Time Goes by - Pirata

The Way Time Goes by:
Conceptual Integration and the Poetics of Time

Cristbal Pagn Cnovas
Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra, Spain
Anna Piata
Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
1. Space-time mappings
The understanding of time in spatial terms has long been identified as an example of the
metaphorical construction of an abstract concept (Guyau 1890). In recent research in cognitive
linguistics and psycholinguistics, space-time mappings have become a classic in the study of
projections across conceptual domains. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980)
has used TIME IS SPACE as the paradigmatic case of projection from a concrete to an abstract
domain (Lakoff 1993). Time travels towards an observer (Spring will arrive in two weeks) or
vice versa (We are approaching Sunday), and this motion can also be observed independently
(Moore 2006), from an external viewpoint (The lecture will be followed by a reception).
More recently, within the framework of Conceptual Integration or Blending Theory
(Fauconnier & Turner 2002), a more fine-grained and complex view of space-time mappings
and of mappings in general has been proposed. Rather than a binary, unidirectional projection
between vast experiential domains, such as TIME and SPACE, the blending account proposes that
meaning emerges from selective projection and integration within a network of small conceptual
packets, or mental spaces (Fauconnier 1985; 1997). The conceptual blend for time as motion
To appear in S. Csbi (ed.) Expressive Minds and Artistic Creations: Studies in Cognitive Poetics. OUP
along a path requires at least the following (Fauconnier & Turner 2008). At a first step we have a
blend of event structure with a more specific event of motion from A to B. This is what allows
us, independently of temporal notions, to conceptualize events as having a starting point, a
destination, and a path that the experiencers go through (We went through the lecture) or that
the events themselves go through (The lecture went by). This blend of events and A to B
motion becomes integrated with the social and cultural measurement of time, which renders
universal events (events taking place at the same time everywhere) such as days, hours, weeks,
years. These time measures result from blending the observation of recurrent events in nature,
such as the sun rising and setting, with a material (or immaterial) mechanism for registering and
measuring those regularities: a sundial, a clock, a calendar, observation of shadow-length, or any
other method. At this second step of integration, the blend between events + motion and cyclic
repetition + measuring mechanism allows us to think about time measures, or time in general, as
something that can pass by or that we can go through, just like any other event.
Here is a summary of the template:
1. We have the following separate mental constructs: events, AB motion, natural cycles,
and mechanisms for measuring or registering natural cycles. These are the inputs for the
first blending step.
2. We have a blend of events + AB motion and a blend of natural cycles + mechanisms.
These two blends are separate mental constructs. They are the inputs for the second
blending step.
3. We blend events + AB motion with natural cycles + mechanisms. Only now have we
time or units of time that move, or that constitute landmarks that experiencers can move
towards.
In this account, the pattern underlying time-space mappings is a set of more or less
flexible instructions for building a blended scene with constraints derived from the general
architecture of the network: all observers/travelers depending on viewpoint stay/move
together, and objects in motion/landmarks are all aligned, with fixed relative positions. Even in
the most conventional renderings of the pattern, several of the basic parameters can be
manipulated to construct meanings that go beyond any unidirectional transfer. For example,
speed can be modified by the observers attitude or emotions (Time runs fast when you are
having fun).
2. No manipulation of the spatial features
In everyday communication, there is often no motivation to specify or manipulate the
basic elements and relations of the time-motion blending network. The generic template, in its
most underspecified version, offers enough possibilities for expressing the temporal relations that
arise most frequently in conversation, or in most other forms of oral and written communication.
Time passes, events can be far or near, we can approach a certain moment, or a certain moment
or time can come. Quite often too, poets do not need anything else. The basic version of an
entrenched conceptual recipe can be used to create a powerful aesthetic effect. Perhaps the oldest
preserved example for this in Western literature is this short fragment from Sappho:

