The Cognitive Construal Of Polysemy Of English Tenses From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

Tense indicates the time concept of verbs, and it is one of the most important categories of verbs. The importance, polysemy and complexity of tense category have drawn linguists and grammarians’ study attention. The traditional grammar approach and functional linguistic approach work on few studies on the polysemy of English tense. The former focuses on the classification of tense into bi-tense or tri-tense, while the latter engages in the study of the tense in clauses. As to the cognitive linguistics, it has conducted a few researches on the polysemy of English tense. But it has some disadvantages: for one thing, the study and interpretation are too general, which fails to employ cognitive construal operations to carefully and specifically analyze and interpret the polysemous usages of the simple present and simple past tenses; for another, previous cognitive studies have not made any comparison between the the time contexts for polysemous usages of the simple present and simple past tenses and the time contexts depicted by correspondent tenses, which fails to present a suitable model for understanding English tenses.Therefore, based on previous researches, this thesis adopts the qualitative analysis, introspection, speculative analysis, and inductive method in the study. Under the guidance of the Prototype Theory, this study comprehensively employs the cognitive construal operations, including viewing frame, windowing attention, figure-ground, and mental scanning, to systematically analyze and interpret the simple present and the simple past tenses.The simple present involves the state present, habitual present and instantaneous present, which serve as the prototypical meaning of the simple present and are of the high degree of factuality. Through cognitive operations of profiling and mental scanning, ect., the simple present can represent the progressive actions. By shifting the attentional window, the simple present can depict the past actions or states. By broadening the viewing frame, the simple present can refer to the future actions or states. According to the factuality and the connection with the present time domain, the polysemous usages of the simple present can construct a cognitive continuum in which the state present, habitual present and instantaneous present are of high degree of factuality and the simple present for the hypothetical certainty of the future actions or states is of low degree of factuality. The simple past has the prototypical meaning of event past, state past and habitual past, which describe situations in the past domain. The polysemous usages of the simple present include: profiling anterior past actions, representing the present actions and states by the cognitive construal operation of windowing attention, and getting involved in the subjunctive mood by constructing the distance between the virtual mental space and the reality. According to the closeness to the past time domain, the cognitive continuum can be constructed in which the event past, habitual past and the state past are of the highest degree of closeness and the simple past in the subjunctive mood is of the lowest degree of closeness. The polysemous usages of the simple present and simple past tenses depict situations which are different from that of the correspondent tenses. The differentiation and analysis of these differences makes for understanding and learning relevant tenses.The innovation of the thesis lies in four aspects. Firstly, this thesis makes a cognitive analysis of the English simple present and simple past tenses with the help of cognitive construal operations, including viewing frame, windowing of attention, mental scanning, figure and ground, subjectivity and objectivity. Secondly, with the help of varioud cognitive construal operations, the study makes comparative analysis on the non-prototypical meanings of the simple present and the simple past and the meanings of correspondent tenses, which provides cognitive motivation for English tense learning and teaching. Thirdly, various schemata are employed to clearly represent the prototypical and non-prototypical meanings of the simple present and simple past tenses, which contributes to the pervasive influence of the study. Lastly, this thesis constructs continua of the simple present and the simple past and makes comparisons between the prototypical and non-prototypical meanings. Theoretically, this study provides cognitive motivation for the polysemy of English tenses, and meanwhile, broadens the application field of the Prototype Theory. As to the practical aspects, this study serve as a reference for English tense teaching.