Temporal Nouns Research Articles

Content-Form Interaction in the Acquisition of Temporal Markers by Mandarin-Speaking Children

Aspect markers (AMs), temporal adverbs (TAs) and temporal nouns (TNs) are used by young Mandarin-speaking children to express time. However, the factors that affect the relative acquisition trajectories of these categories remains unclear. Accordingly, this study adopts Weist’s time-concept model to examine the patterns of acquisition between and within the above three categories of temporal markers in the Mandarin system of time. Specifically, temporal markers were extracted from language samples obtained from 82 Mandarin-speaking children aged 2 to 5 years, who were divided into three groups by age. The results indicated that the token counts and the type counts of temporal markers were significantly higher among the older children, who were also more capable of using more categories of temporal markers, and were more likely to use multiple markers in single utterances. Of the three categories of temporal marker, AMs emerged earliest, and the participants’ repertoires of AMs stopped expanding sooner than their TA and TN repertoires did. As measured by token use, AMs were mastered earliest. Within each of the three categories, the acquisition of temporal-marker subgroups also varied according to two semantic features: temporal remoteness and specificity. The findings were consistent with Weist’s principles, and suggest that language-general time concepts (content) and language-specific syntactic properties (form) interact to shape the acquisition of temporal markers by Mandarin-speaking children, with the additional role being played by the semantic features of temporal remoteness and specificity within each category. Theoretical and clinical implications are also discussed.

Czas i inne określenia temporalne w przysłowiach polskich

From the New Book of Proverbs and Proverbial Polish Expressions edited by Julian Krzyżanowski, proverbs and proverbial expressions containing the word “time” and other various temporal terms were collected. The aim of the article was to describe paremiological works of folk culture, taking into account the semantic (what image of time – maybe other temporal concepts), functional (purposes for which they were used in everyday life, what clues gave what were proverbs based on a temporal noun) and structural (temporal paremies, like all such constructions, have a specific ossified structure, fixed syntactic schemes) aspects. In addition to proverbs based on the lexeme of time, time measures (names of time segments, seasons, names of months and days), calendar proverbs and other temporal terms are described. Among the words of the thematic field of time there are about 150 lexemes - names of time – names of time periods, incl. general names, names of seasons, months, days of the week. The beliefs constituted and communicated in the texts of folk culture refer, inter alia , to man's idea of time as being omnipotent against which man is powerless; something powerful that a human being cannot resist. Time is endowed with the attributes of the supreme being. Proverbs show the inevitability of the passage of time and the accompanying aging processes of all living creatures. The construction of proverbs makes them easier to remember, e.g. by building rhymes. Paremias can take the form of comparisons, antitheses, metaphors or allegories conveying some general thought, a reference to specific situations or life experience of a person.

The interaction of various temporal devices in the use of past followed by temporal nouns

Followed by a temporal noun, past can be synonymous with last, but not with non-deictically anchored previous (e.g., ‘I've not been feeling very well for the past/last/*previous few days’). Most dictionaries provide examples in which past occurs with the present perfect, giving the impression that past is incompatible with other tenses. A close examination of the token past retrieved from the Brown Corpus, the Frown Corpus, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (coca), however, has revealed that it is not uncommon for past to occur with the simple past or even with the past perfect (e.g., ‘His wife had left him the past year for a wealthy Wall Street broker’) and that past occurring with the past perfect can be explained as instances of free indirect style, discourse freezing or difference in reality (i.e., the three discourse principles allowing a shift in viewpoint with last). Research on temporal reference has thus far been ‘strongly biased towards certain devices’ such as tense, Aktionsart, and aspect ( Klein, 2009 : 41). This study shows that our understanding of how time is encoded in language can benefit from research studies dealing with the relationship between tense-aspect, temporal adverbials and discourse principles.

