Aymara's time metaphor reversed? Yahgan says....

[jess tauber]

A question arises for me about whether such oppositions as in 'push forward' and 'push back' depend on a larger framework against which they are interpreted.

In Yahgan TAM terms are split up into as 'space/time' subset, and a 'mass/energy' subset. For the former the language appears to prefer movement or position on the vertical dimension for aspect (utilizing, for instance, a plethora of posture verbs much expanded beyond simple sit, stand, lie to include singular, dual, and plural forms, position in the water, on the land, and in the air, etc.). The closer contact one makes with the substratum the more time out of the total involved is spent in the activity. English is similar in some ways- we are 'up to our neck' in work, buried, deeply immersed etc., having made our bed we must lie in it, and so on. Less and less contact means more and more freedom to pursue other things. Jumping/flying is also cessation of the contact, and of the activity.

As in many other languages tense in Yahgan often seems to be relatable to horizontal movement verbs, whose system is orthogonal to that of the vertically organized aspect system forms.

The larger mood system appears partially based on notions of force dynamics, as in Len Talmy's work. But just as space and time seem to be intimately related in the tense and aspect systems (with grammaticalization pushing spatial towards more temporal senses), so too does mood intertwine energy and mass (as force IS dependent on both).  In physics one also sees dependence on area of application (space) and for work we also include time.

While it is obvious that the gravitational field supplies a force/work context for the vertical dimension encoding aspectual notions, the same isn't true in any obvious way for the horizontal one. But people usually have homes, and are familiar with the 'near fetched' and less so with the 'far fetched'- and I'd guess that one is likely to suffer increasing fictive force the further afield one goes (just as one does the further from firm footing below one goes in the vertical dimension). Insecurity or homesickness- call it what you will. It is still possibly real enough psychologically for most people for most of the time. One is also much more likely to encounter challenges in the territories of others. Flux/fuzziness thus increases with distance both up and away.

How then can we fit evidentials in to the above systems? Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, let's first take a quick look on the other side of the the grammar/pragmatics divide- at ideophones. In languages where there are thousands of these forms, it is often true that each root has multiple applications across semantic and sensory domains. Motion patterns are the 'same' for sound, visual effects (whether plays of light, distributions of materials, etc.). One interesting major split seems to be 'actor moving through the world (gaits)' versus 'the world moving through the actor (masticatory/deglutitional motions). Thus wolfing down one's food without first chewing it can use the same ideophone root in meaning leaping forward in long bounds.  In both cases the relative motion is fleshy actor forward, world backward, either around him or through him. The difference comes when we think of the actor as unmoving in some absolute reference frame.

It may be that something similar is going on for grammaticalized terms. I've claimed elsewhere that ideophones are a sort of 'antigrammar' formally and functionally. Perhaps what one system does, the other does the opposite, which would be in keeping with this idea.

If tense forms are coming from opposite directions in terms of their sources in grammaticalization (out of aspect or larger mood (as in evidentials), how does this possibly relate to ideophones? The movement verbs (vertical aspect versus horizontal tense) can be viewed against those ideophones which refer to gaits and other motions in the external world- the motor half of reality. The difference between the grams and antigrams is that the former seem to encode our imposition of control/tractability beyond what we usually can control by right of birth, while the latter are 'about' loss of control where we 'should' have it. The near fetched and familar encroaching on the unfamiliar external, and vice versa.

Where movement is through us we have sensory appreciation- again control imposed on the external in the case of evidential grams, and control loss in the case of equivalent ideophones.

Movement is not necessarily permanent, of course- one can have stoppage, or potential energy within the larger context. Force dynamic modality probably finds a better home here than with the movement forms. And there are more 'adjectival' ideophones which express unusual or unexpected properties of referents than 'adverbial' ones do, often variance/mismatch from 'fit' for a particular occasion or role needing playing, or from expectations based on other experience.

It may be possible that NO gram (or antigram) lacks some tidbit of the other values in the space-time-energy-matter (STEM) system, though it puts most of its efforts into one or another (or more)- this might allow evolution from one part of the system to another as the focus changes with grammticalization.

Equations such as used by physicists can have their bits and pieces moved about. A/B = C/D is also AD = BC. In doing so we flip our vantage point. Could something like this also be going on with grammaticalization of tense terms? If space, time, energy and mass are not merely convenient fictions utilized by our minds then how do they interrelate? How will each impose an order or hierarchicalization, and how may they be transformed? I'm not saying this IS what we see in the time metaphors and their origins, but could it POSSIBLY be so?

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net