A Study Of Expressions Denoting Psychological Time In English Versus Vietnam In The Light Of Cognitive Linguisyics

Abstract

This thesis has been done in an effort to investigate expressions denoting psychological time in English versus Vietnamese in the light of cognitive linguistics. Some concepts related to this area such as definition of expressions, concept of time, concept of psychological time, expressions denoting psychological time have been presented and discussed. The viewpoints on expressions and expressions denoting psychological time of some linguists like Vyvyan Evans (2005), Simon (2008), Gunter Radden and Rene Dirven (1984), Diệp Quang Ban and Hoàng Văn Thung (2006), Lý Toàn Thắng (2009) have been also mentioned in theoretical background on which 141 English samples and 119 Vietnamese ones have been collected from American and Vietnamese famous poetries, short stories, novels and literary works in the 20th and 21st century to find out the cognitive syntactic and semantic features of expressions denoting psychological time. A contrastive analysis has been carried out to explore the similarities and differences between English expressions denoting psychological time and Vietnamese ones in terms of the above mentioned aspects. The study has showed the distributions as well as the frequency of these expressions in both languages. The findings, then,served as a foundation to put forward a number of implications for English language teaching and learning to help Vietnamese learners of English to reach communication targets more effectively. Finally,suggestions for further studies have been offered for anyone that is interested in this problem to continue doing this research.