On stative Mandarin sentences with aspectual marker '-le'

Mandarin Chinese has many simple word forms that can receive a change-of-state (CoS) interpretation when combining with the aspectual marker -le, and the CoS interpretation has been widely accounted for aspectually. However, the observations that -le can also give rise to two types of stative readings challenge the aspectual account and complicate the definition of -le. To address this problem, I develop an alternative analysis according to which the stative forms and the CoS verb form co-exist but happen to be homophonous. Based on this account, I also propose an updated definition for -le, which successfully captures its full range of interpretations.