The perfect aspects of many languages are grammaticalized from possession verbs, which is motivated by human cognition. There
is an asymmetry between the affirmative and negative forms of the perfect aspect in modern Chinese: the affirmative side was derived of an ordinary verb le meaning 慶ompletion? whose ordering is 慥 + le? but the negative side is derived of the negative counterpart of the
possession verb mei meaning 憀ack? whose form is mei(you) + V? However, in many southern dialects of Chinese, the expressions of the perfect aspect is symmetric: the affirmative form of perfect aspect came from the affirmative counterpart of the possession verb you meaning 慼ave, and the negative form from the negative counterpart mei(you) 憂ot have? In addition, this paper has in depth investigated the various usages of the affirmative possession verb you related to expressions of aspects. The interaction between
written language and spoken language in the course of the development of Chinese has also been discussed.