20120408 Nose Izmil Temporal Final

8/2/2019 20120408 Nose Izmil Temporal Final

1/7

International Symposium on Language and Communication: Research trends and challenges

A contrastive study of temporal feeling for a moment:

East Asia and Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose

Shiga University, Hikone, Japan, [email protected]

Abstract: This study contrasts adverbial usage in three typologically and geneticallydistinct languages: Chinese and Japanese in East Asia and Amele in Papua New Guinea.Specifically, this study focuses on the temporal expression for a moment. This temporal

expression is related semantically to adverbial expressions of quality and quantity such asa little and a bit. This paper tries to clarify the grammatical and semanticcharacteristics of each language. Finally, I assert that the observed expressions are quitevarious among the three sample languages, which shows that each language has its ownviewpoint on temporal evaluations. Moreover, the temporal expressions of all threelanguages utilize time is space metaphors and other figurative innovations.

Keywords: contrastive, temporal expression, Chinese, Japanese, Papua New Guinea

1. IntroductionThis study contrasts adverbial usages in the following three languages: Chinese,

Japanese, and Amele in Papua New Guinea. This contrastive study tries to clarifydifferences among temporal expressions and, in particular, consider how these expressions

relate to the grammars of the languages. There are more than 1,000 languages spoken inNew Guinea Island, and their grammatical behaviors are said to be different from otherlanguages in the world (Foley 1986:8-9). This study illustrates characteristics or tendenciesof the New Guinea languages by focusing on one language, Amele. Thus, we explore thepossibilities of the grammar of temporal expressions of East Asia as well as Papua NewGuinea.

Even in East Asia, Chinese and Japanese are typologically distinct, and they differ interms of grammar, word order, verbal inflection, and other categories. Nevertheless,Japanese has borrowed many Chinese characters (kanji) from Chinese, and spatial andtemporal expressions in Japanese are identical or related to those of Chinese.

These three languages are not Western languages such as English and German, andpossibly this study enables us to explain their temporal expressions from another viewpoint.

2. Methodology: basics of temporal expressionsThis section reviews some preliminary studies on temporal expressions and illustratesone of them (perlative) in terms of semantics. There are several studies of temporalexpressions, classified as verb-based and non-verb-based. The verb-based forms arerepresented by tense and aspect, and other non-verb forms are represented by noun-basedadverbials and temporal adverbs (cf. Knig and Gast 2009). This study deals with noun-based adverbials and temporal adverbs. They (noun-based adverbials and temporaladverbs) can be classified roughly into four types: temporal inessive (in, on, etc),preessive (before, ago), postessive (after, later), and perlative (for, during). Inparticular, this study focuses on one perlative meaning: for a moment.


2/7

Some studies (Wierzbicka 1993, Kurzon 2008) describe temporal adverbs andadverbials semantically, and other studies (Anderson and Keenan 1985) define them interms of deixis. One basic principle is inevitable: time is space (Radden 1997, Knig andGast 2009), which means that temporal expressions are semantically related to spatialexpressions. Spatial prepositions such as in a city and on a car are used in temporalexpressions such as in 10 minutes and on Monday. Thus, spatial expressions aremetaphorically realized in temporal expressions. In addition, Radden (1997:150) claimsthat [t]ime is also metaphorised as an object and may take many attributes that aretypically associated with physical objects: it may thus be described as hard, heavy, rich,lean, long, short, new, old, big, little, great, good, nice, etc.

This study concerns temporal or perlative meanings. Hagge (2010:303) definesperlative as a grammatical case that may be bounded or unbounded, depending on

whether the past, present, or future event, whose duration is considered, is viewed as nothaving a beginning and an end. Perlative has two types of meanings: one is unbounded(for a minute), and another is bounded (in a minute). This study examines unboundedperlative meanings and tries to clarify points that preliminary studies have ignored.

First, this study examines which forms (grammatical or lexical) are used to expressfor a moment in the sample languages. Second, it describes how each language construessuch moments of time. Third, the study summarizes the results and considers theirrelationship to the time is space metaphor.

3. Results: a temporal expression of for a momentThis study focuses on the perlative meaning in temporal expressions; in particular, one

temporal expressionfor a momentis examined in this section. It is considered to besemantically related to adverbial expressions of quality and quantity such as a little anda bit. This relationship can be explained by metaphorical extension (Knig & Gast2009:222). In this section we observe the examples of three sample languages.

First, this study considers for a moment in English, as shown in (1):

(1) Imagine for a moment that you are the general manager of a medical office.(http://www.enotes.com/health/q-and-a/)

There are several equivalent expressions of for a moment: in a minute, in a fewseconds, for a while, for a short time. Similarly, there are equivalent expressionswithout prepositions, such as wait a moment and simply a minute. Moreover, there areadverbs of quantity, a little, a bit, which can be used in temporal situations. This studyclassifies them in forms with prepositions and those without prepositions. Other languageswill use other grammatical forms (postposition case1); thus, temporal expressions haveseveral grammatical means or simply lexical means.

In Chinese there are three types of a little expressions, as shown in (2). Eachexpression shows different usage according to degree, quality/quantity, and temporalmeanings. (2a) and (2c) can indicate the temporal expression for a moment in Chinese.

(2) Chinese:a. yi1 xia4 a littleb. yi1 dianr3 a littlec. yi1 huir4 for a moment


3/7

(2a) implies both degree and the temporal meanings a little and once, but it functionsas a verbal adverb modifying actions. The Chinese character yi means one, a little, and

xia means down, bottom; thus, we suppose this form to be a bottom literally. Next,(2b) implies quantity and quality meanings a little, particularly modifying adjectives.This yi dianrform comprises one and point in Chinese characters and does not includeany temporal meaning. (2c) has a temporal meaning (for a moment, mainly), consistingof one and meeting, opportunity, chance. All three forms do not require apreposition (such as the English word for), and this fact indicates that Chinese does notneed a preposition or other grammatical means, even though Chinese has several types ofprepositions. The examples above show that the temporal feeling is expressed by usinglexical or adverbial means.

In Japanese the lexical expression chotto (a little, just, slightly) covers both

temporal (3a) and quality/quantity interpretations (3b). The form (3b) sukoshi (a little)similarly has degree and quantity/quality meanings; moreover, this sukoshi occurs intemporal situations, meaning a moment and a minute as well. Both chotto and sukoshihave longer redundant forms: chotto-no-aida and sukoshi-no-aida in (3c). The no (of)and aida (betweenness) forms clearly specify temporal intervals. Therefore, thedifference between chotto and chotto-no-aida/sukoshi and sukoshi-no-aida corresponds tothat between a moment and for a moment in English. In this case, the form aida(betweenness) can be interpreted as a relative noun with partly grammatical (notpostposition) and partly lexical (not purely lexical) meanings.

(3) Japanese:a. chotto a little, a bit, (for) a momentb. sukoshi a little, a bit, (for) a momentc. chotto-no-aida/sukoshi-no-aida: for a moment, in a certain moment (longerforms)

Moreover, chotto indicates looseness in discourse, as shown in (4a). However, sukoshi in(4b) sounds odd and does not imply looseness.2

(4) Japanese:a. Chotto Tokyo-made iku

a little Tokyo-to goI will go to Tokyo casually.

b. ? Sukoshi Tokyo-made iku.

Amele distinguishes between temporal and non-temporal meanings. Amele useslexical means for a temporal meaning: sain gohic bahic

3 in (5a), literally indicating time,

short, very. That is, Amele speakers use the temporal expression for a moment with themeaning of short time. On the other hand, in (5b) non-temporal uses (degree,quality/quantity) are indicated by nag (little, small). The form nag

4 is semanticallydifferent from gohic, and this difference can be subsumed in shortness and smallness.

(5) Amele: a native language of Papua New Guineaa. sain gohic bahic for a moment: temporal (sain time, gohic short, bahicvery)b. nag a little: (nag: little, small)


4/7

In particular, there is no grammatical marker (such as for in English) specifying temporalduration in (5a). The word sain plays an important role in describing temporal situations.The word sain has the meanings time and watch, and this form functions as a temporaladverbial. It can function as a temporal conjunction when in (6).

(6) Amele: Usage ofsainSain ija haunnatime I youngwhen I was young

In summary, the temporal form for a moment indicates a short range of time, whereas the

non-temporal form a little indicates a small piece of an object or thing. In addition, thetemporal word sain introduces a characteristic of temporal adverbials. These facts showthat Amele has one-by-one semantic elements of temporal expressions.

4. DiscussionThis section discusses the observed data in terms of forms and meanings.First, this section considers grammatical forms specifying temporal expressions. In

English, for instance, several prepositions are used to specify temporal points and durations,such as on Monday, for a week, and at night. Wierzbicka (1993:440-441) claims thatspeakers of English have some freedom in their choice of prepositions to go with wordssuch as day or night. Specifically, in the perlative case, speakers of English can assumea psychological duration (during night, but not during dusk or during dawn) byadding the preposition during. Thus, many European languages have prepositions orequivalent grammatical forms (postposition cases) that limit temporal points or situationsin semantic terms (Hagge 2010). In contrast, speakers of Chinese, Japanese and Amelehave some freedom in their choice of not using grammatical means when they want todescribe ambiguous or unbounded temporal situations.

