mapping spatial frames of reference onto time: a review of...

Cognition 132 (2014) 342–382

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Cognition

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Mapping spatial frames of reference onto time: A reviewof theoretical accounts and empirical findings

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.03.0160010-0277/� 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Bender).

Andrea Bender ⇑, Sieghard BellerDepartment of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, N-5020 Bergen, Norway

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 15 May 2013Revised 30 November 2013Accepted 31 March 2014

Keywords:SpaceTimeFrames of referenceTemporal perspectivesMental time lineSpace–time mapping

When speaking and reasoning about time, people around the world tend to do so withvocabulary and concepts borrowed from the domain of space. This raises the question ofwhether the cross-linguistic variability found for spatial representations, and the principleson which these are based, may also carry over to the domain of time. Real progress inaddressing this question presupposes a taxonomy for the possible conceptualizations inone domain and its consistent and comprehensive mapping onto the other—a challengethat has been taken up only recently and is far from reaching consensus. This article aimsat systematizing the theoretical and empirical advances in this field, with a focus onaccounts that deal with frames of reference (FoRs). It reviews eight such accounts byidentifying their conceptual ingredients and principles for space–time mapping, and itexplores the potential for their integration. To evaluate their feasibility, data from somethirty empirical studies, conducted with speakers of sixteen different languages, are thenscrutinized. This includes a critical assessment of the methods employed, a summaryof the findings for each language group, and a (re-)analysis of the data in view of thetheoretical questions. The discussion relates these findings to research on the mental timeline, and explores the psychological reality of temporal FoRs, the degree of cross-domainconsistency in FoR adoption, the role of deixis, and the sources and extent of space–timemapping more generally.

� 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

When speaking about time, people around the worldtend to do so with vocabulary and concepts borrowed fromthe domain of space (Alverson, 1994; Clark, 1973;Haspelmath, 1997; Traugott, 1978). This link reachesbeyond the extension of word meaning. For instance,co-speech gestures often add a spatial dimension totemporal expressions (Núñez, Cooperrider, Doan, &Wassmann, 2012; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006); postural swayis affected by whether people embark on a mental timetravel into the future or the past (Miles, Nind, & Macrae,

2010); and spatial primes can be used to influence theexperience of duration (DeLong, 1981), visuospatial atten-tion (Torralbo, Santiago, & Lupiáñez, 2006; Weger & Pratt,2008), or reasoning about time (e.g., Boroditsky & Ramscar,2002; Gentner, Imai, & Boroditsky, 2002). In fact, time andspace, together with quantity, appear to be computed by ageneralized magnitude system of the brain (Walsh, 2003),with temporal relations being mapped onto spatial repre-sentations, but not vice versa (Casasanto & Boroditsky,2008; Casasanto, Fotakopoulou, & Boroditsky, 2010), atleast in humans (Merritt, Casasanto, & Brannon, 2010).

In parallel, evidence has accumulated that differentgroups of people conceptualize space in different ways(Bennardo, 2002; Haun, Rapold, Call, Janzen, & Levinson,2006; Haun, Rapold, Janzen, & Levinson, 2011; Levinson,

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A. Bender, S. Beller / Cognition 132 (2014) 342–382 343

2003; Levinson & Wilkins, 2006; Majid, Bowerman, Kita,Haun, & Levinson, 2004; Senft, 1997), and this raisesimportant questions. If, for instance, the link betweenspace and time is indeed universal, should we then expectthat the cross-cultural variability found for spatial repre-sentations will carry over to the domain of time? And towhat extent might culture-specific ways of talking aboutspace also structure talking about time? Real progress inaddressing these questions, we argue, presupposes a tax-onomy for the possible conceptualizations in one domainand its concise and comprehensive mapping onto theother. Such a harmonizing of terminology would facilitatenot only cross-domain comparisons in general, but also theassessment of the influence of spatial representations ontemporal ones in particular, and is therefore currently con-sidered to be one of the important desiderata in this field ofresearch (Bender, Rothe-Wulf, Hüther, & Beller, 2012;Tenbrink, 2011).

However, while research in the two domains and theacknowledgement of cross-domain transfers do have along tradition in several disciplines (reviewed in Núñez &Cooperrider, 2013), the challenge of mapping a taxonomyof spatial representations onto the domain of time hasbeen taken up only recently. During the last decade,respective attempts have mushroomed, but although sev-eral of them even sail under the same flag as ‘‘temporalframes of reference’’, they differ considerably in terms oftheoretical conceptualization and subsequent interpreta-tion of data—to the extent of being incompatible with eachother. All too often it has been left to the reader to figureout how these accounts are related to each other, to spatialtaxonomies, and to the empirical data accumulated duringrecent years. Núñez and Cooperrider therefore concludethat ‘‘despite intuitive appeal and promise of parsimony,a definitive taxonomy of ‘temporal frames of reference’remains elusive’’ (2013, p. 221). With our review, weattempt to systematize the theoretical and empiricaladvances in this field, by sorting the temporal accountsproposed so far according to their similarities and differ-ences, by comparing the principles according to which theymap spatial taxonomies onto time, and by scrutinizing theavailable data with regard to how they would be inter-preted in the light of each of these accounts.

More specifically, we begin (in Section 2) by describingthe theoretical and conceptual ingredients on which mostof the accounts are based, including a brief outline of theproperties and variants of the concept TIME and of the con-ceptual sources for the construal of temporal taxonomies.In Section 3, we provide an overview of the differenttaxonomies, followed, in Section 4, by their systematiccomparison according to the relations they establishbetween conceptual sources, the principles they adopt forconstruing frames of reference and for assigning FRONT,and the reference patterns they distinguish.

The second part of this review is then devoted to a(re-)analysis of the available empirical data, collectedpartly as evidence for conceptual innovations of specificaccounts and partly with the goal of assessing cross-cultural variability. Based on an overview of the methodsemployed (Section 5), findings are first presented sepa-rately for each speech community (Section 6), and are then

discussed with regard to their theoretical implications(Section 7). The potential for integration is outlined inthe conclusion (Section 8).

Before doing so, two constraints need to be explicatedand one clarification should be made. First, this reviewdoes not presuppose that all temporal conceptualizationsare derived from space. In fact, some properties of timeand temporal entities cannot be spatialized (Galton,2011), and some linguistic groups appear to generalize thisto the whole domain of time (e.g., Sinha, Da Silva Sinha,Zinken, & Sampaio, 2011, and see Section 6.9 below). How-ever, as the main thrust of this paper is to provide an over-view of temporal taxonomies based on the spatialization oftime, it will focus on temporal conceptualizations derivedfrom space. Second, this review will be restricted to theo-retical accounts that are based on, or at least related to,some type of frames of reference (FoRs) taxonomy. Whilethere may be other taxonomies of spatial conceptualiza-tions (and more options for mapping them onto time), thisrestriction is justified by the fact that most of the accountsthat have been proposed recently and that are of relevancefor this review have chosen this approach. And finally, ourusage of the terms ‘‘cultural’’ and ‘‘linguistic’’ requiressome a priori clarification. Although we basically utilizecross-linguistic data (i.e., data collected in groups speakingdifferent languages), we will adopt the term ‘‘cultural’’whenever preferences for some kind of FoR are referredto. The rationale for this is that preferences for FoRs withina speech community are not inherent in the meaning ofwords, or in any language-specific feature for that matter,but are a result of agreements or conventions within aspeech community—which we take to be a culturalphenomenon.

Throughout this paper, some abbreviations will be usedas a compromise between conciseness and readability(explained in Table 1, upper part). We also attempt touse the same terms throughout the paper when referringto the same referents; in cases where being faithful toalternative accounts requires deviations from this termi-nology (for an overview, see Table 1, lower part), we willadd the labels preferred in this review in square brackets.

2. The domain of time and its relation to space

Time is an abstract domain in the sense that it is intan-gible and ephemeral, and that we lack sensory organs toperceive it directly. The ability to process temporal infor-mation is based on two distinct computational mecha-nisms (Pöppel, 1997; Pöppel & Wittmann, 1999), and theawareness of the passing of time is linked to memory pro-cesses (Lewis & Miall, 2006). But our attempts to capturetime conceptually seem to hinge to a considerable degreeon metaphorical extension (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980,1999). While not the only possible candidate (Evans,2003), one domain which suggests itself as a source forsuch a metaphorical extension is space. Not only is spacemore concrete than time; it is also linked in various waysto the latter, for instance in all processes of change ormotion. But before we turn to the various ways in whichspace is fundamental to time, thus allowing for the transfer

Table 1Abbreviations and variations of technical terms as used in this paper.

AbbreviationsFoR frame of references-FoR spatial frame of referencet-FoR temporal frame of referenceF Figure; also: ‘‘referent R’’ (see below)G Ground; also: ‘‘relatum’’ (Tenbrink, 2011) or ‘‘reference point RP’’ (see below)V observer’s viewpoint (in temporal contexts often equated with Ego)X origin (origo) of the coordinate system in establishing a FoR; in ternary relations (relative FoR), X is transferred from V into G, which

then becomes the origo of the secondary coordinate system (X2)RP reference point (as used by Núñez & Sweetser, 2006, and Yu, 2012) [= G]R referent (as used by Yu, 2012) [= F]ME moving Ego (perspective); also: ‘‘Ego-moving’’ (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000; Gentner et al., 2002)MT moving time (perspective); also: ‘‘time-moving’’ (e.g., Boroditsky, 2000; Gentner et al., 2002)

Technical terms preferred for this paper, and some of their variantsabsolute FoR also referred to as: ‘‘field-based’’ (Talmy, 2000; and see Moore, 2004, 2011) or ‘‘extrinsic’’ (Kranjec, 2006)intrinsic FoR also referred to as: ‘‘ground-based’’ (Talmy, 2000)relative FoR also referred to as: ‘‘projector-based’’ (Talmy, 2000), ‘‘deictic’’ (e.g., Kranjec, 2006), ‘‘egocentric’’, or ‘‘viewer-centered’’ (elsewhere in

the literature)

Note. Some terms are used in capital letters when they denote concepts of things (as the concept of TIME) or, in the specific case of FRONT, do distinguish FRONT

assigned to entities or fields from ‘‘front’’ in the ‘normal’ sense.

344 A. Bender, S. Beller / Cognition 132 (2014) 342–382

of spatial conceptualizations to time in the first place(Moore, 2011), we need to explicate the ways in whichspace and time differ.

2.1. Properties and concepts of time

Attempts to describe and analyze time are plentiful (foroverviews see, e.g., Evans, 2003; Friedmann, 1990; LePoidevin, 2003; Newton-Smith, 1980), and we will notrepeat these here. But in order to identify the conceptualingredients of space-based taxonomies of temporal FoRs

Table 2Properties of time and how they can (or cannot) be mapped onto theexplanation is given in the text.

and to compare these taxonomies in a constructive man-ner, the following aspects need to be explicated: (i) theextent to which properties of time itself can (or cannot)be mapped onto the spatial dimension, (ii) the extent towhich concepts of time may vary, and (iii) the ways inwhich the directionality of time can be assessed.

2.1.1. Properties of timeAccording to Galton’s (2011) commendable analysis,

time has four distinct properties (or attributes), which itshares—to varying degrees—with space: extension, linear-

spatial dimension (for more details, see Galton, 2011); further

Table 3Concepts of time.

1 This structure can be violated, of course, for various reasons, and if doneartistically—as in the movie Memento (2000), directed by ChristopherNolan—this violation may be experienced as fascinating. However, one ofthe very reasons for the positive reviews of Memento was that its nonlinearnarrative structure was considered unique and original.


ity, directionality, and transience. Extension implies thattime has separate parts (such as distinct moments); linear-ity implies that of any three distinct moments, one has tobe between the other two; directionality implies an asym-metry between past and future; and transience impliesthe fleetingness of every single moment. These four prop-erties constitute an ordered series, with extension beingfoundational to linearity, which itself is foundational todirectionality, which is foundational to transience (seeTable 2).

Parallel to this increase in hierarchical order, the extentto which these properties can be mapped onto spacedecreases. While mapping is straightforward for the prop-erty of extension, it is possible for linearity only if any one ofthe three dimensions of space is singled out. Please notethat this may also include closed loops. In addition to therestriction to one dimension, the mapping of asymmetryfrom time to space also requires consideration of specificconditions under which this property may emerge: Theasymmetry between UP and DOWN relies on gravitation,the asymmetry between FRONT and BACK on the anatomy ofthe human body, and the asymmetry between LEFT andRIGHT (largely) on cultural values. A less obvious, but none-theless valid, asymmetry also emerges from the half-axesthat are radiating out from a central point, namely alongthe TOWARDS/AWAY FROM, NEAR/FAR, or INWARDS/OUTWARDS dimen-sion. Transience, finally, is the only property of time thatspace cannot have in and of itself. However, space canacquire it by being linked to time, as in motion (Galton,2011). When traveling by train, for instance, the placespassed by are transient in a way similar to the elapsedmoments. In contrast to changes of place during motion,changes of state involve only a negligible spatial compo-nent and thus might be regarded as almost purely tempo-ral. This temporal transience is captured by a concept oftime not as spatially extended, but simply as a perpetual‘‘getting later’’, as has been described for the Hopi byWhorf (1956; and see Malotki, 1983).

When time is metaphorically mapped onto space, theproperty of extension leads to the description of events as‘‘occupying space’’ or being ‘‘in the middle of’’ something.Linearity affords linguistic metaphors of duration, but alsographic and other representational metaphors (as in writ-

ing, musical notation, the time axis of graphs, or the designof clocks). Directionality allows for the mapping of asym-metric spatial axes onto time, as in the mapping of pastand future to the TOP/DOWN axis in Mandarin (Scott, 1989)or as in the Moving Ego (ME) and Moving Time (MT) met-aphors to be described below (Clark, 1973; Fillmore, 1971).As the ME/MT metaphors also involve motion, they makeadditional use of the property of transience (Galton, 2011).

Of these properties, the latter three will be of relevance forthe remainder of this paper: linearity for the concept of cycli-cal time (to be discussed in the next section); directionalityfor the asymmetric properties of time and temporal concepts,which is essential for the assignment of FRONT and thus for theconstrual of temporal FoRs; and transience for dynamic con-texts that involve real or metaphorical motion.

2.1.2. Conceptual variants of timeThree fundamentally different concepts of time will be

considered in this review: linear, cyclical, and radial time(see Table 3).

The concept of linear time is compatible with the expe-rience of passing time and the irreversible courses ofevents. Typically, this concept also implies directionality,aptly illustrated in the metaphor of an ‘‘arrow of time’’(Section 2.1.3). Its directionality is reflected, for instance,in diagrammatic depictions that are oriented towards thefuture (Galton, 2011), and it structures the canonical wayin which we recount history or tell stories.1 Cognitive sci-entists tend to consider the linear concept as the prevailingconcept of time in human thinking, and conceptualize itsrepresentation by a mental time line (Walsh, 2003; andsee Miles et al., 2010; Weger & Pratt, 2008).

While the concept of linear time seems to directlyspring from the property of linearity, the latter also affordsa concept of cyclical time, except that in this case the lineforms a closed loop (Galton, 2011; and see Le Poidevin,2003; Newton-Smith, 1980). The concept of cyclical time


is compatible with our experience of recurring time peri-ods that structure our life, such as times of the day, daysof the week, seasons, or annual holidays and feasts, andrecurring events, such as the life cycles of plants andanimals. It has been described for several non-Westerncultures such as Hinduism (Sharma, 1974), the Hopi(Malotki, 1983; Whorf, 1956), or the Maya (Farriss, 1987;León-Portilla, 1990). The linear and the cyclical conceptcan be reconciled and integrated into a spiral or helicconcept according to which types of events do recur, butat different points in time and in a non-reversible order.

The concept of radial (or ego-centric) time, finally,reflects the precision of memory (of the past) andanticipation (of the future), which is most pronouncedfor proximal events and decreases with distance from thesubjective now, symmetrically into past and future. Likethe aforementioned linear and cyclical concept, it iscompatible with, and in fact follows directly from, theproperty of directionality when mapped onto space. How-ever, as outlined above, the mapping of the asymmetryproperty from time to space requires a consideration ofspecific conditions under which this property may emerge,and one of these conditions involves the half-axes radiat-ing out from a central point (Galton, 2011). Illustrativeexamples of this radiation are the loudness of sound orthe brightness of light emitted from a single source, orthe field of vision or attention from the point of view ofany given observer. The concept of radial time has receivedthe least amount of attention (but see Bennardo, 2009),and although it has been predicted to occur in speech com-munities, which prefer a relative (or ego-centric) FoR fortemporal descriptions (Bender, Bennardo, & Beller, 2005),it remains unclear whether it only characterizes temporalaspects of cognitive processes or may also serve to struc-ture representations of time (as claimed by Bender,Beller, & Bennardo, 2010).

(a) A-series (b) B-Series

deictic or tensed time non-deictic or sequence time

Fig. 1. The A-series versus B-series of time.

2.1.3. The arrow of timeAn implication of Galton’s (2011) third property of time

is the asymmetry between past and future, also labeled‘‘arrow of time’’. This notion deserves particular attentionhere as it will be essential in some accounts for construingan absolute FoR. While most physical processes are sym-metrical with regard to time (i.e., they could be reversedwithout violating physical laws), some appear to unfoldover time from past to future. The increase of entropy,for instance, described by the second law of thermodynam-ics, bestows a direction onto the flow of time; and the sameholds for the expansion of the universe, for radiation andradioactive decay, or for the course of biological evolution(Gould, 1987; Mackey, 2003). This directedness from pastto future is captured by the ‘‘arrow of time’’ metaphor.Although its status in physics is not entirely uncontrover-sial (Price, 1996), it is reflected in some of our basic cogni-tive processes: The perception of events precedes memoriesof these events, and causes precede effects. Typically, thearrow of time is seen as pointing into the future, and forany concept based on this notion, FRONT in time would thusbe assigned to the future (alternative views and assign-ments will be discussed further below).

2.2. Conceptual sources for taxonomies of temporal frames ofreference

Although this review focuses on the spatialization oftime and in particular on the mapping of taxonomies ofspatial frames of reference onto temporal relations, twoother sources for these types of taxonomies also requireattention as they are frequent ingredients for construalsof temporal taxonomies: the distinction of A-series versusB-series, and the equally popular distinction of the MovingEgo (ME) versus Moving Time (MT) perspective. The heter-ogeneity in this field of research basically arises from thevarious ways in which these two temporal sources arecombined with each other and with spatial notions.

2.2.1. Descriptions of time: A-series versus B-seriesOne of the oldest research traditions in the domain of

time goes back to an essay by the philosopher JohnMcTaggart (1908) on ‘‘The Unreality of Time’’, in whichhe identifies two different descriptions of temporal order:the A-series versus B-series of time (see also Gell, 1992;Traugott, 1975). Broadly speaking, the A-series descriptionof events follows from the way in which these events areordered, as being in the past, present, or future, relativeto an observer’s subjective now or deictic center. Beingpart of an A-series also involves a change of status for eachand every event, which was once in the future, thenbecomes present, and will finally drift into the past(Fig. 1a). The B-series description, on the other hand, simplyrefers to the order of events within a sequence, in whichone event precedes (‘‘is earlier than’’) or follows (‘‘is laterthan’’) another one, regardless of the point in time fromwhich this may be observed (Fig. 1b).

This distinction is captured by language in that A-seriesdescriptions typically include tense, which requiresanchoring in the speaker, and thus are deictic, whereas B-series descriptions are based on sequencing (expressedby ‘‘earlier/before’’ and ‘‘later/after’’ relations), whichrequires an anchoring of events with respect to each other,and are thus non-deictic (Traugott, 1975, 1978).

2.2.2. Temporal perspectives: Moving Ego (ME) versus MovingTime (MT)

If we think of time as a river, the direction of flowallows for two different, yet complementary, perspectives(see Table 4, left column): the Moving Ego (ME) and theMoving Time (MT) perspective (e.g., Clark, 1973;Fillmore, 1971). From the Moving Ego perspective, weregard ourselves as moving downstream through station-ary time; we approach future events and leave thembehind, as in (1). From the complementary Moving Timeperspective, we regard ourselves as stationary and time

Table 4Extending the Moving Ego (ME) and Moving Time (MT) perspective beyond deictic examples (A-series) to include non-deictic examples (B-series).

Note. Non-deictic MT corresponds to the ‘‘Time-RP’’ metaphor (proposed by Núñez et al., 2006); non-deictic ME does not occur in English,but has been observed in Hausa (Hill, 1978), and in Japanese and Marathi (Shinohara & Pardeshi, 2011); further explanation is given inthe text.


as moving towards us; future events approach us and passby, as in (2):

(1)
‘‘We are approaching Tuesday.’’ [ME] (2) ‘‘Tuesday is approaching (us).’’ [MT]
These two perspectives on time can be regarded as met-
aphoric systems which are accessed during informationprocessing (for overviews, see Gentner, 2001; Núñez &Sweetser, 2006). Either of these systems suggests one spe-cific reading of ambiguous phrases like ‘‘moving a meetingforward’’ (Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976), priming either theME or MT perspective shifts these readings more towardsthe future or the past, and switching from one system tothe other incurs cognitive costs, as revealed by reactiontime in consistent versus inconsistent mapping conditions(Boroditsky, 2000; Gentner et al., 2002; McGlone &Harding, 1998).
ME and MT are simply two different perspectives on theexact same scene—mirror images or figure/ground reversalsof each other (Talmy, 2000; Traugott, 1978): In (1), forinstance, the figure (i.e., the entity to be located) is ‘‘we’’,and the ground (the entity in reference to which the figureis located) is Tuesday; in (2), it is the other way around.

