The relationship between space and time in language Essay

The relationship between space and time in language - Essay Example We suggest that there is no direct interdependency between these terms, because they are defined by exact contextual environments and are clearly differentiated from one another in the natural environments. On the basis of modern studies and studies on temporal and spatial representations of previous years, we have examined linguistic basis to prove the fact of a co-existence of spatial and temporal relationships. Moreover, considerations from cognitive science, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics are also relevant to further differentiation between spatial and temporal relationships. The spatial basis of temporal terms has been often supported by the majority of scientists and researchers (Cantor & Thomas, 2007; Clark, 1994; Levinson, 2003). This study opposes to the generally accepted methodological paradigm and it is claimed that there spatial/temporal terms chosen above are independent terms with complete semantics. Moreover, there is no need to investigate a temporal or spati al basis of these terms, because initially spatial domain is perceived as concrete and temporal domain is known as the abstract one. Therefore, we can suppose that â€Å"terms denoting space are concrete objects and the terms denoting time are abstract events† (Tenbrink, 2006). ... nt to investigate a possibility to identify definite limits between time and spatial relationships or it is relevant to talk about the existence and prevalence of spatiotemporal relationship. 2.0 Background Basing on the idea that human perception of time is related to space conceptualization is an unquestionable claim. It has been always underlined that time representation depends on space. In accordance with findings of psychological studies, it has been always claimed that it is natural of children to mix up spatial and temporal relationship (Clark, 1994). Clark (1994) was the first who claimed that â€Å"temporal language is based on spatial language and that English relational temporal prepositions are based on front and back† (Clark, 1994). Clark talked about â€Å"moving time† metaphor and â€Å"moving ego† metaphor and underlined that, for example, before is derived from in front of and after is derived from in back of, i.e. he correlates these two terms with â€Å"moving time† metaphor (Clark, 1994). Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that there is no one basic conceptual metaphor defining further metaphorical representations of a certain domain. A consistent basis of a metaphor has been often underlined by Lakoff and Johnson (1999). Therefore, it is necessary to underline that representations of concepts in metaphorical language is also possible outside this language, or in other words is possible in an independent manner. Still, there is a need to talk about the following peculiarities of metaphorical representations: metaphors are compatible with different domains though they do not have a scope covering different aspects of one domain and thus do not embrace the whole target concept. From another perspective, it is suggested by Habel & Eschenbach (1997)