AvH Research Project F010416012

Event-based time and quantification in three indigenous Brazilian languages and cultures: A typological perspective

This project aims to investigate the relationship in language, cognition and culture between time, number and space in three indigenous minority communities of Brazil: Awetý (Tupian), Kamaiurá (Tupian) and Huni Kuĩ (Panoan) from a typological perspective.

The research aims, objectives and methods to be used in the project are designed to answer the following Research Questions:

(a) How is gesture integrated with speech and with symbolic artefact use in event-based time reckoning and temporal reference?

(b) Does gesture reveal spatial conceptualisations of time (e.g. a mental time line) that are not manifested in speech?

(c) To what extent are relationships (or their absence) between time, space and number in language paralleled in non-linguistic cognitive processes?

(d) Are there differences between non-linguistic cognitive processes relating time, space and number in small number/event-based time language speakers, and those of speakers of more familiar languages? 

(e) How does the domain of embodied cognitive and perceptual processes metaphorically map to the domains of time and space?

(f) Is the absence in these languages of spatial metaphors for time best explained by the absence of linguistic and cognitive artefact representations of metric time, or by the prevalence of psychological metaphors across different domains, or both?

Principal Investigator / Research Fellow: Dr. Vera Da Silva Sinha (University of East Anglia, UK)

Host Professor / Collaborator: Prof. Dr. Tania Kouteva-Kuteva (Heinrich-Heine University, Germany/SOAS, University of London, UK)

Funding Period: 2021 – 2023.