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LANGUAGE 149 nia, and although the technical literature on tense as a facet of many different languages is voluminous, scholars of tense agree that tense is not well understood as a grammatical phenomenon. Robert Binnick begins his encyclopedic 1991 work, Time and the Verb, "It is no contradiction to say that we know a very great deal about tense, but understand it little. ... It has been difficult even to know how much we do understand it, for confusing as discussions of the tenses of various languages may be, the scholarly literature concerning tense in general is, if anything, even more confusing." It seems reasonably clear that any general explanation of tense finally accepted will look substantially different from what we have now. We explored in chapter 7 the basic human story of a person recognizing a story. In this general story, there is a recognizing agent who has a single spatial focus and a single spatial viewpoint. We saw that projecting the story of perception in space with spatial focus and spatial viewpoint onto the story of perception in time gives us an agent with a temporal focus and temporal viewpoint. Someone recognizing a story in time has, by means of this projection, a particular temporal focus and a particular temporal viewpoint. In spatial perception, there are alternative foci and viewpoints. In temporal perception, there are alternative temporal foci and temporal viewpoints. This structure of temporal foci and viewpoints is projected to create a rudimentary grammatical system of tense. The projection of certain relations between temporal focus and temporal viewpoint creates certain constructions of tense. In English, basically, the grammatical construction of present tense corresponds to the narrative category in which temporal focus and viewpoint are the same; the grammatical construction of past tense corresponds to the narrative category in which the focus precedes the viewpoint; the grammatical construction of future tense (or technically, of verb phrase constructions that we commonly say signify "future tense") corresponds to the narrative category in which the viewpoint precedes the focus. A relative tense such as we find in "I will have run" corresponds to a complex narrative structure in which viewpoint precedes focus, but the focus itself contains a viewpoint that is preceded by its own different focus. Technically, spaces A and C precede space B; C has the event of running; A has a speaker considering B; B has an agent identical to the speaker and the runner and who is considering space C. So A is a viewpoint on B as a focus and B is a viewpoint on C as a focus. Tense lets us express such a structure of temporal viewpoints and foci as "I will have run." Often we are told—or have reason to suspect, or assume from background knowledge—that the temporal viewpoint is identified with the actual moment of speaking, but this is an independent circumstance. Although it is the default circumstance, it is not fixed and does not have to be used. In story, the identifi-
150 THE LITERARY MIND cation is optional; it is therefore optional in tense. Linguists often regard an utterance in English that makes no use of this identification as a problem, an exception that requires special explanation. I offer a different view. In the parabolic view of tense, present tense arises as the counterpart of the narrative structure in which temporal focus and temporal viewpoint belong to the same space. Only in the default case does viewpoint also correspond to the moment of speaking. Cases that do not fit the default scenario are not problems or exceptions. Let us consider some examples. I will begin with examples that make the nonidentification of viewpoint and moment of speaking very obvious—they sound odd out of context, but people said them. In the first example, the setting is a veranda; an old man is sitting; his old wife conies out, and, after a pause, sits down beside him; the silence grows more nervous; at last, the old man says, "It was a warm night on the banks of the intercoastal waterway. He sat alone, until she finally appeared and sat beside him. She seemed distracted and unhappy. At last, she announced—" Here, the man telling the story gestures to his wife to announce whatever it is she has to announce; the man and woman in the story are the old man and old woman on the veranda. In this example, the past tense tells us that the focus lies behind the viewpoint. From context, we know that the focus is the moment of speaking. The viewpoint is not the moment of speaking. Instead, the moment of speaking precedes the viewpoint. Consider another lively real example with similar structure. A wife and husband are traveling in Greece; at night, they defend against mosquitos by covering the hotel window with netting; kounoupi is Greek for "mosquito." I am going to clean up, take a shower, lay down my naked body. What about the kounoupi netting? My husband took care of that while I was in the shower. The past tense tells us the focus precedes the viewpoint: The focus is the space in which the husband puts up the kounoupi netting; the viewpoint is sometime after the focus; but we know from context that the moment of speaking precedes the viewpoint (as well as the focus). Now consider idiomatic examples that have similar structure. Two travelers ask the train attendant to tell them the destinations of each of five trains that are sitting at platforms; the conductor tells them; the travelers think it over, and one of them asks, "That train, where did it go?" In this case, the focus precedes the viewpoint but we know from context that the moment of speaking precedes both of them. Later, one of the travelers can start to hop on the wrong train and the other can say, "Wait! That train went to Nice!" Consider also:
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THE LITERARY MIND
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THE LITERARY MIND MARK TURNER NEW Y
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PREFACE I F YOU ARE BROWSING this p
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T HE JOHN SIMON GUG
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CONTENTS 1 Bedtime with Shahrazad 3
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THE LITERARY MIND
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1 BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD T HERE WAS
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD 5 future, of
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD and projecti
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD other fictio
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD 11 daughter
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HUMAN MEANING 13 products of vision
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HUMAN MEANING 15 to the category pe
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HUMAN MEANING 17 out and picking so
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HUMAN MEANING 19 moves the object t
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HUMAN MEANING 21 movement when we r
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HUMAN MEANING 23 ries of connection
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HUMAN MEANING 25 ceptual primitives
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BODY ACTION 27 EVENTS ARE ACTIONS g
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BODY ACTION 29 In addition to "even
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BODY ACTION 31 so as to find such a
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BODY ACTION 33 different action-sto
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BODY ACTION 35 that change. We can
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BODY ACTION 37 cal. Usually, we con
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FIGURED TALES 39 projected onto the
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FIGURED TALES 41 ACTORS ARE MANIPUL
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FIGURED TALES 43 person, the hearer
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FIGURED TALES 45 that the eight sta
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FIGURED TALES 47 Stories of our int
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FIGURED TALES 49 hear / Time's wing
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FIGURED TALES 51 the nonspatial sto
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FIGURED TALES 53 led to another," "
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FIGURED TALES 55 literary thought b
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W E 5 CREATIVE BLENDS ... nor did A
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CREATIVE BLENDS 59 reinforced by th
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CREATIVE BLENDS 61 BLENDED SPACES I
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CREATIVE BLENDS 63 kind of badness.
