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1、 Submitted for publicationDecember 2002Temporal Interpretation in Mandarin ChineseCarlota S. Smith, University of TexasMary S. Erbaugh, University of OregonIntroductionIn all languages, sentences convey information that allows people to locate situations in time. We discuss here how such information
2、 is conveyed in Mandarin. The language does not have tense morphemes, and aspectual viewpoint is not obligatory, yet people make consistent temporal interpretations. A traditional explainatiom is that Mandarin relies heavily on adverbs and pragmatics. This article addresses the matter in some detail
3、: we seek to state the semantic information and principles that underlie temporal interpretation. The principles are pragmatic in nature, since they rely on inference and context as well as the information conveyed by linguistic forms. The principles of temporal interpretation for Mandarin are strik
4、ingly close to those needed for tensed languages.1 Time is a single unbounded dimension. Like space, time requires an orientation point for location. The speaker is the canonical center of linguistic communication, and the canonical temporal orientation point is Speech Time, now. Thus the basic patt
5、ern of temporal interpretation is deictic: the situations expressed in sentences are located in relation to Speech Time. This is the default interpretation of tense. It is also the default interpretation of tenseless languages, arising in a manner that we spell out below. The linguistic forms that p
6、lay a role in temporal location for Mandarin are aspectual, lexical, and adverbial. The information conveyed by aspect introduces event and state entities as discrete and bounded, ongoing and unbounded, or indeterminate. This information, supplemented by pragmatic principles, determines temporal int
7、erpretation in the deictic pattern. Three pragmatic constraints explain the deictic pattern: the Bounded Event Constraint, the Temporal Schema Principle, and the Simplicity Constraint on Interpretation. Lexical and adverbial information provides information that adds to or overrides the basic patter
8、n. We state the principles and discuss the information conveyed by the relevant linguistic forms, with examples from written texts in Mandarin.Traditionally, temporal interpretation is deictic. But other patterns of temporal interpretation are required when one looks at texts. There are at least two
9、, the well-known temporal advancement of narrative, and the static interpretation that one finds in description and certain other contexts (2000, 2003). Later in this article we show that these patterns of temporal interpretation, which appear in texts of tensed languages, are found in Mandarin text
10、s as well 1 discusses the deictic pattern and introduces the basic notions of aspect and temporal location on which we rely; 2 presents an account of the deictic pattern, with example of how it is realized in Mandarin; 3 introduces two other patterns of temporal interpretation, and their realization
11、 in Mandarin; 4 concludes.1. The deictic pattern: aspectual information and pragmatic constraintsThe deictic pattern is a linguistic universal, so far as we know. It depends on pragmatic constraints that involve both aspectual and temporal information. The constraints are coded by tense and/or aspec
12、t, depending on the language. In deixis the default interpretation locates bounded events in the Past, and ongoing events and states in the Present. The other possibilities - e.g., states in the Past, Events in the future - require additional explicit information.The default deictic pattern is expre
13、ssed differently in English and Mandarin, according to the resources of each language. In English tense and aspect interact: the present tense conveys unbounded situations in the Present and the past tense conveys situations in the Past.2 In Mandarin, aspectual factors give key information. Imperfec
14、tive morphemes convey that a situation is unbounded - taken as Present; perfectives convey that a situation is bounded, and sentences with these forms are taken as Past. Aspectual situation type provides the essential information in clauses without explicit aspectual morphemes, in a manner explained
15、 below. The deictic pattern is stated in (1). (1) Deictic pattern of temporal form and interpretation a. Ongoing events are in the Present: located at Speech Time b. States (unbounded) are in the Present: located at Speech Timec. Bounded events are in the Past: located before Speech Timed. Explicit
16、temporal information may override a-cThe temporal possibilities are not limited to the statements in (1a-c). Bounded events may be located in the Future, and states or ongoing events may be in the Past or Future. These departures from the pattern are expressed with lexical and/or adverbial informati
