國立臺灣大學文學院語言學研究所 碩士論文
Graduate Institute of Linguistics College of Liberal Arts
National Taiwan University Master Thesis
中文近義詞「之前/以前」及「之後/以後」之時間距 離差異研究
Temporal Distance Distinction in Two Pairs of Mandarin Chinese Near-Synonyms Zhiqian/Yiqian and Zhihou/Yihou
林玥彤 Yueh-Tung Lin
指導教授：呂佳蓉 博士 Advisor: Chiarung Lu, Ph.D.
中華民國 102 年 7 月
July 2013
謝辭
這篇論文得以完成要感謝許多人。首先要感謝指導教授呂佳蓉老師一直以來 的指導和包容，以及兩位口試委員賴惠玲老師和黃惠如老師所提出的各種寶貴建 議。謝謝語言所的黃宣範老師、蘇以文老師、江文瑜老師、張顯達老師、宋麗梅 老師、馮怡蓁老師以及謝舒凱老師，還有外文系的王珊珊老師、胥嘉陵老師、史 嘉琳老師以及高照明老師，感謝他們在這一路上所給予的啟發和關心。謝謝謝美 玲助教、白小姐和嘉蘭姐為語言所所做的付出和貢獻。
謝謝尉賢和駿杰在我構思論文的這段期間不斷給予我各種建議和想法，有時 甚至質疑我的分析，讓我有機會能將論述調整得更完整。謝謝珮琪、佳音和姿瑩，
在我最無助的時候傾聽我的心聲，給予無限的關懷和溫暖。謝謝宗榮和聖富這八 年來一直陪著我學習、督促我進步。謝謝承諭常常被我騷擾問問題。謝謝靜琛教
我使用更有效率的Word 小技巧。謝謝昱志和佳音在我印口試版的前一晚陪我把
論文編排完畢。謝謝炯皓和奕揚的噓寒問暖和加油打氣。謝謝所有一起寫論文的 大家，在這一年的互相陪伴。有你們在身邊真的很幸運。
謝謝所上的各位。惠如學姊、郁婷學姊、人鳳學姊、雅婷學姊、國樹學長、
智凱學長、芷誼學姊、乃欣學姊、萱芳學姊、怡欣學姊、育穎學姊、盈妤學姊、
徐寧學姊、家宏學長、家麟學長、孟賢學長、展嘉學長，在不同的事情上都曾經 幫助我許多。謝謝莉芳為我解答國學方面的問題。謝謝盈潔、佩霖、瑜芸和瑾儒 平常的幫助。謝謝婉如和馨妍來聽我的口試。謝謝所有學弟妹的加油和鼓勵。謝 謝筑涵、麗芬、倩倩、蒸輝和徐超在義大利交換期間的照顧。謝謝珮瑤、祖威、
佳寧、俐晴、依庭、Tina、Daniel 和 Ralph 在異鄉時的款待。
最後，感謝爸媽給予的一切，感謝當初給我靈感的那兩個德國人，也感謝自 己沒有放棄。
摘要
中文近義詞「之前/以前」及「之後/以後」之時間距離差異研究
本篇論文以口語語料庫為本，探討兩組中文時間近義詞「之前」、「以前」以
及「之後」與「以後」的時間距離差異，並以認知語法為描述的理論框架。
兩組時間詞皆有「後附」及「單用」的使用形式，如以下例句所示。
(1) 後附
a. [他打電話來 RP]之前/以前[我在睡覺 TG]。
b. [他打電話來 RP]之後/以後[我就睡不著了 TG]。
(2) 單用
a. 他之前/以前[來過 TG]。
b. 他之後/以後[會來TG]。
後附使用中，這些時間詞附著於某一前置成分之後，該前置成分通常表達某一可
作為「參照點」（reference point，RP）的事件。參照點用以標示與「目標事件」
或「目標物」（target，TG）之間在時間上的相對順序，屬「相對時間參照」。單
用時，在小句的層次上時間詞並未附著於任何參照點之後，然而有時上文會提及
參照點，有時則無，前者亦為「相對時間參照」，後者則以「說話當下」（speech
time）為參照時間（reference time），將目標事件定位於過去或未來，屬「絕對時
間參照」。
後附使用中，近義詞之間意義大抵相同，可互換使用，然而單用的「絕對時 間參照」用法中，卻有「時間距離」遠近的差異：「之前」指的是離說話當下不
久前的過去，「以前」指的是較為遙遠的過去，「之後」標示較近的未來，「以後」
則標示較遠的未來。先行研究多半著重這些時間詞「後附」使用時共同的功能，
雖有零星研究和辭典指出每組近義詞之間搭配詞的差異，但皆未觸及時間距離的 議題。
本研究認為，後附使用時，兩組近義詞內的兩個詞所搭配的目標事件類型並 無明顯差異。參照點與目標事件之間的距離由參照點本身的時間位置及目標事件 本身的時間位置所決定，不論使用哪一個時間詞來排序這兩個事件，都不影響兩 者之間的時間距離。而兩事件之間的時間距離又通常是短的，從客觀的概念內容
（conceptual content）來看，相關的事件往往在時間上也是接近的，從主觀的識 解（construal）來看，由於以這四個詞排序兩事件時並未側重（profile）其他介 於中間的事件，使得兩事件彷彿是接連發生的，因而具有將參照點和目標事件拉 近的功能。因此後附使用時，不論是用「之」或是「以」帶出的時間詞描述兩者 的順序，兩事件的時間距離都是近的，近義詞間可互換不造成影響。
另一方面，「之」本身有代詞及領屬標記的功能，「之前」和「之後」單用時
絕大部分都回指到前文提及的參照點。在領屬標記「之」所標示的所有關係中，
所有者和所有物往往在空間距離上接近，在時間範疇中亦然。在絕對時間參照的 用 法 中 ， 雖 然 不 再 有 以 語 言 呈 現 的 參 照 點 ， 但 依 附 於 從 屬 關 係 的 近 距 性
（proximity）依然保留，因此「之前」指離說話當下較近的過去，「之後」則指 離說話當下較近的未來。
「以」則標示由某一起點開始往某一方向不斷「延伸」後所包含的所有範圍，
終點並未說出但往往可推測而得，如「濁水溪以南」指的是以濁水溪為起點，往 南的方向不斷延伸後所涵蓋的範圍，終點未說出，但可推知最遠為臺灣的最南 端。後附使用中，參照事件和目標事件距離相近，因此目標事件的發生即為「以 前」和「以後」的「延伸」義在範圍較短時就劃下終點。單用中以說話當下為參
照時間時，「以」的「延伸」義可浮現，使「以前」和「以後」分別由說話當下
往「過去」和「未來」兩個方向不斷延伸。搭配上可持續或重複發生的目標事件
時，「以後」意義近於「從此以後」，「以前」則義近「一直以來」。「以前」和「以
後」的延伸雖以說話當下為起點出發，但延伸的同時卻也遠離了起點，「延伸」
義導致「遠離」義，而「遠離」義又導出「遠距」義，搭配點狀事件或一次性事
件時，「以前」和「以後」分別指離說話當下較遠的過去和較遠的未來。
由於距離為相對的概念，同樣的時間長度在不同類型的事件中或不同的說話 者心中往往有不同的長短或遠近意義，再加上這些時間詞並不像某些在動詞時態 上標記時間距離的語言有較為規範性的限制，因此本文所提的「遠」和「近」指 的是一種相對的、原型的（prototype）解讀，所牽涉到的除了相對較為客觀的「概
念內容」之外，也包含主觀的「識解」。
關鍵詞：時間詞、近義詞、時間距離差異、之前、以前、之後、以後
Abstract
Temporal Distance Distinction in Two Pairs of Mandarin Chinese Near-Synonyms Zhiqian/Yiqian and Zhihou/Yihou
This thesis a corpus-based study on the temporal distance distinction in two pairs of Mandarin Chinese near-synonymous temporal terms zhīqián/yǐqián ‘before’ and zhīhòu/yǐhòu ‘after’, with Cognitive Grammar as the descriptive framework.
