culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

METAPHORICAL THOUGHT IN CULTURE:
THE ISSUE OF TIME IN ROMANIAN
The topological elements of the motion schema SOURCE, PATH and GOAL
and possibly DIRECTION are directly mapped on to the structure of time. As
Fillmore (1997: 52) rightly shows, there are analogies between time extent
expressions and the source/goal distance notions associated with movements in
space, and in many cases similar syntax is called for: He stayed there from
Monday to Friday and He travelled from Chicago to Pittsburgh. Fillmore further
argues that in the temporal movement case there is nothing that corresponds to
the notion PATH 5 which is proposed for characterizing movement in space.
There is only one route between two time points: one cannot go from 1970 to
1971 by passing through 1930.
It is generally agreed that the abstract target domain of TIME is understood
in terms of the source domains of SPACE and MOTION. Understanding concepts
(time included) implies understanding the correspondences existing between the
source and target domains 6 .
Space and motion are the metaphorical source domains (B) that are
mapped onto the target domain of time (A) and that establish the structural
framework of time:
Times are things
The passing of time is motion
The Present is The Location of the Observer
The Future is The Space in Front of the Observer
The Past is The Space Behind the Observer
One thing is moving, the other is stationary
The stationary thing is in the deictic center
These mappings are the knowledge needed to understand the two domains
that are being compared and hence to understand the metaphor. Without this
knowledge, it is clear that the comprehension of conceptual metaphors will not
occur (Kövecses 2002: 6).
Time may move non-deictically, as in Time marches on or deictically, as
in Christmas is coming up on us and We passed the deadline. Evans (2004: 261)
uses the term ‘deictic motion’ in the sense of motion which presupposes a
particular deictic centre with respect to which motion occurs. Thus, deictic
motion can be the motion of an object towards an experiencer, or the
experiencer’s motion towards a particular location. Deictic motion is expressed
by verbs such as come, arrive, approach, get closer, move up on, etc.
Talmy (2000) analyzes a Motion event as consisting of an object, called
Figure, and its movement through a Path with respect to another reference
object, called Ground. It seems to be universally the case that a word that can be
used to talk about the deictic motion of visible objects (e.g. The dog is coming)
are extended to refer to the onset of events in time. This extension may go via
relatively clearly observable events (The rain is coming) to hardly observable
events (The rainy season is coming or Christmas is coming). What is interesting
about temporal motion is that only events nested in larger events can come, as
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