中英文时间表征的对比探析

从时间的似真表征和隐喻表征对比分析可以发现汉语和英语时间表征上的异同。操汉语的人是基于客观真实时间顺序和主观想象时间顺序来构建其句子和概念的，其时间表征多为似真表征方式，英语里虽也有某种程度的似真表征，但说英语的人更多的是依据形态语法和抽象原则来表征时间关系的；时间的隐喻表征在两种语言中既有相同之处也有很大差别，这主要源于不同文化的价值观和认知方式

Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Time Representations

This paper aimed to show that the time representations in languages might reveal people's mental representations of time. Thus a contrastive analysis of the verisimilar representations and the metaphorical representations of time in the Chinese and the English languages was conducted. The analysis showed that there was more use of verisimilar representations of time in Chinese than in English and this was due to the fact that Chinese language is more iconicity oriented while English is more bounded by grammatical rules. Both languages used a lot of metaphorical representations but they differed greatly in concepts due to different cultural backgrounds. It was shown that it was possible and useful to get insight into mental time representations and human cognitive mechanism through the study of languages.