Abstrakt
Evidence from psycholinguistic studies shows that grammatical aspect influences the conceptualisation of the encountered event. However, all these studies focus on semantic properties of time described in the events.
That is, time has not been investigated in terms of the experience of time by the language user. The existing studies treat time rather like a non-absolute entity which is differently cut and sequenced according to the temporal properties of one or another grammatical or lexical marker.
In contrast, the present study is going to investigate how the temporal properties of verbs influence the way we perceive psychological time. We will conduct psycholinguistic experiments to address this question.
The proposed study will investigate the influence of language on time perception from a cross-language perspective, using French and Dutch as the case languages. Exploring general characteristics of human cognition by means of language is a goal which per definition requires cross-linguistic research.
Only if we compare how the perception of time duration changes in speakers of various languages, we can get results which tell us which aspects of the issue under investigation are linked to a concrete language and which are shared among all human beings. The objective is to test an emergent view in cognitive linguistics that language components as seemingly abstract as grammar carry a substantial and measurable influence on our cognitive processes.
The identification and elucidation of this novel aspect of the interrelatedness of language and time perception, contribute to an integrated understanding of the human mind at the confluence of the fields of linguistics and cognitive psychology.