Metaphoric expressions and temporality in Telugu

Abstract

Abstract The tendency for the abstract domain of time to be lexicalized in terms of the relatively concrete domain of space has been extensively researched with reference to languages spoken in the Western hemisphere. That such cross-domain mappings in the conceptual system give rise to metaphors is also a well-established fact. The surface realization of metaphors known as “metaphoric expressions” are said to be language and culture specific and tend to play an important role in expressing inter-subjective communication needs. There is limited published literature on this topic with reference to the languages of South Asia, and especially those of India. Drawing on some insights gathered from previously published research on this topic, this corpus-based study examines aspects of temporality encoded in a set of 105 metaphoric expressions in Telugu. The results revealed that metaphoric expressions containing reduplicated spatial terms encode “time-as-such” temporality and are greater in number compared to both temporal terms expressing “matrix-sense”, and onomatopes expressing “event-based time”. These results are discussed with the help of examples and some suggestions are made for future research.