Both pairs are found to occur in the attached form and in the bare form, as shown in the following examples.
(1) Attached form
a. [tā dǎdiànhuà-lái RP] zhīqián/yǐqián [wǒ zài shuìjiào TG] 3SG call-come BEFORE 1SG DUR sleep ‘I was sleeping before he called.’
b. [tā dǎdiànhuà-lái RP] zhīhòu/yǐhòu [wǒ jiù shuì-bù-zháo- le TG] 3SG call-come AFTER 1SG JIU fall-NEG-asleep-PFV
‘I couldn’t fall asleep after he called.’
(2) Bare form
a. tā zhīqián/yǐqián [lái-guò TG] 3SG ZHIQIAN/YIQIAN come-EXP
‘He came here earlier/ He once came here.’
b. tā zhīhòu/yǐhòu [huì lái TG]
3SG ZHIHOU/YIHOU will come
‘He will come later/ He will come in the future.’
In the attached form use, the four temporal terms are attached to a preceding element, which usually expresses a situation. This situation serves as a reference point (RP) with respect to which another situation, called target (TG), is sequenced in time (relative time reference). In the bare form use, there may or may not be an antecedent RP the previous context. Without an antecedent RP, the TG is located in the past or in the future with respect to the speech time (absolute time reference).
The two near-synonyms within each pair are basically equivalent and interchangeable in the attached form use. In the bare form use with the speech time as the reference time, however, two near-synonyms display the distinction of temporal distance: zhīqián and yǐqián respectively locate a TG in the recent past and the distant past, whereas zhīhòu and yǐhòu respectively do so in the near future and the far future.
Based on the corpus data, we argue that in the attached form use the temporal distance between the RP and the TG is determined by the temporal location of the RP
and the temporal location of the TG, no matter which near-synonym is used to sequence the two situations. Meanwhile, the temporal distance between the two situations is often short. At the level of objective conceptual content, it is a usual concomitant that relevant situations tend to be temporally close. At the level of subjective construal, the RP and TG are the only two situations profiled within the onstage region (i.e., within a conceptualizer’s focal attention); with no intervening situations being profiled, the RP and the TG seem to happen in uninterrupted succession and are thus close to each other. These features account for the absence of temporal distance distinction in the attached form use.
The temporal distance distinction in the bare form use is attributed to the respective functions of zhī and yǐ. In a possessive relation profiled by the possessive marker zhī, the possessor and the possessed item tend to be close, especially for inalienable possession such as relational spatial concepts. Spatial proximity is inherited as temporal proximity between the RP and qián ‘front’ and hòu ‘back’. In the bare form use with the speech time as the reference time, temporal proximity associated with the possessive construction is still inherited despite the lack of a linguistically realized RP. As such, zhīqián locates a TG in the recent past and zhīhòu does so in the near future, both close to the speech time.
The function of yǐ is to mark an extension. It profiles the region covered starting form a certain starting point (i.e., a boundary) and extending towards a certain direction. The endpoint is usually not specified but can be inferred. The extension sense is surprised in the attached form by the short temporal distance between the RP and the TG. In the bare form use where the context does not suggest any RP, the extension sense of yǐ is freed. Yǐqián and yǐhòu respectively profile a temporal region extending from the speech time towards the direction of past and future. With a durative or repetitive TG, yǐqián has the sense ‘for a long time’ whereas yǐhòu means
‘from now on’. On the other hand, as the extension proceeds it also departs from the speech time. The departure sense provides the basis for the remoteness sense. Thus, with a punctual or one-time TG, yǐqián locates this TG in the distant past, whereas yǐhòu locates it in the far future.
The concept of distance is a relative one. The same temporal distance may be conceptualized as short or long in different types of situation for different speakers, reflected in the choice of temporal term. A temporal term profiles a short distance and another profiles a long one in a relative, prototype sense, a combination of objective conceptual content and subjective construal.