,
, ' ' ,
.
Sappho (Voigt 168b)
The moon has set,
and the Pleiades, it is

midnight, time is passing,
and I sleep alone.
Here Sappho works at all three different levels of the blending network. She starts with
the cyclic day, at the basis of the integration template. The first sentence is a conventional
expression of two regularities that are familiar to anyone used to watching the night sky in most
of the Northern Hemisphere. The mental configuration of the cyclic day is basic and presumably
shared by all human beings. No concept of time, no measuring mechanism, no technology, and
no socially constructed notion of temporal relations are needed. Only the expectations created by
the repetition of certain events in nature: the sun sets and rises, the moon sets and rises and also
goes through its phases, seasons recur, and stars have fixed positions in the sky at different times
of the night and the year. This first sentence in the poem is a mere observation of two of those
repetitions, indicating that it is quite late at night. Only the compression of many days into one
cyclic day (Fauconnier & Turner 2002, pp.195198) is needed, so that the setting of the moon
and Pleiades is understood as a recurrent event that marks a moment in the cycle. We are still at a
conceptual level prior to the first blending step. Cyclic natural repetitions are one of the inputs
for this first integration.
The second sentence, (it is midnight), goes a step further in the
network. Midnight is a more complex notion, which does require a socially constructed concept
of time, alongside certain techniques, even if very basic, for measuring time intervals. Night
being in the middle () implies that there is a universal event, the cyclic day, which is
simultaneously conceived as an object that can be divided into sections. In the mere observation
of stars in motion or in any other repetition of events, there is nothing that could be divided into
fractions or be in the middle. It is the blend of a cycle of events and a measuring mechanism
(timeline, sundial, clock, etc.) that renders a discrete, spatial configuration, which can be divided.
As a result of this, we come up with universal measures: days, years, hours These measures
correspond to different positions in the mechanism that divides and subdivides the cycle. In our
everyday life, all this knowledge is taken for granted. However, it does take a certain cultural
development, and a considerable cognitive achievement, to go from the moon has set to it is
midnight.
This is still no metaphorical concept of time as motion in space. The moon and the stars
do move, but this is perceived motion. There can also be motion in the mechanism that gives us
access to notions such as midnight. This motion may be real; that is, a clock, a sundial or some
other measuring device may move or register physical motion, such as that of the sun in the sky
or the hands of the clock. Alternatively, we can imagine ourselves, a situation, or the whole
world as being all at a certain point of the mechanism (clock, sundial, calendar): we can be in
July or in 2015 or in the spring. But in all these cases time is not moving, and the observer is not
moving through time either: it is all a matter of relative positions. Now the next sentence in
Sapphos poem takes us to that third step in the template: ' ' , time passes.
Only at this point have we a mapping between motion from A to B and the socially constructed
notion of time. Sappho has taken us to this mental configuration in three steps, by means of three
conventional expressions, one at each level of the generic integration template.
The juxtaposition of these expressions prompts for a meaning that can be re-created by
practically every person from every culture: somebody is showing her awareness of the passing
of time, of it being late at night, and, by repeatedly showing this awareness, this person is also
expressing anxiety, because she has some expectations or desires. Then we get to the fourth line,
and we know what it is all about: the speaker did not want, or did not expect, to sleep alone
tonight. Lines 2-4 also carry the particle , which indicates a relevant contrast or connection
with the on line 1 and with the preceding particles, thus increasing the effect. This simple
combination is extremely effective for creating a powerful, perhaps universal meaning, which
allows this small fragment to stand alone as a poetic achievement. To accomplish this, Sappho
did not need to specify, manipulate, or violate any basic elements or constraints of the network.
But she did need to rely on the readers ability to build the full generic template, to work at each
level of it separately, and to integrate it all into a coherent whole.
One may think that these assumptions are all basic and that no different levels should be
distinguished. A useful exercise for addressing that objection is to read the poem to a young
child. Within their second year, most infants are able to make perfect sense of language about the
moon or the sun (or any other object) moving and then being gone, or even rising and setting.
They may even understand that the event has temporal implications: the sun is gone, time to go
to bed. But it will take a child several years more to understand what it means to be in the middle
or at any other particular point of a short event such as a class or a game, let alone a day or a
year. It will take even more cognitive development to build the very abstract and complex
concept time, and then to think about it as something that passes by, relentlessly, at a regular
pace, and without turning back.
Of course, once we have interiorized it, we can work within the generic template quite
smoothly and effectively. Emily Dickinson, for instance, built this short poem on the re-assertion
that time passes:
Time does go on
I tell it gay to those who suffer now
They shall survive

There is a sun
They don't believe it now
The emphatic auxiliary does is used here for reassuring those who suffer now of
something that may seem obvious: time is not going to stand still, we will not remain frozen in
this situation. In Sapphos text, there was a spontaneous ascertainment or confirmation of time
passing, and this told us that the speaker had negative feelings or anxiety about its passing. In
Dickinsons poem the same ascertainment is again meaningful, but for opposite reasons: it is a
positive evaluation and it is resisted by those who suffer, because it would bring good things for
them in which now they cannot believe. Of course, it is not the belief that time itself will keep
running what the sufferers resist, but the idea that they will live to see positive events. They are
emotionally stuck in their now. It is this contrast of attitudes and viewpoints about the passing of
time that gives the conventional, proverbial language of the poem its aesthetic and emotional
value.
Dickinson, just like Sappho, takes for granted that the reader is able to build the full timemotion network from minimal prompts, in this case, from those provided by the first line. From
the moment we start reading, we are immediately situated in the blended scene in which time
passes. We know that an important event has occurred, because there seems to have been a
pause, and now time needs to go on. Although this projects inferences that are contradictory with
the basics of our experience of time, time can indeed halt in the time-motion blend, even in the
most conventional renderings of the pattern. This emergent meaning, only possible in the blend,
allows us to represent experiences so intense that they seem to last for ever, thus reflecting an
important aspect of our subjective temporal perception (Fauconnier & Turner 2008). In this
particular expression of the template, somebody is re-asserting that time will keep on moving.
Therefore, this means that someone has undergone an intense experience that has stopped time
in the blend, and then this person needs to be told that, despite everything, the motion is
relentless and will continue. If we are to make sense of the rest of the poem, we need to have all
this knowledge active by the end of the first line. We would not be able to do it if we were
unfamiliar not only with the basic mappings and integrations of the template, but also with some
of its major possibilities for variation, such as the conventional manipulation of speed.
Lakoff and Turner (1989, pp.6772) identified the questioning of conventional mappings
as one of the major strategies of poetic metaphor. Indeed, poetic texts very often prompt us to
rethink standard conceptualizations. Here, on the other hand, we seem to have the opposite
strategy: reinforcement. Dickinsons emphatic does reinforces the standard phrase time goes
on, which is conventionally used in everyday life. In this case, a deep truth is offered alongside
the idiomatic consolation. With this reinforcement, the speaker is trying to make the sufferers
believe that the phrase has a deep meaning beyond the formulaic, that time goes on is more
than just a commonplace. The reader is left to choose whether this is actually a confirmation or
in fact a questioning of the standard consolation as futile: they dont believe it now.
As we see, very powerful effects can be achieved by remaining within a standard version
of the generic integration template. Let us look at a final example. In this passage contemporary
poet and lyrics writer Dimitris Christodoulou uses the same integration template as Sappho,
almost twenty-six centuries later:

