Now and xianzai
A contrastive study of two deictic adverbs
The present study looks at the deictic adverbs now and 現在 (xianzai) and examines their respective roles in English and Chinese. Now and xianzai are commonly considered to be semantically equivalent. Their primary value is temporal: both now and xianzai refer to the time of utterance, or more generally to a temporal interval which includes the time of utterance. By examining a parallel corpus of Taiwanese and English novels, this paper aims to show that apart from this present-reference value, now and xianzai have little in common. The analysis of aligned texts reveals that: (1) now is more frequent than xianzai; (2) there is an asymmetry in the temporal use of both markers. Following Wang (2001), I argue that now has a wider semantic range than xianzai: whereas now might be used pragmatically (Now, why on earth did she leave at such a time?), xianzai is limited to strict temporal reference. It appears that even in its temporal use, now is more complex than xianzai; now is quasi-systematically contrastive, whereas xianzai tends to be purely deictic. We conclude that now is closer in function to the Chinese particle le than to the adverb xianzai.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Material and Method
- 3.Literature review
- 4.Distribution of now and xianzai: data description
- 4.1
Frequency of now and xianzai
- 4.2
Correspondence pattern of now and xianzai
- 4.3
Non-Correspondence pattern of now and xianzai
- 5.Analysis of the data
- 5.1Hypotheses
- 5.2
Now / xianzai: Situational use vs. contrastive use
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
This article is currently available as a sample article.
References
Altenberg, B.
1999 Adverbial connectors in English and Swedish: Semantic and lexical correspondences. In
Out of corpora. Studies in honour of Stig Johansson,
H. Hasselgård and
S. Oksefjell (eds), 249–268. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Badai
2013 Diguan (Sorceress Diguwan). Taipei City: Serenity International.
Badai
2013 Sorceress Diguwan, translation
C. Hsiao. Taipei City: Serenity International.
Boucher, P.
1986
Now in Narrative Discourse, Boundary Crossing and Discursive Topology. In
Cahiers Charles V vol. 81, 117–123. Paris: Institut d’Anglais Charles V et Université Paris VII.
Boucher, P.
1993 Deixis revisited: connective and pragmatic functions of now, then, here and there
. In
Opérations énonciatives et interprétation de l’énoncé, 7–25. Paris: Ophrys.
Brown, D.
2003 Da Vinci Code. Random House.
Brown, D.
2004 Dawenxi mima (Da Vinci Code). Taiwan: China Times Publishing Company.
Brunaud, N.
1991
Now et Then dans la cohérence argumentative.
Langages 25(104):79–91.
Celle, A.
2004 A Propos des marqueurs disursifs now et maintenant[short version of “Contradiction et altérité(s): le cas de now / maintenant”]. In
La contradiction, Actes du Congrès de la SAES, 2001, 17–34. Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry.
Chung, W.Y.
2012 Yan ge xing (Decayed Lust). Taipei City: Serenity International.
Chung, W.Y.
2012 Decayed Lust, translation
C.J. Anderson-Wu. Taipei City: Serenity International.
Comrie, B.
1976 Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Mulder, W.
2006
.
Maintenant: un connecteur token-réflexif? In
Les connecteurs temporels du français, Cahiers Chronos, 21–38.Amsterdam: Rodopi.
De Mulder, W. and Vetters, C.
2008 Le sens fondamental de maintenant: un token-réflexive. In
Ici et maintenant, 15–33. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Fleury, S., Zimina, M.
2006 MkAlign, Manuel d’utilisation. Paris: Centre of Textometrics CLA2T, Paris Sorbonne University – Paris 3.
Fryd, M.
1991 Contribution à une étude formelle de alors et maintenant
.
Les Etats de l’adverbe, Travaux linguistiques du CERLICO 3. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2. 129–142.
Gaiman, N.
2001 American Gods. United Kingdom: Headline.
Gaiman, N.
