Temporal scenery

要旨

The present article analyzes the conceptual patterns of temporal deixis in Ainu, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Ryukyuan. It demonstrates that Lakoff and Johnson’s notions ‘moving time’ and ‘moving observer’ are more or less applicable to the five East Asian languages but are not necessarily mutually exclusive conceptions. Deictic expressions of time in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean can presuppose both moving time and moving observer, while comparable expressions in Ainu and Ryukyuan, only moving time. It is argued that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean have busier “temporal scenery” for expressions of temporal deixis than Ainu and Ryukyuan do.

主題