.
It is not because inside me a dead man trembles
nor because the moments leave and I shudder.

Dimitris Christodoulou, from the poem [Passage]
In the second line cited, moments leave and the speaker is afraid. Once more,
conventional mappings are involved: events or time units are objects that arrive or depart, while
the observer remains on one location (i.e., moving-time version of the network). Instead of time
passing, or conventional expressions such as years go by, the poet uses small but also
indefinite units or moments (), and the verb to leave (). This stylistic choice gives
rise to the particular inferences that can be then derived: the moments are fleeting, they go away
and will not come back. The leaving frame and the moments provide some features that we did
not have in Sappho: here we have a deictic center in which the speaker is located, and from
which the moments keep departing; time is not merely passing by or through non-specified
locations. Thus the text can suggest a feeling of being forsaken by these moments, or make us
imagine a place that is abandoned or emptied relentlessly. Moments leaving also suggest a more
iterative and rapid motion than, for example, years rolling by. This allows the meaning in
Christodoulous poem to be substantially different from that in Sapphos poem, even if
remaining within the conventional spatial parameters of the network.
But the first line also reminds us that not even the time-motion template is needed for
achieving poetic effects and complex semantics in the expression of time. Here we have a
different pattern: a compression and quite a standard one of a temporal relation. A present
moment is connected to a future moment. In the blend, this relation between two different inputs
becomes one single element or relation. In this case, diachrony becomes synchrony, and the
present self and the dead self, which are separate in the inputs, now come together, sharing the
same time and place.
The spatial schema that emerges here is containment: the dead man is inside the present
man. There is no containment in any of the inputs if they are considered separately: nobody is
inside anybody in our typical conception of a present or a dead self. The blend now
opportunistically recruits what we could call the Matryoshka Doll template for causation and
succession. Other standard mappings such as CAUSATION IS PROGENERATION (Turner 1987) may
be derived from this compression pattern. The template is based on a familiar image schema:
there is something inside a container that will eventually come out, maybe that strives to come
out, is ambushed and will eventually come out as a surprise, is being blocked from coming out,
and other such possibilities. Combining this schema with time compression, we create a
productive way of connecting present and future or possible selves, as in sentences such as
nobody saw the killer in him or there is a great poet in her. In this conventional pattern, we
know, without being told, that there is an identity connection between the inputs: she and the
great poet are the same person. It is redundant to make this identity connection explicit: *there
is a great poet inside her, and she herself is that poet. Christodoulou benefits from this generic
template and its patterns of verbal expression. He does not need to tell us that (first person
pronoun in the genitive) and (dead) refer to the same person, because we already know,
thanks to the Matryoshka Doll template. This allows him to take the identity for granted and to
concentrate on the spatial features, the containment and the trembling:
(inside me a dead man trembles). The compression patterns are guiding the poets
stylistic choices.
A further emergent structure in this poem is a dead man that trembles. In the input of the
dead self, dead men do not tremble, of course. In the blend, both the living and the dead man
tremble ( trembles, shudder), or one trembles and the other is very afraid
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requires fear or horror, and may refer to the feeling itself and not necessarily to the shuddering,
while for it is the emotion that is optional, and not the trembling. We can understand the
dead mans trembling as fear, shared with his now-contemporary living self. This gives us a dead
man who is afraid to die, a paradoxical meaning that is most certainly not available from any
input. We can also choose to interpret the trembling as a feeling of imminence: the dead man is
in a flutter because he knows that he will be coming out soon. This results in another very
complex, and no less paradoxical meaning: a dead man with anticipatory knowledge and with a
feeling of imminence inside a living man who is also aware of this imminence, and consequently
feels fear too. None of these meanings requires time-motion, although they can be compatible
with it. Again quite conventionally, the poet could have said I carry a dead man trembling
inside me, and then the containment schema and the temporal compression would have
combined with the ego moving through time.
3. Manipulating path-trajectory: Line and circle
One of the basic parameters of motion in this conceptual network is the type of path or
trajectory that the ego or time travel through. The straight line seems to be the standard spatial
configuration for the time-motion blend in Western languages and literatures. One of the major
reasons for preferring the straight line is probably because it favors the perception of causal
relations (Turner 1987, pp.162163). As we saw, the blend of event structure, motion, and cyclemechanism selects a very particular case of motion from A to B, and produces a mental
configuration with numerous constraints that do not belong to our normal spatial experience, but
that rather emerge from the blend. When working with this template, the standard option at
least for the languages we examine here is linear, unidirectional motion at a regular pace and
along a regular, straight path, whenever the shape of the path is specified at all.
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We must not forget that there is nothing unusual in other types of motion that are not
linear, in the sense of being bound to a recognizable path from A to B. When standing at a
reception or dancing, people combine lateral, forward, and even backward motion, and usually
lack a particular destination; an infant learning to walk or an insect flying can be good examples
of random motion. But, for thinking about time or about sequential processes, it is generally
more adequate for human beings to represent time as a unidimensional experience, because we
experience events as single and non-revertible, rather than as multiple and with simultaneous
alternatives as is the case with spatial relations. If a building is no longer there, we do not
suppose that it may have never been built, but rather that it has been demolished. When
something is happening, we do not conceive it at least in our everyday experience as
happening in many different ways in a variety of alternative universes. Therefore, it is
appropriate in cognitive terms that time should move along a single, distinct path.
In the blend, cognition prefers to operate with structures that are as simple and familiar as
possible, that offer good possibilities for projecting meaningful inferences back to the inputs, that
create an autonomous mental configuration, and that generally serve the purposes of the situation
at hand (Fauconnier & Turner 2002, chap.16). These are usually competing principles, but in this
case linear motion satisfies them all quite well, except for autonomy. Linear motion is discrete
and familiar, and it allows us to project inferences from unidimensional space that are productive
for temporal experience, without complicating the process with additional dimensions or with
more complex types of motion that may present further features. On the other hand, the motion
event emerging from the blend turns out to be quite peculiar, and certainly much more
constrained than the vast majority of linear motion events that we can experience. It does not
stand on its own as a conceptual structure: it needs the connections to the rest of the network
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(events + AB motion with natural cycles + mechanisms) if it is to make sense at all.

