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Expressing the existence of an event with ‘you (to have) + VP’ in Taiwan
Mandarin: A corpus-based investigation
Article in Concentric Studies in Linguistics · November 2022

DOI: 10.1075/consl.21046.col
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Citation : Collart, Aymeric, and Hung-Kuan Su. 2022. Expressing the
existence of an event with ‘you (to have) + VP’ in Taiwan Mandarin:
A corpus-based investigation. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics
48.2:249-284.
Expressing the existence of an event with ‘you (to have) + VP’ in

Taiwan Mandarin: A corpus-based investigation
[表示事件的存在: 以語料庫方法探討臺灣華語「有字句」]
Aymeric Collart [理克] and Hung-Kuan Su [蘇洪寬]
National Taiwan Normal University [國立臺灣師範大學]
The verb you ‘to have’ in standard Mandarin is typically followed by a noun. You can also take a VP as its
complement (‘you + VP’) in several varieties of Mandarin. However, the function associated with it is still
under debate: ‘you + VP’ has been analyzed as expressing past tense, perfective aspect, perfect aspect, or realis
mood. This paper assesses these analyses by conducting a corpus-based investigation of ‘you + VP’ on the PTT
platform and by looking at different morphosyntactic environments in which it is used. The data favor analyzing
‘you + VP’ as expressing an assertive modality meaning (the situation is considered true in the real world by the
speaker). This analysis corroborates with the high frequency of ‘you + VP’ in assertive environments (e.g., after
factual verbs in embedded clauses, with attitudinal adverbs of truth value, among others). Conversely, taking
‘you + VP’ as indicating past tense or perfective aspect is challenged by the present data, and the perfect aspect
analysis cannot explain all the environments in which ‘you + VP’ is used. This paper provides new insights
regarding the morphosyntactic use of ‘you + VP’ and sheds light on the meaning this construction encodes.
Keywords: Taiwan Mandarin, ‘you + VP’, corpus linguistics, assertive modality, Tense-
Aspect-Modality, syntax
關鍵詞: 臺灣華語、有字句、語料庫語言學、斷定情態、時態－時貌－情態、句法學
1. Introduction
Differences between varieties of Mandarin Chinese can be identified in Mandarin-speaking

regions such as Singapore and Taiwan. The term ‘Mandarin Chinese’ is understood in the
present paper as the standard variety of Mandarin Chinese as conceived in native speakers’
minds (referred to as Putonghua). It is also argued that Putonghua is based on the Mandarin
spoken in Beijing (however, see Li (2004) for a critical discussion on the difficulty of
defining the notion of ‘standardization’ of Mandarin Chinese). Some Mandarin-speaking
regions have developed endemic characteristics which are supposedly not found in Standard
Mandarin Chinese, for instance, at the phonological level, with some phonemes being
differently realized, or at the lexical level, with some words used to refer to entities that relate
to other entities in Standard Mandarin Chinese.
Variations can also occur at the grammatical level. One is concerned with the verb you
‘to have’ which is analyzed in Standard Mandarin Chinese as taking an NP as its complement.
You ‘to have’ used as a verb can express the possession of an object (see (1), (Tsai 2002)).
(1) Ta you wu-dong fangzi.

s/he have five-CL house
‘S/he has/possesses five houses.’ (Tsai 2002:3)
A second meaning of you ‘to have’ as a verb concerns the existence of an object in space,
or “locative-existential” (see (2), (Tsai 2002:3)).
(2) Shui-li you wu-tiao yu.

water-inside have five-CL fish
‘There are five fish in the water.’ (Tsai 2002:3)
You ‘to have’ as a verb can also have a “presentational” meaning, introducing an entity
into the discourse (see (3), (Tsai 2002:3–4)).
(3) You wu-ge ren lai le.

have five-CL people come CRS
‘(There are) five people (who) came.’ (Tsai 2002:4)
The verb you ‘to have’ went through grammaticalization and is also an auxiliary verb,
taking a verbal phrase as its complement, resulting in the construction ‘you + VP’ (hereafter
referred to as ‘you + VP’ or ‘you-sentence’). See (4) for an illustrative example.1
(4) Ta you lai.

s/he have come
‘S/he has come.’ (Tsai 2002:4)
Notice that the ‘you + VP’ construction is not specific to one variety of Mandarin
Chinese: it is attested in Taiwan Mandarin (Teng 2002, Tseng 2003), Singapore Mandarin
1
You ‘to have’ can be found preceding a VP in standard Mandarin when you is used after the negation marker
mei. Sentences involving you used as an auxiliary verb and preceded by the negation marker mei are not
included in what is referred to as ‘you + VP’ in this paper.
Existential assertion with ‘you (to have) + VP’
(Lock 1989, Khoo & Lin 2020) and Hong Kong Mandarin (Chen 2010), as well as in parts of
Mainland China (Yang & Dong 2003, Jing 2005).2
Despite the growing number of studies dedicated to the ‘you + VP’ construction, the
primary function of ‘you + VP’ is still under debate: it is analyzed as either expressing past
tense (Chen 2010, Cai 2011), perfective aspect (Tsai 2002), existential perfect aspect (Khoo
& Lin 2020), realis mood (Wen 2002, Liu 2011) or factuality (Collart 2018a). The present
paper presents new data to investigate the morphosyntactic contexts in which the ‘you + VP’
construction in Taiwan Mandarin has been used in recent years through a corpus
investigation. The goal of the present paper is to assess the different analyses mentioned
above in light of the data from native speakers made available by our corpus exploration.
Furthermore, the corpus-based study conducted in this paper allows us to borrow the concept
of ‘attraction’ from Stefanowitsch & Gries (2003, 2005), in which the higher frequency of
occurrence of certain lexemes, grammatical markers or syntactic constructions with a specific
and pre-defined syntactic construction reflects a higher compatibility in terms of meaning.
The present paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the theoretical background in
which the analyses are placed is described and the different accounts regarding the primary
meaning of ‘you + VP’ are briefly reviewed. The methodology regarding the corpus data is
given in Section 3. The data found in the corpus are then qualitatively (in terms of syntactic
co-distribution) and quantitatively (in terms of frequency profiles) analyzed in Section 4.
Several accounts of the primary meaning of ‘you + VP’ are discussed and assessed with the
collected data in Section 5. The conclusion is given in Section 6.
2. ‘You + VP’: between tense, aspect and modality
2.1. Theoretical background: definitions
The main linguistic debate surrounding ‘you + VP’ concerns the primary function encoded by
this construction, with accounts focusing on the link between ‘you + VP’ and the temporal
information it conveys. The present paper follows these accounts by adopting the frameworks
of the expression of time as proposed by Comrie (1976, 1985), Bouscaren & Chuquet (1987),
Bouscaren (1991) and Palmer (2001). In these frameworks, while tense, aspect and
mood/modality are related to the concept of TIME, they are assumed to be different semantic
and grammatical categories.
Tense is defined as the grammaticalized localization of an event in time, placing an
event in the past (past tense), at the present moment (present tense) or in the future (future
tense).
Aspect focuses on the temporal structure of the event in question, such that an event can
be seen as a whole, including its initial and final temporal boundaries (perfective aspect).
Conversely, the focus can also be on the internal stages of an event (imperfective aspect), or
on one of the phases of the event (such as the final temporal boundary, or terminative aspect,
for example). Perfect aspect is defined as the relevance at a certain time of reference of a
situation that occurred before the time of reference. Perfect aspect can be further divided into
four types: (a) perfect of result (the result state of the prior situation is concomitant with the
time of reference), (b) experiential perfect (the prior situation occurred at least once, and the
result state of this situation no longer holds at the time of reference), (c) perfect of persistent
situation (a situation that began prior to the time of reference still holds at the time of
reference), and (d) perfect of recent past. The first three subtypes differ in terms of the
2
Notice that instances of ‘you + VP’ can be found in Ancient Chinese, as pointed out by Jing (2005:32 –35). The
use of ‘you + VP’ in Mainland China may come from the exposure to Taiwan or Hong Kong Mandarin through
movies or TV shows as suggested by Yang & Dong (2003).
3
temporal relation between the situation and the time of reference: the entire situation still
holds at the time of reference, though it started before (perfect of persistent situation), only
the result state of the prior situation holds at the time of reference (perfect of result), or none
of the situation holds at the time of reference (experiential perfect).
Modality and mood are concerned with the judgment ascribed by a speaker towards the
status of the event. This judgment can be expressed in terms of realis and irrealis mood, with
realis “portray[ing] situations as actualized, as having occurred or actually occurred”, and
irrealis related with situations “within the realm of thought, knowable only through
imagination” (Mithun 1999:173). Palmer (2001:4) further claims that the distinction between
realis and irrealis is about “what is asserted and what is not asserted” in terms of
presupposition made by the speaker and hearer. Regarding the temporal interpretation of a
sentence, realis marking is typically associated with past time reference and to a lesser extent
to present time reference, while irrealis is typically associated with future time reference
(Comrie 1985, Palmer 2001, among others). Judgment can also be expressed through modal
systems. Four main types of modal system are assumed in this paper: epistemic modality
(concerned with the probability of occurrence of a situation, hence leaving space for
uncertainty), deontic modality (concerned with the notions of necessity, permission and
command), dynamic modality (concerned with the notions of capacity and volition), and
assertive modality (referring to a speaker’s judgment of a situation in terms of truth value;
Bouscaren & Chuquet (1987), Bouscaren (1991)). To some extent, the notions of ‘realis
mood’, ‘factuality’ and ‘assertive modality’ are similar at the semantic level. Therefore, the
present paper regroups them under the term ‘assertive modality’ (though the terms ‘realis
mood’ and ‘factuality’ are kept in the literature review if they were originally employed by
the study in question).
The different accounts of ‘you + VP’ exposed in the next section follow the trichotomy
displayed in tense, aspect and mood/modality. Four different analyses are proposed in the
literature: ‘you + VP’ as expressing (a) past tense, (b) perfective aspect, (c) existential perfect
aspect, or (d) realis/factual mood. The reviews below primarily focus on analyses made
concerning ‘you + VP’ in Taiwan Mandarin. References to analyses made for other varieties
of Standard Mandarin Chinese are explicitly mentioned.
2.2. ‘You + VP’ as expressing past tense
In the first account, the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ in ‘you + VP’ is analyzed as a past tense
marker (Chen 2010, Cai 2011). Chen (2010) collected a corpus of you-sentences from the
Internet to investigate the distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction with the Aktionsart of
the verb in the VP and the time adverbs used in the you-sentences. Chen (2010:36) identifies
two main temporal properties characterizing ‘you + VP’: (a) aspectually, ‘you + VP’
expresses a perfect meaning, and (b) ‘you + VP’ is also analyzed as a past tense marker,
anchoring the time of the event in the past. Two arguments related to the collocation of ‘you
+ VP’ and time adverbs are provided by Chen (2010:43–44). The first comes from the
observation that in the corpus collected by Chen (2010), ‘you + VP’ mostly occurs with past
time adverbs. The other argument is that you-sentences with either a present or future time
adverb (as in (5)) are ungrammatical.
(5) Wo zuotian/*xianzai/*mingtian you zuo zuoye.

