Cognitive Semantics : Meaning and Cognition

Notes
SPACE AND TIME 149
1. In talking about sign languages, I distinguish between location and space such that
location (or locative) is a semantic notion, while space denotes an expressive means of
sign languages.
2. An example such as
(i) We’re coming up on Christmas. (from Lakoff 1993: 218)
demonstrates the use of come to denote someone moving in time, but with ‘come’ used of
‘later’ in time in apparent contrast to both (3a) and (4a). The point is, however, that in (3a)
the event is seen from the point of view of the time when the door has been closed, in (i)
the event is seen from the point of view of Christmas. In both cases the ‘coming’ is a past
event in relation to the moment of the point of view, i.e. both demonstrate the conceptualization
of time as stationary with someone moving along a path.
3. Later in the article, Traugott uses Comrie’s (1976: 1-2) definition of tense, which differs
significantly from her first definition: “Tense relates the time of the situation referred to to
some other time, usually the moment of speaking.” (Traugott 1978: 374 - emphasis added).
4. The transcriptions of signed examples in this chapter are very simplified. An English
word in capital letters is a gloss for a manual sign. DET, the determiner, stands for a
pointing gesture that is part of a nominal, while PRON is a pointing gesture that functions
as a pronoun. If a sign is modified, the modification is described by one or more words in
small letters initiated by +: +deictic-tl-before means that the sign is modified for a locus
indicating a moment in time earlier than the reference point. In the transcriptions, / stands
for a boundary marked non-manually or manually by lengthening of the sign preceding
the boundary or by lowering of the hands or the like.
5. The overwhelming majority of temporal expressions using space in Danish Sign Language
are static. One exception is an expression with a verb of motion modified for the
deictic time line to denote the sudden and unexpected occurrence of an event (somewhat
like Event X arrived suddenly and unexpectedly).
References
Benveniste, E.
1974 Le langage et l’expérience humaine. E. Benveniste: Problèmes de linguistique
générale II. Gallimard, 67-78.
Brennan, M.
1983 “Marking time in British Sign Language”. Language in Sign: An International
Perspective on Sign Language ed. by J. Kyle & B. Woll, 10-31.
London: Croom Helm.
Bybee, J., Perkins, R. and Pagliuca, W.
1994 The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages
of the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.