One of the advantages of keeping within linear motion along a regular path is that the
blend can retain most of the connections to the inputs, as well as the major mappings and the
main emergent elements that constitute the basis of the template. For instance, a straight line is
better for diachrony and sequence, but if I shift to a circular path I can still keep the alignment of
objects/landmarks and their relative positions for mapping onto sequential order. I can also keep
the grouping of observers/travelers for viewpoint, the mappings between distance and duration,
the integrations of objects and distances with universal measures in the cycle-mechanism notion
of time, and many other central aspects of the pattern. It would be hard to keep those features if
random motion or waltz dancing were used to structure the blend, or if the ocean or the desert
were used for its general layout.
In their analysis of the relation between speed and subjective time, Fauconnier and
Turner (2008) use a literary example that also enhances linear motion along a straight path:
Perhaps time is flowing faster up there in the attic. Perhaps the accumulated mass of the
past gathered there is pulling time out of the future faster, like a weight on a line. Or perhaps,
more mundanely, it is only that I am getting older every year and that it is the accumulated
weight of time behind me that is unreeling the years with ever-increasing speed.
Ian McDonald, Emilys Diary, November 5, 1913, in King of Morning, Queen of Day
(1991), pages 82-83.
As Fauconnier and Turner explain, time has a variable speed and now a new blend is
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constructed according to which that motion is induced by standard physics. Weight is pulling the
timeline along. Interestingly, this still preserves the registration of the timepieces. The straight
line makes it easier to preserve the time pieces or units, by providing a material anchor
(Hutchins 2005) that allows for an easy and straightforward grounding of the time measures,
alongside their relations and durations or, in spatial terms, extensions. Thanks to material
anchors such as the timeline or the dial, conceptual structure becomes perceptual structure; in
this case, temporal relations become spatial relations, which can be perceived directly. Hutchins
uses, among other examples, that of the cue, which allows us to see who is first, second, and so
forth directly, by looking at the relative position of people in the cue. On a straight timeline, we
see diachrony at a glance, and this allows us to think about sequences and durations with great
ease. With no further instructions, we immediately know what it means for the weight to pull
elements from the upper to the lower part of the line. We instantly know what it means to be at
the end, middle, or beginning of the line in temporal terms.
As shown by Coulson and Pagn Cnovas, one does not always need to interact
physically with the material anchors of blends. If the material structure is widely shared and
simple to operate as many such structures are they can be virtually manipulated by imagining
them, representing them, remembering them, talking about them (2013: 212-213). In the
example used by Coulson and Pagn Cnovas, one does not need to be looking at a clock, or to
visualize a rich image of one for that matter, in order to make sense of a complex metaphor such
as the following:In their anxiety to be scientific, students of psychology have often imitated the
latest forms of sciences with a long history, while ignoring the steps these sciences took when
they were young. They have, for example, striven to emulate the quantitative exactness of natural
sciences without asking whether their own subject matter is always ripe for such treatment,
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failing to realize that one does not advance time by moving the hands of the clock.
As a unidimensional object that can easily be imaged or seen with the minds eye (just
like the clock), the timeline provides many opportunities for meaningful compressions that create
emotional effects in poetic texts, by prompting the reader to visualize and navigate the material
anchor. Kavafis Candles is a masterful example of it:

, , .
,

,
, , .
,
.
' .

