Research Questions

Before we proceed to the research questions, we will give some examples of how these temporal terms are used. Below are two examples in the attached form, namely attached to another element. In (1-1), substituting yǐqián for zhīqián is perfectly acceptable, and similarly in (1-2) zhīhòu and yǐhòu are interchangeable (data from Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese 4.0). There is no temporal distance distinction.

(1-1) (Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Mandarin Chinese)

在 進 大學 之前/以前 大多數 的 人

zài jìn dàxué zhīqián/yǐqián dàduōshù de rén at enter university BEFORE majority NOM person

並 不 知道 自己 的 興趣 在 哪兒

bìng bù zhīdào zìjǐ de xìngqù zài nǎér even NEG know self GEN interest at where

‘Before entering university, most people don’t know what they are interested in.’

(1-2) (Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Mandarin Chinese)

他 跟 房東 講好 房租 之後/以後

tā gēn fángdōng jiǎng-hǎo fángzū zhīhòu/yǐhòu 3SG with landlord talk-well house.rent AFTER

就 決定 租了

jiù juédìng zū-le

JIU decide rent-PFV

‘After he made a deal with the landlord on the rent, he decided to take it.’

The two terms in the before-pair zhīqián and yǐqián here can be described as the same, without any noticeable difference. The same situation holds for the after-pair zhīhòu and yǐhòu.

Indeed, most dictionaries and thesauruses do not distinguish between the two

near-synonyms within each pair, and when they do (usually for the bare form use), the explanations are often not complete or accurate (see chapter 2). When being asked if there is any difference between the two terms within each pair, most native speakers of Mandarin Chinese will intuitively reply that they are (almost) the same. Native speakers, however, know how to use these terms differently in an appropriate way even though consciously they are not able to describe the differences pointedly.

Although the current study does not handle second language acquisition, it will be helpful to show some inadequate uses in the bare form made by foreign learners of Mandarin Chinese, because some of them use these terms in a particular way that vividly captures the difference between the two near-synonyms within each pair, namely, the difference in temporal distance. One example is given in (1-3). This use is made by a German learner of Mandarin Chinese. The situation is as follows. A friend opened a locked gate for this German lady, and just as this friend was about to close and relock the gate after she had come in, this German lady made the following request:

(1-3) (personal data)

E: 不 要 關 門 bùyào guān mén

NEG.want close gate

→ 我 先生 以後 會 進來

wǒ xiānshēng yǐhòu huì jìnlái 1SG husband YIHOU will come.in

Literal: “Don’t close the gate. My husband will come inside in the future.”

Intended: “Don’t close the gate. My husband will come inside later.”

A sensitive native speaker will find it somewhat strange to use yǐhòu in this context.

The appropriate word to use would be zhīhòu, which would convey the intended meaning later or afterwards, among other possible alternatives. Saying yǐhòu, as the

case in (1-3), sounds like the husband would come inside much later, not on the same day when these words were uttered. This example shows that while zhīhòu and yǐhòu can both mean ‘after’ or ‘later’ when used alone, as defined in dictionaries, there are some cases in which only zhīhòu means “later,” i.e., not long after the speech time or some other mentioned event, whereas yǐhòu is closer to “in the future.” That is to say, the anomaly in (1-3) is a semantic-pragmatic one, not a grammatical or syntactic one.

As for the before-pair, there seems to be a similar situation that one term indicates a past time point closer to the speech time, while the other refers to a time point in the distant past. In the following excerpt from a TV program, the host A uses yǐqián and zhīqián in the way that captures this distinction well.¹

(1-4) (personal data)

A: “I once saw that our former comrade (i.e., from the past), I have said this before,

1 From the TV program Qing Ni Gen Wo Zheyang Guo (請你跟我這樣過), episode #395, originally broadcast on December 14, 2012 on Super TV in Taiwan.

during our military service he did not have a bowel movement for one and half a week, almost in a stupor.”

In IU 1 (intonation unit 1, i.e., line 1), speaker A first sets the time in the past with yǐqián. Before he goes on finishing the story that he has in mind, he inserts a parenthetical statement in IU 2 to signal that he is aware that he has told the story before, and the “before” is conveyed with zhīqián. Since the story about A’s comrade happened during A’s military service presumably in his early twenties, and A is now in his earlier forties, it is reasonable to describe the event as having happened a long time ago in the past. The temporal information of “a long time ago” or “in the past” is carried in yǐqián. On the other hand, the previous occasion on which A told this story is much closer to the speech time in (1-4), and this feature is conveyed in zhīqián, here indicating “before” or “not long ago.” Note that if we exchange the two temporal terms in this example, it will not arrive at the meaning that the speaker intends to get across. This example shows that although zhīqián and yǐqián may both mean “before”

or “earlier” when used alone, they still differ in terms of the temporal distance.

Based on the examples we have seen, it seems that when used alone, one term indicates a longer temporal distance while the other describes a shorter temporal distance. Our first research question is why the two near-synonyms within each pair display the distinction of temporal distance. Obviously, it has something to do with zhī and yǐ as they are the potential source of difference for these temporal terms.

The second research question to put the third question in a reverse way: why do two near-synonymous temporal terms display temporal distance distinction when used alone in the bare form but not in the attached form, as in (1-1) and (1-2)? We will use corpus data to observe more uses of the four temporal terms. In particular, we will analyze whether the property of a situation is related to the temporal distance distinction.