Conceptualization Of Time And Its Linguistic Representation

Time is the basic domain and form of human cognition. To study the concept of time is to explore the nature of time. In the field of philosophy, cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics, time is connected with the objective world through the embodiment of time. In doing so, time gains the characteristics of locomotion and eventness. Through the mapping of objects in the domain of space onto time, time acquires the features of directionality, irreversibility, continuity and measurement. Based on the time theories of philosophy and cognitive psychology, this dissertation aims at exploring the mechanism of the conceptualization of time and its linguistic representation within the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and the interaction between the two. The major findings are as follows:First, the spatial construal of time has its root in philosophy and cognitive psychology. To some degree, theories of time in the two fields have laid a solid foundation for the study of the cognitive models for time.Philosophical view of time regards time as existence, and particularly as the existence of human beings. The structure of our body can naturally explain the direction of motion objects. Similarly, the Moving-time model and the Moving-ego model are based on the direction and location of the observer.In the field of cognitive psychology, the perception of time is the perception of events and motion, which is a metaphorical process of conceptualization. Time concept depends on a more concrete concept like feelings, motion, space, events, things, etc., so that time can be treasured, saved, spent, wasted, made up, and it can come and go, fly and flow, and accelerate and decelerate.Secondly, some similarities and differences of the metaphorical representation of linear time in English and Chinese are discovered. We studied the time usages of Chinese characters Qian, Hou, Shang, Xia in CCL PKU and the time usage of before, in front of, after, behind, up, down in BNC, and find that the linear thinking of time in Chinese and English has the following characteristics:(1) Horizontal time is pervasive in both English and Chinese. But in English time prepositions before and after are derived from spatial preposition in front of and behind, so before and after are mainly for time use. In Chinese, space and time share the words Qian, Hou.(2) By studying the use of these words in the corpus, we find that reference frame of time or events is more frequently used rather than reference frame of ego when Qian, Hou, before and after are used to describe time on the horizontal time line. Therefore, more often the time expressions of these words express sequence of time rather than location of time.(3) There is great difference in vertical time representation in Chinese and English. Up and down are spatial words, which are scarcely used to express time, while Chinese characters Shang, and Xia are frequently used to describe time. Similarly in the two languages, past is Shang/up, future is Xia/down. But the way of time motion is different. In Chinese, time moves top-down, while in English time goes both top-down and bottom-up.(4) There are great more horizontal time expressions than vertical time expressions in CCL PKU (with Qian, Hou71%&67%vs. Shang, Xia12%&9.3%). This shows that in the mode of time thinking, Chinese speakers'metaphorical thinking is mainly horizontal rather than vertical.Thirdly, metonymical thinking of time is pervasive in time representation. Time construal is a conceptualization process which resembles the process of metonymy. Inevitably, metonymy becomes an important means in the conceptualization of time. After exploring the relationship between time and space, time and motion, time and events, we find that time conceptualization by way of metonymy includes the following:(1) Metonymy of time and events. First, the occurrence and existence of events go together with time, and the existence of time is dependent on events. Consequently, there exists an internal link between the two. Metonymy is based on the contiguity of entities within a domain or frame. The embodied cognition on various events forms a conceptual frame, and the elements in the frame have a contiguity nature, which gives rise to metonymy (Kovecses,2005). The metonymical thinking from the embodiment of events results in a conceptual relation between time and events, which integrates the two entities into a schema, so that one may stand for another, and the conceptualization of time is possible by way of metonymy between time and events. Second, metonymy of time and events is referential metonymy. Once the metonymical relationship between time and events is there, the linguistic representation highlights one of them and the other remains in the background. Either time or event can be a reference point. The conceptualizer may evoke time to form a mental access to event and vice visa, which integrates into a whole schema.(2) The metonymy time and space, including two aspects:One is distance for time duration. When time is conceptualized through space, there is the concept of spatial time. In space, distance can be measured, and time events happen in certain space, which has a start point and an end point. Therefore spatial expressions for distance also apply for time duration. For example, In "The two earthquakes are close together", the word close usually describes the distance between places or objects.The other is time for distance. Because of the close tie between time routine activities, people are more conscious of time. In addition, our potential tendency of least-effort principle in cognition enables us to remember time, rather than distance. For example, we usually remember "It's three hour's drive from Chongqing to Chengdu", but scarcely remember the distance between the two cities.(3) The metonymy of time of activity and contents of activity.Through spatial time, time is conceptualized as a container for things and activities. Since activities take up both space and time, they are contained in the time container. For example, thirty minutes in thirty minutes of reading resembles a container which contains the reading activities.(4) The metonymy of the feature of time and the concept of time.A time we perceive usually has certain features. For example, spring is warm, summer is hot, autumn is cool with clear sky and yellow plants, and winter is cold. These characteristics the time has often stand for time (domain or concept) itself by way of metonymy.(5) The metonymy of constituents of time and the whole time entity. Since a time consists of segments of time, one of the segments or the segments plus together may stand for the whole of it.(6) The metonymy of objects and concept of time. The instruments we use to measure time displays metonymic thinking. In this way, instruments of measurement become symbols of time. In a common cognitive frame build up by the two parties in communication, instruments can stand for time concept, and vice versa.Forth, there is interaction between metaphor and metonymy in the conceptualization of time. There is not always a clear boundary line whether the representation of time is by means of metaphor or metonymy. The vague boundary of domain and membership may constitute a continuum of metaphor and metonymy, which is another way of the conceptualization of time. Three cases may appear:(1) The meaning of metonymy and metaphor follows one another by which a specific time expression gives metonymic meaning and from which metaphor derives.(2) The meaning of metaphor and metonymy occurs simultaneously, which shows that the two goes hand-in-hand in decoding meanings of time. As a result, a time expression displays its compound meaning.(3) The meaning of metaphor and metonymy occurs alternatively. The construal of time expression involves both metaphor and metonymy, but follows different order, i.e. metaphor goes before metonymy or after metonymy.In a word, based on the achievements of other scholars, this research strives for a creative study. We consulted the findings of experiments and linguistic observation in psychology, but we make great efforts to find the areas being neglected, such as corpus-based study of Chinese and English metaphorical representation of time, time metonymy, and the phenomena of metaphtonymy in the conceptualization of time. We have made some progress in lexical semantics of time.