Conceptualizing Time in Terms of Space: Experimental Evidence

Gijssels, Tom; Casasanto, Daniel

doi:10.1017/9781316339732.041

Cited by 38 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Taken together with recent evidence suggesting complexity not only in the domains of space and time, but also in the mapping between them (Duffy & Feist, 2017;cf. de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache, & Casasanto, 2014;Gijssels & Casasanto, 2017), this finding begins to outline constraints on the aspects of spatial conceptualization that are likely to be reused in the conceptualization of time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

On the path of time: temporal motion in typological perspective

Feist

Duffy

2020

Lang. cogn.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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. Second, 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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

On the path of time: temporal motion in typological perspective

Feist

Duffy

2020

Lang. cogn.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Beyond theories of numerical cognition, these findings also bear on a broader debate about the role of language in cognition (Fodor, 1975;Hume, 1748Hume, /2000Bowerman & Levinson, 2001;Lupyan, 2016;Sapir, 1929;Whorf, 2012). Linguistic-relativity effects have been reported in a variety of domains, including color (Forder & Lupyan, 2019;Regier & Kay, 2009), time (Gijssels & Casasanto, 2017), musical pitch (Dolscheid et al, 2013), and spatial reasoning (Majid et al, 2004). However, the idea that language shapes thought remains controversial (Gleitman & Papafragou, 2013;McWhorter, 2014;Pinker, 1994), in part because there are many versions of the Whorfian hypothesis (Casasanto, 2016;Kay & Kempton, 1984).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exact Number Concepts Are Limited to the Verbal Count Range

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous findings suggest that mentally representing exact numbers larger than four depends on a verbal count routine (e.g., “one, two, three . . .”). However, these findings are controversial because they rely on comparisons across radically different languages and cultures. We tested the role of language in number concepts within a single population—the Tsimane’ of Bolivia—in which knowledge of number words varies across individual adults. We used a novel data-analysis model to quantify the point at which participants ( N = 30) switched from exact to approximate number representations during a simple numerical matching task. The results show that these behavioral switch points were bounded by participants’ verbal count ranges; their representations of exact cardinalities were limited to the number words they knew. Beyond that range, they resorted to numerical approximation. These results resolve competing accounts of previous findings and provide unambiguous evidence that large exact number concepts are enabled by language.

show abstract

Conceptual Underpinnings and Methodology

Winters

Nathan

2020

Cognitive Linguistics for Linguists

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conceptualizing Time in Terms of Space: Experimental Evidence

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

On the path of time: temporal motion in typological perspective

On the path of time: temporal motion in typological perspective

Exact Number Concepts Are Limited to the Verbal Count Range

Conceptual Underpinnings and Methodology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About