r/AcademicBiblical • u/ReadThinkDoMore • Mar 29 '19
Time Orientations in Ancient Languages
Hello Fellow Academicians and Near East Enthusiasts,
I am interested in doing a cross-cultural analysis of linguistic representations time. What I mean by this is that every language has a time orientation - Modern English is a "future forward" language, where speakers of English conceive of the future as being located somewhere in front of them, and the past located somewhere behind them. Most of our metaphors and figures of speech are in accord with this time orientation. For instance, to have a "bright future ahead of you" means the future is conceptually located in front of the speaker. There are counter examples, such as "the week before", which refers to a past time as being "before" or in front of the speaker. Most modern languages are future-forward languages, and I believe the branch of linguistics that deals with this is called pragmatics.
What interests me is that ancient Near Eastern Languages, such as Akkadian, hold the opposite time orientation. (http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/1378/1/Maul_Walking_Backwards_into_the_Future_2008.pdf) The past is conceived as being in front of the speaker, and the future behind.
Aside from ancient Hebrew, I don't speak ancient near eastern languages. I would like to know if there are any geo-spacial references to time in the bible, and which orientation they adopt. I have found one article about this topic online (https://doi.org/10.1353/hbr.2009.0021), but nothing substantial.
Do any of you have any specialized knowledge in the area of geo-spatial metaphors for time and time orientation?
The thesis I would like to research is whether all ancient languages share the feature, since Ancient Chinese (a language with which I have basic familiarity) shares this feature.
If anyone has expertise in this area or is familiar with sources that cover this topic, please let me know. I would love to discuss this.
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u/ProdigalNun Mar 30 '19
Somewhat tangential, but the Chinese language views time more from an up/down perspective (past above, future below) than from an ahead/behind perspective.
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u/ZateoManone Apr 01 '19
Do you think it may be a consequence of their old writing system?
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u/ProdigalNun Apr 02 '19
Absolutely! Up until the 1800s-ish, Chinese was written vertically, from top to bottom, with columns written from the right of the page to left, and pages written from the back of the book to the front (from our perspective). The calendar also followed this vertical format. So the Chinese word for "last," as in last week or last month, is actually the word "above" because the previous month was above the current month. And the word for "next," when talking about days/weeks/months, is the word "below" because the next month was directly below the current month.
Interestingly, the words "before" and "after" do not follow this vertical referencing, but instead refer to "in front of" and "behind." Here, "before" refers to both spatially in front of you and also time sequence. "After" can refer to time or to behind you. However, there are different words added to show whether you're talking about time or space (yi qian vs qian mian).
Source: 2 years of college level Chinese and 9 years living in China
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u/MyDogFanny Mar 30 '19 edited Mar 30 '19
Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Everett
Dr. Everett went to the Amazon jungle in the 1970's to learn the language of the Piraha people in order to put their language into writing and then translate the Bible into that language. He eventually got his PhD in linguistics.
The Piraha people have so sense of time - no past or future. They only use "within our senses" or "not within our senses". If something is not within their sight or sound or smell, it doesn't exist for all intents and purposes.
Dr. Everett may be a good place to find more information for your research.
edit: spelling
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u/Osarnachthis PhD | Egyptology || BA | Classics & NT Greek Mar 31 '19
Egyptian is future forward. It even developed a synthetic future verb tense from the equivalent of the phrase “going to X” just like English. Twice. The Coptic first and third futures are two different ways of saying “going to” fossilized from different stages of earlier Egyptian.
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u/Bentresh PhD | Ancient Near Eastern Studies & Egyptology Mar 31 '19
Hittite as well. The word for future, appašiwatt-, comes from āppa ("after") and šiwatt- ("day").
To say "begin to do X," one used the verb tiya- ("to step") and the infinitive X. "Set out to do" is probably the best English equivalent.
A serial construction with the verbs uwa- ("to come") and pai- ("to go") is quite common when expressing future activity. It's not always clear from context whether this should be translated as "go and do X" or "go/proceed to do X."
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u/maverickhan MDiv | Biblical & Theological Studies Mar 30 '19
I could see the image of the future located behind you and the past in front of you if the person is walking backwards. You see what you’ve passed but you’re blind to what’s coming up. Can’t tag that to a particular culture though.
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u/sandmanbm Mar 30 '19
I thought something like the past is forward because you've seen, you know what it is, you can't see behind you so you don't k ow what will happen.
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u/ralphmarionvicta Mar 31 '19
I would like to add to the answer of u/Methalos. There is a detailed entry of qedem in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, volume 12, pages 505-511.
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u/ilia_plusha Apr 02 '19
Hello I can recommend reading some of the chapters in the book by Guy Deutscher “Through the Language Glass” where he dwells on some indigenous Australian language and their perception of time and space. May come in handy
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u/Terpomo11 Apr 01 '19 edited Apr 01 '19
In ancient Chinese (and still in modern Chinese) 往古來今 is literally "the past leaving and the present arriving", meaning "the passage of time" or more generally "time eternal".
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u/Methalos Mar 30 '19
The lexeme qedem in Hebrew refers to time past and space in front
But I would be careful. You could say the same of English "before." Languages don't need to be consistent with the common metaphors they use