讲座题目： Time, space and space-time across languages and cultures
主讲嘉宾： Prof. Chris Sinha
讲座时间：10月21日（周五）下午3：00---4：45
讲座地点：紫金港校区东五-201（东）
Abstract: Human beings differ from other animals in entertaining and communicating elaborate inter-event representations. In language, we can distinguish deictically based (D-time) from sequentially based (S-time) schemas. The comparative linguistic evidence suggests that all cultures employ both D-time and S-time schemas, although these vary considerably. It has been suggested that time is universally conceptualized in terms of spatial metaphors, but recent research shows that this is not the case. Drawing on my own research with my colleagues, and research by other teams, I suggest that systematic space-time metaphor is only found in languages and cultures that have invented the notion of time as an abstract conceptual domain: what I call “Time as Such”. I emphasize the importance of distinguishing what is universal from what is variable in cultural and linguistic representations of time, and speculate on the general implications of an event-based understanding of time.
Selected References
Sinha, C. and Bernárdez, E. (2015) Metaphors, maps and fusions: Space, time and space-time. In Sharifian, F. (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. New York: Routledge, pp. 309-324.
Sinha, C. and Gärdenfors, P. (2014) Time, space and events in language and cognition: a comparative view. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1326: 72-81.
Silva Sinha, V., Sinha, C., Sampaio, W. and Zinken, J. (2012) Event-based time intervals in an Amazonian culture. In Luna Filipović and Kasia Jaszczolt (Eds.) Space and Time in Languages and Cultures: Language, Culture, and Cognition. Human Cognitive Processing Series 37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 15-35.
Sinha, C., Silva Sinha, V. da, Zinken, J. and Sampaio, W. (2011) When Time is not Space: The social and linguistic construction of time intervals and temporal event relations in an Amazonian culture. Language and Cognition 3(1): 137-169.
Prof. Chris Sinha is currently a Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at the College of Foreign Languages of Hunan University. He obtained a PhD Degree (cum laude) from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1988. Prior to his current appointment, Professor Sinha taught in departments of Education, Psychology, and Language and Communication in Brazil, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, India, and Sweden, including two previous positions at Faculty full professor rank and the position of Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, 2002-2005. He is the former President of the UK and of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association;General Editor of the journal Language and Cognition; and a member of three international journal editorial boards and four book series editorial boards. Professor Sinha has authored 2 monographs and 130+ articles, and edited 4 volumes, and has been the Principal Investigator of variousfunded projects in China, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
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外语学院
2016年10月10日
