Spatiotemporal Metaphor: Vertical and Horizontal Axis of Time

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2002

Temporal language is often couched in spatial metaphors. English has been claimed to have two space!time metaphoric systems: the ego-moving metaphor, wherein the observer's context progresses along the time-line towards the future, and the time-moving metaphor, wherein time is conceived of as a river or conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past. In three experiments, we investigated the psychological status of these metaphors by asking subjects to carry out temporal inferences stated in terms of spatial metaphors. In Experiment 1, we found that subjects were slowed in their processing when the assertions shifted from one spatial metaphoric system to the other. In Experiment 2, we determined that this cost of shifting could not be attributed to local lexical factors. In Experiment 3, we again found this metaphor consistency effect in a naturalistic version of the study in which we asked commonsense time questions of passengers at an airport. The results of the three studies provide converging evidence that people use spatial metaphors in temporal reasoning. Implications for the status of metaphoric systems are discussed.

In Farzad Sharifian (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, 2015

Space and time are frequently considered to be universal, transcultural domains of human language and thought, and the language of space, time, and motion has been intensively researched in recent decades. Space is widely viewed as the principal source domain for the linguistic and conceptual structuring, through metaphoric mapping, of time. At lexical and constructional levels, the spatial and temporal domains are closely related. In many languages, temporal meanings have been shown to be expressed by words and construction types whose primary meanings are analysed as being spatial. Typological studies have shown that lexical space-time mapping is indeed widespread (Haspelmath 1997), and constructional space-time mapping been analysed in languages as typologically and geographically disparate as English ((West Africa: Moore 2006).

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.

2009

Abstract The present study aimed to test whether the “Time is Space” conceptual metaphor is grounded on the sensori-motor experience of reading and writing. Two groups of participants differing in their directional reading/writing system (Spanish and Hebrew) carried out a time judgment task on auditorily presented words referring either to the past or the future.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences doi: 10.1111/nyas.12491, 2014

We propose an event-based account of the cognitive and linguistic representation of time and temporal relations. Human beings differ from non-human animals in entertaining and communicating elaborate detached (as opposed to cued) event representations and temporal relational schemas. We distinguish deictically based (D-time) from sequentially based (S-time) representations, identifying these with the philosophical categories of A-series and B-series time. On the basis of crosslinguistic data, we claim that all cultures employ both D-time and S-time representations. We outline a cognitive model of event structure, emphasizing that this does not entail an explicit, separate representation of a time dimension. We propose that the notion of an event-independent, metric “time as such” is not universal, but a cultural and historical construction based on cognitive technologies for measuring time intervals. We critically examine claims that time is universally conceptualized in terms of spatial metaphors, and hypothesize that systematic space-time metaphor is only found in languages and cultures that have constructed the notion of time as a separate dimension. We emphasize the importance of distinguishing what is universal from what is variable in cultural and linguistic representations of time, and speculate on the general implications of an event-based understanding of time.

2012

This literature review analyzes articles on the perception of space, motion and time across speakers of typologically different languages (L1s). The purpose of this analysis is to explore evidence of native language influence on speakers' perception and conceptualization of these cognitive domains. The analysis revealed that although languages may not encode all the cognitive aspects of space and motion, there is no difference among speakers with regard to the conceptualization and perception of these two domains. On the other hand, language-specific encodings of time seem to influence the speakers' perception of this domain, so it was concluded that language may affect abstract thought in general. Possible consequences for second language acquisition are discussed. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born-the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

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.

Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana, 2020

Conceptual metaphor theory postulates that interpreting metaphorical expressions requires mentally simulating the base sensory-motor experiences of the conceptual metaphor from which they are derived. Even though TIME IS SPACE is one of the most studied conceptual metaphors, the evidence about its embodied basis is scarce and equivocal. An experiment was carried out to test the thesis that interpreting EGO MOVING metaphorical expressions involves simulating the experience of moving forward towards a fixed destination. While participants in the experimental group read EGO MOVING metaphorical expressions after performing the sensory-motor activity that corresponded to the base domain, participants in the control group read those metaphorical expressions after performing an unrelated physical activity. No differences in reading times were found between the two conditions. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of previous research on the embodied perspective on meta...

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.

2004

Abstract In this paper we present the results of a preliminary survey to investigate the range of temporal metaphors in mundane discourse in English. We concentrate in particular on temporal metaphors that involve space and movement, which we call 'spatio-kinetic'temporal metaphors. We present a sample of real text showing how, even in a short piece of discourse, a wide variety of temporal metaphors is used.