Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Motivation of the Thesis
Tense is the topic that has been discussed the most by many different linguists.The Latin word “tempus”, showing the concept of time, is the origination of theword tense. Tense originally is used to distinguish time. The simple present tense isto suggest present time and the simple past tense is to suggest past time and thesimple future tense is to suggest future time. However, tense has some non-standardusages owing to the complexity of language use. Take a look at the simple presenttense. The simple present tense is not only to describe the state or the eventhappening at the present time of speaking, but also to describe the state or the eventoccurring in the past or in the future. Towards such kinds of phenomena, manylinguists, including fuzzy linguists, systemic functional linguists and cognitivelinguists, have put forward their own explanations. However, all their studies haveyet to touch the internal cognitive mechanism of those non-prototypical temporalorientations of the English tense, just superficially explaining their non-standardusages.Fuzzy linguists just thought of those usages as the fuzziness of language. Somesystemic functional linguists applied the remoteness view or the connectiveness viewto explain those usages. Other systemic functional linguists studied the English tensein terms of the discourse function and the interpersonal function. Although cognitivelinguists studied these phenomena from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, theirstudies haven’t explored the deep cognitive mechanism behind those complex usageseither, thus unable to demonstrate a comprehensive and systemic explanationtowards them. In this thesis, the author will try to give an overall explanation aboutthose non-prototypical temporal orientations of the English tense under theframework of the conceptual blending theory.
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1.2 Objective of the Thesis
The author of this thesis aims to explore the internal cognitive mechanism ofthose non-prototypical temporal orientations in English tense by applying theconceptual blending theory. The author wants to find out how these three basic formsof conceptual integration operate to give rise to those non-prototypical temporalorientations of the English tense, thus uncovering the cognitive mechanism behindthose usages. For this thesis, the author mainly adopts the qualitative methods as the mainmethods. The author tries to explore the cognitive mechanism of thenon-prototypical temporal orientation of the English tense by adopting theconceptual blending theory. Zhang Daozhen advocates that the number of tense inEnglish is sixteen. The author of this thesis will choose three most basic Englishtenses as the study objects since the research is limited in space and time, includingthe simple present tense, the simple past tense and the simple future tense.
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Chapter Two Literature review
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the author will firstly present definitions of tense given bydifferent scholars and give his own understanding of the definition of tense.Secondly, the author will give an overview of the English tense system. And lastly,different approaches to the English tense will be discussed. tense we understand a particular form of a verb, or a verb group, by means ofwhich we show to what time sphere an action or state is considered to belong(Poutsma, 2008, p. 205).By tense, we understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and ourconcept of time (past, present or future) (Leech, 1987, p. 305).I take tense to be defined as the grammaticalisation of location in time, and Ibelieve that at least much of what has traditionally been called tense does fall underthis definition (Comrie, 2005, p. 8).Tense differentiates, to a certain degree, from one language to another. However,they share one thing in common. All of them express time relations in forms oflinguistic expression. In English, however, as well as in many other languages, suchforms serve not only for time-relation, but also for other purposes (Jespersen, 2006,p. 180).Tense is a grammatical category of the verb, it is the verb form to express the timedistinction (Zhang Zhenbang, 1995, p. 435).Tense refers to the various finite verb forms which are used to express the time ofactions or events. There are sixteen tenses in English (Zhang Daozhen, 2003, p.173).
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2.2 An Overview of the English Tense
Tense in English is of great significance in the grammatical system. Subjectsconcerned with tense have attracted a number of scholars’ interests, not only scholarsat home but also scholars abroad. Tense originates from the Latin word “Tempus”,which shows the concept of time (Smith, 2009, p. 83). Since the 5th century BC,when the Greek philosopher Protagoras confirms the concept of the grammaticaltense (Ma Yongxiang, 2003, p. 589), the study of tense has always been existing.Later, in the 4th century BC, the Stoics in Greece hold the opinion that there aretemporal meaning and aspectual meaning inherent in the tense system anddistinguish present and past, perfect and imperfect (Hornstein, 1981, pp. 116-151).At the 1st century, Dionisius Thrax writes the first comprehensive and completegrammar book, Techne Grammatike. He advocates that all verbs own three kinds oftense, that is, past, present and future (Liu Runqing, 1995, pp. 11-14). Grammariansin ancient Rome, at the same time, also make much research on tense.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework........... 23
3.1 An Overview of the Conceptual Blending Theory ......... 23
3.2 Theoretical Foundation of the Conceptual Blending Theory...... 26
3.3 Key Elements in the Network Model of the Conceptual Blending Theory.. 29
3.4 Three Operations Involved in Conceptual Blending ...... 32
3.4.1 Composition.......... 32
3.4.2 Completion............ 33
3.4.3 Elaboration............ 33
3.5 Basic Forms of the Conceptual Blending ..... 34
3.6 Non-Linguistic Elements in Blending .......... 37
Chapter Four the Non-Prototypical Temporal Orientation............ 39
4.1 Introduction......... 39
4.2 The Non-Prototypical Temporal Orientation in the Simple Present Tense... 40
4.3 The Non-Prototypical Temporal Orientation in the Simple Past Tense........ 49
4.4 The Non-Prototypical Temporal Orientation in the Simple Future Tense ....
.5 Summary............. 64
Chapter Five Conclusion........... 65
5.1 Summary............. 65
5.2 Contributions and Implications......... 66
Chapter Four the Non-Prototypical Temporal Orientation inEnglish Tense within CBT Network
4.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the author will discuss the non-prototypical temporal orientationin English tense within the conceptual blending network. Traditionally, tense isdeictic in nature. Tense is time distinction. The simple present tense is used todescribe states or events happening at the present time of speaking, which is theprototypical usage of the simple present tense. However, since people’s emotion isincreasingly rich and complicated and language can’t meet their need to expressthemselves, the simple present tense is no longer limited to its original usage. Thesimple present tense can be used to refer to the state or event in the past or in thefuture, which are the non-prototypical temporal orientation of the simple presenttense. Likewise, the simple past tense is not only used to describe the state or eventoccurring at the past time. The simple past tense can be used to describe a kind ofcounter factuality, or be used as a means of pragmatic softener, which arenon-prototypical temporal orientation of the simple past tense. Similarly, except forthe temporal orientation, the simple future tense can be used as a means to ask forpermission, which is also the non-prototypical temporal orientation of the simplefuture tense.
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Conclusion
First, the author of this thesis has applied the conceptual blending theory intoexploring the cognitive mechanism of those non-prototypical temporal orientationsin the English tense, which provides a crucial novel aspect in explaining the Englishtense system. Cutting-joining blending blends two related but not similar conceptstogether to make the simple present tense be used to indicate the past or the future.Mixture blending blends two similar but not related concepts together to make thesimple past tense be used to describe a kind of counter factuality or be used as ameans of a pragmatic softener. Mixture blending also makes the simple future tensebe used to ask for permission.Second, the conceptual blending theory is used to demonstrate the cognitivemechanism of those non-prototypical temporal orientations in the English tense,which strengthens the explanatory power of the conceptual blending theory. Previousstudies have mainly concentrated on applying conceptual blending theory into thestudies of humors, puns, ironies and so on. In this thesis, the author has usedconceptual blending theory to explore the cognitive mechanism of thosenon-prototypical temporal orientations in the English tense, which broadens theexplanatory ranges of conceptual blending theory
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