Language, Culture & Cognition

Time

Learning Objectives

By the end of the lecture, you should be able to •  understand the conceptualization of TIME in terms

of two types of temporal experience; •  learn four lexical concepts of TIME; •  appreciate the universal and cross-linguistic

variation on the cognitive models for TIME; and •  substantiate our understanding of linguistic

universality and relativity of TIME through in-depth reading of Boroditsky (2001).

Conceptualization of Time

•  Vyvyan Evans (Bangor University): The Structure of Time

•  There is no analogous apparatus dedicated to the processing of temporal experience (unlike visual system responsible for assessing spatial experience).

•  Yet, human beings are aware of the ‘passing’ of time. This is an introspective/subjective experience.

•  Evans (2004): Temporal experience can ultimately be related to the same perceptual mechanisms that process sensory experience. –  Perceptual processes are underpinned by temporal

intervals, or perceptual moments, which facilitate the integration of sensory experience into perceptual ‘windows’.

–  Perception is a ‘windowing’ operation, which presents and updates our external environment.

– The updating occurs as a result of timing mechanisms which hold at all levels of neurological processing and range from a second to around three seconds in duration.

•  Temporal experience exhibits TWO levels of organization: 1)  Lexical concepts for time • This is the meaning (sense) that is represented by

a lexical form or word. • E.g., time, past, present and future

2)   Cognitive models for time • This is a level of organization in which various

lexical concepts are integrated, together with their patterns of conventional imagery. • Evans (2004a) calls this process concept

elaboration.

(1) Lexical concepts for TIME •  Primary lexical concepts – They relate to common aspects of human cognitive

processing à temporal universals a)   DURATION b)   MOMENT c)   EVENT d)   INSTANCE

•  Secondary lexical concepts –  Culture-specific lexical concepts

•  Secondary lexical concepts – Culture-specific lexical concepts

– E.g., the concept of TIME as a valuable commodity is only present in the languages of the industrialized world and absent in the languages of non-industrialized cultures.

•  Two lexical examples that demonstrate four primary lexical concepts for TIME – Time – Christmas

a)   DURATION

b)  MOMENT c)   EVENT d)   INSTANCE

(a) DURATION

•  Time drags when you have nothing to do. à protracted duration

•  Time flies when you’re having fun. à temporal compression

My first thought was, ‘Where did that car come from?’ Then I said to myself, ‘Hit the brakes.’. . .I saw her look at me through the open window, and turn the wheel, hand over hand, toward the right. I also [noticed] that the car was a brown Olds. I heard the screeching sound from my tires and knew . . . that we were going to hit . . . I wondered what my parents were going to say, if they would be mad, where my boyfriend was, and most of all, would it hurt . . . After it was over, I realized what a short time it was to think so many thoughts, but, while it was happening, there was more than enough time. It only took about ten or fifteen seconds for us to hit, but it certainly felt like ten or fifteen minutes. (Flaherty 1999: 52)

•  Protracted duration is caused by a heightened awareness of a particular stimulus array, either because the interval experienced is ‘empty’, as in a boring class, or because the interval is very ‘full’ due to a great deal being experienced in a short space of time. This is illustrated in the near-death experience involving a car crash.

•  Protracted duration: special effects in movies •  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvPzl5tiXAg

(b) Moment

•  Human beings have the ability to assess time in terms of discrete moments. – The time for a decision has come. – Now is the time to address irreversible environmental

decay.

•  Here, TIME is conceptualized not in terms of an interval, whose duration can be assessed, but instead as a discrete point.

(c) Event

•  Evans (2004a) suggests that events derive, at the perceptual level, from temporal processing, which binds particular occurrences into a temporally framed unity: a ‘window’ or ‘time slot’. – With the first contraction, the young woman knew her

time had come. – The man had every caution given him not a minute

before to be careful with the gun, but his time was come as his poor shipmates say and with that they console themselves. (British National Corpus)

•  In each of these examples a particular event, childbirth and death respectively, is lexicalized by time. This suggests that the conceptualization of an event is closely tied up with temporal experience.