Key words: temporal terms, near-synonyms, temporal distance distinction, zhīqián, yǐqián, zhīhòu, yǐhòu.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgement ... i
Chinese Abstract ... ii
English Abstract ... iv
Table of Contents ... vi
List of Abbreviations... x
Transcription Conventions ... xi
Diagramming Conventions ... xiii
List of Tables ... xiv
List of Figures ... xv
Chapter 1 Introduction ... 1
1.1 Overview ... 1
1.2 Research Questions ... 2
1.3 Data Collection ... 6
1.4 Organization of the Thesis ... 7
Chapter 2 Literature Review ... 8
2.1 Functional Studies ... 8
2.1.1 Y. Wang (2006) ... 8
2.1.2 Yeh (2000) ... 9
2.2 Dictionaries and Thesauruses ... 12
2.2.1 Components ... 12
2.2.1.1 Qian... 12
2.2.1.2 Hou ... 13
2.2.1.3 Zhi ... 14
2.2.1.4 Yi ... 17
2.2.2 Composite Expressions ... 21
2.2.2.1 The Before-Pair ... 22
2.2.2.2 The After-Pair ... 25
2.3 Lexical Studies ... 29
2.3.1 Gu (2010) and C. Liu (2007) ... 29
2.3.2 Zhao and Li (2009) and Yang (2009) ... 32
2.4 Chapter Summary ... 37
Chapter 3 Terminology and Framework ... 38
3.1 Describing the Four Temporal Terms ... 38
3.1.1 Lexical and Syntactic Compounds... 38
3.1.2 Postpositions and Conjunctions ... 39
3.2 Describing Temporal Location ... 40
3.2.1 Positional Temporal Adverbials ... 41
3.2.2 Speech Time, Event time, and Reference Time ... 42
3.2.3 Absolute vs. Relative Time Reference ... 44
3.2.4 Degree of Remoteness ... 46
3.2.5 Diagraming Situations ... 48
3.3 Cognitive Grammar ... 50
3.3.1 Specificity ... 50
3.3.2 Focusing: Onstage Region ... 51
3.3.3 Prominence: Profiling ... 52
3.3.4 Perspective: Mental Scanning ... 56
3.4 Integration ... 58
3.4.1 Reference Time, Reference Point, and Target ... 58
3.4.2 The Four Temporal Terms and the Two Time References ... 59
Chapter 4 Attached Form ... 61
4.1 Overview ... 61
4.2 Preceding Element: Reference Point and Others ... 62
4.2.1 Verbal/Clausal ... 63
4.2.1.1 General Description ... 63
4.2.1.2 Punctual-Durative Distinction ... 64
4.2.2 Nominal... 73
4.2.2.1 General Description ... 73
4.2.2.2 Punctual-Durative Distinction ... 75
4.2.3 Set Expressions ... 78
4.3 Modified Material: Target ... 80
4.3.1 Nominal... 81
4.3.2 Verbal/Clausal ... 83
4.3.2.1 Beyond Clausal Level ... 83
4.3.3 Punctual-Durative Distinction ... 85
4.3.3.1 Durative TGs and the Extension Sense ... 85
4.3.3.2 RP and TG Coincide ... 88
4.3.3.3 TG’s Location Uncertain ... 95
4.4 Putting Together ... 97
4.4.1 The Temporal Adverbial Expression ... 97
4.4.1.1 Grammatical Category ... 97
4.4.1.2 Syntactic Position... 98
4.4.2 Relative Time Reference: With Verbal/Clausal RP ... 100
4.4.2.1 Simple Combination ... 101
4.4.2.2 Complex Combination ... 103
4.4.2.3 Summary ... 104
4.5 Temporal Distance ... 105
4.5.1 Sequence and Distance ... 105
4.5.1.1 Between Two Situations ... 106
4.5.1.2 Nominal Preceding Element ... 108
4.5.2 Temporal Proximity ... 110
4.6 Chapter Summary ... 116
Chapter 5 Bare Form ... 119
5.1 Before-Pair ... 120
5.1.1 Zhiqian ... 120
5.1.1.1 With an Antecedent RP ... 120
5.1.1.2 Without an Antecedent RP ... 128
5.1.2 Yiqian... 134
5.1.2.1 With an Antecedent RP ... 135
5.1.2.2 Without an Antecedent RP ... 141
5.1.2.3 Implications... 149
5.2 After-Pair ... 151
5.2.1 Zihou ... 152
5.2.1.1 With an Antecedent RP ... 152
5.2.1.2 Without an Antecedent RP ... 157
5.2.2 Yihou ... 160
5.2.2.1 With an Antecedent RP ... 160
5.2.2.2 Without an Antecedent RP ... 167
5.3 Chapter Summary ... 176
Chapter 6 Discussion ... 180
6.1 Zhiqian and Zhihou ... 180
6.1.1 Genitive/Possessive Marker and the Attached Form ... 181
6.1.2 Pronominal and the Bare Form ... 184
6.1.2.1 Relative Time Reference ... 184
6.1.2.2 Absolute Time Reference ... 184
6.2 Yiqian and Yihou ... 186
6.2.1 Extension Sense and the Attached Form ... 186
6.2.2 Extension Sense and the Bare Form ... 189
6.2.2.1 Relative Time Reference ... 189
6.2.2.2 Absolute Time Reference ... 190
6.2.3 From an Instrumental Marker to the Extension Sense ... 192
6.3 Chapter Summary ... 195
Chapter 7 Conclusion ... 196
7.1 Recapitulation ... 196
7.1.1 Short Temporal Distance in the Attached Form ... 196
7.1.2 Temporal Distance Distinction in the Bare Form ... 197
7.1.3 Conclusion ... 199
7.2 Suggestions for Future Studies ... 199
References ... 203
List of Abbreviations 1PL first person plural pronoun
1SG first person singular pronoun 2PL second person plural pronoun 2SG second person singular pronoun 3PL third person plural pronoun 3SG third person singular pronoun BA bǎ (把)
BEI passive voice marker bèi (被) CAI cái (才)
C/F copula/focus marker shì (是) CL classifier
COM complementizer shuō (說) CRS Currently Relevant State le (了) DUR durative aspect -zhe (著), zài (在) EXP experiential aspect -guò (過) GEN genitive de (的)
JIU jiù (就)
NEG negative marker NOM nominalizer de (的) NP noun phrase ORD ordinalizer dì- (第) PFV perfective aspect -le (了) PN proper noun
PT particle
Q question marker ma (嗎) RP reference point
RT reference time TG target
VP verb phrase
Transcription Conventions
Units
Intonation unit {carriage return}
Truncated intonation unit --
Truncated word -
Speakers
Speaker identification and turn beginning :
Speech overlap [ ]
Transitional continuity
Final .
Continuing ,
Appeal ?
Terminal pitch direction
Fall \
Rise /
Level _
Accent and lengthening
Primary accent ^
Lengthening =
Transcriber’s perspective
Researcher’s comment (( ))
Uncertain hearing <X X>
Indecipherable syllable X
Phonetic/phonemic transcription (/ /)
Pause
Long (0.7 seconds or longer) …(N) Medium (0.3 - 0.6 seconds) … Short (about 0.2 seconds or less) ..
