Spatiality and temporality: the fundamental difference between Chinese and English
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Wenbin Wang [1] ; Xinmiao Liu [1]
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[1] Beijing Foreign Studies University
Beijing Foreign Studies University
China
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- Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 251, 2021
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
A language represents the unique medium of how people of a nation perceive and understand the world. This study takes a diachronic perspective to trace the evolution of Chinese and English, respectively, and examines the synchronic features of the two languages that most typically demonstrate the underlying principles of linguistic encoding. It attempts to argue that in dissecting the world and in ways of thinking, Chinese seems to focus more on space and English more on time. Therefore, this study proposes that Chinese is a spatiality-dominant language, whereas English a temporality-dominant one. This fundamental difference underlies many particularities in Chinese and English in terms of their syntactic and textual structures. It is proposed that spatiality and temporality be used as overarching typological parameters to account for the enormous differences between Chinese and English. The findings of this study can provide significant insights into the nature of the distinction between the two languages.
