Abstract
What factors influence our understanding of metaphoric statements about time? By examining the interpretation of one such statement – namely, Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward by two days – earlier research has demonstrated that people may draw on spatial perspectives, involving multiple spatially based temporal reference strategies, to interpret metaphoric statements about time (e.g. Boroditsky 2000; Kranjec 2006; McGlone and Harding 1998; Núñez et al. 2006). However, what is still missing is an understanding of the role of linguistic factors in the interpretation of temporal statements such as this one. In this paper, we examine the linguistic properties of this famous temporally ambiguous utterance, considered as an instantiation of a more schematic construction. In Experiment 1, we examine the roles of individual lexical items that are used in the utterance in order to better understand the interplay of lexical semantics and constructional meaning in the context of a metaphoric statement. Following up on prior suggestions in the literature, we ask whether the locus of the ambiguity is centred on the adverb, centred on the verb, or distributed across the utterance. The results suggest that the final interpretation results from an interplay of verb and adverb, suggesting a distributed temporal semantics analogous to the distributed semantics noted for the metaphoric source domain of space (Sinha and Kuteva 1995) and consistent with a constructional view of language (Goldberg 2003). In Experiment 2, we expand the linguistic factors under investigation to include voice and person. The findings suggest that grammatical person, but not grammatical voice, may also influence the interpretation of the Next Wednesday’s meeting metaphor. Taken together, the results of these two studies illuminate the interplay of lexical and constructional factors in the interpretation of temporal metaphors.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Ewa Dąbrowska, John Newman, the Associate Editor of Cognitive Linguistics and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of the article.
References
Boroditsky, Lera. 2000. Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition 75(1). 1–28.10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00073-6Search in Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera & Michael Ramscar. 2002. The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science 13(2). 185–188.10.1111/1467-9280.00434Search in Google Scholar
Brunyé, Tad T., Tali. Ditman, Caroline R. Mahoney, Jason S. Augustyn & Holly A. Taylor. 2009. When you and I share perspectives: Pronouns modulate perspective taking during narrative comprehension. Psychological Science 20, 27–32.10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02249.xSearch in Google Scholar
Cambridge Dictionaries Online. 2013. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ (accessed June 2013).Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1973. Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, 27–63. New York, NY: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-505850-6.50008-6Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2004–. BYU-BNC. (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (accessed June 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. http://corpus2.byu.edu/glowbe/ (accessed June 2013 and June 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Dennis, John L. & Arthur B. Markman. 2005. Are abstract concepts structured via more concrete concepts? In B. G. Bara L. Barsalou & M. Bucciarelli (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2467. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Search in Google Scholar
Duffy, Sarah E. & Michele I. Feist. 2014. Individual differences in the interpretation of ambiguous statements about time. Cognitive Linguistics 25(1). 29–54.10.1515/cog-2013-0030Search in Google Scholar
Duffy, Sarah E., Michele I. Feist & Steven McCarthy. 2014. Moving through time: The role of personality in three real life contexts. Cognitive Science 38(8). 1662–1674.10.1111/cogs.12124Search in Google Scholar
Elvevåg, Brita, Kim Helsen, Marc De Hert, Kim Sweers & Gert Storms. 2011. Metaphor interpretation and use: A window into semantics in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research 133(1–3). 205–211.10.1016/j.schres.2011.07.009Search in Google Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan. 2004. The structure of time: Language, meaning, and temporal cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/hcp.12Search in Google Scholar
Farmer, Thomas A., Jennifer B. Misyak & Morten H. Christiansen. 2012. Individual differences in sentence processing. In M. Spivey, M. Joannisse & K. McRae (eds.), Cambridge handbook of psycholinguistics, 353–364. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139029377.018Search in Google Scholar
Fried, Mirjam & Jan-Ola Östman. 2005. Construction Grammar and spoken language: The case of pragmatic particles. Journal of Pragmatics 37(11). 1752–1778.10.1016/j.pragma.2005.03.013Search in Google Scholar
Gentner, Dedre, Mutsumi Imai & Lera Boroditsky. 2002. As time goes by: Evidence for two systems in processing space time metaphors. Language and Cognitive Processes 17(5). 537–565.10.1080/01690960143000317Search in Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel. 1997. Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics 8(3). 183–206.10.1515/cogl.1997.8.3.183Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 7(5). 219–224.10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00080-9Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268511.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195111095.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198270126.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Kranjec, A. 2006. Extending spatial frames of reference to temporal concepts. In R. Sun & N. Miyake (eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 447–452. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Search in Google Scholar
Kranjec, Alexander & Laraine McDonough. 2011. The implicit and explicit embodiment of time. Journal of Pragmatics 43. 735–748.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.004Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 2nd edn., 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173865.013Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
MacDonald, Maryellen C. & Mark S. Seidenberg. 2006. Constraint satisfaction accounts of lexical and sentence comprehension. In M. Traxler & M. Gernsbacher (eds.), Handbook of psycholinguistics, 2nd edn., 581–611. New York, NY: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-012369374-7/50016-XSearch in Google Scholar
McElree, Brian & Johanna Nordlie. 1999. Literal and figurative interpretations are computed in parallel. Psychonomic Bulletin Review 6. 486–494.10.3758/BF03210839Search in Google Scholar
McGlone, Matthew S. & Jennifer L. Harding. 1998. Back (or forward?) to the future: The role of perspective in temporal language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 24. 1211–1223.10.1037/0278-7393.24.5.1211Search in Google Scholar
McTaggart, John. 1908. The unreality of time. Mind 17. 457–474.10.1093/mind/XVII.4.457Search in Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael, Benjamin Motz & Ursina Teuscher. 2006. Time after time: The psychological reality of the ego- and time-reference-point distinction in metaphorical construals of time. Metaphor and Symbol 21. 133–146.10.1207/s15327868ms2103_1Search in Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary: The Definitive Record of the English Language. 2007. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Princeton University. 2010. WordNet. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ (accessed July 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Restak, Richard. 2011. Empathy and other mysteries. American Scholar 80(1). 44–52.Search in Google Scholar
Richmond, Jill, J. Clare Wilson & Jörg Zinken. 2012. A feeling for the future: How does agency in time metaphors relate to feelings? European Journal of Social Psychology 42(7). 813–823.10.1002/ejsp.1906Search in Google Scholar
Sato, Manami & Benjamin K. Bergen. 2013. The case of the missing pronouns: Does mentally simulated perspective play a functional role in the comprehension of person? Cognition 127. 361–374.10.1016/j.cognition.2013.02.004Search in Google Scholar
Sinha, Chris & Tania Kuteva. 1995. Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 18. 167–199.10.1017/S0332586500000159Search in Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2). 209–243.10.1075/ijcl.8.2.03steSearch in Google Scholar
Trueswell, John & Michael Tanenhaus. 1994. Toward a lexicalist framework for constraint-based syntactic ambiguity resolution. In C. Clifton, L. Frazier and K. Rayner (eds.), Perspectives on sentence processing, 155–179. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Search in Google Scholar
Vallacher, Robin R. & Daniel M. Wegner. 1989. Levels of personal agency: Individual variation in action identification. Personality Processes and Individual Differences 57(4). 660–671.10.1037/0022-3514.57.4.660Search in Google Scholar
Widdowson, Henry. 2003. Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton