A Systemic Description of the Restricted Recursive Aspect System in Standard Chinese

摘要

Temporal information is expressed differently in standard Chinese and Engligh due to their own intrinsic characteristics. Halliday devised his recursive tense for English. Can this recursive tense theory be used to generate complex aspect expressions in standard Chinese? The answer is positive provided the process of recurring is restricted. The paper will explain the reasons for adopting the restricted recursive method and also give a precise systemic description of the restricted recursive aspect system in Chinese.