I yesterday/now/tomorrow YOU do homework
‘I did do my homework yesterday/*now/*tomorrow.’ (Chen 2010:43–44)
Cai (2011:40–41) also conducted a corpus-exploratory study based on different sources

of Taiwan Mandarin (total: 537 sentences). The focus of the analysis is on the occurrence of
you-sentences with (a) the class of lexical aspect of the verb, and (b) the aspect markers -guo,
zai and -le. Cai (2011) concludes that the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ indicates past tense
regardless of the verb type modified by you ‘to have’ (Cai 2011:70–71). Whether or not a
past time or present time interpretation is obtained depends on the telic feature of the verb.
Cai (2011) provides the same arguments as Chen (2010), in that ‘you + VP’ is analyzed as a
past tense construction because of its ungrammaticality with a future time adverb but not with
a past time adverb (Cai 2011:75). Notice that Cai (2011) restricts her analysis to the
occurrence of you-sentences with the class of lexical aspect of the verb in which it occurs as
well as three aspect markers (-guo, zai and -le). In other words, no information is given
regarding the occurrence of you-sentences with other elements, such as time adverbs, even
though Cai (2011) bases her arguments on the occurrence of ‘you + VP’ with time adverbs.
2.3. ‘You + VP’ as expressing aspect: between perfective and perfect
Some studies treat the ‘you + VP’ construction as primarily encoding aspectual information.
Two analyses are proposed under the aspect category: ‘you + VP’ as encoding either
perfective meaning (Tsai 2002, among others) or existential perfect meaning (Chen 2010,
Khoo & Lin 2020).
2.3.1. ‘You + VP’ as indicating perfective aspect
Tsai (2002), basing his analysis on the interpretation of the sentence in (4) (ta you lai ‘s/he
has come’), argues that the perfective meaning of ‘you + VP’ comes from the assertion of an
event. Therefore, Tsai (2002) does not consider ‘you + VP’ as an exact equivalent of the
perfective verbal suffix -le, holding that you-sentences encodes assertive meaning in addition
to perfective meaning. The ‘you + VP’ would be better paraphrased, according to Tsai (2002),
with the copula shi ‘to be’ along with the perfective -le, where shi ‘to be’ is used as a
predicate focus marker, expressing assertion of the proposition induced by the predicate (Li
& Thompson 1981:151, Shyu 2016). See (6a) for the you-sentence and (6b) for its paraphrase.
(6) a. A Q you qu Meiguo.

Ah Q YOU go US
‘Ah Q has gone/went to the US.’ (Tsai 2002:2)
b. A Q shi qu-le Meiguo.
Ah Q be go-PFV US
‘Ah Q did go to the US.’ (Tsai 2002:2)
2.3.2. ‘You + VP’ as indicating existential perfect aspect
Another account for ‘you + VP’ as primarily expressing aspectual information has been
proposed by Khoo & Lin (2020). After inspecting the collocation of ‘you + VP’ with other
grammatical aspect markers in an oral corpus of Singapore Chinese, Khoo & Lin (2020:112)
analyze the auxiliary verb you as an existential perfect marker, “because it implies the
persistence or the existence of a state” and “is concerned with the existence of an event
resulting from a prior situation or event”. More specifically, Khoo & Lin (2020:112) take
‘you + VP’ as expressing a perfect of result or a perfect of persistent situation, in Comrie’s
(1976) sense. They exemplify this use of ‘you + VP’ with the sentence in (7).
5
(7) Bu yao, wo you chi.

NEG want I YOU eat
‘No need (to give to me), I have eaten.’ (Khoo & Lin 2020:112)
According to Khoo & Lin (2020:112), a speaker uttering the sentence in (7) aims to
express that they are still in the state of having eaten, i.e., of being full, hence analyzing ‘you
+ VP’ as a perfect of result in (7). The use of ‘you + VP’ to express a perfect of persistent
situation is exemplified with (8).
(8) Wo you he jiu.

I YOU drink alcohol
a. ‘I have drunk alcohol.’
b. ‘I have the habit of drinking alcohol.’ (Khoo & Lin 2020:113)
‘You + VP’ in (8) can be interpreted as expressing a perfect of result, corresponding to

the interpretation in (8a). However, the sentence can also be interpreted as having a habitual
reading (see (8b)), taken by Khoo & Lin (2020) as being an instance of perfect of persistent
state. It should be noted though that Khoo & Lin (2020) only investigate the distribution of
aspect marking with the ‘you + VP’ construction, as well as the type of sentence (declarative
or interrogative). No information is given regarding, for example, the type of adverbs that can
be found along with ‘you + VP’, or the syntactic configuration of the clause with the auxiliary
verb you ‘to have’.
2.4. ‘You + VP’ as expressing realis mood, factuality or assertive modality
The fourth account found in the literature treats the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ as having a
modal meaning primarily. Wen (2002) and Liu (2011) consider the auxiliary verb you ‘to
have’ a realis marker, while Collart (2018a) analyses the ‘you + VP’ construction as
expressing factuality.
Wen (2002), after comparing the use of ‘you + VP’ with (a) the perfective verbal suffix -
le, (b) the ‘currently relevant situation’ sentential-final le, and (c) the copula shi ‘to be’,
observes that despite having some similarities, ‘you + VP’ cannot completely replace these
markers. Wen (2002:283) further argues that the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ is in
complementary distribution with the auxiliary verb hui, taken as expressing irrealis mood and
low probability of the occurrence of a situation, as in (9a–b).
(9) a. Fahang you zhi fei Taibei.

Air.France YOU direct fly Taipei
‘Air France (certainly) has direct flights to Taipei.’ (Wen 2002:283)
b. Fahang hui zhi fei Taibei.
Air.France HUI direct fly Taipei
‘Air France will (probably) have direct flights to Taipei.’ (Wen 2002:283)
Liu (2011) provides further arguments in favor of the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as marking
realis mood. He points out that the ‘you + VP’ construction is ungrammatical in irrealis
environments, such as imperative mood (see (10)) and in conditional clauses (see (11)).
(10) (*You) chi pingguo le!

