A Cognitive Approach To The Usage Of Since Time Adverbials

The usage of since time adverbials discussed in this thesis includes mainly two facets: one is the use of a durative verb in the adverbial clause of time elicited by since; the other is the usage that since very often appears with the main verb in the present perfect. There is some controversy among grammarians about the usage of since time adverbials, which may confuse learners. This thesis aims to reveal the cognitive mechanism underlying the complicated verbal facts. Thus we can help English learners understand this grammatical item and facilitate their study of the system of English tense and aspect.It is commonly acknowledged that since indicates a starting point of a time span. There are various collocations after since. This thesis proposes that the collocations after since consist of a prototype category whose extension reflects human’s spatial experience in the temporal domain.It is well known that the system of tense and aspect, which is regarded as one of the most complicated grammatical categories by most grammarians and linguists, is an important but difficult grammatical item for English teaching. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the nature of the system of tense and aspect is the representation of human’s cognition of time in grammar. Therefore, it can not be treated isolatedly from other grammatical categories like time adverbials and verbs etc., which entail temporal meanings as well. This thesis discusses the sentence patterns about since time adverbials in terms of the notion of construal.This thesis mainly focuses on the relation between since time adverbials and the present perfect. We have noticed that there is some asymmetry among the three elements of the inherent span of the perfect: the left boundary (temporal position), the right boundary (temporal position) and the span itself (temporal quantity). The customary temporal focus of the present perfect should be the right boundary of the span, namely the time of speaking. We have found that since time adverbials foreground the left boundary (the LB) of the time span of the perfect and thus vary the range of the immediate scope of the present perfect to some extent. In other words, the usual role of since time adverbials is to make foregrounded the LB and then the whole time span of the present perfect which are initially the background vis-à-vis the time of speaking. As the inherent span of the perfect, namely the temporal quantity, is consequently focused, the duration of the relevant situation comes to be prominent. Accordingly, the main verb in the present perfect should be imperfective or perfective expressing repetition. However, sometimes a since time adverbial just foregrounds the temporal position or scope of a single bounded situation, to create a special pragmatic effect. We argue that the speaker’s choice of the temporal focus among the three elements of the inherent span of the perfect determines the role of since time adverbials in construing a situation. That is to say, the different roles of a since time adverbial in construing a situation depend on where the temporal focus lies.After the analysis, it can be held that the situational information conveyed by the speaker is the product of the subjective construal of the objective reality. Tense/aspect is just the means to construe a situation, and time adverbials are also the means to construe a situation.Finally, we have made a further discussion of since and other time adverbials from a cognitive perspective.