Nghiên cứu đối chiếu cách tri nhận thời gian trong những thành ngữ, tục ngữ chỉ thời gian tiếng anh và tiếng việt

ABSTRACT This study is conducted to investigate how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived, from which the similarities and differences in how Eng

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*******************

PHẠM THỊ THÚY CHINH

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF TIME

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND

PROVERBS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH TRI NHẬN THỜI GIAN TRONG NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ, TỤC NGỮ CHỈ THỜI GIAN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*******************

PHẠM THỊ THÚY CHINH

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF TIME

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND

PROVERBS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH TRI NHẬN THỜI GIAN TRONG NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ, TỤC NGỮ CHỈ THỜI GIAN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dr Huynh Anh Tuan

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I declare that the thesis titled A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE

PERCEPTION OF TIME IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND PROVERBS has not been submitted for any other degree or professional

qualification at this or any other university and that it is entirely my work

I agree that the Library may lend or copy this thesis on request

Hanoi, 2017

Phạm Thị Thúy Chinh

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all my lecturers

in Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their valuable instruction and assistance throughout the realization of this thesis

Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends who have always inspired me to complete this study

ABSTRACT

This study is conducted to investigate how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived, from which the similarities and differences in how English and Vietnamese people perceive the concept of time are uncovered Data for this study are 50 English and 50 Vietnamese idioms and

proverbs about time selected from three idioms and proverbs dictionaries, Oxford

dictionary of idioms (2004), Oxford dictionary of proverbs (2004), Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary (Nguyen Lan 2011) The idioms and proverbs are

classified and grouped based on the similar source domains The study adopts the Conceptual Metaphor Theory as its approach and contrastive analysis as the research method The findings suggest that the similarities in how English and Vietnamese people perceive time are they both think of time as space, motion, a person, a thing that one can qualify The prominent difference is that whereas English people tend to conceptualize time in terms of the tangibles such as a person,

a container, an object, Vietnamese people have the tendency to perceive time as an abstract concept such as farming seasons, weather and the limit of human existence

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Research questions 1

3 Significance of the research 2

4 Scope of the research 2

5 Organization of the thesis 3

PART I DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Idioms and Proverbs 4

1.1.1 Idioms 4

1.1.2 Proverbs 5

1.1.3 Distinction between Idioms and Proverbs 5

1.1.4 Idioms and proverbs about time 6

1.2 Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics 6

1.2.1 Cognitive Linguistics 7

1.2.2 Cognitive semantics 8

1.3 Contrastive analysis 13

1.3.1 Definitions 13

1.3.2 Guiding principles of Contrastive analysis 14

1.4 Previous studies related to the research 15

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 18

2.1 Research questions 18

2.2 Research approach 18

2.3 Data 19

2.4 Research method 19

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21

3.1 How the English people perceive through their idioms and proverbs about time 21

3.1.1 Time is perceived as space 21

3.1.2 Time is perceived as motion 23

3.1.4 Time is perceived as container 25

3.1.5 Time is perceived as a person 26

3.1.6 Time is perceived as an object 27

3.1.7 Summary 29

3.2 How the Vietnamese people perceive time through their idioms and proverbs about time 29

3.2.1 Time is perceived as space 29

3.2.2 Time is perceived as motion 30

3.2.3 Time is perceived based on the continuity of action 31

3.2.4 Time is perceived based on the relationship between human and production 32

3.2.5 Time is perceived as the limit of human existence 34

3.2.6 Time is perceived as an object that one can qualify 35

3.2.7 Time is perceived as a person 36

3.2.8 Summary 36

3.3 Similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived 37

3.3.1 Similarities 37

3.3.2 Differences 38

PART III CONCLUSION 43

1 Recapitulation 43

2 Pedagogical implications 44

3 Limitations and suggestions for further researches 45

REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1: LIST OF ENGLISH IDIOMS/PROVERBS ABOUT TIME I APPENDIX 2: LIST OF VIETNAMESE IDIOMS/PROVERBS ABOUT TIME VI APPENDIX 3: FREQUENCY AND PERCENTAGE OF TIME PERCEPTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE IDIOMS AND PROVERBS ABOUT TIME IX

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Time is an abstract concept that belongs to the natural world Human beings are born and develop depending completely on the nature so it is apparent that they must have a close relationship with nature in general and with time in particular The relationship between human and time is clearly expressed through human beings‟ history It can be said that there is no human‟s historical event that is not involved in a concrete timeline Also, due to the involvement, people need to perceive the abstract concept and try to convey those perceptions through their own languages Therefore, language becomes one of the major devices to give expression to the time perception of human beings