YOU eat apple CRS
Intended: ‘Eat apples!’ (Liu 2011:45)
(11) Ruguo wo duzi e, wo (*you) chi pingguo.

if I stomach hungry I YOU eat apple
Intended: ‘If I am hungry, I eat apples.’ (Liu 2011:45)
Following this analysis, the ungrammaticality of ‘you + VP’ after a future time adverb as
(already exemplified in (5)) is not the result of an incompatibility in terms of time-relational
information given by the future time adverb, but in terms of the irrealis dimension induced by
future time reference in general (Lyons 1977).
Collart (2018a), while analyzing the ‘you + VP’ construction as marking factuality,
argues that the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ asserts a situation that is “presupposed as being
true by the speaker”. Though using a different label from Wen (2002) and Liu (2011), this
definition is similar to the one proposed for realis mood in terms of meaning. Notably, it is
argued that ‘you + VP’ cannot occur in all past time environments, in that they need to be
factual. For instance, the adverb chadian ‘almost, nearly’ implies that an event took place in
the past, but did not come to its natural end, i.e., the event is past non-factual (Shyu &
Chuang 2015). Collart (2018a) notices that the ‘you + VP’ under the scope of chadian
‘almost, nearly’ is ungrammatical, as exemplified with (12).
(12) Ta chadian (*you) da-shang gongche.

he almost YOU take-up bus
Intended: ‘He almost caught the bus.’ (Collart 2018a)
However, as pointed out by Khoo & Lin (2020), the sentences used in Collart (2018a)
are not taken from a corpus, hence the naturalness of the data can be questioned.3
2.5. Interim summary
The four types of analysis of the ‘you + VP’ construction are summarized in Table 1 below.
3
Yet, as Liu & Chen (2017:273) put it, data obtained from intuitive judgments and from quantitative studies can
complement each other and provide insights from different perspectives.
7
Table 1. Summary of the studies mentioned in Section 2 (chronologically presented)

Study Variety of Analysis of Source of the Co-occurrence analysis
Mandarin ‘you + VP’ data
Tsai Taiwan Perfective Intuition of Occurrence with shi-
(2002) Mandarin aspect native speakers construction and -le
Wen Taiwan Realis mood Self-collected Occurrence with shi-
(2002) Mandarin corpus construction, -le, sentential
le, auxiliary verb hui
Chen Unclear Past tense, Self-collected Aktionsart of the verb,
(2010) experiential corpus from the occurrence with time adverbs
perfect aspect internet
Cai Taiwan Past tense Acadamia Aktionsart of the verb,
(2011) Mandarin Sinica balanced occurrence with -le, zai and -
corpus of guo
Modern Chinese
Liu Taiwan Realis mood NCCU oral Occurrence with zai,
(2011) Mandarin corpus sentential le, in imperative
and in conditional clauses
Collart Taiwan Factual Intuition of Occurrence with time
(2018a) Mandarin assertion native speakers adverbs and chadian ‘almost’
Khoo & Singapore Existential Self-collected Type of sentence, occurrence
Lin Mandarin perfect aspect oral corpus of with -le, -zhe, -zhu, zai, -guo
(2020) variety show and sentential le
As can be seen in Table 1, the co-occurrence analyses conducted in each study were
slightly different. Some looked at the occurrence of ‘you + VP’ with aspect markers, but the
aspect markers that were considered were not the same in each study. Others analyzed the
occurrence of ‘you + VP’ with adverbs, but these studies only looked at time adverbs. The
corpus exploration proposed in the present paper differs from the studies summarized in
Table 1 in that not only the distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction with aspect markers
and time adverbs is explored, but we propose to widen the scope to other types of adverbs,
other modal markers as well as the type of clauses it occurs in.
3. Methodology
The data analyzed in this study are from the ‘PTT’ bulletin board, a popular bulletin board in
Taiwan (see Liu, Hsieh & Prévot (2013), Liu (2014) and Chung et al. (2021) for a more
complete presentation of the PTT and its applications in corpus-based studies). It covers a
variety of topics such as gossiping, relationships and cars. The ‘Gossiping’ board was
selected to create a corpus of you-sentences because of its frequent activity on PTT (tens of
threads are created every day) and the kind of interactions which is a unique informal and
spontaneous written-spoken style from which the usage of ‘you + VP’ is likely to emerge.
The selection of the PTT bulletin board was also motivated by the restrictions on applying for
an account (a student ID from a Taiwanese university is required to sign up), and the
‘Gossiping’ board by further restrictions on posting and commenting (e.g., it is required to
login to PTT at least 180 times). This decision was taken to ensure that the sentences were
written by native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin. On the ‘Gossiping’ board, people post news
or personal opinions about social phenomena, and others can comment on these posts (an
example of the ‘Gossiping’ board is given in Figure 1; the main post is in the upper part of
Figure 1 (characters in white), comments from other users are found below the main post
(characters in yellow)).
Figure 1. Example of a PTT board

Contents from the boards were extracted using R (R Core team 2018) and the ‘rvest’
package (Wickham 2020). As for the scraped elements, both posts and comments were
included to collect more data. Furthermore, in order to have a more representative corpus,
posts from the years 2017 to 2020 were scraped. From the output of each year, 3,000
sentences containing you ‘to have’ were extracted (regardless of whether it was ‘you + NP’ or
‘you + VP’).4 In total, there were 12,000 you-sentences from the PTT ‘Gossiping’ board from
2017 to 2020.
Since there were a high number of sentences to analyze, an automated method was
employed to assist with the identification of possible you-sentences before a manual double-
check. Sentences were first segmented into words and annotated with part-of-speech tags
using the ‘Articut’ package (Wang et al. 2019). After checking part-of-speech tags on the
Articut documentation, tags related to ‘you + VP’ sentences were picked out. Sentences in
which you ‘to have’ was followed by an element tagged by <ACTION_verb>, <MODAL>,
or <VerbP> were extracted.5
The sentences were then manually double-checked by two native speakers of Taiwan
Mandarin to ensure that they contained the ‘you + VP’ construction described in Section 2.
To do so, a list of criteria was set, which automatically led to the exclusion of a sentence
when met: (a) when you was preceded by the negation marker mei since the negative phrase
mei-you is not specific to Taiwan Mandarin (as mentioned in Footnote 1), (b) when you was
found in the interrogative pattern you-mei-you since it involves the negative phrase mei-you,
(c) when you was followed by dian ‘a little’ (e.g., you dian e [have little hungry] ‘to be a little
hungry’) because it is not clear whether dian is an adverb modifying the predicate following
you, or whether you dian is considered as a whole (the sentences were kept when dian was
used as a verb, meaning ‘to order’), and (d) when you was followed by keneng ‘possible,
possibility’ (e.g., you keneng [have possible] ‘to be possible that’), because it is not clear
4
The first 3,000 sentences of a pre-defined month which included you were extracted (e.g., January 2017,
November 2020, etc.). We selected different months in order to avoid topics specific to a certain time of the year
since that may affect the frequency of the verb following the auxiliary verb you.
5
The tagged element did not need to directly follow you ‘to have’, allowing the retrieval of sentences in which
one or several words were found between you 'to have’ and the tagged element (e.g., when an adverb or the
passive marker bei for example were found between you ‘to have’ and the tagged element). Also notice that
state verbs are included under the labels <ACTION_verb> and <VerbP> in Articut.
9
whether keneng ‘possible, possibility’ is used as an auxiliary verb or as a noun. Another type
of ambiguity was also found which required manual inspection: cases when the class of the
word following you could not be clearly identified as either a noun or a verb. For instance,
the word ai ‘love’ in Mandarin, like its English counterpart, can be used as a noun or as a
verb. In such cases, the syntactic context was used to determine whether it was a noun (e.g.,
you ai [YOU love] ‘there is love’) or as a verb (e.g., ta you ai kan xinwen [s/he YOU love
watch news] ‘s/he loves to watch the news’). When the ambiguity remained despite
inspecting the syntactic context, a decision was made to exclude the sentences to avoid false
positives.6 Finally, only sentences with an explicit subject and a complete VP were
considered for the analyses to ensure of the quality of the data.7 Two native speakers
independently annotated the extracted sentences. 34 cases of disagreement occurred out of
12,000 sentences (i.e., when only one of the annotators considered that the ‘you + VP’
construction was in the sentence), and these sentences were removed from further analysis.
After data-cleaning, 1204 you-sentences retrieved from 841 different threads were
considered for further analysis, suggesting that they were produced by a large variety of
speakers. The distribution per year is as follows: 146 sentences from 2017, 143 sentences
from 2018, 449 sentences from 2019 and 466 sentences from 2020.8 A total of 524 different
verbs were identified in the ‘you + VP’ construction, indicating that the ‘you + VP’
construction is not fixed, and that it is rather productive.
The process of building the ‘you + VP’ corpus is summarized in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Workflow of building the ‘you + VP’ corpus

6
The syntactic test of adding the modal auxiliary verb hui ‘will’ was used to determine whether you ‘to have’
was followed by a VP or an NP, since ‘you + VP’ is ungrammatical when occurring with hui but ‘you + NP’ is
grammatical (Wen 2002:283). Notice that because of this criterion, true positives may have been deleted.
7
This criterion led to the exclusion of a large number of sentences (808 sentences), possibly containing ‘real’
you-sentences. Analyses conducted on the dataset containing also the sentences without subjects showed similar
tendencies in terms of frequency profiles as in Section 4. The selection of the dataset with only sentences
involving an explicit subject was motivated by the fact that the analyses conducted in Section 5 are qualitative
and quantitative and require unambiguous you-sentences.
8
The difference between the number of extracted sentences (12,000) and the final number of sentences kept for
the analysis (1204) may be surprising at first sight (i.e., 10.03% of the extracted sentences). Yet, it should be
noted that most of the sentences not kept for the analyses are instances of the ‘you + NP’ construction and that
very strict criteria were applied during the data cleaning process.
4. Frequency profiles of the distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction
The distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction was analyzed according to three elements: (a)
the type of clause in which ‘you + VP’ is found, (b) the adverbs and adverbial phrases
occurring along with the ‘you + VP’ construction, and (c) the aspect and modal markers
interacting with the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’. Sentence examples are provided for the
main tendencies only.9
4.1. Clause types
The ‘you + VP’ construction was found in different types of clauses. In most of the collected
sentences, ‘you + VP’ was found in a simple clause (1097 instances, 91.11% of the collected
corpus). The ‘you + VP’ construction was found in 107 sentences involving complex clauses.
Six types were identified: embedded clauses, shi-construction, causal, concessive, conditional
and sequential clauses. The quantitative distribution of ‘you + VP’ with clause type is
graphically given in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and clause types

A large number of the instances of ‘you + VP’ are concerned with embedded clauses (48
instances, 44.9% of the complex clauses). See an example in (13).
(13) Ni queding ni you kan wen ma ?

you be.sure you YOU read main.text Q
‘Are you sure that you read the main text of the article?’ (M.1592361044.A.436)
Notice that when the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ is used in a subordinate clause after a
verb of indirect speech, the time of the event modified by you ‘to have’ is understood as
occurring before the time of the main clause by default in the absence of any other indication.
The occurrence of ‘you + VP’ in embedded clauses can be further analyzed according to
the meaning of the verb of the matrix clause. These verbs constitute four groups: (a) verbs
indicating factuality (e.g., zhidao ‘to know’), (b) verbs expressing the speaker’s beliefs
towards the occurrence of the event described by the verb following you ‘to have’ (e.g.,
xiangxin ‘to believe’), (c) verbs of indirect speech, and (d) verbs expressing an evidential
meaning. The frequency profile of these types of verb is represented in Figure 4.
9
The ID of the thread in which the sentence was found is given between parentheses after the translation. The
address of the webpage can be reconstructed as follows (example taken from (13)): ID: M.1592144170.A.E87,
web page: https://www.pttweb.cc/bbs/Gossiping/M.1592144170.A.E87
11
Figure 4. Frequency profile of the types of verb in the matrix clause preceding ‘you + VP’
The ‘you + VP’ construction was mostly found in an embedded clause after two types of
verb, which together stand for 87.5% of the verbs of the matrix clause: (a) verbs expressing a
factual assessment by the speaker of the event denoted in the embedded clause and marked
with ‘you + VP’ (see (14)), and (b) verbs indicating an assertion in terms of belief by the
speaker of the event described in the embedded clause (see (15)).
(14) Ta zhidao [Ke-shizhang you luoshi zhangzhao].

He know Ko-mayor YOU implement long.term.care
‘He knows that Mayor Ko (Wen-je) has implemented long-term care.’
(M.1542443427.A.B64)
(15) Ni hai zhende yiwei [ta you yao lai] o?
you even really think s/he YOU YAO come SFP
‘You really thought that s/he was coming/wants to come?’
(M.1571833865.A.877)
There was also a difference in terms of frequency of the verbs introducing an embedded
clause. These tendencies are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Most frequent factual and belief verbs introducing an embedded clause which
includes ‘you + VP’
Factual Belief
queding, zhidao ‘to jide ‘to juede huaiyi ‘to doubt’, yiwei ‘to
queren ‘to know’ remember’ ‘to think’ xiangxin ‘to believe’, believe
ensure’ shenxin ‘to deeply (wrongly)’
believe’
6 5 4 6 6 5
Note: The numbers indicate the raw count of the verbs found in the matrix clause.
Another complex syntactic configuration in which the ‘you + VP’ construction was
found is the shi-construction (where shi is a copula), which is analyzed as expressing the
assertion or emphasis of the predicate (36 instances, 33.6% of the complex sentences). See
(16) for an example of ‘you + VP’ in a shi-construction (notice that you ‘to have’ must be
placed after the copula shi).
(16) Ta shi you zhangkai zuiba gei ni kan o.

s/he COP YOU open mouth to you look SFP
‘S/he opened your mouth for you to look inside.’ (M.1542462786.A.C02)
The ‘you + VP’ construction was also found in a relatively lower number in other types
of clauses, such as causal clauses (9 instances, 8.4% of the complex clauses), concessive
clauses (7 instances, 6.5%), conditional clauses (6 instances, 5.6%) and sequential clause (1
instance, 0.9%).
4.2. Adverbs and adverbial phrases
Based on the research question and the literature review, the distribution of the adverbs and
adverbial phrases occurring along with ‘you + VP’ was divided into three types: time adverbs,
aspect adverbs and attitudinal adverbs (Biq & Huang 2016). Time adverbs (and adverbial
phrases) are broadly defined as adverbs which function to localize the event described in a
sentence into a specific time frame. This time frame can be unspecified, only setting the
temporal scene (e.g., in 2021), or it can be specified according to another temporal anchor:
the time of speech (deictic anchor). The term ‘aspect adverbs’ is used to describe adverbs that
specify the internal temporal structure of the event in question, without necessarily placing
this event on a timeline (e.g., already, often, etc.). Attitudinal adverbs refer to adverbs that are
used by the speaker to express her/his commitment regarding the status of the event described
in the sentence. In a sense, attitudinal adverbs can be understood as expressing a modal
meaning.
A total of 235 you-sentences involving either a time, aspect or attitudinal adverb or
adverbial phrases were collected from the corpus (19.52% of the sentences). Their
distribution is as follows: 113 time adverbs (48.1% of the time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs), 25
aspect adverbs (10.6%), and 97 attitudinal adverbs (41.3%). Each type of time-aspect-
attitudinal adverb is described below.
4.2.1. Time adverbs
The time adverbs and adverbial phrases were classified under four subcategories, depending
on whether they depict a deictic past, present or future meaning, or whether they just set the
temporal frame in which the event took place. See Figure 5 for a summary of the frequency
profile of the time adverbs occurring with ‘you + VP’.
Figure 5. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and time adverbs
13
It is clear from Figure 5 that the type of adverb that occurs the most frequently with ‘you
+ VP’ is the deictic past adverb (71.7% of the time adverbs, which also corresponds to 34.5%
of the time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs). See (17) for an example.
(17) Wo yiqian you gen-guo lengqi shifu.

I in.the.past YOU follow-EXP air.con qualified.worker
‘I worked with an air conditioner engineer in the past.’
(M.1592198821.A.625)
Deictic past time adverbs found with ‘you + VP’ can refer to an event occurring in an
underspecified past (e.g., zhiqian and yiqian ‘in the past’, guoqu ‘in the past’, and zao ‘early,
past’) or at a specific time point (e.g., qian-nian ‘two years ago’, zuotian ‘yesterday’, etc.).
The ‘you + VP’ construction was also found with present time adverbs. The majority of
such time adverbs are xianzai ‘now’ (see (18)).
(18) Ke Wenje xianzai zhende you zai gao shi-zheng ma ?

Ko.Wen.je now really YOU PROG handle city-affair Q
‘Is Ko Wen-je really handling the affairs of the city now?’
(M.1571817175.A.CEB)
The last type of time adverb that was found occurring with the ‘you + VP’ construction
is referred to as ‘time frame’ adverb, in that it sets the temporal scene during which an event
occurs without specifying its localization in time (see (19)).
(19) Zai Zhongzheng yifenju de shihou

at Zhongzheng first.precinct.police.department DE time
ni you ganjue-dao bei weixie ma?
You YOU feel-arrive PASS threaten Q
‘Were you feeling threatened when you were at the First Precinct Police Department
of Zhongzheng?’ (M.1542442870.A.0E7)
No occurrence of ‘you + VP’ was found with a deictic future time adverb.
4.2.2. Aspect adverbs
Aspect adverbs and adverbial phrases were categorized according to the aspectual meaning
that they convey. A total of 20 aspect adverbs and adverbials were found occurring with the
‘you + VP’ construction, divided according to three subgroups: expressing a perfect or
perfective meaning, expressing a continuous (progressive-like) meaning, or expressing a
frequency meaning (subgroups based on Biq & Huang (2016)). See Figure 6 for a summary
of the distribution of the aspect adverbs.
Figure 6. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and aspect adverbs
The most frequent type of adverb occurring with ‘you + VP’ is continuous aspect
adverbs (60% of the aspect adverbs). See (20) for a sentence example with the adverb yizhi
‘always, continuously’.
(20) Tamen yizhi you juan qian gei Taiwan jigou.

they continuously YOU donate money to Taiwan organization
‘They have continuously been donating money to Taiwanese organizations.’
(M.1571810037.A.C83)
The second type of aspect adverb is referred to as frequency aspect adverbs (20%), such
as mei + noun ‘each + noun’ or pingchang ‘usually’ (see (21)).
(21) Ni pingchang you kan-dao dingziku zai lai shuo.