Latching (0)
Vocal noises
Vocal noises ( )
Inhalation (H)
Exhalation (Hx)
Glottal stop %
Laughter @
Quality
Quality type <Y Y>
Laugh quality <@ @>
Quotation quailty <Q Q>
Multiple quality features <Y<Z Z>Y>
Specialized notation
Code switching <L2 L2>
Taiwanese <T T>
English <E E>
Diagramming Conventions
Time line
Time points (punctual situations)
Speech time
Speech time as the reference time
Time stretches (durative situations)
Unbounded time stretch (ongoing situation)
Extension sense
R0
0
List of Tables
Table 2.1 The before-pair in RED ... 22
Table 2.2 The after-pair in RED ... 25
Table 4.1 Distribution of the temporal terms in the NTU Corpus ... 61
Table 4.2 Grammatical category of the preceding element ... 63
Table 4.3 RPs conceived as punctual ... 71
Table 4.4 Classification of nominal preceding elements ... 73
Table 4.5 Distribution of nominal preceding elements in the NTU Corpus ... 74
Table 4.6 Grammatical category of the modified material/TG ... 81
Table 4.7 Pattern of nominal TGs in the attached form use ... 83
Table 4.8 Verbal/clausal TGs in the attached form use ... 86
Table 4.9 Grammatical category of the whole temporal adverbial expression ... 98
Table 4.10 Temporal location of RP and TG ... 105
Table 5.1 The before-pair with and without an antecedent RP in the bare form ... 120
Table 5.2 The after-pair with and without an antecedent RP in the bare form ... 151
Table 5.3 The before-pair in the bare form ... 178
Table 5.4 The after-pair in the bare form ... 179
Table 6.1 The inheritance of proximity ... 186
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Time flow and information flow... 11
Figure 3.1 Point of reference in different tenses in English... 43
Figure 3.2 Comrie’s representation of situations on the time line ... 48
Figure 3.3 An example of the modified diagram ... 49
Figure 3.4 The profile of come and the profile of arrive ... 53
Figure 4.1 The relative sequence between the RP and the TG ... 87
Figure 4.2 The after-pair with a durative RP ... 88
Figure 4.3 The before-pair with a durative TG ... 89
Figure 4.4 The extension sense of the after-pair with an ongoing TG ... 90
Figure 4.5 The expected scenario and the reality in (4-23) ... 94
Figure 4.6 TG’s location uncertain ... 96
Figure 4.7 The temporal distance between two punctual situations ... 107
Figure 4.8 When one situation is durative ... 108
Figure 4.9 A time point with a durative TG ... 109
Figure 5.1 The before-pair with a durative TG that lasts up to the speech time ... 144
Figure 6.1 The temporal region profiled by the possessive construction ... 182
Figure 6.2 Zhiqian and zhihou in the attached form with a punctual TG ... 183
Figure 6.3 Zhiqian and zhihou in the attached form with a durative TG ... 183
Figure 6.4 Zhiqian and zhihou in absolute time reference ... 185
Figure 6.5 Extension sense in the attached form ... 187
Figure 6.6 Yiqian and yihou in the attached form with a punctual TG ... 188
Figure 6.7 The before-pair with a durative TG in the attached form ... 189
Figure 6.8 The after-pair with an unbounded TG in the attached form ... 189
Figure 6.9 Yiqian and yihou with a durative or repetitive TG ... 191
Figure 6.10 Yiqian and yihou with a punctual or one-time TG ... 192
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Overview
It is known that language has two essential devices of locating situations in time:
the grammatical device is tense, and the lexical device is temporal adverbials (Comrie 1985). In tenseless languages, the second device plays a more significant role in marking temporal location than in tensed ones. Mandarin Chinese is such a language without grammatical tense marking on the verb, and the interpretation of temporal location in this language to a great extent relies on the specification of temporal adverbials (cf. Li & Thompson 1981; C. S. Smith and Erbaugh 2001). This thesis is a study on four lexical temporal adverbials in Mandarin Chinese. They are near-synonyms zhīqián (之前) and yǐqián (以前), both meaning before or earlier, and their antonymous counterparts zhīhòu (之後) and yǐhòu (以後), both meaning after or afterwards.
In Mandarin Chinese, there are several other lexical items that express similar meanings as the before-pair or the after-pair do. There are two reasons for comparing zhīqián to yǐqián and zhīhòu to yǐhòu without referring to other temporal adverbials.
First, zhīqián, yǐqián, zhīhòu and yǐhòu share similar syntactic complexities, in that all of them can be used as postpositions, sentential conjunctions (both called attached form use, see chapter 2), and pure adverbs (called bare form use, see chapter 2), whereas other temporal lexical terms have only one of the three uses. Second, related to the first point, there is something puzzling shared by the two synonymous pairs:
while two near-synonyms are almost identical and interchangeable in the attached form use, in the pure adverb use there are some subtle distinctions in the degree of remoteness (or temporal distance) that make the two terms not interchangeable. The purpose of this thesis is to account for this issue, with spoken data as the basis of
analysis and Cognitive Grammar as a theoretical framework.
1.2 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)
→1 A: 我 曾經 看到 我們_ 以前,_
wǒ céngjīng kàn-dào wǒmen yǐqián 1SG once see-arrive 1PL YIQIAN
→2 (0)就 是 我 之前 有 講過 啊,_
jiù shì wǒ zhīqián yǒu jiǎng-guò ā JIU C/F 1SG ZHIQIAN have say-EXP PT
3 ..當兵 的 同袍,_
dāngbīng de tóngpáo serve.in.military NOM comrade 4 .. ^一 ^個 ^半 ^禮^拜,\
yī ge bàn lǐbài one CL half week 5 …都 沒有 排便,\
dōu méiyǒu páibiàn
all NEG.have have.a.bowel.movement 6 ..神智 都 快 不清了.\
shénzhì dōu kuài bùqīng-le mind all soon NEG.clear-PFV
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.
1.3 Data Collection
The analyses of zhīqián, yǐqián, zhīhòu and yǐhòu in this study are mainly based on the data in the National Taiwan University Corpus of Spoken Mandarin Chinese (hereafter “the NTU Corpus”), a corpus consisting of about 90 separate transcription files of naturally occurring Mandarin Chinese amounting to nearly eleven hours. Most of the files are face-to-face conversations and radio talks. All of the data are transcribed according to the conventions established in Du Bois et al. (1993) into
“intonation units” (IUs). Besides the corpus, we also resort to some spoken data collected elsewhere when necessary.
After manually searching for the four target words, we retrieved 50 tokens of zhīqián, 118 tokens of yǐqián, 79 tokens of zhīhòu, and 108 tokens of yǐhòu. We classified these temporal terms into “attached form” and “bare form” according to their syntactic form, as done in Gu (2010) (cf. 2.3.1 in this thesis). Instances of repetition or self-repair will be merged and counted as one token. Those involving code-switching into Taiwan Southern Min or song titles will be excluded from further analysis (two examples of yǐhòu are thus excluded from the 108 tokens).
There are two main reasons for analyzing spoken data. One is to distinguish the current study from Gu (2010), whose analysis is based on written data (see 2.3.1). The other is that naturally occurring language is the place where we can observe the functions of these temporal terms when speakers, under the pressure of immediate response, have limited time to organize their speech, and these functions may not be present in written data. The detailed distributions of each term will be given in chapter 4 and chapter 5.
1.4 Organization of the Thesis
The other parts of the thesis are organized as follows. Chapter 2 covers some relevant literature. How dictionaries and thesauruses define and explain these near-synonyms is a main issue. The theoretical framework and terminology are introduced in chapter 3, in which we introduce some notions of temporal location and Cognitive Grammar. Chapter 4 and chapter 5 respectively present the corpus data in the attached form and in the bare form. Special attention is paid to linguistic and non-linguistic evidence for different temporal distances in chapter 5. In chapter 6, we provide explanations for the phenomenon that two near-synonyms within each pair are almost the same in the attached form yet display temporal distance distinction in the bare form. And finally in chapter 7, we give a summary of this study as well as suggestions for future studies.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
In this chapter we review the previous literature concerning the meaning and use of the four temporal terms. In section 2.1 we review two functional studies, in 2.2 we consult several dictionaries and thesauruses, and in 2.3 we include some studies specifically focused on one or more of the four temporal terms.