Time perception can be investigated into many areas of a language such as in literature or in communication However, the focus of this thesis will be English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time because idioms and proverbs are considered special linguistic units with the very long existential time in which the traditional culture, national custom, praxis of thinking are contained (Huu Dat, 2011) The consideration of idioms and proverbs as the generalization of thinking through language of a nation may be the reason why people should study on its idioms and proverbs when they want to investigate into a nation and its language

On the ground of cognitive linguistics, there are many researches on time perception in English or in Vietnamese but few researches on it in both English and Vietnamese were conducted Therefore, this study is conducted to delve into the similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived

2 Research questions

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived so the findings of the research are hoped to bring some insights into cognitive process on time that occurs

in English and Vietnamese people‟s mind

To achieve the aim of this study, the following research questions have to be answered:

1 How is the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time perceived?

2 What are the similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived?

3 Significance of the research

This study, to some extent, would like to shed light on the temporal cognitive mechanism happening on human mind by analyzing English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time on the basis of the conceptual metaphor theory (a subfield of cognitive semantics theory) Moreover, a contrastive analysis is conducted in this research with the aim of finding out the similarities and the differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived in the two languages This thesis is also hoped to make a small contribution to the overall stock of cognitive semantic investigation into time from a cross-linguistic perspective The finding of this study will explore the way how people think of time and try to construe partially the reason why they perceive time as the way they do

4 Scope of the research

This thesis is restricted to investigating the time perceptions expressed in Vietnamese and English temporal idioms and proverbs This investigation is based

on my manual selection of 50 English and 50 Vietnamese idioms and proverbs

related to the concept of time which are collected from three sources, viz Oxford

dictionary of idioms (2004), Oxford dictionary of proverbs (2004) and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary by Nguyen Lan (2011)

The conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Johnson and Lakoff (1980) are used as research approach in analyzing the time perceptions in the selected idioms and proverbs

5 Organization of the thesis

This thesis is divided into three main parts The first part is INTRODUCTION which states the rationale of the study, the research questions, significance of the research, scope of the research and the organization of the thesis The next and also most important part is DEVELOPMENT that is subdivided into three chapters: CHAPTER 1 is the discussion on the general theoretical background

of the study; CHAPTER 2, the mainstay of the research, is the presentation on the methodology in which the research questions, research method, data and analytical framework is discussed; CHAPTER 3 presents data analysis and discussions The last part is CONCLUSION that will summarize all the major points of the thesis and also gives some implications together with limitations and suggestions for further researches As a rule, the thesis will end with REFERENCE and APPENDIX

PART II DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE

REVIEW

This study is a contrastive analysis of the perception of time in English and Vietnamese temporal idioms and proverbs so this chapter reviews the literature in term of the following:

- The definitions of idioms and proverbs; the distinction between idioms and proverbs; idioms and proverbs about time;

- Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics, the guiding principles of Cognitive Semantics and its major theories;

- Contrastive analysis and its guiding principles;

- Previous researches related to the study

1.1 Idioms and Proverbs

In this section, some definitions of idioms and proverbs are presented, from which the distinction between idioms and proverbs is clarified, followed by the discussions concerning idioms and proverbs about time

1.1.1 Idioms

There is a variety of definitions of idioms defined in many dictionaries

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2000:643) defines an idiom as „a group of

words whose meaning is different from the meanings of individual words‟ Collins

Co-build Learner’s Dictionary (1996: 547) states “an idiom is a group of words

which have a different meaning when used together from the one they would have if

you took the meaning of each word individually” According to Longman

Dictionary of Contemporary English (1988, p.711), an idiom is “a phrase which

means something different from their meanings of the separate words from which it

is formed” Besides, in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary by Nguyen Lan

(2011), he states that idioms are fixed phrases that convey certain concepts Or, in

English Idioms in Use Advanced by Cambridge University Press, the definition of

idiom is given that „Idioms are fixed combinations of words whose meaning is often

difficult to guess from the meaning of each individual word.‟ All aforementioned definitions shows that idioms, at first, are fixed phrases whose structures cannot be substituted or rearranged otherwise their original meanings are lost Secondly, the meanings conveyed in idioms are figurative so it is absolutely difficult to understand their meanings from the meaning of each individual word

1.1.2 Proverbs

Proverbs are defined in many different ways According to Wikipedia, „a proverb is a simple and concrete saying, popularly known and repeated, that

(www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proverb) The English Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

