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I have grave doubts about this article. First, it doesn't succeed in explaining the concept of spatial tense. All it seems to say is things like 'English does not have it', 'it is like this, but not quite', and 'Sapir-Whorf thought something about it, but he was wrong'. The reader searching for an explanation is left with more questions than answers.
Secondly, why is the reader informed that several languages have spatial tense, but 'English does not'? Wouldn't it be more appropiate to state unambiguously which languages do have spatial tense? And wouldn't it be really cool to cite some real examples?
Furthermore, I doubt whether spatial tense is a relevant concept. It might be that I'm overlooking something here, but I am inclined to think that the fact that a search in the Cambridge Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts database (spanning articles and books from 1973 to 2004) does return only one result, does say something about the relevance of the concept. (That particular result is a review of a 1945 work by G. Guillaume.)
I also doubt the accuracy of the concept of spatial tense as it is defined in the article: it doesn't make much sense cross-linguistically to define tense in terms of 'something modifying the verb'. In a lot of languages (case in point: the Gbe languages), what one might call 'tense' is not a verbal inflectional category as it is in English. Even in English, tense is not expressed by verbal inflection only. It reminds me of medieval grammarians putting Latin-inspired grammatical labels on only vaguely related grammatical concepts in totally unrelated languages. ¶ Mark Dingemanse (talk) 15:38, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Folks, I hope you don't mind, but I've rewritten a good part of the article. I took a look at the Lojban grammar and started from that. I need to get some Hopi into my head now, and see if I can make room for it, since I only reworded that part -- I have no idea if it's right at all. -- Pablo D. Flores 01:26, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I havent read the article very carefully, but I'm going to ramble here anyway.
In English, it seems that we speak of time often in terms of space. I am talking about metaphor here.
For instance, the verb go is basically used to speak of movement through space. However, since we often equate time with space, we have a grammaticalized go that appears as a future marker, as in
Go is used to speak of a forward movement in time (toward the future). As further evidence of this grammaticalization, we can use the time go with the space go:
What about prepositions?
It seems that the spatial dimension is somehow equivalent to the temporal dimension. At refers to a point in space or time. On, a 2-dimensional surface or a less point-like temporal referent. In, a 3-dimensional object or a span of time.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Peace. - Ish ishwar 19:01, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
note the time stamp on the above comment was affected by a technical problem (out of sync apache) and should read 13:05 UTC (probably not important, but confusing :) -- sannse (talk) 13:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, any thoughts from you are welcome. The preposition suggestion is not mine, but from Háj Ross (a.k.a. John Robert Ross), one of the early generative semanticists formerly at MIT (& good friend of George Lakoff). Háj is into poetics, syntax, semantics, education, & love. His email is haj @ unt.edu.
There is probably much to think about here & figure out, & I havent done anything with it. Looks like it might be pretty "hairy". But it is intriguing. I would like to know what goes on in other languages (esp. non-Indo-European). I think that the future go works in French to some extent. Maybe alot of langs are similar?
I think that it is difficult to speak of time in any way besides metaphorical. So we have target domain time spoken in terms of source domain space. In Metaphors we live by Lakoff & Turner mention another one: Time = Money. I havent thought of any others.
Another somewhat related thing that Háj told me is about the grammaticalization of have ('to possess') to function as a sort of past aspect marker. This is true of some European languages. I also wonder about Japanese: where Verb+past koto ga aru means have done Verb — aru also is used for possession as in car ga aru 'to have/possess a car'. But I dont have a good Japanese dictionary with etymology notes.
Len Talmy is very cool. I have his 2 volume book & some other papers of his, but havent read the chapters you suggest. I've read the intro & the chapter on figure & ground (which was very good). I think I need to check his force dynamics, too. I also would love to read his dissertation on Atsugewi. My reading list is endless: an issue I'm sure you know about. Thanks for the link to Talmy's website. Peace - Ish ishwar 06:50, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)
This article still haunts me occasionally. Seeing as I am unable to find any substantiation - except for copies of this article - for the claim that the Hopi language employs spatial tenses, it would seem reasonable to remove in its entirety the paragraph dealing with this language. Any objections? — Itai ( talk) 15:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that you should leave it there, because maybe someone will find somthing about Hopi and will be kind in off to write it here.