2.1 Functional Studies
In this section, we review two functional studies on the four temporal terms.
Both make references to other functionalist authors. The first study is Y. Wang (2006), a journal article version of Y. Wang’s PhD dissertation on Chinese adverbial clauses (Y. Wang 1996). The other is Yeh (2000), a conference paper following Y. Wang’s (1996) theoretical framework. From a global, top-down perspective, the two researchers investigate zhīqián, yǐqián, zhīhòu and yǐhòu as temporal adverbials with the function of setting a time frame or interpretive orientation for the associated modified material.
2.1.1 Y. Wang (2006)
In a series of related studies, Y. Wang (1996, 1999, 2002, 2006) investigates adverbial clauses in Mandarin Chinese in terms of their position with respect to the main clause and their discourse functions. The main findings are that temporal, conditional and concessive clauses in Mandarin Chinese tend to occur before the main clause/the modified material in both spoken and written discourse, whereas causal clauses have a higher tendency to occur after the main clause/modified material. Y.
Wang supports other functional studies on adverbials (e.g., Chafe 1984, 1988; Ford &
Thompson 1986) and argues that the function of initial adverbial clauses is to form
pivotal points in the development of talk and present explicit background for the modified material that comes after. In other words, initial adverbials represent a limitation of focus and signal a path of orientation in terms of which the following information is to be understood. Initial temporal clauses, for example, are often used to establish a temporal frame for assertions that follow, and likewise, initial conditional clauses are used to establish an optional situation frame for the upcoming assertions (Y. Wang 2006: 57-58). Y. Wang explains that this is why an initial adverbial clause and the main clause that follows have been viewed as a topic-comment structure in Chinese (e.g., Chao 1968).
Conversely, when adverbial clauses come after the main clause/modified material, they complete a unit of information by adding something to the assertion in the main clause or modifying part of what is said there, without creating discourse-level links or providing a pivotal frame for what follows (Chafe 1988; Ford 1993; cited in Y.
Wang 2006). Causal clauses, which are most frequently used as final adverbial clauses, give further elaboration or explanation, especially in spoken discourse.
In short, the sequence between an adverbial clause and its main clause/modified material is correlated with the types of information that the adverbial clause is associated with.
2.1.2 Yeh (2000)
Based on a similar framework in Ford (1993, 1994) and Y. Wang (1996), Yeh (2000) conducts a functional study on temporal and conditional clauses in Chinese spoken discourse with her own corpus. Her main findings and conclusion are in accord with Y. Wang (1996): temporal and conditional clauses in Chinese tend to occur before their modified material, i.e., they occur in the initial/preposed position.
Initial temporal clauses are used to introduce or shift time reference (from generic to
specific, for instance), set the time frame for the following material, and/or to offer a contrast for what follows (cf. Ford 1993 and Y. Wang 1996). By contrast, final temporal adverbial clauses are scarce in Yeh’s corpus, and when they are made, one function is self-editing while another is for the negotiation of understanding between interlocutors out of communicational needs.
Yeh makes the effort to differentiate adverbial connectors within the same category. Within the temporal clause category, she distinguishes three groups:
when-clause, before-clause and after-clause. She points out that before-clause adverbial connectors (i.e., zhīqián and yǐqián) and after-clause adverbial connectors (i.e., zhīhòu and yǐhòu) occur at the end of the adverbial/subordinate clause, unlike in English subordinate clauses, in which before and after occur at the beginning of the clause. For example, as shown in (2-1), in the after-clause the adverbial connector yǐhòu occurs at the end of the clause in Mandarin Chinese, whereas in English after is used at the beginning of the clause.
(2-1) (constructed data)
我 畢業 以後， 馬上 找到了 工作。
wǒ bìyè yǐhòu mǎshàng zhǎodào-le gōngzuò 1SG graduate YIHOU immediately find-PFV job
‘After I graduated, I immediately found a job.’
Yeh also notes that zhīqián/yǐqián ‘before’ and zhīhòu/yǐhòu ‘after’ can occur independently as pure adverbs. In such uses, yǐqián means ‘in the past’ and zhīqián means ‘in the past’ or ‘before certain event’. The ‘certain event’ is not spoken superficially, or is simply out of sentence domain but is known/specific to both speakers and hearers through discourse (Yeh 2010: 369). According to Yeh, there are slight differences between zhīqián and yǐqián as well as between zhīhòu and yǐhòu when used as pure adverbs, but she does not clarify what these differences are.
One more observation made by Yeh is that in Chinese spoken discourse zhīhòu and yǐhòu ‘after’ have higher frequencies than zhīqián and yǐqián ‘before’ (when used as adverbial connectors). She attributes this discrepancy to the iconicity between time flow and information flow. Consider the following figure from Yeh (2010: 375), in which Event A happens first and then Event B happens later:
Figure 2.1 Time flow and information flow
In English, whether one uses before or after to describe the order of Event A and Event B, one has the choice to alternate the order of the adverbial clause and the main clause (though with semantic or pragmatic differences, of course). In Chinese, however, temporal clauses almost always precede the main clause/modifier material, unless a temporal adverbial is added after the main clause for self-editing or clarifying purposes. As a result, zhīhòu and yǐhòu sequence events according to the time flow, meaning that Event A is mentioned first, whereas zhīqián and yǐqián sequence events anti-chronologically.2 Yeh argues that the iconicity of zhīhòu and yǐhòu ‘after’ makes the two terms more frequent than zhīqián and yǐqián ‘before’.
In sum, zhīhòu and yǐhòu as connectors follow what James H-Y Tai calls the principle of temporal sequence (PTS), which states that “the relative order between two syntactic units is determined by the temporal order of the states which they represent in the conceptual world” (1985: 50). The before-pair, on the other hand, is an exception to PTS in Chinese.
2 Pan (2012:27) also points out this discrepancy and relates it to collocation patterns.
2.2 Dictionaries and Thesauruses
In this section, we consult various dictionaries and thesauruses as well as individual studies for the meaning of the four temporal terms as composite expressions and the meaning of the components. The sources consulted include two official dictionaries, i.e., the Revised Edition of Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (RED) and the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (CCD, 5th ed.), one Chinese-English dictionary, the Oxford Chinese Dictionary (OCD), the Chinese WordNet (CWN), and one online dictionary, Handian (HD). In 2.2.1 we review how the four components qián, hòu, zhī, and yǐ are defined and explained in these sources and others, and in 2.2.2 we turn to see how the four composite temporal terms are compared and contrasted.
