Yiqian

In the NTU Corpus most of the uses of yǐqián occur in the bare form (81.7%, n = 94/118). In only a small number of the bare-form examples can we find something in the preceding context that can be identified as the RP (n = 8), before which the TG is located. In addition, in these cases the reference time can almost always be the speech time. These two phenomena seem to suggest that bare-form yǐqián selects the speech

time as the default reference time, and that the existence of an antecedent RP is simply a contextual contingency.

5.1.2.1 With an Antecedent RP

The first example is from the same dialogue in (5-1). The antecedent/contingent RP and the TG both lie in the distant past.

(5-7) (GAMBLE)

burn-PFV one CL afternoon

D: “I used the bucket for burning ghost money to burn down the love letters.”

H: “Uh-huh.”

D: “It took one afternoon.”

H: “Oh, really?”

D: “Yes. [In the past]”

H: “[So], before that, it must have been really intense.”

D: “Yes, in the past it used to be one love letter per day.”

In this passage, we can simply regard the speech time as the reference time and interpret yǐqián in IU 191 and IU 196 as ‘in the past’. Yǐqián profiles a long temporal distance and serves the purpose to locate the TG (the state of receiving one love letter per day) in the distant past, which held more than one decade ago. In the absolute time reference reading, it would be weird to use zhīqián, which profiles a shorter temporal distance. However, in this particular case it is also fine to have relative time reference reading due to the existence of another event mentioned in the preceding context, namely, the letter burning event. When we conceive the letter burning event described from IUs 181-186 as an antecedent RP, using zhīqián in IU 196 will be appropriate in the relative time reference sense. The meaning would become ‘before that’, with

‘that’ referring to the letter burning event.

From this example we observe that a bare-form yǐqián profiles a long distance between the speech time and the time of the TG, with evidence from the context (i.e.,

“ten years”). Meanwhile, since there happens to be an event mentioned earlier that can be viewed as an RP, zhīqián can substitute yǐqián here, as zhīqián has the function of linking backward to something in the preceding context. The absolute time reference reading seems slightly preferred, probably because the RP is emergent.

In the next example, the antecedent RP and the TG both lie in the past, but not so distant from the speech time. Here a woman calls in to a radio program to share her recent experience of clearing up a misunderstanding with her husband using the tips that the program introduced.

(5-8) (COUNSEL2)

→227 D: ..然後 後來 解釋完了 之後,_

ránhòu hòulái jiěshì-wán-le zhīhòu

and.then later explain-finish-PFV ZHIHOU

JIU like.this always suppress-DUR

D: “And then later after we cleared things up, I felt really better inside.”

A: “Yes. Thank you for telling us an example. You indeed learned some methods from our program and applied them to your own life.”

D: “Yes, because, because in the past I was always unhappy. When I was not happy, I just suppressed it like this.”

The TG is speaker D’s being unhappy, which is a repetitive situation located in the past by yǐqián in absolute time reference sense. Like in the previous example, D’s clearing things up with her husband, mentioned in the preceding context, may serve as an RP. In the relative time reference sense, the meaning of IU 237 would become

“before that I was always been unhappy,” with “that” referring to the event of clearing things up. Using zhīqián is acceptable in this regard, though it somehow gives the connotation that the state of being unhappy is a temporary state, rather than a long-term repetitive situation. In this example, speaker D is implying that in the past whenever she had a misunderstanding with her husband (relevant condition), she would just suppress her emotion and do nothing and thus be unhappy (TG). Using yǐqián gives the impression that the state of being unhappy started since a long time and extended until this time when she chose to communicate with her husband.

Because the TG is a repetitive situation, yǐqián here has the meaning of ‘for a long time’.

In the next example, the antecedent RP is a currently relevant situation.

