Part of
Time Representations in the Perspective of Human CreativityEdited by Anna Piata, Adriana Gordejuela and Daniel Alcaraz Carrión
[Human Cognitive Processing 75] 2022
► pp. 41–60
Edited by Anna Piata, Adriana Gordejuela and Daniel Alcaraz Carrión
[Human Cognitive Processing 75] 2022
► pp. 41–60
Chapter 2Time moves more often in poetry
A comparative corpus study
It is assumed that humans use spatial concepts to think and speak about time. In this chapter we analyze the spatialization of time in five different literary and non-literary corpora by looking at the frequency with which time units (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and centuries) appear as the subject of a motion verb. The results reveal that there is a tendency to spatialize time more often in literature – especially in lyric poetry – than in other non-literary linguistic contexts. This supports the idea that meaning construction cannot be reduced to a direct transfer-based model, but rather requires an elaborate network of conceptual integration that opportunistically – and creatively – adjusts mappings and integrations to goals.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.An indicator of cognitive differences in time spatialization
- 3.Measuring the frequency of time-unit-as-motion-verb-subject
- 4.Results
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
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References -
Appendix
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