(d) INSTANCE

•  This concept underlies the fact that temporal events can be enumerated, which entails that distinct events can be seen as instances or examples of the ‘same’ event. – With that 100m race the sprinter had improved for the

fourth time in the same season. •  Here, time refers not to four distinct moments, but to

a fourth instance of the ‘improvement’ event. This example provides linguistic evidence that separate temporal events can be related to one another and ‘counted’ as distinct instances of a single event type.

Christmas •  Protracted DURATION – Christmas seemed to drag this year.

•  Temporal compression – Christmas sped by this year.

•  MOMENT – Christmas has finally arrived/is here.

•  INSTANCE – This Christmas was better than last Christmas.

•  Christmas is a festival that takes place at the same time each year, traditionally on the 25th of December.

•  While the festival of Christmas is a cultural construct – deriving from the Christian tradition – the expression Christmas can be used in contexts that exhibit the same dimensions of temporal experience we described above for the expression time: dimensions that appear to derive from our cognitive abilities, and therefore from pre-linguistic experience of time.

Spatial Metaphors of Time

•  Lexical concepts for TIME are often elaborated is in terms of motion. – E.g., it is almost impossible to talk about time without

using words like approach, arrive, come, go, pass, etc.

•  CM: TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT. •  In Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and

English, lexical concepts for TIME are systematically structured in terms of motion.

•  Mandarin – 流逝的歲月不斷地沖淡著人們的記憶。

•  Japanese – Toki ga nagareru time NOM flows

•  Spanish – La Noche Buena viene muy pronto The night good come very soon Christmas Eve is coming very soon.

(2) Cognitive models for TIME

•  A cognitive model is a level of organization in which various lexical concepts are integrated, together with their patterns of conventional imagery.

•  Evans: three main cognitive models for TIME

a)   Moving time model

b)   Moving ego mode

c)   Temporal sequence model

Ego-based

Time-based

(a) Moving time model

•  In this model, there is an experiencer, who may be implicit or linguistically coded by expressions like I.

•  The experiencer is called the ego, whose location represents the experience of ‘now’.

•  In this model, the ego is static.

•  Temporal moments and events are conceptualized as objects in motion.

•  These objects move towards the ego from the future and then beyond the ego into the past.

•  It is by virtue of this motion that the passage of time is understood.

•  Many languages, including English, conceptualize the ego as facing the future with the past behind.

•  At least one language, Aymara, spoken in the Andean region of South America, conceptualizes the ego as facing the past, with the future behind.

English •  The passage of time is understood in terms of the

motion of a temporal entity towards the ego: – Christmas is getting closer.

– My favorite part of the piece is coming up. – The deadline has passed.

(b) Moving ego model

•  In this model, TIME is a landscape over which the ego moves, and time is understood by virtue of the motion of the ego across this landscape, towards specific temporal moments and events that are conceptualized as locations.

English •  We’re moving towards Christmas. •  We’re approaching my favorite part of the piece. •  She’s passed the deadline. •  We’ll have an answer within two weeks. •  The meetings were spread out over a month.

•  In these examples TIME is conceptualized as a stationary location or bounded region in space. It is through the motion of the ego that time’s passage is understood.

(c) Temporal sequence model

•  This model relates to the concepts EARLIER and LATER.

•  Unlike the previous two models, this one does not involve an ego.

•  Instead, a temporal event is understood relative to another earlier or later temporal event.

English •  Monday precedes Tuesday. •  Tuesday follows Monday.

•  In these examples, LATER follows EARLIER: the earlier event, Monday, is understood as being located in front of the later event, Tuesday.

PAST/FUTURE vs. EARLIER/LATER

a)   in the weeks ahead of us b)   That’s all behind us now •  PAST/FUTURE (time is conceptualized relative to

the speaker)

c)   in the following weeks d)   in the preceding weeks •  EARLIER/LATER (time is conceptualized relative

to some other event)

Ego-based

Time-based

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

Lera Boroditsky University of California, San Diego

For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.