2.2.1 Components 2.2.1.1 Qian
According to Zhao et al. (2007), the original meaning of qián (前) is ‘to move forward without going on foot’.3 This meaning indicates a movement with a specific direction (i.e., forward) and a restriction on manner (i.e., excluding walking). The use as a verb ‘to move forward’ or ‘to advance’ is not productive in contemporary Chinese, and is mostly observed in set expressions with the loss of manner restriction (CCD;
RED; Zhao et al. 2007).4 In terms of space, the locative noun qián refers to ‘the front side’ or ‘the direction that one faces’. In the sense of sequence, qián denotes ‘before
3 Based on the dictionary Shuowenjiezi “Explaining and Analyzing Characters” (ca. early 2nd century), Zhao et al. (2007) holds that in ancient times the character of qián (前) is written as 歬, composed of
‘foot’ (止) above and ‘boat’ (舟) below, denoting a person sitting in a boat and moving forward without walking. The definition of qián in Chinese is bù xíng ér jìn wèi zhī qián (不行而進謂之前) ‘to advance without walking is called qián’.
4 Such as yǒngwǎng zhíqián (勇往直前) ‘to go straight ahead bravely’ and tíngzhì bù qián (停滯不前)
‘to be stagnant’ (lit. to stop and not to move forward) (CCD; RED; Zhao et al. 2007).
other things in a series’ or ‘earlier in sequence’. In the domain of time, qián means
‘earlier’, ‘past’, ‘pertaining to history’, or ‘a certain time in the past’ (CCD; RED;
Zhao et al. 2007).5 In the temporal sense, English counterparts of qián may include
‘former(ly)’, ‘previous(ly)’, and ‘pre-’, all indicating a combination of ‘earlier in sequence’ and ‘earlier in time’, since the two concepts are highly related. Qián can also be used alone or in zhīqián and yǐqián following an expression of an event, in which case -qián, zhīqián and yǐqián denote the relational meaning ‘before’ something or a certain event (CWN and Lü 1999).
2.2.1.2 Hou
We adopt F. Wu’s argument that, as the character of hòu (後) contains the radical chì (彳) ‘to walk’, the original meaning of hòu should have something related to walking (2007:504, fn. 4). F. Wu considers ‘to walk behind (someone)’ as the original meaning of hòu, from which the spatial concept ‘rear’ or ‘back’ is presumed to have derived, since walking behind someone entails being physically after this person.6 Whether this is indeed the historical development of hòu, in contemporary Chinese the lexeme hòu, like its antonym qián, has spatial, sequential and temporal senses. As a locative term marking a spatial concept, hòu denotes ‘rear’, ‘back’, ‘behind’ or ‘at or
5 Paradoxically, in Chinese the same lexeme qián can also refer to ‘future’ as in the compounds qiántú (前途), literally ‘front road’, qiánjǐng (前景), literally ‘front scenery’, and qiánchéng, literally ‘front journey’, all meaning ‘prospects’ or ‘the future’. However, as pointed out in CDC, the ‘future’ sense of qián is used for talking about ‘the prospects’ at the individual level. In other words, the ‘future’ sense of qián is limited to a particular semantic field associated with the future. The past/earlier sense is not only more productive, in lexical items or elsewhere, but also related to the sequence sense ‘before other things in a series’. The expression qiánqī (前妻), literally ‘front wife’, means ‘ex-wife’ or ‘the previous wife’, not ‘the future wife’, and qián jǐ tiān (前幾天), literally ‘front several days’, means ‘a few days ago’, rather than ‘in a few days’. In this study we take the ‘past/earlier’ sense of qián as the basis of analysis, and we will not go further to discuss the ‘future’ sense.
6 F. Wu (2007) points out that scholars have not yet reached an agreement on the original meaning of hòu. While in Shuowenjiezi “Explaining and Analyzing Characters” hòu is defined as ‘late’ (後, 遲也) (cf. F. Wu 2007 and Zhao et al. 2007), which already pertains to the temporal domain, F. Wu (2007) doubts that it is the original meaning of hòu and considers xíng ér zǒu zài rén hòu (行而走在人後) ‘to walk behind someone’ as the original meaning.
towards the back of something’. Sequentially speaking, hòu means ‘towards the end in a series’ or ‘later in sequence’. In its temporal sense, hòu refers to ‘(of or related to the) future’ or ‘later in time’, as opposed to xiān (先) ‘first’ or qián (前) ‘earlier’
(CCD; RED; Zhao et al. 2007). Other senses include ‘offspring’, which is an extension from the temporal sense ‘later’. And finally, paralleling the case of qián, hòu can also be used alone or in zhīhòu and yǐhòu following an expression of an event, in which case -hòu, zhīhòu and yǐhòu all mean ‘after’ something or a certain event (CWN and Lü 1999).
2.2.1.3 Zhi
Chinese zhī (之) is a polysemous lexeme. According to the sources consulted, zhī is originally a verb meaning ‘to go (to)’ or ‘to arrive’ (CCD; Cao 2000; Zhao et al.
2007). Later uses include adposition ‘at, as to’, connector ‘and’, pronoun and genitive marker ‘of’, among other functions (Cao 2000). As a pronoun, zhī may be a demonstrative pronoun meaning ‘this, that’ (HD; Zhao et al. 2007), or a third person pronominal pronoun referring to people or things without gender or number distinctions (‘it, they’), and typically occurring as the object of a verb (CCD; HD;
OCD; Cao 2007; Zhao et al. 2007). As a genitive marker, zhī is used to connect the attributive modifier and the head (i.e., the modified word) and mark relations such as possession and modification (CCD; HD; OCD; Cao 2007; Zhao et al. 2007). In this function, zhī is a literary equivalent of a more colloquial genitive marker de (的) (Cao 2007; M. Wang 2009). In contemporary Chinese, zhī is used in written Chinese or certain set expressions (D. Li 2005).
Regarding the current study, it appears that the most relevant senses involved in two of the four composite temporal terms are the pronoun and the genitive marker.
Since our concern is not the polysemy of zhī, we will not linger on the issues as to
how its various senses come into existence or how they are related to each other. Here it suffices to know that according to Cao (2000), the demonstrative pronoun use ‘this, that’ stems from the word-formation process called jiajie (假借) ‘rebus’, in which the character originally used for writing ‘go’ is borrowed to write a near-homophonous morpheme whose function is demonstrative pronoun ‘this, that’.
Several researchers argue that the genitive marker (or attributive marker) zhī derives from the pronoun zhī, (e.g., L. Wang 1980; M. Zhang 2003; J. Wang 2008). L.
Wang (1980), for example, shows that zhī, used between two nouns was originally a pronoun and was reanalyzed as a genitive marker later on.
