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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…

Counterfactuals, concessives and hypotheticals are three semantically related but different constructions. Hypotheticals, also known as conditionals, typically involve an adverbial clause, often referred to as the antecedent or protasis clause and a consequent or apodosis main clause. In some cases, a verb complement is used to express a hypothetical world, as the complement of the verb xīwàng 希望 ‘wish’. This article focuses on the former type. The antecedent clause of a Chinese hypothetical is typically marked by a discontinuous constituent rúguǒ … de huà 如果 … 的話 ‘if’ or yàoshì … de …

Genericity is reflected in two rather different phenomena in natural language. One phenomenon involves noun phrases which refer to genera, or kinds, such as shīzi 獅子 ‘lions’, in sentences such as (1): 1. 我喜歡獅子。   Wǒ  xǐhuān  shīzi.   1sg  like         lion   ‘I like lions’. Such noun phrases are called generic or kind-referring NPs. The other phenomenon is exhibited by sentences which involve generic characterizations such as (2a) or habituals such as (2b).  2. a. 奇異果富含維他命C。     Qíyìguǒ  fùhán                  wéitāmìng C.     kiwi          richly.contain  vitamin C     ‘Kiwis are rich in…