The more in front, the later: The role of positional terms in time metaphors

Shinohara, Kazuko; Pardeshi, Prashant

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.001

Cited by 53 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…An event F is then "in front of" event G if it will happen in G's future (as is the case for F 1 in relation to G 1 in Figure 1). While respective constructions may sound odd in English, they are reported for languages such as Hausa, where one would say "Tuesday is before Monday" (Hill, 1978; and see Dahl, 1995;Shinohara & Pardeshi, 2011 The intrinsic FoR locates F in reference to G on the basis of the orientation provided by G itself; it can thus be adopted only if G itself has a FRONT assigned to it (Figure 1b). The prototypical instances of such intrinsically oriented entities are human beings, but this kind of orientation can be generalized to other animates and even to objects such as cars, computers, or chairs.…”

Section: Temporal Frames Of Referencementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

Rothe-Wulf

Beller

Bender

2015

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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A task like "moving a meeting forward" reveals the ambiguity inherent in temporal references. That speakers of U.S. English do not agree on how to solve it is well established: Roughly one half moves the meeting futurewards, the other half pastwards. But the extent to which individual speakers, rather than groups of speakers, consider such phrases as ambiguous has not been scrutinized. Does the split in readings result from a lack of intraindividual consistency or from a lack of interindividual consensus? And how specific is U.S. English in this regard when compared to other closely related Germanic languages? Based on a taxonomy of spatiotemporal frames of reference (FoRs), we conducted two experiments with speakers of Swedish, U.S. English, and German to assess individual preferences for temporal FoRs, intra- and cross-linguistic variability, consistency and long-term stability of these preferences, and possible effects of priming a spatial FoR. The data reveal cross-linguistic differences, both in terms of which temporal FoRs speakers prefer (the absolute FoR in Sweden, the intrinsic FoR in German, and both of these in the US) and in terms of the extent to which these preferences are shared and stable (high consensus and consistency in Sweden and Germany, and low consensus and partial consistency in the US). Overall, no effect of spatial priming was observed; only speakers of U.S. English with a baseline preference for the absolute temporal FoR seemed to be susceptible to spatial priming. Thus, the assumption that temporal references are affected by spatial references is only weakly supported.

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Section: Temporal Frames Of Referencementioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

Rothe-Wulf

Beller

Bender

2015

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…The principles involved seem to be valid crosslinguistically (cf. Moore, 2014, Part 3;Shinohara & Pardeshi, 2011;Yu, 2012). I look forward to a continuing development of our understanding of how path semantics is relevant to temporal concepts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The two-Mover hypothesis and the significance of “direction of motion” in temporal metaphors

Moore

2014

RCL

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It is claimed that expressions that instantiate sequence is relative position on a path (e.g. Spring follows winter) are the only type of temporal expression in English in which two distinct entities metaphorically move. A possible motivation for why we do not find two Times-as-Movers "moving toward" the future may be that people are not disposed to tracking two "nows". It is further hypothesized that this could be a crosslinguistically common or universal tendency, and data relevant to the constraint are discussed for Japanese and Wolof (West Africa). This exercise documents and categorizes certain semantic relations (such as ahead/behind) that are relevant to the study of direction of motion in metaphors of time.

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“…3 Owing to this linguistic similarity, there are relevant studies on Japanese in which the use of metaphorical mapping to understand time is taken for granted (e.g. Iwasaki 2009;Shinohara and Pardeshi 2011). Also, with regard to Chinese, Yu (1998: Chapter 4) takes a strong stance by emphasising the indefinability of time, resorting to a spatial metaphor to make it definable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise of temporal expressions in the history of Japanese: A preliminary account

Yamaguchi

2013

Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association

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In cognitive linguistics, a widely accepted and highly influential approach to the notion of time is conceptual metaphor. This states that the abstract concept time should be understood in terms of a concrete concept such as space. This paper challenges this notion by proposing that time exhibits independent experience. Using diachronic data, the paper investigates how temporal expressions in Japanese have emerged that are also employed as spatial expressions, and demonstrates how they conform to theoretical standpoints that are postulated in synchronic studies. First, I refer to the insights of Fraisse (1963), who singles out from a psychological point of view two fundamental perspectives of time: succession and duration. Second, I provide 10 examples from the eighth century to the fourteenth century that comply with five aspects of psychological reality (succession, duration, causation, organization, and anticipation). Third, I evaluate Evans' (2004) cognitive complex models that champion temporal independence. The paper makes two claims. First, the rise of Japanese temporal expressions does not rely on external experience but on internal, that is, psychological perspectives. Second, the three attributes central to Evans' models (motion, agency, and sequence) were not absolutely fundamental when Japanese temporal expressions emerged. While this last point downgrades Evans' models, the paper tentatively suggests an alternative approach, namely that a diachronic development should embrace indexical, iconic, and symbolic evidence for the construction of linguistic signs.

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The more in front, the later: The role of positional terms in time metaphors

Cited by 53 publications

References 5 publications

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

The two-Mover hypothesis and the significance of “direction of motion” in temporal metaphors

The rise of temporal expressions in the history of Japanese: A preliminary account

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