(2-2) (L. Wang 1980: 335)
(a) 麟 之 趾
lín zhī zhǐ animal.name 3SG toe
‘lin’s toe’ (literally ‘lin it toe’ (麟它趾)) (b) 公侯 之 事
gōnghóu zhī shì prince 3PL thing
‘princes’ affairs/business’ (literally ‘princes they affairs’ (公侯他們事))
L. Wang provides two facts in support for this analysis. First, zhī is not found to occur after another pronominal pronoun in ancient Chinese in the Pre-Qin period.7
(2-3) (L. Wang 1980:335)
? 余 之 / 吾 之 / 汝 之
yú zhī / wú zhī / rǔ zhī 1SG 3SG / 1SG 3SG / 2SG 3SG
Intended: ‘my/ my/ your’
Secondly, in the data from the Pre-Qin period, the attributive modifier (i.e., the element before zhī) is predominantly a noun, suggesting that zhī as a genitive marker
7 The period in Chinese history before the Qin Dynasty was established in B.C. 221.
was first used to link two nouns to mark a possessive relation. The attributive modifier could be an adjective or a verb, but these uses were less frequent. In sum, the pronoun zhī and the genitive marker zhī are historically related, both connecting a noun to another.
In terms of the composite expressions zhīqián and zhīhòu, the literal spatial meaning of “NP zhī qián” and “NP zhī hòu” is, respectively, ‘the front of NP’ and ‘the back/rear of NP’. In each case zhī connects the first NP, which is the modifier, to the second NP qián or hòu. Consider the following examples from the Pre-Qin period, (examples cited in M. Wang 2009, glossing and translation mine). In (2-4) it is possible to interpret zhī and the locative term separately or as a compound postposition.
(2-4)
(a) 君 之 病， 在 耳 之 前， 目 之 下。
jūn zhī bìng zài ěr zhī qián mù zhī xià king GEN illness at ear GEN front eye GEN down
‘The king’s illness lies in front of (i.e., before) the ear and below the eye.’
(Zhan Guo Ce (戰國策) “Strategies of Warring States”)
(b) 子姓 兄弟 立 於 主人 之 後。
zǐxìng xiōngdì lì yú zhǔrén zhī hòu descendant brothers stand at host GEN rear
‘Descendants and brothers stand at the rear of the host (i.e., behind the host).’
(Yi Li (儀禮) “Etiquette and Ceremonial”)
Since qián ‘front’ and hòu ‘rear, back’ also have temporal meanings, “NP zhī qián”
and “NP zhī hòu” also denote ‘a time earlier than NP’ and ‘a time later than NP’, respectively. At some point zhī and qián are fused into a disyllabic postposition as a unit, meaning ‘before’, whereas the fused form zhīhòu means ‘after’. The development from “genitive marker + a locative noun” into an adposition is a common path across languages (D. Liu 2003. cf. chapter 6 in this thesis).
It is not certain whether the metaphorical extension from space to time preceded the fusion of zhī and qián and the fusion of zhī and hòu, or it was the other way around. Wu (2007) points out that as early as in the Pre-Qin period (i.e., before B.C.
221) the temporal sense of hòu was already far more frequent than the spatial sense,8 and the combination zhīhòu was more frequently used than hòu used alone. M. Wang (2009) also notes that zhīhòu was rarely used for its spatial sense in this period. In any case, it seems evident that as early as in the Pre-Qin period, the fusion and the extension from space to time were both completed and matured, at least for the case of zhīhòu. Below is an example of zhīhòu used as a postposition for the temporal sense ‘after’ in the Pre-Qin period (example cited in Wu 2007, glossing and translation mine).
(2-5)
八 世 之後， 莫 之 與 京。
bā shì zhīhòu mò zhī yǔ jīng eight generation ZHIHOU nothing 3SG with big
‘After eight generations, nothing will be as big as it is (i.e., nothing can be an equal of this family).’
(Zuo Zhuan (左傳) “Chronicle of Zuo”)
In contemporary Mandarin Chinese, it is certain that zhīqián and zhīhòu are both highly fixed compound expressions and that the temporal senses ‘before’ and ‘after’
are prevalent, although the spatial sense still persists (cf. 2.2.2).
2.2.1.4 Yi
Chinese yǐ (以) is also a polysemous lexeme. Based on the data of oracle bone script from the late Shang Dynasty (ca. 17th - 11th century B.C.), contemporary
8 Which might have been a genre effect, as the linguistic data from that period in a large part consist of historical records. It is possible that a word’s temporal meaning is more likely to be used than its spatial one in discussing events.
scholars such as Guo (1998) and Djamouri (2009) basically agree that the original lexical meaning of yǐ was ‘to carry (something)’, as the character of yǐ in oracle bone script depicts a person carrying something in hand.9 From ‘to carry’ derived the metaphoric sense ‘to lead (someone)’, which coexisted in oracle bone script with ‘to carry’. Guo (1998) further points out the path of grammaticalization of yǐ as follows.
When the object of yǐ was extended to things that could not be physically carried or led, the meaning of ‘to use’ emerged. When yǐ and an object that could not be carried or led occurred with another verb, this environment provided the motivation for the grammaticalization from the verb ‘to use’ to the adposition ‘with’.
It is not surprising that the ‘to carry/lead’ sense developed into ‘to use’, since the concept of accompaniment and the concept of instrument are cross-linguistically correlated and often expressed in the same way in language, whether as a verb or an adposition. The grammaticalization from the verb ‘to use’ to the adposition ‘with’ is also motivated. As an adposition, yǐ can be viewed as a marker of a broad range of concepts under the category of instrumental. Guo (1998) and Djamouri (2009) point out that the concepts that the adposition yǐ could introduce include instrument, cause, participant (beneficiary), manner, time, or location, basically almost anything involved in an event or action. This is understandable, because the cause or the reason for doing something can be viewed as an abstract instrument, and a beneficiary participant can be a type of cause. Manner can also be viewed as an abstract instrument (cf. English with ease and with caution).
Although the development of yǐ did not stop here, we will not elaborate on the complete semantic change of yǐ. Among the various uses of yǐ, one is particularly
9 According to the famous dictionary Shouwenjiezi ( 說 文 解 字 ) “Explaining and Analyzing Characters” from the Han Dynasty (ca. early 2nd century), the original meaning of yǐ is ‘to use’ (HD;
Zhao et al. 2007). We follow Guo (1998) and Djamouri (2009) and accept that the original meaning is
‘to carry’, because the author of Shouwenjiezi did not have access to oracle bone script (甲骨文) and therefore did not have the opportunity to observe the ‘to carry’ sense of yǐ.
relevant to the contemporary composite expressions yǐqián and yǐhòu. In almost all the sources that we consulted, one meaning of yǐ identified in the environment where yǐ is used with a monosyllabic spatial term, such as shàng (上) ‘up’, xià (下) ‘down’, qián (前) ‘front’, hòu (後) ‘back’, wài (外) ‘out’, nèi (內) ‘in’, nán (南) ‘south’, běi (北) ‘north’, etc. In almost all the dictionaries and sources, it is said that yǐ and the spatial term form a compound marking a boundary in space, time, quantity, or quality (CCD; HD; OCD; Guo 1998; Cao 2000; Zhao et al. 2007). According to Guo (1998), the earliest use of this meaning was found in the Bronze script from the Western Zhou period.10
Before we proceed, let us see some examples of the so-called “boundary marker”
use of yǐ. Examples (2-6a) and (2-6b) are historical data cited in Cao (2000).