In their original version, the scenes depicted in a phraselike ‘‘moving forward next Wednesday’s meeting’’ involveda deictic center or Ego (implied in ‘‘next Wednesday’’), butthe complementary relation of ME and MT also holds fornon-deictic scenes (Bender et al., 2010). Consider theslightly rephrased non-deictic expression ‘‘moving forward

every Wednesday’s meeting’’: The perspective of time asmoving from the future to the past (MT) would still suggesta pastwards reading, whereas the inverse perspective oftemporal entities as moving from the past to the future(ME) would suggest a futurewards reading, as illustratedin the right-hand column of Table 4. Accordingly, non-deictic sentences like (3) will also count as MT:

(3)
‘‘Monday comes before Tuesday.’’ [MT]
In this case, the metaphorical motion of events—triggered by their alignment in a sequence, in which ear-lier events are ‘‘in front of’’ later ones—resembles themoving time perspective from future to past. This raisesthe question of whether such (non-deictic) B-seriesdescriptions could also be compatible with the reverseME perspective. While the label ‘‘Moving Ego’’ may makethis sound odd, there is actually no reason why it shouldbe impossible or even implausible. The lack of evidencefrom linguistic examples in English alone does not sufficeto assess such a claim. Although seemingly not a domi-nant phenomenon across languages, at least one condi-tion is conceivable under which B-series descriptionswould indeed be compatible with an ME perspective:When sequences of events are described with later eventsbeing ‘‘in front of’’ earlier ones, their alignment reflectsthe futurewards direction, which is otherwise characteris-tic of the ME perspective, as in (4), taken from Hill (1978,p. 536; and see Levinson & Majid, 2013; Shinohara &Pardeshi, 2011):


(4)
‘‘Tuesday is before Monday.’’
Fig. 2. Spatial frames of

[MT]

In any case, the relationship between the ME and MT
perspective on the one hand, and A- and B-series onthe other, cannot be straightforward. While ME and MTare mirror images of each other (i.e., complementaryperspectives on the same scene), A- and B-series are not;in fact, they are incommensurable with each other(McTaggart, 1908; Traugott, 1975, 1978). As we will seebelow, one of the reasons why the different accounts differso much is because they define ME and MT perspectivesdifferently (as being strictly deictic or not), and becausethey map them differently onto A- and B-seriesdescriptions.
2.2.3. Spatial frames of reference (s-FoR)The theoretical construct of prime interest for this

review is frames of reference, which were first designed

reference, s-FoR

for space. Over the years, several different taxonomieshave been proposed, with the taxonomy by Levinson(2003) being one of the most popular. It will be taken hereas the reference point because it has served as the basis forassessing cross-linguistic variability in spatial references,and because it was employed as one of the conceptualsources in most recent attempts of space–time mappings(for alternative accounts, see also Bohnemeyer &O’Meara, 2012; Danziger, 2010; Talmy, 2000).

In general, a frame of reference (FoR) is a coordinatesystem required to establish the position of a figure inreference to a ground from a given perspective (Talmy,2000); sometimes, albeit not necessarily, this perspectivecoincides with the viewpoint of an observer. The taxonomyproposed by Levinson (2003) distinguishes three basictypes: an absolute, an intrinsic, and three variants of a rela-tive FoR, most of which are depicted in Fig. 2 (for detaileddescriptions, see Bender et al., 2010, 2012; Levinson, 2003).

(adapted from Bender et al., 2010).


The characterization of these FoRs requires the followingcomponents: a figure F (the object to be located), theground object G (in reference to which F is located), andthe origo and orientation of the coordinate system X. Theviewpoint of the observer V is optional and relevant forthe relative FoR only.

The absolute FoR derives its orientation from a superor-dinate field outside F and G. As argued above (Table 2; andsee Galton, 2011), space generally lacks directionality andasymmetry, even on Earth (and especially if one leavesaside the vertical dimension that, by virtue of gravitation,may be seen as ‘naturally’ directed). Assignment oforientation to the superordinate field therefore dependson cultural conventions and includes, for instance, the car-dinal points, mountain slopes, prevailing wind directions,rivers, or the land-sea axis on small islands (Bennardo,2000, 2002; Levinson, 2003; Senft, 1997). Importantly,neither the position of a potential observer nor theorientation of G is relevant for referencing. The catin Fig. 2a would therefore be described as ‘‘east of thecar’’.2

The intrinsic FoR derives its orientation from the groundentity G and can thus only be adopted if G is perceived asbeing directed. Although a large number of potentialground entities are asymmetric, this does not necessarilyimply directionality. Assignment of orientation to such anentity therefore, again, depends on cultural conventions.In the case of animates this is typically based on lookingdirection; but even artifacts such as cars, computers, orchairs can be assigned a FRONT, depending, for instance, onhow people normally interact with them or into whichdirection they tend to move (e.g., Bennardo, 2000; Clark,1973). Crucially, this includes an observer, as long as thisobserver serves as the (primary) ground. The cat inFig. 2b could therefore also be described as ‘‘in front ofthe car’’. The fact that a particular object may have anintrinsic orientation, however, only allows for, but doesnot determine, the choice of an intrinsic FoR. Again, theposition of a potential observer, if different from G, is irrel-evant when choosing an intrinsic FoR.

The relative FoRs derive their orientation from the view-point V of an observer, which needs to be different from theground object G to establish the ternary relation between F,G, and V that is constitutive of a relative FoR (Fig. 2c). As theposition of F is still determined in reference to G, however,the primary coordinate system with origo X in V needs to betransferred into G. This secondary coordinate system(anchored in G = X2) can be established in three differentways, thus giving rise to the three variants of the relativeFoR: by rotation, reflection, or translation. Of these threevariants, reflection and rotation can only be distinguishedin two-dimensional space; in one-dimensional space (ortime, for that matter), they conflate and will thus be treatedjointly as the reflection variant (Fig. 2d).

These different construals have several implications,one of which is crucial for the mapping of spatial FoRs to

2 In Talmy’s (2000) account, the alignment of entities (e.g., in a queue)can provide directness and thus create orientation for an absolute FoR. Thisversion of an absolute FoR is picked up by some scholars when construingtemporal FoRs.

the domain of time. With the reflection variant of therelative FoR (Fig. 2d), FRONT is assigned to a positionbetween G and V or nearer to V, and BACK is assigned to aposition beyond G or further away from V. With thetranslation variant of the relative FoR (Fig. 2e), the reverseis true. Please note that the relative FoRs correspond tothe half-axes radiating out from a central point, identifiedby Galton (2011) as one possibility for mapping thedirectionality property of time to space. This gives rise toan asymmetry along the TOWARDS/AWAYWARDS dimension(see Table 2), with the reflection variant favoring theTOWARDS direction, and the translation variant favoring theAWAYWARDS direction.

Most of the previous work on spatial FoRs has been con-cerned with documenting culture-specific preferences forspecific FoRs (e.g., Bennardo, 2002; Haun et al., 2006,2011; Hüther, Bentz, Spada, Bender, & Beller, 2013;Levinson, 2003; Levinson & Wilkins, 2006; Majid et al.,2004; Senft, 1997), and with exploring whether differencesin these preferences also entail cognitive implications(Levinson, Kita, Haun, & Rasch, 2002; versus Li &Gleitman, 2002; and see Haun et al., 2011; Li, Abarbanell,Papafragou, & Gleitman, 2011). In this review, we will focuson the question of whether preferences for a specific FoR inspatial contexts may carry over to the temporal domain. Aconclusive answer to this question, however, requires aconclusive mapping of spatial FoRs onto time. The premisesfor such a mapping are given: Establishing the position of afigure in reference to a ground from a given perspectiverequires a frame of reference, in time as much as in space.And although space and time differ in various ways(Galton, 2011), the principles on which Levinson’s (2003)taxonomy is based are domain-general, as outlined above,and can therefore be applied equally well to both domains,as we aim to demonstrate in the remainder of this paper.

2.2.4. Other conceptual sources: route perspective versussurvey perspective

For the sake of completeness it should be noted thattemporal perspectives have also been related to the litera-ture on mental maps and spatial navigation. Jamalian andTversky (2012), for instance, consider both the ME andMT perspective as analogous to a route (or intrinsic or ego-centric) perspective in space, taken from an embeddedviewpoint and with Ego as the reference point. In contrast,a calendar view on time is seen as analogous to a survey (orabsolute) perspective on space, taken from an externalviewpoint and with dates or events as the reference points.This account is too recent to have inspired much researchyet, but should be kept in mind.

3. Accounts for mapping spatial frames of referenceonto time

For just one decade now, attempts have been under-taken to map a taxonomy of spatial frames of reference(s-FoR) to the domain of time, and these attempts alreadyencompass more than half a dozen different variants. Inthis review, the following accounts will be considered:


� the Ego-based vs. field-based frames of referenceaccount by Moore (2004, 2006, 2011);

� the reference-point (RP) metaphors account byNúñez and Sweetser (2006);

� the temporal framework models account by Kranjec(2006);

� the temporal frames of reference account by Zinken(2010);

� the reference frames of space and time account byTenbrink (2011); and

� the temporal frames of reference (t-FoR) account byBender, Bennardo, and Beller (2005; see alsoBender et al., 2010).

Two other accounts will be considered merely inpassing:

� the time-referent vs. human-referent distinction byYu (2012). and

� the route vs. survey perspective account by Jamalianand Tversky (2012).

The review will take note only of those aspects that arerelevant to the question under scrutiny, namely howthese accounts make use of, and attempt to integrate, theconceptual sources for temporal taxonomies, includingA-/B-series, ME/MT perspectives, and frames of reference(overview in Table 5). For any other detail of theseaccounts and for the often elaborate metaphoricalmappings, the reader is advised to consult the respectivearticles.

3.1. Ego-based versus field-based frames of reference (Moore)

The account proposed by Moore (2004, 2006) providesone of the first attempts to combine temporal perspectiveswith a frame of reference notion (albeit initially not relatedto any of the spatial FoR taxonomies). He takes the dichot-omy of the ME versus MT perspective as the starting point,but expands their scope beyond examples of the A-seriesby distinguishing the MT perspective further into ‘‘Ego-centered Moving Time’’ and a non-deictic MT, which arecaptured by an Ego-based versus field-based frame of ref-erence, respectively (Table 5a).

For the Ego-based frame of reference, Ego serves as thereference point. The Ego-based frame of reference thusinvolves a deictic center and in this respect correspondsto the A-series of time, as in (5):

(5)
‘‘Tuesday isapproaching (us).’’
[= (2)]
[Ego-based]
In contrast, the field-based frame of reference does notinvolve a deictic center; Ego and its subjective present isoptional and irrelevant. Instead, it reflects a SEQUENCE AS POSI-

TION ON A PATH metaphor and corresponds to the B-seriestime: What counts for this type of reference is the orderof events within a sequence, as in (6):

(6)
‘‘Monday comesbefore Tuesday.’’
[= (3)]
[field-based]
Recently, Moore (2011) further specified this account invarious ways: by categorizing ME and the Ego-centered MTperspectives together as ‘‘Ego-perspective (path-config-ured) frames of reference’’, by now explicitly relating histerms to the A-series (= Ego-perspective) and B-series (=field-based), and by discussing possible relationships withthe spatial FoRs in Levinson’s (2003) taxonomy (Table 5b).On the latter issue of mapping spatial FoRs to the temporaldomain, however, he remains rather critical: While thefield-based frame of reference is taken as including theabsolute FoR, the Ego-perspective frame of reference isclaimed to be without counterpart and, more specifically,to be explicitly not equivalent either to the relative or theintrinsic FoR (Moore, 2011). This revised account is alsodiscernibly closer to the account described in the nextsection.

3.2. Reference-point (RP) metaphors (Núñez)

A second attempt to go beyond temporal perspectivesand to integrate them with referencing systems is the ref-erence-point (RP) metaphors account proposed by Núñezand Sweetser (2006; and see Núñez, Motz, & Teuscher,2006). In contrast to Moore (2004, 2011), who splits theMT perspective into two distinct categories, Ego-based ver-sus field-based, and merges one of these (Ego-based) withthe ME perspective as deictic, Núñez’ account classifies MEand MT as two sub-cases of what they call the ‘‘Ego-Refer-ence-Point (Ego-RP) metaphor’’, because they considerboth ME and MT as typically involving an Ego. The Ego-RP metaphor is set apart from a ‘‘Time-Reference-Point(Time-RP) metaphor’’ that does not presuppose Ego(Table 5c).

Examples like (5) and (7) are thus categorized asinstances of Ego-RP metaphors because they make use ofEgo (or rather its subjective now) as the reference point.Examples like (8) are categorized as instances of Time-RPmetaphors because they depict sequences of events anduse one of these events (here Tuesday) as the referencepoint.

(7)
‘‘June is still ahead[of me].’’
[Ego-RP]

(8)
‘‘Monday comesbefore Tuesday.’’
[= (6)]
[Time-RP]
In this sense, the Ego-RP metaphor directly corresponds
to an A-series description, and the Time-RP metaphor to aB-Series description, even though this is not explicitly sta-ted by Núñez and Sweetser (2006). The main differencebetween this account and the one proposed by Moore isthus related to how strictly each defines the scope of theME and MT perspectives: as being restricted to deictic(A-series) descriptions, or as reaching further to includenon-deictic (B-series) descriptions (see discussion aboveand Section 2.2.2).
Núñez and Sweetser (2006) do not explicitly refer theiraccount to any taxonomy of spatial FoRs either. What theydo point out, though, is a correspondence between theTime-RP metaphor and Evans’ (2003) complex temporal

Table 5Schematic overview of the temporal accounts using frames of reference (FoR).

Note. The terms characteristic for each account are printed bold-faced; correspondence with relevant terms that are not explicated but canbe inferred are printed grey and in square brackets; metaphors are in capital letters; and correspondence to Levinson’s (2003) FoRs areshaded. Further explanation is given in the text.



sequence model; in addition, they characterize the temporalrelationships in the Time-RP metaphor as ‘‘intrinsic’’ to thesequence (Núñez et al., 2006, Footnote 1), with earlierevents being described as ‘‘in front of’’ later events. Thesetwo statements encourage us to (tentatively) classify theTime-RP metaphor as an instance of the intrinsic FoR. Thiswould also be compatible with how they derive the intrin-sic FRONT of G in the Time-RP metaphor, namely from theprototypical direction of motion (i.e., pastwards; Fig. 1b).In contrast, the Ego-RP metaphor, for which they assignEgo the decisive role, might be seen as corresponding toa relative FoR.

3.3. Temporal framework models (Kranjec)

Following on from this classification, Kranjec (2006)proposes a temporal framework models account, with whichhe tries to integrate the reference point metaphors withthe A- and B-series of time and with all three spatial FoRsfrom Levinson’s (2003) account. His taxonomy encom-passes a deictic temporal framework (which comes closeto what Levinson labels ‘‘relative’’), an intrinsic, and anextrinsic framework or ‘‘absolute’’ FoR in Levinson’s termi-nology (in more recent work, the intrinsic and extrinsictemporal framework were relabeled as ‘‘linked’’ and‘‘path’’, respectively; see Kranjec & McDonough, 2011).

The deictic temporal framework covers the A-series typeof events, subsumes the ME and MT perspectives, and isthus equivalent to the Ego-RP metaphor proposed byNúñez and Sweetser (2006). The classical non-deictic cases(B-series), which basically rely on the earlier/later relationwithin temporal sequences, are captured in his account bythe intrinsic temporal framework, akin to Núñez’ Time-RPmetaphor. Finally, the one framework that is newly consid-ered here, the extrinsic temporal framework, is based onthe notion of ‘‘time itself’’ (referred to as the ‘‘matrix sense’’of time by Evans, 2003). According to this notion, time is ‘‘abackdrop, or something understood to move forward, inde-pendent of particular events embedded within it’’ (Kranjec,2006, p. 450), and its direction eventually affords assign-ment of FRONT to the future (Table 5d).

3.4. Temporal frames of reference (Zinken)

Similar to the previous account, Zinken (2010) takes theA-/B-series conception as his starting point and tries tointegrate it with Levinson’s (2003) taxonomy of spatialFoRs. He equates an A-series classification with Moore’sEgo-based frame and Núñez’ Ego-RP metaphor. Both tem-poral perspectives, ME and MT, are considered to be sub-cases of this category (which reveals the stricter readingof the temporal perspectives; Section 2.2.2). Conversely, aB-series classification is equated with Moore’s field-basedframe and Núñez’ time-RP metaphor, except that this doesnot entail the MT perspective (Table 5e). The integrationwith spatial FoRs is based on whether the relationsinvolved are binary or ternary (Fig. 2) and on an analysisof how FRONT is assigned in each of these cases.

A-series time always involves an Ego, and is thus a nec-essary precondition for ternary relations (which are a nec-essary precondition for the relative FoR). However, it is not

a sufficient precondition for ternary relations: If Ego servesas the ground entity G for the reference, the relation is bin-ary (as explained in Section 2.2.3) and thus only affords anintrinsic FoR. A-series descriptions may therefore entail anintrinsic FoR as in (9)

(9)
‘‘I have a fun afternoon in front of me.’’ [intrinsic] (binary, with F = afternoon andG = me/Ego),
or a relative FoR as in (10)

(10)
‘‘the day after tomorrow’’ [relative] (ternary, with F = the day,G = tomorrow, and V = today/Ego’snow).
As Ego is constitutive of A-series descriptions, Ego’slooking direction is taken as the source for assigning FRONT

to the future. This holds both for the intrinsic example in(9) and the relative example in (10); however, in the lattercase, FRONT is constrained to that part of Ego’s future whichis also in G’s past (which is why the day after tomorrow,and thus in G’s future, is also in G’s back).

In B-series time, Ego is irrelevant; therefore, both anintrinsic and an absolute FoR are, in principle, possible.However, in contrast to binary relations in A-series time,where the intrinsic FoR is warranted by Ego and its intrinsicFRONT, its adoption in this context requires an additionalassumption. To endow a ground event G with an intrinsicFRONT, Zinken argues, events need to be regarded as one‘‘following’’ the other, as in (11):

(11)
‘‘One day comes after the other.’’ [intrinsic]
The direction of movement can thus be used to assignFRONT—here: to the earlier or anterior event (Zinken,2010; and see Fillmore, 1971).

The absolute FoR, on the other hand, requires that theorigo of the coordinate system is not located in the groundentity G, but in the surrounding field. According to Zinken(2010), temporal intervals (such as days or weeks) can beunderstood as such bounded entities or ‘fields’, with thebeginning of the interval (in the past) corresponding tothe field’s FRONT, and with earlier events as being closer tothis FRONT. For this very reason, he classifies (12)—differentfrom (11)—as an example of an absolute FoR:

(12)
‘‘Wednesday is after Tuesday.’’ [absolute]
In a more recent paper (Sinha et al., 2011), Zinken’saccount has been somewhat modified. Here, the termsabsolute, intrinsic, and relative are no longer used; instead,ME and MT are classified as ‘‘Ego-relative temporal motionconstructions’’, and sequence-based ones as ‘‘positionaltime constructions’’, which is equated with Moore’s(2011) field-based temporal FoR and McTaggart’s (1908)B-series (Table 5e0). It is unclear whether this shift in ter-minology is intended as a conceptual advancement. How-ever, as Zinken himself argued in his earlier paper, such abipartite classification would be less powerful than his ori-ginal tripartite FoR system.


3.5. Reference frames of space and time (Tenbrink)

For her account, which aims to provide a cross-domainframework, Tenbrink (2011) directly builds on Levinson’s(2003) taxonomy and expands it by adding dynamic rela-tions to the static ones, and by transferring the resultingsystem from space to time. Her reference frames aremodeled along the following lines: (a) intrinsic, relative,and absolute concepts (or none of these), (b) static versusdynamic situations, and (c) external versus internal rela-tionships between entities (in space only). Based on thesedistinctions, she describes 23 different reference framesfor space and 10 for time. Leaving aside the external/internal distinction, we will focus in this review on herabsolute, intrinsic, and relative FoR for static situations,but will also, where necessary, pay special attention todynamic situations.

The transfer of Tenbrink’s spatial taxonomy to timeadditionally makes use of the A- and B-series and theirmapping onto ME and MT perspectives. FollowingGalton (2011), she describes time as having an ‘‘inbuiltasymmetry’’, which, however, can be conceived of intwo contrasting ways: as a vector from past to future(associated with the deictic A-series), and as a vectorbased on anteriority/posteriority in sequences (associatedwith the non-deictic B-series), which points towardsearlier times (Table 5f).

In line with Moore (2006, 2011), the B-series in heraccount corresponds to the Ego-free MT and thus to afield-based frame of reference; and the anteriority/posteri-ority relation within sequences of events is seen as war-ranting its classification as absolute FoR (it cannot beintrinsic as events do not have an intrinsic FRONT accordingto Tenbrink, 2011). Her treatment of the A-series, however,diverges from Moore (2004, 2011) insofar as she does notexplicitly account for Ego-centered MT as instance of refer-ence frames. Instead, she considers a distinction of staticversus dynamic situations as more important.

The static A-series situations in her account all have abinary structure, with G = Ego (as in (13)), thus affordingan intrinsic FoR (see also Zinken, 2010).

(13)
‘‘Good times lie before me.’’ [intrinsic]
FRONT is assigned in line with Ego’s looking direction and
thus typically to the future. According to Tenbrink (2011),ternary relations do not exist in temporal language for sta-tic situations, and therefore no relative FoR exists either. Incontrast, the dynamic situations in her account afford morethan one FoR. Respective cases include binary relations asin (14), which are classified as intrinsic (again withG = Ego), and ternary relations as in (15).
(14)
‘‘I’m going forward in time.’’ [intrinsic] (15) ‘‘Next Wednesday’s meeting has
been moved forward two days.’’

At least in English, example (15) constitutes an ambig-
uous case, in which the meeting may be understood ashaving been moved towards Friday (futurewards) or Mon-day (pastwards). Both readings are classified by Tenbrink(2011) as being based on a relative FoR: the futurewardsreading as resulting from an ME perspective and the
pastwards reading as resulting from an MT perspective.From the ME perspective, assignment of FRONT is derivedfrom Ego’s moving direction into the future. From the com-plementary MT perspective, the event is seen as beingmoved into Ego’s FRONT area. The same reading (pastwardsto Monday) could also arise from an absolute FoR, accord-ing to which the meeting has been simply moved towardsearlier times, regardless of how it is related to Ego’s now.

3.6. Temporal frames of reference, t-FoR (Bender, Beller, andBennardo)

In contrast to most other accounts, Bender and col-leagues (Bender et al., 2005, 2010, 2012; Rothe-Wulfet al., 2014; and see Table 5g) do not take the A-/B-seriesdistinction as their starting point, but rely entirely on thedesign principles laid out for frames of reference by Levin-son (Section 2.2.3). Based on these principles, they proposea set of possible FoRs (not necessarily attested to by exam-ples from English) that can be used to explore the extent ofdiversity in temporal references.

