With an Antecedent RP

The anaphor of zhī in zhīqián has the function of referring backward to something in the preceding discourse, thus making zhīqián compatible with relative time reference, also called anaphoric temporal reference (Klein 1994: 16). In relative time reference, zhīqián means ‘before that’, with ‘that’ referring to an antecedent RP. In some cases, the antecedent RP is mentioned adjacently or very closely to the IU in

which zhīqián is used, which resembles the attached form use. In other cases, there may be more IUs or even turn takings between the mentioning of the antecedent RP and the use of zhīqián. In extreme cases, the elaboration of the RP occupies a large segment of the prior discourse.

Example (5-1) is a case in which the antecedent RP takes multiple IUs to finish and is separated from the use of zhīqián by several IUs. In this dialogue, speaker D is talking about her break-up with her ex-husband, a habitual gambler who would put aside everything to gamble.

106 ..還是 你 要 再見.\

D: “At that time, I thought, I was, I was determined. I just said good-bye to him.”

H: “He wanted to say good-bye or you wanted to say good-bye?”

D: “Me.”

H: “You were the one who wanted to say good-bye?”

D: “Yes.”

H: “OK. You, you, you simply told him you wanted to split?”

D: “Uh, no, because I, before that, I had forgiven him too many times.”

The RP is the event of D’s splitting from her ex-husband, which is stated by D in IUs 99-104 and mentioned again by H in IU 114. The TG is D’s forgiving him, which occurred multiple times. Note that D does not foresee that she will mention the forgiving when she is still talking about the splitting. She mentions it out of the communicational need to resolve her interlocutor’s confusion. Put differently, the emergent RP does not become the RP until D mentions the TG. Still, the RP is mentioned prior to the mentioning of the TG, and zhīqián here displays a relative time reference use, i.e., sequencing the forgiving prior to the splitting.

In the attached form use, the preceding element must be within the scope of an NP or a VP/clause. This means that the speaker has to compress the RP into a syntactically complete unit within only a few syllables before he/she says the temporal term zhīqián and the TG. By contrast, in the bare-form use of zhīqián in (5-1) the elaboration of the RP is not only loosely organized (the first four IUs do not convey any complete information) but also occupies several IUs to finish. Also, there are other IUs between the elaboration of the RP and the use of zhīqián. These phenomena reveal that functionally speaking, bare-form zhīqián allows for a less organized presentation of the RP and a loose syntactic connection between the RP and zhīqián.⁵⁰ This discourse function, though interesting, is not related to the temporal distance between the RP and the TG.

50 I owe the analysis of this discourse function to Chun-Chieh Wang.

In this example it is acceptable to use yǐqián, in the absolute time reference sense, of course. The reason is that both the RP and the TG lie in the distant past. According to other parts in the same dialogue, D broke up with her ex-husband ten years ago.

The temporal term yǐqián in the bare form serves the function of locating a TG at a past time point distant from the speech time. We call the temporal distance of ten years “long” because ten years is considerably long judging from the life span of human beings. Things that happened ten years ago to an individual can be reasonably be conceived and expressed as having happened “a long time ago,” or “in the past.” In addition, the sense of sequentiality is not strong in this case, and it is not obvious how much time had elapsed between the RP (the breaking up) and the end of the durative TG (i.e., the last time of forgiving). The substitution still changes the meaning, though. Using yǐqián in this case will result in the reading “I was determined to split … because in the past (cf. before that) I had forgiven him too many times.”

In the next example zhīqián is preferred over yǐqián. Speaker B, a film critic, anti-chronically names three recent British films that have received positive feedback worldwide.

(5-2) (RS007)

26 B: ..像 去年 大家 都 知道 的,_

xiàng qùnián dàjiā dōu zhīdào de like last.year everyone all know NOM

27 ..一路到底[脫線舞男= oh]\

yīlùdàodǐtuōxiànwǔnán o Full.Monty (film title) PT

28 A: [unh…unh].\

29 B: ..那 像 前年 的 那個,_

nà xiàng qiánnián de nàge

then like year.before.last NOM that 30 …unh=..猜火車. oh.\

cāihuǒchē o Trainspotting (film title) PT

→31 ..在 之前 還 有 一 部,_

zài zhīqián hái yǒu yī bù at ZHIQIAN still have one CL

32 ..叫 魔鬼..一族.\

jiào móguǐyīzú

call Shallow.Grave (film title)

B: “Like the one that everyone knows from last year [i.e., 1997], The Full Monty. And like Trainspotting from the year before last. And before that there was another one called Shallow Grave.” ⁵¹ (Speaker A’s reactive token omitted.)

In this temporal/sequential relation, the RP is the film Trainspotting, before which the TG Shallow Grave was released. This is also a use of relative time reference. It would be inappropriate to use yǐqián in IU 31, however, even if in absolute time reference.

For one thing, both films are apparently still “recent” and temporally close to the speech time. Using yǐqián to locate Trainspotting in the past would give the impression that this film was from a very long time ago, which contradicts with the real situation. On the other hand, there is a strong sense of sequentiality between these two films, suggesting that relative time reference is preferred, unlike the previous example where the RP is emergent. Bare-form yǐqián is primarily used for absolute time reference, as we will see in 5.1.2. Also, the temporal distance between the RP and TG is short. However, if out of the blue speaker B wanted to refer to a very old British film after he just mentioned Trainspotting, yǐqián would serve the purpose well.

In the previous two examples the RP lies in the past. The next example contains an ongoing situation as the RP. Below is taken from a telephone conversation between two friends. After a long pause, speaker W drops the original topic on exams and turns to ask about speaker C’s current situation.

51 Year of the films: The Full Monty (1997), Trainspotting (1996), Shallow Grave (1994).

(5-3) (EXAM)

C: “Hmm, I am talking to you on the phone [laughter].”

W: “And how about before (that)?”

C: “Before (that), nothing special. I just got up.”

In response to W’s question what are you doing now, C jokingly answers that she is talking to W on the phone (see the laughter symbol @ in IU 112). Then using zhīqián

plus a topic marker ne, W redirects the question into what were you doing before talking on the phone. C initiates the new answer with zhīqián again to set the time frame. The activity of talking on the phone serves as the RP, emergent like in (5-1), and C’s prior action of getting up is the TG, the ultimate information that W is interested in. We can consider this instance as a relative time reference use. Using yǐqián here in the sense of absolute time reference would be weird; it would appear that W was asking about C’s action in the past, rather than prior to the telephone conversation.

On the other hand, since the activity of talking on the phone is an ongoing, current situation, the reference time here can be viewed as the speech time. The rationale is as follows: (1) the reference time is the temporal position of the reference point; (2) the temporal position of the reference point here is, or overlaps with, the present moment; (3) therefore the reference time here is the present moment, which is the speech time. Viewing the speech time as the reference time will be more like absolute time reference, and the corresponding interpretation of zhīqián in IU 113 will be how about earlier (than now) (cf. how about before that, that = talking on the phone). Even in this absolute time reference reading, it would be inappropriate to use yǐqián, for the same reason mentioned in the last paragraph.

To conclude this part, most of the bare-form uses of zhīqián in the NTU Corpus contain a linguistically realized RP mentioned in the preceding context, whether preplanned or emergent. When the RP is a current situation, it provides a suitable environment for the speech time to be reanalyzed as the reference time. This type of example overlaps with the one that will be discussed in the next part, i.e., when there is clearly no antecedent RP in the context and the speech time serves as the reference time.