An Overview of Studies of Modern Chinese Temporal System

The study of modern Chinese temporal system, which can be traced back to 1930s, is receiving attention from more and more scholars.The focus of research has transformed from the existence of temporal concepts in Chinese to the realizations of temporal meaning and their relationship.The research tends to be more systematic and justifies a wider range of language phenomena.However, as a result of diversified research angles and emphases, the study of modern Chinese temporal system takes on an inconsistent scenario.This paper attempts to make a generalization of the studies in this area from the perspectives of tense, aspect, phase, temporal words, etc.in the hope of shedding some light for the construction of a complete and consistent modern Chinese temporal system.