也论英汉时空性差异假说——来自英汉表量方式的启发

Second thoughts on English and Chinese temporality/spatiality hypotheses:Implications from classifier expressions in English and Chinese

关于英汉语言时空性差异,目前主要存在两大假说:“英汉时空性强弱说”和“英汉时空分立同态说”。对二者与“英汉名动分立包含说”的关系,尚存若干基本和根本问题有待回答。以英汉表量方式为例,研究发现:英汉时空性差异问题的落脚点应在概念层面,而非语言层面;表量方式提供概念框架,以组织表量对象的概念内容;名动分立并不意味时空分立,名动包含并不意味时空同态;语言证据提供概率,指向时空性概念化方式的使用倾向。

There are mainly two hypotheses as to the temporal-spatial nature of English and Chinese:strongweak temporality/spatiality and time-space independence/conflation. Both hypotheses are related to the hypothesis of nominalism. With this relationship taken into consideration,there are basic and fundamental problems to be tackled.English and Chinese classifier expressions taken as examples,the study holds that the temporal-spatial nature of the two languages should be rooted at the conceptual level instead of the linguistic level;classifier expressions provide conceptual structures which organize the semantic content of what is classified;the distinction between verbs and nouns does not mean the independence of time from space,and the nominalism does not mean the conflation of time and space;linguistic evidences are directed to the tendency of temporal-spatial conceptualization means.