How we conceptualise time: language, meaning and temporal cognition

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// Essays in Arts and Sciences, XXXIII, No. 2, 2004, pp. 13-44. Reprinted in: The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox. 2007. — pp. 735-765.This paper represents a linguistic investigation into the nature of time, and is based on proposals developed at greater length in Evans (2004). Given that linguistic organisation and structure reflects, at least partially, the nature and structure of thought, as it must if we are to be able to employ language in order to facilitate the expression of our thoughts, then language constitutes a key tool in investigating the nature of conceptual organisation. My focus here is on what language can reveal about conceptual structure – the nature and structure of thought. I will be focusing on temporal cognition– that aspect of conceptual structure which relates to our conceptualisation of time. The crux of my argument is that time, as realised at the conceptual level (and as revealed by linguistic organisation), is not a unitary phenomenon, but rather, constitutes a complex set of temporal concepts, which combine to form a number of distinct larger-scale cognitive representations for time.