Aspectual selection and negation in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This paper argues that the distributions of bu 'not' and mei 'not' in Mandarin Chinese can be accounted for in terms of their aspectual selections. I propose that while mei aspectually selects an event as its complement, bu aspectually selects as its complement a stative situation that requires no input of energy in order to obtain that situation. I show that this approach to the distributions of bu and mei better accounts for the data than previous analyses such as Huang (1988), Ernst (1995), and Lee and Pan (2001).