현대 중국어의 정형과 비정형 연구

There are the concept of finiteness and non-finiteness in languages. some grammatical category exist in a explicit form, some grammatical category exist in a potential form. Italian type language decide them as tense and agreement, verb tense and inflection status are especially an important elements. in case of Chinese, its verb doesn"t be inflected, and then use various elements and syntactic means, it embodies the tense or makes it appear through the semantic category. this paper we suppose there is the concept of finiteness and non-finiteness in Chinese, according to the generation grammar"s theory, we tried to study principles and parameters of them in detail, we came to the following conclusions.<BR> According to Morphological Uniformity Principle, a predicate verb doesn"t be inflected, it is different from Italian type language. verb is only used side by side after being duplicated, and we add postposition or complement behind the verb. we appear tense after using time information marker and several elements. we mainly use time adverb, temporal noun in front of predicate, and we use postposition behind predicate. some sentences don"t use time information marker, they form a sentence, they mean objective truth or the present of things. the standard of judgement are Morphological Uniformity Principle, time information marker status, null subject pro in the finite sentence. pro-drop is the feature of Italian type language, pro appear in the subject position of finite sentences. on the contrary to this, when we judge non-finite sentences, its verb isn"t a major predicate, they don"t have any time information marker. and null subject PRO appear in the subject position of non-finite sentences. the sentence of finite feature have time adverb and temporal noun, they are located in front of predicate, it was used for Adjunct, the Adjunct of finite sentence was added to maximal projection, Adjunct was projected in TP, vP, VP. according to Adjunct Projection Principle, it can"t be added to argument NP or CP. Adjunct is generated in surface structure, it doesn"t need to move position, it is merged into the left in tree diagram, a predicate verb mean action, it is a light verb, it constrains the meaning of predicate verb materialize, we can project this like paper 〈picture2〉. when it is non-finite sentence, null subject PRO appear in front of predicate V, it has same indices with subject.<BR> Time information marker is used for Adjunct, we add postposition behind of predicate verb, null subject PRO is used according to sentence feature, this facts are the sole phenomenon of chinese, it is the parameter of language. we need to modify the definition of finiteness and non-finiteness in generative grammar.the negative color of the latter.

Adverb of manner and its translations found in the novel “The Good Earth”

The novel the Good Earth is one of the popular novels that tell the story about Chinese culture. Some sentences contain an adverb of manner and its translation from English into Indonesian. The text is analyzed and viewed to find the translation of the adverb of manner. The purpose of this study is to analyze the source translation and get the meaning and its sentence. As we know that an adverb is a word that changes the meaning of a verb, adjective, and a sentence. Adverbs are words like hurriedly, quickly, slowly, and instantly. It modifies a verb or verb phrase. An adverb gives information about the manner, time, place, frequency, or certainty. Adverbials are words groups in which an adverbial phrase tells us something about the verb. They could be taken in the forms of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Some classifications of adverbial are found in the novel. It is called adverbial of manner. The research aims to find out the translation of manner adverb. The theory used is Brown and Miller (1992) describing that adverb of manner indicating how the event described by the verb.

Ways to Specify Temporal Nouns in the “Livonian Rhymed Chronicle”

Introduction.Introduction explores synchronic and diachronic researches of temporal nouns in German as well as their classifications. Combinations of time adverbials with attributes of different kind in the Middle High German period are studied insufficiently. The research was conducted in the field of historical pragmatics, which allows to specify the speaker’s attitude to a statement.Methodology and sources.Material for the research is the “Livonian Rhymed Chronicle”. Provenience, specifics and the study of this text in linguistics and historiography as well as different points of view on the text’s poetics are considered. If the chronicle is considered as a conscious imitation of court epics, the functioning of its time adverbials is also to be considered from the court epic’s poetics’ point of view. Temporal organization of the Chronicle is not studied very well.Results and discussion.Results of the research represent examples of temporal nouns in the Chronicle. Collected examples are divided into groups according to by what part of speech is an attribute represented: by nouns, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, numerals and subordinate clauses. Most characteristic examples for each group are analyzed. Discussion is devoted to summarizing the investigation and reviewing the results. A conclusion is drawn that temporal nouns due to their attributes receive some quality that bears the main semantic charge, whereas the temporal noun itself is partly non-semantic. Parallels to the usage of time adverbials in court epics are drawn.Conclusion.In the conclusion the connection between time presentation in the Chronicle and the medieval mentality is highlighted.