They define an absolute t-FoR as one that derives its ori-entation from the superordinate field outside figure,ground, and observer. As space itself is the superordinatefield in the spatial domain, so is time in the temporaldomain; and the asymmetry of time (i.e., its directionality)can be recruited for assigning orientation to this field: FRONT

is where the arrow of time is pointing to, namely (typi-cally) towards the future. Events ‘‘in front of’’ other eventsor ‘‘moved forward’’ from their previous position wouldthus be further in the future.

An intrinsic FoR derives its orientation from the groundentity G; and the asymmetry of events (with a beginningand an end) can be recruited for providing these entitieswith orientation: FRONT is assigned to that part of time per-tinent to the beginning of event G. Events ‘‘in front of’’other events or ‘‘moved forward’’ from their previous posi-tion would thus be in the past of the original date. Impor-tantly, in the t-FoR account, this also holds if Ego happensto coincide with G, as what counts here as G in time is atemporal entity such as subjective present, and not Ego’slooking direction.

A relative FoR, finally, requires a ternary relationbetween figure F, ground G, and observer V. How F is local-ized in reference to G depends on V’s subjective viewpoint,and this viewpoint can change relative to the constellationof F and G (e.g., by simply ‘moving’ through time). Cru-cially, it emerges as either one of two different (and in factopposed) variants (Fig. 2): In the reflection variant, the pri-mary coordinate system originating in V is transferred intoG by reflection and thus leads to the assignment of FRONT tothe time between G and V (i.e., nearer to V), whereas in thetranslation variant, the primary coordinate system is trans-ferred into G by translation, thus leading to the assignmentof FRONT to the time beyond G (i.e., further away from V). Ineither case, events are localized symmetrically in one’spast and future, and thus with diverging FRONTs and BACKs.Such a relative-reflective (or ‘‘egocentric’’) pattern is nicelydemonstrated, for instance, in the French terms for great-grandchildren and great-grandparents, which are allsuffixed by arrière, ‘‘behind’’ (Radden, 2004).


In the t-FoR account, A-series and B-series descriptionsmay reflect certain FoRs more or less closely (e.g., a B-ser-ies description of sequenced events invites an intrinsicFoR), but are not seen as logically related. In particular,A-series descriptions do not entail a relative FoR per se. Agenuine relative FoR presupposes that the introduction ofthe subjective viewpoint (V) of an observer (which has tobe distinct from G) makes a difference for referencing;and this is not the case for most A-series descriptions.For instance, a sentence like (16)

(16)
‘‘Next Wednesday’s meetinghas been moved forward twodays.’’
Table 6The four temporal reference frames distin

Note. A-series and B-series labels were ad

[= (15)]

could still be understood according to the intrinsic FoR in
that ‘‘forward’’ is interpreted as being towards earliertimes, or according to the absolute FoR in that ‘‘forward’’is interpreted as being simply towards the future.
Likewise, the ME and MT perspective in the more gen-eral reading (Section 2.2.2) largely reflect different tempo-ral FoRs, with ME reflecting the futurewards orientationaligned to the arrow of time (absolute FoR) and MT reflect-ing the pastwards orientation, towards the beginning oftime (intrinsic FoR). However, they do not necessarilyalways correlate with them: From both perspectives,future is where the arrow of time is pointing to (absolute),the beginning of events occurs earlier than their endings(intrinsic), and Ego and future are approaching each other(relative). The assignment of FRONT, arguably the hallmarkof a frame of reference, is not fully affected by the adoptionof a temporal perspective (except for ambiguous cases like(16), the reading of which may indeed be primed by move-ment; see Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002).

3.7. Further accounts

For the sake of completeness, two more accounts will bebriefly presented despite the fact that they are not yetwidely disseminated: the temporal reference framesaccount by Yu (2012), and the route versus survey perspec-tives account by Jamalian and Tversky (2012).

3.7.1. Temporal reference frames (Yu)In order to resolve the controversy regarding whether,

in Chinese, Ego is conceived of as facing toward the futureor the past, Yu (2012) proposes two distinctions. The first

guished by Yu (2012

ded here for easier

distinction concerns the reference point RP, which in othertaxonomies (and in this review) is denominated as groundentity G. Following Moore (2011) and Núñez and Sweetser(2006), the two categories are labeled Ego-RP and Time-RP(Yu, 2012). The second—and novel—distinction concernsthe referent R (or figure entity F), with time-referent(Time-R) and human-referent (Human-R) as the two cate-gories relevant for Chinese (Yu, 2012; and see Table 6).The latter category consists of human sequences (eitheras ‘‘deictic human frame’’ or ‘‘sequential human frame’’),which are analogous to event sequences and thus maponto an earlier/later relation, with older people and gener-ations ‘‘in front of’’ the sequence and/or Ego.

The A-/B-series distinction is mentioned in passing asbeing related (and presumably overlapping with the RPdistinction). ME and MT are mainly used for assigningFRONT to temporal entities and/or relations. Yu’s accountlargely remains silent regarding a possible correspondencewith (spatial) FoRs, leaning more towards Talmy’s (2000)than Levinson’s (2003) taxonomy, specifically when itcomes to assigning FRONT in queue-like compositions suchas event sequences. Such compositions are seen as‘‘encompassive secondary reference objects’’ (Talmy,2000; and see Moore, 2011). Their FRONT is derived fromalignment and/or moving direction and overrides the (pos-sible) orientation of single entities. In contrast to manyother scholars, but in line with Bender and colleaguesand partly Zinken (2010), this account also grants anintrinsic FRONT to times and events (Yu, 2012).

3.7.2. Route perspective versus survey perspective (Jamalianand Tversky)

In contrast to the aforementioned account that relatesto spatial FoRs only in passing, the account proposed byJamalian and Tversky (2012) is not as elaborate withregard to temporal concepts as the previous ones. Comingfrom the research tradition in mental maps and spatialnavigation, these authors focus on the distinction betweenroute perspective versus survey perspective, which theyequate with an intrinsic or egocentric FoR and an absoluteFoR, respectively. The route perspective in space is consid-ered to be analogous to both the ME and MT perspective intime, taken from an embedded viewpoint and with Ego asthe reference point. In contrast, the survey perspective onspace is considered to be analogous to a calendar viewon time, taken from an external viewpoint and with dates

).

comparison.


or events as the reference points (see also Núñez &Sweetser, 2006; Zinken, 2010).

4. Comparison of accounts

As we have seen above, most accounts make use of thesame set of conceptual components for construing tempo-ral FoRs (which is partly obscured by idiosyncratic label-ing), but combine them in distinct ways. As oneconsequence, each of the accounts proposed so far differsin substantial ways from any other account. In this section,we attempt to analyze similarities and differences betweenthe accounts by addressing the following questions: (1)How are the conceptual sources related to each other forthe construal of temporal FoRs? (2) On which principlesis FoR construal based, and how is FRONT assignment real-ized in this process? And (3) what types of relations or ref-erencing patterns are predicted from each of thesetaxonomies? In closing this section, we also explore (4)the potential for integrating these accounts.

4.1. Relations between conceptual sources

The conceptual sources to be considered here encom-pass A- and B-series, the Moving Ego (ME) and MovingTime (MT) perspective, and up to four frames of reference(FoRs).

4.1.1. Relations between A-/B-series and temporal FoRsAlmost all of the accounts presented here (except for the

one by Bender et al., 2010) take deixis, in any one of its con-ceptual variants (e.g., A-/B-series, Ego-/field-based, Ego/time reference point), as their starting point. In other words,the basic distinction from which most taxonomies unfold isthe distinction between linguistic expressions that do or donot entail a deictic center: Ego, or rather Ego’s present. Thisis certainly attributable to the fact that most of theseaccounts originate from linguistics, and it accommodatesthe relevance of deixis, particularly for the relative FoR,which does indeed require the viewpoint V of an observer.Taking deictic versus non-deictic expressions as the primedistinction, however, may obscure the fact that the relationsbetween the A-/B-series classification on the one hand and aFoR-based classification on the other are more complex(Section 2.2.2; and see Levinson, 2003; Moore, 2011). Binaryrelations in which Ego (or V) serves as the primary referencepoint (= ground G), such as (9) or (13) above, attest to thiscomplexity as much as a ternary example like (15). The bin-ary relations with G = V do not qualify as examples of a rel-ative FoR (Tenbrink, 2011; Zinken, 2010), whereas a ternaryexample like (15), despite clearly qualifying as an A-seriesdescription, could also be interpreted in line with an abso-lute FoR (Bender et al., 2010; Tenbrink, 2011). Undoubtedly,however, the A-/B-series distinction helps to avoid confu-sion between past and future on the one hand and earlierand later on the other.

4.1.2. Relations between ME/MT perspectives and A-/B-seriesWhereas A- and B-series are incommensurable with each

other, ME and MT provide complementary perspectives on

the exact same scene. As detailed in Section 2.2.2, this sim-ple fact implies that the two distinctions address differentdimensions of temporal descriptions and, as a consequence,cannot be mapped onto each other in any straightforwardmanner.

Some accounts (e.g., Kranjec, 2006; Núñez & Sweetser,2006; Zinken, 2010) conceptualize both ME and MT asinvolving a deictic center (Ego), as was intended in theoriginal version (Section 2.2.2), and therefore map themonto the A-series (Table 5). Other accounts (notablyMoore, 2004, 2011; and see also Tenbrink, 2011) extendthe notion of MT by also including non-deictic cases,which they then map onto the B-series. As argued byBender et al. (2010), such an extension presupposes amore general view on temporal moving perspectives,namely as a perspective on time as moving not onlytowards Ego but towards temporal entities and eventsmore generally. Since ME and MT are figure/ground rever-sals of each other, this must entail the possibility of thereversed perspective: a non-deictic ME perspectiveaccording to which not only Ego, but temporal entitiesand events more generally are (figuratively) movingthrough time (in this case, of course, the perspectiveshould be labeled ‘‘moving event’’ or ‘‘moving entity’’,rather than ‘‘moving Ego’’). In (16), for instance, the meet-ing moves towards the future; the same is possible (inboth directions) for other events such as floating holidaysand vacations. As proposed in the account by Bender,Beller, and Bennardo (2010; and see Table 4 above), theME/MT distinction would thus fully intersect the A-/B-ser-ies distinction, at least in theory. Whether this theoreticalclaim can be corroborated by empirical evidence remainsto be seen.

4.1.3. Relations between ME/MT perspectives and temporalFoRs

Those accounts that conceptualize ME and MT in thestricter sense as involving a deictic center also tend toequate both perspectives with a relative FoR (Kranjec,2006; and by inference perhaps Núñez & Sweetser,2006). The same holds for Zinken’s (2010) account, albeitwith the relative FoR being restricted to ternary relations.Accounts that also admit non-deictic MT cases (Moore,2004, 2011; Tenbrink, 2011) match them to an absoluteFoR (Table 5). The account by Bender et al. (2010) divergesfrom all of these accounts in various ways. Due to diverg-ing design principles, it proposes cases that do or do notinvolve Ego for both the ME and MT perspective, and itrefuses to conflate the two complementary perspectivesunder one FoR. As a consequence, non-deictic MT is seenas being compatible with an intrinsic FoR, and non-deicticME as being compatible with an absolute FoR. In contrast,the two variants of the relative FoR do not comply, in thisaccount, with any general moving perspective.

4.1.4. Distinction between static and dynamic situationsTenbrink (2011) argues that a comprehensive taxonomy

of temporal FoRs should include the distinction betweenstatic and dynamic situations (Section 3.5), and as we willsee from the empirical data compiled below, this mayindeed be important in some cases. With regard to her clas-

Table 7Assignment of FRONT depending on the adopted t-FoR, together with the principles on which this is based, in each of the accounts; further explanation is given inthe text.

4 The same seems to hold for Jamalian and Tversky (2012), who equatethe absolute FoR with a calendar view on time, with dates or events as thereference points and ‘‘earlier/later’’ as the terms of reference. However, thisaccount leaves open whether the field is considered to be oriented towardsearlier or later events. Yu (2012) does not specify his account with regard to


sification of FoRs, however, it only has a bearing on her con-ceptualization of relative FoRs, which are claimed to exist indynamic but not static situations. Why this should be validis an interesting question in itself (for counter-examples,see Levinson & Majid, 2013; Radden, 2004; Shinohara &Pardeshi, 2011; Zinken, 2010), but in either case, thisrestriction entitles us to collapse our review across staticand dynamic situations for all other FoRs.

4.2. Principles of FoR construal and FRONT assignment

As explained in Section 2.2.3, a frame of reference (FoR)is a coordinate system required to establish the position ofa figure F in reference to a ground G from a given perspec-tive (which may or may not be an observer V). The FoRsdiffer essentially in terms of where this coordinate systemoriginates and how it is oriented. The system’s origo maybe in the superordinate field (in the case of the absoluteFoR), in G (intrinsic), or in V (relative) and is used to estab-lish its orientation. With regard to these design principles,spatial frames of reference (s-FoRs) do not differ from tem-poral frames of reference (t-FoRs).3

4.2.1. Absolute t-FoRThe construal of an absolute FoR requires an oriented

superordinate field outside F, G, and V. In the spatial domain,this field is space, and in the temporal domain, by analogy, itis time. But while the relevance of such an oriented field is

3 It should be noted, though, that not all accounts reviewed here arebased on these principles (see specifically Moore, 2011).

undisputed, there is no consensus on where this orientationmay come from. In the accounts reviewed here, at least threedifferent principles can be identified for how orientation ofthe temporal field is conceptualized (see Table 7).

In line with causal relations and the change from per-ception to memory, the arrow of time as conceptualizedby most physicists and psychologists points towards thefuture (Section 2.1.3). This notion is enlisted by Kranjec(2006) and Bender and colleagues (2005, 2010) to identifythe orientation of the field as futurewards. In at least twoother accounts (Tenbrink, 2011; and, albeit with reserva-tions, Moore, 2011), this same arrow of time is regardedas emerging from the viewpoint of Ego, who happens tobe aligned to the future, thus connecting it to an intrinsicFoR. For construing an absolute FoR, these accounts takeinstead the earlier/later (anteriority/posteriority) relation,inherent in the sequence of events (akin to people in aqueue), as the source from which they derive the orienta-tion of the field. According to these accounts, the absolutefield is therefore oriented pastwards or, more precisely,towards earlier events.4 Finally, Zinken (2010) also consid-ers the absolute field as being oriented towards earlier

a FoR taxonomy, but as he leans on Talmy’s (2000) treatment of queue-likecompositions in a way similar to Moore (2011), we categorize him into thisgroup by analogy. Crucially, in his account, not only sequences of events arereferenced absolutely, but also sequences of human generations.


times, but for a different reason. In his account, the field, inwhich single events are embedded, consists of larger tem-poral entities—intervals like days, weeks, months, or years.The beginning of these intervals is assumed to be theirFRONT, and this has always taken place in the past of theembedded events.

4.2.2. Intrinsic t-FoRThe intrinsic FoR usually attracts little dispute, even

with regard to denomination. For it to be enacted, theground object G (or reference point) that serves as origoof the system needs to have an orientation assigned to it.Amazingly, however, in the temporal domain, little con-sensus can be observed across the different accountsregarding what would count as an intrinsic orientation—or whether G, if it is an event, may have one at all (seeTable 7).

Tenbrink (2011), for instance, claims that this is impos-sible (and see Zinken, 2010). For this very reason, the twoaccounts only consider cases in which the observer V coin-cides with the ground (G = Ego) as examples of an intrinsicFoR. Derived from the assumed looking or moving direc-tion of Ego (prevailingly futurewards), FRONT is assigned tothe future5 (in Zinken’s account only for A-series descrip-tions). In contrast, three accounts propose the oppositeassignment of FRONT to earlier times, although for differentreasons: Zinken (2010, for B-series phrases) and Kranjec(2006)—as well as, perhaps, Núñez and Sweetser (2006)—due to the metaphorical moving direction of G, derived fromthe earlier/later relation in event sequences; and Bender andcolleagues (2005, 2010) due to what they hold to be anintrinsic FRONT of events (the latter assumption is also sharedby Yu, 2012).

4.2.3. Relative t-FoRTo an even greater extent than the intrinsic FoR, the rel-

ative FoR seems to open up a wide field for diverging per-spectives and positions. Relative FoRs require a ternaryrelation, in which Ego (or V) cannot serve as the primaryreference point (or G). But whether they exist in thedomain of time, and, if so, in how many variants, remainsdisputed (see Table 7).

A relative temporal FoR is claimed not to exist at all byMoore (2011) and not to exist for static situations byTenbrink (2011). Other accounts do admit its existence.Zinken (2010), for instance, defines a relative FoR as entail-ing the assignment of FRONT to the future of Ego—due to itslooking direction—but past of or earlier than G (i.e., theinterval between Ego and G). Kranjec (2006) and evenTenbrink (2011, for dynamic situations) also propose a rel-ative FoR, but one that implies two diverging assignmentsof FRONT: towards the future or later times from an ME per-spective, and towards the past or earlier times from an MTperspective (see also Jamalian & Tversky, 2012; Núñez &Sweetser, 2006).

Bender and colleagues (2005, 2010), finally, proposetwo relative FoRs, a reflection and a translation one—each

5 Arguably, this may also be how one can categorize Yu’s (2012) deictictime frame, which combines Ego-RP with Time-R (thus corresponding to theclassical A-series) and is oriented towards the future.

with a distinct and unambiguous assignment pattern:nearer to Ego for the reflection, and further away fromEgo for the translation variant. This conception is in linewith Galton’s (2011) notion of radial half-axes, and it alsoconforms with early theoretical considerations put forwardby Traugott (1975, 1978), who defined tense, in its sim-plest form, as the distinction between proximal and distalrelations, and thus as symmetrical to the deictic center.

4.3. Referencing patterns

As a consequence of the different conceptualizationsand principles for assigning FRONT, the accounts reviewedhere also make qualitatively distinct predictions withregard to the number and type of the resultant referencingpatterns (see Table 8).

4.3.1. Two patternsThe early accounts of A-series versus B-series (following

McTaggart, 1908) as well as the approaches that build onthe ME versus MT perspective on time (Clark, 1973;Fillmore, 1971; and see, e.g., Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002;Gentner et al., 2002; McGlone & Harding, 1998) basicallydistinguish two patterns of assigning FRONT, namely eitherfuturewards (A-series, ME perspective) or pastwards/towards earlier events (B-series, MT perspective). This pat-tern is reflected in the accounts of Moore (2004, 2011),Núñez and Sweetser (2006), and Kranjec (2006)—and thisdespite the fact that Moore splits MT into an ego-centeredand a field-based version, and Kranjec even distinguishesfour different cases (extrinsic, intrinsic, and deictic in anME versus MT version).

4.3.2. Three patternsZinken (2010) and Tenbrink (2011) predict three differ-

ent patterns: a simple pattern each for a futurewardsassignment (for A-series, with Ego = G) and a pastwardsassignment (for B-series) as well as a more complexpattern of assigning FRONT to the space between Ego and aground entity (which is in the future of Ego). In Zinken’s(2010) account, this occurs for all cases of A-series, inwhich Ego is not conflated with G. In Tenbrink’s (2011)account, it occurs for dynamic situations only, and onlyaccording to one reading of her example (16), in whichthe entity to be moved is perceived as approaching. Whilethese accounts offer a third pattern insofar as they qualifythe pastwards movement by fixing it to the future of Ego,they remain silent on the question of what happens to thispattern in Ego’s past. It is thus not clear whether assigningFRONT to the past of G (but the future of Ego) is qualitativelydifferent from a more general assignment of FRONT to thepast and thus from a broader MT perspective, regardlessof Ego’s position.

4.3.3. Four patternsIn contrast, the account by Bender and colleagues

(2005, 2010) explicitly distinguishes the set of generalmovements (pastwards vs. futurewards) from a set ofradial movements (towards Ego/now vs. awaywards fromEgo/now, both in past and future). This subsumes the

Table 8Patterns of FRONT assignment and/or forward movement; explanation is given in the text.


half-linear or half-radial patterns acknowledged by Zinken(2010) and Tenbrink (2011).

4.4. Potential for integration

As is apparent from the above overview, conceptualiza-tions differ dramatically for all of the FoRs, and for none isthere convergence among more than half of the accounts.None of the accounts agrees completely with any of theother accounts across all FoRs. And even where twoaccounts propose the same type of FRONT assignment, thismay be for quite different reasons. Does this situation leaveany leeway for us to decide objectively, which of the prin-ciples adopted for the construal of the t-FoRs is more sen-sible than the others?

At first glance, this seems to be unlikely. For instance,the orientation of the temporal field required for the abso-lute FoR can be derived from the arrow of time, whichpoints towards the future, but it can also be derived froman extensive temporal interval that began in the past, in‘‘the beginning of all time’’. This is further complicated bythe fact that, for some speech communities like Aymara(Núñez & Sweetser, 2006), the future is apparently con-

ceived of as being in one’s back, and the past as in front.However, this apparent arbitrariness in how such a crucialquestion could be addressed in fact helps to highlight aneed for further conceptual clarifications related to a spa-tio-temporal taxonomy of FoRs.

In order to settle the theoretical disputes, we propose ataxonomy entirely based on abstract design principles. FoRconstrual according to this taxonomy depends on the num-ber of entities for which the relation has to be established(binary or ternary) and on the origo of the coordinate sys-tem (in the superordinate field, the ground entity G, or theobserver’s viewpoint V). While this is largely consensualacross the accounts reviewed here, the current proposaldiffers from these accounts in how it treats linguisticexamples: For an intrinsic FoR to be diagnosed, it cannotbe decisive whether, for instance, Wednesday’s meetingis moved forward into the past, but whether the alignmentof FORWARD with past is derived from the ground (Wednes-day), rather than from the field (time in general) or theobserver’s viewpoint (now).