You usually YOU see-arrive thong then come speak
‘You can talk when you see thongs in your daily life.’ (M.1572155627.A.C20)
Other adverbs are perfect/perfective aspect adverbs (20%). See (22) for an illustrative
example with yijing ‘already’.
(22) Dangshi Meiguo yijing you yaoqiu Riben suohui Dongbei le.
that.time US already YOU request Japan retreat North.East SFP
‘The US had already requested Japan to retreat to the North-East area at that time.’
(M.1592163071.A.954)
4.2.3. Attitudinal adverbs
The third category of adverb occurring with the ‘you + VP’ construction investigated in the
present paper relates to attitudinal adverbs, which are concerned with the expression of the
commitment of the speaker towards the event depicted by the predicate in the sentence. A
total of 97 attitudinal adverbs (41.3% of the time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs) were identified.
The 97 attitudinal adverbs were subdivided into four groups according to the type of
commitment expressed: (a) epistemic (likelihood for an event to actually occur), (b)
evaluative in terms of truth value (commitment of the speaker regarding the actual occurrence
or non-occurrence of the event), (c) evaluative in terms of wish, and (d) gap between what the
speaker thought regarding the occurrence of the event and its actual occurrence. The
distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction with attitudinal adverbs according to the four
subgroups is summarized in Figure 7.
15
Figure 7. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and attitudinal adverbs

The most represented subgroup regarding the number of occurrences was evaluative
attitudinal adverbs in terms of truth value (56.7% of the attitudinal adverbs, also
corresponding to 23.4% of the time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs). Most of the evaluative (truth
value) adverbs are zhende ‘really’ (and its alternative zhen or zhenzheng ‘really’), as shown in
(23).
(23) Ni zhende you kan yingpian ma?

you really YOU watch video Q
‘Have you really watched the video?’ (M.1572365626.A.007)
The second most represented subgroup was epistemic adverbs, such as yiding ‘for sure’
(and its negative counterpart bu yiding ‘not sure’ as well as bu jiande ‘not sure’), haoxiang ‘it
seems like’, keneng ‘maybe’ and yexu ‘maybe’, as shown in (24).
(24) Ke.P yexu you bian.

Ko.P maybe YOU changed
‘Maybe Ko P (Ko Wen-je) has changed.’ (M.1592066582.A.326)
The third subgroup concerns attitudinal adverbs used with ‘you + VP’ that are related to
the speaker’s wish towards the occurrence of the event. Examples of such adverbs are haozai
‘luckily’, haoxian ‘fortunately, it is a good thing that’, xinghao ‘fortunately’ and haihao ‘it is
a good thing that’ (see (25)).
(25) Haoxian wo you tou piao.

fortunately I YOU vote bulletin
‘Fortunately I did vote’ (M.1592098260.A.6DC)
The fourth subgroup corresponds to what is referred to by Biq & Huang (2016) as
expressing a gap between the speaker’s assumption concerning the factuality of an event and
the actual factuality of the event in question. The adverb qishi ‘in fact, actually’ is the only
adverb in this subgroup. See (26) for an example.
(26) Qishi zhe yi-duan wo you penxiao.

actually this one-part I YOU snigger
‘Actually, I sniggered when I read this part.’ (M.1571841819.A.5F9)
The most frequently used attitudinal adverbs are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Attitudinal adverbs frequently occurring with ‘you + VP’

Evaluative (truth value) Epispemic Wish Gap
assumption
zhen(de) dique, mingming, haoxiang yiding haihao, qishi ‘in
zhenzheng queshi mingxian ‘as if’ ‘surely’ xinghao fact’
‘really’ ‘indeed, ‘obviously’ ‘fortunately’
really’
31 8 7 9 5 6 7
Note: The numbers indicate the raw count of attitudinal adverbs found along ‘you + VP’
4.2.4. Other types of adverb
Apart from time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs, four other adverbs were found occurring with the
‘you + VP’ construction. The first is ye ‘also, too’, which may appear frequently because of
the ‘discussion’ format of the forum platform (70 instances). The second is dou ‘all’ (68
instances), a scope adverb indicating totality which may also have discursive functions. The
third is jiu ‘just’, which is ambiguous, expressing either a subjective view on the content of a
proposition (e.g., such as an event occurring faster than expected, or a quantity of objects
being less than expected) or insistence on the speaker’s view on the event (32 instances). The
fourth one is hai or haishi ‘still’ (11 instances), which is also ambiguous and could have
several meanings: continuous aspect, discourse connector similar to ye ‘too, also’, or surprise
by the speaker concerning the occurrence of an event.
4.3. Aspect and modal markers
The frequency profile of the occurrence of aspect and modal markers with the ‘you + VP’
construction is given in Figure 8 below.
Figure 8. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ with aspect/modal markers
Out of 1204 collected sentences, 339 involve an aspect or modal marker in addition to
the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’, corresponding to 28.2% of all the sentences. The experiential
aspect -guo is the most frequently used aspect marker (49.6%). An example of you-sentence
with -guo is given in (27).
(27) Ni you zhu-guo Taoyuan ma?

you YOU live-EXP Taoyuan Q
17
‘Have you ever lived in Taoyuan?’ (M.1592113527.A.091)
The second most represented aspect marker occurring with ‘you + VP’ is the progressive
marker zai (see (28)). Note that the sentence is ambiguous and could have either a
progressive (on-going) or habitual interpretation.
(28) Wopengyou ta you zai xi du la.

my.friend s/he YOU PROG inhale drug SFP
a. ‘My friend, s/he is taking drugs (now).’
b. ‘My friend, s/he has the habit to take drugs (s/he is addicted to drugs).’
(M.1542432783.A.1F2)
The ‘you + VP’ construction was also frequently found with the current-relevant-state
aspect marker sentence-final le (see (29)).
(29) Wo shangmian you tie xinwen le.

I above YOU post news CRS
‘I posted the news article above.’ (M.1571949467.A.C20)
The interpretation of the sentence in (29) does not change a lot when the ‘you + VP’
construction is used. The ‘you + VP’ construction adds a sense of confirmation or certainty.
The fourth most frequent aspect/modal marker is the auxiliary verb yao. The auxiliary
verb yao is ambiguous with two possible meanings: a modal one, expressing volition, and an
aspectual one, expressing prospective aspect (Li & Thomson 1981:174–176, Chen & Saillard
2011). Therefore, some sentences involving both you ‘to have’ and yao ‘to want/prospective
aspect’ are ambiguous, as in (30) below.
(30) Ta bu shi you yao xuan liwei?

s/he NEG be YOU YAO choose deputy
a. Doesn’t she want to run for the deputy election?’ (volitional reading)
b. ‘Isn’t she going to run for the deputy election?’ (prospective reading)
(M.1571889021.A.8EC)
On the one hand, (30) can be interpreted as having a volitional modal reading, focusing
on the willingness of the subject to run for election. On the other hand, (30) can also have a
prospective aspect reading, focusing on running for the upcoming election.
5. Discussion
The data obtained from the present corpus study can help us assess the different accounts
found in the literature concerning the function of the ‘you + VP’ construction. Each account
(i.e., ‘you + VP’ as (a) marking past tense, (b) as a perfective construction, (c) as an
existential perfect construction, and (d) as an assertive modal construction) is discussed
below in light of the data presented in Section 4.
5.1. The auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ is not a past tense marker
The ‘you + VP’ construction is analyzed as expressing past tense by Chen (2010) and Cai
(2011). Their main argument is the grammaticality of the occurrence of a past time adverb
with ‘you + VP’, contrasting with the ungrammaticality of the use of a present or future time
adverb with the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’. Their argument indeed echoes the frequency
profiles of the time adverbs: most time adverbs are deictic past adverbs.
However, analyzing ‘you + VP’ as indicating past tense only focuses on part of the data.
Unlike Chen’s (2010) and Cai’s (2011) claims, a deictic present adverb was found with ‘you
+ VP’, as seen in (18). Atypical usages of tense in Indo-European languages are also common,
meaning that a tense verb form may apparently mismatch with the meaning of the deictic
time adverb it occurs with (Klein 1994:134–136). Such atypical uses of tense verb forms
include the occurrence of now with a past tense verb, where now is not understood for its
deictic function but for shifting the reference time in the past. This use often occurs in
narrative texts, as exemplified in (31) (Boulin 2017:5).
(31) Alice looked into his eyes, which had always charmed her so, and still did. But
somehow the qualities that had attracted Alice to Thom in the first place were now
her biggest worry. (Boulin 2017:5 [emphases are ours])
Nevertheless, it must be noticed that xianzai ‘now’ does not have a similar narrative
function as now in English (Boulin 2017:14–15). In addition, the collected sentences were not
found in a narrative mode but in a conversational mode. Therefore, it is unlikely that xianzai
‘now’ is used here for narrative purposes.
The temporal interpretation of some examples found in the present corpus also do not
support the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as a past tense construction, in particular when ‘you + VP’
occurs with the progressive morpheme zai (see (32), repeating (28)).
(32) Wo pengyou ta you zai xi du la.