Realizaciones temporales de la construcción fraseológica [Ssing PREP Ssing

El objetivo de este trabajo es realizar una descripción tanto formal como semánticopragmática de las realizaciones de valor temporal de la construcción binomial [Ssing PREP Ssing], de uso habitual en español. Para ello se lleva a cabo un análisis detallado, basado en datos de corpus, que incluye la justificación de su carácter fraseológico a través de los rasgos de frecuencia y de fijación, así como la explicación de los significados detectados en distintos contextos de uso y de las diferencias fundamentales entre las preposiciones empleadas y los sustantivos temporales que cubren el slot. En el análisis se presta especial atención a los datos de coocurrencia léxica.

相対名詞の語彙的なアスペクトの関係 －韓国語の｢전｣と日本語の｢前(マエ／ゼン)｣をめぐって－

This paper, based on synchronic and diachronic studies on systems of the temporal relational nouns in Korean and Japanese temporal relative clauses, describes and identifies correspondence of the systems of temporal relative nouns in terms of facts and observation. On this paper, corresponding relation and lexical association(on Chinese words/Haneo) of Koran “전” and Japanese “前(マエ／ゼン)” are classified as 4 types and considered. as a reviewing method, based on dictionaries published in Korea and Japan, all vocabularies are extracted and reviewed. Each heading vocabulary extracted from each dictionary for each type is described; ① beyond the standards, and “前·後” is lexically corresponding. ② beyond the standards, and “前” is lexically not corresponding. ③ beyond the standards, and “後” is lexically not corresponding. ④ “前”,which is beyond the temporal standards, means a temporal relational noun in the standards. As a result of consideration, temporal directional functions in Korean and Japanese temporal relative nouns do not coincide. In other words, when we think about when the generality inherent in each temporal relative noun is actually realized in language, we find that their specificity is part of the universality, not an exception, but a process of grammaticalization.

Конструкции с временными словами

ABSTRACTThe paper describes constructions related to a representative group of Russian temporal nouns (e.g. vremja ‘time’, čas ‘hour’, god ‘year’, den′ ‘day’). These words often occur in prepositional, postpositional and prepositionless constructions which function as temporal circumstantials or modifiers. For example, triždy za god ‘three times in a year’, za god do perevorota ‘a year before the coup’, s času na čas ‘any moment’, čas nazad ‘an hour ago’, god spustja ‘a year later’. The words of this group are highly polysemous, they have up to 10 senses. Different senses often differ both in argument frames and in construction types they are used in. In this paper, we systematically describe all the constructions that are typical of temporal nouns. We propose schemes of semantic definitions, which are common for different words. Although different temporal words manifest similar patterns of polysemy and are very close semantically, the sets of constructions they are used in are often lexeme-specific and need therefore a detailed lexicographic description.

An animacy hierarchy within inanimate nouns: English corpus evidence from a prototypical perspective

Existing animacy hierarchies, derived from either typological grammars or cognitive perception, appear to be elaborated exclusively within animate entities, leaving the inanimate nouns an undifferentiated class. However, it by no means indicates that all the inanimate nouns are equally inanimate without any hierarchic structure. According to the prototypical approach, animacy is a gradient hierarchy contingent on human egocentric assessment and interpretation. A thing's animacy depends on how much resemblance it bears to us, specifically, how many human prototype features it possesses. Based on this theory, our research investigated the animacy hierarchy within previously undifferentiated inanimate nouns. The method is to use predicate (typically finite) verbs as a linguistic externalization of human prototype features, which can then be quantified and weighted, based upon an actual corpus. The results attest to the presence of an animacy hierarchy of five inanimate categories. Collective nouns, spatial and temporal nouns, concrete nouns, psychological nouns, followed by other abstract nouns, rank in descending sequence along this hierarchy. Further syntactic exploration shows that this hierarchy can impact word order just as do existing animacy hierarchies. This study might shed some theoretical and methodological light on future animacy research.