Like its counterpart in space, this taxonomy constitutesa tool for assessing a broad range of possible references intime. However, it remains abstract insofar as it contains at


least one free parameter, namely the principle according towhich orientation is assigned to the entity that serves asorigo for the coordinate system—in each of the FoRs underscrutiny here, albeit to varying degrees. How orientation isconcretely assigned depends almost entirely on culturalconventions and may thus vary across and perhaps evenwithin speech communities. If two speakers diverge inhow they assign orientation to origo, an apparently identi-cal expression would be generated by diverging FoRs,whereas adoption of the same FoR would generate diverg-ing expressions. More specifically, the alignment of FORWARD

with past could be indicative of an absolute FoR (if time isseen as having its beginning in the past), or of an intrinsicFoR (if events are seen as being oriented by their begin-ning, or if events are seen as moving into the past).

In not presupposing a specific alignment, this accountdiffers substantially from all accounts reviewed above,and even from the initial t-FoR taxonomy. While Benderand colleagues (2005, 2010) acknowledged such a freeparameter to be fixed by cultural convention in the caseof the absolute FoR, they did not acknowledge it for theintrinsic FoR, which they simply equated with pastwardalignment.6 Consequently, the original t-FoR taxonomy fellshort of achieving a clear conceptual separation of thedesign principles on the one hand and their (culture-specific) instantiation on the other.

This conceptual separation, however, is crucial fortighter integration of the accounts reviewed above. Asindicated in Table 7, most of these accounts already agreeon the relevance of the design principles for FoR construal.This convergence, however, is partly blurred by foursources of confusion, three of which can be resolved ontheoretical grounds.

The first source for blurring is the conceptualization ofthe relative FoR, which has given rise to the most contro-versy—from claims that it does not exist at all, to sugges-tions of one FoR or even two variants of it. Thiscontroversy fizzles out if some of the somewhat under-specified assumptions regarding the relative FoR are elab-orated further. Three of the four accounts that do proposerelative FoRs distinguish two different cases that entaildiverging FRONT assignments, namely both to future andpast (Table 7). This in itself is unsatisfactory: The purposeof adopting a FoR is to locate F in reference to G. Conse-quently, each FoR should give a non-ambiguous searchspace for F. While this does not imply that relations canbe described by only one FoR, it does imply that each FoRshould give only one relation of F to G. Assuming two dis-tinct variants of the relative t-FoR (akin to the variants ofthe relative FoR in space, as described in Section 2.2.3)solves this problem: The reflection variant of the relativeFoR could encompass the MT cases in the accounts of

6 In the case of the relative FoR, the free parameter to be fixed by culturalconventions defines how the primary coordinate system with origo X in V istransferred into G. As described in Section 2.2.3, this can be done byrotation, reflection, or translation, thus giving rise to three variants, whichdiffer in how the secondary coordinate system (anchored in G = X2) isoriented. The degree to which speakers may differ in this regard, has beendocumented especially for the spatial domain (e.g., Beller et al., 2014;Bender et al., 2012; Bennardo, 2000; Bennardo, 2009; Hill, 1982) and willbe discussed for the temporal domain in Section 7.3.1.

Núñez and Sweetser (2006), Kranjec (2006), and Tenbrink(2011), with the additional specification that FRONT isassigned not simply to the past, but to the past of G withinthe future of Ego (i.e., to the interval between Ego/V andG); and the translation variant could encompass the MEcases in these same accounts, with the additional specifica-tion that FRONT is assigned not simply to the future, but tothe future of both G and Ego.

A second source for blurring is the question of whetherEgo’s assumed looking or moving direction (into thefuture) may serve to assign FRONT in any of the FoRs. Asdetailed in Section 4.2.2, some accounts (Tenbrink, 2011;Zinken, 2010) consider binary relations with Ego (V) = Gas the only cases in which an intrinsic FoR can be adopted.In these cases, Ego’s looking direction is seen as providingthe basis for FRONT assignment. ‘‘Ego’’ in time, however, isonly used figuratively as person; in actual fact it is definedas an event or time point (i.e., Ego’s subjective present), forwhich looking direction does not make sense. Rather, Ego’slooking direction reflects the general view of where time‘flows’ to, and may thus be used as an indicator for howorientation of the absolute field is defined in this speechcommunity (see also Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Yu, 2012).

This concern is related to the third source for blurring,namely the debate on whether temporal entities and/orthe superordinate field can be regarded as oriented at all.As mentioned above, some accounts (including Zinken,2010) claim that events do not have an intrinsic orienta-tion. If, however, time in general, as well as time intervalslike weeks or days more specifically, may be seen as direc-ted, thus providing orientation to the field in an absolutesense (Zinken, 2010; and see Yu, 2012), any event servingas ground G for the intrinsic FoR—by virtue of having abeginning in the exact same way—should also be seen asdirected. This is what actually allows the sequence ofevents in B-series descriptions to be depicted by a vectorpointing towards earlier times.

The final source for blurring is the disagreement amongaccounts on what provides the basis for FRONT assignmentin binary temporal relations, with some scholars recruitingthe same principle (e.g., the sequence of events) for justify-ing an absolute FoR that others use to justify an intrinsicFoR. This disagreement cannot be resolved on theoreticalgrounds. As we argued above, the principle according towhich orientation is assigned to the origo for the coordi-nate system is largely based on conventions. Whetherand how speakers assign FRONT to time and temporal enti-ties such as events can only be assessed empirically. Thesecond part of this review therefore scrutinizes the avail-able empirical data. Based on this analysis, the potentialfor a more coherent theoretical integration will then bediscussed anew.

To summarize, while the ways in which each accountassigns FRONT in each of the temporal FoRs currently painta rather confusing picture, it would indeed be possible toachieve more consensus and coherence: by taking thedesign principles for FoR construal as the starting point,by acknowledging the radial patterns involved in the rela-tive FoR, by using Ego’s alignment with time (its ‘‘lookingdirection’’) as an indicator of how field orientation isperceived, and by establishing the (culture-specific) princi-


ples for FRONT assignment in the intrinsic and absolute FoRon empirical rather than theoretical grounds.

One of the main differences between accounts simplyarises from their disciplinary background and traditions.Most of them, originating in linguistics, present naturallanguage examples that are then analyzed and sorted intocategories. To various degrees, these categories aremodeled after the A-/B-series distinction, the ME/MT-per-spectives on time, some reference point metaphors, orother related conceptual sources. Another approach, whichis more closely related to representational accounts inanthropology, psychology or cognitive science, begins bycovering the space of conceivable reference patterns andderives from those the design principles for frames of ref-erence, with the purpose of being broad enough to capturea potentially large degree of cross-linguistic variability. Theresultant grid overlaps substantially with the categoriesarising from the linguistic approach, but (presently) alsocontains empty cells. For instance, apart from the genera-tional terms reported by Radden (2004), no conclusive evi-dence has yet been provided for a relative-reflectivereference pattern in the temporal domain (contrary to itspervasiveness in space). The crucial question, then, iswhether languages can be found that may provide exam-ples for the empty cells. Used in this way, such a gridequips us with a powerful tool to discover new and inter-esting phenomena. If, however, these cells remain empty,we will still have gained valuable information with regardto cognitive constraints on temporal referencing.

5. Empirical investigations: methods and tasks

Regardless of how thoroughly scholars may havedesigned their cross-domain taxonomies for frames ofreference, the question of whether and how people reallydo transfer spatial conceptualizations into the domain oftime—or are otherwise affected by spatial cues when engag-ing in temporal reasoning—can only be answered throughempirical investigations. For the following overview, somethirty studies were scrutinized, which differ with regardto the theoretical stance they took, the methods theyadopted, and the findings they obtained. To facilitate com-parison, we will first describe in necessary detail their mainmethods, before presenting and discussing their findings(Sections 6 and Section 7). The range of widely differenttasks can be sorted into the following types: (1) languageelicitation, typically combined with some sort of priming,(2) analysis of bodily expressions such as gesture and pos-tural sway, (3) elicitation of spatial layouts on which tem-poral relations are mapped, and (4) implicit tasks that usea reaction time paradigm with congruency priming.

5.1. Language elicitation tasks

Generally, elicitation tasks present some kind of (lin-guistic or non-linguistic) stimuli and ask participants toprovide a linguistic description or response. This is the casein the classic reference tasks where arrangements ofobjects have to be described (e.g., Pederson et al., 1998;Senft, 1995), either by way of free answers or instructions

for another person, or by selecting from a set of givenoptions. The descriptions are then analyzed in terms ofwhich FoRs they are based on. This type of task can easilybe transferred to the temporal domain.

5.1.1. Elicitation: the Wednesday’s meeting taskThe classical elicitation paradigm in the temporal

domain revolves around moving an event (McGlone &Harding, 1998): Participants are informed that ‘‘The meet-ing originally scheduled for next Wednesday has beenmoved forward two days.’’ When asked for the day onwhich the meeting will now take place, two answeroptions are provided (Monday and Friday), from whichparticipants can choose. The question is ambiguous in thatroughly half of US participants tend to choose Monday andthe other half Friday. The former choice is considered to beconsistent with an MT perspective and the latter with anME perspective.

If only two perspectives are to be distinguished, onequestion is sufficient. If, however, more possible perspec-tives are at stake, the original question with the eventlocated in the future needs to be supplemented by a ver-sion in which the event is located in the past (Benderet al., 2005; Núñez et al., 2006). According to the refer-ence-point (RP) metaphors account (Núñez et al., 2006),the past version forces participants to choose between aninterpretation either relative to Ego’s front (leading to afuturewards movement) or relative to the front of thesequence (leading to an earlier-movement). According tothe t-FoR account (Bender et al., 2005, 2010, 2012; Rothe-Wulf et al., 2014), only the simultaneous consideration ofa past and a future reference discriminates between allpossible FoRs.

In either case, however, we have no way of detectingmistakes which people may make in responding: Everysingle combination of responses produces a sensible pat-tern. This is generally true regarding all previous researchin this field, but it becomes more salient when the correctdiagnosis of specific FoRs is at stake. To address this con-cern, more than one pair of questions should be used,which enables one to assess intra-individual consistencyin addition to FoR choice. While detecting inconsistentanswers will not reveal whether participants made a mis-take or simply changed their minds, consistent answersmay be interpreted as support for the assumption that aspecific FoR has indeed be adopted.

5.1.2. Linguistic priming (of the ME and MT perspective)Typically, the Wednesday’s meeting question is embed-

ded in some sort of experimental context. In the originalstudy by McGlone and Harding (1998; and see Gentneret al., 2002), this consisted of a list of similarly structured,but non-ambiguous temporal sentences like: ‘‘We passedthe deadline two days ago’’. When the context consistentlysuggested an ME perspective, participants preferred theFriday response twice as often as the Monday response,whereas this pattern switched when the context suggestedthe MT perspective. The results are generally taken as evi-dence for the psychological reality of the ME and MT per-spective: They prove that taking either of these temporal


moving perspectives affects the way in which people inter-pret an ambiguous temporal phrase.

Moving on from there, Boroditsky and her colleaguescrossed the ‘space–time barrier’ demonstrating that prim-ing spatial perspectives may have similar effects. Theprimes they used consist of spatial scenarios including apicture and a sentence description, with the scenarioseither depicting a moving observer or a moving object(Boroditsky, 2000), or involve imagined and real motion(Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002).

5.1.3. Visual priming (of additional perspectives and/or framesof reference)

In a similar vein, the Wednesday’s meeting question canbe used to explore the psychological reality of other tempo-ral concepts or metaphors which are claimed to be also usedto process temporal information. Núñez et al. (2006), forinstance, sought to provide evidence for the relevance ofwhat they term the ‘‘Time-RP’’ metaphor (i.e., an Ego-freeMT perspective; Section 3.2). In order to foreground theanterior/posterior relation, which is also inherent in non-deictic event sequences (B-series), they used visual primesthat consist of a graphical array of objects sliding horizon-tally across a screen. Likewise, in order to demonstrate therelevance of an ‘‘extrinsic’’ (= absolute) FoR, Kranjec (2006)attempted to foreground the superordinate field, with twotypes of stimuli: a single entity moving over some kind ofground, and the picture of a river coming down from amountain, for which the path of motion had to be indicated.

Finally, Rothe-Wulf and colleagues (2014) intended todirectly investigate the relation between four distinct spa-tial FoRs and their temporal counterparts, as proposed byBender and colleagues (2010). In order to activate a specific(spatial) FoR, they used as primes three sets of pictures, allof which show a superordinate entity in motion (i.e., a con-veyor belt, train, or river) as well as smaller entities locatedin the superordinate entity; when required for the relativeFoR, an observer (outside this superordinate entity) wasadded to the picture. The picture was accompanied by afew sentences that describe the scene in a way compatiblewith one of the four FoRs to be foregrounded in the respec-tive condition. A final test question on the relationbetween two entities ensured that participants indeedadopted the primed FoR.

5.2. Analysis of bodily expressions

Bodily expressions accompany most of what we try tocommunicate, ranging from the emotions we areexperiencing (Darwin, 1872; Meeren, van Heijnsbergen, &de Gelder, 2005; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010) tocomplex cognitive ideas (Goldin-Meadow, 2003; McNeill,1992). The two types of bodily expressions that have beenused to date for investigating space–time mapping includeco-speech gesture and postural sway.

5.2.1. Co-speech gesturePeople spontaneously and mostly unconsciously use

gesture in conjunction with words (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 1998; McNeill, 1992; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006),

and these gestures may convey meaning that is not onlyrelevant to their verbal expressions but also completesthem (Goldin-Meadow, 2003; Le Guen, 2011a). As gesturesnaturally unfold in space, they also provide ecologicallyvalid information about how abstract concepts are spa-tially structured by the speaker (Cooperrider & Núñez,2009; Núñez et al., 2012).

The task assigned to elicit gestural data is similar to thepreviously described language elicitation task in that itsmain purpose is to induce people to talk about a certaindomain, for instance by asking them to explain temporalexpressions (Núñez et al., 2012), to re-tell a brief story theyhave just studied (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012), or to tell the(depicted) history of the universe (Cooperrider & Núñez,2009). To capture co-speech gesture, people are videotapedwhile talking, for later transcription and analysis. For theinvestigation of spatial and temporal representations, cod-ing the position and orientation of the speaker (with regardto the fixed bearings of a potential absolute frame of refer-ence) is crucial. Ideally, this orientation is rotated midwaythrough the interview to disentangle overlapping FoRs (LeGuen, 2011a). It may also be revealing to contrast indoorand outdoor settings, as blocking visual contact with land-marks may suspend a possible adoption of the absoluteFoR (Núñez et al., 2012). For data analysis, references todeictic time versus non-deictic or sequence time need tobe distinguished, as these two are assumed to recruit dis-tinct axes (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012; Emmorey, 2002;Núñez et al., 2012).

To compare spontaneous with deliberate gestureproduction, Casasanto and Jasmin (2012) also asked theirparticipants to make gesture demonstrations that theybelieve would most naturally accompany speech aboutearlier and later times.

A reversed strategy was employed by Jamalian andTversky (2012) who provided gestures together with theverbal description of a cyclical temporal sequence (e.g.,from seed to flower) or with the Wednesday’s meetingtask. Participants were then asked to depict the sequencein schematic diagrams or indicate the next step after itscompletion, or to identify the date to which the meetinghas been moved, respectively. Responses were then codedaccording to whether they are in line with the accompany-ing circular versus linear gesture (in sequence description)or forward versus backward gesture (the Wednesday’smeeting task).

5.2.2. Postural swayPeople do not only speak with their hands; often,

their whole body is involved. The fact that this type ofinformation may reveal underlying conceptions of timehas been shown by Miles et al. (2010). They requestedparticipants to embark on a mental time travel into thefuture (i.e., to imagine what their everyday life circum-stances might be like four years in the future = prospec-tion) or the past (to recall such circumstances four yearspreviously = retrospection) and to envisage the events ofa typical day. A magnetic motion-tracking system wasused to measure movement (postural sway) in the hori-zontal plane.


5.3. Mapping temporal relations on spatial layouts

The third type of task, like the previous one, is largelynon-linguistic and recruits space as the medium for tem-poral representations, but does so in a less spontaneousway. Over the years, the following variants have beendeveloped, which differ in sometimes small, but importantaspects, and are therefore described sequentially.

5.3.1. Graphic productionsThe task was designed by Tversky, Kugelmass, and

Winter (1991) to explore how space comes to be used forrepresenting non-spatial relations. Five sub-tasks are used,with one each devoted to spatial, imagined spatial, tempo-ral, quantitative, and preference concepts (each includingtwo or three parts). In the temporal sub-task, participantsare provided with a reference point in space: A sticker,which represents the middle event of a tripartite sequence,is placed on a blank sheet of paper. Sequences consist ofmeals, activities, and times of the day. The instructionsrun as in the following example (for children):

‘‘Now I want you to think about the times of day thatwe eat meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I will put asticker down for lunch time, and I want you to put asticker for dinner time and a sticker for breakfast time.Here’s where I’m putting a sticker for lunch time. Nowyou put a sticker for dinner time (pause), and anothersticker for breakfast time.’’ (Tversky et al., 1991, p. 526)

The task produces two general types of data: the type ofthe representation (i.e., nonlinear, ordered, or interval),and its direction. Of interest here is the direction of theordered representations. To be categorized as ‘‘ordered’’,stickers had to be separate, properly ordered (in any direc-tion), and more or less in one line7; direction was scored asleft-to-right (LR), right-to-left (RL), top-to-bottom (TB), andbottom-to-top (BT). Please note that, in this case, ‘‘top’’and ‘‘bottom’’ refer to the sheet of paper used as pad andthus are located in the horizontal plane. In other studies(e.g., Brown, 2012) and the remainder of this review, theseresponses are categorized instead as far-to-near (FN) andnear-to-far (NF), respectively.

As described above (in Section 5.2.1), Jamalian andTversky (2012, Exp. 1) asked participants to construct ‘‘asimple schematic diagram’’ to convey cyclical temporalsequences that were described to them verbally (accompa-nied by gestural priming). In this case, diagrams are codedas circular (with the last event being connected back to thefirst) or linear (without any such connection).

5.3.2. Temporal landscapesA similar principle is used by Zinken, Sampaio, da Silva

Sinha, and Sinha (2005; and see Sinha et al., 2011) for theirtemporal landscapes task, which consists of three parts. In

7 Examples of nonlinear responses included stickers forming a trianglerather than a line or representing events out of order (e.g., breakfast—dinner—lunch). Unfortunately, this category was excluded from the anal-ysis, which eliminated not only 15–40% of the data for the youngestchildren and 6–25% for the older children, but also, and more importantly,potential information on nonlinear time concepts.

the two calendar installations, participants are providedwith a larger number of tokens to be used as representa-tions of conventional time intervals (i.e., seasons and theirsub-intervals or constituents, and times of the day). Partic-ipants are then asked to ‘‘make a map of the year (or day)’’,in which each token should represent one interval of time.The design of this task differs from the previous one, in thatit (i) more strongly emphasizes the cyclical character of thetemporal entities under scrutiny by using terms for theannual and diurnal cycle and by illustrating the task witha circular diagram, (ii) provides a substantially larger num-ber of tokens which, in principle, allows for a broader vari-ety of arrangements, and (iii) does not prompt participantswith a reference point (i.e., the central stage is not placedfor them). The third part of the task, the time landscapegame, involves tokens to be used as representations of timeintervals. Two of these tokens (or a token and a doll) areplaced in line, perpendicular to the participant’s gaze.One token is then moved along the imaginary line so thatit reverses its position in relation to the other token (orthe doll, respectively). Participants are asked to describewhat they saw.

5.3.3. Picture arrangement taskChan and Bergen (2005; Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012) devel-

oped Tversky’s design into a card arrangement task, in whichthe tokens are not blank but contain black and white imagesof the entities in question. The five sets of three cards eachdepict growing stages of a living being (i.e., tree, chicken,butterfly, frog, and woman). As in the original study(Tversky et al., 1991), the cards have to be arranged on awhite sheet of paper ‘‘in sequence from the earliest to thelatest stage’’ (Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012, p. 3), but partici-pants are not prompted with a reference point.

5.3.4. Time arrangement tasksThe question that is most relevant for this review is

whether the spatial FoRs that are preferred in a givenspeech community may have an impact on how its mem-bers conceptualize the passage of time. To address thisquestion, the layout tasks had to be further modified: Arotation of participants halfway through the sitting isessential in order to disambiguate responses with respectto whether they are based on an absolute s-FoR (oriented,e.g., in line with cardinal directions) or a relative s-FoR(from the participant’s own perspective). The version ofthe task designed specifically for this purpose consists oftwo parts: a card arranging task and a time-points task(Boroditsky, Gaby, & Levinson, 2008).

For the card arranging task, eight sets of four cards eachare used. The cards in each set contain photographs thatdepict a temporal progression, such as stages in a life cycleor an event developing through time. Participants are askedto set them down ‘‘so that they are in the correct order’’.

For the time-points task, participants are provided witha reference point—for instance, by pointing abstractly toa central spot in the air (affording a 3D representation)or by placing a token on the ground directly in front ofthe participant (for a 2D representation)—and are thenasked to locate related temporal expressions in referenceto the first mark. More specifically, the instructions are


shaped as follows: ‘‘If I tell you that this here is today,where would you put yesterday? And where would youput tomorrow?’’ Altogether, twelve sets of three tempo-rally ordered terms each are used.

The sessions are videotaped and responses coded forlater analysis. The tasks are described in more detail inthe MPI Field Manual (Boroditsky et al., 2008; also availableonline) and are part of a larger cross-linguistic survey ontemporal representations (for respective studies, seeBoroditsky & Gaby, 2010; Brown, 2012; de Sousa, 2012;Fedden & Boroditsky, 2012; Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010;Gaby, 2012; Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012; Levinson &Majid, 2013).

5.4. Implicit tasks: reaction time paradigm based oncongruency priming

The final type of task is also largely non-linguistic, buttakes an indirect approach by contrasting experimentalconditions that are either congruent or incongruent withassumed spatio-temporal links. The task labels used hereare invented on the spot (derived from the stimuli used)to aid discrimination of and reference to these tasks inthe remainder of the paper.