Section (7) summarizes the data of for a moment or a moment. Although thepreposition for is used in English, no preposition or postposition case is used in Chinese,Japanese, or Amele. Japanese can use the longer form chotto-no-aida to specify temporalduration. This aida is a relative noun meaning betweenness, middle. This relative nounis used in adverbial phrases such as ago in English (Kurzon 2009:209).

(7) Checking for grammatical markings for a moment:a. English: for a moment (preposition: for)b. Chinese: yi1 huir4 (lexically realized)c. Japanese: chotto-no-aida (relative noun: aida betweenness, middle)

d. Amele: sain gohic bahic (lexically realized)

Chinese uses prepositions, but no preposition is used in the phrase for a moment. Thus,the temporal feeling in Chinese is realized lexically. Similarly, Amele depends on lexicalmeans, but it is represented with the help of the word sain (time). This word sequencetime short very is semantically transparent and a peculiar characteristic of New Guinealanguages.

Second, this section considers the time is space metaphor (Radden 1997, Andersonand Keenan 1985). Radden (1997:150, 162) claims that concepts of time have often been


5/7

developed from concepts of space but not vice versa. He continues: the English temporalprepositions for, since, and till as well as the temporal adverbs sudden, always, and againare derived originally from spatial meanings. Moreover, he adds that time ismetonymically related to events and metaphorically to space and things. In general,prepositions indicating location or locative cases are used for temporal expressions, such ason Monday in English and shougo-ni (at noon) in Japanese. In (8a) the Englishpreposition for can be considered to have been derived from the location-/space-baseduse of for, such as I leave for Canada tomorrow. By contrast, in (8be), the other threelanguages do not use a preposition or postposition case. Seemingly, Chinese, Japanese, andAmele do not have a semantic relationship between space and time.

(8) Temporal expressions based on space/location:

a. English: for a moment (the preposition for is space-based)b. Chinese: yi1 xia4 (the form xia means down, bottom)c. Chinese: yi1 huir4 (the form hui means meeting, opportunity, chance)d. Japanese: chotto-no-aida (relative noun: aida means betweenness, middle)e. Amele: sain gohic bahic (literally, time-short-very)

The temporal expressions do not include a grammatical form, but lexical forms includecertain space/location meaning. In (8b) the form xia means down, bottom; in contrast,there is no location meaning hui in (8c). The form hui indicates meeting, opportunity,chance, and the temporal expression (8c) is equivalent to one meeting, one chance.Thus, (8c) is an exception to the time is space metaphor. In Japanese, the relative nounaida indicates a location meaning of betweenness, middle. In Amele, there is nogrammatical form, and speakers of Amele consider temporal expressions to be short orlong in duration (gohic means short). These expressions are semantically related tophysical distance and possibly deictic terms. The temporal expression (short time) isparallel to an object or a distance (short stick, long way). The results are summarizedin (9).

(9) Relationship between time and space:a. space-based: down, bottom in Chinese, betweenness, middle in Japaneseb. other motivations: meeting, chance in Chinese, short in Amele

In (9), all three languages are various in usages, but certain expressions in (9b) do notreflect on the time is space metaphor. Therefore, we cannot assume semanticallycommon characteristics among them, and it is still difficult to claim that their expressionscan be equivalent to each other. Thus, we have difficulties to translate for a momentamong English and other languages including Chinese, Japanese, and Amele.

5. ConclusionTemporal expressions of for a moment are realized differently in the grammars of

these three non-European languages. By comparison with for a moment in English, theequivalent expressions of these three languages are rather lexically dependent, althoughsome are partly related to space/location. This study reveals that there are two types oflanguages: ones that utilize grammatical markings to limit the duration of time and othersthat indicate ambiguous temporal expressions by non-grammatical means. The formerincludes English, and the latter includes Chinese, Japanese, and Amele. In lexical terms,


6/7


7/7

Radden, G. (1997). Time is space. In Simieja, B. and M. Tasch (eds.). Human contactthrough language and linguistics. Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 147-166.

Roberts, J. R. (1987). Amele. London/New York/Sydney: Croom Helm.

Wierzbicka, A. (1993). Why do we say in April, on Thursday, at 10 o'clock?: In search ofan explanation. Studies in Language 17, 437-454.

20120408 Nose Izmil Temporal Final

Documents

Transcript of 20120408 Nose Izmil Temporal Final