.
Konstantinos P. Kavafis, [Candles]
The days of the future stand in front of us,
15
like a row of burning little candles

golden, warm, and vivid little candles.
Days past lie behind,

a grim line of extinguished candles;
the nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.
I don't want to see them: their shape saddens me,

and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my burning candles.
I don't want to turn and see, terrified,

how quickly the dark line gets longer,
how quickly the burnt out candles multiply.
In this poem, the speaker is navigating a row of candles that stands for the duration of a
whole human life. The default shape associated to the word (row, cue, alignment of various
elements) is the straight line. Although, in principle, it is not absolutely compulsory, the
reasonable expectation is that we will choose that shape to picture the image suggested by the
text. The speaker is oriented in relation to a timeline made of candles, which map onto the days
of his life. The future is ahead and the past behind. Future candles are lit and past candles are
extinguished. These two contrasts, ahead-behind and light-darkness, dominate the poem, which
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is in fact an extended simile that repeatedly maps between spatial relations on the row of candles,
the candles being lit or extinguished, and the duration of life. The poem prompts the reader to
construct powerful affective implications: fear of death, the feeling of life being short, negative
emotions when past days are remembered, excitement about days to come, or the willingness to
concentrate on the future and not think about the past. None of these meanings is available from
any of the inputs separately (events, AB motion, natural cycles or mechanisms) or from their
separate blends at the first step of the network.
There are interesting compressions in this text (see Pagn Cnovas & Jensen 2013 and
Piata 2013 for a more detailed analysis of this and other poetic timeline examples). A significant
emergent meaning is the candle row itself. Although the conventional mapping of the birthday
candles applies, a row of thousands of candles one for every day of a persons life is not
something that we encounter in experience, but an ad-hoc image devised to provide a material
anchor for the blend, in order to serve the purposes of the poem. As in the previous example of
the weight on the line, speed is connected to events/landmarks on the timeline. But this poem is
not about the subjective perception of a particular experience, but rather about the speakers
general perception of time as passing fast, of the brevity of his whole life, without distinguishing
between periods or events. For this effect to be achieved, he needs a compressed perception, an
overall perspective of his whole existence. This perspective is provided by his interaction with
the timeline and his positioning at a particular point of it.
With the timeline operative, simple spatial meanings such as moving along the path or
considering the stretches that lie ahead and behind create strong emotional and poetic effects,
by projecting inferences back to the input with the duration of a human life. These emergent
timeline meanings also define elements in the running of the mental simulation, such as the
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state of the candles that constitute the timeline lit or extinguished, plus other adjectives related
to feelings about time that do not typically apply to candles, but that are meaningful here. There
are many meaningful constraints, further rules and implications that are not mentioned, and that
do not need to be mentioned, because they constitute standard inferences within the blending
template. It is not possible to go back and replace an extinguished candle with a lit one. It is not
possible to add even one more lit candle to the row ahead. Soon there will only be a few candles
burning ahead, and then we will reach the end of the row, and the darkness will be complete. We
also know, again with no words indicating it in the text, that the only light available is the light
of the row of candles. Adding sunlight or any other source of light would block the inferences
about the duration of life that arise from the light-shadow contrast in the blend.
These effects could not be created through other means, alternative to the candle row.
The meaning of reaching the end of the row, or of the dark line rapidly getting longer, cannot be
built without referring to the timeline object. Words referring to feelings about past, future, and
the brevity of life would not provide the same immediacy, because they are signs and therefore
can have an arbitrary connection with their meanings. The timeline is not exactly a sign, but a
material anchor: it is designed in a particular way that matches certain essential features of the
blending template, in order to afford direct perceptual access to the temporal meanings that
emerge from the network. The path and landmarks imported from linear motion provide an
opportunity to create an anchor for the blend, and the mind often seizes that opportunity. That
way temporal relations can be seen with the minds eye.
We do not absolutely need the timeline to construct powerful meanings about past,
future, or duration, but it is a very useful and deeply entrenched pattern, and we will probably
use it if we have the opportunity to do so. For this to happen, the language does not have to be
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conventional, as in Kavafis Candles. Not even the indication that a timeline should be built is
absolutely necessary. An experiment by Pagn Cnovas, Valenzuela and Santiago (2015)
showed that readers tend to picture the snake in the following simile, which opens Octavio Pazs
poem Beyond Love, as much less curvy, much closer to a straight line, than the default mental
image of a snake:
Todo nos amenaza:
el tiempo, que en vivientes fragmentos divide
al que fui
del que ser,
como el machete a la culebra
Everything threatens us:
time, which into living fragments divides
the one I was
from the one I will be,
like the machete the snake
Octavio Paz, Ms all del amor [Beyond Love].
This straightening of the snake was directly related to the temporal reading of the
poem. Readers who failed to establish the temporal mappings between the machete-snake and
time dividing the self drew significantly curvier snakes. The timeline habit, independently from
the poem, was conditioning them to impose a straight linear shape on the snake-temporal self,
thus opportunistically performing a further blend that is not suggested by the words. This was
confirmed by a follow-up experiment that primed for either temporal sequences or typical snake
scenes. Bringing the snake closer to a straight line clashes with our typical knowledge of snakes,
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but, on the other hand, it facilitates the anchoring of past and future within a unidimensional,
regular path for time. In terms of metaphor or simile research, this would be a projection from
the alleged target onto the source, a very problematic notion for models of unidirectional
transfer. In terms of blending, it can be viewed as an opportunistic optimization of an aspect of
the blend, seeking to increase the cohesiveness of the network. It does not need to happen, but if
it does, fusing snake and straight path in the blend enhances the temporal meaning of the snake.
As we see, the properties of the straight line are useful in this generic integration template
because they offer certain possibilities for meaning construction. But there are many things to be
said about temporal experience for which the straight line can be of no use, or even a hindrance.
Using a different shape can yield quite a different conceptualization of time, and, crucially for
poetry, render different affective implications. We now present some circular examples to
illustrate this point.
The circle is not completely inadequate for anchoring causal chains, or for presenting
diachrony or duration, but it is generally less appropriate than the straight line. In most cases, the
circular shape is recruited to perform as a sign providing further symbolic possibilities, such as
recurrence or feelings of monotony and boredom, and not as an anchor on which spatial relations
can be directly perceived as temporal relations. Here is a literary example that compares the two
conceptualizations. In Karen Russells short story Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Clyde, a
vampire, reflects about immortality with his life companion, Magreb, in the following way:
I once pictured time as a black magnifying glass and myself as a microscopic, flightless
insect trapped in that circle of night. But then Magreb came along, and eternity ceased to frighten
me. Suddenly each moment followed its antecedent in a neat chain, moments we filled with each
other.
20
Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove

The images of time as a black magnifying glass and a circle of night do not intend to
situate the reader within a duration. There are no landmarks, no beginning or end. Instead, the
choice of a circular shape recruits a schema of enclosure or encirclement. The motion of the
trapped insect could be either circular or random. In either case, the simulation in the blend
presents an experiencer that is actually not going anywhere. Motion is in fact halted: the insect
may move, but it will not change location.
Encirclement, imprisonment, and the feeling of being trapped are not available from any
input in the time-motion network, even if we choose a circular shape for the time-motion path.
As we write this paragraph on a Monday morning, we can find numerous messages on Twitter
with expressions such as "Monday morning has come around too quickly" or "good old Monday
morning has come back around." These are examples of a circular path used to represent the
cyclic week. The recurrent universal events or time units, such as Monday morning, go around
and eventually "come back" to the fixed location of the observer. Monday morning has special
connotations attached, which come from the frame of the working week in Western culture.
These feelings are expressed in the blend through the conventional manipulation of speed, or
through the adjectivation "good old," which salutes the event as if it were a familiar agent with
which one has a long acquaintance, because it has "come back" many times. But these circular
paths need not suggest a feeling of being trapped. After all, we are in the time-moving
perspective of the template, and therefore the observer(s) is/are not supposed to move anyway.
Imprisonment can only arise when you have someone who wants to leave a location and
cannot. For that, the observer needs to change his position with respect to the path: instead of
being at a particular location on the circular path, now he needs to be out of the path and inside
21
the circle created by the circular shape. Going from circular motion to encirclement is a creative
exploitation of an opportunity emerging in the blended simulation, motivated by the new
inferences that it can create within the network. This requires a shift to a two-dimensional space,
which clashes with the standard one-dimensionality of temporal representation. Now there is not
only linear sequence along the path, but also an inside and an outside. The interplay between
these two dimensions is what produces the emergent feeling of purposelessness, of being stuck in
the cyclic repetition of temporal landmarks. This simple spatial structure is meant to help us
conceive an extremely unusual temporal concept: immortality as experienced by a lonely
vampire.
Going nowhere or being stuck only make sense if the conventional time-motion template
is in the background. Thus here encirclement also comes alongside the implicit knowledge of the
timeline. We do not merely have encirclement: we have encirclement where we know that we
should have progress along a path, where we know, using Emily Dickinson's words, that the
motion should go on. The second time metaphor in the text takes us back to the unidimensional
path where motion is always forward and there is a direct link between one moment and the next.
This spatial configuration, as opposed to the previous circular shape, is felt as purposeful. The
causal relation is enhanced by the choice of the "neat chain" to instantiate the linear path. In this
chain moments are slots to be filled, which enhances the sense of time as having a purpose.
Clyde fills those moments with Magreb, and vice versa. The "other" is recruited as an object that
completes what would otherwise be a gap on the timeline. The shift from magnifying glass to
chain, from enclosing circle to forward path, signifies the transition from the absurdity and
despair of lonely eternity to a meaningful shared existence.
The shift between a linear, often straight, and a circular path can be found in many texts.
22
The comparison between two different types of path can offer an overall perspective, allowing
for the contrast of two different conceptions of human life as a whole. But that is only one of the
possibilities. There are many other possible goals. Some of these desired effects can be achieved
not by a full contrast of the two shapes, but by their combination. When this happens, the most
common option seems to be the integration of circular motion into the straight line or linear,
underspecified path from A to B. An example of this is a scene in which motion along the
timeline reaches a landmark or comes to an end, and then circular motion starts. In these shifts
from AB motion to AA motion, we can expect again the feeling of being stuck, stopped by
an obstacle. Besides, as we have just seen, circular motion offers the possibility of expanding to
two-dimensional space. This allows for the identification of the location around which the
circular motion takes place with a significant element on the timeline. In such cases, the
anchoring properties of the straight path can be kept. Direct perception of conceptual relations is
then facilitated, as opposed to Karen Russel's flightless insect trapped into a circle. One of the
results can be an emergent sense of imminence and strong associated emotions: the landmark or
destination is at hand, and the attention is focused on it. Once more, this meaning is unavailable
from any input, but can be constructed in the blend as a result of the repetition of the circular
motion around the same object or destination in view, or as a result of the enclosure produced by
the circular shape, both in combination with the preceding AB motion.
Here is an example of A to B plus circle, from Spanish Baroque poet Francisco de
Quevedo, in his poem El reloj de arena (The Hourglass), where he claims that love:
no slo me apresura
la muerte, pero abrviame el camino;
pues, con pie doloroso,
23
msero peregrino,
