From spatial location to eventive sequentiality: A cognitive approach to the evolution of the aspectual system in Chinese.

摘要

The domain of spatial cognition is one of the basic sources via which more abstract notions, ranging from physical states to moral qualities as well as temporal relations, are understood through metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987). According to the localism hypothesis (Anderson, 1971; Lyons, 1967, 1975, 1977; Pottier, 1974), "much of what is commonly thought of as being metaphorical in the use of language can be brought within the scope of the thesis of localism" (Lyons, 1977, p. 720). This study is a case study of how spatial cognition shapes language evolution, specifically, how spatial cognition has cross-linguistically shaped the grammaticalization of spatial expressions into aspect markers, as exemplified by the evolution of the grammatical aspectual system in Chinese. I propose that such grammaticalization per se is underdetermined by a metaphorical transfer from spatial location to eventive sequentiality or, alternatively speaking, that such grammaticalization requires the metaphorical application of spatial cognition to event cognition, with the sequence of an event within its temporal structure being metaphorically conceptualized as the location of a moving entity along its path.