Stimuli typically belong to either a past or future cate-gory (e.g., words in the past vs. future tense, or picturesof persons or buildings from the past vs. present/future,of persons at a younger vs. older age, or events at an earliervs. later stage). Stimuli are presented on a computer screenand have to be categorized, typically by pressing one oftwo keys. Mapping each stimulus category to one of thetwo locations of the keys creates congruent and incongru-ent conditions. For instance, mapping past onto the left keyand future onto the right constitutes one condition (pre-sumably the congruent one), while the reversed mappingconstitutes the other condition. Participants’ reaction timeand accuracy in making their decision are recorded. If map-ping conditions produce a main effect, the faster (and/ormore accurate) condition is identified as the congruent con-dition, thus revealing the existence and direction of theunderlying cognitive space–time mapping. The experimen-tal designs described in the following modify this generalidea in various ways, some of which are crucial for datainterpretation.

5.4.1. Tensed words, laterally displacedParticipants are presented with verbal stimuli, one after

another, which may appear either on the left or right sideof the screen. The stimuli consist of tensed verbs and tem-poral adverbs. Stimulus category (past/future) is indicatedby pressing one of two laterally displaced response keys(Santiago, Lupiáñez, Pérez, & Funes, 2007; for differentversions of this task, see also Ouellet, Santiago, Funes, &Lupiáñez, 2010a; Ouellet, Santiago, Israeli, & Gabay,2010b).

5.4.2. Actors of two ages, non-lateralizedA similar design is used in Experiment 1 of Weger and

Pratt’s (2008) study, but with two crucial modifications:Their stimuli are non-ordered (pictures of formerly or cur-

rently popular actors) and non-lateralized (presented cen-ter-screen). Stimulus category (‘‘before’’ or ‘‘after’’participants were born) is indicated by pressing one oftwo laterally displaced response keys.

In a second experiment, verbal stimuli are presentedcenter-screen, followed by a white circle that may appearon the left or right side of the screen. Circle location is indi-cated by pressing one of two laterally displaced responsekeys. Whereas the question pursued in Experiment 1 (asin previous studies) is whether congruent space–timemapping facilitates temporal judgments, Experiment 2investigates whether temporal cues may affect visuospa-tial attention and facilitate spatial responses.

5.4.3. Speech balloon with tensed words, twofold displacedIn addition to the stimuli used in the first task

(Santiago et al., 2007), the main experiment in Torralbo,Santiago, and Lupiáñez’ (2006) study introduces an exter-nal perspective: Participants are presented center-screenwith a side-view silhouette of a person’s head, lookingeither left- or rightwards. The verbal stimuli are pre-sented in a speech balloon and appear either in the backor front of the silhouette, either on the left or right side ofthe screen. In one version, stimulus category (past/future)is indicated verbally, while in another version, it is indi-cated by pressing one of two laterally displaced responsekeys. Trials can be congruent along the lateral (left/right)axis and/or along the sagittal (back/front) axis (in the sec-ond version this is further crossed with responsecongruency).

5.4.4. Temporal entities of two stages, non-lateralizedA similar goal is pursued by Boroditsky, Fuhrman, and

McCormick (2011), but in a different version: Instead ofcrossing a lateral condition with a sagittal one, they crossa lateral (horizontal) condition with a vertical one. To thisend, participants are presented with pairs of images, oneafter the other, all appearing center-screen. Each pair ofimages depicts the same entity at two different stages(e.g., a picture of a person at a younger and an older age).Participants are asked whether the second image shows aconceptually earlier or later time-point than the firstimage. Responses are given by pressing one of two adja-cent keys. For half of the participants, keys are arrangedhorizontally (on the left/right axis), while for the other halfthey are arranged vertically (perpendicular to the tabletop,on the up/down axis).

5.4.5. Buildings of two ages, non-lateralizedA similar principle is adopted by Miles, Tan, Noble,

Lumsden, and Macrae (2011), with the exception that thevertical response is not defined in 3-dimensional, but in2-dimensional space. Participants are presented withimages, one after another, all appearing center-screen.The images depict buildings and cities, representing thepast or a (science fiction) future. Stimulus category (past/future) is indicated by pressing one of four spatially dis-placed response keys, to which participants have to movetheir finger right versus left (horizontal condition) or upversus down (vertical condition). Please note that, although


for vertical responses the same keypad was used, it wasmounted on an incline to ensure up/down movements tosome extent.

5.4.6. Temporal sequences, non-lateralizedA version that extends stimuli presentation to larger

sequences was designed by Santiago, Román, Ouellet,Rodríguez, and Pérez-Azor (2010) to investigate not onlycongruency effects for space–time mapping, but also a pos-sible distance effect for temporal entities that are more orless removed from a reference point. To this end, partici-pants are presented with an unfolding sequence of every-day activities (in one version by way of video clips, in asecond version by way of pictures) at full screen size. Thisis followed by an order judgment task: Whether a givenscene comes ‘‘before’’ or ‘‘after’’ the reference scene is indi-cated by pressing one of two laterally displaced responsekeys.

5.5. Discussion of methods and tasks

The four types of tasks described above differ not onlyin the details of how they are designed and conducted,but also in the questions they allow us to address. In thefollowing, we briefly discuss their strengths and weak-nesses, before turning to the data obtained from them.

For identifying temporal frames of reference andassessing the degree to which they reflect space–timemapping, a language elicitation task provides a necessaryfirst step. After all, temporal referencing is a linguisticactivity, and systematic data collection on how peopledo this provides the foundation for any subsequent anal-ysis. In space, this can be accomplished in a straightfor-ward manner, and large-scale surveys have bestowed onus a cornucopia of data on cross-cultural variability inspatial FoR use (e.g., Beller et al., 2014; Bennardo, 2002;Haun et al., 2006, 2011; Hüther et al., 2013; Levinson,2003; Levinson & Wilkins, 2006; Majid et al., 2004;Senft, 1997). The same is not true for the temporaldomain—partly due to its non-tangible nature, and partlydue to the ongoing debate on what might count as anact of referencing in contrast to simply reading off themeaning from the words used.

The Wednesday’s meeting task (see Section 5.1.1) pro-vides an exception in that it allows for more than one read-ing, which opens the door for experimental manipulationsaimed at testing potentially influential factors. However,the task is peculiar in at least two ways. First, it employsa dynamic situation (the movement of an event), whereasin the spatial domain, static settings are more typicallyused. As mentioned above, there is some controversy asto whether static and dynamic settings are fundamentallydifferent (Tenbrink, 2011) or may be covered by the same,slightly modified typology of FoRs (Bender et al., 2010,2012; Levinson, 2003). The second peculiarity is relatedto the previous concern in that this whole line of researchhinges on one type of phrase and its possible readings:‘‘Moving X forward’’ is not only inherently under-specifiedin theory (Rothe-Wulf et al., 2014), but also happens toproduce ambiguity in practice, at least among speakers of

English (the same is true for ‘‘advancing X’’ and ‘‘pushingX back’’; see McGlone & Harding, 1998). To the best ofour knowledge, these three phrases provide the onlyinstance of such an ambiguity and thus have to shoulderthe entire weight of empirical testing in this field. The factthat in many other languages, these phrases are not dis-cernibly ambiguous—in the sense of producing equally splitreadings—renders cross-linguistic comparisons a contro-versial endeavor.

In contrast to this linguistic task, the documentation ofbodily expressions (Section 5.2), the spatial layout tasks(Section 5.3), and the implicit tasks based on congruencypriming (Section 5.4) do not take verbal output as theirprime data, but recruit space as the (implicit) mediumfor expressing temporal relations. As participants are typi-cally not aware of the purpose of the tasks, they are likelyto respond spontaneously, thus revealing implicit repre-sentations. In stark contrast to the implicit congruencytasks, the other two types (bodily expressions and spatiallayout tasks) entail a largely open format, which makesthem highly suitable for exploratory purposes. But eventhese tasks are not entirely impartial: Postural sway andmost versions of the layout tasks (except for the 3D versionof the time-points task; Section 5.3.4) are restricted to 2-dimensional responses in the horizontal plane, thus pre-empting vertical representations. And in some cases (suchas possibly in the temporal landscape task described in Sec-tion 5.3.2), the tokens used may be too large in size andnumber to afford unrestricted arrangement in the availableworking space (Sinha et al., 2011, p. 151). Even the gesturaldata (including the 3D pointing task) is constrained tosome extent by the body, which blocks genuinely back-wards pointing.

Furthermore, the basic question of whether space–timemappings are considered sensible in a speech communitycannot be answered unambiguously with these tasks. Bothbodily expressions and spatial layouts have an inherentspatial dimension. Co-speech gestures and postural swayunfold in space, regardless of the domain for which theymay be emblematic. Likewise, abstract pointing andarrangement of tokens is also fundamentally spatial innature. In all of these cases, any possibly observed cross-domain consistency could be attributed to this shared spa-tial dimension, whereas unsystematic response patternsmay have multiple causes (Bender et al., 2012).

The implicit tasks based on congruency priming, on theother hand, do allow the extent of such space–time map-ping to be assessed. Most often, however, they are fairlyrestrictive with regard to the dimension for which congru-ency is assumed and/or scrutinized (in most examples forthis type of task, this is the lateral left/right axis). More-over, task-specific characteristics appear to affect partici-pants’ responses (Torralbo et al., 2006).

To sum up, the Wednesday’s meeting task is useful fordiscriminating several t-FoRs (at least to a certain extent)and for identifying factors influencing their adoption. Itsweaknesses are its singularity, the fact that it predomi-nantly produces linguistic data, and that these data arenot unambiguous. Bodily expressions and spatial layouts,on the other hand, are non-verbal and more implicit, and


provide an efficient way to assess spatial representationsof time. However, the evidence they obtain is at least partlyconfounded with the inherent spatial nature of the task.Implicit congruency tasks, finally, yield more valid dataon the true extent of space–time mapping, but cannot beused for exploring the full space of mapping options, andcannot be informative of referencing preferences, as theytypically pre-define response patterns (e.g., along the left/right dimension). Since no single task is adequate toanswer the full set of questions in a satisfactory manner,the best advice that can be derived from this overview isto combine different methods and exploit a variety of datasources.

6. Empirical evidence

The following overview comprises some thirty empiri-cal studies on temporal representations and space–timemapping. With few exceptions, none of these studiesexplicitly addresses temporal FoRs; however, their findingsare relevant and instructive for assessing the theoreticalaccounts presented in the first part of this review. Thestudies compiled here include, in total, speakers of sixteendifferent languages, which will be pooled into nine clustersbased on relatedness. Although some of the studies weredesigned as cross-linguistic comparisons, we first presentdata for each language cluster separately (current section;overview in Table 9); this allows us to provide somedescriptive information on each of the clusters as a back-ground for the empirical findings—especially for thosecases for which strong claims on variability have beenput forward. The relevance of these findings for the theo-retical questions posed above is then discussed inSection 7.

6.1. Indo-European languages

Of the languages belonging to the Indo-European fam-ily, four have been investigated to a considerable extentin this field of research: English, Swedish, German, andSpanish. We take English as the starting point—for the solereason that most studies were conducted with speakers ofthis language and that respective findings are occasionally(even if implicitly) taken as a reference point or even asindicative of temporal representations and processing ingeneral.

6.1.1. EnglishEnglish belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-

European language family. According to Ethnologue8, it isthe native language to 335 million people around theworld, and an official or national language in more than50 countries. With two exceptions, the findings reportedhere all originate from studies conducted in the US(especially in California, with some additional data fromIllinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Hawai’i); Weger

8 Where available, information on numbers of speakers was taken fromEthnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/; see also Lewis, Simons, & Fennig,2013).

and Pratt (2008) collected their data in Toronto/Canada,and Miles and colleagues (2010, 2011) in Aberdeen/Scotland.

A wealth of data is available on patterns of referenceand spatial representations (overview in Levinson, 2003),on spatial gesture (e.g., Goldin-Meadow, 2003; McNeill,1992), and on metaphorical space–time mappings in lan-guage (e.g., Bennett, 1975; Clark, 1973; Evans, 2003;Haspelmath, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Miller& Johnson-Laird, 1976; Radden, 2004; Traugott, 1978). Ina nutshell, these studies indicate that speakers of Englishmake use of all three spatial FoRs for describing locationsand movements in space (with a preference for intrinsicand relative in small-scale space, and absolute in large-scale space), that spatial vocabulary is mapped onto time(which is what triggered this line of research in the firstplace), and that time in co-speech gesture is also spatiallyconstrued (Cienki, 1998; McNeill, 1992).

The metaphorical space–time mapping adopted in lan-guage suggests preferential recruitment of the sagittal axis,with past and future mapped on BACK and FRONT, respectively(e.g., the future ‘‘ahead’’, and olden days ‘‘passed by’’). Aswe have seen above, however, the reverse direction is alsopossible, attested to in language elicitation tasks (Sec-tion 5.1), in which only half of the speakers tend to moveWednesday’s meeting ‘‘forward’’ to a future date, whilethe other half moves it pastwards.

Interestingly, however, this linguistic preference wasconfirmed on a behavioral level only in a minority ofempirical studies. In a spatial layout task, Fuhrman andBoroditsky (2010, Exp. 1b [3D pointing]) found a small per-centage of responses along the sagittal axis. Postural swayis also compatible with a BF9 time line (Miles et al., 2010),and data on deliberate gestures reveal that people do concep-tualize time along this time line (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012,Exp. 1). Data on spontaneous gestures, however, indicatesadoption of the sagittal axis for deictic time only and withconsiderable flexibility (i.e., no marked preference for BFover FB; see Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012, Exp. 2). More impor-tantly, these data attest to a preference of the lateral axisover the sagittal axis, specifically for sequence time(Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012). Adoption of the sagittal axisfor deictic and of the lateral axis for non-deictic expres-sions—with future in front or to the right, and past in theback or to the left—has also been documented for AmericanSign Language ASL (Emmorey, 2002) and French (Calbris,1990).

The remainder of the findings, including some gesturaldata, most spatial layout data, and all congruency primingdata, coherently indicate a preference for the lateral axis inLR direction (see Table 9). Although the design of most ofthese studies restricted the range of possible responses toone or two dimensions, this constraint does not hold gen-erally and does not invalidate the general trend (see espe-cially Fuhrman et al., 2011).

The empirical studies across a broad range of methodsthus suggest that native speakers of English recruit twodistinct axes: (i) the sagittal axis, presumably in both

9 Abbreviations of directions are explained in footnote to Table 9.

http://www.ethnologue.com/

Table 9Preferences for dimension and direction of the time line axes (direction in brackets were given with still substantial, but lower frequency than main responses).

Language Main findings Type of task Design n References

English BF and FB Moving meeting BF design (ling.) 279 Bender et al. (2010), Rothe-Wulf et al.(2014)a

LR Gesture Open (LR stimuli) 50 Cooperrider and Núñez (2009)BF (and LR) Gesture (delib.) Open 32 Casasanto and Jasmin (2012, Exp. 1)LR (and BF/FB) Gesture (spont.) Open 28 Casasanto and Jasmin (2012, Exp. 2)BF Postural sway Open 20 Miles et al. (2010)LR Spatial layout On plane 520 Tversky et al. (1991)LR Spatial layout Open 13 Boroditsky (2008)LR (and BF ¼ NF) Spatial layout On plane and open 24 Fuhrman and Boroditsky (2010, Exp. 1)LR Spatial layout On plane 10 Boroditsky and Gaby (2010)LR Spatial layout On plane 10 Bergen and Chan Lau (2012)LR Congr. priming LR design 50 Weger and Pratt (2008)LR Congr. priming LR design 85 Fuhrman and Boroditsky (2010, Exp. 2+3)LR Congr. priming Horiz. vs. vertical

(inclined)19 Miles et al. (2011, Exp. 1)

LR Congr. priming Horiz. vs. vertical 118 Boroditsky et al. (2011)LR Congr. priming 3D 59 Fuhrman et al. (2011)LR Congr. priming LR vs: TB ½¼ FN� 32 Chen and O’Seaghdha (2013)

Swedish BF Moving meeting BF design (ling.) 284 Rothe-Wulf et al. (2014)

German FB Moving meeting BF design (ling.) 279 Bender et al. (2010),Rothe-Wulf et al. (2014)

LR Congr. priming LR design 30 Ulrich and Maienborn (2010; Exp. 1)BF Congr. priming BF design 60 Ulrich et al. (2012, Exp. 1)

Spanish BF Congr. priming BFþ LR 57 Torralbo et al. (2006)LR LR designLR Congr. priming LR design 32 Santiago et al. (2007)LR Congr. priming LR design 96 Santiago et al. (2010)LR Congr. priming LR design 93 Ouellet et al. (2010a)LR Congr. priming LR design 20 Ouellet et al. (2010b)

Hebrew More RL than LR Spatial layout On plane 366 Tversky et al. (1991)RL (and BF ¼ NF) Spatial layout On plane and open 24 Fuhrman and Boroditsky (2010, Exp. 1)RL Congr. priming LR design 82 Fuhrman and Boroditsky (2010, Exp. 2 + 3)RL Congr. priming LR design 28 Ouellet et al. (2010b)

Arabic RL (and TB [= FN]) Spatial layout On plane 283 Tversky et al. (1991)

Mandarin (US) LR (and UD) Spatial layout Open 42 Boroditsky (2008)LR and UD Congr. priming Horiz. vs. vertical 63 Boroditsky et al. (2011)

Mandarin (P.R. China) FB Moving meeting BF design (ling.) 163 Bender et al. (2010)LR (and TB [= FN]) Spatial layout On plane 33 Bergen and Chan Lau (2012)UD (and LR) Congr. priming 3D 75 Fuhrman et al. (2011)LR Congr. priming LR vs: TB ½¼ FN� 40 Chen and O’Seaghdha (2013)

Mandarin (Taiwan) LR and TB [= FN] (and RL) Spatial layout On plane 38 Bergen and Chan Lau (2012)LR (and UD) Spatial layout Open 15 Boroditsky (2008)TB [= FN] Congr. priming LR vs: TB ½¼ FN� 32 Chen and O’Seaghdha (2013)

Mandarin (Singapore) LR and TB [= FB/UD] Spatial layout On plane 32 Miles et al. (2011, Exp. 2)LR and TB [= FB/UD] Congr. priming Horiz. vs. vertical

(inclined)25 Miles et al. (2011, Exp. 1)

Cantonese LR (and RL) Spatial layout On plane and open 10 de Sousa (2012)

Tongan BF + FB Moving meeting BF design (ling.) 120 Bender et al. (2010)

Yupno down-/uphill Gesture Open 27 Núñez et al. (2012)

Yélî Dnye LR > NF/FN > East/West Spatial layout On plane 10 Levinson and Majid (2013)

Kuuk Thaayorre East/West Spatial layout On plane 14 Boroditsky and Gaby (2010)East/West Spatial layout On plane 6 Gaby (2012)

Aymara FB (and LR) Gesture Open 30 Núñez and Sweetser (2006)

Tzeltal Maya LR > NF >East/West > DU >down-/uphill

Spatial layout On plane 12 Brown (2012)


Table 9 (continued)

Language Main findings Type of task Design n References

Yucatec Maya cyclical (radial) Gesture Open 10 Le Guen and Pool Balam (2012)LR > DU > RL > cycle > FN > NF Spatial layout On plane and open 26 Le Guen and Pool Balam (2012)

Amondawa LR and RL Spatial layout On plane 4 Sinha et al. (2011)

Note. The following abbreviations are used (here and in the remainder of this paper):LR = lateral axis (left/right, without indication of direction), LR = left-to-right, RL = right-to-left;BF = sagittal axis (back/front, without indication of direction), BF = back-to-front, FB = front-to-back;UD = vertical axis (up/down, without indication of direction), UD = up-to-down, DU = down-to-up (observed as pile-up solution in the card task only); incontrast to TB in real space;TB = top–bottom (top/bottom, without indication of direction), TB = top-to-bottom; BT = bottom-to-top; please note that this orientation is specified in thereference frame of a sheet of paper or the computer keyboard, with ‘‘top’’ referring to the top (further away side) of the page or keyboard, respectively (asused, e.g., by Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Tversky et al., 1991); more accurately, it would be classified as FN = far-to-near or NF = near-to-far, respectively (inthe case of Miles et al., 2011, reclassification as FB or even UD is also acceptable).

a Converging data on English with language elicitation tasks was also collected, among others, by McGlone and Harding (1998), Boroditsky (2000),Boroditsky and Ramscar (2002), Kranjec (2006), and Núñez et al. (2006). Although not reported here, these are referred to in the discussion of findings in thetext.


directions (preferably BF when linguistically referring todeictic time, with past events as in their back and futureevents as ahead, but also reversed in some cases), and (ii)the lateral axis exclusively in LR direction, when depictingthe unfolding of events, for instance in writing, graphs, orsigned language. Both axes are not only cognitively avail-able for information processing, but also appear to beembodied to a certain extent, as emerging in co-speechgesture and postural sway.

6.1.2. Swedish and GermanSwedish and German, like English, belong to the Ger-

manic branch of the Indo-European language family.Swedish is spoken as the native language by roughly 8 mil-lion people in Sweden (with some additional distributionin Denmark and Finland). German is spoken as the nativelanguage by roughly 84 million people, mostly in CentralEurope (with some additional major settlements inKazakhstan, Namibia, and Paraguay), and is an official lan-guage in five states. The findings reported here originatefrom studies conducted in Sweden (Göteborg) and Ger-many (Freiburg and Tübingen), respectively.

Compared to English, considerably less research hasbeen conducted in these two languages on patterns of ref-erence and spatial representations (and none, to the best ofour knowledge, on temporal co-speech gesture; for excep-tions, see Ladewig, 2011; Müller, 1998, 2008). Yet, speak-ers of German are known to make use of all three spatialFoRs for describing locations and movements in space,with a preference for the intrinsic and relative FoR (andhere for the reflective variant) in small-scale space, andthe absolute FoR in large-scale space (Beller et al., 2014;Grabowski & Weiß, 1996a, 1996b; Herrmann &Grabowski, 1998; Herrmann & Schweizer, 1998), and mostlikely the same is true for speakers of Swedish (Grabowski& Weiß, 1996a). The existing literature also reports exten-sive metaphorical space–time mappings in language (e.g.,Grabowski & Miller, 2000; Grabowski & Weiß, 1996a,1996b; Hellberg, 2007; Radden, 2004).

As in English, the linguistic space–time mappingadopted in Swedish and German suggests preferentialrecruitment of the sagittal axis, with past and future mappedon BACK and FRONT, respectively. Interestingly, however,

speakers of the two languages differ fundamentally inhow they respond to the Wednesday’s meeting task: Thevast majority of Swedish speakers move the meeting‘‘forward’’ to a later date, German speakers to an earlier date(Bender et al., 2010; Rothe-Wulf, Beller, & Bender, 2014).

Recruitment of the sagittal axis BF in speakers ofGerman was also observed in a congruency priming task,in which responses to past- versus future-related sen-tences had to be made by moving a (sagittal) slider backand forth (Ulrich et al., 2012). However, when left- versusright-hand responses were required instead, the obtainedcongruency effect reflected a time line along the lateralaxis LR (Ulrich & Maienborn, 2010). As these two studiesused the exact same material (i.e., tensed sentences thateither did or did not have meaning), it appears unlikelythat recruitment of either axis (exclusively) depends onthe deictic or non-deictic nature of the stimulus.

6.1.3. SpanishSpanish belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-

European language family. It is spoken as the native lan-guage by roughly 400 million people around the world,and is an official or national language in more than 20countries. The findings reported here all originate fromstudies conducted in Spain (largely from Granada).

The majority of studies so far predominantly exploredspace–time mappings by way of congruency priming tasksand report a strong preference for the lateral axis in LRdirection (Ouellet et al., 2010a, 2010b; Santiago et al.,2007, 2010; Torralbo et al., 2006). By requesting a left/rightmapping on response keys, however, the task specifics mayhave suggested this kind of mapping. The fact thatmapping may switch depending on such context factorshas been demonstrated by Torralbo et al. (2006). In oneversion of the speech balloon task (Section 5.4.3),responses had to be given by pressing one of two keys,and participants exhibited a main effect of LR congruency.However, in the version in which responses were givenvocally, the LR congruency effect gave way to a BF congru-ency effect. These findings indicate a preference for thesagittal mapping for time, but sufficient flexibility in thispreference to be overridden in tasks that emphasize thelateral axis (Torralbo et al., 2006).


Two aspects are additionally noteworthy. First, theadopted temporal perspective—even for deictic stimuli—need not be egocentric, but may be allocentric. The pointof view to be taken in the speech balloon task is anchoredin the face silhouette on the screen, and aligned to its per-spective. In a similar fashion, the congruency priming taskby Santiago and colleagues (2010), described in Sec-tion 5.4.6, asked participants to adopt a specific scenewithin a sequence as the reference point and to decidewhether another scene comes ‘‘before’’ or ‘‘after’’ it(whereas from the participants’ point of view, all sceneshad come before now). In both studies (combinedn = 126), participants exhibited congruency effects relativeto this requested point of view.

And second, the study by Santiago and colleagues(2010) also obtained a distance effect: Responses were fas-ter, when the target scene was more distant from the ref-erence scene. In other words, proximal scenes are harderto discriminate from a reference scene than distalscenes—in either direction, past and future.

6.2. Hebrew and Arabic

Hebrew and Arabic belong to the Semitic branch of theAfro-Asiatic language family. Hebrew is spoken by 5 mil-lion people, basically in Israel (with some additional distri-bution elsewhere, specifically as the liturgical language);Arabic is spoken by roughly 225 million people in NorthernAfrica and the Middle East, and is an official language in 26states. All findings reported here (including those on Ara-bic speakers) originate from studies conducted in Israel.

The variable that has attracted most interest is the—com-pared to English—reversed writing direction. In their semi-nal study, Tversky and colleagues (1991) comparedspeakers of three languages with different writing systems:English, which is written left to right (LR), Arabic, which iswritten right to left (RL), and Hebrew in which letters arewritten RL, but most characters are formed, numbers writ-ten, and arithmetic operations performed in the oppositedirection, LR (Tversky et al., 1991; and see Shaki, Fischer, &Petrusic, 2009). As detailed in Section 5.3.1, the study com-prised five tasks, and the main finding for the temporal taskwas a strong effect of language: a clear LR preference amongEnglish speakers, a strong RL and secondary TB preferenceamong Arabic speakers, and more RL than LR among Hebrewspeakers (please recall that, what in the classification ofTversky et al., 1991, is labeled TB, is actually performedalong the sagittal axis and thus corresponds to FN). Thesefindings were taken as evidence for the assumption thattemporal relations are indeed represented by spatial means,and that the direction of writing and reading affects thedirection of the temporal representation.

A preference for the lateral axis (RL) in Hebrew has alsobeen found in subsequent studies and with modified tech-niques (Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010; Ouellet et al., 2010b),some of which, however, had a design that constrainedresponses to the lateral axis. The only other spatial layouttask (Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010, Exp. 1b [3D pointing])also produced a small percentage of responses along thesagittal axis, but unfortunately, the exact proportion ofresponses and direction of the axis remain unclear (18.2%

of all responses, aggregated across English and Hebrewspeakers, are reported to ‘‘put later events further in frontof the body 93% of the time’’).

6.3. Chinese

China is home to speakers of roughly 300 differentlanguages, which belong to eight major language families.Chinese is the name for a cluster of languages that togethermake up the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languagefamily. Many of the languages in the Chinese cluster arenot mutually intelligible, and some of these are comprisedof varieties that are not mutually intelligible either. Two ofthe largest languages in this cluster are Mandarin and Yue(Cantonese). Mandarin is spoken as the native language byroughly 850 million people, basically in Northern andSouthwestern China, and is an official language in thePeople’s Republic of China (P. R. China), Taiwan, and Singa-pore. Cantonese is spoken by roughly 62 million people inP. R. China, Singapore and Malaysia, and is the official lan-guage of Hong Kong and Macau.

The findings reported here originate from studies con-ducted with speakers of Mandarin living in the US, in P.R. China (especially Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shijiazhu-ang), in Taiwan, and in Singapore, and with speakers ofCantonese living in Hong Kong and Macau. Notably, withjust one exception, none of these studies was conductedin an area where Mandarin is the prevailing language (inGuangzhou this would be Cantonese, in Shanghai Wu, inTaiwan Min or Hakka, and in Singapore Hoklo). However,despite its (linguistic) status as one of many Chinese vari-eties, Mandarin is also an official language and often thelingua franca in most Chinese-speaking states; it is the vari-ety on which most writing is based; and the people whoparticipated in most of the following studies are reportedto be highly fluent in Mandarin.

With regard to spatial frames of reference, speakers of(Mandarin) Chinese make use of all three major FoRs,albeit with considerable regional variation (e.g., the prefer-ence for the absolute FoR is stronger in Northern parts thanin the South; see Li & Zhang, 2009), and they prefer thetranslational variant of the relative FoR over the reflectiveone (Beller et al., 2014).

For most of their history, the two Chinese languagesunder scrutiny here were written in vertical columnstop-to-bottom (TB), ordered from right-to-left (RL). Thishas gradually changed in recent decades and to a divergingextent: Whereas in Taiwan, the traditional direction is stillalso used, writing in mainland China nowadays almostexclusively follows the Western pattern LR and TB(Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013),and the same is true for Singapore (Miles et al., 2011). Incontrast to Mandarin, Cantonese has no conventionalizedwriting and is largely used for informal communication.Direction of writing in Hong Kong and Macau is domi-nantly LR, followed by TB, whereas RL (which was domi-nant between the 1920s and 1950s), is nowadaysexceedingly rare (de Sousa, 2012).

In addition to the vertical direction of writing and read-ing, Mandarin also makes systematic and frequent use ofvertical metaphors for space–time mapping. In line with


the ‘river model’ of time, earlier times and the past are saidto be ‘‘up’’, whereas later times and the future are ‘‘down’’(Scott, 1989; Yu, 1998).

Which of these two aspects affects metaphoricalconstruals of time, if indeed either of them does so, is amatter of ongoing controversy. The point of origin for thiscontroversy was a publication by Boroditsky (2001), whoargued that the availability of vertical metaphors inMandarin (in contrast to English, which almost exclusivelyuses horizontal spatial metaphors) affects temporal rea-soning. In a priming paradigm, participants had to workon two spatial judgment tasks, followed by a temporaljudgment task. The former consisted of questions on therelation between two objects, arranged either horizontallyor vertically, whereas the latter consisted of questions onthe spatial relationship between two temporal entities(such as ‘‘March comes earlier than April: true or false?’’).The spatiotemporal condition used the terms ‘‘before’’and ‘‘after’’, whereas the purely temporal condition used‘‘earlier’’ and ‘‘later’’. In the spatiotemporal condition, bothEnglish- and Mandarin-speaking participants were fasterafter the horizontal than after the vertical spatial primes.The same was true in the temporal condition for the Eng-lish speakers, whereas the Mandarin speakers showedthe reversed pattern, being faster after the vertical primes.This latter finding was taken as support for the claim thatMandarin speakers conceptualize time vertically, whereasEnglish speakers do so horizontally. This is only partlymotivated, however, by the usage of vertical metaphorsin addition to, but not instead of, horizontal metaphors inMandarin. Mandarin speakers should therefore be moresensitive to vertical priming than English speakers (butabout as likely to respond to vertical as to horizontalpriming).

Controversy arose when subsequent studies reporteddifficulties in replicating these findings (Chen, 2007;Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; January & Kako, 2007; Tse &Altarriba, 2008; for successful replications and extensions,see Boroditsky, 2008; Boroditsky et al., 2011; Fuhrmanet al., 2011; Miles et al., 2011; for a recent review on thedebate, see Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; an overview of themain findings is provided in Table 10). The first generationof these studies was concerned with the cross-linguisticcomparison and with questions pertaining to the degreeof linguistic relativity involved. They were thereforefocused on the dimension of space–time mapping andremained oblivious to questions of its direction. This

Table 10Relation of vertical (v) to horizontal (h) conceptions of time in English and Mand

Type of taskLanguage elicitation with priming 3D

poinParticipants’language

Boroditsky(2001)

January andKako (2007)

Chen(2007)

Tse andAltarriba(2008)

Boro(200

English v < h v = h (v = h) v > h v < hMandarin v > h – v = h v > h v �

Note. The data summarized here show whether effects were stronger or weakerthey were basically equal.

section of the current article is confined to findings for Chi-nese and pays specific attention to those studies that areinformative on both dimension and direction.

Findings with Mandarin speakers in the US (whosecountry of origin and native language is unclear) indicatea preference for the lateral axis LR, accompanied by a sec-ondary preference for the vertical axis UD in an opendesign (Boroditsky, 2008), and activation of both axes ina congruency priming task (Boroditsky et al., 2011). Similareffects, by and large, are reported for Mandarin speakers inSingapore (Miles et al., 2011) and Taiwan (Bergen & ChanLau, 2012; Boroditsky, 2008; Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013,although the latter found no evidence of an LR congruencyeffect).

In contrast, findings for Mandarin speakers from P. R.China remain mixed: indicating an LR preference over TB[= FB] in an open design (Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012), UD(over LR) in one congruency priming task (Fuhrman et al.,2011) and exclusively LR in another congruency primingtask (Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013).

A mix of reasons may contribute to this mix of findings,one clearly being regional variations. No two studies wereconducted with the same language community, as indi-cated in the introduction to this section: Some studiesincluded mixed samples of Chinese emigrants to the US(Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Boroditsky, 2008; Boroditskyet al., 2011); others were conducted in Shijiazhuang inHebei province (Bender et al., 2010), in Guangzhou, whereCantonese is dominant (Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013), inShanghai, where Wu prevails (Fuhrman et al., 2011), in Tai-wan (Boroditsky, 2008; Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013), and inSingapore (Miles et al., 2011), respectively. As noted above,preferences for frames of reference may vary within thesame country (Li & Zhang, 2009), and different traditionsin writing and reading in some of these places may alsoaffect the way in which people represent temporal rela-tions (Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Boroditsky et al., 2011;Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; de Sousa, 2012).

Matters may be complicated further by the fact that,what is labeled ‘‘horizontal’’ and ‘‘vertical’’ in this discus-sion, often conflates two dimensions: horizontal the sag-ittal and lateral dimension, especially in the stimuli usedin the earlier studies (e.g., Boroditsky, 2001), and verticalthe sagittal and genuinely vertical dimension, especiallyin the response modes in some of the later studies(e.g., Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Chen & O’Seaghdha,2013). In these latter cases, ‘‘vertical’’ does not refer to

arin.

tingImplicit task with congruency priming

ditsky8)

Boroditskyet al. (2011)

Fuhrmanet al. (2011)

Mileset al.(2011)

Chen andO’Seaghdha(2013)

v < h v < h v < h v < hh v = h v = h v = h v < h (Chin.)

v > h (Taiw.)

for vertical (v) than for horizontal (h) primes or arrangements, or whether


the upright orientation people typically adopt, but to theplane in which sheets of paper or computer keyboardsare placed. The resulting ‘‘top/bottom’’ (TB) classificationtherefore usually translates into ‘‘front/back’’ (FB) or evenonly ‘‘further/nearer’’ (FN) along the sagittal axis in ‘realspace’, which may be more relevant than previouslyassumed: Data collection with the Wednesday’s meetingquestion reveals a preference for the FB direction alongthe sagittal axis, with ‘‘forward’’ being mapped onto apastwards movement (Bender et al., 2010). Findings fromspatial layout tasks are at least compatible with, if notindicative of, the same FB (rather: FN) direction(Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Miles et al., 2011), and thesame is true for some of the congruency priming tasks(Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; Miles et al., 2011). Not com-patible with a sagittal interpretation are the datareported in Boroditsky (2008) and Fuhrman et al.(2011), who used open formats or offered responsemodes in 3D (Boroditsky et al., 2011, had no sagittaloption available). As long as only writing direction isassumed to affect temporal representations (as in thecase of Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012), this conflation of ver-tical on paper and vertical in real space does not hamperconsistent argumentation. If, however, genuinely vertical(‘‘up/down’’) space–time metaphors are a possible candi-date for affecting temporal representations, these twodimensions need to be distinguished.

The influence of writing direction itself also remainsdisputed. Four studies explicitly addressing this questionreport convincing evidence in favor of such an influence:de Sousa (2012) found generational differences in tempo-ral representations as a function of changes in the directionof Chinese writing in past decades; Bergen and Chan Lau(2012) found spatial layouts in line with the prevailing(and distinct) writing directions in China versus Taiwan;and Boroditsky et al. (2011) as well as Chen andO’Seaghdha (2013) found the same pattern for congruencypriming. In contrast, two studies report strong vertical pat-terns also for speech communities where Chinese is writ-ten LR (Fuhrman et al., 2011, Exp. 1; Miles et al., 2011).Apparently, writing direction is a powerful factor, but mostlikely not the only one to have an impact on temporalrepresentations.

6.4. Tongan

Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in the Poly-nesian Kingdom of Tonga, a small island group in theSouthwest Pacific. Its (approx. 140,000) speakers makeuse of all three basic FoRs for spatial descriptions: Forsmall-scale (and static as well as dynamic) settings, theyprefer the intrinsic FoR and the relative FoR in its transla-tional variant (Beller et al., 2014; Bender et al., 2012;Bennardo, 2000, 2009); for large-scale settings, they preferthe absolute FoR, which, depending on context, may bebased on a radial land/sea axis or on cardinal directions(Bennardo, 2000, 2009).

Linguistic overlap for space and time is considerable(Bender et al., 2005). In line with the range of FoRs pre-ferred for space, Tongan speakers are also reported torespond in linguistic elicitations with the Wednesday’s

meeting task (see Section 5.1.1) in a variety of ways:25.0% of responses reflect an absolute t-FoR, 36.7% anintrinsic t-FoR, and 30.8% the translation subtype of therelative t-FoR (Bender et al., 2010). Although the latterwas predominantly chosen by the older generation andmay thus be moribund, it attests to the possibility of suchrelative FoRs.

6.5. Yupno and Yélî Dnye

Yupno and Yélî Dnye are both categorized as Papuanlanguages, but are not related to each other. Yupno is spo-ken by 5000 people in the Finisterre Range in northeasternPapua New Guinea, whereas Yélî Dnye is an isolatedlanguage spoken by the 5000 inhabitants of Rossel Island,off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea.

Speakers of Yupno prefer an absolute FoR for spatialdescriptions on different scales, based on the topographiccontrasts uphill/downhill, co-located with the source andmouth of the Yupno river (Wassmann, 1994). Yupno hasisolated expressions for mapping spatial conceptualiza-tions on time, but not in a systematic manner (Núñezet al., 2012). Despite this low degree of linguistic mapping,data on co-speech gesture (Section 5.2) indicate a transferof referencing preferences. Gestural production whileexplaining temporal expressions reveal systematic spatial-ization of time: towards the ground indicating the present(or deictic center, which is spatially co-located with thespeaker), downhill indicating the past, and uphill the future.This pattern, albeit deictically anchored in the speaker andhis or her subjective present, is claimed to be largely allo-centric and thus indicative of the same absolute FoR that ispreferentially used in space (Núñez et al., 2012).

Speakers of Yélî Dnye prefer an absolute (or geocentric)FoR for spatial descriptions, based on a combination of themountain/sea axis with an East/West axis. They also makeuse of a body-based intrinsic FoR and to some extent evenof a relative FoR (Levinson, 2006). Co-speech gesture isgeocentrically anchored and geographically accurate(Levinson & Majid, 2013), and this partly constrains ges-tures on time. Spatial locations are recruited only whenreferring to the position of the sun or moon (other repre-sentations include gestures along the East/West axis andalong a vertical axis with downwards denoting here andnow, in contrast to upwards for a distant point in time).

The basic concept of time is described as cyclical with-out calendrical fixed points, and the language possesses arich system for the grammaticalization of time. Linguisticspace–time mapping, however, is limited, and data collec-tion with the time arrangement tasks (see Section 5.3.4)did not yield systematic patterns, either in the card arrang-ing task or in the more abstract (2D) time-points task. Theslight majority for relative responses (prevailingly left-to-right) is most likely due to the fact that those who partic-ipated were at least partly literate.

6.6. Kuuk Thaayorre (Pormpuraaw settlement)

Kuuk Thaayorre is a small Paman language spoken byAustralian Aborigines in the settlement Pormpuraaw (CapeYork Peninsula, Queensland; approx. 250 speakers). For


describing locations and movements in space, Kuuk Tha-ayorre speakers, like the Yupno, prefer the absolute FoR,invoked by one of six absolute directional root forms thatrefer to the four cardinal directions and the north and southbanks of a nearby river. Although systematic data on co-speech gesture are still lacking, some evidence is reportedfor pointing towards the position of the sun for indicatingtime, and for pointing eastwards for indicating a distantpast. The very few expressions applicable across domainsconsist of one term for both ‘‘place’’ and ‘‘time’’ and one termencoding both the intrinsic relation ‘‘in front of’’ and tempo-ral priority (Gaby, 2012). Despite this paucity of linguisticspace–time mappings, Kuuk Thaayorre speakers respondto the time arrangement tasks (Section 5.3) in line with anabsolute FoR: mapping past to the East and future to theWest (Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010; Gaby, 2012). As the Tha-ayorre do not speak of future as westwards, this might beregarded as another example of how the idea of absolute ref-erences is transferred from space to time.

6.7. Aymara

Aymara is one of the two languages that make up theAru (or Jaqi) family, which—besides Quechua—is one ofthe two dominant language families of the central Andesin South America. Aymara is spoken by approximately2.8 million people in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. For spatialdescriptions on different scales, Aymara speakers makepreferential use of an absolute FoR, which is based on thecardinal directions. Interestingly, aligned with this coordi-nate system is the intrinsic coordinate system emanatingfrom the body, so that East is mapped onto ‘‘front’’ andWest mapped onto ‘‘back’’. More generally, people, objects,and land are conceived of as having a canonical orientationEastwards, facing the sunrise (Núñez & Cornejo, 2012).When talking about time, Aymara speakers have beenobserved to use both lateral and sagittal gesture: the for-mer for depicting non-deictic time (i.e., earlier/later rela-tions), and the latter for deictic time. In deictic gestures,FRONT is assigned to the past, and BACK to the future. Inprevious work, this was related to the VISION-IS-KNOWLEDGE

metaphor and a focus on evidentiality, with what onecan know (because of personal experience) as providingthe basic motivation for the FRONT-to-past mapping(Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). In the light of the new findingson preferred spatial orientation (Núñez & Cornejo, 2012),however, one might also argue that the canonical absoluteorientation towards the sunrise provides the basis for theFRONT-to-past mapping (as both are located in the East).

6.8. Tzeltal and Yucatec Maya

Tzeltal and Yucatec belong to two different branches ofthe Maya language family. Tzeltal is basically spoken in thehighland of Chiapas (Mexico), Yucatec in the lowlands ofthe Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico and northern Belize(approx. 370,000 and 770,000 speakers, respectively).

For describing locations and movements in space,neither of these languages makes use of a full-fledged rel-ative FoR. Tzeltal speakers prefer the absolute (geocentric)FoR, which derives its orientation from the overall

downhill/uphill slope of the land, but they also make useof a body-based intrinsic FoR and its projections (Brown,2012; Brown & Levinson, 1992; Levinson & Brown, 1994).Yucatec speakers, on the other hand, appear to preferintrinsic references over absolute ones, based on cardinaldirections (Bohnemeyer & Stolz, 2006; Le Guen, 2011a).Despite these diverging preferences, however, co-speechgesture is geocentrically anchored and geographicallyaccurate in both groups (Brown, 2012; Le Guen, 2011a,2011b; and see Haviland, 2003, 2005). More importantly,the two groups differ with regard to space–time mapping.

Tzeltal provides a wide range of spatial expressions thatcan be mapped onto time, thus giving rise to a wide rangeof temporal representations, which include the followingconcepts: (1) deictically anchored (ego-centered) time vec-tors, (2) deictically anchored static sequences of time peri-ods, (3) time as change of state or of location along aunidirectional time line, (4) time as a unidirectional vectororiented uphill-wards, and (5) cyclic time. The relationshipbetween the two domains is therefore highly variable, andonly occasionally is the future located according to anabsolute FoR, namely uphill (Brown, 2012).

