On the path of time: temporal motion in typological perspective. (13th September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: FEIST, MICHELE I.; DUFFY, SARAH E.
• Is Part Of: Language and cognition. Volume 12:Number 3(2020)
• Page Start: 444
• Page End: 467
• Publication Date: 2020-09-13
• Subjects: Time, -- Space, -- Motion, -- Metaphor, -- Moving Time, -- Moving Ego, -- Path, -- Manner; Psycholinguistics -- Periodicals; 401.9
• DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2020.7
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1866-9808

Abstract

ABSTRACT: 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.