Orientational metaphors for time conceptualisation from archaic to hellenistic greek

• Grant number: 25/21235-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2026
• End date: January 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Languages
• Principal Investigator: José Marcos Mariani de Macedo
• Grantee: Carolina Murata Sanchez
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to systematise the different meanings of spatio-temporal preverbs, prepositions, and adverbs throughout the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods of the Greek language. The research is based on the conceptual metaphor theory in the field of cognitive linguistics developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), from which Núñez & Sweetser (2006) establish two primary models, Time-RP and Ego-RP, through which human language references former and later events using spatial terms, such as "The next day", or "One day ago". According to Bartolotta (2018), the Greek language during its Archaic period only made use of a single type of metaphor for conceptualising time, Time-RP, and, afterwards, in the Classical period, another way of expressing anteriority and posteriority was developed, with the introduction of a deictic ego in the temporal axis. The present project's objective is to analyse two corpora: one consisting of 14 lexical items belonging to the horizontal semantic field, in order to verify the diachronic shift in their meaning and the evolution of the cognitive paradigms for time conceptualisation in Greek; and another of 13 terms related to the vertical semantic field that are used with temporal meaning as well. Due to the scarce use of the latter lexical items with temporal meaning in the Homeric poems and their broader usage in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, its semantic analysis in the different stages of Greek is made relevant. Therefore, this research intends to conceive a scheme of the diachronic semantic evolution of the selected corpus, in addition to suggesting hypotheses concerning the change of cognitive processes for conceptualising time in Ancient Greek. (AU)