Moving-Time and Moving-Ego Metaphors from a Translational and a Contrastive-Linguistic Perspective

Mario Brdar; Rita Brdar-Szabó

doi:10.1515/rela-2017-0012

Authors

Mario Brdar University of Osijek
Rita Brdar-Szabó ELTE, Budapest

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/rela-2017-0012

Keywords:

conceptual metaphor, moving time, moving ego, fictive motion, translation, contrastive linguistics

Abstract

This article is concerned with some cross-linguistic asymmetries in the use of two types of time metaphors, the Moving-Time and the Moving-Ego metaphor. The latter metaphor appears to be far less well-entrenched in languages such as Croatian or Hungarian, i.e. some of its lexicalizations are less natural than their alternatives based on the Moving-Time metaphor, while some others are, unlike their English models, downright unacceptable. It is argued that some of the differences can be related to the status of the fictive motion construction and some restrictions on the choice of verbs in that construction.

References

Ahrens, Kathleen and Alicia L. T. Say. 1999. Mapping Image-schemes and Translating Metaphors. In Proceedings of 13th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 1–8. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
Google Scholar

Boroditsky, Lera 2000. Metaphoric Structuring: Understanding Time Through Spatial Metaphors. Cognition, 75, 1–28.
Google Scholar

Boroditsky, Lera and Michael Ramscar. 2002. The Roles of Body and Mind in Abstract Thought. Psychological Science 13(2). 185–189.
Google Scholar

Clark, Herbert H. 1973. Space, Time, Semantics and the Child. In Timothy E. Moore (ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, 27–64. New York.: Academic Press.
Google Scholar

Duffy, Sarah E., and Michele I. Feist. 2014. Individual Differences in the Interpretation of Ambiguous statements about time. Cognitive Linguistics 25 (1). 29–54.
Google Scholar

Evans, Vyvyan. 2003. The Structure of Time: Language, Meaning and Temporal Cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Evans, Vyvyan. 2013. Language and Time: A Cognitive Linguistics Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Gentner, Dedre. 2001. Spatial Metaphors in Temporal Reasoning. In Merideth Gattis (ed.), Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, 203–222. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Google Scholar

Gentner, Dedre, Mutsumi Imai and Lera Boroditsky. 2002. As Time Goes By: Evidence for Two Systems in Processing Space → Time Metaphors. Language and Cognitive Processes 17. 537–565
Google Scholar

Grady, Joseph E. 1997a. THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS revisited. Cognitive Linguistics 8. 267–290.
Google Scholar

Grady, Joseph E. 1997b. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. Dept. of Linguistics, U.C. Berkeley: PhD Dissertation.
Google Scholar

Huang, Hsin-mei May and Shelley Ching-yu Hsieh. 2007. Time-moving Metaphors and Ego-Moving Metaphors: Which is Better Comprehended by Taiwanese? The 21st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Computation, Seoul National University. November 1–3, 173–181.
Google Scholar

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1991. Contrasting Languages: The Scope of Contrastive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Google Scholar

Lakoff, George 1993. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In Andrew Ortony, (ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed.), 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Lakoff, George 1993. The Internal Structure of the Self. In Ulric Neisser and David A. Jopling (eds.), The Conceptual Self in Context, Culture, Experience and Self Understanding, 92–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenges to Western Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar

Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara. 1987. Conceptual Structure, Linguistic Meaning, and Verbal Interaction. Łódź: Łódź University Press.
Google Scholar

Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara. 2010. Re-conceptualization and the Emergence of Discourse Meaning as a Theory of Translation. In Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Marcel Thelen, (eds.). Meaning in Translation, 105–147. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Ljubešić, Nikola and Filip Klubička. 2014. {bs,hr,sr}WaC – web corpora of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Proceedings of the 9th Web as Corpus Workshop (WaC-9), 29-35. Gothenburg, Sweden. (Available online at http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-0405 accessed on September 9, 2016).
Google Scholar

Mandelblit, Nili. 1995. The Cognitive View of Metaphor and Its Implications for Translation Theory. In Marcel Thelen and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, (eds.), Translation and Meaning, Part 3, 483–495. Maastricht: Universitaire Press.
Google Scholar

Margolies, Skye Ochsner and L. Elizabeth Crawford. 2008. EVENT VALANCE and Spatial Metaphors of Time. Cognition and Emotion 22. 1401–1414.
Google Scholar

Matlock, Teenie, Michael Ramscar and Lera Boroditsky. 2005. On the Experiential Link Between Spatial and Temporal Language. Cognitive Science 29. 655–664.
Google Scholar

Matsumoto, Yo. 1996. Subjective Motion and English and Japanese Verbs. Cognitive Linguistics 7. 183–226.
Google Scholar

McGlone, Matthew S. and Jennifer L. Harding. 1998. Back (or Forward?) to the Future: The Role of Perspective in Temporal Language Comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 24(5). 1211−1223.
Google Scholar

Milić, Goran. 2008. Metaforički jezični izrazi tipa ‘ljudsko biće je životinja’ u engleskom i hrvatskom jeziku. MA thesis, University of Zagreb.
Google Scholar

Moore, Kevin Ezra. 2013. Frames and the Experiential Basis of the Moving Time Metaphor. In Mirjam Fried and Kiki Nikiforidou (eds.), Advances in Frame Semantics, 85−108. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Moore, Kevin Ezra. 2014. The Spatial Language of Time: Metaphor, Metonymy, and Frames of Reference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Neagu, Mariana. 2008. Metaphorical Thought in Culture: the Issue of Time in Romanian. In Michaela Praisler and Gabriela I. Colipcă (eds.), Culture, Subculture, Counterculture, 137−155. Galaţi: Editura Europlus.
Google Scholar

Núñez, Rafael E. and Eve Sweetser. 2006. With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence from Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time. Cognitive Science 30. 401–450.
Google Scholar

Radden, Günter. 2003. The Metaphor TIME AS SPACE Across Languages. Zeitschrift für interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 8, 226–239.
Google Scholar

Radden, Günter. 2011. Spatial Time in the West and the East. In Mario Brdar et al. (eds.), Space and Time in Language, 1–40. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Richmond, Jill, J., Clare J. Wilson and Jorg Zinken. 2012. A Feeling for the Future: How Does Agency in Time Metaphors Relate to Feelings? European Journal of Social Psychology 42(7). 813–823.
Google Scholar

Schmidt, Goran and Mario Brdar. 2012. Variation in the Linguistic Expression of the Conceptual Metaphor LIFE IS A (GAMBLING) GAME. In Mario Brdar, Ida Raffaeli and Milena Žic Fuchs (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics Between Universality and Variation, 271–292. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Google Scholar

Schmidt, Goran and Marija Omazić. 2011. Time Metaphors in English and Croatian: A Corpus-Based Study. In Mario Brdar et al. (eds.), Space and Time in Language, 237–246. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Sinha, Chris. et al. 2011. When Time Is Not Space: The Social and Linguistic Construction of Time Intervals and Temporal Event Relations in an Amazonian Culture. Language and Cognition 3. 137–169.
Google Scholar

Suzuki, Kohei. 2015. Distributions of Temporal Metaphors in Japanese. US-China Foreign Language 13(2). 101–108.
Google Scholar

Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja. 2002. Metaphoric Expressions in Translation Processes. Across Languages and Cultures 3. 101–116.
Google Scholar

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1978. On the Expression of Spatio-Temporal Relations in Language. In Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles A. Ferguson and Edith A. Moravcsik, (eds.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. 3, 369–400. Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.
Google Scholar