| Tense and the perfect aspect are essential grammatical categories of English verbs, and the literature on them at home and abroad is abundant but of different views. Although it is commonly agreed that tense has various uses in English, few scholars have seriously studied the relations among those uses, fewer scholars have tried to study the polysemy of the present perfect aspect and that of the past perfect aspect based on the polysemy of the present tense and the past tense, and the semantic interactions between tense and the perfect aspect, even fewer scholars have tried to figure out a consistent and reasonable explanation to some syntactic and pragmatic constraints related to the present perfect aspect, e.g.,"the present perfect puzzle", which have actually been bothering the English grammarians since long before and which are real nuts to crack. Therefore it is of both theoretical and practical significance to study the polysemy of tense and its semantic interactions with the perfect aspect.First of all, with respect to the study of tense in English, three major viewpoints have been formed:(1) tense is a grammatical ised means of time-distinctions,(2) tense is a deictic category,(3) tense is one of the two grounding elements, and two consensuses have been reached:(1) there are two subcategories of tense in English, the past tense and the present tense, which are inflected with "-ed" and "-s/es/(?)" correspondingly;(2) both the past tense and the present tense have various uses.However, as for what relations exist among the various uses of the present tense and those of the past tense respectively, this dissertation finds out four major drawbacks in the previous related studies:(1) with the adoption of the mood category, most scholars have cleverly avoided probing into the reason why the same verb inflection can be used to convey completely different meanings, which are seemingly of default homonymy (Jespersen1924, Poutsma1926, Curme1931, Bo Bing2000, Zhang Daozhen2002);(2) many scholars neglect to explore the relations among the different uses of the past tense and among those of the present tense although they list and describe its different uses (Quirk et al.1985, Declerck1991,2006, Zhang Zhenbang1997, Biber et al.1999, Huddleston and Pullum2002);(3) some scholars employ the strategy of abstraction in order to explain the various uses of the past tense and those of the present tense. Unfortunately, they haven’t touched the interrelations among these uses either, nor illustrated the discrepancies of the distribution and productivity of those uses (Joos1964, Palmer1971, Leech1978, Yi Zhongliang1987,1988b,1999, Brisard1997,1999,2002, Taylor2002, etc.);(4) some scholars use the strategy of polysemy to study the different uses of the past tense and those of the present tense, however, because their study purpose is to test the feasibility of their theories instead of systematically expounding the tense of English verbs per se, their study of tense is not systematic, their study perspectives are not consistent either (Langacker1991,1999,2001,2002,2003,2009,2011, Taylor1995). Nevertheless, this dissertation thinks all these studies are illuminating on the one hand; on the other hand, they are unable to offer a consistent and convincing explanation to the polysemy of the present tense and that of the past tense. Hence, it is necessary to advance studies in this respect.Moreover, scholars vary in their viewpoints in the previous studies of the perfect aspect in English [have+(V)-en]. As for which grammatical category the form "have+(V)-en" should be classified into, three major opinions have been formed based on the meaning it expresses:①it is a subcategory of tense,②it is a subcategory of aspect paralleling to the progressive aspect,③it is neither a subcategory of tense nor that of aspect, but forms a new grammatical category, called "phase"(Palmer1974),"formula"(Yi Zhongliang1989,1999),"secondary tense"(Huddleston&Pullum2002), etc. This dissertation thinks that the three classifications have both advantages and disadvantages of their own; however, their main and common drawbacks are that they fail to specify the grammatical meaning of the perfect aspect and use it to explain the uses of the finite forms of the perfect aspect (e.g., the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect) in a consistent way.Furthermore, in the previous studies of the present perfect aspect, a consensus has been reached that it can convey four distinct meanings or uses:①universal perfect,②existential/experiencial perfect,③stative/resultative perfect, and④hot news perfect (McCawley1971, Comrie1976, Quirk et al.1985, Binnick1991, Declerck1991,2006, Zhang Zhenbang1997, Biber et al.1999, Huddleston and Pullum2002, etc.). And five different theories have come into being in order to expound the relations among these four meanings or uses of the present perfect:the current relevance theory, the indefinite past theory, the extended now theory, the embedded past theory (c.f, McCoard1978) and the perfect construction theory (Langacker1991,1999,2009). Nevertheless, the five theories can neither explicate the interrelations among the four major meanings of the present perfect aspect, nor explain consistently and convincingly the so called "present perfect puzzle","Wh-puzzle" and "Sequence of Tense Puzzle", and some other syntactic or pragmatic constraints in the use of the present perfect aspect.In addition, concerning the study of the past perfect aspect, although scholars have unanimously agreed that its grammatical meaning is to express "past-in-the-past"(Quirk et al.1985, Zhang Zhenbang1997, Biber et al.1999, Huddleston and Pullum2002, etc.), such a grammatical meaning can not give a consistent explanation to the relations among the four distinct uses of the past perfect:①referring to a past state in the past,﹔eferring to a past action in the past,③referring to an event that is supposed to have happened in the past, but the speaker thinks that is not true,④referring to a hope, expectation, supposition, etc., which has not been realized yet.For the purpose of overcoming the above mentioned drawbacks in the previous studies of the present tense, the past tense, the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect, this dissertation proposes the following three research questions:(1) What are the relations between the basic grammatical meanings of the present tense and the past tense and their other grammatical meanings correspondingly?(2) What are the relations among the distinct meanings of the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect respectively?(3) What is a possible consistent and reasonable account for "the present perfect puzzle" and some other syntactic and pragmatic constraints related to the present perfect aspect?This dissertation studies these research questions from the perspectives of the conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier1985/1994,1997, Fauconnier&Turner2002), the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptual metonymy theory (Lakoff&Johnson1980,2003, Indurkhya1992, Barcelona2000, Kovecses2002/2010). It first studies comprehensively the polysemy of the present tense and that of the past tense, explains consistently and convincingly their various uses and constructs their radial polysemic models respectively. Then it re-defines the perfect aspect from the perspective of construal and profiling, on such a basis, it studies the polysemy of the present perfect aspect and that of the past perfect aspect through the detailed studies of the semantic interactions between the perfect aspect and the present tense and the past tense. In addition, it constructs their respective radial polysemic model and offers a comparatively consistent and convincing account for those syntactic and pragmatic constraints of the present perfect aspect, including the present perfect puzzle.This dissertation mainly applies the qualitative research method. The major research data are from a large volume of related literature by distinguished scholars at home and abroad, some are from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and some are offered directly by American linguistic scholars to the author of this dissertation when he discussed relevant questions with them in the University of Oregon.This dissertation consists of three major parts:the study of the polysemy of the past tense from the perspectives of CMT and CBT, the study of the polysemy of the present tense from the perspectives of CMYT and CBT, and the study of the semantic interactions between the perfect aspect and tense from CBT.The study of the polysemy of the past tense is focused on its four major different meanings:①referring to past time,②referring to the anterior time in the future,③indicating hypothesis or counterfactuality, and④implying tentative or polite attitude. In the course of our qualitative analysis of the relations among them, three respects are involved:(1) motivations for the relations among the four uses of the past tense;(2) infeasibility of the strategy of homonymy or abstraction;(3) arguing for a radial polysemic model of the past tense through metaphor and conceptual blending.The study of the polysemy of the present tense is also concentrated on its four major distinct meanings:①referring to present time,②referring to past time (the historical present),③referring to future time, and④referring to the present time in imaginary or fictional narratives. Our qualitative analysis of the relations among these four major meanings involves four respects:(1) making clear our interpretation of the present time;(2) motivations for the relations among the various uses of the present tense;(3) the enlightenment of epistemic immediacy as the basic meaning of the present tense;(4) arguing for a radial polysemic model of the present tense through metonymy and conceptual blending.The study of the semantic interactions between tense and the perfect aspect is unwound from the following four dimensions:(1) a new