Creating Temporal Frames of Reference

440

10.5.1 The Cognitive Dimension

Certain concepts from Lambrecht’s Information Structure 1994 and Fauconnier’s Mental Spaces 1985 can help understand the function of from a cognitive perspective. In the discussion of grammaticalization above, the DEICTIC use of was proposed as one of the cognitive links or associations between the verbal uses and the temporal uses. The DEICTIC function of plays a role in the temporal organization of narrative.

10.5.1.1 Creating Temporal Frames of Reference

Since narrative reflects life as it is experienced in the world of time and space, one of the functions of temporal and spatial systems of reference in text is to establish and maintain coherence with the event world. Literary modes or genre such as fantasy or science fiction may manipulate the dimensions of time and space, but even these texts will not be completely a-temporal or a-spatial. One of the significant aspects of the work of Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By 1980 and Philosophy in the Flesh 1999 has been the demonstration of the interconnectedness of physiological and cognitive experience. As they state, “the structure of our spatial concepts emerges from our constant spatial experience” Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 56. Text is limited to one acoustic or graphic dimension, but events have complex causal, temporal, and spatial dimensions. In order to represent this complexity, a text must implement linguistic mechanisms to capture the intersecting dimensions of an event. Two events can occur simultaneously in two locations, but language in text is incapable of simultaneously depicting those events. Each event must be narrated separately and the 441 simultaneity is communicated by language-specific mechanisms that represent that temporal relationship. Flashback, then, is a linguistic means of expressing events in a way that cognitively represents experience in the event world. Just as certain linguistic items will be employed to properly signal events in a flashback, there are a variety of items which function to establish and maintain temporal reference throughout a text. In Lambrecht’s Information Structure model, there are different states of IDENTIFIABILITY in communication Lambrecht 1994. Proper communication depends on the IDENTIFIABILITY of referents and entities. Lambrecht does not discuss the temporal organization of text, but the same principles apply. The proper interpretation of narrative depends on the hearer or reader accessing the same temporal organization with which the text was communicated. One of the cognitive functions of involves accessing proper temporal reference. This is closely related to its DEICTIC function discussed in 9.2.2.1. One of the potential misconceptions of an item like —perhaps perpetuated by labels like marker or sign—is that a text can be segmented on the basis of its occurrences. is, however, only one element in the intricate network of temporal and deictic reference. Some of the central concepts have already been addressed in the discussion of the grammaticalization of , but it is important to reiterate the fact that communicators do not intend all linguistic items they use to perform the same referential function. The function of some items is not strictly referential, but rather is related to the proper cognitive processing of the text. At a cognitive level, aids the proper temporal interpretation of the text and contributes to its proper segmentation. The propositional 442 content of the temporal expressions is provided by the expressions themselves: after these things, three days later, at the end of ten days, etc. signals the way in which the temporal expression is intended to connect to its context. Temporal expressions without are still involved in the temporal organization of the narrative, but the discourse- pragmatic connection differs. 10.5.1.2 Episode Initiator?