The semantics of pure indexicals "I," "here," and "now" has been discussed in the area of philosophy of language. According to David Kaplan, in face-to-face communication, "I," "here," and "now" refer resp...The semantics of pure indexicals "I," "here," and "now" has been discussed in the area of philosophy of language. According to David Kaplan, in face-to-face communication, "I," "here," and "now" refer respectively to the agent, the place, and the time of the context of utterance. In recorded and written messages, however, the identification of pure indexical references is nontrivial, given that there is a gap between the time of utterance and that of interpretation. In the literature, four major views are proposed from a philosophical perspective. While these are theoretically competing, no empirical data or pragmatic analyses have been provided. How is the reference of "now" in written messages interpreted? Which views proposed in the literature are supported empirically? This paper investigates these questions from experimental and pragmatic perspectives.展开更多
In this paper, we focus our grammar studies on two early Cantonese literature contexts: Huajian Ji (花菚記, 1714) and Yue Ou (粤謳, 1820). Two aspect markers, the experience aspect marker "gwo 過" and the durat...In this paper, we focus our grammar studies on two early Cantonese literature contexts: Huajian Ji (花菚記, 1714) and Yue Ou (粤謳, 1820). Two aspect markers, the experience aspect marker "gwo 過" and the duration aspect marker "dzy 住", in these two Cantonese books show different characteristics from oral Cantonese today. "Gwo", mostly used as an aspect marker of"experience" and "repeat" in verbal expression, had the usage of"unhappened experience" in the old books as a connection between this two aspects. Every step of "dzy"'s grammarlization process was clearly recorded in the written materials. By comparing with the aspect markers in Mandarin Chinese, the usage of the completion aspect marker "liu 了" found in these two books was also discussed. We argue the importance of literature context in diachronical grammar studies of dialect.展开更多
文摘The semantics of pure indexicals "I," "here," and "now" has been discussed in the area of philosophy of language. According to David Kaplan, in face-to-face communication, "I," "here," and "now" refer respectively to the agent, the place, and the time of the context of utterance. In recorded and written messages, however, the identification of pure indexical references is nontrivial, given that there is a gap between the time of utterance and that of interpretation. In the literature, four major views are proposed from a philosophical perspective. While these are theoretically competing, no empirical data or pragmatic analyses have been provided. How is the reference of "now" in written messages interpreted? Which views proposed in the literature are supported empirically? This paper investigates these questions from experimental and pragmatic perspectives.
基金This research is financially supported by the Youth Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No 10CYY008).
文摘In this paper, we focus our grammar studies on two early Cantonese literature contexts: Huajian Ji (花菚記, 1714) and Yue Ou (粤謳, 1820). Two aspect markers, the experience aspect marker "gwo 過" and the duration aspect marker "dzy 住", in these two Cantonese books show different characteristics from oral Cantonese today. "Gwo", mostly used as an aspect marker of"experience" and "repeat" in verbal expression, had the usage of"unhappened experience" in the old books as a connection between this two aspects. Every step of "dzy"'s grammarlization process was clearly recorded in the written materials. By comparing with the aspect markers in Mandarin Chinese, the usage of the completion aspect marker "liu 了" found in these two books was also discussed. We argue the importance of literature context in diachronical grammar studies of dialect.