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

汉语指代时间的方式与英语截然不同。例如，汉语中的“后年”在英语中的字面意思是“Back Year”。因此，在前后轴线上，汉语表达违反了将未来与前置空间(过去与后置空间)联系在一起的惯例。当然，如果不同语言之间的表达差异对思维没有影响，这可能是一个没有意义的观点。许多著名的语言学者认为，术语上的这种差异并不有趣(例如，参见Pinker，2007)，因为他们说，这种词汇差异对思维没有影响。然而，这样的论点大多(如果不是完全的话)是基于直觉，而不是科学数据。因此，在语言相对论的争论中，建立汉语等语言特有的表达与时间概念化等心理表征之间的联系是至关重要的。以前的研究(例如，Boroditsky，2001；Boroditsky，Fuhrman&McCormick，2011)已经提供了一些证据，支持语言相对论效应与时间概念化的关系。然而，这类研究完全基于行为测量，并且是在参与者可能意识到实施的关键操纵的条件下进行的，这只会加剧辩论，因为仍然存在一个悬而未决的问题，即使用特定语言表达时间的人是否真的对时间有不同的想法，或者他们是否只是在执行任务时受到有意识的语言引用的影响(根据Pinker，2007年的语言相对论的弱版本)。为特定语言表达和思维模式之间的联系提供严格而明确的证据，需要使用不完全依赖于行为测量的方法，并且需要预测性地评估无意识的思维过程。这正是申请者在博士期间打算做的事情，事实上，我们已经获得了使用大脑活动测量的汉英双语者无意识地进行后向倒置操作的证据(Li等人，2019年)。在这里，我们打算通过研究语言表达对思维的概括效应来证明特定的单词可以与时空关系发生冲突。其目的是提供第一个切实的、科学上可靠的证据，证明以中国为母语的人不仅在水平(前后)轴上概念化了时间的流逝，而且通过将“垂直”思维延伸到没有提到垂直轴(或者实际上没有提到空间)的表达方式来概念化时间的流逝。在一个需要对申请者导师的研究实验室进行物理重新配置的实验中，我们将调查汉语指代上下空间以表达过去和未来事件的时间表达如何干扰参与者周围环境中的语音来源。例如，中文中的“商周”指的是“上周”，在英语中直译为“上涨一周”。当这种表情通过位于参与者头顶上方的扬声器呈现时，他们的大脑是否比扬声器位于椅子下方时更容易理解？我们假设情况会是这样的。然而，关键的是，这种影响是否也适用于曲年--“去年”，字面意思是“逝去的一年”，与空间无关？我们认为，汉语中言语的空间来源和过去/将来对纯时间表达的指涉之间的任何干扰，都将是语言表达对时间概念化产生影响的第一个令人信服的证据。这样的发现将代表着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.