construal of the perfect aspect and the construction of its image schema;(2) semantic interactions between the present tense and the perfect aspect;(3) semantic interactions between the past tense and the perfect aspect;(4) accounts for the present perfect puzzle and some other related syntactic and pragmatic constraints.This dissertation finally achieves the following three principal findings and offers consistent and reasonable answers to its research questions:(1) Revelation of a radial polysemic model of the past tense in EnglishThe primary meaning of the past tense is "referring to the past time", which can be represented by the image schema of the distance between the moment of speaking and some point on its left side. When this image schema is projected onto the right side of the moment of speaking, it signifies the "anterior time in the future time zone"When this image schema of temporal distance and the image schema of evolving reality in the epistemic domain (c.f, Langacker1991,2008, Radden&Dirven2007) are taken as two input spaces, their elements are selectively projected onto a blend space, where another image schema of distance is created, which stands for the gap between the situation of an event described in language and the realitiy of that event. That represents the meaning of "hypothesis or counterfactuality" of the past tense. In addition, when the image schema of temporal distance and that of people’s social relations based on their ethical, economic and social status in the social-cultural domain are regarded as two input spaces, the result of their conceptual integration is an image schema of social distance, which signifies the past tense’s grammatical meaning of "tentative or polite attitude". Accordingly, the four distinct meanings of the past tense form a radial polysemic model:(2) Revelation of a radial polysemic model of the present tense in EnglishThe primary meaning of the present tense is referring to the present time, which includes the moment of speaking and which can be short or long with the potentiality of stretching into the future. Cognitively speaking, this meaning actually profiles the psychological reality of the state or action expressed by a verb in context, in other words, based on his/her judgment at the moment of speaking, the speaker thinks that some action or state not only has reality in the past or at the present, but also has necessity in the future. Therefore, this meaning can be represented by an image schema of "left-right endocentric mental association","left" refers to "the left of the moment of speaking, that’s past time","right""the right of the moment of speaking, that’s future time","endocentric mental association" refers to "the speaker at the moment of speaking connects in mind the reality of the situation both in the past and in the future"(c.f., Leech1978, Yi Zhongliang1988b,1999, Chen Minzhe2000, Chen Minzhe&Yi Jing2008).This primary meaning extends through metonymy into "left-endocentric mental association" and "right-endocentric mental association", the former indicates some described situation that in fact happened in the past but its psychological reality turns up in the speaker’s mind at the moment of speaking, the latter suggests some described situation that will happen in the future but the speaker takes it as actuality at the moment of speaking based on his/her judgement. What’s more, the three endocentric mental associations and their relations can all be metaphorically projected onto fictional domains, which enables the present tense to refer to imaginary situations in fictional narratives, stage directions, travelogue itinerary, the instruction booklet, etc. As a result, the four different meanings of the present tense also shape a radial polysemic model with "referring to the present time" at the core: (3) Revelation of the image schema of the perfect aspect, the respective radial polysemic model of the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect, and the consistent and reasonable accounts for the present perfect puzzle and some other syntactic and pragmatic constraints related to the present perfect aspectThe perfect aspect in English is actually a grammatical category that construes the process (no matter whether it is imperfective or perfective) expressed by any verb in context as perfective with a specific time frame. It has three major features:①it is highly subjective;②the action or state it expresses has no direct relation to the moment of speaking;③it presupposes a specific time frame whose starting and ending points are usually grounded by context. Hence, we can figure out its image schema with reference to the image schemata of the aspectuality of verbs proposed by Langacker (1987a:116-137,1987b,1999:203-245). In Figure3, T stands for time axis, the solid-line rectangle (P) represents the time frame presupposed by the perfect aspect with S as its starting point and R as its ending point, the broken-line rectangle (E) indicates the period that the imperfective or perfective process takes, which is expressed by a verb in context. No matter whether E<P or E≥P, the speaker/hearer construes E as a perfective process with P.In the study of the semantic interactions between the perfect aspect and the present tense with CBT, this dissertation takes the image schema of the perfect aspect and that of the "left-right endocentric mental association" of the present tense as two input spaces (c.f., Chapter5, Figure5.6). In the process of their conceptual integration, the frame of the former is selectively projected into the blend as the organizing frame whose ending point R is valued with the moment of speaking O, which is selectively projected from the latter. Furthermore, the two arrows representing "left-right endocentric mental association" are also selectively projected into the blend. With the process of composition, completion and elaboration, a blend with emergent structure is created as shown in Figure4.In Figure4,"(?)" means O is a value of the role R, which is one of the essential features of the present perfect aspect. E stands for the construed perfective process; its specification depends on the aspectuality of the verb in context. The two arrows pointing to the moment of speaking represent "the right-left endocentric mental association".Figure4represents the basic grammatical meaning of the present perfect aspect, which we called "the left-right endocentric mental association of a construed perfective process". On the one hand, the speaker construes a process (perfective or imperfective) expressed by a verb in context as perfective with a specific time frame whose ending point is the moment of speaking O, on the other hand, due to the motivation of "the left-right endocentric mental association", the speaker is aware of some effects of that process on the situation at the moment of speaking through the conceptual metonymy of "CAUSE FOR EFFECT", at the same time, he/she thinks that process has the potentiality of reoccurrence or continuation in the future. What’s more, this basic meaning extends into other meanings through metonymy. We can thus reveal a radial polysemic model of the present perfect aspect as follows: Accordingly, this dissertation offers a consistent and reasonable account for the puzzles mentioned above and some other syntactic or pragmatic constraints related to the present perfect aspect (c.f., section6.5).Besides, in the study of the semantic interactions of the perfect aspect and the past tense with CBT, by taking the image schema of distance of the past tense and Figure4as two input spaces, this dissertation constructs a blend with an emergent structure, shown in Figure6, which represents the basic grammatical meaning of the past perfect. It is called "the temporal distance between the moment of speaking and a construed perfective process in the past", i.e.,"past-in-the-past". On the one hand, the speaker construes a process (perfective or imperfective) expressed by a verb in context as perfective with a specific time frame whose ending point locates on the left side of the moment of speaking O, on the other hand, due to the motivation of "distance", marked by the arrow from O to R, the speaker just describes a past event in the past, paying no attention to its connections to the moment of speaking.Similar to the way the past tense extends its primary grammatical meaning, the conceptual structure of "past-in-the-past" can also be metaphorically projected into the counterfactual domain (c.f., Figure4.6), thus a corresponding conceptual structure is metaphorically produced. Such a conceptual structure can represent a process that did not take place in the past, but the speaker supposes that the process happened for some reasons; such a conceptual structure can also represent a hope, a thought, a desideration, etc. that the speaker held in the past, but that has not been realized till the moment of speaking, and that seems unable to be realized in the future based on the speaker’s judgement. Therefore, the grammatical meaning of "counterfactuality" or "hypothesis" of the past perfect aspect comes into being. As a result, we can figure out a radial polysemic model of the past perfect aspect displayed in Figure7. In Figure7,"past-in-the-past" as the basic meaning of the past perfect aspect can be further elaborated into two types depending on the aspectuality expressed by the verb in context:①the experiential perfect in the past, which indicates a past action in the past and②the continuative perfect in the past, which suggests a past state in the past.The above-mentioned three findings have sharpened our understanding of the polysemy of the present tense, the past tense, the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect respectively, they have also offered a new perspective for the study of the interrelations among tense, aspect and modals, moreover, they have facilitated the English grammar teaching in colleges and universities in China. |
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