(5-9) (COLLOGE)

205 A: ...(12’91) 啊,- a

PT

206 ..來 臺北 一 年.- lái táiběi yī nián .- come Taipei one year 207 ...哼.-

hēng PT

208 B: ...(1’52)什麼 一 年.\

shénme yī nián

what one year

209 A: ...沒有,- méiyǒu NEG.have

210 ..說 我 來 臺北 一 年.- shuō wǒ lái táiběi yī nián say 1SG come Taipei one year

→211 B: ...你 以前 有 來 臺北 唸 嗎.\

nǐ yǐqián yǒu lái táiběi niàn ma 2SG YIQIAN have come Taipei study Q

A: “Ah, it’s been one year since I came to Taipei (to study). Hum.”

B: “What about one year?”

A: “Nothing. I said it’s been one year since I came to Taipei.”

B: “Have you ever come to Taipei to study before?”

The TG is speaker A’s coming to Taipei to study, which is expressed in the form of a question by speaker B in IU 211. In absolute time reference, yǐqián locates the TG in the past and thus this question can be translated as “have you ever come to Taipei to study before (now)?” Alternatively, speaker A’s coming to Taipei one year ago can be viewed as an antecedent RP, and in such a relative time reference use the question becomes more like “did you come to Taipei to study before you came one year ago?”

Substituting zhīqián for yǐqián is acceptable due to the existence of a previously mentioned event as the RP. The difference seems to be that with zhīqián, the question concerns only the time closely before A’s coming to Taipei one year ago, whether in absolute or relative time reference sense, whereas with yǐqián speaker B is asking about A’s studying experience at any possible given time point in the general past.

Since A is still studying in Taipei at the speech time, her coming to Taipei one year ago is a currently relevant situation at the present moment, and consequently locating the TG prior to this situation roughly equals to locating the TG prior to the speech

time, which is still absolute time reference.

In sum, in our corpus all the uses of yǐqián in the bare form is interchangeable with zhīqián as long as there is something that can be identified as the RP in the preceding context, though the RP is contingent and the speech time is still a preferred reference time. This suggests that bare-form zhīqián is strongly compatible with relative time reference use, in which it links anaphorically to an RP. Also, the TG situation tends to be a durative or repetitive situation that lasts some extent of time in the past, as in (5-7), or occurs when a relevant condition holds, as in (5-8), or the temporal location of the TG is not certain but is possible to be at any time point prior to the reference time, as in (5-9). This feature of TG resembles the cases that display the extension sense as discussed in 4.3.3. Note that in the last two examples, substituting zhīqián for yǐqián would somehow weaken the extension sense and result in a shorter duration of the TG. This does not have to be at the content level but the construal level, though.

5.1.2.2 Without an Antecedent RP

In most of the uses of bare-form yǐqián in the NTU Corpus, it is more obvious that the speech time serves as the reference time, as there is no previously mentioned event in the preceding context that can be identified as an RP. As said earlier, even in the examples where an RP can be identified, the speech time can still be the reference time with respect to which the TG situation is located. When the TG is a punctual situation or a durative one that is already concluded in the past, the TG is located by yǐqián in the past far from the speech time. When the TG is a durative or repetitive situation that continues up to the speech time, using yǐqián indicates that the starting point of this TG lies in the distant past, meaning that this TG lasts for a long time. In either case, yǐqián profiles a long temporal distance between the speech time and the

TG.

We first present an example where a durative TG ends almost at the speech time.

The following dialogue is between two freshmen talking about the sex ratio at universities in Taiwan. A: “And SYSU and CCU are half-half. And FJU has more girls.”

B: “So strange.”

A: “Yeah.”

B: “I didn’t know that FJU has more girls.”

The TG situation is speaker B’s not knowing that FJU has more girls, and this state of not knowing is ended roughly at the speech time thanks to speaker A’s sharing this information. By using yǐqián, B suggests that there has been a considerable amount of time during which the state of not knowing held. In this case, since the TG is a durative situation, yǐqián has the meaning of ‘for a long time’. Using zhīqián here will

not have this meaning.

