The Comparative Study Of Time Category Between Russian And Chinese From Multiple Perspectives

Time category is an important study field in linguistics. It is represented by different means on each linguistic layers, it is also a combination of vocabulary means, lexical means and syntactic means. Therefore, because of different language structure and different cognitive patterns, these expressing means of time lay particular emphasis in different languages. Based on grammar, semantics, cognitive linguistics, the comparative study of Russian and Chinese time category is made in the paper. The purpose is to explain the differences and similarities on time category between the two languages.At first, the comparative study of the temporal relationship between actions and reference is analyzed. "Reference" here refers to speech time and the time not for speech. The differences and similarities between Russian and Chinese on the means of expressing temporal relationship and ways of temporal cognition are analyzed. The conclusion is: Russian is mainly focused on the first temporal cognitive way and Chinese is mainly based on the second temporal cognitive way.Then, the sequential relationship between actions is discussed. This sequential relationship can be showed by following relationships — simultaneity, heterochronism, and indistinction of their sequential relationship. It can be seen that the differences between the expressing behaviors on temporal relationships are existed in the two languages. The conclusion is: the Chinese behavior and Russian behavior not only havetemporal relationship, but also have other semantic relationships, and the Chinese temporal iconicity is more obvious than Russian iconicity.At last, the internal time of actions, the semantic characters of verbs and their time morphology are analyzed. It is concluded that the verbs in the two languages have their own morphological characteristics and semantic characteristics is the main factors which influence their temporal morphology.By means of contrastive study on time category in Chinese and Russian, it is hoped that, on one hand, the Chinese and Russian teaching can benefit from it, on the other hand, the clearer understanding on time attitudes hold by Chinese and Russian can be got.