Tense as a Grammatical Category in Sinitic: A Critical Overview

Sinitic languages are very often described as tenseless, since they generally seen lacking ‘true’ grammatical markers of tense: thus, the interpretation time reference relies on other factors, such aspect, modal verbs, and use expressions. However, debate concerning tenseless nature Chinese has not been settled yet: several types items in have analyzed expressing both aspect tense, tense modality, or even only. In this paper, we offer a critical analysis proposals made description Standard Mandarin (so-called) dialects exponents tense. We shall show that there appears to be broad degree variation within type tense(-like) meanings expressed, with different degrees overlap between TAM categories (i.e., modality), grammaticalisation alleged markers. Furthermore, most grammaticalised located subregions northern China: thus discuss relevance our data for areal typology Sinitic.