doy cercos a la negra sepultura.
not only rushes me
to my death but also shortens the way:
since with painful steps,
miserable pilgrim,
I am circling the black sepulture.
This poem takes the ego-moving perspective. Here the circular pattern is not all time or a
whole human life, but is instead restricted to the final part of the path, where the destination is
approached. Walking around your grave makes it dangerously imminent. The feelings of terror
and anticipation are maximized by the fact that the traveler can be close to the destination for an
indefinite amount of time. Precise duration or cyclic repetitions are not relevant here. The goal of
manipulating the shape of the path in the blend is to enhance the affective significance of the
encircled location, which projects strong inferences back to the input with the duration of a
human life: love has sped up the speaker's progress towards his grave, and now he is spinning
around the sepulture. We are not told about it, but we expect that the circular motion will end
soon how long can someone sustain this circling of the sepulture? and the speaker will die.
4. Conclusions and future directions
We have first examined poems that attest to the generic template for blending time and
motion in its most conventional version. We saw that the template offers many rich possibilities
for poetic effects, if adequately used in combination with contextual cues, compression
processes, other generic templates, and the overarching principles of blending. We also saw that
there are other blending patterns for creating powerful and intricate space-time mappings, such
24
as compression patterns for bringing together elements that belong in different moments. The
analysis of any of these other patterns in terms of blending is, at best, in its early infancy (see
Pagn Cnovas & Teuscher 2012, for preliminary work on the commoditization of time).
For this chapter, we chose the time-motion template because it is particularly
conventional, and has been established as a universal or quasi universal phenomenon; also
because the spatial parameters related to time-motion, such as speed or path, are relatively
unproblematic for their study, and can be observed in a text without resorting to complex
interpretations. In the section about the uses and manipulation of path-trajectory, we saw that
instantiating the path as a straight line simplifies the construction of meaning within the blended
simulation. All things being equal, all observers/travelers stay/move together along a linear,
straight path, and the moving objects/fixed landmarks that represent time units or events are
aligned along this straight line, and can thus be more easily visualized, either through mental
imagery or through actual material anchors, such as appropriate graphical representations or
objects (Coulson & Pagn Cnovas 2013). Regular speed and irreversible forward motion are
also default options. When other spatial parameters are manipulated, such as speed for subjective
time perception, it is still preferable, on most occasions, to keep the straight line (or an
underspecified path), because in this way we do not add extra modifications, and can concentrate
on the inferences related to any other parameter that we may be manipulating. In general,
manipulating only one parameter and keeping the rest of the spatial configuration
conventional, seems to be the most usual strategy, even for extremely creative, unconventional
examples of figurative language. But this needs to be confirmed by further empirical research on
poetic corpora.
We saw that certain meanings, such as feelings about duration or sequence, can arise
25
more easily when a straight line is used for the path. The straight timeline is a deeply entrenched
template, and empirical evidence, though still scarce, is already showing that it can be activated
even by extremely non-conventional texts. Giving the timeline a circular shape produces a
variety of effects that cannot be achieved through the straight path. Many of these effects are
motivated by the fact that circular motion can more easily facilitate the expansion from one to
two-dimensional space. Comparing a straight path with a circular one can enhance progress or
purposefulness as opposed to enclosure and meaningless repetition, of getting nowhere. By
turning the straight timeline into a circular path at a particular point of the trajectory, imminence
or even fear can be added to encirclement and lack of progress. Expressions such as circling the
sepulture are made possible by this contrast of forward and circular trajectories.
We have only showcased a very small part of the possibilities of non-manipulation and
manipulation of the template. There are many other ways in which the underspecified passing of
time can be approached creatively, depending on which other elements in the text can be
combined with it, as well as on the pragmatics and semantics of the conventional time
expressions involved. There are also many other ways in which the path can be manipulated:
there are circular paths that are not contrasted with the straight timeline and appear
independently of it, there are alternative paths, irregular paths, and perhaps even some examples
of non-linear motion. Besides, there are a variety of possible interactions or interventions on the
path: there may be obstacles or gaps, somebody can cut the path, we may lose it... And of course
there are several other spatial parameters that are important in the network, and that can be
manipulated to produce significant inferences: speed, directionality, manner of motion,
viewpoint, among others.
The options are many, but not anything goes: choices are governed by the functioning
26
and constraints of the template. We have mainly focused on the spatial properties themselves, but
these also need to be studied in relation with the different non-spatial concepts that may be
