A Study Of Tense Of The English Verb From A Metaphorical Perspective

Tense, as a grammatical category, has long been studied, andtraditionally it has been defined as a verbal form for expressing timedistinctions. However, this definition is always challenged by languagefacts for there are quite a number of situations in which tense is not usedfor time indication. Hence, traditional grammarians either declare thoseuses as "abnormal uses" or put them under the category of mood, whichmakes tense of the English verb both difficult to interpret and to learn.This embarrassing situation results from the fact that previous researcheshave centered their attention on the linguistic features of tense andignored the cognitive mechanism of non-time-indication uses of tense.Recently, however, quite a number of researchers home and abroadhave tried new ways to understand and interpret tense in English. Specialefforts have been exerted on the study of the past tense and achievementshave been made. This thesis takes their achievements as its foundationand tries to offer a coherent and systematic explanation to the differentuses of both the past tense and the present tense.Enlightened by the polysemy research done within the framework ofcognitive semantics, this paper adopts a new approach to the study oftense of the English verb and applies the notion of metaphoricalextensions to the explanation of the different uses of tense. By this newapproach, past tense is understood as a tense which is originally used toexpress remote relationship in time and extends its meaning ofremoteness from time domain to truth-value domain and to psychology domain through metaphorical mappings based on the image schema ofdistance extracted from the original use of the past tense in time domain.Thus, past tense gains a unified meaning—distance. While the presenttense is understood as a tense which is originally used to expressconnectiveness in time and extends its meaning of connectiveness fromtime domain to truth-value domain, imaginary truth-value domain, and topsychology domain through metaphorical mappings based on the imageschema of connectiveness extracted from the original use of the presenttense in time domain. Hence, the present tense gains a unifiedmeaning—connectiveness, namely non-distance.This thesis broadens the scope of metaphor research and thecognitive approach adopted in this thesis provides a new perspective forthe study of tense of the English verb. Besides, the new interpretation ofthe uses of tense of the English verb offers a practical help for theteaching of tense in SLA.