Abstract
In numerous languages, space provides a productive domain for the expression of time. This paper examines how time-to-space mapping is realized in Yucatec Maya. At the linguistic level, Yucatec Maya has numerous resources to express deictic time, whereas expression of sequential time is highly constrained. Specifically, in gesture, we do not find any metaphorical oriented timeline, but only an opposition between “current time” (mapped on the “here” space) and “remote time” (mapped on the “remote/distant space”). Additionally, past and future are not contrasted. Sequential or deictic time in language and gesture are not conceived as unfolding along a metaphorical oriented line (e.g., left-right or front-back) but as a succession of completed events not spatially organized. Interestingly, although Yucatec Maya speakers preferentially use a geocentric spatial frame of reference (FoR), especially visible in their use of gesture, time is not mapped onto a geocentric axis (e.g., east-west). We argue that, instead of providing a source for time mapping, the use of a spatial geocentric FoR in Yucatec Maya seems to inhibit it. The Yucatec Maya expression of time in language and gesture fits the more general cultural conception of time as cyclic. Experimental results confirmed, to some extent, this non-linear, non-directional conception of time in Yucatec Maya.
Highlights
Time is generally considered an abstract conceptual domain and, it can be divided on the basis of calendar calculations, all humans have some way of dividing time through language
The card arrangement task was designed to elicit the direction in which time goes and, since it does not go in any specific direction for Yucatec Maya, participants adapted a new solution: piling up the cards
The linear organization of the cards was used inconsistently and, the elicitation task conducted with one informant suggests that the sequences may have been too short to fully understand the space-to-time metaphor in Yucatec Maya
Summary
Time is generally considered an abstract conceptual domain and, it can be divided on the basis of calendar calculations (more or less complex depending on the culture), all humans have some way of dividing time through language. Time is often linguistically expressed through spatial metaphors. In line with the ideas of Sapir [2004(1921)] and Whorf (1956) several studies have proposed that the abstract notion of time is modeled and conceptualized on the ontological domain of space, mainly through metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Boroditsky, 2000, 2001; Boroditsky and Gaby, 2010). 55) assert that “Time as Space is a deep metaphor for all human beings It is common across cultures, psychologically real, productive, and profoundly entrenched in thought and language.”. Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction, 3rd Edn. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, 1st Edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
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