Aspectually-bounded structures in the Chinese pear stories: the two le's in Chinese: a case of homonymy, polysemy or neither?

This study investigates the dual functions of the Chinese particle le in narrative discourse, challenging traditional analyses of homonymy or polysemy. It argues that le is a single morpheme whose meaning—boundedness—remains constant, but whose discourse function varies by syntactic position: clause-internal le marks event completion, while clause-final le signals episode closure. Cross-linguistic comparisons with Tamil, Ewe, and Alsea reveal similar aspectual overlaps between perfective and perfect markers, supporting the boundedness framework. Diachronic evidence suggests that verbal le evolved from sentence-final liao, and may be shifting toward a past tense marker. The paper highlights how discourse structure and cultural context shape grammatical development, offering insights into aspectual systems and the fluid boundaries between perfective, perfect, and tense across languages (AI generated abstract, Copilot)