Temporal semantics, e.g. "last time"

[TheCommissar]

(Tried to search, not sure how to get results.)

I want to try "generating" a proto-language from some primitive idioms, and I want those idioms to be derived from the cultural ontology of the speakers. More specifically, I'm wondering how temporal semantics get affected by cosmological views. I've heard that there are peoples who view time as progressing away from, but in front of the speaker, and thus refer to past events as being "before" them, but also that this might be sketchy research.

A couple ideas that come to mind for building a conlang are representing time as a string of beads that are discrete events, or as a river (that "it is futile to swim against," or other fun metaphors). Do you guys have any fun real-world examples or required reading on the subject? For example, how do different languages express "last time that happened?" Thanks in advance.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

I believe Chinese (Mandarin?) expresses time like a river going downstream and thus up is the past and the future is down.

My own conlang Vrkhazhian expresses time like the growth of a plant and thus the past is a seed below ground and the future is the budding fruit.

[M Mira]

I believe Chinese (Mandarin?) expresses time like a river going downstream and thus up is the past and the future is down.

I can't remember such expressions in Mandarin, Min Nan, nor Yue, perhaps it's a specific idiom I can't recall at the moment?

In any case, we use terms of or terms deriving from "in front of" to express "before", "behind" to express "after", similar to how English does it.

[Ser]

He's referring to the use of 上 'above' to say "last" (as in 上次 'last time', 上星期五 'last Friday', etc.) and 下 'down' to say "next".

[M Mira]

He's referring to the use of 上 'above' to say "last" (as in 上次 'last time', 上星期五 'last Friday', etc.) and 下 'down' to say "next".

Oh, yeah, that's correct. Didn't think of it immediately

[zompist]

In Kuuk Thaayorre, time runs from east to west.

[So Haleza Grise]

In Kuuk Thaayorre, time runs from east to west.

Interesting! I didn't know about this aspect of it, though I suppose it makes more sense when you consider that instead of "left" and "right" everyone is oriented with an absolute frame of reference (e.g. north, south, east, west) and speakers have an unerring ability to determine their position in relation to it.

[KathTheDragon]

In Kuuk Thaayorre, time runs from east to west.

That makes perfect sense, given that the sun is the prototypical marker of the passage of time, which travels from east to west.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

In Kuuk Thaayorre, time runs from east to west.

That makes perfect sense, given that the sun is the prototypical marker of the passage of time, which travels from east to west.

In my conlang, I use that for tomorrow and yesterday...

[Magb]

I recall some talk about this in Metaphors We Live By, so I'd recommend reading that.

Here are some interesting examples of temporal metaphors in English from some Japanese university page (probably originally from somewhere else, but this is the first thing I found). Time is...

• ...a changer
• ...a container
• ...a landscape
• ...a pursuer
• ...a resource
• ...money
• ...moving toward you

[linguoboy]

I believe Chinese (Mandarin?) expresses time like a river going downstream and thus up is the past and the future is down.

I never considered a river analogy. Instead, I imagined time as floating upwards, like fireflies or sky lanterns. Still took me a while to internalise the metaphor to the point where I didn't have to think about it before saying "next week" or "last time".

[2+3 clusivity]

I think there's a language in south America -- Aymara? -- where time metaphors orient the past as "in front" and the future as "behind" the origo. Perhaps a good analogy is rowing into the unknown while seeing the visible past.

[Salmoneus]

I think there's a language in south America -- Aymara? -- where time metaphors orient the past as "in front" and the future as "behind" the origo. Perhaps a good analogy is rowing into the unknown while seeing the visible past.

As has been alluded to, this is also the case with English. Or at least it used to be.

Hence the past comes before (i.e. in front of) us and the futures comes after (i.e. behind us). Think 'fore' and 'aft' of a ship!

Of course, that's mostly reversed itself over time, so that now people talk about putting the past behind us and going forward into the future.

[gmalivuk]

I find it interesting in English is that "before" and "behind" still have opposite meanings spatially, despite having become synonymous in some temporal expressions.

It's further complicated by journey-type metaphors (which include a subset of river-type metaphors), where "ahead of schedule" means something will happen earlier and "behind schedule" means it will happen later, while at the same time the future is ahead of us and the past is behind us.

I would guess (without much concrete evidence) that most languages with front and back metaphors for time are somewhat inconsistent, precisely because we can see in the same direction we're going spatially, but can only "see" in the opposite direction we're going temporally, so both analogies can lend themselves to equally intuitive metaphors, depending on the context.