Our former colleague doc. Olivová will give an invited presentation at IIAS Leiden.
Her presentation is part of the workshop East Asian textiles and clothing in motion.
Viewpoint shift across languages: A Multiple-Parallel-Text approach to “tense shifting” in a tenseless language
Annotation:
In this talk, I introduce a cross-linguistic approach to the construal of viewpoint in narratives, drawing on linguistic samples from English and Chinese. In particular, I compare the linguistic manifestations of narrative viewpoint and the resultant construals that are invoked by the viewpoint expressions in the two languages. In my analysis, I address the viewpoint effect of tense marking and the cognitive-typological consequence that results from a lack of an obligatory tense marking system in the Chinese toolkit. I conclude by relating my findings to a discussion of the vague and context-dependent nature of the Chinese language in light of linguistic relativity.
