Abstract: There has been a long debate as to whether there is tense in Chinese, an uninflected language. Some scholars hold that there exist only four aspectual morphemes including zhe, guo, zai, and verbal le, serving as time markers while others argue that the past time morpheme guo is in fact a tense marker, indicating that there is tense in Chinese. Without empirical evidence and with only theoretical discussion, the debate can hardly come to any conclusion. Against this background the linguistic studies on syntactic deficits in aphasic agrammatism may have special value since they may provide the empirical evidence helping settle the debate. A longitudinal case study was conducted, aiming at observing the recovery process of a Chinese agrammatic speaker. We examined the production of the above four morphemes by a 52-year-old male patient in a longitudinal study spanning five months. The findings indicate that guo is indeed dissociated from the other aspectual morphemes zhe, zai, and verbal le. This study has provided the empirical evidence that there may be a tense phrase (TP) node in the syntactic tree of the Chinese language, hosting guo, higher than the NegP node, which is in turn higher than the AspP node. Thus it was concluded that there may be tense in the Chinese language. This study, based upon the generative linguistics, provides an innovative perspective in proving hierarchical structure in language.

Keywords: tense; aspect; agrammatism; aphasia

摘要： 汉语是否存在时态，争论已久。有研究者认为，汉语中仅有4个体标记语“着”“过”“了”“在”作时间标记词；另有研究者认为，表示过去时间的“过”就是汉语里的时态标记词。但这些争论只停留于理论探讨，少有实证研究证据。对失语症病人的语言研究能为该争论提供独特的实证视角。本研究为个案研究，对一名汉语失语症患者进行5个月的历时追踪实验，目的为检测其在语言恢复过程中在“着”“过”“了”“在”4个语素上的语言行为表现。结果显示，“过”与其他3个时态成分分离。依据句法树剪裁理论分析认为，汉语句法结构中存在TP，且在NegP 和AspP之上。据此研究结果可以推论，汉语中或许存在时态。作为生成语法框架下的汉语失语症实证研究，本文具有创新意义，证明失语症研究有助于厘清语言的层级结构、证实语言学理论。

关键词: 时态, 体, 语法缺失, 失语症