18.2549, Qs: Ability Modality in Mandarin and English

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2549. Thu Aug 30 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.2549, Qs: Ability Modality in Mandarin and English

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1)
Date: 26-Aug-2007
From: Zhiguo Xie < culinguist at gmail.com >
Subject: Ability Modality in Mandarin and English

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:53:36
From: Zhiguo Xie [culinguist at gmail.com]
Subject: Ability Modality in Mandarin and English
E-mail this message to a friend:
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Dear linguists,

I am trying to convince myself that ability modality in Mandarin has a
temporality presupposition while English does not. Towards this end, I am
looking for help from native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of
English.

In English, is it good if, out of blue, someone utters "John was able to
finish the assignment yesterday' or "John could finish the assignment
yesterday' (focusing on the ability reading). Does the sentence convey any
contrastive meaning, like in such contexts as 'John was able to finish the
assignment, but he cannot do so today.'?

In Mandarin Chinese, are sentences (1) and (2), which both contain
past-denoting zuotian 'yesterday', acceptable in their ability reading?

(1)  Zhangsan zuotian   neng   zuo       wan          zuoye 
     Z     yesterday    can     do        finish     homework
(2) Zhangsan   zuotian   zuo de     wan     zuoye
    Z         yesterday  do  DE   finish   homework

Some people that I consulted reported to me that (1) and (2) would be
improved if we add elements like hai 'still' before neng (for (1)) and zuo
(for (2)), respectively. That seems to suggest that (1) and (2) are
marginal as they stand alone as above. But I really don't want to jump to
such a conclusion before consulting more native speakers. 

Thank you very much.

Best,
Zhiguo 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics






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