Abstract:
Drawing on temporal frames of reference, this study addresses two constructions:
biān A
biān B ‘side A side B’ and
yòu A
yòu B ‘again A again B’.It is discovered that
biān-biān as a simultaneity frame emphasizes durative synchronization between pairwise actions, and cannot structure spatial entities, states or properties;
yòu-yòu as another simultaneity frame, by contrast, emphasizes simultaneity out of successive iteration, and can structure spatial entities, states or properties.Despite these differences, either
biān-biān or
yòu-yòu manifests the identical interval effect, i.e., the closer the utterance distance between
biān and
biān or
yòu and
yòu is, the more these two simultaneity frames are instantiated.This fact suggests that linguistic features in form regulate the formation of a conceptual frame.