“以后”与“后来”的对比分析

This paper is a comparative study on the differences between “yihou” and “houlai” in the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic viewpoint. “Yihou” and “houlai”have different reference points, therefore the range of meaning each term represents are also different. “Yihou” has a wider range of meaning than “houlai”does, and there are differences between the focus of each words. I analysed the amount of time they represent, and the temporal gap between the time they point to and each word's reference point. Generally speaking, the amount of time represented by “yihou” is somewhat larger, but that of “houlai”can be very variable. In both cases, there must exist a certain amount of temporal gap between the reference point and the time they actually point to. I also scrutinized the types of the syntactic elements these temporal words can serve as, and the practical usage in both verbal and written occasions. Finally, I discussed about the relationship between the preceeding/succeeding events connected to these terms and the terms themselves. The connection between the events and “houlai” have relative meanings such as: sequential, gradational, adversative and causal, but “yihou”only sequential and gradational.