The Hierarchy ofLein Chinese Imperatives

This article investigates the occurrence of lein imperatives and attempts to outline the syntactical hierarchy of le.Previous research indicates that lein Chinese (the verbal - leand the sentential le) can be construed as the phasal complement (- le ₀), the perfective marker (- le ₁) and the sentence final aspect particle ( le ₂).However, in this study it is found that the sentential lein imperatives behaves different from the sentence final aspect particle ( le ₂) in that it does not express temporal relations of inchoativity or perfectness.On the other hand, it behaves the way the typical sentence final particle does in that it can be deleted, but it cannot be embedded, or co-occur with other sentence final particles or expresses the speaker's attitude of emphasis.Conclusively, lein Chinese consists of a four-layered hierarchy: SaP( le ₃) le ₂)<(TP)le ₁)<(vP)le ₀), where - le ₁and le ₂are not allowed in imperatives as the temporal relations they define run against that of imperatives.- Le ₀and le ₃can co-occur in imperatives but are phonetically reduced and realized as one leby the operation of haplology.