(2000) defines a proverb as „a well-known phrase or sentence that gives advice or says something that is generally true‟ In Mieder (1993:5), „a proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorable form and which is handed

down from generation to generation‟ Nguyen Lan, in his Vietnamese idioms and

proverbs dictionary (2011), states that proverbs are sentences or utterances that are

comments, complaints, advice or sayings about natural or social experiences From the definitions mentioned above, it can be seen that a proverb is a sentence or an utterance which contains experiential lessons in them

1.1.3 Distinction between Idioms and Proverbs

Many linguistic researchers when studying idioms and proverbs tried to give

a clear discussion about the definition of idioms and proverbs so that from which the distinction between idioms and proverbs can be given From the definitions of idiom and proverb discussed above, the distinction between idiom and proverb can

be seen as follows

 are fixed phrases

 do not contain a moral

 are sentences or utterances

 contain moral lessons or advice based on natural or social experiences

Table 1: Distinction between idioms and proverbs

This distinction, however, is sometimes not completely a clear-cut Many linguists found it a challenging task to distinguish between the two Some proverbs,

in fact, have similar features of idioms and vice versa For example, in the Idioms

Organizer by Jon Wright (2002), „time is money‟ is classified as an idiom although

syntactically it is a sentence and semantically it contains an experiential lesson Or,

in Vietnamese, „trèo cao ngã đau‟ (climb high, fall painful) is considered an idiom

by some linguists but some others regard it as a proverb because they argue the figurative meaning of this saying is that a person who is too ambitious will be desperate when being failed, this saying is also an experiential lesson (see Huu Dat 2011) Therefore, when analyzing the time perception of English and Vietnamese people through their idioms and proverbs, the study is not intended to make a clear distinction between idioms and proverbs

1.1.4 Idioms and proverbs about time

Idioms and proverbs about time are the idioms and proverbs that contain words denoting time or have the meaning of time According to Seild and Mordie (1993), English idioms and proverbs are divided into a lot of special groups such as body parts, animals, colors, numbers, and time The authors state that idioms and proverbs about time is a special kind in which time terms with special meaning are considered key words They belong to one specific group of idioms that demonstrate the way each person use time terms in set expressions and how they associate these terms with other things in the world

In the study, the idioms and proverbs about time are selected based on the two criteria: containing words denoting time or containing the meaning of time

1.2 Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics

The study is conducted to find out how English and Vietnamese people perceive time in their idioms and proverbs so it belongs to cognitive semantic researches Thus, in this section, a brief overview on Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics is given

1.2.1 Cognitive Linguistics

During the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence and development of the cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive psychology, rooted the birth of a new approach to the study of language: Cognitive Linguistics

Cognitive linguistics […] is an approach to language that is based on our

experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it

(Ungerer & Schmid, 1997: x)

Primarily, Cognitive Linguistics is concerned with investigating the relationship between human language, the mind and socio-physical experience (Croft & Cruse, 2004; Evans & Green, 2006; Langacker, 1987) Johnson (1987) considers linguistic knowledge as part of general cognition and thinking; linguistic behavior is not separated from other general cognitive abilities which allow mental processes of reasoning, memory, attention or learning, but understood as an integral part of it In the same vein, Fauconier (2000) also emphasizes that Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language use because language is an integral part of cognition which reflects the interaction of social, cultural, psychological, communicative and functional cognitive development and mental processing which can be understood in the context of a realistic view of acquisition

The emergence of Cognitive Linguistics in the 1970s (Fillmore, 1975; Lakoff

& Thompson, 1975; Rosch, 1975) is originally a reaction against formal approaches

to language which were dominant at that time, viz generative grammar and conditional (logical) semantics Therefore, it rejects the main claims made by Generative Linguistics and Truth-conditional Semantics: (1) language is an innate and autonomous cognitive faculty; (2) to know a language is to know its grammar, which consists of a finite number of combinatory rules; (3) syntax (form) is the main focus of linguistic analysis (and thus semantics (meaning) is largely overlooked) Consequently, it proposes three major hypotheses: the first is that language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty; the second is that grammar is conceptualization; and the third is that knowledge of language emerges from

truth-language use According to Lakoff (1990), Cognitive linguistics is also characterized by the two fundamental commitments, namely Generalization Commitment and Cognitive Commitment The Generalization Commitment represents a commitment to openly investigating how the various aspects of linguistic knowledge emerge from a common set of human cognitive abilities upon which they draw, rather than assuming that they are produced in encapsulated modules of the mind Together, the Cognitive Commitment represents the commitment to providing a characterization of these principles that reflects what is known about human cognition Thus, the combination of the two commitments leads to a universal commitment of cognitive linguistics which is committed to characterizing the general principles governing all aspects of human language while being faithful to empirical discoveries from parallel disciplines of cognitive science such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychophysical and neuro-physical research about the nature of our mind and/or brain, and artificial intelligence

