Introduction (area of study): Time conceptualisation in Thai
The problem (that I tackle): Do speakers of tensed and tenseless languages conceptualise time in the same or different way?
What the literature says about this problem: Apparently different.
How I tackle this problem: I examine the semantic and pragmatic properties of five words commonly considered temporal expressions in Thai: dai, khery, kamlang, yu, and ja.
How I implement my solution: I represent utterances containing the five in the Discourse Representation Structure and merger representation in the frameworks of Discourse Representation Theory and Default Semantics.
The result: Temporal information is not encoded by the five but is their default reading, analysable as a cognitive default in DS. Their status in Thai grammar is modal or aspectual rather than temporal.
Conclusion: With the proposal of temporality as modality in mind, universality of time conceptualisation is perhaps a plausible case.
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