17、on, as (1d) indicates. However, no bounded events are located in the Present. This is an important, non-accidental, gap in the paradigm. It is due to a general constraint that events in the present cannot be bounded. The restriction on events in the present is due to a pragmatic convention of commun
18、ication that has semantic consequences. In taking the temporal perspective of the present, speakers follow a tacit convention that communication is instantaneous. The perspective of the present time is incompatible with a bounded event, because the bounds would go beyond that perspective. As Kamp &
19、Reyle put it: “A present tense sentence describes an eventuality (situation) as occurring at the time at which the sentence is uttered, and thus at a time at which the thought is being entertained which the sentence expresses. So the thought must conceive the eventuality as it appears from the persp
20、ective of the time at which it is going on. A sentence which describes something as going on at a time - in the sense of not having come to an end when that time is up - cannot represent something as an event. For the event would have to be entirely included within the location time and thus would n
21、ot extend beyond it” (1993:536-7). Due to this constraint, all simple present tense sentences express unbounded situations. We call this the Bounded Event Constraint, cf Smith 2003. The constraint is stated in (2):(2) The Bounded Event Constraint: Bounded events are not located in the Present. In En
22、glish, present situations are ongoing events, e.g John is talking, states, e.g. Ella is sick, or states that involve a general pattern, e.g. Tom feeds the cat. The latter type - sentences in the simple, perfective verb form with present tense - are semantically stative.3 They express a pattern of si
23、tuations rather than a specific event or state. There are exceptions, notably performatives (I christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth) sports-announcer reports and stage directions (Now Jones throws to third base), literary commentary (Here the author creates an interesting metaphor). Another way of
24、 realizing the constraint is found in Russian, where sentences with the perfective viewpoint and present tense convey future. Some languages, e.g. the Romance languages, do not have a perfective present tense form. The Bounded Event Constraint is an essential factor in the deictic pattern, since it
25、partially explains clause c, the default for bounded events. Almost the same notion is called the punctuality constraint by Giorgi & Pianesi. The constraint is stated in semantic terms; however, it too has a pragmatic basis, the conceptualization of the speech event as punctual (1997: 157 et seq.).W
26、e must also explain why the default for bounded events is past rather than future. For this we invoke a general simplicity constraint on information processing. When faced with information that does not fully determine an interpretation, people choose the simplest interpretation to resolve it. The p
27、oint has been made convincingly for perception. If people are presented with a partial or indeterminate form, the visual system constructs a simple, complete percept (Kanizsa 1976). The key point is that dealing with a complete form is simpler than dealing with an incomplete one. We adapt this findi
28、ng as a simplicity criterion for the interpretation of temporal location. The Past is simpler than the Future. The two are symmetrically related to Speech Time - the Past precedes, the Future follows. But the Future has the additional factor of uncertainty, which makes it quite different from the Pa
29、st (Lyons 1977, Kamp & Reyle 1993). Due to the factor of uncertainty we take it that the future is more complex than the past. The prediction then is that people take sentences expressing bounded events to be in the Past unless there is explicit indication of the Future. And indeed, this is the case
30、. We state the finding as a general simplicity principle that constrains interpretation.(3) Simplicity Constraint on InterpretationChoose the interpretation that requires the least additional informationThis is really a principle for information processing, of course. It applies directly to the case
31、 at hand. We suggest these two pragmatic constraints underlie the deictic pattern of temporal interpretation. 1.2 The keys to the deictic pattern: Aspect and temporal locationAspect concerns the internal temporal structure of the situations introduced into a discourse. We assume that aspectual syste
32、ms have two components, situation type and viewpoint (Smith 1991/7). Situation type indirectly classifies a sentence as expressing a state or an event. The categories of event and state are idealizations, types of situations. with distinctive temporal properties. The situation types are realized at
33、clause level by the verb and its arguments, the verb constellation. Verb constellations associated with a given situation type have unique distributional and semantic properties, and are thus recognizable as covert linguistic categories in the sense of Whorf (1956).Three two-valued temporal features
