On The Temporality Of Chinese From The Perspective Of Semantic Relations

Time and space have always been hot topics of common concern in many disciplines such as philosophy,physics,psychology,and linguistics.Linguistic research on time and space roughly involves three areas:the study concerning time and space ontology of language,the study of time and space from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and the study of the properties of languages defined by time and space.The third type of linguistic research concerning time and space is the focus of this study.There are currently three different views regarding the temporal and spatial characteristics of Chinese:Chinese is characterized by spatiality;Chinese is characterized by temporality;Chinese is a language characterized by time-space conflation.Although the concepts of time and space are always closely related,they often appear in opposition.Therefore,whether the three views on the properties of Chinese defined by time and space are contradictory and incompatible is the original intention of the current research.This study focuses on the temporality of Chinese from the perspective of semantic relations.The temporality of Chinese is reflected in the linear arrangement of semantic components.However,the linear arrangement is not always temporal,but may also be nontemporal,such as the pure arrangement of spatial order,reverse temporal order,etc.Temporality is divided into natural temporality,cognitive temporality,functional temporality and conventional temporality in this study based on its definition.Ideographic characters and composite structures at larger linguistic levels(such as compounds,compound phrases,simple sentences,complex sentences,special sentence patterns and texts)are analyzed from the perspective of semantic relations to show the restrictive role of temporality in these structures.In terms of the previous studies on the temporality of Chinese,there are still some aspects that need to be further improved,both in theory and in the scope of research.The problems include:(1)The domain which the theory of sequential iconicity governs is still not clear;the concept which the principle of temporal sequence refers to is ambiguous to some extent;the specific principles involved in the conceptual principles governing word order also need to be clarified.(2)Word order studies of Chinese primarily focus on the syntactic level,and few studies cover all levels of Chinese language units.There are few studies on the order of sentences in Chinese texts,and almost no studies have touched on the semantic relations and order of the internal components of Chinese characters.Therefore,it is necessary to carry out a systematic and comprehensive study on the temporality of Chinese.This study constructs the theoretical framework based on the theory of sequential iconicity and Chinese word order principles.It extracts various analytical units which best reflect the semantic relations within Chinese characters and Chinese language units.Rich and detailed corpus are employed to illustrate the temporal issues within various semantic relations.The research method is mainly based on literature analysis,and other methods are also used,such as the combination of theoretical research and data analysis,description and interpretation,qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.Comparative method that involves Chinese and English is also used to further strengthen the Chinese-specific analysis.The overall purpose of using all these methods is to highlight the temporality of Chinese.This research is intended to answer the following questions:(1)Are the three views that define Chinese characteristics in terms of time and space contradictory or compatible?(2)What is the connotation of the temporality of Chinese,and how to classify it?(3)What are the specific manifestations of Chinese temporality at the level of characters,words,phrases,sentences,and texts?(4)What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and English in terms of temporality?The findings of this research are as follows:First,it is found that the three views concerning time and space attend to the property of Chinese from different perspectives:the spatiality of Chinese mainly focuses on the manifestation of space on Chinese characters,language genes,parts of speech,sentences and discourse structures;the temporality of Chinese is mainly aimed at the semantics relations between adjacent language units;the property of time-space conflation of Chinese focuses on the interaction and integration of time and space concepts.Therefore,the three views are not contradictory but reflect different points of view.Second,through the theoretical framework constructed based on the theory of sequential iconicity and the principles of Chinese word order,the concept of the temporality of language and its classification are clarified.The temporality of Chinese is not simply a natural sequence of time order but includes cognitive temporality,functional temporality and conventional temporality.These temporalities show different manifestations and have the consistency of linear time development,which serve as the extension of language temporality.Third,the temporality of Chinese is an essential mechanism that restricts the semantic relations of Chinese.It is also a significant manifestation of Chinese as a highly iconic language.Moreover,the more complicated the semantic relations,the more prominent the temporality,and the more critical it is to organize semantic and syntactic relations.It is easier to find after a comparison with a hypotactic language such as English that the weakening of the constraints of Chinese syntax is more conducive to the organizational function of temporality,and it can better reflect the essential characteristics of Chinese structure that is seemingly disconnected but basically orderly.Fourth,through the analysis of various Chinese structures,it is found that there is a significant imbalance in the reflection of temporality.At the level of Chinese characters,temporality is not a significant characteristic of ideographic characters.At the lexical level,verb-complement compounds,serial-verb compounds,and telescopic compounds show consistent natural temporality.In contrast,the temporality of compounds of other grammatical types is determined by their internal semantic relations.At the phrase level,most verb-complement phrases,serial-verb phrases,and telescopic phrases generally embody natural temporality.At the same time,the temporality of phrases of other grammatical types is also related to its internal semantic relations.At the sentence level,the subject-predicate sentences,the "ba" sentences,the sentences and the existential sentences all show functional temporality.As for the complex sentences,if the clauses of the coordinate sentences involve time sequence,they are often arranged in chronological order,which show natural temporality;causation sentences in causal-effect order show natural temporality;inference sentences embody cognitive temporality;hypothetical sentences,conditional sentences,purpose sentences,and hypothetical negative transition sentences show natural temporality;adversative sentences exhibit functional temporality;the temporality of concessional sentences varies with different connectives.At the discourse level,narrative texts indicate significant natural temporality;descriptive texts involving whole-part relation generally follow the cognitive order of whole-before-part,showing cognitive temporality;the above two types of discourse all show strong functional temporality.Fifth,there are similarities and differences between Chinese and English in terms of temporal expression.The coordinate structure of English also shows temporality.However,at the sentence level,the temporality of English is generally weaker than that of Chinese.Besides,the claim that Chinese takes the whole-part order as the dominant word order and English takes the part-whole order as the dominant word order still lacks sufficient evidence.The contributions of this study to the field are mainly reflected in the following aspects:First,it examines the three viewpoints of Chinese characteristics defined by time and space from a macro perspective.Supporters of previous views uphold the corresponding conclusions from their standpoints.This study explores their respective research perspectives and research objects,which helps solve whether these three viewpoints are contradictory or compatible.Second,in terms of theoretical construction,this research uses the theory of sequential iconicity and Chinese word order principles as the theoretical guidance,forming a relatively complete theoretical analysis framework of temporality.On the one hand,it establishes the correlation among the theory of sequential iconicity,Chinese word order principles and the theoretical framework of temporality.On the other hand,it helps eliminate the problems of the unclear domain governed by sequential iconicity,the ambiguous reference of concept of the principle of temporal sequence,and the uncertain coverage of the conceptual principles.Third,this study expands the scope of research content,which tries as much as possible to investigate the temporality of Chinese at all levels,including Chinese characters,words,phrases,sentences and texts.Although temporality is not a new topic,the investigation of temporality in Chinese mainly concentrated on the syntactic level.Few studies have conducted detailed and comprehensive investigations at all levels of Chinese.This research breaks this limitation and explores the temporal issues at various language levels,including Chinese characters and texts.Fourth,based on the analysis of temporality at various levels of Chinese and the reference of English,it further reveals the commonalities and differences between Chinese and English in terms of temporality,which is valuable for a more comprehensive and profound understanding of the temporal issues of Chinese.Meanwhile,it will be essential enlightenment for the more detailed Chinese and English temporality study in the future.The issue of the temporality of Chinese is a grand and important research topic.This research attempts to comprehensively demonstrate the temporal issues of Chinese at multiple levels of semantic relations.At the same time,it will inevitably ignore other aspects,which is not only a shortcoming of this research but also provides valuable research room and research ideas for future research.