A Consideration on Japanese Temporal Nouns - Focusing on ‘YORU’ -

A Consideration on Japanese Temporal Nouns - Focusing on ‘YORU’ -

On the Temporality of the Spatial Adjectives in Korean

Many time-related expressions are obtained through the expansion of the meaning of the spatial words. For example, the temporal meanings of the spatial words, '앞 front', '뒤 behind', '틈 gab' is gained from the metaphorical expansion of spatial expressions. Because time is not visible physical phenomena. However, it is not always be true. If time expressions are gained simply from metaphorical expansion of spatial expressions, most that represent the spatial relationship can take freely temporal noun as their arguments. However, as see the (1), '길다 long / 짧다 short ' or '멀다 far / 가깝다 close ' take temporal noun '시간 time' as its argument, but '얕다 shallow / 크다 big / 넓다 wide ' cannot take so.

Tense and temporality

This study investigated how a representative sample of 492 Cantonese-speaking children aged 36, 48 and 60 months expressed time during naturalistic conversations with peers. Spontaneous utterances produced by dyads of children in a 30-minute role-play context were collected, transcribed and analyzed. A productive repertoire of 62 nouns, 69 adverbs and 9 aspects was identified and classified into an appropriate typology. An age-related increase in types of temporal noun and adverb and repertoire size was found. It was also discovered that three-year-olds might already possess knowledge of aspect markers even though they might not be able to produce temporal nouns about “season” and “week” before 4 or 5 years of age. Some instances of double aspectual marking and misplacing aspects were found in the expressions. Linguistic, cognitive and conversational influences presumed to shape performance are discussed together with the implications of the findings for early childhood language education.

Processing temporal agreement in a tenseless language: An ERP study of Mandarin Chinese

Human languages are equipped with an impressive repertoire of time-encoding devices which vary significantly across different cultures. Previous research on temporal processing has focused on morphosyntactic processes in Indo-European languages. This study investigated the neural correlates of temporal processing in Mandarin Chinese, a language that is not morphologically marked for tense. In a sentence acceptability judgment task, we manipulated the agreement between semantically enriched temporal adverbs or a highly grammaticalized aspectual particle (-guo) and temporal noun phrases. Disagreement of both the temporal adverbs and the aspectual particle elicited a centro-parietal P600 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs) whereas only disagreeing temporal adverbs evoked an additional broadly distributed N400 effect. Moreover, a sustained negativity effect was observed on both the words following the critical ones and the last words in sentences with temporal disagreement. These results reveal both commonalities and differences between Chinese and Indo-European languages in temporal agreement processing. In particular, we demonstrate that temporal reference in Chinese relies on both lexical semantics and morphosyntactic processes and that the level of grammaticalization of linguistic devices representing similar temporal information is reflected in differential ERP responses.

A Corpus Analysis of (The) Last/Next + Temporal Nouns

Many reference grammars cover the use of last and next, but none pays overt attention to when and why those words combine with ø or the before temporal nouns; for example, (a) I came to Boston ø last year and (b) I've been in Boston for the last year. Based on three theoretical notions of predicated time, extensivity, and the null article, and a corpus analysis of the tokens of (the) last/next from the Brown Corpus, the 1996 LA Times Corpus, and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, this article presents a detailed account of when the determiners last and next combine with null or the; why last/next followed by singular temporal nouns occur with null, as in (a), or with the, as in (b); and why only singular temporal nouns, but not plural temporal nouns or non-temporal nouns, can combine with null + last/next.

