Description
Book SynopsisUsing linguistic and conceptual resources to fix events in time is one of the most complex computational feats that humans perform. In the first book-length taxonomy of temporal frames of reference, Vyvyan Evans provides an overview of the role of space in structuring human representations of time.
Trade Review'Time is at once familiar and mysterious. Its status in the physical universe may be uncertain and contested, cultural conceptions of it may vary dramatically, but time is fundamental to all human experience. Vyvyan Evans furnishes linguists and other researchers with important new tools for thought about this fascinating domain.' Chris Sinha, Lund University, Sweden
'Evans' volume [offers] a multifaceted approach that will meet the interests of various disciplines such as semantics, psycholinguistics, metaphor theory, linguistic relativity, metaphysics and conceptualization of time, anthropology, and philosophy of language.' Sonja Zeman, The Linguist List
'Vyvyan Evans's Language and Time is a product of this newly found confidence in the field of cognitive science. It is an important work that expands Evans's earlier studies dealing with lexical concepts for time (The Structure of Time, 2004) and his Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models, LCCM for short (How Words Mean, 2009), and an ambitious enterprise of applying his LCCM to a specific area of investigation, taking us into the complexities of the use of language and thought to place events in time, or temporal reference.' Anca M. Nemoianu, KronoScope
Table of ContentsPart I. Orientation: 1. Introduction; 2. Access semantics; 3. The nature of temporal reference; Part II. Temporal Frames of Reference: 4. Deictic temporal reference; 5. Sequential temporal reference; 6. Extrinsic temporal reference; 7. Time versus space; Part III. Meaning Construction and Temporal Reference: 8. Conceptual metaphors and lexical concepts; 9. Figurative meaning construction in LCCM theory; 10. Semantic affordances and temporal reference; 11. Universals and diversity in the cross-linguistic representation of time.