my.friend s/he YOU PROG inhale drug SFP
a. ‘My friend, s/he is taking drugs (now).’
b. #‘My friend, s/he was taking drugs.’
Morphosyntactically speaking, past tense markers can occur with progressive aspect
markers, since they belong to two different categories. Yet, semantically speaking, this is not
borne out by the collected data. Indeed, if ‘you + VP’ expresses tense distinctions, this means
that the use of ‘you + VP’ would shift the reference time in the past (i.e., before the time of
speech). Therefore, we would expect that the occurrence of zai with ‘you + VP’ would result
in an ‘on-going meaning in the past’ (as it is the case with the past progressive construction in
English). However, such an interpretation is not available in (32), where a present progressive
interpretation is obtained (the same rationale can also be applied to the sentence in (18)).
In sum, the ‘you + VP’ construction is indeed more frequently associated with the notion
of past time, indicating that more natural associations are made between ‘you + VP’ and past
time. However, it appears to be incorrect to claim that when it comes to deictic time adverbs,
only deictic past time adverbs can occur with ‘you + VP’, as it would be by analyzing ‘you +
VP’ as expressing past tense (except atypical usages of tense). Indeed, ‘you + VP’ can occur
with deictic present time adverbs as well based on our data.
19
5.2. The primary function of ‘you + VP’ is not to express aspectual distinctions
Other accounts which focus on the aspectual functions of ‘you + VP’ argue that it is used to
express perfective aspect (Tsai 2002) or existential perfect aspect (Khoo & Lin 2020).
5.2.1. ‘You + VP’ does not primarily express perfective aspect
The discussion starts with the analysis of the auxiliary verb you as indicating perfective
aspect. The data obtained in the corpus provide strong counterarguments. First, the use of
‘you + VP’ along with the progressive marker zai suggests that taking the auxiliary verb you
as expressing perfective aspect is unlikely. Indeed, as shown with (33) mirroring (32), the
perfective marker -le cannot occur with zai, while you can.
(33) *Wopengyou ta zai xi-le du(ping) la.

*my.friend s/he PROG inhale-PFV drug SFP
The quantitative data further show that the occurrence of you with zai is not marginal:
100 of the 339 you-sentences with an aspect or modal marker included zai. Numerically
speaking, zai is the second most represented aspect marker occurring in the ‘you + VP’
construction.
Second, the ‘you + VP’ construction was found with frequency aspect adverbs (Figure 6).
In contrast, the perfective -le is ungrammatical after a frequency aspect (see (34a) for ‘you +
VP’ after a frequency aspect adverb and (34b) for -le after a frequency aspect adverb).
(34) a. Ni pingchang you kan-dao dingziku zai lai shuo.

you usually YOU see-arrive thong then come speak
‘You can talk when you usually see thongs.’ (M.1572155627.A.C20)
b. *Ni pingchang kan-dao-le dingziku zai lai shuo.
you usually see-arrive-PFV thong then come speak
Hence, it seems unlikely that the auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ is a perfective aspect
marker like the perfective verbal morpheme -le, though the ‘you + VP’ construction may
indeed be understood as having a perfective meaning in some sentences.
5.2.2. Is the ‘you + VP’ construction marking existential perfect aspect?
The auxiliary verb you ‘to have’ is analyzed by Khoo & Lin (2020:112) as marking
existential perfect aspect, expressing either a perfect of result or persistent situation, or, in
their terms, the “existence of an event resulting from a prior situation or event”. Indeed, this
analysis appears to fit with most of the data we collected: it accurately predicts the use of
‘you + VP’ with time adverbs (including sentences with deictic present time adverbs) and can
account for the occurrence of ‘you + VP’ with aspect markers such zai, -le, -guo and the
sentential le. The occurrence of you ‘to have’ with the auxiliary verb yao (as exemplified in
(30)) can be analyzed as contradicting the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as marking existential
perfect aspect. Taking ‘you + VP’ as being an existential perfect construction entails that the
situation described by the VP is anterior to the time of reference, while the result state holds
at the time of reference.10 However, in contrast, prospective aspect denotes a situation