2005 Meiguo zhongshen (American Gods). Taiwan: Muses Publishing House.
Hasselgård, H.
2006 Not now – on non-correspondence between the cognate adverbs now and nå
. In
Pragmatic Markers in Contrast 2,
K. Aijmer and
A-M. Simon Vandenbergen (eds), 93–114. Oxford: Elsevier.
Hunter, J.
2012
Now: A Discourse-Based Theory. In
Logic, Language and Meaning – 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 19–21, 2011, Revised Selected Papers.
M. Aloni,
V. Kimmelman,
F. Roelofsen,
G. Sassoon,
K. Schulz and
M. Westera, M. (eds), 370–381. Springer.
Huddelston, R. and Pullum, G.
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hsu, K.
1998 A Discourse Analysis of Temporal Markers in Written and Spoken Mandarin Chinese: The Interaction of Semantics, Syntax, and Pragmatics. Chinese Studies. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
Johansson, S.
1997 Using the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus – a corpus for contrastive analysis and translation studies. In
Practical applications in language corpora,
B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and
P. J. Melia (eds), 282–296. Lodz: Lodz University.
Li, C.N., & Thompson, S.A.
1981 Mandarin Chinese: a Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Li, C. N., Thompson, S. A., Thompson, R. M.
Li, Z.
2014
Xianzai: from a Time Marker to a Discourse Marker.
Journal of Zhejiang Education Institute, July 2014, n°4. 62–65.
Lin, J. W.
2003 Temporal Reference in Mandarin Chinese.
Journal of East Asian Linguistics 12. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 259–311.
Lin, J. W.
2006 Time in a Language Without Tense: The Case of Chinese.
Journal of Semantics 23. 1–56.
Lyons, J.
1990 Sémantique linguistique. Paris: Larousse.
Methven, A.
2006 A Comparative Study of Deixis in Chinese and English. MA Chinese Translation Practice and Theory, SOAS London.
Moeschler, J., Reboul, A.
1998 Pragmatique du discours. Paris: Armand Colin.
Nef, F.
1980
Maintenant 1 et Maintenant 2: sémantique et pragmatique de Maintenant temporel et non-temporel. In Proceedings of the Centre d’analyse syntaxique de l’Université de Metz Conference (May 18th-20th, 1978),
Recherches Linguistiques V: La Notion d’Aspect. Paris: Librairie Klincksieck. 145–166.
Nef, F.
1986 Sémantique de la référence temporelle en français moderne. Nancy, Berne, Francfort s. Main: P. Lang. 145–166.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J.
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Ritz, M-E., Dench A., Caudal, P.
2012
Now or Then? The Clitic -rru in Panyjima: Temporal Properties in Discourse.
Australian Journal of Linguistics 32(1):41–72.
Rowling, J. K.
2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Arthur A. Levine Books.
Rowling, J. K.
2007 Sishen de shengwu (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Translation
C.W. Peng. Taipei: Crown Editor and Translator Group.
Smith, C. S.
1997 The Parameter of Aspect. 2nd Ed. Springer Science & Business Media.
Smith, C. S., Erbaugh, M. S.
2001 Temporal information in sentences of Mandarin. In
New Views in Chinese Syntactic Research – International Symposium on Chinese Grammar for the New Millenium. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Jiaoyu Chuban she. 514–542.
Wang, L.
2001 Exploring Parallel Concordancing in Chinese and English.
Language Learning and Technology 5(3):174–184.
Wu, M.Y.
2011 Fuyan ren (The Man with the Compound Eyes). Taipei: Summer Festival Press.
Wu, M.Y.
2013 The Man with the Compound Eyes, translation
D. Sterk. London: Harvill Secker.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Arnulf, Jan Ketil, Wanwen Dai, Hui Lu & Zhe Niu
2021.
Limits of a Second Language: Native and Second Languages in Management Team Communication.
Frontiers in Psychology 12
Collart, Aymeric & Hung-Kuan Su
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.