[Lingtyp] Query: Metaphors of Time and etymology

[Kulikov, L.]

Dear Juergen,
Thanks for your suggestions and references. Of course, this spatial representation of time is a well-known phenomenon, repeatedly noted in the literature; moving may certainly be related (at least indirectly) to the metaphor of Time as a (flowing) river. 
But I am particularly interested in a more specific thing, the etymology (inner structure) of the words for time which is directly based on the river/flow-metaphor. 
Thanks again,
All the best,
Leonid 

________________________________________
From: Bohnemeyer, Juergen [jb77 at buffalo.edu]
Sent: 25 January 2020 16:18
To: Kulikov, L.
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org; kulikovli at googlemail.com
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Query: Metaphors of Time and etymology

Dear Leonid — I wonder whether what you are thinking of when you refer to ‘time as a river’ are the so-called ‘moving-time’ and ‘moving-ego’ metaphors, which were first identified as such in the modern literature by Clark (1973). But these are not to my knowledge used to express the concept of time itself, but rather temporal relations, or relations of temporal order.

We treat events either as passing us by in a certain order (moving time) or as us passing them by in a certain order (moving ego). This motion analogy allows us to apply spatial relators otherwise used in the motion domain to describe temporal order. Thus we might say that the future is ‘ahead of’ us or, in other cultures, ‘behind’ us. Temporal relators that are not used for static spatial relations, such as _before_ and _after_, still clearly buy into this motion frame.

In other words, what we have there is a systematic domain mapping from space via motion to temporal order. This domain mapping constitutes a family of metaphors in the sense of Lakoff & Johnson (1980), but also a Fillmorian frame - a conceptualization strategy for a particular cognitive domain, in this case, that of temporal order.

In contrast, as far as words for ‘time’ and ‘space’ themselves are concerned, these are abstract domains, and it seems that most languages make do without lexicalizing autochthonous labels for such top-level domains.

Of course, nothing I’m aware of prevents languages from deriving a lexical label for the abstract concept of ‘time’ from the ‘moving-time’ or ‘moving-ego’ metaphors. And I agree that it would be interesting to see whether or not that happens. I’m just pointing out that these metaphors have been invoked to describe polysemies and etymologies in a different, though related, area of the temporal domain.

Best — Juergen

Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York, NY: Academic Press. 27–63.
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

> On Jan 25, 2020, at 7:16 AM, Kulikov, L. <L.Kulikov at hum.leidenuniv.nl> wrote:
>
> From: Kulikov, L.
> Sent: 24 January 2020 22:54
> To: lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> Cc: kulikovli at googlemail.com
> Subject: Query: Metaphors of Time and etymology
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> It is well-known that the concept of Time is linguistically connected with a plethora of metaphors that help to accommodate the notions related to Time within the human mind. In particular, there are two well-known universal metaphors for Time: Time as rotation (wheel, revolving etc.) and Time as flow(ing) (river etc.).
>
> The former metaphor underlies the etymology of the words for Time in many languages, including Indo-European. Cf., for instance:
> 1) Slavic (Old Church Slavonic) vrěmę (with cognates), going back to *vert-men- ‘turning, rotation’; and
> 2) (Vedic) Sanskrit kāla- ‘time’ derived from the Indic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European root *kwel- ‘move (around), revolve, rotate’ (cf. words for ‘wheel’ in several Indo-European languages, such as Greek kyklos, Slavic kolo- etc., Germanic (Eng.) wheel etc., all derived from the reflexes of the same root).
>
> However, I was unable to find similar examples for the latter metaphor – that of river/flow. Can anyone provide examples from any language, illustrating this metaphor, i.e. word for Time etymologizable as ‘river’, ‘flow’, ‘stream’ etc.?
> Many thanks,
>
> Leonid Kulikov
> Ghent University, Linguistics Dept.
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Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
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University at Buffalo

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