Definite article usage before Last/Next Time in spoken and written American English

Unlike any other noun in English, time can combine with either Ø last/next or the last/next and maintain the same reference, e.g. (The) last time I saw her, she was still in grad school. Nontemporal nouns cannot combine with Ø last/next, while the references of temporal nouns change with the use of the before last/next, e.g. In 2001, he said he’d come back Ø next year (= in 2008) vs. In 2001, he said he’d come back the next year (= in 2002). Based on the analyses of tokens retrieved from both spoken and written corpora, this paper describes when and how often the combines with last/next time in American English. Defining temporal nouns as nouns that refer to specific periods or points of time, this paper also argues that, contrary to what other scholars have suggested (e.g. Larson 1985), time is not a temporal but quasi-temporal noun.

Five factors in interpreting the last decade/ century and the next decade/ century in American English

Temporal nouns such as week, month, and year have two meanings: “even units,” e.g. from January to December, and “arbitrary periods,” e.g. any 12 months. The disambiguates the meanings of these temporal nouns preceded by last/ next: Ø next week means “from Sunday to Saturday,” e.g. Next week will be fun, and the next week “the next seven days,” e.g. The next week will be fun. Decade and century also have two meanings; however, they do not usually combine with Ø last/ next. Consequently, the last decade, for example, refers to either “the 1990s” or “the past 10 years.” Based on the analyses of tokens from the 1996 LA Times and New York Times corpora, this paper argues that the following five factors are involved in interpreting the last/ next + decade/ century: prepositions, tense, other lexical clues, pragmatic world knowledge, and relevance to the utterance time. Furthermore, two questionnaires containing authentic sentences from the two corpora were used to supplement these corpus findings. Thirty educated native speakers of American English living on the West Coast answered the questionnaires, the analyses of which support the aforementioned findings and also reveal that native speakers do not agree on what preposition to use for which interpretation.

Extracting meaning from temporal nouns and temporal prepositions

This article provides a compositional semantics for temporal nouns and temporal prepositions that are annotated as temporal prepositional phrases or noun phrases by an automatic tagging system (e.g., last Monday, on Dec. 1 st , for three weeks or before Christmas ). Current temporal tagging systems rely on an ad-hoc-representation for temporal date and time expressions, but the more demanding tasks of temporal question-answering and automatic text summarization require a sound logical derivation and representation of temporal expressions. Our proposal draws from two formal accounts of temporal prepositional phrases by Pratt and Francez [2001] and von Stechow [2002b], and is realized within an automatic temporal tagging system for German newspaper articles.

Temporal phrases in the Shiji: adverbials indicating a point of time

In this paper, the syntax and the semantics of deictic temporal adverbials - complex temporal noun phrases and prepositional phrases with yi 以 - that locate a situation on the time axis are at issue. Although these adverbials differ syntactically, they can represent both independent (calendar adverbials) and dependent adverbials which are related to a previously established time. Within a framework based on Reichenbach's distinction of the temporal categories speech time, event (situation) time, and reference time and on a fourth category TA time which focuses on the time inherent in the temporal adverbial, it will be shown how these adverbials contribute to the temporal interpretation of a sentence.

Compilation of dictionaries for semantic attribute analysis of television news captions

AbstractWith the increase in the amount of video that is broadcast daily, there is an increasing need for storage of video in a systematic way for future reuse and retrieval. In particular, from the viewpoint of importance and usability, it is desirable to index news videos. For adequate automatic indexing based on the text information in the video, it is not sufficient to apply the simple index extraction and annotation methods which have been widely used in conventional methods. It is important to select index candidates with reference to semantic attributes. The purpose of this study is to compile dictionaries which are needed for analyzing the semantic attributes of captions (noun phrases) in TV news videos. We describe the process by which words are extracted from text corpora and a thesaurus for storage on the basis of specified conditions. The quality of the dictionaries is examined by analysis of the semantic attributes of the words appearing in actual news videos, and the results are presented. In evaluation experiments in which an existing proper noun dictionary and temporal noun dictionary were combined and used, a recall of 79 to 93% and a precision of 41 to 71% were obtained. Although the precision is low in this result, it is concluded that the compiled dictionaries are of practical use for indexing since the recall is more important in that case. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(12): 32–44, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10417