Data collection with the time arrangement tasks (seeSection 5.3.4) did not yield systematic patterns, either inthe card arranging task or in the (2D) abstract time-pointstask. A slight majority in the latter for relative responses(prevailingly left-to-right, followed by near-to-far) ratherindicates a preference for temporal representations, whichis at odds with preferences for space. With regard to ges-ture, convergence across domains appears to be stronger:In line with the absolute FoR underlying spatial gestures,Tzeltal speakers routinely point to different positions inthe sky to indicate where the sun would be. Occasionally,they also point back over the head or shoulder to indicatethe past (Brown, 2012).

In contrast, speakers of Yucatec Maya, who make morefrequent use of an intrinsic FoR in speaking about spaceand of an absolute FoR in their co-speech gestures, avoidmappings of temporal entities onto any distinct spaceand thus tend to point towards the ground for the hereand now, and upwards for distant past or future events.This resistance to cross-domain mappings is also observedin the time arrangement tasks, in which a substantial num-ber of participants came up with a piling strategy: bottom-up, so that the most recent one covers all of the older ones(Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012).

6.9. Amondawa

Amondawa, finally, is a Kawahib language that belongsto the Tupí-Guaraní branch of the Tupí family. It is spokenby approximately 100 people living in the Uru-eu-wau-wau reservation in Rondônia in Greater Amazonia (Brazil).Besides documentation of the diverse lexical and construc-tional repertoire for the conceptualization and expressionof location and spatial motion (Sinha et al., 2011), dataon frames of reference or co-speech gesture were notcollected.

Linguistic analyses show that none of the spatialexpressions is used across domains to situate an event inrelation to a temporal reference point, and no term for an


abstract notion of time exists. Instead, temporal intervalssuch as those belonging to the seasonal and diurnal sys-tems are expressed by sun-based terms. In three spatiallayout tasks, this lack of space–time mapping at the con-structional level was further explored. The two calendarinstallation tasks (Section 5.3.2) exhibited curvilinear rep-resentations, likely fitted into working space, whichrevealed no clear preference for either left-to-right (LR)or right-to-left (RL) orientation. The time landscape gameproduced expressions like ‘‘The sun/dry season goes’’,‘‘. . . has passed across’’, or ‘‘. . . is coming’’, or ‘‘The nightis coming behind [the sun]’’ (Sinha et al., 2011, p. 159).These expressions may be regarded as instantiations of lin-guistic space–time mappings. However, the authors con-sider this an unwarranted over-interpretation, as all ofthese expressions were elicited in situations that involvespatial motion (and non-deictic sequences). They conclude,instead, that Amondawa speakers do not conceptualizeevents as occurring in Time as Such, and that they do notemploy expressions for spatial location and motion to con-struct temporal ones (Sinha et al., 2011).

7. Theoretical implications

One of the main purposes of this review is to scrutinizethe accounts of temporal frames of reference (FoRs) pro-posed to date in the light of the available empirical data.More precisely, we intend to investigate whether andhow these data would be interpreted by each of theseaccounts, and whether and to what extent they are com-patible with their theoretical predictions. To this end, wewill now look at the empirical findings with the followingquestions in mind: Which properties and concepts of timeare reflected in the observed cultural patterns (Sec-tion 7.1)? How do they relate to the construct of a mentaltime line (Section 7.2)? What do the observed concepts oftime and the culture-specific mental time lines revealabout the principles of FoR construal and the psychologicalreality of the proposed temporal FoRs (Section 7.3)? And towhat extent, and based on which grounds, are spatial FoRsreally mapped onto time (Section 7.4)?

7.1. Properties and concepts of time

In Section 2.1, we discussed the properties of time andhow they may or may not be mapped onto space, and weidentified possible concepts of time. Which of these proper-ties are preserved, and which concepts are reflected in thespace–time mappings reported for the sixteen languagesdescribed above? While these questions lie at the heartof our endeavor, they were addressed only indirectly bythe studies reviewed here. Central to most of them is a con-cern with the mental time line, but, as we try to demon-strate, respective findings can be used to shed light onother questions as well.

7.1.1. Spatial and non-spatial properties of timeThe properties of time comprise extension, linearity,

directionality, and transience (Galton, 2011). Three ofthese are largely preserved when time is spatialized. This

is most obvious for extension: Every spatial representationextends along at least one dimension. And for all but threeof the examples mustered for this review, temporal datapatterns do indeed reflect this property. Almost all of thesealso preserve the properties of linearity and directionality:Most representations seem to take the shape of a lineand are oriented in one direction (with circles being loopedlines, directed clockwise or counterclockwise). Direction,in turn, provides the foundation for assigning FRONT and isthus essential for construing temporal FoRs, as discussedbelow (Section 7.3).

One of the cases that provide an exception to the pres-ervation of spatio-temporal properties is Amondawa. Itsspeakers allegedly do not employ expressions for spatiallocation and/or motion when constructing temporalexpressions (Sinha et al., 2011). The empirical data seemto contradict this claim, as they appear to reveal adoptionof the lateral axis for temporal representations, but due tosome of the specifics of the task and the small sample size,no solid inferences can be drawn. The other exceptions areYucatec Maya, whose speakers avoid spatial mappings ingesture and who do not exhibit consistent patterning inspatial layout tasks (Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012; seeBrown, 2012, for similar observations among TzeltalMaya), and Yélî Dnye, for which space–time mapping ispatchy in language, gesture, and behavioral tasks(Levinson & Majid, 2013). A final exception, which is notlisted above but is recurrent in discussions on this topic,is Whorf’s claim that the Hopi do not conceptualize timeas anything spatially extended, but as purely temporal:‘‘Nothing is suggested about time except the perpetual‘getting later’ of it’’ (1956, p. 143).

Each of these exceptions may serve as instance of a cul-tural focus on the fourth property of time, its transience,which implies a change of state and the fleetingness ofeach single moment, meaning that it cannot be expressedspatially in any straightforward way. As most tasks involvea spatial dimension (especially those on bodily expres-sions, spatial layout, and congruency priming), empiricalsupport for the absence of space–time mappings is hardto obtain—unless speakers shoulder the effort to avoid suchmapping, as the Yucatec Maya appear to do (Le Guen &Pool Balam, 2012). And yet, even some of the spatial dataindicate transience more than any other property: It isreflected in the piling-up strategy during card arrange-ment, especially by Mayan speakers (Brown, 2012; LeGuen & Pool Balam, 2012), and in gestures that indicatetime by pointing to the corresponding position of the sunin the sky (Brown, 2012; Gaby, 2012; Levinson & Majid,2013; Sinha et al., 2011).

7.1.2. Concepts of timeThe concepts of time considered here include the linear,

cyclical, and radial concept. As described in Section 2.1.2,all preserve—at least to some extent—the properties ofextension, linearity, and directionality.

The linear concept is typically considered to be the pre-vailing concept of time in human thinking, and the datacompiled in Table 9 support this assumption: Spatial lay-out data reveal, in almost all cases, fairly straight, lineararrangements; to locate past and future, linguistic phrases


employ dichotomous contrasts along a one-dimensionalcontinuum; gesture and postural sway do the same; andcongruency priming tasks found congruency effects alongthe same continua.

The preponderance of the linear concept, however, doesnot preclude the existence of other concepts. For instance,our experience of recurring time periods and cyclicalsequences may also motivate a cyclical concept of time.In the past, the cyclical concept has typically been associ-ated with non-Western cultures such as Hinduism(Sharma, 1974), the Hopi (Malotki, 1983; Whorf, 1956),Maya (Farriss, 1987; León-Portilla, 1990) or South-Ameri-can Toba (Klein, 1987)—and has given rise to a fair amountof controversy. Of the methods reviewed here, only thedocumentation of co-speech gesture and some of the spa-tial layout tasks are suitable for detecting such a cyclicalconcept in the first place. Respective data suggest that,although this concept may not be pervasive, it does exist;Tzeltal Maya (Brown, 2012) speak of time as cyclical;Bergen and Chan Lau (2012) report small proportions ofcyclical arrangement of cards in P.R. China (3%) and Taiwan(8%); and Le Guen and Pool Balam (2012) found instantia-tions of the cyclical concept among the Yucatec Maya, bothin spatial layout tasks (9%) and in gesture (46%).

Notably, findings like these are not restricted to non-Western cultures. For instance, Tversky, Kugelmass, andWinter (1991; see Section 5.3.1) report that 15–40% ofthe data for the youngest children and 6–25% for theolder children consisted of nonlinear responses, includingtriangular (i.e., circular) instead of linear arrangements.And Jamalian and Tversky (2012) obtained 24% circulardiagrams (in contrast to 67% linear diagrams) from Eng-lish-speaking adults in a control condition, and even 67%circular diagrams in the condition with circular gesture.

The radial (or ego-centric) concept, finally, stressesasymmetry between proximal and distal events more thanasymmetry between past and future, thus emphasizing—and in fact presupposing—a deictic center. Radial patternsin space are far from unusual: They are characteristic ofthe relative FoR, with assignment of FRONT either nearer toEgo (reflection) or further away from Ego (translation),and even some absolute FoRs are based on radiality, espe-cially those used on small islands (e.g., Bennardo, 2000,2009).

But how likely is a radial concept to emerge in thedomain of time? Several pieces of the currently availabledata hint at such a possibility, each of which may appearweak in isolation but gain weight when considered jointly.Acknowledgement of its feasibility goes back at least toTraugott (1975, 1978), who defined tense in its simplestform as the distinction between proximal and distal rela-tions and thus as symmetrical to the deictic center. Thedistinction between past and future requires an additionalstep—which is not taken by all languages—namely map-ping the tense relations onto a time line. Conflation of dis-tant past and future has also been described for Toba(Klein, 1987) and Yucatec Maya (Le Guen & Pool Balam,2012). When confronted with Wednesday’s meeting task,the majority of (older) speakers of Tongan tend to read‘‘moved forward’’ as pastwards in the case of a past meet-ing, and as futurewards in the case of a future meeting

(Bender et al., 2010). Such an ‘‘anthropocentric’’ view oftime also shines through in English, with the observer‘towering’ above both past and future (Radden, 2004).And the distance effect observed in congruency primingtasks by Santiago and colleagues (2010; see Section 5.4.6)demonstrates that proximal scenes are harder to discrimi-nate from a reference scene than distal scenes—in eitherdirection, regardless of past or future.

It should also be noted that some of the data reported asevidence for a linear concept do not really allow a decision tobe made between a linear and a radial concept, as theadopted axis begins or ends in Ego. This holds especiallyfor data on the vertical (top/bottom) axis that should bemore accurately coded as nearer/further (Bergen & ChanLau, 2012; Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; Tversky et al., 1991).The nearer/further axis is also employed in Tzeltal and Yuca-tec Mayan (Brown, 2012; Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012).

7.2. The mental time line

Recent years have seen accumulating evidence for theproposition that people process a variety of abstract infor-mation such as number, size, speed, or time by mapping itonto a linear spatial representation (Walsh, 2003). Themental time line, a construct widely discussed in thisdomain, is assumed to extend in a more or less spatialmanner, along one dimension, in one direction, and poten-tially ad infinitum. This notion reflects three of the fourproperties of time, namely extension, linearity, and direc-tionality, and is compatible with a linear concept of time.

As detailed in the previous subsection, however, someof the observed representations are at odds with the timeline construct and indicate that it may not be universal(the same has been claimed for the related mental numberline; see Bender & Beller, 2011; Núñez, 2008, 2011; Núñez,Doan, & Nikoulina, 2011). The cyclical concept of time pre-serves the properties of extension, linearity, and directiononly to some extent, namely if transitivity is suspended(Galton, 2011). And the radial concept entirely precludesthe existence of a single mental time line, as its half-axesradiate out from the deictic center, thus pointing in dia-metrically opposed directions. Even those data, however,that do support the mental time line construct exhibitremarkable variation, and they do so with regard to (i)the number of available different time lines, (ii) theirdimension and direction, and (iii) their anchoring.

7.2.1. Number of time linesApparently, most people do not possess exactly one

time line. Some, like the Yucatec Maya or Amondawa, areclaimed to possess none at all (Le Guen & Pool Balam,2012; Sinha et al., 2011), while others appear to have atleast two (Miles et al., 2011) or even three, if one takesthe data from Mandarin speakers (compiled in Table 9)as evidence for alternative recruitment of the sagittal, lat-eral, and vertical axis.

7.2.2. Dimension and direction of the time lineVariability is also profound with regard to the preferred

axis and direction of the time line. One of the first investi-gations into space–time mappings found an LR preference


in English, but the reverse in Arabic and Hebrew speakers(Tversky et al., 1991). Ever since then it has been assumedby psychologists—and recurrently demonstrated for a num-ber of languages—that the mental time line basicallyunfolds along the lateral axis (e.g., Ouellet et al., 2010a,2010b; Santiago et al., 2007, 2010; Ulrich & Maienborn,2010; Weger & Pratt, 2008). This assumption contrastedsharply with the linguistic emphasis of the sagittal axis(again across a range of languages), supported by data onbodily expressions (Miles et al., 2010) and from congruencypriming tasks that permitted sagittal responses (e.g.,Torralbo et al., 2006; Ulrich et al., 2012). Evidence for thethird dimension along the vertical axis comes from speak-ers of Chinese languages (Tables 9 and 10).

Interestingly, the direction of time lines is not conven-tionalized to the same extent for all three dimensions. Thedirection of the lateral axis appears to be non-controversial,as it basically corresponds to the prevailing writing direc-tion (Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010; Ouellet et al., 2010b;Tversky et al., 1991). The vertical axis appears to be pointinguniformly downwards (UD). The two instances of upwardsdirection (DU) reported in Table 9 (i.e., Tzeltal and YucatecMaya) are convincingly explained as representations oftemporal transience rather than spatial orientation(Brown, 2012; Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012). Only the sagit-tal axis may be oriented both ways (FB or BF), within andacross speech communities, as attested to in linguistic tasks(e.g., Clark, 1973; McGlone & Harding, 1998; Rothe-Wulf,Beller, & Bender, 2014) and co-speech gesture (Casasanto& Jasmin, 2012)—likely a reflection of the two complemen-tary perspectives on time (ME and MT).

In at least four of the cases compiled in Table 9, how-ever, none of these dimensions appears to be relevant forthe time line. Instead, speakers recruit geographical coor-dinates for its construals: the inclination of the landscape,with uphill/downhill contrasts as in Tzeltal Maya (Brown,2012), the flowing direction of a prominent river as inYupno (Núñez et al., 2012) and other Papuan languages(Fedden & Boroditsky, 2012), or the course of the sun fromEast to West as in Thaayorre (Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010;Gaby, 2012), Yélî Dnye (Levinson & Majid, 2013), and per-haps Aymara (Núñez & Cornejo, 2012; Núñez & Sweetser,2006). This raises the question of where the time line isanchored, or grounded.

7.2.3. Anchoring and grounding: Egocentric versus allocentrictime lines

A time line may be classified as egocentric if it is anchoredin Ego (i.e., it takes the speaker as the reference point or deic-tic center), whereas an allocentric time line has its origin inan entity distinct from Ego. In this sense, postural sway dur-ing a mental time travel into one’s own past or future clearlyreveals an egocentric time line (Miles et al., 2010). Thespeech balloon task with a person’s head as the referencepoint, in contrast, reveals an allocentric time line (Torralboet al., 2006). In a similar fashion, some of the spatial layouttasks provide a reference point outside the speaker(Boroditsky et al., 2008; Tversky et al., 1991), and so do someof the congruency priming tasks (Miles et al., 2011; Torralboet al., 2006; Ulrich et al., 2012).

A related, yet broader distinction based on groundingprinciples is proposed by Núñez and colleagues (2012).They classify a time line as egocentric if it is grounded inthe asymmetries of the conceptualizing Ego (such asback/front, up/down, or left/right), whereas an allocentrictime line is grounded in the superordinate field.

Interestingly, only very few data patterns unequivocallyattest to a time line that extends literally through thespeaker: linguistic mapping on front/back vocabulary (e.g.,McGlone & Harding, 1998), some gestures that explicatebackward as over the head or shoulder (Brown, 2012;Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006), andforward/backward postural sway (Miles et al., 2010). As inmost of these cases representations were linked to partici-pants’ subjective past or future, the egocentric nature ofthese representations is beyond question. The only othertype of representations for which this is the case is thatbased on the radial concept of time, which is egocentric bydefinition.

On the other end of the spectrum, Yupno and Kuuk Tha-ayorre (as well as, to some extent, Yélî Dnye, Tzeltal andAymara) provide examples for temporal construals thatare undoubtedly allocentric. Regardless of how the speakeris oriented, his or her time line is oriented towards a dis-tinct, external coordinate such as East/West or down-stream/upstream (Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010; Núñez et al.,2012; and see Fedden & Boroditsky, 2012). It happens topass through Ego, but is not emanating from it.

For the bulk of data, however, this classification is noteasy to make. As time is one-dimensional, thus comprisingthe speaker in each stream of events, even time lines thatare not egocentric likely appear to be so. Most studies com-piled in this review take the participant as point of origin.It may thus be a mere artifact that time line representa-tions appear to be egocentric at all. The question of howaccurate it is to classify a mental time line as egocen-tric—simply because it comprises the speaker—is relatedto the question discussed above (in Sections 2.2.2 and4.1) of whether the ME and MT perspective are indeed nec-essarily ego-centered or simply happen to include Ego, andthus has a direct bearing on FoR assignment as will bedetailed in the next section.

7.3. Temporal frames of reference

Section 2.2.3 introduced the notion of frames of refer-ence (FoRs) as one possibility for structuring spatio-tempo-ral representations, and Section 3 presented a range ofdiverging theoretical accounts that are based on thisnotion. This current section is devoted to the question ofhow the empirical data may inform the evaluation of theseaccounts, by discussing (i) what the observed concepts oftime and the culture-specific mental time lines revealabout the principles of FoR construal and assignment oforientation, (ii) how they speak to the psychological realityof the proposed temporal FoRs, and (iii) whether they sup-port a fundamental role for deixis.

7.3.1. Principles of FoR construal and FRONT assignmentAs detailed above, the three basic FoRs—absolute, intrin-

sic, and relative—are construed (and can be distinguished)


largely on the basis of the following principles: The abso-lute and intrinsic FoR describe binary relations (betweenfigure F and ground G), the relative FoR a ternary relation(between F, G, and observer’s viewpoint V); and orientationis derived in the case of the absolute FoR from the superor-dinate field (outside F and G), in the case of the intrinsic FoRfrom G, and in the case of the relative FoR from V. As a con-sequence, the relative FoR tends to be egocentric, and theother two tend to be allocentric.

The possible concepts of time relate to these principlesin two ways. First, both the linear and the cyclical conceptare one-dimensional and unidirectional representations oftime that, from a mathematical point of view, require onlytwo points for precise definition. In other words, theyafford construal of binary relations and thus an absoluteor intrinsic FoR (and are therefore unlikely to be Ego-cen-tered). The radial concept, on the other hand, not onlyintroduces a deictic center, but also presupposes its con-sideration for establishing the ternary relation betweenthree points (whether F is in front of G depends on whereexactly V is in relation to F and G). In this sense, only theradial concept affords a relative FoR. Second, the conceptsof time also provide orientation for the construal of FoRs:Whereas the radial concept defines Ego as the deictic cen-ter, thereby establishing the subjective perspectiverequired for a relative FoR, the direction assigned to thelinear (and, to some extent, the cyclical) concept reflectsthe conceptualization of where time is generally flowingto, thus bestowing an orientation upon the superordinatefield required for an absolute FoR (this argument corre-sponds to the proposition above that neither the ME norMT perspective presuppose a deictic center, but reflectmore general perspectives on time, and thus do not qualifyas instances of a relative FoR).

Accordingly, orientation of the relative FoR is easy toestablish, as it simply derives from the deictic center ofthe radial concept (typically the speaker). In line with thearguments put forward for the existence of a radial conceptof time (Section 7.1.2), the following cases could beenlisted as examples of a relative FoR: languages withproximal/distal distinction only (Traugott, 1975, 1978),the conflation of (distant) past and future in Toba andYucatec Maya (Klein, 1987; Le Guen & Pool Balam, 2012),indications of an anthropocentric perspective on time inEnglish and in French generational terms (Radden, 2004),and the symmetrical forward movement of dates awayfrom now in Tongan (Bender et al., 2010). All of these casesattest to the possibility of relative FoRs in the domain oftime—contrary to claims by Moore (2011) and Tenbrink(2011), but in line with the accounts of Kranjec (2006)and Zinken (2010). These cases also afford, at least in prin-ciple, the two variants reflection and translation as pro-posed by Bender and colleagues (2005, 2010, 2012): TheFrench generational terms both for great-grandchildrenand great-grandparents as ‘‘behind’’ (Radden, 2004)instantiate the reflection variant, and the Tongan movingpattern away from Ego the translation variant.

Establishing orientation of the absolute and intrinsicFoR is less straightforward, and more controversial.

In order to be diagnosed as absolute, external coordi-nates need to be recruited for FoR construal. Some of the

cases compiled in Table 9 are obvious candidates for this:the mapping of past events downhill (or rather down-stream) and future events uphill (upstream) in Yupno(Núñez et al., 2012) and, to some extent, Tzeltal (Brown,2012), and the mapping of past events to East and futureevents to West in Kuuk Thaayorre (Boroditsky & Gaby,2010; Gaby, 2012) and perhaps Aymara (Núñez &Cornejo, 2012; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006).

However, even speakers who do not invoke geographi-cal coordinates may adopt an absolute FoR, for instancewhen aligning their mental time line with the arrow oftime (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Yu, 2012). If time is assumedto ‘flow’ or ‘fly’ from the past into the future, and speakersare assumed to be oriented in line with this direction oftime, then assignment of FRONT to the future would countas an instance of the absolute FoR (as proposed byBender et al., 2005, 2010; Kranjec, 2006). Likewise,arrangement of tokens along the lateral axis from left toright would count as an instance of the absolute FoR ifthe rationale for the arrangement is that the past is locatedleft on the time axis, and the future towards the right (inmarked contrast to arrangements based on sequential,anterior/posterior relations, according to which earliertimes should be mapped to the left side). In this sense,almost all instances of mental time lines would, in fact,qualify as representations of the same temporal orienta-tion, with almost all of the cases compiled in Table 9 beingthen classified as instantiations of an absolute FoR.