blended with them, such as old age or death, and the emergent meanings sought, such as
acceptance, denial, fear, reflection. And then there are other major templates for time, such as
commoditization or compression patterns. And these templates can blend between themselves or
with other patterns, such as the personification of abstract causes or other conceptual networks
related to agency or purpose.
Identifying sets of recurrent projections between domains, such as those from space to
time, was crucial for developing the field of conceptual mappings. Shifting from binary
projections to a network model that accounts for novel meanings and complex inferences has
been a major breakthrough, which has opened the path towards the study of more complex
patterns, constituted by networks of projections and integrations. But establishing the skeleton of
a template is just the beginning. If we are to grasp the intricacies of cognitive and verbal
creativity, we need more insight into the fleshing out of the pattern. For this, we must put to
use, and if possible increase, all our knowledge about mappings and blending, about the
optimality and governing principles of the processes involved, and, crucially, about the relation
between the cognitive operations and the context and goals of communication, thought, or action.
We have a chemistry: now we need a formulation. We cannot understand the mapping and
integration of concepts without a deep understanding of the recurrent patterns of blending.
Researchers in cognition and poetics have a lot of work to do, on time-space mappings or on any
other conceptual patterns recurring across languages and literatures.
27
References
Coulson, S. & Pagn Cnovas, C., 2013. Understanding timelines. Journal of Cognitive
Semiotics, 5 (1-2), pp.198219.
Fauconnier, G., 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Fauconnier, G., 1985. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M., 2008. Rethinking metaphor. In R. W. Gibbs, ed. The Cambridge
handbook of metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 5766.
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M., 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Minds
Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Guyau , J. M. 1988 [1890]. The origin of the idea of time. Reprinted In J. A. Michon , V.
Pouthas , & J. L Jackson (Ed.), Guyau and the idea of time. Amsterdam: North-Holland .
Hutchins, E., 2005. Material anchors for conceptual blends. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(10),
pp.15551577.
Lakoff, G., 1993. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In A. Ortony, ed. Metaphor and
Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 202251.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M., 1980. Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. & Turner, M., 1989. More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor.
Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press.
Moore, K.E., 2006. Space-to-time mappings and temporal concepts. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(2),
pp.199244.
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Pagn Cnovas, C. & Jensen, M.F., 2013. Anchoring time-space mappings and their emotions:
The timeline blend in poetic metaphors. Language and Literature, 22(1), pp.4559.
Pagn Cnovas, C. & Teuscher, U., 2012. Much more than money: Conceptual integration and
the materialization of time in Michael Endes Momo and the social sciences. Pragmatics
& Cognition, 20(3), pp.546569.
Pagn Cnovas, C., Valenzuela, J. & Santiago, J., 2015. Like the Machete the Snake: Integration
of Topic and Vehicle in Poetry Comprehension Reveals Meaning Construction Processes.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 9(4), pp. 385-393.
Piata, A. 2013. Conventionality and Creativity in the Conceptualization of Time in Modern
Greek: Metaphors and Blends in Language and Literature. PhD Dissertation, Athens:
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University of Chicago Press.
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Abstract
Conceptual Metaphor Theory has used TIME IS SPACE as the paradigmatic case of
projection from a concrete to an abstract domain. More recently, within the framework of
Conceptual Integration or Blending Theory, a more complex view of time-space mappings and
of mappings in general has been proposed. Rather than a binary, unidirectional projection
between the vast experiential domains of TIME and SPACE, the blending account proposes that
meanings combining time and motion emerge from successive integrations within a network of
relatively small conceptual packets, including event structure, motion from A to B, and a cultural
mechanism for measuring duration. We examine how poetic effects can be created by using the
conventional opportunities provided by this conceptual template, as well as by manipulating the
path (with a linear or circular shape), one of the basic spatial features in this representation. We
analyze examples in Greek, English, and Spanish. 1
keywords
poetic imagery; blending; metaphor; time as space; path schema
This research was completed thanks to a Swiss Government Excellence Fellowship awarded to Anna Piata for the
academic year 2015-16 and to a Fundacin BBVA Award for Early Career Researchers for the year 2015, awarded
to Cristbal Pagn Cnovas.
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Time Goes by - Pirata

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The Way Time Goes by:

Conceptual Integration and the Poetics of Time

and the Pleiades, it is

They shall survive

nor because the moments leave and I shudder.

(events + AB motion with natural cycles + mechanisms) if it is to make sense at all.

like a row of burning little candles

Days past lie behind,

I don't want to see them: their shape saddens me,

I don't want to turn and see, terrified,

Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove

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