This study is well situated in cognitive linguistics because it seeks to explore the relationship between human brain and practice which is reflected in their language use More specifically, the investigation explores how English and Vietnamese people conceptualize time through their use of idioms and proverbs about time

1.2.2 Cognitive semantics

Cognitive Semantics, together with Cognitive Grammar as the two main areas of Cognitive Linguistics, was born to reject the formal theories of meaning based on the objectivist world view, such as the theories of truth conditional semantics which argued that „meaning was seen as the link between the world and words, completely disengaged from human cognition‟ (Sweetser, 1990:4) Cognitive Semantics, however, states that linguistic meaning is a manifestation of conceptual structure which emerges from bodily experience Accordingly, Cognitive Semantics is concerned with the relationship between experience, the

conceptual system and the semantic structure encoded by language (Rosch, 1973; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Johnson, 1987; Langacker, 1987, 1990, 1999) In specific terms, scholars working in cognitive semantics investigate knowledge representation (conceptual structure), and meaning construction (conceptualization) Cognitive semanticists have employed language as the lens through which these cognitive phenomena can be investigated Consequently, researches in cognitive semantics tend to be interested in modeling the human mind

as much as it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics

In the light of cognitive semantics, this study is conducted to find out the relationship between the concept of time and the temporal bodily experience of English and Vietnamese people conceptualized in their idioms and proverbs about time

1.2.2.1 Guiding principles of Cognitive Semantics

Like Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Semantics is an approach rather than a specific theory so it also has adopted a number of guiding principles There are four guiding principles in Cognitive Semantics: (1) Conceptual structure is embodied; (2) Semantic structure is conceptual structure; (3) Meaning representation is encyclopedic, (4) Meaning construction is conceptualization (Evans & Green, 2006: 157)

Firstly, Conceptual structure is embodied, exemplified by Image Schema

theory of Mark Johnson This principle derives from the findings of cognitive sciences about the nature of human‟s body It is well-known that human beings are the most complex organism on earth with the extremely developed brain so they have not only a species-specific view but also their own distinct and independent viewpoint of the world from which all concepts are structured Therefore, the conceptual system formulated from the viewpoint is embodied experiences From this assumption, conceptual structure is a consequence of the nature of human‟s body and thus is embodied

Secondly, Semantic structure is conceptual structure, typified by Theory of

Conceptual Structure of Talmy This principle asserts that language refers to the concepts in mind of the speaker rather than, directly, to the entities which inhere in

an objectively real external world In other words, Semantic structure (the meanings conventionally associated with words and other linguistic units) can be equated with Conceptual Structure (i.e., concepts) (Rosch, 1973) However, it does not mean that Semantic structure and Conceptual structure are identical because in the reality, there are still many thoughts, feelings and ideas that we cannot encode them in language Therefore, linguistic concepts are only a subset of the full set of concepts

in the minds of speaker-hearer (Evans, 2006; Evans & Green, 2006)

Next, meaning representation is encyclopedic, exemplified by Frame

Semantics of Fillmore This principle holds that semantic structure is encyclopedic

in nature It means lexical concepts do not present „neatly packaged bundles of meaning […] but serve as point of access to vast repositories of knowledge‟ (Tyler

& Evans, 2006: 160) Accordingly, in fact, in order to understand the meaning of a given utterance, the hearer is necessary to draw upon her/ his encyclopedic knowledge relating to the specific situation represented by the utterance to construct its meaning

Finally, meaning construction is conceptualization, exemplified by Mental

Space theory of Faucconier This principle states that language itself does not encode meaning Meaning is constructed through the process of conceptualization Consequently, „Meaning construction is […] a dynamic process whereby linguistic units serve as prompts for an array of conceptual operations and the recruitment of background knowledge It follows from this view that meaning is a process rather than a discrete „thing‟ that can be „packaged‟ by language.‟ (Tyler & Evans, 2006: 162)

This study follows the four guiding principles of semantic cognitive to find out how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived and the similarities and differences in their perception of time By

analyzing English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time, it can be seen that the concept of time is embodied For example, English people perceive time as money because of their embodied experience on the value of time which is explained clearly by Lakoff „the way the concept of work has developed in modern Western culture, where work is typically associated with the time it takes and time

is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by hour, week or year In our culture, TIME IS MONEY in many ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel room rates…‟ (Lakoff, 1980:130) The metaphorical link between a source domain and a target domain which is conceptual structure is reflected in the semantic structure TIME IS MONEY

