Аннотация:This paper argues that the distributions of bu 'not' and mei 'not' in Mandarin Chinese can be accounted for in terms of their aspectual selections. I propose that while mei aspectually selects an event as its complement, bu aspectually selects as its complement a stative situation that requires no input of energy in order to obtain that situation. I show that this approach to the distributions of bu and mei better accounts for the data than previous analyses such as Huang (1988), Ernst (1995), and Lee and Pan (2001).
