唐宋시기 동사 ‘了’의 어법기능과 의미변화 연구 - ≪近代汉语语法资料彙编≫을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper examined the grammatical functions and meanings of the verb ‘–le’, which has been written as ‘了’. In the Tang-Song Dynasties, ‘了’ has appeared in three different structures as ‘V-le’, ‘V-O-le’ and ‘V-le-O’ sequences. At first, ‘了’ was used as a verb meaning ‘to finish’. In the ‘V-le’ and ‘V-le-O’ sequences, it gradually became a resultative complement, which means ‘to complete’, but only when it appeared right after a verb, that had [+durative] feature. Furthermore, during the Song Dynasty, ‘了’ in the ‘V-le-O’ sequence began to appear in ancient literatures to mark the perfective aspect because of ‘generalization of meaning’. After the Song Dynasty, ‘了’ in the ‘V-O-le’ sequence started to appear right before the sentential-final element ‘也’, which could indicate the ‘anterior’ meaning. Because of this ‘anterior’ meaning of ‘也’, ‘-了也’ also could be used as an anterior marker. As shown above, new meanings are continually emerging, but old ones are not easily discarded. Therefore, several meanings which had emerged from the same word, such as ‘了’, has remained to coexist. Because of this, in the present Mandarin, ‘了’ has several different meanings such as ‘to finish’, ‘to complete’, and it also can be used as an ‘anterior marker’ or a ‘perfective/simple past marker’. But it should be noted that it has been quite long time since the first two meanings of ‘了’ had appeared, which leads to the fact that they are now used only in the special forms like ‘idioms’ or ‘V-得/不-R’ structures.