Are you sure that metaphors don't explain anything about the tense-aspect
system? How about the grammaticalization of "be going to", from a spatial
meaning to a temporal one; time understood in terms of space?

Marie
France


> Sometimes Craig makes assertions that need more support than he provides
> in his posts.
>
>>>> Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> 06/09/09 11:03 AM >>>
> Susan,
>    You should read "Metaphors We Live By" (there are other follow up
> books)if you haven't already. They are a core aspect of language and
> cognition, well documented, well researched.
>    If you find my views pointless, it might be better not to respond.
>
> *****
> I have no idea how "core" metaphors are in language.  They don't seem to
> explain anything about the formal aspects of the tense-aspect system, the
> basic structure of phrases and clauses, the pronominal system, etc.
>
> However, let's consider the following sentence on the bottom of page 1 in
> Metaphors We Live By.
>
> Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in
> thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what
> that system is like.
>
> ***
> Pinker, in the Language Instinct, does a good job of suggesting that
> thinking and the language we use to express those thoughts are necessarily
> different systems.  Consider the problem of syntactic ambiguity: the basis
> of this famous joke by Groucho Marx.
>
> Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas.  How it got there, I have no
> idea.
>
> If we take the statement by Lakoff and Johnson seriously, then whenever a
> person thinks about what they were wearing when they shoot an animal is
> necessarily confusable with where the animal was.  Really? A person can't
> keep those two ideas separate.
>
> Of course, if we have to translate our thoughts to a formal system, the
> ambiguity that is the basis of Marx's joke makes sense.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
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