Cognitive Interpretation Of Non-past Uses Of The Simple Past Tense

The simple past tense is traditionally termed as one-to-one correspondence withpast time. However, in real language uses, besides expressing past time, the simplepast tense can also be used to express non-past time and non-temporal meanings.Therefore questions of this thesis are: Why the simple past tense can be used to expressnon-past time? Why the simple past tense can be used to express non-temporalmeanings? Are there any constraints on syntactic structures of non-past uses? Andwhat are the syntactic constraints?The thesis claims that due to the involvement of speaker·s subjective perspective,affect and modality, meaning of the simple past tense has become subjective fromexpressing objective past time to expressing non-past time and non-temporal meaningsand that due to the involvement of speaker·s subjectivity, syntactic structures ofnon-past uses are constrained and low in productivity.The thesis analyzes non-past uses of the simple past tense under theoreticalframework of subjectivity and iconicity. Non-past time of the simple past tense resultsfrom the shift of speaker·s vantage point and is the result of speaker·s subjectiveconstrual. Non-temporal meanings of the simple past tense reflect speaker·s subjectiveaffect and modality, resulting from speaker·s subjective understanding of time distanceexpressed by the simple past tense, that is, the time distance is iconic to the speaker·semotional distance, psychological distance and epistemic distance based on theprinciple of iconicity of distance.Besides analyzing the subjectification of the simple past tense in non-past uses,the thesis also analyzes the syntactic constraints produced by the speaker·ssubjectivity.The thesis gives a comprehensive analysis of non-past uses and reveals thecognitive mechanism of non-past uses and their syntactic constraints, which will deepthe understanding of the simple past tense and be favorable for systematic teaching andlearning of non-past uses of the simple past tense.