Cognitive Scientific Studies of Spatio-Temporal Expressions in Japanese and English

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The lignuistic study of natural languages (especially, the study of linguistic expressions of location, time and space) is one of the most important research topics in the field of cognitive sciences. Little attention, however, has been paid to the elucidation of the underlying mechanisms which formally and conceptually characterize such linguistic expressions. In this research, we have investigated three basic problems concerning spatio-temporal expressions with special reference to Japanese and English. In the first year, we have examined the basic formal types of spatio-tempral expressions in Japanese and English (espetially, Japanese location markers and English locational prepositions). In the second year, the conceptual nature of Japanese and English spatio-temporal expressions was clarified. In the third year, we have investigated the underlying mechanisms which characterize the metaphorical extension of concrete meanings to abstract meanings in Japanese and English locational expressions.