Examples (2-6c), (2-6d) and (2-6e) are contemporary uses taken and modified from CCD.
(2-6)
(a) 時 天下 承平 日 久，
shí tiānxià chéngpíng rì jiǔ time world peace day long
自 王侯 以下 莫 不 逾 侈。
zì wánghóu yǐxià mò bù yú chǐ
from duke YI.down no NEG excess extravagant
‘By that time the world had been at peace for a long time. From the rank of duke on down, no one was not excessively extravagant.’
(5th century, Hou Han Shu (後漢書) “Book of the Later Han”)
(b) 歲 戊申， 江 以南 大 水。
suì wùshēn jiāng yǐnán dà shuǐ year wushen Yangtze.River YI.south big water
‘In the year of Wushen, there was a flood towards the south of the Yangtze River.’
(16th century, Gan Shu Shu Xu (甘藷疏序) “Prologue to Sweet Potatoes”)
10 Ca. 11th century B.C. - 771 B.C.
(c) 三 天 以後 sān tiān yǐhòu
three day after (yǐ + ‘back’)
‘after three days; in three days; three days later’
(d) 二十 歲 以下
èrshí suì yǐxià
twenty year under (yǐ + ‘down’)
‘under the age of twenty’
(e) 五千 以內
wǔqiān yǐnèi
five.thousand within (yǐ + ‘in’) ‘within five thousand’
In this “boundary marker” use, yǐ and the spatial term form a postposition, being a lexical unit as a whole.11 Note that only (2-6b) pertains to a boundary in space, whereas all the other examples are about non-spatial dimensions. One problem about the “boundary marker” explanation is that, as the boundary is in fact expressed by the element before yǐ, the expression “marking a boundary” does not explain the meaning or function of the monosyllabic spatial term that comes after yǐ.
Here we propose another explanation for this use of yǐ. When occurring with a monosyllabic spatial term, yǐ marks a region that extends from a starting point (the
“boundary”) towards the direction or dimension indicated by the spatial term. Thus, in (2-6b) the covered region starts from the Yangtze River and extends towards the south. The endpoint is not mentioned, but can be inferred as the southernmost point in China, or at least not beyond this point. Likewise, in (2-6a), the starting point of the extension is duke, a specific rank in the aristocratic hierarchy in Chinese history, the direction towards which the extension takes is down, and the region that the whole expression covers is all the aristocratic people in this aristocratic system under the rank of duke, with the duke being included. The endpoint is not specified, but we can
11 For the time being we disregard the issue as to when and how yǐ and the spatial term fused together.
gather that it should be the lowest rank in the hierarchy.12
The same analysis applies to yǐqián and yǐhòu. According to M. Wang (2009), in the Pre-Qin period yǐqián and yǐhòu were mostly used for their temporal meaning and rarely used for the spatial meaning. The expression “X yǐqián” refers to all the time points covered extending from X towards the direction of past, or simply ‘before X’, whereas “X yǐhòu” covers all the time points covered extending from X towards the direction of future, i.e., ‘after X’ or ‘since X’. In chapter 6 we will return to discuss the effect of the extension sense of yǐ and how the extension sense is developed from the instrument marker yǐ (cf. 6.1.2).
2.2.2 Composite Expressions
The four temporal terms zhīqián, yǐqián (the before-pair), zhīhòu and yǐhòu (the after-pair) are composite expressions that are highly fixed, each being a lexical unit as a whole. Although within each pair the two terms are synonyms and exhibit considerable similarities, they must differ in some way or another, assuming that no two forms in one language are truly identical. In this section we give examples of how these temporal terms are defined and analyzed in dictionaries and thesauruses. As will be noted shortly, within each pair the two terms are often treated as interchangeable or even mutually explanatory. While some differences are pointed out, they do not pertain to the issue of temporal distance distinction or remoteness that has been mentioned in chapter 1.
12 M. Wang (2009) implicitly points out the extension sense and calls is tuī (推) ‘expand’ (literally ‘to push’). M. Wang claims that the element “X” (i.e., the starting point) in “X + yǐ + spatial term” is not included in the scope expressed by “X + yǐ + spatial term.” We argue that whether the starting point is included depends on its property. In (2-6a), duke is likely to be included in those excessively extravagant aristocrats. In (2-6b), the Yangtze River is not included in the region suffering from flooding, because it does not make sense to say that there is a flooding in or on a river. In (2-6c), three days is not a point but a period, and whether the first day is included is unimportant. In (2-6d) and (2-6e), it is not clear whether twenty years old or five thousand is included, and in contemporary written language there is often an additional expression hán (含) ‘included’ or bù hán (不含) ‘not included’ to resolve the ambiguity.
2.2.2.1 The Before-Pair
One extreme case that treats zhīqián and yǐqián as identical is found in the Revised Edition of Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (RED), where the description in zhīqián’s definition contains the word yǐqián, while the definition of yǐqián is
‘zhīqián’. Here we quote the original definitions in Chinese and give our English translation to show the phenomenon of being mutually explanatory.
Table 2.1 The before-pair in RED
Zhīqián (之前) Yǐqián (以前)
表示某個時間以前的連詞。
‘a connector marking before (yǐqián) a certain time’
之前、從前。
‘before (zhīqián); in the past (cóngqián)’
This is not to say that the definitions in these two entries are incorrect. The definition in the entry of zhīqián is adequate in the sense that it is general enough to cover different kinds of uses of zhīqián, in which ‘a certain time’ can be linguistically mentioned or assumed as the speech time. And indeed, yǐqián has the two senses enumerated here, i.e., ‘before’ and ‘in the past’. There are, however, other subtleties that are not covered.
Although most dictionaries and thesauruses provide more detailed or longer definitions and explanations, the two terms zhīqián and yǐqián are still treated as almost equivalent. The main differences reported between the two terms pertain to the spatial meaning and genre. All the sources consulted that touch upon both zhīqián and yǐqián point out that zhīqián has the spatial meaning ‘in front of something’, whereas yǐqián can only be used temporally (e.g., CCD, CWN, and Lü 1999). In Lü (1999), zhīqián is said to be used in written language. Despite that these generalizations contribute to a better understanding of how to use these two terms, in