A third possibility put forward by Zinken (2010) is toconsider the superordinate field as being oriented towardsthe beginning of temporal intervals and, ultimately, thebeginning of time itself. Adoption of this view appears tobe reflected in FB gestures (as reported by Casasanto &Jasmin, 2012) and linguistic mapping along the FB axis(as obtained with the Wednesday’s meeting task).

The intrinsic FoR, finally, is anchored in the ground entityG and can only be adopted if G is regarded as being oriented.Crucially, a potential observer may also serve as ground,which requires the distinction of two cases: anchoring ofthe FoR in event G, and anchoring of the FoR in Ego (= G).Unfortunately, no consensus has been reached as towhether temporal entities may or may not be regarded asoriented. This controversy is most explicit for events, butcan also be generalized to the apparently simpler case ofEgo = G. As detailed in Section 4.2.2, some scholars (e.g.,Tenbrink, 2011; Zinken, 2010) assume that the intrinsicFRONT in this case is derived from Ego’s looking direction,which in most cases is futurewards. However, as we arguedabove (Section 4.4), what would serve as G in temporalcontexts is not Ego as a person, but his or her subjectivepresent, and whether this specific moment in time can beassigned an intrinsic FRONT—and, if so, towards which direc-tion—depends on the more general question of whethertemporal entities may have an intrinsic FRONT in the firstplace. Whereas Tenbrink (2011) claims this to be impossi-ble, Zinken (2010) is prepared to assign an intrinsic FRONT

at least to temporal intervals, and Bender and colleagues(2005, 2010) as well as Yu (2012) assign an intrinsic FRONT

(= their ‘‘beginning’’) to all temporal entities. Combinationsof a linear concept with assignment of FRONT to earliertimes—reflected in all cases recruiting the FB axis—thus


appear to be a likely candidate for the diagnosis of an intrin-sic FoR.

In any case, the problem remains that differentaccounts classify the same patterns as instances of diverg-ing FoRs. The classification of absolute and intrinsic FoRsby Tenbrink (2011) and see Moore, 2011, for instance, isdiametrically opposed to that by Kranjec (2006) orBender and colleagues (2005, 2010). However, whethertime lines oriented pastwards really reflect adoption ofan absolute FoR and time lines oriented futurewards reflectadoption of an intrinsic FoR cannot be decided on theoret-ical grounds, as different speech communities may differ inthe principles on which they base their assignment of ori-entation. Fortunately, some priming studies explicitlyaimed to test the psychological reality of these FoRs andmay thus shed light on this infelicitous situation.

7.3.2. The psychological reality of temporal FoRsAs mentioned earlier, the Wednesday’s meeting ques-

tion was primarily used to explore the psychological real-ity of specific perspectives that people are claimed totake while processing ambiguous temporal phrases. Theperspective under scrutiny is typically primed before par-ticipants are asked to answer the target question. Of theaccounts described in Section 3, only three attempted toempirically test the space–time mapping they claim andthe psychological reality of any additional perspective orFoR predicted by them (details in Section 5.1.3). Two ofthem are relevant here.

The reference-point (RP) metaphors account (Núñezet al., 2006; see Section 3.2) predicts an Ego-free MT [=intrinsic] perspective (indicative of the ‘‘Time-RP’’ meta-phor) in contradistinction to the ‘‘Ego-RP’’ metaphor,which is regarded as consisting of the ME and an Ego-cen-tered MT perspective. To enforce such an Ego-free MT per-spective, visual primes were used that foregrounded theanterior/posterior relation between two events. Comparedto a control condition, this priming significantly shiftedparticipants’ responses to the earlier date (52% [n = 50] vs.71% [n = 45 speakers of US English] in Exp. 2; in Exp. 1without control condition, Monday was chosen by 64%,n = 66 speakers of US English).

The temporal framework models account (Kranjec, 2006;see Section 3.3) predicts an additional ‘‘extrinsic’’ [= abso-lute] FoR. To enforce this FoR, visual primes were used thatforegrounded the superordinate field: In two experiments,the priming shifted responses to the later date (Friday: 73%,aggregated across experiments, combined n = 44 speakersof US English). In contrast, priming them with intrinsicstimuli (similar to the ones by Núñez et al., 2006) reversedthe pattern (Monday: 61%, n.s.; n = 36 speakers of USEnglish).

These findings provide empirical support for twoimportant propositions: First, they do attest to effects ofspatial priming on temporal reasoning and thus to space–time mapping in the context of references. Second, andmore importantly, they demonstrate that an absolute (spa-tial) FoR leads to assigning FRONT futurewards, and anintrinsic FoR leads to assigning FRONT pastwards (in thedirection of earlier events). In other words: The empiricaldata support those accounts that classify futureward

movements as an indication of an absolute FoR, and past-ward movements as an indication of an intrinsic FoR (i.e.,Bender et al., 2010; Kranjec, 2006; Núñez et al., 2006; seeTable 7). This classification also entails that, of the timelines compiled in Table 9, those unfolding in LR, BF, andUD direction are likely to favor the absolute FoR.

7.3.3. The role of deixisThe preponderance of the absolute FoR for temporal

representations across tasks is at odds with the claim thatdeictic representations differ fundamentally from non-deictic representations. As described above, almost allaccounts of temporal FoRs take deixis as their point ofdeparture. They construe their taxonomies from the basicdistinction between expressions that do (A-series) or donot (B-series) entail Ego as a deictic center. Quite fre-quently, deictic A-series expressions are equated with arelative temporal FoR, and with the ME perspective—asthis appears to also presuppose a deictic center, the (mov-ing) Ego—and, in some accounts, an Ego-centered MT per-spective. Conversely, non-deictic B-series expressions areequated with an Ego-free MT perspective, and either withan intrinsic or absolute temporal FoR. As argued in Sec-tion 4.1, however, this focus on deixis may obscure themore complex relations between the A-/B-series classifica-tion and a FoR-based classification, and may incite hastymappings. The crucial role for the unfolding of the timeline and for preferences in temporal references that hasbeen ascribed to deixis is challenged both on theoreticaland empirical grounds.

Theoretically, deixis reveals only little about theadopted FoR. Whereas adoption of a relative FoR does pre-suppose a subjective point of view (typically, although notnecessarily, the speaker), adoption of a non-relative FoRdoes not preclude the presence of the speaker. In otherwords, descriptions can be non-relative, regardless ofwhether Ego is or is not part of the scene. The non-relativerelationship between Monday and Tuesday (as depicted inFig. 1 and Table 4), holds regardless of whether one isaware of or oblivious to the fact that Monday coincideswith Ego’s today. Especially in one-dimensional ‘spaces’like time, Ego’s alignment with a sequence of events is dif-ficult to elude. This is nicely illustrated by co-speech ges-tures, produced by speakers of Yupno, which appear tobe speaker-centered and yet depict a general, non-relativeperspective on time as moving upstream into the future(Núñez et al., 2012). What counts in terms of the classifica-tion of a FoR as relative is not whether it reveals the speak-er’s position, or passes through it, but whether it isanchored in and emanating from this position.

As a consequence, both the ME and MT perspective ontime may also afford a more general and inherently non-deictic view on temporal moving: MT reflects a perspectiveon time as moving not only towards Ego, but towards tem-poral entities and events more generally (in most cases past-wards); and ME reflects a perspective according to whichnot only Ego, but temporal entities and events more gener-ally are moving through time (in most cases futurewards).For the time being, this account of the temporal perspectivesis afforded by the empirical data on temporal references and


space–time mappings, but whether it will stand up to moreconclusive scrutiny remains an open question.

Empirical data that could illuminate the role of deixisare scarce and ambiguous. Some studies seem to confirmthat mental representations may indeed differ substan-tially depending on whether they refer to deictic or non-deictic time. Specifically in co-speech gestures, people tendto recruit the sagittal axis for deictic, and the lateral axisfor non-deictic expressions (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012;Emmorey, 2002; Núñez et al., 2012). However, the storymust be more complicated, as the very same (deictic) stim-uli may trigger diverging axis preferences, depending onother context factors (Torralbo et al., 2006). And con-versely, both types of stimuli (non-deictic as in the cardarranging task vs. deictic as in the time-points task, Sec-tion 5.3.4) may yield the same type of results (e.g.,Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010). It is also worth noting that,despite the preference for the lateral axis to expresssequence time, this does not involve FRONT-to-past mapping(as in ‘‘earlier times’’ before ‘‘later times’’), but the oppositedirection (with FRONT in the future direction). In otherwords, both sagittal and lateral axis reveal an absolute FoR.

A more comprehensive explanation for the observedvariability across contexts may thus be that speakers ofmost languages have more than one axis readily availablefor temporal representation and reference, and simply pre-fer the one that is most compatible with their mindset,with task specifics, and with contextual factors, whichmay—but need not—involve consideration of deictic versusnon-deictic aspects.

10 If cyclical representations are simply triggered by a cyclical concept oftime, there is no reason to assume a specific direction (clockwise orcounterclockwise); if, however, they are (also) affected by the canonicaldirection of clocks, they should be oriented clockwise only. Unfortunately,not all cyclical concepts found in previous research were systematicallyanalyzed (e.g., Tversky et al., 1991). The available data, however, supportthe assumption: Cyclical representations produced by Chinese participantsare oriented exclusively clockwise (Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012), whereasthose produced by (non-literate) Yucatec Maya exhibit an almost equalnumber of clockwise and counterclockwise directions (Le Guen & PoolBalam, 2012).

7.4. Extent of space–time mapping

If our analysis of FoR construals is correct, then one sur-prising inference is that the majority of cases compiled inTable 9 favor adoption of an absolute FoR. Exceptionsinclude a few cases of refusal to spatialize time at all (i.e.,Amondawa and Yucatec Maya), a few cases of adoptingthe radial concept and concomitantly a genuinely relativeFoR (like Toba and, to some extent, perhaps Yucatec Mayaand older speakers of Tongan), and a few cases of adoptingthe intrinsic FoR (as indicated by the occasional occurrenceof the FB time line). Based on this classification, even theapparently inconsistent responses of Tzeltal Maya(Brown, 2012) and Yélî Dnye (Levinson & Majid, 2013)would be considered coherently absolute (except for thepiling-up strategy): LR and NF reflect a lateral and sagittalline, respectively, aligned to the flow of time, while East/West and downhill/uphill recruit external coordinates,but for the same purpose. Instead of inconsistency in pref-erences for temporal FoRs, the data thus reveal inconsis-tency in how these temporal FoRs are represented inspace—which may not be as surprising, given the lack ofcultural conventions for space–time mappings.

Despite converging on the absolute FoR, however, agreat deal of diversity is discerned in how these absoluteFoRs are instantiated, and this raises two important ques-tions: What motivates the specifics of each of these FoRs,and to what extent do preferences for a specific FoR inthe domain of time reflect preferences in space?

7.4.1. Sources for space–time mappingAt least four possible sources for space–time mapping

have been discussed in the literature: cultural artifactssuch as writing direction, linguistic metaphors, embodiedrepresentations of motion, and principles of FoR construal.

Initial research on how spatial representations affecttemporal ones unearthed the importance of cultural arti-facts: People’s mental time line turned out to be correlatedwith the prevailing writing direction (Tversky et al., 1991).Subsequent studies confirmed this impact of writing direc-tion (Bergen & Chan Lau, 2012; Casasanto & Bottini, 2010;Chen & O’Seaghdha, 2013; de Sousa, 2012; Fuhrman &Boroditsky, 2010; Ouellet et al., 2010b), and hinted atrelated factors such as musical notation, the time axis ofgraphs, or the design of calendars and clocks10 (Galton,2011; Jamalian & Tversky, 2012).

That language itself may serve as a principal source forspace–time mappings is as obvious as it is wrong, at leastas a general rule. Adoption of the sagittal axis BF is in linewith respective linguistic metaphors that put the pastbehind the speaker and the future ahead. Likewise, anadditional vertical time line in speakers of Mandarin may(also) be derived from vertical expressions and may be inplace even in the absence of vertical writing (Fuhrmanet al., 2011; Miles et al., 2011). And speakers of TzeltalMaya occasionally point to the future as uphill in a wayakin to how they may refer to it verbally (Brown, 2012).And yet, most non-linguistic data on temporal representa-tions, at least in the Western world, indicate a lateral axisLR for which there is no linguistic equivalent (Casasanto& Jasmin, 2012; Cooperrider & Núñez, 2009). Likewise,speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre do not speak of the future as‘‘westwards’’ (Gaby, 2012), and speakers of Yupno do notreally speak of it as ‘‘upstream’’ (Núñez et al., 2012).

An alternative explanation of this preference for thesagittal axis focuses on embodied representations ofmotion and/or vision. When walking, places to be reachedin the future are lying ahead, and previously visited onesare behind, thus providing strong associations of futurewith FRONT, and past with BACK (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012;Núñez & Sweetser, 2006; and see Miles et al., 2010). Nota-bly, this imagined motion may also give rise to thereversed pattern (of mapping FRONT to the past). And inAymara, the (known) past is indeed regarded as in frontand the unknown as in back of Ego (Núñez & Sweetser,2006; for claims of similar FRONT-to-past mappings in Mal-agasy, Toba, and Maori, see Dahl, 1995; Klein, 1987;Thornton, 1987, respectively).

A fourth possible source for space–time mappings arethe principles of FoR construals themselves (Bender et al.,


2010), which appear to highlight the exact same externalcoordinates for the absolute references among speakersof Kuuk Thaayorre (Boroditsky & Gaby, 2010; Gaby,2012), Yupno (Núñez et al., 2012), or—albeit to a lesserextent—Tzeltal Maya (Brown, 2012).

Alternative availability of these different sources forspace–time mappings may be what allows people to adoptmore than one such representation in parallel (e.g., Mileset al., 2011; Torralbo et al., 2006). It also explains whythe direction of time lines is not conventionalized to thesame extent for all three dimensions, with the lateral andvertical axis being significantly more uniform than the sag-ittal axis (which may be oriented both ways, FB or BF,within and across speech communities).

Importantly, most of these sources favor an absoluteFoR: The mental time line fostered by the prevailing writ-ing direction, a substantial number of linguistic metaphors,and people’s looking direction and imagined motion allmore or less reflect (or are aligned to) the general flow oftime, thus foregrounding the orientation of the superordi-nate field (Table 11). The only source that does not seem tofavor one particular FoR over any other are the principlesof FoR construal. These would predict that, whatever FoRpeople prefer in one domain should also be preferred inthe other (Bender et al., 2010). Is this prediction confirmedby the data?

7.4.2. Degree of space–time mappingBased on the assumption that (unidirectional) mental

time lines attest to an absolute FoR, we re-coded the datafrom Table 9, and contrasted them with preferences forspatial FoRs where available. Results are summarized inTable 11.

The mere fact that absolute FoRs appear to prevail in thelanguages under scrutiny already hints at the conclusionthat FoR preferences may not carry over from space to time.In only very few of these cases (including Yupno, Yélî Dnye,Thaayorre, and to some extent the two Maya groups) dospeech communities favor the absolute FoR in small-scalespace; more often, they prefer the relative and/or intrinsicFoR. Given the somewhat tentative classification of tempo-ral representations as instantiations of one or another FoR,however, this inference may be too hasty. Furthermore, the

Table 11Evidence for preferred FoRs in space (s-FoR) and time (t-FoR), based on findings asprevious subsection).

Note. The following abbreviations are used: A = absolute, I = intrinsic, and R = rethis FoR is preferred (G = gesture, L = linguistic, nd = non-deictic, d = deictic). Prefused; entries in gray indicate likely, but unconfirmed preferences; shaded cells

flexibility of temporal representations depending on taskdesign, material, and other context factors—together witha similar flexibility of FoR adoption in spatial tasks—forbidssimple comparisons across diverse tasks.

An explicit empirical assessment of cross-domain con-sistency in FoR adoption has only been attempted by asmall number of studies to date. The authors of the t-FoRaccount (Bender et al., 2005, 2010; see Section 3.6), whichdistinguishes four different FoRs, assumed that—specifi-cally in the case of the two relative FoR variants—prefer-ences should carry over from space to time. Comparingspeakers of US English, German, Mandarin, and Tongan ina language elicitation study with the Wednesday’s meetingtask, they found a substantial proportion of relative FoRadoption in only one of the languages under scrutiny (i.e.,among older speakers of Tongan), and the variant used intime (i.e., translation) was identical to the one preferredin space (Bennardo, 2000). For the other three languages,the observed temporal FoRs were not incompatible withthose available for space, but did not reflect the preferredones either (Bender et al., 2010). A follow-up studyattempted to bring the spatial condition more in line withthe temporal one by replacing the static task with a task onobject movements. Still, responses from speakers of thesame four languages did not indicate cross-domain consis-tency in FoRs. Notably, correlation between spatial andtemporal FoRs among the US participants, who had workedon both tasks sequentially, was close to zero (Bender et al.,2012). And finally, Rothe-Wulf and colleagues (2014; seeSection 5.1.3) tested with speakers of US English, Swedish,and German whether adoption of a temporal FoR could beprimed by spatial FoRs. They found that only a minor pro-portion of speakers of only one of the three languagesunder scrutiny seemed to be susceptible to this primingin the predicted direction.

These findings are compatible with the observation thatspeakers do not necessarily base their mapping on thesame principles: While speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre orYupno appear to take principles of FoR construal as a ratio-nale for mapping an absolute FoR from space onto time,this is obviously not the case with speakers of languagessuch as English or German, who prefer a relative FoR inspace, but the absolute FoR in time.

reported in Section 6 and Table 9 (for classification of patterns into FoRs, see

lative FoR; subscript letters indicate the type of representation, for whicherred FoRs are printed bold-faced; FoRs in brackets are possible, but rarelyindicate lacking data.


8. Conclusion

The conceptual relations of space and time are manifoldand complex. Time and space share four properties to vary-ing extents. Some of the speech communities included inthis review are reported to emphasize the least sharedproperty transience and thus to avoid space–timemappings entirely. Most others, however, use spatializedrepresentations of time that exhibit the shared propertiesextension, linearity, and direction. These representationsreflect three different spatial concepts of time (most fre-quently the linear concept, but occasionally also the cycli-cal or radial concept), which favors the selection of aspecific temporal FoR by defining a coordinate system, itsanchoring, and its orientation.

Unfortunately, theoretical accounts on temporal FoRsdiverge broadly in how they conceptualize and distinguishtemporal FoRs—depending, for instance, on what maycount as the superordinate field, whether events may havean intrinsic FRONT, or how a deictic center may affect refer-encing patterns. Of the thirty studies scrutinized for con-firming or disconfirming evidence, only very few addressthis issue directly. They suggest that the absolute FoR doesderive its orientation from concepts such as the arrow oftime, to which the mental time line is aligned in almostall cases. The intrinsic FoR, in contrast, is anchored in atemporal interval or event serving as ground that derivesits orientation from assignment of FRONT to the beginningof temporal intervals and events or from the anteriority/posteriority relation inherent in their sequence. Whilethese two FoRs are fostered by the linear or cyclical con-cept, the relative FoR is compatible with a radial conceptonly: It presupposes a subjective viewpoint (or deictic cen-ter) and pertains to ternary relations.

Based on this classification, the empirical data, with fewexceptions, suggest a preponderance of the absolute FoR inthe temporal domain, but also attest to an amazing varietyin how this FoR is instantiated. To assign orientation to thesuperordinate field, some speech communities recruitexternal (allocentric) coordinates such as the position ofthe sun or the gradient of landscape or rivers, while othersuse the arrow of time in a more abstract manner. This isreflected in a variety of dimensions and directions, alongwhich the mental time line unfolds: sagittally BF or FB(in line with the direction of looking and moving), laterallyLR or RL (depending on writing direction), vertically UD(triggered variably by writing direction and/or perhaps lin-guistic metaphors), and even cyclically in either of twodirections (depending on familiarity with clocks). In con-trast to the FoRs based on geographical coordinates, thesetime lines might appear to be egocentric as they comprisethe speaker and are construed relative to his or her posi-tion. As argued above, however, even these time linesshould be considered allocentric in the sense that their ori-entation is derived from the direction into which time‘flows’ rather than from a subjective perspective of thespeaker. To assess the validity of this proposal, more sys-tematic and empirical research is imperative.

The diversity in time lines, which reveal the tendency tospatialize time, reflects the flexibility with which this can

be achieved—not only across speech communities, but alsowithin them, and even within individual speakers. Theactual shape of the time line (if one is adopted at all) seemsto depend on contextual factors, task specifics, and mind-set. This flexibility is less surprising, if one considers thattime is not only one-dimensional and unidirectional, butalso orthogonal to all spatial dimensions. Which spatialdimension is actually adopted to convey the flow of timetherefore does not really matter, as long as its basic prop-erties are preserved. The fact that this may request compli-ance to cultural conventions, in order to be understood inthe intended sense, explains why explicit tendencies arefound in some speech communities and for some dimen-sions, but not others.

The preponderance of the absolute FoR in the temporaldomain (at least in the data compiled here) contrasts shar-ply with a more diverse pattern in the spatial domain. Onlya small number of studies found cross-domain consistencyin FoR adoption, but this is typically the case in thosespeech communities with an almost exclusive preferencefor the absolute spatial FoR. Does this devalue our effortsto systematize the mapping of spatial frames of referenceonto time, which motivated this review? We are convincedthat, on the contrary, the conclusions of our review rendersuch an endeavor even more essential. Not only do infor-mative cross-domain comparisons presuppose a consistentand comprehensive mapping of FoR taxonomies; withoutconsensus on what exactly may count as a frame of refer-ence, according to which principles they should be definedand construed, and how respective data should be inter-preted, this field of research will not advance, and will beunable to contribute to fundamental theoretical questionson temporal cognition.

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article took place during our stay atthe Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at the Uni-versity of Bielefeld and was supported by a Heisenberg Fel-lowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG(Be 2451/8-1,2) to Andrea Bender and by a grant from theDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG for the project on‘‘Spatial referencing across languages: Cultural preferencesand cognitive implications’’ to Andrea Bender and SieghardBeller (Be 2451/13-1, Be 2178/7-1). We are indebted to Sus-anne Bubser for support with the literature, to Gunter Senftfor valuable comments on a previous version of the paper,and to Sarah Mannion de Hernandez for proofreading. Thispaper is dedicated to Melissa Bowerman, in appreciation ofher scientific support and personal friendship.

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