Nominal

4.2.2.1 General Description

Taking up only a small proportion in the NTU Corpus, most of the nominal preceding elements denote time-related concepts. These preceding elements include NPs denoting a temporal point and NPs denoting duration (67.7%, n = 21/31). Other types of NP include determiners used alone as demonstrative pronouns or combined with other time-related nouns. Historic events and nominalized action are also found in the preceding element slot.⁴⁴ Examples are enumerated in Table 4.3.

Table 4.4 Classification of nominal preceding elements

Type Examples in the NTU Corpus

(1) Temporal point (a) time of day, e.g., liù diǎn ‘six o’clock’

(b) date/day, e.g., liùyuè shíwǔhào ‘June 15’, shēngrì

‘birthday’ and guònián ‘Lunar New Year’

(c) month name, e.g., shíyīyuè ‘November’

43 Also, the RP is almost always bounded.

44 In a pilot study using a corpus mostly composed of written data, the RP may also be expressed with an NP denoting a person (usually famous in history), a particular literary genre, or a scientific theory, etc. Although this use is scarce, it still holds that it is the temporal/historical location of the person, the genre, and the theory that is taken as the reference time for locating the TG.

Type Examples in the NTU Corpus

(d) period name, e.g., shǔjià ‘summer vacation’

(e) age, e.g., èrshí suì ‘(the age of) twenty’

(2) Duration sān gè yuè ‘three months’ and jǐ nián ‘several years’

(3) Demonstrative pronoun or determiner + NP

zhè ‘this’ and nàge shíjiān ‘that time’

(4) Historical event jiěyán ‘the Lifting of Martial Law’

(5) Nominalized action tā de xíngwéi ‘her behavior’

Table 4.4 below shows the distribution of nominal preceding elements in the NTU Corpus.

Table 4.5 Distribution of nominal preceding elements in the NTU Corpus Nominal preceding

element

Before-pair After-pair

zhīqián yǐqián zhīhòu yǐhòu Total

(1) Temporal point 4 2 1 5 12

(2) Duration 0 7 2 0 9

(3) Demonstrative/

determiner + NP 2 1 0 1 4

(4) Historical event 0 0 2 1 3

(5) Nominalized

action 1 0 2 0 3

Total 7 10 7 7 31

Table 4.3 and Table 4.4 are mainly to show that the nominal preceding element can be of various types. Because the raw number of each type is small, no comparison or contrast is intended to be made between the before-pair and the after-pair, or between the two near-synonyms within each pair. One thing worth mentioning is that the seven nouns of duration occurring with yǐqián are said by the same speaker in one single transcription. For this reason, we avoid making claims such as “yǐqián is more likely to occur with nouns denoting duration than zhīqián does.”

4.2.2.2 Punctual-Durative Distinction

If we classify the nominal preceding elements based on the punctual-durative distinction, then the duration type is durative, specifying an amount of time, whereas all the other types belong to punctual. Some NPs refer to an event or an action with respect to which the TG is sequenced. In this sense they are functionally similar to verbal/clausal preceding elements. Other NPs denote a particular temporal point, whether as specific as liù diǎn ‘six o’clock’ or as vague as nàge shíjiān ‘that time’.

Hereafter we focus on nouns that denote duration or a particular temporal point.

Recall that Gu (2010) also classifies nominal reference points into punctual and durative, but what is the real point of making the punctual-durative distinction for nominal preceding elements? How is a temporal noun denoting a temporal point different from one denoting a period or duration, apart from the obvious difference in temporal length?

When the preceding element is an NP denoting a temporal point, the temporal location of this temporal point is the temporal point itself. In other words, the temporal point is not only the reference point but also the reference time per se.

Consider (4-10):

(4-10) (CON1CHI)

10 A: ..她 就 跟 我 說,\

tā jiù gēn wǒ shuō 3SG JIU with 1SG say

→11 ..她 六 點 以後 就 會 在 寢室 等 我.\

tā liù diǎn yǐhòu jiù huì zài qǐnshì děng wǒ 3SG six o’clock YIHOU JIU will at dorm.room wait 1SG

A: “She told me that she would be waiting for me at her dorm room after (i.e., since) six o’clock.”

The NP liù diǎn ‘six o’clock’ is not only the RP but also the reference time after

which the situation of “waiting for me” is expected to take place and continue.

As for a temporal noun denoting a period or duration, this duration does not profile the RP but rather specifies the temporal distance between the reference time and the situation time of the TG. Consider the example below:

(4-11) (HUS-WIFE)

→39 F: ... (1.5)兩 年 以前,_

liǎng nián yǐqián two year YIQIAN

40 ..我 講 這個 主題 的 時候,_

wǒ jiǎng zhège zhǔtí de shíhòu 1SG talk this topic NOM time 41 ...需要 更正,\

xūyào gēng-zhèng

need change-correct

42 ..這個 統計 資料.\

zhège tǒngjì zīliào

this statistics data

F: “Two years ago when I talked about this topic, I had to update the statistics.”

In (4-11), the temporal noun liǎng nián ‘two years’ specifies that the temporal distance is two years between the speech time and the time when the speaker updated the statistics. The temporal term yǐqián indicates that the speaker’s updating the statistics is prior to the speech time, namely, in the past. This meaning of a noun denoting duration is also pointed out in X. Li (1997).

In the above case the reference time is the speech time, which is absolute time reference. In the next example, the reference time is not the speech time but some other time associated with a situation. Note that there are totally two uses of zhīhòu in this excerpt. The first one in IU 81 is attached to a VP, whereas the second one in IU 89 is attached to a temporal noun denoting duration.

(4-12) (RS008)

→81 B: .. 其實 失戀 之後 呢,_

qíshí shīliàn zhīhòu ne in.fact break.up ZHIHOU PT

82 ..也 必然 有 一些 憂鬱,_

yě bìrán yǒu yīxiē yōuyù

also inevitably have some depressive

83 ..或者.. 有 一些 感傷 的 情緒._

B: “In fact, after breaking up, one must have some depressive or sad emotions. But if it lasts very long, for example, after three months she has not recovered yet …”

(Speaker A’s reactive tokens omitted)

The NP sān ge yuè ‘three months’ specifies the temporal distance between the RP (the event of breaking up mentioned in IU 81) and the TG (“she is still feeling down).

In the NTU Corpus there are three instances in which the preceding element contains a VP plus a temporal noun denoting duration, such as the example in (4-6),

here replicated as (4-13).

(4-13) (TE3LOVE)

→279 B: ..寫信 半年 以後,\

xiě-xìn bàn-nián yǐhòu write-letter half-year YIHOU

280 A: (0) (H)

281 B: ..好像 變成 男女朋友 關係.\

hǎoxiàng biànchéng nánnǚpéngyǒu guānxì seem become boyfriend.and.girlfriend relationship

B: “After they corresponded for six months, it seems that they have become boyfriend and girlfriend.”

In this case, the RP is the activity of writing letters, which lasts for six months. The TG is becoming a couple, which follows the letter writing. This type of example demonstrates a higher degree of specificity of construal in that it not only profiles the sequential relation between the letter writing and the becoming a couple, but also specifies how much time has elapsed between the onset of the letter writing and the TG.