现代汉语“前、后”时间指向的认知视角、认知机制及句法语义限制

Cognition perspectives,mechanism,syntactic and semantic constraints on Mandarin temporal indication of qian(前) and hou(后)

人类认知时间存在"自己在动"和"时间在动"两个视角。本文通过系统考察现代汉语中含时间词"前、后"的各类表达式,认为汉语语用倾向于采取"时间在动"的视角,即"前"表过去,"后"表未来。但在这一总的原则之下,还有细微的区别,对某一特定语句而言,认知视角的选择受到该语句内部句法、语义关系的影响和制约。本文主要从句法位置、句中动词及其与之搭配的名词之间的语义关系出发,进一步探讨了两个视角各自适用的范围和条件,分析出"前、后"时间指向的认知路径、认知机制、判定流程及制约因素,将宏观抽象的认知原则精细化为操作层面的具体规则,从而贯彻原则和规则互动的研究策略。

There exist two perspectives on time cognition:the moving time metaphor and the moving ego metaphor.After making a systematic analysis on various kinds of Mandarin temporal expressions of qian and hou,this article argues that Mandarin tends to employ the moving time metaphor(qian indicates past and hou indicates future) as the unmarked perspective.Under this general principle,there are several subtle differences.For a specific sentence,the selection of cognitive perspectives is constrained by its internal syntactic and semantic relations.The usage and conditions of two perspectives are explored on the basis of syntactic positions and the semantic relations of verbs as well as their co-occurring nouns.Also discussed are the cognitive path,mechanism,inferential process and constraints on the temporal indication of qian and hou.