Temporal Interpretation In Chinese:An Event-based Perspective

Temporal interpretation is an important part of semantics of natural languages,and therefore constitutes a hot topic as well as a difficulty for linguists.Tense languages can mark their temporal interpretation with tense morphology,which have been the main focus as well as the source of evidence in theoretical studies of temporal interpretation.Recently,scholars began to pay attention to temporal interpretation in tenseless languages,and initial investigations have been made on the basis of theories derived from tense languages.Those studies reveal that notable difference can be found between those two types of language.Nevertheless,characteristics of tenseless languages are barely employed to evaluate current theories on temporal interpretation,which means,the potential value of tenseless languages have not received enough attention.In response to such situation,under a novel event-based framework for temporal interpretation,this study makes a thorough investigation of temporal interpretation in Chinese,a typical tenseless language.Three major questions that we are concerned with are:1).How are temporal interpretations derived in simple sentences?2).How are temporal interpretations derived in embedded clauses?3).What implication can facts in Chinese bring to current theoretical issues?For the first question,we discuss how temporal interpretations are derived in bare eventive sentences,static sentences as well as sentences with aspectual particle"le".Under the event-based framework,all these issues can receive a dedicate analysis.Temporal interpretation of bare eventive sentences can be derived from anaphoric relations between events,that of static sentences can be derived with the aid of topic time,which,as a necessary element in static sentences,provides a description of temporal properties of states,and that of sentences with "le" can be derived by assuming that "le" merely express the existence of events or states with regard to evaluation world and differences in predicates’ aspectual properties contribute to the variation in temporal interpretations of sentences with "le".For the second question,we discuss how temporal interpretations are derived in complement clauses and relative clauses.When temporal interpretations in simple sentences are made clear,those in embedded sentences are no more a tough issue.In complement clauses,while forward reading in eventive sentences can be derived by pragmatic inference on the basis of eventual properties,simultaneous reading as well as backward reading are determined by topic time in the complement clauses.Meanwhile,the double-access reading is obtained when topic time in the complement clause spans both the event time of the matrix clause and the speech time.Temporal interpretation in relative clauses can be divided into two sorts:when the noun modified is a cardinal nominal,a stage of the individual denoted by the modified noun can be identified with the time of the predicate in the matrix clause,and the stage will further composite with the relative clause and consequently grant the latter the simultaneous reading;when the noun modified is a presupposed nominal,the noun will introduce a specific situation and the relative clause will denote a particular event or state in such situation and therefore obtain its temporal interpretation independent of that in the matrix clause.The answer to the third question lies on the basis of explorations of the previous two questions.In the final part of each investigation of a type of sentences,we exp lore the theoretical implications of conclusions obtained.Three major implications are as follows:first,semantics of bare eventive sentences and sentences with "le" shows that event variables can be bound by existential quantification or realize as particular events,which indicates that both referential analysis and quantificational analysis are necessary.Second,temporal interpretation in static sentences shows that it’s topic time rather than tense that is crucial for temporal interpretation,which means that tense morphology is not necessary for temporal interpretation and should be treated as pragmatic presupposition rather than semantic assertion.Lastly,the so-called simultaneous reading in complement clauses and relative clauses are actually quite different,which indicates that the mechanism for the simultaneous reading in them should receive different treatments and that previous uniform analysis are on the wrong track.This study makes clear many fuzzy facts and provides detailed description and in-depth explanation of temporal interpretation in some important types of sentences,which deepens our understanding of semantics in Chinese.Meanwhile,the conclusions arrived provide new solutions and implications for a number of theoretical issues and controversies.Besides,the attempt made in this study to base the theoretical exploration of temporal interpretation on facts in tenseless languages rather than simply apply current theories to explanation of facts in tenseless languages provides a new perspective for the study of temporal interpretation.