34、 differentiate the main classes of situations: dynamic/static, telic/atelic, durative/instantaneous. The distinction between events and states, and between telic and atelic events, lead to different temporal interpretations.4 Events are dynamic, occurring at successive stages. States are static, hol
35、ding consistently throughout an interval without endpoints - the changes into and out of a state are events in themselves. Telic events have natural endpoints; atelic events have arbitrary, potential endpoints. Each situation type is modeled in a temporal schema that gives its defining features. The
36、 features have linguistic correlates discussed by Vendler 1957 and others. The feature heterogeneity vs homogeneity, based on part-whole relations, also forms classes among the situation types. Telic and/or bounded events are heterogeneous because the part is different in kind from the whole. Only a
37、 complete telic event has the properties of the event itself, e.g., a part of walking to school doesnt count as walking to school. In contrast, states and atelic events are homogenous and sometimes pattern together linguistically.Aspectual viewpoint makes available for semantic interpretation all or
38、 part of a situation; more precisely, the temporal schema associated with a situation type (Smith 1991/7). Viewpoints are expressed morphologically in Mandarin with aspectual morphemes. The perfective morphemes (-le, -guo) express situations with endpoints, as bounded. The imperfective morphemes (za
39、i, -zhe) express situations as ongoing, unbounded. The language also has a zero viewpoint morpheme: an explicit viewpoint is optional in most clauses. These introductory comments will be expanded below.Temporal location requires an orientation point, and other times as well. Our understanding of tem
40、poral interpretation is informed by the views of Hans Reichenbach (1947). Reichenbach showed that the temporal location of situations involves a designated time, known as Reference Time. This time is needed in addition to two other times: the time of the situation expressed, Situation Time, and the
41、orientation point of Speech Time. The designated time conveys a temporal perspective from which the speaker invites his audience to consider the event (Taylor 1977:203). Reichenbach gave several kinds of evidence for Reference Time; he focused on the English tense system. One piece of evidence is th
42、e contrast between sentences in the past tense and the present perfect. The two have the same truth conditions, yet they differ in conceptual meaning. The notion of Reference Time explains the difference. Sentences with the past tense are set squarely in the Past, e.g. Leigh arrived. Reference Time
43、and Situation Time are both Past. But present perfect sentences take the perspective of the Present: e.g. in Leigh has arrived, Reference Time is Present and Situation Time is Past. In some sentences three times are needed to state truth-conditional meaning, e.g. the past perfect Leigh had already a
44、rrived. The perfect construction has both temporal and aspectual meanings; aspectually perfects are stative. Reference Time clarifies the temporal relations between the situations expressed in language. Adverbial clauses and other contexts give information that locates situations relative to one ano
45、ther. Using the notion of Reference Time, Reichenbach notes that overlapping situations share Reference Time and those in sequence do not. The phenomenon of shifted deixis also supports the notion of Reference Time. Deictic adverbials such as now, in 3 days, etc., which normally anchor to the moment
46、 of speech, can anchor to a past (or future time), as in Thomas sat down at the desk. Now he was ready to start work. In such contexts the shifted now suggests Thomas perspective. Reference Time is the anchor for this perspective. These ideas were developed for tensed languages. In Reichenbachs syst
47、em, tense conveys information about three times, Speech Time (SpT), Reference Time (RT), and Situation Time (SitT); and the relations between them. The semantic meaning of a tense gives the relations between the times. The approach has been formalized for English in the framework of Discourse Repres
48、entation Theory (Smith 1991/7, 2003; Kamp & Reyle 1993).5 For each clause, a tense morpheme introduces three times and their relations into the semantic representation. Tense interpretation interacts with aspectual information. The property of boundedness determines how a situation relates to the si
49、tuation time. The perfective viewpoint focuses events as bounded, while the progressive focuses events as unbounded. States are also unbounded. Bounded events are totally included in the situation time, whether it be a moment or an interval (e SitT); unbounded events and states overlap or surround it (e 0 SitT). Although cast in a different framework, this is close t
