concepts cannot be directly perceived through senses. How do people represent abstract concepts in their minds? According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, people tend to rely on concrete experiences to understand abstract concepts. For instance, cognitive science has shown that time is a metaphorically constituted conception, understood relative to concepts like space. Across many languages, the “past” is associated with the “back” and the “future” is associated with the “front”. However, space-time mappings in people’s spoken metaphors are not always consistent (...) with the implicit mental metaphors they are using to conceptualize time in their minds, suggesting a dissociation between temporal language and temporal thought. Beyond the influences of language, the Temporal Focus Hypothesis proposes that people’s spatial conceptions of time are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. In general, people conceptualize the past as being in front to the extent that their culture is past-oriented, and the future as being in front to the extent that their culture is future-oriented. Recent lines of research have provided preliminary evidence that people’s implicit space-time mappings are malleable and likely result from multiple factors related to temporal focus, ranging from those relating to contextual features, such as cultural attitudes toward time, to those more tightly tied to the individual, such as age-related differences. By building upon and extending these findings, the overall aim of this thesis is to ascertain the generalizability of the Temporal Focus Hypothesis and further investigate the range of factors that may influence people’s spatializations of time, focusing specifically on previously unexplored within-cultural differences, political ideology, religion, real life experiences, pregnancy, temporal landmarks, circadian rhythms and chronotype, and personality. Together, these studies demonstrate that people’s implicit space-time mappings may vary according to their temporal focus, which can be explained by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. The findings of these studies also shed new light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis by extending the range of factors that may influence people’s conceptions of time, and reveal the malleability and flexibility of time representations. (shrink)

Expression of physical motion (e.g.,man runs by) shows systematic variability not only between language types (i.e., inter-typological) but also within a language type (i.e., intra-typological). In this study, we asked whether the patterns of variability extend to metaphorical motion events (e.g.,time runs by). Our analysis of randomly selected 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) event descriptions from written texts originally produced by German, Polish, and Spanish authors showed strong inter-typological differences in the expression of both event types. (...) German and Polish speakers differed from Spanish speakers in how they packaged manner and path components of a motion event; they also differed in how extensively they expressed each component in their lexicalization of motion. The strong inter-typological differences were accompanied by more modest intra-typological variability: Polish and German writers differed in their packaging and lexicalization of manner and path components of metaphorical—butnotphysical—motion events. Our results provide evidence for robust inter-typological differences evident in the expression of both physical and metaphorical motion, along with less robust intra-typological differences, largely evident in the expression of metaphorical motion. Our study thus highlights event type as an important factor in determining crosslinguistic variation in motion expression. (shrink)

This study analyzes the metaphoric and metonymic nature ofbaş/kafa‘head’ in Turkish idiomatic expressions from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The database for the study is composed of idioms containing the two head-denoting wordsbaşandkafa. Idioms and their definitions are analyzed in terms of their figurative uses of abstract concepts, and the conceptual metaphors and metonymies are identified. Findings are examined under five categories: head as the representative of the person, the seat of mental faculties, the locus of emotions, the sign of superiority/power, (...) and the sign of value. The study proposes a cultural model in which the image schemaswhole-part,containmentandverticalityplay a key role, and reveals cross-cultural similarities and differences in the conceptualization ofhead. The study also provides further support for the embodiment thesis, and underscores the impact of cultural processes in shaping the way the body is conceptualized. (shrink)

Metaphor plays a unique role in cognitive development by structuring abstract concepts and leading to conceptual change. Existing work suggests early emergence of metaphorical abilities, with five-year-olds understanding and explaining metaphors that involve cross-domain comparisons (e.g., SPACE to TIME). Yet relatively little is known about the factors that explain this developmental change. This study focuses on spatial metaphors for time, and asks whether cognitive and/or verbal factors best explain developmental changes in three- to six-year-old children's comprehension and explanation of metaphors. (...) The results show that children's grasp of the time concept—but not verbal ability—predicts their metaphor comprehension. Verbal ability, on the other hand, is a predictor of metaphor explanation, even after controlling for age. The results thus suggest that cognitive and verbal factors selectively predict children's emerging metaphorical abilities. (shrink)

The expression of physical motion (the spider crawls across the net) and metaphorical motion (the fear crawls across her heart) shows strong inter-typological differences between language types (German, an S-language vs. Spanish, a V-language) and more subtle intra-typological differences within a language type (German vs. Polish, both S-languages). However, we know relatively less about the extension of these patterns to translated texts. In this study, we focused on physical and metaphorical motion descriptions in written texts in original language and their (...) translations to a language that belongs to the same or a different typological group, to determine whether motion expression in translated texts shows the same patterns of inter-typological and intra-typological variability as it does in original texts. We investigated this question by extracting 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) descriptions from novels originally written in German, Polish, or Spanish and their translations to typologically different (i.e. inter-typological; German to Spanish, Spanish to German) or typologically similar (i.e. intra-typological; German to Polish, Polish to German) languages. Our results provided evidence for similar patterns of strong inter-typological and more subtle intra-typological variability in translations akin to those observed in original texts – with translated texts largely following the patterns of the target language in their expression of physical and metaphorical motion. Our results also highlighted specificity of event expression in a language as an important factor in the attainment of target language patterns in translated texts. (shrink)