统一时体理论中的参照时间——兼论复杂句的时间结构

Reference Time in the Unified Theory of Tense and Aspect and the Temporal Construction of Complex Sentences

汉语学界引入事件时间、参照时间和说话时间来定义统一时体系统,这也引起了一些争议。这些争议主要是因为对“参照时间”这一概念没有解释清楚而造成的,包括参照时间究竟是时点还是时段,它的认知本质是什么,完整体与非完整体的对立是否必要,参照时间的语言表达方式有哪些,表达式与标记的关系、绝对时与相对时的关系如何,复杂句子中参照时间如何判定等问题。文章试图澄清这些问题,并讨论对一个基于统一理论的时体系统框架来说,应该遵循哪些原则。

Event time,reference time and speech time have been used to define a unified system of tense and aspect by some Chinese scholars,which have caused some disputes.These controversies are mainly related to the lack of a clear explanation of the concept of reference time,including whether reference time is a time point or a time period,what is its cognitive nature,whether the opposition between the perfective and the imperfective is necessary,what are the linguistic expressions of reference time,what are the relations between expressions and markers,between absolute tense and relative tense,and above all how we justify reference time in complex sentences.This paper attempts to clarify these issues and discusses the principles that should be followed for a systematic framework of tense and aspect which is based on the unified theory.