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I have grave doubts about this article. First, it doesn't succeed in explaining the concept of spatial tense. All it seems to say is things like 'English does not have it', 'it is like this, but not quite', and 'Sapir-Whorf thought something about it, but he was wrong'. The reader searching for an explanation is left with more questions than answers.
Secondly, why is the reader informed that several languages have spatial tense, but 'English does not'? Wouldn't it be more appropiate to state unambiguously which languages do have spatial tense? And wouldn't it be really cool to cite some real examples?
Furthermore, I doubt whether spatial tense is a relevant concept. It might be that I'm overlooking something here, but I am inclined to think that the fact that a search in the Cambridge Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts database (spanning articles and books from 1973 to 2004) does return only one result, does say something about the relevance of the concept. (That particular result is a review of a 1945 work by G. Guillaume.)
I also doubt the accuracy of the concept of spatial tense as it is defined in the article: it doesn't make much sense cross-linguistically to define tense in terms of 'something modifying the verb'. In a lot of languages (case in point: the Gbe languages), what one might call 'tense' is not a verbal inflectional category as it is in English. Even in English, tense is not expressed by verbal inflection only. It reminds me of medieval grammarians putting Latin-inspired grammatical labels on only vaguely related grammatical concepts in totally unrelated languages. ¶ Mark Dingemanse (talk) 15:38, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Folks, I hope you don't mind, but I've rewritten a good part of the article. I took a look at the Lojban grammar and started from that. I need to get some Hopi into my head now, and see if I can make room for it, since I only reworded that part -- I have no idea if it's right at all. -- Pablo D. Flores 01:26, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I havent read the article very carefully, but I'm going to ramble here anyway.
In English, it seems that we speak of time often in terms of space. I am talking about metaphor here.
For instance, the verb go is basically used to speak of movement through space. However, since we often equate time with space, we have a grammaticalized go that appears as a future marker, as in
Go is used to speak of a forward movement in time (toward the future). As further evidence of this grammaticalization, we can use the time go with the space go:
What about prepositions?
It seems that the spatial dimension is somehow equivalent to the temporal dimension. At refers to a point in space or time. On, a 2-dimensional surface or a less point-like temporal referent. In, a 3-dimensional object or a span of time.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Peace. - Ish ishwar 19:01, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
note the time stamp on the above comment was affected by a technical problem (out of sync apache) and should read 13:05 UTC (probably not important, but confusing :) -- sannse (talk) 13:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, any thoughts from you are welcome. The preposition suggestion is not mine, but from Háj Ross (a.k.a. John Robert Ross), one of the early generative semanticists formerly at MIT (& good friend of George Lakoff). Háj is into poetics, syntax, semantics, education, & love. His email is haj @ unt.edu.
There is probably much to think about here & figure out, & I havent done anything with it. Looks like it might be pretty "hairy". But it is intriguing. I would like to know what goes on in other languages (esp. non-Indo-European). I think that the future go works in French to some extent. Maybe alot of langs are similar?
I think that it is difficult to speak of time in any way besides metaphorical. So we have target domain time spoken in terms of source domain space. In Metaphors we live by Lakoff & Turner mention another one: Time = Money. I havent thought of any others.
Another somewhat related thing that Háj told me is about the grammaticalization of have ('to possess') to function as a sort of past aspect marker. This is true of some European languages. I also wonder about Japanese: where Verb+past koto ga aru means have done Verb — aru also is used for possession as in car ga aru 'to have/possess a car'. But I dont have a good Japanese dictionary with etymology notes.
Len Talmy is very cool. I have his 2 volume book & some other papers of his, but havent read the chapters you suggest. I've read the intro & the chapter on figure & ground (which was very good). I think I need to check his force dynamics, too. I also would love to read his dissertation on Atsugewi. My reading list is endless: an issue I'm sure you know about. Thanks for the link to Talmy's website. Peace - Ish ishwar 06:50, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)
This article still haunts me occasionally. Seeing as I am unable to find any substantiation - except for copies of this article - for the claim that the Hopi language employs spatial tenses, it would seem reasonable to remove in its entirety the paragraph dealing with this language. Any objections? — Itai ( talk) 15:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that you should leave it there, because maybe someone will find somthing about Hopi and will be kind in off to write it here.