This example is similar to the one in (5-4) in that in both cases one speaker’s speech act of sharing information causes the immediate change of the mental state in another. In (5-4), a girl’s mental state changes from being suspicious and unsettled into not being worried because of what her roommate tells her about accommodation fee. Here in (5-10), speaker B changes from not knowing into knowing about something due to speaker A’s information. The difference between these two examples lies in the duration of the former state, or the starting point of this state. In (5-4), the girl’s being worried starts at a time close to the speech time, hence the use of zhīqián. By contrast, here speaker B’s state of not knowing about FJU’s sex ratio is likely to have started since she first knew about the existence of FJU and the system of higher education in Taiwan in general. Although the starting point is not specified, it can be inferred to lie at a longer distance from the speech time, compared with the accommodation fee example in (5-4), in which being suspicious and unsettled is a temporary state of emotion rather than a personal trait.

When the TG is a durative situation whose endpoint coincides with the speech time, the use of yǐqián suggests that the starting point of the TG lies at a longer distant from the speech time. However, using zhīqián in (5-10) is acceptable because it does not contradict with the real world situation at the level of content. As illustrated in Figure 5.1, a durative situation lasting from a recent time point (t²) to the speech time is included in the temporal stretch that lasts from a distant time point (t¹) to the speech time. The time point “R0” stands for the speech time as the reference time.

(a) zhīqián

(b) yǐqián

Figure 5.1 The before-pair with a durative TG that lasts up to the speech time

That the state holds at t² does not contradict with thatthe state already holds at t¹. Also, using zhīqián in (5-10) may simply reveal that the speaker considers the duration of the TG to be short at the level of construal. On the other hand, when it is clear that a TG starts at a recent time point close to the speech time, such as in (5-4), using yǐqián would be strange, as explained earlier.

In the next example, the TG can be conceived as a point in that past and thus does not overlap with the speech time. This is from a dialogue of a radio program between the host and a listener who calls in from abroad.

(5-11) (MUSICAL)

H: “You probably would like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s works very much.”

L: “Hmm, if fact, when I was in Taiwan I had listened to the tapes of his works.”

R0

t¹ t2

R0

t²

The TG situation is speaker L’s listening to the tapes of Webber when she still lived in Taiwan, a repetitive action located prior to the speech time in the distant past by the use of yǐqián. From the context, we do not know how much time has elapsed between L’s listening to the tapes in Taiwan and the speech time when she is having this dialogue with the host from abroad. Using yǐqián here gives the impression that it has been a considerable while since she listened to the tapes last time in Taiwan, or at least to L’s subjective evaluation it has been relatively long. Using zhīqián would seem to suggest that L has been abroad for a shorter period of time, and that the temporal distance between the listening to the tapes in Taiwan and the speech time is short. In this example, without enough contextual information of the real world content (i.e., how long exactly), either yǐqián or zhīqián can fit in IU 53 without any weirdness, even though the construal would change accordingly. In addition, using zhīqián would somehow entail that there is something else in the preceding context that can serve as the RP, because of the anaphoricity of zhī.

It has been repeated that bare-form yǐqián profiles a longer temporal distance, but a distance can be called long or short only when we know what kind of situations are being discussed (i.e., construal) and how long the distance exactly is (i.e., content).

In (5-1) and (5-7), the context provides the information that the TG situation lies ten years ago (content), and accordingly we judge this temporal distance as being long against the life span of human beings (construal). Thus, something that happened ten years ago can be conceptualized and described as having happened in the distant past.

In other transcriptions, though, there may not be any contextual evidence supporting the long distance interpretation. In these cases, only the speaker knows how long the temporal distance is. To researchers, when little or no evidence can be traced from the context that suggests a long temporal distance in real life situation, it is generally

acceptable to substitute zhīqián for yǐqián without any semantic oddity or inappropriateness, precisely because we do not know the distance for sure. The consequence is simply that, using zhīqián gives the impression that the TG pertains to recent past, or the speaker considers it so, whereas using yǐqián suggests a distant past, or the speaker considers it so.

