The Expression of Time (The Expression of Cognitive Categories)

Time is the most fundamental category of human cognition and action, and all human languages have developed many devices to express it. These include verbal categories, such as tense and aspect, but also adverbials, particles, and principles of discourse organisation. The book consists of what are essentially tutorials on the various notions of time, their encoding in different languages, on the formal semantics, the computer modelling and the acquisition of temporality. It also includes chapters on the mental representation and on culture-specific perspectivation of time and event structure. It concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.