occurring at a time posterior to the time of reference, or an event that is ‘going to happen’
(Comrie 1976:64, Klein 1994:104). Therefore, such an occurrence would not be expected
following Khoo & Lin’s (2020) analysis. However, it should be noticed that the 23 sentences
involving yao and ‘you + VP’ ambiguously lie between two meanings: the volitional and
prospective meaning (as in (30)). The volitional meaning may even be more prominent than
the prospective meaning in such sentences. This may be due to two reasons: (a) the properties
of the subject (animate agents), and (b) ‘you + VP’ expressing an existential perfect meaning,
putting forward the volitional meaning as the prospective reading would be attenuated.
Taken together, analyzing ‘you + VP’ as encoding perfective aspect seems to focus too
much on the interpretation of sentences in which ‘you + VP’ is involved. Syntactic
counterarguments can be advanced against this analysis based on the data collected in the
present corpus. The collected data do not completely discard the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as
expressing an existential perfect meaning. However, it is possible that other analyses are also
able to capture the frequency distributions reported in Section 4. Such accounts are discussed
below.
5.3. ‘You + VP’ as an assertive modal construction
The ‘you + VP’ construction has been analyzed as a realis mood construction (Wen 2002, Liu
2011) and a factual construction (Collart 2018a). These two analyses are related to the notion
of ‘assertive modality’ and are therefore regrouped in the present paper under this term. This
is discussed below.
Qualitatively speaking, analyzing ‘you + VP’ as expressing assertive modality can
crucially overcome the limitations of other analyses as pointed out in previous sections. First,
occurrence with deictic present time adverbs is not aberrant under this analysis, since the
assertion of an event as realis is often related with a non-future time reference, as opposed to
a future time reference concerning events which are not asserted (Mithun 1999, Palmer 2001).
This echoes the observation that deictic past and present time adverbs were found in you-
sentences. Indeed, in numerous languages which exhibit the realis/irrealis distinction (i.e.,
languages in which the ‘assertion/non-assertion’ distinction is grammaticalized), it is often
pointed out that realis marking is associated with both past and present time references, while
irrealis is linked with future time reference.11 In some languages, (e.g., Chalcatongo Mixtec
(Bhat 1999:157–158), citing Macaulay (1996), and Chini (Brooks 2018:139)), a verb can
bear both realis and deictic present morphemes, resulting in a sentence with a present time
interpretation. This is in line with the interpretation of ‘you + VP’ in (18) (also notice that this
interpretation is reinforced by the use of the progressive zai in (18)).
Second, the occurrence of zai with ‘you + VP’ was also taken as an argument against the
analyses of ‘you + VP’ as a past tense construction and a perfective aspect construction.
Again, the occurrence of the progressive aspect with assertive markers is not aberrant, and
realis marking along with progressive marking is attested in numerous languages (e.g., Bikol
(Givón 2001:359), Puyuma (Ross & Teng 2005), and Rukai (Mantauran dialect) (Zeitoun
2007:151)). In such cases, a sentence obtains a present time interpretation, and use of realis
marking emphasizes the assertion of the event occurring at the time of speech. Similar
10
This corresponds to the perfect component of the definition given by Khoo & Lin (2020:112), or the part
stating that ‘you + VP’ asserts an event “resulting from a prior situation or event” [emphasis added by us].
11
See, for instance, Burmese (Okell 1969, Comrie 1985, Bhat 1999, Gärtner 2005, Vittrant 2005), Chini
(Brooks 2018), Mao Naga (Giridhar 1994, Bhat 1999), Rukai (Labuan dialect: Zeitoun & Huang 1997;
Mantauran dialect: Zeitoun 2007), among others).
21
observations can be made for ‘you + VP’ occurring with zai, as in (32). In other words,
analyzing ‘you + VP’ as an assertive modality construction can correctly predict the
grammatical occurrences mentioned as well as the interpretations which are obtained. It can
be argued that zai as an aspectual morpheme is polysemous, expressing progressive or
habitual aspect (as in (28)). In fact, realis marking can occur with habitual marking in the
same sentence as well (e.g., with a habitual aspect adverb in Burmese (Vittrant 2005:147), or
with a habitual morpheme in Nanti (Michael 2014:274)), asserting the fact that an event
which has been repeated over time can still be repeated at the present time. The compatibility
of habitual aspect with markers expressing the assertion of an event is in line with the fact
that ‘you + VP’ can occur in habitual situations. This possibility is accounted for when ‘you +
VP’ is analyzed as an assertive modality construction.
In terms of quantitative analysis, it has been observed that certain syntactic constructions
‘attract’ certain lexemes, grammatical markers or other syntactic constructions more than
others because of higher compatibility in terms of meaning (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003,
2005). Following this view, this higher compatibility is reflected by a higher frequency of co-
occurrence. The quantitative analysis of ‘you + VP’ conducted in this section is based on to
this assumption. The focus is placed on the occurrence of (a) ‘you + VP’ with clause types, (b)
‘you + VP’ with aspect markers, and (c) ‘you + VP’ with Time-Aspect-Attitudinal adverbs.
The complex clause constructions in which ‘you + VP’ is used in the corpus are
informative regarding the privileged meanings associated with them. According to the
frequency profiles represented in Figure 3, the ‘you + VP’ construction was predominantly
found in embedded clauses. Moreover, the majority of the verbs in the matrix clause were
related with the expression of factuality (Figure 4). In other words, these quantitative
observations indicate that when a speaker wants to report an event which is considered
factual (in the speaker’s own understanding of the event in question), ‘you + VP’ is likely to
occur in an embedded clause which describes the event reported, and the verb introducing an
embedded clause is likely to denote a factual assertion. These observations show that the use
of ‘you + VP’ in an embedded clause can be understood as ‘attracting’ or as being more
likely to induce a factual verb or verb of belief in the matrix clause.
In addition, the second type of syntactic clause in which the use of the ‘you + VP’
construction is most frequent according to Figure 3 is the shi-construction (as already
exemplified in (16)). In this construction, the copula shi ‘to be’ is used as a predicate focus
marker, expressing, among other things, the assertion of the event induced by the predicate
(Li & Thompson 1981:151, Shyu 2016). The high frequency of ‘you + VP’ in the shi-
construction reflects the high compatibility of these two constructions in terms of meaning,
and thus can be seen evidence for taking the auxiliary verb you as an assertive modal marker.
Regarding aspect markers occurring with ‘you + VP’, the fact that -guo is frequently
found attached to the verb in the ‘you + VP’ construction as represented in Figure 8 is not
trivial.12 The aspect morpheme -guo is associated with properties such as ‘holisticity’,
‘repeatability’ and ‘discontinuity’ (Li & Thompson 1981, Smith 1997, Xiao & McEnery 2004,
among others). Yet, more recent studies (e.g., Lin 2007, Iljic 2009, 2010, Xu 2019, among
others) further point out that these three properties actually derive from a single core, namely,
-guo indicates that an event occurred at least once at a time prior to the reference time. As Xu
(2019:10) puts it, -guo means that “there exists an event that can be described by the
predicate in the sentence”, such that “we can simply count the number of events of the
specific type and see whether it is larger than zero”. In other words, -guo asserts the existence
of an event in time. The high frequency of the occurrence of -guo with ‘you + VP’ reported in
Figure 8 therefore indicates the high compatibility of the meaning conveyed by ‘you + VP’
Notice that the high frequency of occurrence of -guo with ‘you + VP’ was also found in Chen (2010) and
12
Khoo & Lin (2020), but subjacent reasons for such a high compatibility are not discussed in these studies.
and -guo—and this compatibility can be accounted for when analyzing ‘you + VP’ as
expressing an assertive modality meaning: ‘you + VP’ indicates the existence of an event in
the speaker’s mind, and -guo the existence of an event in time.
Finally, the adverbs occurring with ‘you + VP’ also shed light on the function endorsed
by this construction. As reported in Section 4.2, two types of adverb prominently occur with
‘you + VP’: time adverbs (113 instances, 48.1% of the Time-Aspect-Attitudinal adverbs) and
attitudinal adverbs (97 instances, 41.3% of the Time-Aspect-Attitudinal adverbs). Attitudinal
adverbs are discussed first. The two most represented types of attitudinal adverb express an
evaluation of an event in terms of its truth or existential value (i.e., zhende ‘really’), and
epistemic adverbs (i.e., yiding ‘certainly’). These two types of adverb are related with the
assertion status of an event in terms of its existence in the real world. In addition, it is worth
remarking that one adverb outnumbers the other ones based on Table 3: the evaluative (in
terms of truth value) adverb zhen ‘really’ (and its other forms such as zhende and zhenzheng).
Indeed, 31 instances were found, which is 32% of all the attitudinal adverbs. This shows that
the ‘you + VP’ construction particularly attracts adverbs expressing the commitment of the
speaker towards the assertion of an event as being real – and this is especially true with the
adverb zhen ‘really’.
As for time adverbs occurring with ‘you + VP’, a majority are deictic past time adverbs,
and a lower number are deictic present time adverbs. Taking ‘you + VP’ as a construction
expressing assertive modality is not contradictory with these observations. Indeed, as pointed
out by Lyons (1977), past time reference has more than one meaning. On the one hand, it can
express that an event occurred before the time of speech-this corresponds to the ‘time-
relational’ facet of past time. On the other hand, past time reference can also ontologically
express a factual or existential by default—this corresponds to the ‘possible world’ facet of
past time. From a possible world perspective, events that are already asserted or considered as
being real are more likely to belong to the past domain as well as the present domain to some
extent, while uncertain and unreal events are associated with future time. ‘You + VP’ being
analyzed as the expression of assertive modality implies that the construction is more
naturally linked with past time, hence the higher frequency of deictic past time adverbs, and
that ‘you + VP’ can also be used with deictic present time adverbs. On the contrary, no
instance of ‘you + VP’ with a deictic future time adverb was found. Therefore, it is not
surprising that occurrences of deictic non-future (i.e., past and present) time adverbs with
‘you + VP’ are prominent, and that no future time adverb was found. In other words, using
the ‘you + VP’ construction with deictic non-future time adverbs emphasizes the assertion in
terms of ‘possible worlds’ of an event.
Finally, it can be remarked that only a few aspect adverbs were found occurring with
‘you + VP’ (10.6% of the time-aspect-attitudinal adverbs). This suggests that other types of
adverb (i.e., time and attitudinal adverbs, and more exactly deictic past time and evaluative
adverbs) are more attracted by the ‘you + VP’ construction. In addition, the aspect adverbs
occurring more frequently are not perfect-like aspect adverbs (as the aspectual accounts of
the ‘you + VP’ construction would have predicted), but imperfective-like aspect adverbs: they
stand for 80% of the aspect adverbs.
In sum, based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the sentences in our corpus,
analyzing the auxiliary verb you as an assertive modal marker is suitable since no
counterevidence can be identified. Importantly, evidence which we gathered is coherent with
the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as expressing an assertive modality meaning, as it can explain the
high frequency of occurrence of deictic past time adverbs and attitudinal (assertive) adverbs,
the high frequency of ‘you + VP’ in embedded clauses when the main verb of the matrix
clause depicts a factive meaning, the high frequency of ‘you + VP’ along with the shi-
construction, as well as the high frequency of occurrence of -guo. In addition, it should be
23
noted that other possible accounts are not able to explain the high occurrence of ‘you + VP’
in such contexts. This can be seen as an additional advantage for the analysis of ‘you + VP’
as expressing assertive modality.
Evidence from Taiwanese Southern Min also favors the assertive modality analysis. The
emergence of the ‘you + VP’ construction in Taiwan Mandarin is widely seen as resulting
from language contact between Mandarin and the variety of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan
(Tsai 2002:496, Cheng Y. 2004:185, Liu 2011:47, among others). According to Tang, Chang
& Liao (2010:92), the verb u ‘to have’ in Taiwanese Southern Min can be followed by an NP,
expressing a possession meaning (see (35)) or an existential meaning (see (36)).
(35) I u hianntitsimue.
s/he have siblings
‘S/he has siblings.’ (Tang, Chang & Liao 2010:92)
(36) Kinajit u hong.

Today have wind
‘It is windy today (lit.: there is wind today).’ (Tang, Chang & Liao 2010:92)
U ‘to have’ can be followed by a VP as well. This is exemplified with the sentence in
(37).
(37) I tsahng u lai.

s/he yesterday have come
‘S/he came yesterday.’ (Tang, Chang & Liao 2010:92)
The meaning of u ‘to have’ when followed by a VP has been the topic of numerous
studies. Tsao & Cheng (1995) consider that ‘u + VP’ encodes an existential as well as an
aspectual (perfective) meaning by extension. Cheng R. (1997) takes ‘u + VP’ as being an
“assertive-existential” construction. Tsao (1998) analyzes ‘u + VP’ as expressing realis mood,
asserting the existence of a state or an event. Wu & Zheng (2019:420–421) identify the ‘u +
VP’ construction as expressing both modal and aspectual meaning. The modal meaning of ‘u
+ VP’ consists in that the “propositions are true or are affirmed to be true according to the
speaker’s knowledge”, and the aspectual meaning in that “u performs event realization”. In
sum, the conclusions from these studies are similar: ‘u + VP’ encodes the existential assertion
of the situation denoted by the VP.
The meaning of ‘u + VP’ in Taiwanese Southern Min appears to converge with the
analysis of ‘you + VP’ in Taiwan Mandarin as being an assertive modal construction. This is
supported by the collected data and this convergence of meaning can be seen as an additional
piece of evidence in favor of this analysis. Indeed, if you ‘to have’ got grammaticalized in
Taiwan Mandarin due to language contact with Taiwanese Southern Min, it is not surprising
that ‘you + VP’ and ‘u + VP’ share a similar meaning. However, this claim does not mean
that ‘you + VP’ and ‘u + VP’ share exactly the same properties. For instance, in Taiwanese
Southern Min, u can be followed by a stative verb, as in (38) (Wu & Zheng 2019:419).
(38) Hue u ang.

flower have red
‘The flower is indeed red.’ (Wu & Zheng 2019:419)
However, such a configuration is ungrammatical in Taiwan Mandarin (see (39)).

