Patterns in the conceptualisation of time
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C3P75
2025-12-04
55
Patterns in the conceptualisation of time
In this section, we address cross-linguistic patterns in the conceptualisation of time. In particular, we focus on how time is encoded in semantic structure. We will not address the grammatical encoding of time by tense systems, to which we will return in Part III of the book (see Chapter 18). Our discussion in this section is based on the 2004 book by Vyvyan Evans, The Structure of Time.
Unlike space, time is not a concrete or physical sensory experience. Moreover, unlike the human sensory-perceptual apparatus that is specialised for assessing spatial experience (among others, the visual system), we have no analogous apparatus specifically dedicated to the processing of temporal experience. Despite this, we are aware of the ‘passing’ of time. This awareness of time appears to be a wholly introspective or subjective experience. According to Evans (2004a), temporal experience can ultimately be related to the same perceptual mechanisms that process sensory experience. That is, perceptual processes are underpinned by temporal intervals, termed perceptual moments, which facilitate the integration of sensory experience into perceptual ‘windows’ or ‘time slots’. In other words, perception is a kind of ‘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 fractions of a second in duration to an outer limit of around three seconds.
Evidence for timing mechanisms comes from two sorts of sources. Brain activity can be measured by techniques such as the electroencephalogram (EEG), for instance. The brain produces electrical signals, which are measured by attaching electrodes to the scalp. These read signals and send them to a galvanometer, an instrument that measures small electrical currents. Such techniques allow researchers to observe changes in brain activity over split seconds of time. The brain rhythm assessed by an EEG is measured by the frequency of electrical pulses per second, and is produced on a galvanometer as a series of ‘waves’ with peaks and troughs (see Figure 3.14)
A second method for assessing timing mechanisms comes from exposing subjects to stimuli of certain kinds at particular points of brain activity. A well-known experiment of this kind involves exposing subjects to two flashing lights, and relies on the phenomena known as apparent simultaneity and apparent motion. If the lights are set to flash with less than 0.1–0.2 seconds between their respective flashes, the lights will be perceived as flashing simultaneously.
This is the phenomenon of apparent simultaneity. If the interval between the two flashing lights is increased slightly, the flashing appears to take place in rapid motion. This is the phenomenon of apparent motion. If the interval between flashes is increased slightly more, the flashing appears to be distinctly sequential. However, when lights are set to flash at an interval close to the transition between apparent simultaneity and apparent motion, and when the flashing is correlated with the brain’s own activity, experimenters found that what is perceived depends on when in the subject’s own brain rhythm the exposure to the flashing lights takes place.
In the visual cortex, the dominant rhythm, the alpha rhythm (named by Hans Berger, who pioneered the EEG technique between 1929 and 1935), has a frequency of around ten pulses per second. It was found that if the lights begin flashing when the alpha rhythm is at a peak, then the subject sees apparent motion. However, when the flashing begins when the alpha rhythm is in a trough, the subject perceives apparent simultaneity. Findings like this provide compelling evidence that it is neurological activity in the brain, innate ‘timing mechanisms’, which give rise to perceptual moments, and these are in large part responsible for what we perceive.
Evidence that such perceptual moments have an outer limit of around three seconds comes from diverse sources, including language. Language, like other human symbolic behaviours (notably music), appears to manifest rhythmic organisation. For instance, the literary scholar Fred Turner and the neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel, in a (1983) paper entitled The Neural Lyre, have shown that the fundamental unit of metered poetry, which they call the Line, can contain between four and twenty syllables, depending on the language. This is based on a survey of languages including Latin, Greek, English, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Ndembu (Zambia), Eipo (New Guinea), Spanish, Italian and Hungarian. Remarkably, however, despite the different numbers of syllables involved, Turner and Pöppel found that the time taken for recitation of the Line among these languages typically ranges from 2.5 to 3.5 seconds. This similarity in the duration of units of meter across such a diverse set of languages suggests that there is a common timing mechanism, or set of mechanisms, that is coordinating rhythmic behaviour.
The discussion so far indicates that, while time is not a physical entity that is objectively given, it is nevertheless a real experience. Our awareness of time emerges from the process of perceiving and from the properties of our perceptual apparatus. It is a consequence, ultimately, of the various ‘timing mechanisms’ in the brain that give rise to a range of perceptual moments, which in turn underpin perceptual processing. It follows that time enters into all human experience, since it is fundamental to the way in which perceptual processes operate.
One important consequence of this fact is that our subjective experience of time is not a single unitary phenomenon. Instead, it is comprised of a number of experiences that relate to our ability to assess duration, simultaneity and ‘points’ in time; our sense that sometimes time seems to proceed more slowly or more quickly than usual; our experience of ‘now’, and so on.
Temporal experience, as it is represented and encoded in language, exhibits two levels of organisation. The first level relates to lexical concepts. A lexical concept is the meaning that is represented by a lexical form or word (its sense, in traditional terms). Examples of temporal expressions from English include the words time, past, present and future, among others. The lexical concepts that underlie words of this kind can be organised in a number of ways at the conceptual level. For instance, the languages of the world appear to structure TIME in terms of MOTION, as we will see below. The second level of organisation relates to cognitive models for time. This is a level of organisation in which various lexical concepts are integrated, together with their patterns of conventional imagery. Evans (2004a) calls this process concept elaboration. For example, in the expression a long time, the lexical concept expressed by the word time relates to DURATION, while the imagery that elaborates the lexical concept relates to LENGTH, lexicalised or ‘put into words’ by long.
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