Aymara's time metaphor reversed?

[Jeff Smith]

On 6/16/06, Andrew LaVelle <lavelle at unm.edu> wrote:
> and in some languages all three are the same (e.g., French:
> "le temps" = time, tense, weather).

Is this really meaningful? This is just a single lexical fact taken in
isolation that doesn't speak for usage at all. We say "température"
for weather at least as much, if not more. In new grammatical
textbooks we specifically speak of tense as "temps verbal", because
the ambiguity with "temps" is pedagogically bothersome and
impractical, as the temporal value of these tenses does not always
follow their labels. I believe that only tradition keeps us from using
new terms here. I think it is irrelevant (and contingent) that,
etymologically, French doesn't have three different roots for three
concepts that we differenciate clearly by other means anyway.

Regards,
Jean-François Smith
Québec, Canada