In the NTU Corpus, more than half of the uses of yǐqián in the bare form are like the musical example in (5-11), in which yǐqián could be changed into zhīqián for the lack of information on the exact temporal distance between the speech time and the TG, or because the temporal distance is not important. On the other hand, about 40%

uses of the bare-form yǐqián that do not have an antecedent RP occur with some contextual or real world information about a long temporal distance. In these cases, substituting zhīqián for yǐqián is changes the meaning. We have seen such an example in (5-7). Below we give another one.

In the following dialogue between two friends, speaker A is referring to a classmate from high school

(5-12) (CHINA AIRLINE) 220A: ..楊婉琳,_

yángwǎnlín

PN

221 ..妳 不 認識.\

nǐ bù rènshì 2SG NEG know

222 ..我 跟 小萍 講 小萍 就 知道,_

wǒ gēn xiǎopíng jiǎng xiǎopíng jiù zhīdào 1SG with PN say PN JIU know

→223 ..以前 我們,_

yǐqián wǒmen

YIQIAN 1PL

→224 ..高中 的,_

gāozhōng de

high.school NOM

225 ..前 任 的 班長.\

qián rèn de bānzhǎng previous CL NOM class.leader

A: “Wan-Lin Yang [fake name], you don’t know her. If I tell Xiao-Ping [fake name] it will ring a bell to her. She [i.e., Wan-Lin] used to be our class leader in high school.”

The TG here is a person, the girl called Wan-Lin. Speaker A first sets the time frame in the past with yǐqián in IU 223 and then provides further information of “high school” in IU 224. At the beginning of the original transcription, the transcriber noted down speaker A’s age as 27 at the time of recording. This information from the external context together with the linguistic context “high school” indicates that it is about ten years ago when Wan-Lin was speaker A’s high school classmate. Speaker A conceives this temporal distance of ten years to be long as reflected in her use of yǐqián, a term that marks a time point distant from the speech time. In addition, it is clear that A and Wan-Lin are not classmates anymore. If A used zhīqián here, then it would suggest a much shorter distance between A’s high school years and the current dialogue (e.g., speaker A is a freshman having finished high school not long ago).

The bare-form yǐqián in IU 223 is semantically redundant in the sense that “high school” alone in IU 224 is sufficient to locate the TG at a past time. From a functional perspective, yǐqián in IU 223 first sets the time frame in the general past while A is trying to organize her speech content, and then in IU 224 she shifts from a generic to a specific time frame as she specifies a more precise period of time in the past, at the same time giving the detail that Wan-Lin used to be the class leader during that period.

In the NTU Corpus, there are other instances of bare-form yǐqián that include such expressions providing the information about a more specific temporal location of the TG. These expressions usually indicate a particular stage or period in a person’s life, such as xiǎo (de) shíhòu ‘when I was a child; in my childhood’, xuéshēng shídài

‘schooldays’, or a specific time frame introduced by the when-clause (dāng) … de shíhòu. When the TG is a durative or repetitive situation, collocations such as yīzhí

‘always’ also provide the evidence for a long period of time.

In the next example, it is another kind of contextual information that serves as the evidence that yǐqián locates a TG in the distant past from the speech time. Here two friends are talking about the major of a mutual friend.

(5-13) (TE3LOVE)

A: “She once told me before that she wanted to change her major into Public Health or something.”

B: “How long ago?”

A: “A long time ago. [Very long ago].”

B: “[Not anymore, I think].”

The TG is the friend’s telling speaker A about her intention to change major, which is located in the distant past by speaker A’s use of yǐqián instead of zhīqián. The long

distance between this telling event and the speech time is confirmed by what speaker A says later in IUs 149-150: it happened very long ago. We do not know how long is very long to A, but the point is that at least he considers the temporal distance very long, and this subjective construal is reflected by his use of yǐqián in IU 147 before

distance between this telling event and the speech time is confirmed by what speaker A says later in IUs 149-150: it happened very long ago. We do not know how long is very long to A, but the point is that at least he considers the temporal distance very long, and this subjective construal is reflected by his use of yǐqián in IU 147 before

在文檔中 中文近義詞「之前/以前」及「之後/以後」之時間距離差異研究 (頁 150-167)