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Event-based time intervals in an Amazonian culture

  • 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.

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Metadaten
Author:Vera da Silva Sinha, Chris Sinha, Wany Sampaio, Jörg ZinkenORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-52823
DOI:https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.05das
ISBN:978-90-272-2391-3
Parent Title (English):Space and time across languages and cultures. Language, culture and cognition
Series (Serial Number):Human Cognitive Processing (37)
Publisher:Benjamins
Place of publication:Amsterdam/Philadelphia
Editor:Luna Filipović, Kasia M. Jaszczolt
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2012
Date of Publication (online):2016/09/19
Tag:Amazonia; artefacts; onomastics; semiotic mediation; time reckoning
First Page:15
Last Page:35
DDC classes:400 Sprache / 410 Linguistik
Open Access?:nein
Licence (German):License LogoUrheberrechtlich geschützt