THE STRUCTURE OF TIME: new in paperback

[Vyv Evans]

********* JUST PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK **********

THE STRUCTURE OF TIME
Language, meaning and temporal cognition

by Vyvyan Evans
University of Sussex

Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company
www.benjamins.com
Paperback: EUR 36.00/USD 42.95
ISBN: 902722367X

Sample chapter and further details available from author's website:
www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/vyv/

One of the most enigmatic aspects of experience concerns time. Since 
pre-Socratic times scholars have speculated about the nature of time, 
asking questions such as: What is time? Where does it come from? Where does 
it go? The central proposal of 'The Structure of Time' is that time, at 
base, constitutes a phenomenologically real experience. Drawing on findings 
in psychology and neuroscience, and utilising the perspective of cognitive 
linguistics, this work argues that our experience of time may ultimately 
derive from perceptual processes, which in turn enable us to perceive 
events. As such, temporal experience is a pre-requisite for abilities such 
as event perception and comparison, rather than an abstraction based on 
such phenomena. The book represents an examination of the nature of 
temporal cognition, with two foci: (i) an investigation
into(pre-conceptual) temporal experience, and (ii) an analysis of temporal 
structure at the conceptual level (which derives from temporal experience).

Quotes:
"Time belongs to the bedrock of human cognition. Beginning before birth and 
remaining for the most part below the horizon of consciousness, temporal 
cognition is a mystery not easily penetrated. The Structure of Time is an 
indispensable investigation, rich in theory and examples, into the 
phenomenology and the linguistics of the way we think about time."
Mark Turner, Institute Professor, Case Western Reserve University

"With this work, Cognitive Linguistics finally turns its attention from 
Space to Time."
Jordan Zlatev, Lund University, Sweden

"This work is interesting, creative, thought provoking, and timely (no pun 
intended)."
Wallace Chafe, University of California at Santa Barbara

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
I. Orientation
1. The problem of time
2. The phenomenology of time
3. The elaboration of temporal concepts
4. The nature of meaning
5. The conceptual metaphor approach to time
6. A theory of word-meaning: Principled polysemy
II. Concepts for time
7. The Duration Sense
8. The Moment Sense
9. The Instance Sense
10.The Event Sense
11.The Matrix Sense
12.The Agentive Sense
13.The Measurement-system Sense
14.The Commodity Sense
15.The Present, Past and Future
III. Models for time
16. Time, motion and agency
17. Two complex cognitive models of temporality
18. A third complex model of temporality
19. Time in modern physics
20. The structure of time
Notes
References
Index

********* JUST PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK ************