Sammendrag
In the dissertation Spatial Paths Representing Time: A Cognitive Analysis of Temporal Expressions in Norwegian Sign Language Kari-Anne Selvik develops a new theoretical approach to the analysis of temporal expressions in sign languages. She provides an alternative analysis of time lines; spatial paths sketched in the space around a signer and used to refer to time. For several decades the notion time line has played a central role in the description of temporal expressions in sign languages. These lines have been treated as independently existing objects in the grammar of many sign languages, and as such they violate a central requirement in Cognitive Grammar: that grammars do not contain arbitrary devices that do not have either phonological or semantic content, or both. Based on examples from Norwegian Sign Language, Selvik illustrates how central aspects of the three Cognitive Linguistics theories Cognitive Grammar, Conceptual Blending Theory, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory can be used to increase our grasp of temporal expressions that previously have been analysed in terms of time lines. The temporal expressions that are analysed in the dissertation involve a side-to-side or a forwardly directed movement path. Selvik suggests that the expressions prompt mental space blends that are created from two inputs: 1) our conceptualisation of the spatial movement path and 2) our conceptualisation of the time periods or points in time that are presented in the linguistic context. Thus, the movement paths blend with a period of time. Selvik further suggests that signers, when they are exposed to large numbers of temporal expressions that prompt such blends, will create abstract conceptual schemas that on a more abstract and general level associate temporal periods and events with conceived spatial paths or locations along such paths. The systematic associations between conceptualised spatial paths and conceptualisations of time show that Norwegian Sign Language has developed a metaphorical model for time.