Sun-Originated Absolute Temporal Model Of Spatio-Temporal Metaphors

Spatio-temporal metaphorical expressions containing qian "fron" and hou "back"in Chinese are known as indicating conflicting directionality,for example,qiantian "the day before yesterday"refers to a time in the past and qiantu literally "front way" stands for the future proper while houtian "the day after tomorrow" refers to a time in the future and xianghoukan "looking backward" means thinking about things in the past.This conflicting directionality by the same word "front" and "back" has troubled linguists for quite some time,different scholars often draw different conclusions about the same expression(Alverson,1994;Yu,1998,2012;Radden,2011;Dai haoyi,1991;Zhang jianli,2003;Cai shumei,2012;Wang canlong,2016).Taking this'paradoxical directionality marked by qian "front" and hou"back" as a starting point,this thesis attempts to conduct a comprehensive and systematic study on Chinese spatio-temporal metaphors in order to put forward a cognitive model of time which can provide a unified account for the diversified forms of spatio-temporal metaphorical expressions.To solve the above-mentioned issue,this study incorporates absolute reference frame of Levinson(1996,2003)into the existing cognitive models of time,e.g,Moving Ego/Moving Time,and/or Ego Reference Point and Time Reference Point.Specifically,this thesis puts forward that the corresponding time representations ought to have"absolute time reference frame" which is not affected by observer and perspective.Absolute time has its own law of motion,and its movement direction is always from the past to the present and to the future.Absolute time is psychologically characterized as a mental timeline(Mental Timeline),The concrete representation of absolute time in social life is the timing system of time,such as calendar and clock.Studies have shown that absolute time systems have a significant impact on our time cognition(Sinha et al,2011;Richmond et al,2012;Duffy,2014),but the connotations,evolutionary processes,language representations as well as the relationship with other time cognitive models of such a frame are lacking.The origin or source of absolute time is the sun and the sun is the emergence of absolute time.In this thesis,this time is called "absolute time originated from the sun",and the model of this time is named "Sun-Originated Absolute Temporal Model of spatio-temporal metaphors."Time" as the moving body in the spatio-temporal metaphor is the linguistic representation of this model,such as "Time will enter the 21st century".Absolute time is the connection of ME/MT or Ego-RP/Time-RP model.The mover in Moving Ego is not simply an observer,but absolute time moves with all human beings.The observer is only attached to it.For example,the subject must be a collective noun in"we will enter the 21st century" and the time in the sentence can not be stopped.Under the premise of absolute time,Moving Ego can be transformed into the mode of Moving Time.The direction of Moving Time is from the future to the present and to the past,which is the subjectivity of human beings.The observer moves toward the future together with absolute time,when the observer is static and imagines that the future time moves toward himself,such as "the 21st century is coming soon".Time Reference Point is the sequence of time,and its order does not change as the change of perspective,such as "New Year's Day is before the Spring Festival",its essence is the order of absolute time.From the perspective of cognitive experience,Sun motion event provides cognitive motivation for spatio-temporal metaphors.This motion event contains two kinds of schemas.In dynamic schema,the space ahead of the sun is a metaphor of the future,and the space behind it is a metaphor of the past.In static schema,the trajectory of the sun consists of different arrangement of space points,with the space that the sun passes first represented as earlier and the space that the sun passes subsequently represented as later.This orientation is based on the reflection pattern in the relative frame of reference(Guo Rui,2004).Sun rises as the forenoon and it falls as the afternoon.Lai"come" and qu"go" in Chinese Spatio-temporal metaphors take discourse time "present" as a reference,the observer puts the perspective onto "present",imagines absolute time from past to present to future,such as ziguyilai "since ancient times," zijinyiqu "from present to future",or imagines absolute time from future to present to past,such as lainian "next year",qunian "last year".The Chinese Spatio-temporal metaphor of wang "go" and guo"cross" is absolute time from one point to another;The yuan "far" and jin "near"Spatio-temporal metaphors refer to the absolute time near the discourse time "present"without directionality,so zuijin "recent year" refers to the past or the future.The absolute time sets the timeline,on this basis,human beings can attach subjectivity on it,which is manifested as time travel(Time Travel)in psychology.We can move our perspective arbitrarily on the time axis.In short,the absolute time represented by the sun plays an important role in humancognition of time,on which we add human subjectivity to evolve other time cognitive models.The Sun-Oriented Absolute Temporal Model not only gives a unified explanation to the Chinese expressions of spatio-temporal metaphors,such as qian"front" and hou "back",shang "rise" and xia 'fall",lai "come" and qu "go" as well as yuan " far" and jin "near",but also reveals some the deep mechanism of human time cognition.