Outlines Effects of Lexical Spatial-Temporal Metaphor l Introduction - PDF document

Outlines Effects of Lexical Spatial-Temporal Metaphor l Introduction l Experiment 1: Survey on Mandarin and Cantonese Speakers' l Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment Temporal Conceptualizations l Discussion and Conclusion Pan Zhu, Yu-Yin Hsu The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The 21 st Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop 1 2 Introduction Introduction • People's language systems and cultures may influence their • The differences of morphemes in temporal compounds between temporal conceptualizations (Boroditsky, 2001; 2008; 2013; Mandarin and Cantonese ： Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2011; Liu & Zhang, 2009). l ‘last year' l Language systems: The spatial-temporal metaphors ---- qu -nian ‘ backward -year’ (Mandarin) l Cultures: the reading-writing habits ---- soeng -nin ‘ up -year’ (Cantonese) • Some research does not support this view (Chen 2007). l ‘next year’ ---- ming -nian ‘ tomorrow -year’ (Mandarin) ---- haa -nin ‘ down -year’ (Cantonese) • è These studies compared a word (in a temporal phrase) with a morpheme (in a temporal compound), e.g., • Q1: Do such morpheme-spatial differences influence speakers’ l the good times ahead of us vs. qian -nian ( front -year) ‘last year’ conceptualization of time? 3 4 Introduction Experiment 1: Survey • Hong Kong Cantonese speakers read vertical and horizontal texts. • Tow existing Cantonese corpora have only 4 temporal expressions. • Most Beijing Mandarin speakers only read horizontal texts. è Create a comparable data set of Cantonese-Mandarin through surveys • Vertical texts in Chinese printed transversely from right to left; horizontal texts printed transversely from left to right. • The survey was distributed to participants in hardcopy. Traditional characters for Cantonese participants, and 從 直 simplified characters for Mandarin participants. 右 式 横 式 書 寫 至 書 • Participants 從 左 至 右 左 寫 69 Beijing Mandarin speakers, aged 18-30 and living in o • Q2: Do different human constructs (in reading and writing Beijing; none had a good command of Cantonese. directions) influence speakers’ conceptualization of time? 32 Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, aged 18-30 and living in o Hong Kong; none had learnt Mandarin before age six or had received formal Mandarin education. 5 6

Experiment 1: Survey Experiment 1: Survey • Survey Procedure • Survey Materials All participants were instructed to choose (√) which of the four Three parts of elements: spatial-metaphorical terms was (the most) appropriate to each of the l 4 spatial-metaphorical terms: 前 ‘front’, 后 ‘back’, 上 ‘up’, 下 ‘down’ six combinations and they were allowed to choose more than one answer. l 11 Time units: 世纪 ‘century’, 年 ‘year’, 季度 ‘quarter’, 月 ‘month’, 世纪 个世纪 半世纪 一世纪 半个世纪 一个世纪 星期 ‘week’, 周 ‘week’, 天 ‘day’, 日 ‘day’, shiji ge shiji ban shiji yi shiji ban ge shiji yi ge shiji 前 qian 小 時 ‘hour’, 分 鐘 ‘minute’, and 秒 ‘second’. 后 hou l Inserted elements: 上 shang measure word: 個 ge; numeral” 一 ‘one’ and 半 ‘half’. 下 xia 7 8 Experiment 1: Survey Experiment 1: Survey Analyses Results (2): Differences with respect to the length of time unit • We obtained the “vertical preference value” by subtracting the l Longer time units (ranging from 世纪 'century' to 星期 'week', value of the percentage of sagittal metaphors selected by the except for 年 'year'): both groups showed vertical preferences. participants on each item from that of the vertical metaphors they l 年 'year’: the Mandarin group preferred sagittal metaphors and the selected. Cantonese group showed no clear preference. Results (1): General preference è This might be because Cantonese speakers • Mandarin speakers use sagittal commonly use the vertical metaphors for ‘year’. metaphors more frequently l Shorter time units (ranging from 秒 ‘second’ • Cantonese speakers use vertical to 小时 ‘hour’, except for 天 'day’): metaphors more frequently the Cantonese group prefer vertical metaphors while Mandarin group had no clear preference. l 天 'day’: both groups had sagittal preferences. 9 10 Experiment 1: Survey Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment • The key-pressing-based judgment tasks devised by Fuhrman (2011) è To test Results (3): some system-internal differences whether there are differences between the two groups’ temporal Mandarin speakers’ choices seem to be more phrasal compositional conceptualizations. while Cantonese speakers’ were more based on the temporal • The mini USB keyboard was installed on a tripod mount and could be rotated concepts. vertically. The middle key was masked with a blue sticker. The key with a black sticker expressed “earlier” concept and the key with a grey sticker expressed l When 半 'half’ occurred with the temporal expressions, Mandarin “later” concept. group preferred sagittal metaphors for most of the terms, whereas • The materials were 40 triplets of pictures. Cantonese group’s preference became more vague but still showed vertical preference. l When 一 'one’ occurred with the temporal expressions, Mandarin group preferred the sagittal metaphors for ‘hour’, while this did not affect Cantonese groups’ judgements. 11 12

Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment Participants Experimental Procedure • In each trial, a picture presenting a middle time point (e.g., an apple being eaten) • 30 Beijing Mandarin speakers, aged 18-30, university students in Beijing; none of was presented on the screen, followed by a picture showing either an earlier time whom had participated in our survey. None had a good command of Cantonese, point (e.g., a whole apple) or a later time point (e.g., an apple core). Participants needed to press the key corresponding to judge whether the second picture and all rarely read vertical texts. showed an earlier or a later conceptual time point than the first picture. • 30 Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, aged 18-30 university students in Hong Kong; • All participants completed four test blocks, each consisting of 40 trials, two blocks covering the transverse axis (left-earlier/right-later key mapping and its opposite) none of them had participated in our survey. None of them had learnt Mandarin and two blocks on the vertical axis (top-earlier/bottom-later key mapping and its before age six, but were free of language-understanding and expression barriers. opposite). The order of the four blocks was counterbalanced with each item appearing once in each axis. 13 14 Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment Experiment 2: Implicit-Processing Experiment Results • Both groups processed transverse-axis items with canonical key- Data Analysis mapping significantly faster than items on the same axis with non- canonical key-mapping ( p s<.001). • Linear mixed effects models were created using log-transformed reaction • Both groups processed transverse-axis items in the canonical condition times (log RT) with the lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015) in R (R Team, significantly faster than vertical-axis items in the canonical condition ( p s<.001). 2016). • Cantonese speakers were faster to process vertical-axis items in the non-canonical condition than Mandarin speakers ( p = .042). • The significance of the main effect was evaluated by likelihood-ratio testing, and post-hoc Tukey’s comparisons were conducted using the multcomp package (Hothorn et al., 2008) in R. 15 16 Di Discussion and Conclusion Q1: Do morpheme-spatial differences influence speakers’ conceptualization of time? l Yes. Cantonese uses vertical metaphor in temporal compounds more Thank you! than Mandarin does, and in our experiment, the Cantonese group showed shorter reaction time in trials related to the vertical axis. Q2: Do different human constructs (in reading and writing directions) influence speakers’ conceptualization of time? Ac Acknowl wledgments: This study was supported by the Faculty of Humanity in Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the HK PolyU-PKU Research Centre on Chinese l Cantonese speakers often read vertical texts, and they were faster to Linguistics (RP2U2). We thank Stephen Politzer-Ahles and Chu-Ren Huang for their make judgements during the task on trials of the vertical axis. comments and suggestions on the earlier stages of this study. We also thank Xia è We are inclined to conclude that Cantonese speakers employed Wang for the technical support. vertical metaphors in temporal expressions more frequently than Mandarin speakers do, and that such lexical differences between the two groups influenced these speakers’ mental conceptualizations of time. 17 18