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CREATIVE BLENDS 65 John is becoming
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CREATIVE BLENDS 67 from the target;
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CREATIVE BLENDS 69 inference of iro
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CREATIVE BLENDS 71 "barely maintain
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CREATIVE BLENDS 73 tral respect. Th
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CREATIVE BLENDS 75 their towns, and
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CREATIVE BLENDS 77 harvest. We can
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CREATIVE BLENDS 79 ing and harvest,
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CREATIVE BLENDS 81 the actor who ca
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CREATIVE BLENDS 83 and go, or shift
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6 MANY SPACES Nirad Das (an Indian
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MANY SPACES 87 manipulating the inp
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MANY SPACES 89 applied to many spec
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MANY SPACES 91 apply to any target
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MANY SPACES 93 of President Bill Cl
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MANY SPACES 95 However, a second po
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MANY SPACES 97 a tent to be staked
Page 110 and 111: MANY SPACES 99 jection of stories o
Page 112 and 113: MANY SPACES 101 die; and he shall r
Page 114 and 115: MANY SPACES 103 The two Kings marve
Page 116 and 117: MANY SPACES 105 result that x in a
Page 118 and 119: MANY SPACES 107 Let us look at a ca
Page 120 and 121: MANY SPACES 109 Invariance is a glo
Page 122 and 123: MANY SPACES 111 example, given that
Page 124 and 125: MANY SPACES 113 When we recognize w
Page 126 and 127: MANY SPACES 115 cists interested in
Page 128 and 129: SINGLE LIVES 117 Our sensory appara
Page 130 and 131: SINGLE LIVES 119 We saw above that
Page 132 and 133: SINGLE LIVES 121 dreamer experienci
Page 134 and 135: SINGLE LIVES 123 as something extra
Page 136 and 137: SINGLE LIVES 125 from a belief, "gr
Page 138 and 139: SINGLE LIVES 127 beg you to cease h
Page 140 and 141: SINGLE LIVES 129 without saying a w
Page 142 and 143: SINGLE LIVES 131 to much anyway, bu
Page 144 and 145: SINGLE LIVES 133 psychological view
Page 146 and 147: SINGLE LIVES 135 "Which story was i
Page 148 and 149: SINGLE LIVES 137 it to project that
Page 150 and 151: SINGLE LIVES 139 character. In the
Page 152 and 153: LANGUAGE 141 Pinker, and Paul Bloom
Page 154 and 155: LANGUAGE 143 "John pushes the ball
Page 156 and 157: LANGUAGE 145 The abstract story, in
Page 158 and 159: LANGUAGE 147 structural property of
Page 162 and 163: LANGUAGE 151 Which of these things
Page 164 and 165: LANGUAGE 153 explanations. For exam
Page 166 and 167: LANGUAGE 155 The projection of narr
Page 168 and 169: LANGUAGE 157 tions like Noun Phrase
Page 170 and 171: LANGUAGE 159 The cast of "character
Page 172 and 173: LANGUAGE 161 In its most simplistic
Page 174 and 175: LANGUAGE 163 and Paul Bloom have ar
Page 176 and 177: LANGUAGE 165 Chomsky's argument is
Page 178 and 179: LANGUAGE 167 to members of that com
Page 180 and 181: NOTES page 3, "There was once a wea
Page 182 and 183: NOTES 171 page 33, "I feel a hand":
Page 184 and 185: NOTES 173 page 67, "As we went to p
Page 186 and 187: NOTES 175 page 120, focus and viewp
Page 188 and 189: NOTES 177 page 161, "Indeed, althou
Page 190 and 191: INTRODUCTION TO IMAGE SCHEMAS FURTH
Page 192 and 193: FURTHER READING ON THE IMAGE SCHEMA
Page 194 and 195: A la recherche du temps perdu, 45,
Page 196 and 197: Gradient of spaces and projections,
Page 198: Talmy, Leonard, 29, 47-48, 161, 179
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