Author: Wolfgang Klein Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136151729 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
This book looks at the various ways in which time is reflected in natural language. All natural languages have developed a rich repetoire of devices to express time, but linguists have tended to concentrate on tense and aspect, rather than discourse principles. Klein considers the four main ways in which language expresses time - the verbal categories of tense and aspect; inherent lexical features of the verb; and various types of temporal adverbs. Klein looks at the interaction of these four devices and suggests new or partly new treatments of these devices to express temporality.
Author: Quentin Smith Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780195348187 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
This book offers a defense of the tensed theory of time, a critique of the New Theory of Reference, and an argument that simultaneity is absolute. Although Smith rejects ordinary language philosophy, he shows how it is possible to argue from the nature of language to the nature of reality. Specifically, he argues that semantic properties of tensed sentences are best explained by the hypothesis that they ascribe to events temporal properties of futurity, presentness, or pastness and do not merely ascribe relations of earlier than or simultaneity. He criticizes the New Theory of Reference, which holds that "now" refers directly to a time and does not ascribe the property of presentness. Smith does not adopt the old or Fregean theory of reference but develops a third alternative, based on his detailed theory of de re and de dicto propositions and a theory of cognitive significance. He concludes the book with a lengthy critique of Einstein's theory of time. Smith offers a positive argument for absolute simultaneity based on his theory that all propositions exist in time. He shows how Einstein's relativist temporal concepts are reducible to a conjunction of absolutist temporal concepts and relativist nontemporal concepts of the observable behavior of light rays, rigid bodies, and the like.
Author: Jonathan Boyarin Publisher: ISBN: 9780979405730 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
What can you say after you say that the world--or at least human life on it--looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity--the bases of human language--are possible now? In Time and Human Language Now two lifelong friends share, in the form of a long-distance e-mail correspondence, a conversation about the relation between cosmos and consciousness, and about the possibility of being responsibly open toward the future without either despair or unreasoning hope. The urgency that underlies this dialogue is the conviction that there can only be reason for hope if the members of homo sapiens can learn--soon--how vital and astonishing is the phenomenon of shared human presence through language.
Author: Ori Sela Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824894588 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
China’s past and present have been in a continuous dialogue throughout history, one that is heavily influenced by time and language: the temporal orientation and the linguistic apparatus used to express and solidify identity, ideas, and practices. Presenting a host of in-depth case studies, Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History argues for and demonstrates the significance of “New Sinology” by restoring the role of language/philology in the research and understanding of how modern China emerged. Reading the modern as a careful and ongoing conversation with the past renders the “new” in a different perspective. This volume is a significant step toward a new historical narrative of China’s modern history, one wherein “ruptures” can exist in tandem with continuities. The collection accentuates the deep connection between language and power—one that spans well across China’s long past—and hence the immense consequences of linguistic-related methodology to the comprehension of power structures and identity in China. Each of the essays in this volume tackles these issues, the methodological and the thematic, from a different angle but they all share the Sinological prism of analysis and the basic understanding that a much longer timeframe is required to make sense of Chinese modernity. The languages examined are diverse, including modern and classical Chinese, as well as Manchu and Japanese. Taken together they bring a spectrum of linguistic perspectives and hence a spectrum of power relations and identities to the forefront. While the essays focus on late Qing and early twentieth-century eras, they refer often to earlier periods, which are necessary to making real sense of later eras. The methodological and the thematic do not only converge, but also generate a plea for fostering and expanding this approach in current and future studies.
Author: Wolfgang Klein Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136151648 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
This book looks at the various ways in which time is reflected in natural language. All natural languages have developed a rich repetoire of devices to express time, but linguists have tended to concentrate on tense and aspect, rather than discourse principles. Klein considers the four main ways in which language expresses time - the verbal categories of tense and aspect; inherent lexical features of the verb; and various types of temporal adverbs. Klein looks at the interaction of these four devices and suggests new or partly new treatments of these devices to express temporality.
Author: Anna Čermáková Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company ISBN: 9027258961 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 315
Book Description
This volume comprises a collection of contrastive studies on language and time. Languages represented include Czech, French, German, Mandarin, Norwegian and Swedish, all of which are contrasted with English. While the amount of published research on temporal relations in general is considerable, less work has been carried out on comparing how we talk about time in various languages and how languages change over time. Several methodological challenges are addressed and solutions proposed, such as how to deal with poor quality historical data and how to identify n-grams in typologically different languages for purposes of comparison. The results of the various studies show how multilingual corpora can increase our knowledge of language-specific features as well as linguistic, typological and cultural differences and similarities across languages.
Author: Thomas Sattig Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199279527 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
Thomas Sattig's book develops a comprehensive framework for doing philosophy of time. He brings together a variety of different perspectives, linking our ordinary conception of time with the physicist's conception, and linking questions about time addressed in metaphysics with questions addressed in the philosophy of language. Within this framework, Sattig explores the temporal dimension of the material world in relation to the temporal dimension of our ordinary discourse about theworld.The discussion is centred around the dispute between three-dimensionalists and four-dimensionalists about whether the temporal profile of ordinary objects mirrors their spatial profile. Are ordinary objects extended in time in the same way in which they are extended in space? Do they have temporal as well as spatial parts? Four-dimensionalists say 'yes', three-dimensionalists say 'no'. Sattig develops an original three-dimensionalist picture of the material world, and argues that this pictureis preferable to its four-dimensionalists rivals if ordinary thought and talk are taken seriously. Among the issues that Sattig discusses are the metaphysics of persistence, change, composition, location, coincidence, and relativity; the ontology of past, present, and future; and the semantics ofpredication, tense, temporal modifiers, and sortal terms.
Author: M. Joshua Mozersky Publisher: Oxford Studies of Time in Lang ISBN: 0198718160 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
This book brings together, in a novel way, an account of the structure of time with an account of our language and thought about time. Joshua Mozersky argues that it is possible to reconcile the human experience of time, which is centred on the present, with the objective conception of time, according to which all moments are intrinsically alike. He defends a temporally centreless ontology along with a tenseless semantics that is compatible with - and indeed helps to explain the need for - tensed language and thought. This theory of time also, it is argued, helps to elucidate the nature of change and temporal passage, neither of which need be denied nor relegated to the realm of subjective experience only. The book addresses a variety of topics including whether the past and future are real; whether temporal passage is a genuine phenomenon or merely a subjective illusion; how the asymmetry of time is to be understood; the nature of representation; how something can change its properties yet retain its identity; and whether objects are three-dimensional or four-dimensional. It is a wide-ranging examination of recent issues in metaphysics, philosophy of language and the philosophy of science and presents a compelling picture of the relationship of human beings to the spatiotemporal world.
Author: Kasia M. Jaszczolt Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199589879 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Linguists and philosophers examine the representation of temporal reference; the interaction of the temporal information from tense, aspect, modality, and context; and the representation of the temporal relations between facts, events, states, propositions, and utterances. They link this to current research in psychology and anthropology.
Author: Wolfgang Klein
Author: Quentin Smith
Author: Jonathan Boyarin
Author: Ori Sela
Author: Wolfgang Klein
Author: Anna Čermáková
Author: Thomas Sattig
Author: M. Joshua Mozersky
Author: Kasia M. Jaszczolt
Author: Gladys Rosa-Mendoza