Grammar Question about Aspect
I've been reading Li and Thompson's "Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar" (highly recommended even though it only provides examples in Pinyin) and I have a question about aspect.
The authors mention that certain verbs such as 死 and 忘 in Mandarin that have an "endpoint built into their meaning" often require a 了 as in:
昨天他死了。
别忘了我的名字。
They mention that such verbs cannot, by definition, have a durative aspect. It is thus ungrammatical to say something like:
*他死着。
for the very natural English sentence "He is dying." My question then is how do I translate such English sentences as the following:
He is dying.
(Recently) I am forgetting names.
I believe this topic is often discussed among Japanese linguists (as in the Japanese expression 死んでいる which literally translated means "dying" but technically means "dead") so I am hoping for some help from our Asian linguists out there (Pasden? Changye?). Thanks!
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