The Structure of Time
Language, meaning and temporal cognition
| University of Sussex
One of the most enigmatic aspects of experience concerns time. Since pre-Socratic times scholars have speculated about the nature of time, asking questions such as: What is time? Where does it come from? Where does it go? The central proposal of The Structure of Time is that time, at base, constitutes a phenomenologically real experience. Drawing on findings in psychology, neuroscience, and utilising the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this work argues that our experience of time may ultimately derive from perceptual processes, which in turn enable us to perceive events. As such, temporal experience is a pre-requisite for abilities such as event perception and comparison, rather than an abstraction based on such phenomena. The book represents an examination of the nature of temporal cognition, with two foci: (i) an investigation into (pre-conceptual) temporal experience, and (ii) an analysis of temporal structure at the conceptual level (which derives from temporal experience).
[Human Cognitive Processing, 12] 2004. x, 286 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements
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ix
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I. Orientation
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1. The problem of time
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3–11
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2. The phenomenology of time
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13–32
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3. The elaboration of temporal concepts
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33–37
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4. The nature of meaning
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39–56
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5. The conceptual metaphor approach to time
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57–77
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6. A theory of word-meaning: Principled polysemy
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79–104
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II. Concepts for time
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7. The Duration Sense
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107–121
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8. The Moment Sense
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123–130
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9. The Instance Sense
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131–134
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10. The Event Sense
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135–140
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11. The Matrix Sense
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141–157
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12. The Agentive Sense
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159–167
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13. The Measurement-system Sense
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169–176
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14. The Commodity Sense
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177–183
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15. The Present, Past and Future
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185–198
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III. Models for time
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16. Time, motion and agency
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201–210
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17. Two complex cognitive models of temporality
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211–226
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18. A third complex model of temporality
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227–236
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19. Time in modern physics
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237–249
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20. The structure of time
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251–254
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Notes
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255
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References
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269
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Index
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277
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“[...] thought provoking and inspiring. It is a valuable interdisciplinary source for insight in several domains, including lexical semantics, conceptual metaphor theory, and cognitive science in the area of time.”
Thora Tenbrink, University of Bremen, Germany, on Linguist List 15-2430 (2004)
“Time belongs to the bedrock of human cognition. Beginning before birth and remaining for the most part below the horizon of consciousness, temporal cognition is a mystery not easily penetrated. The Structure of Time is an indispensable investigation, rich in theory and examples, into the phenomenology and the linguistics of the way we think about time.”
Mark Turner, Institute Professor, Case Western Reserve University
“With this work, Cognitive Linguistics finally turns its attention from Space to Time.”
Jordan Zlatev, Lund University, Sweden
“This work is interesting, creative, thought-provoking, and timely (no pun intended)”
Wallace Chafe, University of California at Santa Barbara
“In general, the style of the book is very accessible, especially in view of the fact that so many different fields are touched upon. The conclusions at the end of each chapter additionally contribute to the reader's comprehension. The book is therefore accessible not only to linguistics and cognitive scientists but to researchers from any field interested in the phenomenon of time.”
Nadja Nesselhauf, Univeristy of Heidelberg, in Anglistik 16(1), 2005
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