Does time flow vertically in Chinese? The quest for groundbreaking evidence for linguistic relativity

汉语中时间的表达方式与英语截然不同。例如，中文中的“后年”在英文中的字面意思是“过去的一年”。因此，在前后轴上，汉语表达违反了将未来与前空相关联（将过去与后空相关联）的惯例。当然，如果不同语言之间表达的差异对思维没有影响，这一点就没有意义了。许多著名的语言学者认为，这种术语上的差异是无趣的（例如，见Pinker，2007），因为他们说，这种词汇差异对思想没有影响。然而，这些论点大多是基于直觉，而不是科学数据。因此，在一种语言（如汉语）特有的表达和心理表征（如时间概念化）之间建立联系，在这场被称为语言相对论的辩论中至关重要。Boroditsky，2001年; Boroditsky，Fuhrman & McCormick，2011）提供了一些证据支持语言相对论效应与时间概念化的关系。然而，这种研究仅仅基于行为测量，并且在参与者可能意识到所实施的关键操纵的条件下进行，只能助长辩论，因为它仍然是一个悬而未决的问题，即用母语表达时间的特定表达方式的个人是否实际上对时间有不同的看法，还是仅仅在执行任务时受到有意识的语言参照的影响（根据平克的语言相对论的弱版本，（2007年）要为特定的语言表达和思维模式之间的联系提供严格和明确的证据，就需要使用不仅仅依赖于行为测量的方法，而且需要预测性地评估无意识思维。流程.这正是申请人在博士期间所做的，事实上，我们已经获得了使用大脑活动测量的中-英双语者无意识地操作的后-前方向反转的证据（Li等人，在这里，我们打算通过调查语言表达对思维的泛化效应，超越特定词语可能与时空关系发生冲突的事实。我们的目标是提供第一个有形的和科学可靠的证据，证明中国母语者不仅在水平（前后）轴上概念化时间的流逝，而且还通过将“垂直”思维扩展到不参考垂直轴（或实际上不参考空间）的时间表达来沿着垂直轴。在一个实验中，需要物理重新配置的研究实验室的申请人的导师，我们将调查如何的时间表达的中国指的上，下空间，以表达过去和未来的事件干扰语音的声音来源在周围的环境中的参与者。例如，中文单词shang zhou指的是“上周”，字面上翻译成英语“up week”。当这种表达是通过位于参与者头部上方的扬声器呈现时，是否比扬声器位于椅子下方更容易让他们的大脑处理？我们假设情况会是这样。然而，至关重要的是，这种效应是否也适用于时间表达方式，比如“去年”，字面意思是“过去的一年”，与空间无关？我们认为，在空间中的言语起源和纯粹的时间表达在汉语中的过去/未来参考之间的任何干扰将是语言表达对时间概念化的影响的第一个令人信服的证据。这样的发现将代表语言相对论领域的开创性新证据。

Chinese refers to time in strikingly different ways to the English language. For instance, "the year after next" in Chinese, hou nian, literally translates to 'back year' in English. Therefore, on the front-back axis, Chinese expressions violates the convention of having the future associated with the front space (and the past with the back space). This could be a moot point of course if the difference in expression across languages had no impact on thinking. Many prominent language scholars have argue that such differences in terminology are uninteresting (see for instance Pinker, 2007) because they say that such word differences have no repercussions on thought. However, such arguments are mostly if not entirely based on intuition rather than scientific data. Therefore, the establishment of a link between expressions specific to one language, such as Chinese, and mental representations such as time conceptualisation, are critical in the debate which has become known as the linguistic relativity debate.Previous studies (e.g., Boroditsky, 2001; Boroditsky, Fuhrman & McCormick, 2011) have provided some evidence in favour of a linguistic relativity effect in relation to time conceptualisation. However, such studies based solely on behavioural measurements and conducted in conditions where participants are likely to become aware of the critical manipulations implemented, can only fuel the debate, because it remains an open question whether individuals having specific expressions in their native language to express time actually think differently about time, or whether they are merely influenced by conscious references to language whilst performing a task (the weak version of linguistic relativity according to Pinker, 2007).Providing rigorous and definitive evidence for a link between specific language expressions and thought patterns requires the use of methods that do not solely rely on behavioural measurements and that predictively assess unconscious thought processes. This is exactly what the applicant has set out to do during her PhD, and indeed, we already obtained evidence for back-to-front orientation inversion operating unconsciously in Chinese-English bilinguals using measures of brain activity (Li et al., 2019).Here, we intend to go beyond showing that specific words can conflict with time-space relationships by investigating generalization effects of language expressions on thinking. The goal is to provide the first tangible and scientifically robust evidence that Chinese native speakers conceptualise the passing of time not only on a horizontal (front-back) axis, but also along a vertical axis by extending 'vertical' thinking to expressions of time that make no reference to the vertical axis (or in fact no reference to space). In an experiment that requires physical reconfiguration of the research laboratory of the applicant's mentor, we will investigate how temporal expressions of Chinese referring to the upper and lower space to express past and future events interfere with the sound origin of speech in the environment around the participant. For example, the Chinese words shang zhou refer to 'last week' and literally translate into "up week" in English. When such expression is presented through a loudspeaker situated above the head of the participant, is it easier to process for their brain than when the loudspeaker is situated below their chair? We hypothesise that it will be the case. Critically, however, will this effect also apply for temporal expressions like qu nian - "last year", which literally translate into "gone year" and has no relationship to space? We contend that any interference between the origin of speech in space and the past/future reference of purely temporal expressions in Chinese would be the first compelling evidence for an effect of language expression on time conceptualisation. Such a finding would represent groundbreaking new evidence in the field of linguistic relativity.