TIME PASSING IS MOTION (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the path of time: Temporal motion in typological perspective (In press, Language and Cognition)
The Moving Ego and Moving Time metaphors have provided a fertile testing ground for the psychological reality of space-time metaphors. Despite this, little research has targeted the linguistic patterns used in these two mappings. To fill that gap, the current study uses corpus data to examine the use of motion verbs in two typologically different languages, English and Spanish. We first investigated the relative frequency of the two metaphors. Whereas we observed no difference in frequency in the Spanish data, our findings indicated that in English Moving Time expressions are more prevalent than are Moving Ego expressions. Secondly, we focused on the patterns of use of the verbs themselves, asking whether well-known typological patterns in the expression of spatial motion would carry over to temporal motion. Specifically, we examined the frequencies of temporal uses of path and manner verbs in English and in Spanish. Contra the patterns observed in space, we observed a preference for path verbs in both languages, with this preference more strongly evident in English than in Spanish. In addition, our findings revealed greater use of motion verbs in temporal expressions in Spanish compared to English. These findings begin to outline constraints on the aspects of spatial conceptualization that are likely to be reused in the conceptualization of time. Keywords: Time, Space, Motion, Metaphor, Moving Time, Moving Ego, Path, Manner
Moving-Time and Moving-Ego Metaphors from a Translational and Contrastivelinguistic Perspective
Research in Language
This article is concerned with some cross-linguistic asymmetries in the use of two types of time metaphors, the Moving-Time and the Moving-Ego metaphor. The latter metaphor appears to be far less well-entrenched in languages such as Croatian or Hungarian, i.e. some of its lexicalizations are less natural than their alternatives based on the Moving- Time metaphor, while some others are, unlike their English models, downright unacceptable. It is argued that some of the differences can be related to the status of the fictive motion construction and some restrictions on the choice of verbs in that construction.
Time Is Water: A Metaphorical Conceptualization of Time in Chinese
Studies in Literature and Language, 2015
A conceptualization of abstract time in Chinese can be instantiated by "Time is Water". Time is universally important in a human being's daily life, yet it is conceptually abstract. This abstraction of time can be understood through the concept of metaphor. Although the English and Chinese languages share many metaphorical conceptions of time, there is one particular metaphor in China that is not as commonly instantiated in English-Time Is Water. Three reasons can be provided for the conceptualization of this metaphor and will be discussed in this paper: water is one of the five basic elements in Chinese philosophy; conceptualization of time as water in Chinese is quite systematic and time and water share many similarities; Confucius' words have a great effect for the metaphor of time as water to be pervasive in Chinese. Cultural understandings of the Chinese people will be shown to impact their language production through metaphorical conceptualization.
Yearbook of Phraseology, 2020
There is a general consensus about the existence of a cognitive transfer by which we conceive TIME in terms of SPACE, witnessed by the recurrence this metaphor in many languages. We can distinguish two theoretical trends in the treatment of this conceptual metaphor: those based on universalistic apriorisms and those based on more relativistic and empirical assumptions. While the first tend to extrapolate from English, reducing this metaphor to very few basic models with a natural motivation, the second privilege Amerindian languages, with empirical data which do not fit in such speculative universals. This contrastive work on two typologically distant languages, such as Spanish and Chi-nese, confirms that the cross-linguistic productivity of other space-to-time associations (reversed time, mirror time, vertical time, cyclic time). Though our results show more similarities than differ-ences in the overall available inventory, some specific divergences between Chinese and Spanish are also noted.
2020
There is a general consensus about the existence of a cognitive transfer by which we conceive time in terms of space, witnessed by the recurrence of this metaphor in many languages. We can distinguish two theoretical trends in the treatment of this conceptual metaphor: those based on universalistic apriorisms and those based on more relativistic and empirical assumptions. While the first tend to extrapolate from English, reducing this metaphor to very few basic models with a natural motivation, the second privilege Amerindian languages, with empirical data which do not fit in such speculative universals. This contrastive work on the two typologically distant languages Spanish and Chinese confirms the cross-linguistic productivity of other space-to-time associations (reversed time, mirror time, vertical time, cyclic time). Though our results show more similarities than differences in the overall available inventory, some specific divergences between Chinese and Spanish are also noted.
