As the first published text-based study of aspect in Chinese, this book demonstrates the value of corpus data for purposes of developing linguistic theory. By filling numerous gaps in the description of Chinese aspect, the findings will prove essential to anyone wishing to gain a more complete picture of Mandarin Chinese language structure. The book is also useful for its clear summary of previous approaches to the theory of aspect and for the clarity it brings to the description of basic aspectual categories. Also welcome is the two-layered approach adopted, which accounts for situation aspect in terms of verb classes on the lexical level and as situation types on the sentential level, resulting in a systhesis of ideas presented by both Vendler and Smith.

- Edward J. Vajda, Western Washington University, in Language 83(3), 2007,

Overall AIMC has done a remarkable job in deepening the understanding of Chinese aspect. It has not only expanded the research scope, but also provided many insights into the nature of Chinese aspect. Most importantly, the seamless integration of theoretic exploration with empirical investigation provides new directions for future exploration. This book is necessary for any one who wants to investigate Chinese aspect further.

- Tao Ming, Concordia University, USA, in Chinese Language and Discourse 1:1, 2010,

In <i>Aspect in Mandarin Chinese</i>, Richard Xiao and Tony McEnery achieve a detailed and insightful analysis of verbal aspect in Chinese, based on a new and powerful two-level model of aspect. Taking as its starting point the theory of Carlota Smith (1991, 1997), their model, clearly and subtly developed, shows undoubted advances over previous treatments of aspect. Of particular importance is the distinction between viewpoint aspect (which is essentially grammatical) and situation aspect (which is essentially semantic, to be analysed at lexical or sentential level). One of the book's particular strengths lies in its successful combination of theoretical depth with a corpus-based methodology. The authors’ use of corpora of both Chinese and English incorporates also the use of a parallel corpus of both source texts and their translations. The corpus data provide them with a means to confirm the validity of their model across language boundaries, and to show the benefit of both theory and data in the contrastive analyses of the two languages. This book brings new clarity and rigour to the study of aspect, and so advances an important area of grammatical research which has previously suffered from confusing or inadequate formulations.

- Professor Geoffrey N. Leech, Lancaster University,