Aspectual adverbs describe a relation between the beginning or end of a current state and a current stage of that state. Included in traditional grammar books are examples such as zhèngzài 正在 ‘right at’, réngrán 仍然 ‘still’, jiànjiàn 漸漸 ‘gradually’, céngjīng 曾經 ‘once’, cónglái 從來 ‘ever’, jiù 就 ‘then’, cái 才 ‘until’, etc. These aspectual adverbs may function differently in different dialects, but only standard Mandarin will be discussed in this article. The most typical example of aspectual adverbs discussed in the literature is the opposition between already and still in English…