Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 27, 03 January 2024
Open
Access | Article
Exploring the Temporal Expressions in Chinese from the Linguistics Perspectives
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Abstract
Chinese offers an intriguing linguistic terrain for temporal expressions that is vastly distinct from many Indo-European languages, which use verb conjugation structures for this purpose. This paper delves deep into China's nuanced temporal nuances, exploring their implications on time delineation using uninflected verbs. Focusing on contextual clues, adverbs, particles and sentence structure we observe the interaction among these components that ensure clarity and precision when conveying temporal information. Notably, temporal adverbs such as "Gang Gang" and "Gang Cai", when used with aspect markers, create layers of temporal ambiguity which underline how language's inherent flexibility relies on shared contextual understanding. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of Chinese temporal expressions, this paper highlights the adaptability of languages, as well as their mutually reinforcing relationship between grammar and pragmatics, and culture and cognition in communicating time's complexity.
Keywords
Temporal expression, Verb Conjunction, Aspect Markers, Ambiguity in Temporal Expressions.
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-257-2
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-258-9
- Published Date
- 03 January 2024
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/27/20232134
- Copyright
- 03 January 2024
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited