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Abstract This paper aims to explore both specificity and universality of time cognition underlying English and Chinese. Firstly, focusing on the relationship between language and time, this paper reviews the early controversy between Linguistic Relativity and Universal Grammar in explaining time cognition. Then, three recent views of Chinese temporal-spatial grammatical specificity (namely the “space view”, the “time view” and the “space-time conflation view”) are critically reviewed, considering their conflicts and respective limitations. Against this background, drawing on Jaszczolt’s idea of “pragmatic universal” in temporal reference, this paper argues that grammatical specificity should be integrated with pragmatic universality in explaining time cognition across languages. Specifically, the specificity of temporal cognition in English and Chinese manifests in different choices of grammatical-pragmatic resources in time expression, while the universality common in language use resides in grammar-pragmatics interaction in temporal conceptualization. Lastly, the underlying motivation of specificity-universality integration is also examined. The account of integrating grammatical specificity with pragmatic universality sheds new light on the similarity and differentiation between English and Chinese temporal cognition.
Key words : English and Chinese; time cognition; grammatical specificity; pragmatic universality; integration
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