1.2.2.2 Major theories of Cognitive Semantics

Through this section, some of the most important theories in cognitive semantics that are utilized for the thesis analysis will be discussed briefly

1.2.2.2.1 Conceptual metaphor theory

Conceptual metaphor theory, sometimes called Cognitive Metaphor theory is one of the most significant theories to take a cognitive semantic approach The fundamental tenet of Conceptual Metaphor Theory is that metaphor operates at the level of thinking Metaphors link two conceptual domains: a source domain – the source of the literal meaning of the metaphorical expression, and a target domain – the domain of experience actually being described by the metaphor (Croft & Cruse

2004:55) Thus, in the influential book Metaphors we live by, Lakoff and Johnson

(1980) present the theory of metaphor whose basic premise is that metaphor is not

an attribute of individual linguistic expressions and their meanings, but of whole conceptual domains In other words, any concept from source domain can be utilized to profile a concept in the target domain For instance, we can think and talk about TIME in terms of MONEY as in TIME IS MONEY metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) In this metaphor, TIME is the target domain and MONEY is the source domain The source domain MONEY which is a concrete valuable asset and possessed/ used by human beings is employed to identify the target domain TIME

which is abstract and intangible TIME, thereby, is clarified as a valuable thing also owned and used in the same way as MONEY is

The Conceptual Metaphor theory directly concerns two of the major assumptions associated with cognitive semantics: one is the thesis that semantic structure reflects conceptual structure and the other is the embodied cognition thesis In Lakoff and Johnson (1980), a formula TARGET DOMAIN IS SOURCE DOMAIN is used to describe the metaphorical link between domains The source domain consists of a set of literal entities, attributes, processes and relationships, linked semantically and apparently stored together in the mind The „target‟ domain tends to be abstract, and takes its structure from the source domain, through the metaphorical link which is conventionally expressed in semantic structure By that means, the Conceptual Metaphor theory relates to the assumption of cognitive semantics that is semantics structure is conceptual structure Secondly, conceptual

metaphor is closely related to the notion of embodiment In Metaphors we live by,

Lakoff and Johnson mention experiential gestalts which are based on the nature or our body, our interactions with our physical environment and with other people within our culture These experiential gestalts which are developed as image schema by Johnson (1987) serve as the grounding of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:117)

In the light of Conceptual metaphor theory, this study will uncover how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived by indicating source domains and clarifying the mappings from source

domains into the concept of time

1.2.2.2.2 Image schema theory

Mark Johnson and George Lakoff together invented the term „image schema‟

in their 1987 books In his book titled The body in the Mind, Johnson proposes that

one way in which embodied experience demonstrates itself at the cognitive level is through image schema As his statement, image schema is „a recurrent pattern, shape and regularity‟ in or of „actions, perceptions and conceptions‟ that are on-

going Also, image schemas are defined as schematic versions of images which are representations of specific, embodied experiences (Fillmore 1975:123) Therefore, image schemas are not particular images but are schematic They represents schematic patterns arising from imagistic domains, such as containers, paths, links, forces, and balance that recur in a variety of embodied domains and structure our bodily experience (Lakoff 1987:453; Johnson 1987:29) For example, the CONTAINER schema defining the predicates IN and OUT would work as the basis for understanding the body as container, the visual fields, and set models Or, the LINK schema helps conceptualize social and interpersonal relationships According

to Lakoff and Johnson, image schemas structure not only our bodily experience but also our non-bodily experience via metaphor (Lakoff 1987; Johnson 1987) In other words, metaphor helps to constitute the link between abstraction and bodily experience

In this study, the image schema theory is adopted to analyze the way English people perceive time as a container

Although the field is explicitly defined to seek to formulate similarities and differences of two languages, Contrastive analysis mainly focuses on studying

differences much more than similarities „… as the term contrastive implies, it is

more interested in differences between languages than in their likenesses‟ (James, 1980: 2)

In this study, by analyzing English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time to find out how English and Vietnamese people perceive time, the contrastive study is also conducted to explore the similarities and differences in the perception of time of the two nations

1.3.2 Guiding principles of Contrastive analysis

Contrastive analysis was originally based on the ideas of linguistic structuralism and was initially aimed not at linguistic studies, but at helping foreign language teachers This aim was intended to show in what ways the two respective languages differ, in order to help in the solution of practical problems such as making it easier to understand learning a second language and how to teach it most effectively However, it then led to large-scale linguistic projects and now it is not merely relevant for second language teaching and learning but it can also make useful contributions to machine translating and linguistics typology It is relevant to the designing of teaching materials for use in all age groups Consequently, Chaturvedi (1973) suggests guiding principles for contrastive study as follow:

(i) To analyze the mother tongue and the target language independently and completely

(ii) To compare item-wise of the two languages at all levels of their structure

(iii) To arrive at the categories of

a) similar features b) partially similar features c) dissimilar features – for the target language

(iv) To arrive at principles of text preparation, test framing and target language teaching in general

Based on the guiding principles of contrastive analysis, this thesis analyzes English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time separately to find out how each of nations perceives time then compares the findings to see the similarities and

differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived

1.4 Previous studies related to the research

In cognitive linguistics, there are many famous linguists conducting studies

on the way people think of/ perceive time Among them, the investigation of Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) into conceptual metaphor, concepts and embodiment in metaphor and especially time perception from the cognitive linguistic perspective is extremely prominent The significant finding of their study is the so-called „space-to-time metaphor‟, that is, spatial metaphor for time This finding holds that people can not perceive time directly because it is too abstract a concept to be fully grasped cognitively, thus spatial metaphors are used to understand time Following that finding, Boroditsky (2001, 2008, 2010) carried out some researches on spatial-temporal metaphors and their influence on the way people perceive time These are empirical cross-linguistic studies which were made up of some experiments involving Mandarin L1/ English L2 and native English speakers And the results of the researches indicate that firstly spatial metaphors are used in both languages to understand and represent temporal aspects Secondly, language habits have an impact on temporal thought regardless of the language one is currently using (Boroditsky, 2001) Thirdly, both English and Mandarin use left-to-right axial spatial metaphor when talking about the notion of past time, which means in their mind, time is perceived to move horizontally from left to right on the spatial metaphor

Along with the finding on TIME AS SPACE, Lakoff and Johnson (1980,1993, 1999) also raise the second finding that is TIME IS MOTION THROUGH SPACE conceptual metaphor In their study in 1999, Lakoff and Johnson argue that time is based on human perceptuo-motor experience of moving around in the world and of perceiving objects moving in the world More specifically, human experience of time, in their opinion, emerges largely on account

of a metaphorical understanding of embodied experience, especially motion events

Philosophers have noted for a long time that time is conceptualized and lexicalized

in terms of motion in space For example, Smart (1949) describes two metaphorical conceptions for time, in which time is conceived in terms of motion towards an observer, or an observer‟s motion towards the future Adopting the observation, psychologists and linguists develop the two basic models of conceptualizing time as motion: the Moving Time model (MT) and the Moving Ego model (ME) (Clark 1973; Lakoff 1993) The distinction between MT and ME space-to-time motion models was formalized by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) as figure-ground reversals of the more general TIME PASSING IS MOTION conceptual metaphor

Apart from the two major aforementioned findings of Lakoff and Johnson, some other linguists carry out cross-linguistic studies of time perception and get some remarkable findings For instance, Casasanto et al (2004), in a study comprising three experiments which is to indicate across-linguistic difference among English, Indonesia, Greek and Spanish, find that time is perceived as

distance and quantity Young-Ok lee, in his research titled „Perceptions of time in

Korean and English‟, finds that metaphorical expressions about time in both Korean

and English reveal time as an animal to capture or to be chased by, time as a living existence that wields great power, time as a precious thing to use or spend Or, in

the study ‘Time perception across Russian and American cultures’ by Maria

Lebedko (2001), time is perceived as monetary concepts, parametrical concepts, ethnical concepts, Juvenile- gerontological concepts, axiological concepts, activity concepts

In Vietnam, many famous linguists also pay attention to study the concepts

of time from cognitive linguistic perspective such as Nguyen Duc Dan, Tran Van

Co, Huu Dat As in the study of Nguyen Duc Dan (2009), he states that words indicating space are formed before words indicating time Also, in this study, he regards TIME AS A MOVING ENTITY As his arguments, the movement of human occurs simultaneously in space and time Time in the already-passed space appearing first is regarded as the past time and time in the coming space happening

later becomes the future time As a consequence, the movement of human from the previous space to the later space is concurrent with the movement of time from past

to future Therefore, when the movement of time is projected to the observer‟s position, the past time is understood to be behind him/her and the future time is ahead him/her Or as Tran Van Co (2007), there are two models of time: the cyclic model and the linear model And when investigating time perception, he proposes that there are two types of time: subjective time and objective time By and large, all the above exemplified findings are great contribution to cognitive linguistics in Vietnam but regarding the concern of this thesis, the study by Huu Dat (2011) titled

