Article published in:
Space and Time in Languages and Cultures: Language, culture, and cognitionEdited by Luna Filipović and Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt
[Human Cognitive Processing 37] 2012
► pp. 15–35
1. Event-based time intervals in an Amazonian culture
Vera da Silva Sinha | Federal University of Rondônia
Chris Sinha | Lund University
Wany Sampaio | Federal University of Rondônia
Jörg Zinken | University of Portsmouth
We report an ethnographic and field-experiment-based study of time intervals in Amondawa, a Tupi language and culture of Amazonia. We analyse two Amondawa time interval systems based on natural environmental events (seasons and days), as well as the Amondawa system for categorising lifespan time (“age”). Amondawa time intervals are exclusively event-based, as opposed to time-based (i.e. they are based on event-duration, rather than measured abstract time units). Amondawa has no lexicalised abstract concept of time and no practices of time reckoning, as conventionally understood in the anthropological literature. Our findings indicate that not only are time interval systems and categories linguistically and culturally specific, but that they do not depend upon a universal “concept of time”. We conclude that the abstract conceptual domain of time is not a human cognitive universal, but a cultural historical construction, semiotically mediated by symbolic and cultural-cognitive artefacts for time reckoning.
Keywords: Amazonia, artefacts, onomastics, semiotic mediation, time reckoning
Published online: 24 July 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.05das
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.05das
Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
Araujo Sampaio, Wany Bernardete de, Vera da Silva Sinha & Chris Sinha
Duffy, Sarah E.
Laeng, Bruno & Anders Hofseth
Silva Sinha, Vera da
Sinha, Chris
Sinha, Chris
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 february 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.