(39) *Hua you hong.

flower have red
Intended for: ‘The flower is indeed red.’
This shows that while there is linguistic transfer between the two constructions
concerning their meanings, not all the properties of the ‘u + VP’ construction were taken
during the grammaticalization process.
6. Conclusion
The ‘you + VP’ construction is a pattern that is attested in variations of Mandarin Chinese
such as Taiwan Mandarin and Singapore Mandarin. While the literature on this topic
becomes more and more abundant, the on-going debate concerns the main function endorsed
by this construction: past tense, perfective aspect, existential perfect aspect, or assertive
modality. The goal of the present study was to investigate this question in Taiwan Mandarin
through a corpus study including a wider scope of analysis than used in previous studies. The
intension was to look at the use of ‘you + VP’ from a morphosyntactic perspective,
examining the occurrence of ‘you + VP’ (a) in different types of clause, (b) with different
aspect/modal markers, and (c) with tense-aspect-attitudinal adverbs. It appears from the
collected corpus that taking ‘you + VP’ as expressing past tense is not tenable. The data
collected in our corpus do not speak against the analysis of ‘you + VP’ as expressing
existential perfect meaning. However, based on the quantitative analysis of the data, we
found that ‘you + VP’ also often triggers the use of other markers related to the notion of
assertive modality. Additionally, analyzing ‘you + VP’ as an assertive modal construction has
the advantage that in addition to the fact that no counterevidence was found in our corpus, it
can account for the quantitative observations above. Therefore, analyzing ‘you + VP’ as
expressing an assertive modality meaning is more coherent with the collected sentences. This
analysis also parallels the analysis of ‘u (to have) + VP’ in Taiwanese, which is often
analyzed as the source of grammaticalization of the ‘you + VP’ construction in Taiwan
Mandarin. This conclusion further implies that the ‘past time’ flavor of the ‘you + VP’
construction may be understood as viewing a past time situation as being asserted—or as true
in the real world, rather than primarily having occurred before the time of speech. This
analysis also suggests a parallelism between ‘you + VP’ and ‘you + NP’, in that both
constructions assert the existence of an element, i.e., an event for ‘you + VP’, and an entity
for ‘you + NP’.
The present study, because of its focus on the morphosyntactic use of ‘you + VP’,
necessarily has some limitations, and further research can be conducted on this topic to
address them. More you-sentences could be collected from other boards (e.g., other than the
‘Gossiping’ board), other social media platforms (i.e., which may have less restrictions
regarding posts and comments) and other types of texts (e.g., narratives, novels, etc.) in
Taiwan Mandarin in order to examine whether the patterns found by the present paper differ
depending on the contexts of use. In addition, extracting data from previous years as well as
upcoming years when available could be interesting to examine whether the patterns found
by the present paper are stable over time, whether changes in the use of ‘you + VP’ occurred
in recent decades and whether changes regarding the use of this construction are ongoing. It
would also be possible to apply analyses methods from computational linguistics on the
collected data to obtain further insights, in order to fully achieve the spirit of ‘attraction’ and
‘collostruction’ as stated by Stefanowitsch & Gries (2003, 2005). Other perspectives could
25
also be taken, such as using discourse analysis methods to gain a better understanding of the
contexts of use of the ‘you + VP’ construction. Similar corpus studies could also be
conducted in other varieties of Mandarin to check for similarities and differences of use of
the ‘you + VP’ construction in different Mandarin-speaking regions. Finally, the conclusions
drawn by the present paper suggest that when compared with (for example) -le and -guo,
which belong to the domain of aspect, ‘you + VP’ rather belongs to the domain of modality.
Further investigations could also be done to determine whether this division can also be
found in terms of language processing (Collart 2018b).
Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful for the constructive comments of the anonymous reviewers. The
authors would also like to thank Prof. Li Jen-i and Prof. Zeitoun Elizabeth, as well as the
audience at the 19th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop (CLSW-19) for their discussions
during the conceptualization and elaboration of the present study. We stand responsible for
any remaining errors.
List of abbreviations
CL classifier
COP copula
CRS ‘currently relevant state’ (sentential le)
DUR durative aspect
EXP experiential perfect aspect
NEG negation
PASS passive
PFV perfective aspect
PROG progressive aspect
Q interrogative marker
SFP sentence final particle
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29
Address for correspondence
Aymeric Collart
Department of English
National Taiwan Normal University
Taipei, TAIWAN
aymeric.collart@gmail.com
Co-author information
Hung-Kuan Su
Department of English
National Taiwan Normal University
Taipei, TAIWAN
jacksugood@gmail.com
Publication history
Date received: 10 December 2021
Date revised: 9 February 2022
Date accepted: (to be decided by the editorial board)
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Article in Concentric Studies in Linguistics · November 2022

Aymeric Collart Hung-Kuan Su

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Expressing the existence of an event with ‘you (to have) + VP’ in

Differences between varieties of Mandarin Chinese can be identified in Mandarin-speaking

(1) Ta you wu-dong fangzi.

(2) Shui-li you wu-tiao yu.

(3) You wu-ge ren lai le.

(4) Ta you lai.

2. ‘You + VP’: between tense, aspect and modality

2.1. Theoretical background: definitions

2.2. ‘You + VP’ as expressing past tense

(5) Wo zuotian/*xianzai/*mingtian you zuo zuoye.

Cai (2011:40–41) also conducted a corpus-exploratory study based on different sources

2.3. ‘You + VP’ as expressing aspect: between perfective and perfect

2.3.1. ‘You + VP’ as indicating perfective aspect

(6) a. A Q you qu Meiguo.

2.3.2. ‘You + VP’ as indicating existential perfect aspect

(7) Bu yao, wo you chi.

(8) Wo you he jiu.

‘You + VP’ in (8) can be interpreted as expressing a perfect of result, corresponding to

2.4. ‘You + VP’ as expressing realis mood, factuality or assertive modality

(9) a. Fahang you zhi fei Taibei.

(10) (*You) chi pingguo le!

(11) Ruguo wo duzi e, wo (*you) chi pingguo.

(12) Ta chadian (*you) da-shang gongche.

2.5. Interim summary

Table 1. Summary of the studies mentioned in Section 2 (chronologically presented)

Figure 1. Example of a PTT board

Figure 2. Workflow of building the ‘you + VP’ corpus

4. Frequency profiles of the distribution of the ‘you + VP’ construction

Figure 3. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and clause types

(13) Ni queding ni you kan wen ma ?

(14) Ta zhidao [Ke-shizhang you luoshi zhangzhao].

(16) Ta shi you zhangkai zuiba gei ni kan o.

4.2. Adverbs and adverbial phrases

4.2.1. Time adverbs

Figure 5. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and time adverbs

(17) Wo yiqian you gen-guo lengqi shifu.

(18) Ke Wenje xianzai zhende you zai gao shi-zheng ma ?

(19) Zai Zhongzheng yifenju de shihou

4.2.2. Aspect adverbs

Figure 6. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and aspect adverbs

(20) Tamen yizhi you juan qian gei Taiwan jigou.

(21) Ni pingchang you kan-dao dingziku zai lai shuo.

4.2.3. Attitudinal adverbs

Figure 7. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ and attitudinal adverbs

(23) Ni zhende you kan yingpian ma?

(24) Ke.P yexu you bian.

(25) Haoxian wo you tou piao.

(26) Qishi zhe yi-duan wo you penxiao.

The most frequently used attitudinal adverbs are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Attitudinal adverbs frequently occurring with ‘you + VP’

4.2.4. Other types of adverb

4.3. Aspect and modal markers

Figure 8. Frequency profile of ‘you + VP’ with aspect/modal markers

(27) Ni you zhu-guo Taoyuan ma?

‘Have you ever lived in Taoyuan?’ (M.1592113527.A.091)

(28) Wopengyou ta you zai xi du la.

(29) Wo shangmian you tie xinwen le.

(30) Ta bu shi you yao xuan liwei?

(5) Wo zuotian/xianzai/mingtian you zuo zuoye.