Time Expression Characteristics of “Zhe”:A Contrastive Study of Tense between Chinese and English

Zhe(着) functions as an absolute time marker in a single-predicate sentence in which speech time equals event time,and as a relative time marker in non-predicate position in complex sentence.As the absolute time marker,Zhe( 着) means the previous time; As the relative time marker,it means the same time. Zhecan be replaced by time words or syntactic components under certain conditions. By comparison,the equivalents of Zhein English,past tense,progressive tense or the non-finite clause V +ingEnglish must be used. English uses different verb forms to express the absolute time and relative tense,while Zhe( 着) in Chinese can express the two tenses.