An emailer pointed me to a great description of research on the Aymara language, a language where the metaphoric representation of time is reversed compared to all known languages, claim the researchers. When an Aymara speaker wishes to indicate something in the past, she points ahead of herself, whereas something in the future is gestured by flicking the hand over the shoulder.
Equally fascinating is the article's discussion of how the researchers concluded that the metaphor for time is actually reversed:
There are also in English ambiguous expressions like "Wednesday's meeting was moved forward two days." Does that mean the new meeting time falls on Friday or Monday? Roughly half of polled English speakers will pick the former and the other half the latter. And that depends, it turns out, on whether they're picturing themselves as being in motion relative to time or time itself as moving. Both of these ideas are perfectly acceptable in English and grammatical too, as illustrated by "We're coming to the end of the year" vs. "The end of the year is approaching."
Only through an analysis of gesture did the researchers conclude that that speakers of Aymara see time as progressing physically backwards. The distinction is not cultural, but linguistic: as young speakers learn not only Aymara but also Spanish, their gestures adapt to the rest of the world, and they again use a forward-moving metaphor for the progress of time.
Update: I've added a poll below the fold!
Update2: More on the Aymary here.
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Lera Boroditsky's field work using the "Wednesday" temporal ambiguity is fascinating - and a great classroom demonstration of the effect (shifting from a 50/50 interpretation to a Friday interpretation with ego motion) is possible if you have about 40 people available. I love this kind of work!
And at APS this May I saw a group that was working on a different temporal ambiguity...one that removes the spatial component of forward/behind...I'll look up that poster later today and describe the ambiguity if anyone is interested
If this backwards metaphor can only be determined by looking at gestures, and not any features of the language itself, then what does the language have to do with anything?
This is a cultural issue that's limited to a group that also happens to speak a certain language, not a linguistic issue.
Michael, based on your suggestion, I added a poll to the post. We'll see if we can get it to work with our readers.
Matthew,
There's additional, linguistic evidence to support the researchers' claims. For example, from the article:
The gestures are just the clincher.
I haven't read the Cognitive Science article yet, but from reading the press release, I'm confused. They translate "nayra mara" as literally "front year" and figuratively "last year", but since "nayra" also means "sight", maybe the correct gloss is "seeing year". And vice-versa for "next year", which might be "unseeing year". Things that are ahead of you are things that can be seen (the past), while you can't see things that are behind you (the future). I agree that the metaphor is different, but my impression is that it's not precisely reversed. It's not that time flow backwards, it's that they use notions of visible and invisible to indicate past and future.
I'll be interested to read the actual article to see if they address this possibility.
Temporal ambiguities in language aren't just relative to how we see ourselves in time, though. For example: It's Wednesday. If I told you I was going on vacation next Friday, would that mean the upcoming Friday (the next Friday to occur) or the Friday after that (the Friday of next week)? I've debated this with several people.
Another question in your poll should be "Wednesday's meeting has been pushed back two days."
I also agree with Jenny regarding the "this weekend" or "next weekend" language. If it's Sunday and you say, "this weekend I'm going to do X," are you talking about something you're going to do with what's left in the day, or are you talking about next weekend? If you say "next weekend" do you mean the next weekend to occur, or do you mean the one following it?
Before propagating this uniqueness claim, you might want to read Language Log's take on it (here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003250.html).
We have these time discussions frequently in my workplace, where many of my colleagues come from China, India, Burma, Israel. We've all learned the hard way that "next Friday" could mean anything, so you'd better clarify it when you first hear it.
I don't think anyone is saying that the Aymara consider time to run "backwards" (the opposite of the way we're used to). The abstract of the Cognitive Science article only refers to the position of the past and future relative to the ego. If you look at the writeup linked in this post, you'll notice that they do address the likelihood that the Aymara consider the past to be in front because it can be seen, whereas the future is invisible.
It seems to be the cognitive scientist half of the research team, rather than the linguist half, who's claiming uniqueness -- at least in that writeup -- so maybe linguists can be persuaded to go easy on him.
Cathy: I've modified the article headline to avoid making the uniqueness claim. Thanks for the information.
The "next" versus "this coming" distinction is one that drives me crazy. I'm also horribly confused when someone says it's "a quarter of eight." Is that 7:45 or 8:15?
This is what do you get when searching dictionary.com for definition of "before":
# Earlier in time: They called me the day before.
# In front; ahead.
Which on second thought might raise some suggestions of where the metaphor "before" comes from. Maybe it is not metaphor taken from time on the context of space, but the other way around.
If two persons go somewhere, that one which is before the other, will also be in front of the other.
BTW, it is same in Slavic languages. "ÐÑед" means before in sense of time, and also in spatial sense (something being ahead). Anyway, excuse me if I'm saying something linguistically silly, as I'm not a linguist.
The phrases strike me as being more "known vs. unknown", not really "front vs. back". The gestures aren't even convincing, as they could derive from the nature of our visual field and not our spatial sense at all.
Perhaps I'm just not seeing it, but I remain skeptical.
This is not correct:
"Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world - from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on - have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back."
Chinese also uses the word for back/behind (Hou) to refer to the future:
Behind - Hou mian (lit. back face)
Forward - Qian mian (lit. front face)
Three years later - San nian yi hou (lit. three year [subordinate] back)
Three years ago - San nian yi qian (lit. three year [subordinate] front)
Methinks they need to do better research on this...
Claw, having just read an article by the same authors, I'm pretty sure they're aware of the issues with the Chinese language. Not having seen the original paper, it may be a rather more esoteric distinction they are making than simply behind/in front, but the MSM writeup, as is to be expected, has simplified things.
The original paper is here:
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/NSaymaraproofs.pdf
They mention Chinese, but only address it in the sense that Chinese mostly uses a vertical representation of time rather than horizontal (for example, "next week" would be represented as "bottom week" while "previous week" would be represented as "top week"). However, the vertical representation is only used in certain contexts (I'm not sure how to describe the context though), and the horizontal representation is used in other contexts. In the paper, they do not seem to be aware that the horizontal back-front representation also matches Aymara's.
Wow, this is really fascinating. I've gone around my house asking my family about the Monday/Friday question, and most are like me, they think the answer is Friday. Which is strange since "pushed back" would imply the past...
I said "Monday" in the poll, but in fact my response (to, say, an email telling me that "Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward 2 days") would be "so, is it on Monday or Friday?". IOW, I consider the phrase ambiguous and would seek clarification.
Not to beat this uniqueness thing to death, but as I recall ancient Greek c. 800 BCE viewed time backwards facing because the Greeks, in a dark age after the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, saw the golden age as in the past and saw themselves as facing it and falling away from it and this is reflected in writing that survives from the time period.
I'm trying to learn Japanese and one thing that tripped me up is that the word "mae", which means "in front of" spacially, also means "in the past" temporally. Which, frustratingly, corresponds with the English word "before"! Does anyone use "before" in the spacial sense any more?
Personally, I think the Aymara concept isn't so strange when you consider the past is known (like what you can see) and the future unknown (like the stuff behind you).
And Dave: a quarter of eight is two, of course!
Doesn't Thorlief Bowman in Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek make a big difference over these issues? I unfortunately don't have a copy handy. But I recall one big difference was the argument that Hebrew conceptions of time were conceived of as rhythm whereas Greek time was more spatially conceived in terms of metaphor. Further that the rare times the Hebrews used visual metaphors the past was before one and the future behind.
Is Bowman still accepted on this?
I've read a few articles on ScienceBlogs about this, and I am disappointed that no one seems to have mentioned that the trolls in Terry Pratchett's Discworld view time the same way. For shame!