Cover not available
Part of
Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity
Edited by Anna Piata, Adriana Gordejuela and Daniel Alcaraz Carrión
[Human Cognitive Processing 75] 2022
► pp. 15–40

Chapter 1
A corpus-based look at time metaphors

 | University of Murcia
 | University of Murcia
Motion-based metaphors of time have been thoroughly discussed in the literature, but some aspects still remain underexplored. The present chapter addresses one of these areas, namely, the lexical richness of the motion verbs found in temporal expressions. We present the findings of a corpus study of motion expressions of time in television news. Using a large set of data, we show that motion verbs that are not conventionally associated with the expression of time, such as crawl and roll, are used alongside the more typical ones (e.g., come, approach). The results suggest that language users are in fact far more creative than it has been assumed so far, thus challenging what is typically perceived as an everyday metaphor of time.
Keywords: space-to-time mappings, motion, path-verbs, manner-of-motion verbs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1A first caveat: On the problems of deciding what a motion verb is
  • 2.Study: Time measurement units and motion verbs
    • 2.1Material and methods
      • 2.1.1Corpus
      • 2.1.2Procedure
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Path verbs and their temporal meanings
    • 3.2Manner verbs and their temporal meanings
      • 3.2.1Group A: Manner of motion verbs to indicate fast passage of time: Rush, hasten, blow, pop, race, drive, fly, swim, march, skip, roll, rush, sail, slide, slip, spin, revolve, stampede, zoom
      • 3.2.2Group B: Manner of motion verbs to indicate slow passage of time: Crawl, creep, drag, inch, limp, linger
      • 3.2.3Other manner-of-motion verbs
  • 3.A test of true creativity: The Week examples
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.75.01val
References (49)
References
Alverson, H. (1994). Semantics and experience: Universal metaphors of time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bender, A., & Beller, S. (2014). Mapping spatial frames of reference onto time: a review of theoretical accounts and empirical findings. Cognition, 132, 342–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R., & Slobin, D. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J., Enfield, N., Essegbey, J., Ibarretxe-Antunano, I., Kita, S., Lüpke, F. & Ameka, F. (2007). Principles of event segmentation: The case of motion events. Language, 83(3), 495–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, O., & McCormick, K. (2011). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, 118(1), 123–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boroditsky, L., & Gaby, A. (2010). Remembrances of times East: Absolute spatial representations of time in an Australian Aboriginal community. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1635–1639. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Callizo-Romero, C., Tutnjević, S., Pandza, M., Ouellet, M., Kranjec, A., Ilić, S., Gu, Y., Göksun, T., Chahboun, S., Casasanto, D., & Santiago, J. (2020). Temporal focus and time spatialization across cultures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 1247–1258. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cifuentes-Férez, P. (2008). Motion in English and Spanish: A perspective from cognitive linguistics, typology and psycholinguistics. PhD dissertation, University of Murcia, Spain.
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 28–63). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Crawl. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
. (n.d.). Creep. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
. (n.d.). Overtake. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
. (n.d.). Revolve. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
. (n.d.). Sail. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
. (n.d.). Strut. In [URL]. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from [URL]
Droit-Volet, S., & Meck, W. H. (2007). How emotions colour our perception of time. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 504–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, V. (2004). The structure of time. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Language and time: A cognitive linguistics approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feist, M. I., & Duffy, S. (2020). On the path of time: Temporal motion in typological perspective. Language and Cognition, 12(3), 444–467. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filipovic, L. (2011). Speaking and remembering in one or two languages: Bilingual vs. monolingual lexicalization and memory for motion events. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(4), 466–485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2006). Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hardie, A. (2012). CQPweb – combining power, flexibility and usability in a corpus analysis tool. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17(3), 380–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
(1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport, M. (1992). The lexical semantics of verbs of motion: the perspective from unaccusativity. In I. M. Roca (Ed.), Thematic structure: Its role in grammar (pp. 247–269). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Moore, K. (2006). Space-to-time mappings and temporal concepts. Cognitive Linguistics, 17, 199–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morimoto, Y. (2001). Los verbos de movimiento. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar
Núñez, R., & Cooperrider, K. (2013). The tangle of space and time in human cognition. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(5), 220–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez, R., Cooperrider, K., Doan, D., & Wassmann, J. (2012). Contours of time: Topographic construals of past, present, and future in the Yupno Valley of Papua New Guinea. Cognition, 124(1), 25–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez, R., & Sweetser, E. (2006). With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science, 30(3), 401–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş., & Slobin, D. (2003). Codability effects on the expression of manner of motion in Turkish and English. In S. Özsoy, D. Akar, M. Nakipoğlu-Demiralp, E. Erguvanlı-Taylan & A. Aksu-Koç (Eds.), Studies in Turkish linguistics (pp. 259–270). Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press.Google Scholar
Radden, G. (2003). The metaphor ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴀs sᴘᴀᴄᴇ across languages. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 8(2/3), 226–239.Google Scholar
“Revolve”. N.D. Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. [URL] Accessed 4 Dec 2020.
“Sail”. N.D. Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. [URL] Accessed 4 Dec 2020.
Scott, A. (1989). The vertical dimension and time in Mandarin. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 9, 295–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. (1996). Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani & M. A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning (pp. 195–233). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Kopecka, A., & Majid, A. (2014). Manners of human gait: A crosslinguistic event-naming study. Cognitive Linguistics, 25(4), 701–741. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snell-Hornby, M. (1983). Verb-descriptivity in German and English: A contrastive study in semantic fields. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Soroli, E., & Hickmann, M. (2011). Language and spatial representations in French and in English: Evidence from eye-movements. In G. Marotta, A. Lenci, L. Meini & F. Rovai (Eds.), Space in language (pp. 581–597). Pisa: Editrice Testi Scientifici.Google Scholar
Sullivan, K., & Bui, L. T. (2016). With the future coming up behind them: Evidence that time approaches from behind in Vietnamese. Cognitive Linguistics, 27(2), 205–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, E. (1995). Coalignment in metaphorical systems. Paper presented at the 4th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, UNM-Albuquerque.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. II: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C. (1978). On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language. In J. H. Greenberg, C. A. Ferguson & E. A. Moravcsik (Eds.), Universals of human language III (pp. 369–400). Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Uhrig, P. (2018). NewsScape and the Distributed Little Red Hen Lab – A digital infrastructure for the large-scale analysis of TV broadcasts. In A. J. Zwierlein, J. Petzold, K. Böhm & M. Decker (Eds.), Anglistentag 2017 in Regensburg: Proceedings. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English (pp. 99–114). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Google Scholar
Yu, N. (2012). The metaphorical orientation of time in Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1335–1354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar