Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

How do people think about time? Here we describe representations of time in Pormpuraaw, a remote Australian Aboriginal community. Pormpuraawans’ representations of time differ strikingly from all others documented to date. Previously, people have been shown to represent time spatially from left to right or right to left, or from front to back or back to front. All of these representations are with respect to the body. Pormpuraawans instead arrange time according to cardinal directions: east to west. That is, time flows from left to right when one is facing south, from right to left when one is facing north, toward the body when one is facing east, and away from the body when one is facing west. These findings reveal a qualitatively different set of representations of time, with time organized in a coordinate frame that is independent from others reported previously. The results demonstrate that conceptions of even such fundamental domains as time can differ dramatically across cultures.

Keywords

time space frames of reference Australian Aboriginal cross-cultural differences space-time mapping

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Boroditsky

(2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 75, 1–28.

Boroditsky

Ramscar

(2002). The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science, 13, 185–189.

Brysbaert

New

(2009). Moving beyond Kucera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 977–990.

Casasanto

Boroditsky

(2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106, 579–593.

Clark

(1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In Moore

T.E.

(Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Fuhrman

Boroditsky

(2010). Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: Evidence from an implicit non-linguistic task. Cognitive Science. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01105

Gaby

(2006). A grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Gevers

Reynvoet

Fias

(2003). The mental representation of ordinal sequences is spatially organized. Cognition, 87, B87–B95.

Haviland

J.B.

(1993). Anchoring, iconicity, and orientation in Guugu Yimithirr pointing gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 3, 3–45.

10.

Kilham

Pamulkan

Pootchemunka

Wolmby

(1986). Dictionary and sourcebook of the Wik-Mungkan language. Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

11.

Kucera

Francis

W.N.

(1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University press.

12.

Lakoff

Johnson

(1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

13.

Levinson

S.C.

(1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Cross-linguistic evidence. In Bloom

Peterson

M.A.

Nadel

Garrett

M.F.

(Eds.), Language and space (pp. 109–169). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

14.

Levinson

S.C.

(2003). Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

15.

Levinson

S.C.

Wilkins

(2006). Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

16.

Majid

Bowerman

Kita

Haun

D.B.M.

Levinson

S.C.

(2004). Can language restructure cognition? The case for space. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 108–114.

17.

Núñez

R.E.

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.

18.

Santiago

Lupiáñez

Pérez

Funes

M.J.

(2007). Time (also) flies from left to right. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 512–516.

19.

Smith

Johnson

(2000). Kugu Nganhcara. In Dixon

R.M.W.

Blake

B.J.

(Eds.), Handbook of Australian languages (Vol. 5, pp. 357–489). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

20.

Sommer

(1991). The deixis of space in Oykangand. In Merry

(Ed.), Essays in honour of Keith Val Sinclair: An Australian collection of modern language studies (Capricornia) (pp. 273–282). Townsville, Queensland, Australia: James Cook University of North Queensland, Department of Modern Languages.

21.

Torralbo

Santiago

Lupiáñez

(2006). Flexible conceptual projection of time onto spatial frames of reference. Cognitive Science, 30, 745–757.

22.

Traugott

(1978). On the expression of spatiotemporal relations in language. In Greenberg

J.H.

(Ed.), Universals of human language: Vol. 3. Word structure (pp. 369–400). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

23.

Tversky

Kugelmass

Winter

(1991). Crosscultural and developmental trends in graphic productions. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 515–557.

24.

Wechsler

(1981). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corp.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.58 MB

Remembrances of Times East

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material