„temporal and spatial cognition in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs‟ is realized to

be its fundamental The findings of Huu Dat on time perception, besides the ones are grounded on the TIME AS SPACE and TIME AS MOTION metaphor proposed

by Jakoff and Johnson, are that time is perceived based on the continuity of action,

on human‟s experiences, on the relationship between human and production

Generally speaking, studies on time from cognitive linguistic perspective are plentiful but there are not many researches on time perception that contrasts English and Vietnamese Thus, this thesis hopes to be one of the English - Vietnamese contrastive studies on the perception of time that may be a contribution to cognitive linguistic field

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is an important sub-field of Cognitive semantics which focuses on the cognitive processes behind linguistic expressions and on the conceptual motivation behind figurative meaning Its fundamental tenet

is that metaphor operates at the level of thinking Metaphor is the mapping between

a source domain and a target domain The source domain consists of a set of literal entities, attributes, processes and relationships, linked semantically and apparently stored together in the mind The target domain tends to be abstract, and takes its structure from the source domain, through the metaphorical link which is conventionally expressed in semantic structure Thereby, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is a way to create new meanings for abstract concepts Consequently, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, maybe, becomes one of the most useful approaches to research the concept of time In this study, from all the English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time selected, the source domains are identified and mapped into the concept of time so as to find out how English and Vietnamese people perceive time

2.3 Data

A total of 100 temporal idioms and proverbs which consist of 50 idioms and

proverbs related to the concept of time in English from Oxford dictionary of idioms (2004), Oxford dictionary of proverbs (2004) and 50 idioms and proverbs about time in Vietnamese from Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary (Nguyen Lan

2011) were chosen manually for the present study The data collection procedure is conducted as follows The idioms and proverbs are selected if they contain one of the following: 1) the word „time‟ 2) words denoting time divisions 3) words whose meanings are related to the concept of time in some ways For example, English idioms and proverbs containing the word „time‟ (e.g ahead of time), words denoting time divisions such as „day, hour, tomorrow‟ (e.g day in, day out) are selected For Vietnamese, the idioms and proverbs containing words denoting time divisions such as „ngày (day), tháng (month), năm (year), sớm (early morning), tối, đêm (night)‟ (e.g ngày qua tháng lại - Days pass, months come), or words whose meanings are related to the concept of time in some ways (Bốn chín chưa qua năm

ba đã tới – Age of forty-nine hasn‟t passed but age of fifty three is coming) are chosen

2.4 Research method

To find out the similarities and differences in how English and Vietnamese people perceive time through their idioms and proverbs, the thesis adopts the contrastive analysis as its research method According to James (1980), contrastive analysis plays an important role in understanding two different languages

The present study adopts the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) as its research approach to analyze and contrast how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived The analysis starts from finding linguistic units contained in the English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time that inherently belong to a certain source domain Then, source domains of English and of Vietnamese are determined After that, the source domains are mapped into the target domain TIME to explore how English and

Vietnamese people perceive time, from which the similarities and differences are explored The analytical framework of the study is illustrated as in the below diagram

The number of idioms and proverbs classified in each source-domain group are presented in the Appendix 3 Besides, Vietnamese idioms and proverbs selected are translated into English with literal meanings

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, data will be classified into groups based on source domains and analyzed to seek the answers of the two major issues, viz how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived, and the similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived The first-mentioned issue

is analyzed in the two separate parts: firstly, how English perceives time which is showed in their idioms and proverbs about time; secondly, the ways of perceiving time of Vietnamese is expressed through their idioms and proverbs about time as well The second issue is analyzed based on the findings of the first issue to find out the similarities and differences in how English and Vietnamese people perceive the concept of time through their idioms and proverbs

3.1 How the English people perceive through their idioms and proverbs about time

3.1.1 Time is perceived as space

In the movement of the physical world in general and of human being in particular, space and time are the two categories that have a close relationship, that

is, the movement of space always inseparably accompanies with the movement of time However, the concept of time is more abstract than the one of space Space is all the things that exist around us and we can realize its change easily but time is not In the ancient world, when there was not any device such as watches, clocks, to measure time, people based on the change of space to determine it As their primitive perception of time, there were only day and night that involved in the sunlight, or more specifically, day started with the sunup and night began with the sundown Even when clock was invented later on, people still understood time via spatial orientation

