Time-moving metaphor

In ASL, temporal signs utilize the future is ahead metaphor which is consistent with both the ego-moving metaphor in which the observer moves toward the future and the time-moving metaphor in which time is conceived of as a type of river that flows from the future toward the... 

The results showed an overall accuracy rate of 93.0%, with errors evenly distributed across the four conditions. In accord with the global mapping hypothesis, subjects in the Consistent conditions responded significantly faster (M = 4228 ms) than those in the Inconsistent conditions (M = 4799 ms). There was a marginal effect of Metaphor type responses for the time-moving metaphor (M = 4934 ms) tended to take longer than... 

We conducted a second study to guard against the possibility that local lexical associations led to the Consistency effect. In this experiment we took advantage of a small set of spatio-temporal terms that can be used in both the ego-moving and time-moving metaphors, but which convey the opposite temporal order in the two systems. This set includes before, ahead and behind. This sequence reversal is exemplified in the following two sentences. 

Why Are Time-Moving Metaphors More Difficult Than Ego-Moving Metaphors ... 

Statements using the time-moving metaphor, in contrast, typically express the temporal relationship between two events from the point of view of an observer (e.g., Spring will come after winter ). In this case, three time points must be represented, one each for event 1, event 2 and the observer ... 

The fact that the time-moving metaphor is typically a three-term relation whereas the ego-moving metaphor is typically a two-term relation probably contributes to the greater processing difficulty of time-moving metaphors. 

We can draw a second explanation for the apparent relative difficulty of time-moving metaphors from recent work on temporal reasoning by Schaeken, Johnson-Laird and d Ydewalle (in press). Because, as discussed above, the relative temporal location of an observer is not specified in the time-moving metaphor, the observer can occur as a third point anywhere on the timeline. For example, the statement John arrives ahead of Mary can produce the following three timelines ... 

Although this phrase preserves the sense of one event preceding another, it is admittedly at best a rather poor example of a time-moving metaphor. 

Another possibility that should be investigated is whether the ego-moving metaphor simply occurs more frequently in discourse than the time-moving metaphor. But even if it does, it would not be clear whether such a frequency differential was cause or effect of the greater processing ease. 

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