2017
The linguistic metaphors of time appear to influence how people gesture about time. This study finds that Chinese English bilinguals produce more vertical gestures when talking about Chinese time references with vertical spatial metaphors than (1) when talking about time conceptions in the English translations, and (2) when talking about Chinese time references with no spatial metaphors. Additionally, Chinese English bilinguals prefer vertical gestures to lateral gestures when perceiving Chinese time references with vertical spatial metaphors and the corresponding English translations, whereas there is no such preference when perceiving time references without spatial metaphors. Furthermore, this vertical tendency is not due to the fact that vertical gestures are generally less ambiguous than lateral gestures for addressees. In conclusion, the vertical gesturing about time by Chinese English bilinguals is shaped by both the stable language-specific conceptualisations, and the online changes in linguistic choices.
Inconsistencies in Temporal Metaphors: Is Time a Phenomenon of the Third Kind?
Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, 2020
This paper discusses the problem of inconsistencies in the metaphorical conceptualizations of time that involve motion within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). It demonstrates that the TIME AS A PURSUER metaphor contrasts with the reverse variant TIME AS AN OBJECT OF PURSUIT, just as the MOVING TIME metaphor contrasts with the MOVING OBSERVER variant. Such metaphorical conceptualizations of time functioning as pairs of minimally differing variants based on Figure-Ground reversal are, strictly speaking, inconsistent with one another. Looking at these inconsistencies from a wider perspective suggests that time may belong to a separate category of conceptual phenomena. This paper puts forward a proposal to approach time from the perspective of “phenomena of the third kind”, which according to Keller’s thesis include conceptual establishments resulting from human cognition, but not of human design.
What trajectors reveal about TIME metaphors: Analysis of English and Swedish
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2016
This paper is an analysis of trajectors (i.e. located entities) in language about fixed durations of TIME. More specifically, trajectors in instances including the English prepositionsinoron, or their Swedish equivalentsiorpå, are analyzed. On the structure of the inverse Moving Observer/Moving Time metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1999) instances such as these should be construed relative to a Moving Observer, and trajectors people that move relative to fixed durations of TIME (as reflected in e.g.when we come to launching the 4th edition in early 1990). My analysis, however, suggests that our understanding of TIME through SPACE is more nuanced than suggested by these metaphors. In this specific context, trajectors are not typically people in motion, but rather events or processes located in, or on, unit of time landmarks. My study emphasizes the need to test the systematicity of the mappings proposed by Conceptual Metaphor Theory.
2006
Research in cognitive linguistics and in processing of temporal metaphors has traditionally distinguished between Moving-Ego and Moving-Time mappings: Either the Ego is construed as moving regarding fixed temporal landmarks or Time is construed as moving regarding the Ego. Both of these metaphors involve time events in reference to an Ego, which specifies the present time "now." We build on recent theoretical suggestions for a more fundamental classification of temporal metaphors: Egoand Time-Reference-Point metaphors (Ego-RP and Time-RP). The distinction focuses on the role of reference points in ascribing orientation, rather than on the identity of a moving entity (Ego or Time). Using visual priming experiments we provide evidence of the psychological reality of the Time-RP metaphor, a temporal metaphor with no reference to an Ego.
The role of cultural artifacts in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time
Across cultures, people employ space to construct representations of time. English exhibits two deictic space-time metaphors: the "moving ego" metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward through time and the "moving time" metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward towards the ego. Earlier research investigating the psychological reality of these metaphors has shown that engaging in certain types of spatial-motion thinking may influence how people reason about events in time. More recently, research has shown that people's interactions with cultural artifacts may also influence their representations of time. Extending research on space-time mappings in new directions, three experiments investigated the role of cultural artifacts, namely calendars and clocks, in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time. Taken together, the results provide initial evidence that, in their interpretation of ambiguous metaphorical expressions about time, people automatically access and use spatial representations of absolute time, whereby moving forward in space corresponds with moving later in time. Moreover, asking participants to use a reverse space-time mapping causes interference, which is reflected through their temporal reasoning.