The influence of spatial orientation on human thought and especially on our understanding of time has often been noted Lakoff (1993:218) assumes our metaphorical understanding of time in terms of space is biologically determined

because in our visual systems, we have detectors for motion, objects and location but not for time That is why language denoting space is employed to describe time The metaphor TIME AS SPACE means that time is understood in terms of space, that is to say, the source domain (SPACE) is mapped onto the target domain (TIME) In conceptualizing time as space, English people take advantage of the conceptual richness inherent in the spatial domain and map its structural elements onto time to impart new meanings onto temporal notions In English temporal idioms and proverbs selected, English people tend to perceive time as extension and location

1) Extension of time

By combining the adjectives that traditionally express space with the words denoting time, new meanings of the abstract concept as time are generated Consider the below examples:

the correspondence that helps to map the source domain SPACE onto target domain TIME The mapping is illustrated as follows:

SOURCE DOMAIN -> TARGET DOMAIN SPACE TIME

Matter Action

Extension Duration

In short, all the examples in (1), (2), (3) are involved in a subjective experience of English people on the duration of time which is perceived through the

quick or slow occurrence of an action More specifically, an action occurring and lasting long or shortly will form the duration of time in people‟s mind, from which English people can perceive time like an extension in space

2) Location of time

Due to being understood through spatial metaphor, the abstract concept as time is conceptualized as location by English people Consider the following instances:

(4) ahead of the time

(5) at the eleventh hours

(6) behind the time

(7) before time

(8) between times

(9) from time to time

English people use the locative prepositions such as „ahead of’, ‘at’, behind’,

‘before’, ‘between’, ‘from…to’ with reference to time to depict time as location

More accurately, spatial location as the source domain is mapped onto TIME so time is conceptualized as a location In examples (4), (6), (7), (8), English people perceive time as a relative location compared with the position of the ego, but time

is conceived as an exact position with „at‟ as in (5) or as the motion from a location

to another as in (9)

3.1.2 Time is perceived as motion

First, English people perceive time through TIME PASSING IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor Take a look at the following:

In this metaphor, time is understood to move towards the static ego, the person who is the point of reference to the event Therefore, time can be seen to

“come” from the future (12) or “fly” towards the future (11) and “go” into the past (10) TIME AS MOVING ENTITY is illustrated as below:

Secondly, English people think of time as TIME AND OBSERVER MOVING IN THE SAME DIRECTION, consider the below example:

(14) Move with the time

Also being in motion but time is projected to the dynamic reference rather than static one like in the examples (10), (11), (12) so as in (13) and (14), it is can

be seen that time and ego are moving together in the same direction, which is illustrated as follows:

3.1.3 Time is perceived as valuable things

Understanding the value of time in the life, English people conceptualize it

as precious things The target domains which are valuable things such as money, gold are mapped onto TIME as in TIME IS A VALUABLE THING conceptual metaphor Time, it has been claimed, is a commodity in the modern Western industrialized culture (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and its worth is reflected in English through three conceptual three metaphors as following:

1) TIME IS MONEY metaphor Consider the below examples:

(15) Time is money

(16) An inch of time is an inch of gold

(17) Time is capital: invest it wisely

(18)Time is like money: once spent it, it can never be spent again

In example (15) and (16), English people use the image schema SOURCE DOMAIN IS TARGET DOMAIN to describe the metaphorical links between time and money/gold Examples (17) and (18) are metaphoric because the verb „invest‟ and „spent‟ which primarily apply to money are employed to talk about time Therefore, English people can spend time or invest it exactly as they spend and invest money as habitual basis The illustration of mapping MONEY onto TIME is presented as follows:

MONEY -> TIME The user of money -> The user of time The purpose that requires money -> The purpose that requires

time The value of money -> The value of time 2) The TIME IS A LIMITED SOURCE conceptual metaphor is derived from the idea that mankind has a limited quantity of time that ends is a projection of limited time of our own lives as in the statement of Lakoff and Tunner (1989, p.34): „each

of us is allotted a certain fixed time on earth Our allotted time will eventually be used up and we will die‟ Thus, English people perceive time as a limited resource that they should „gain‟ or „save‟ and should not „waste‟ For instance:

(19) Save time

(20) Wasting time/ A waste of time

(21) Gain time

3) TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY metaphor is the entailment of TIME IS

A LIMITED SOURCE This entailment is based on English people‟s general experience that what is limited is valuable so it can be bought or sold as in:

(22) Buy time

3.1.4 Time is perceived as container

English people regard Time as bounded; therefore, they can perform actions within defined limits of time Time within which actions are performed can be seen