Music as Time, Music as Timeless

This chapter presents a framework for parsing differing conceptual and analytical positions on time in music, focusing specifically on two contrasting ideologies. The first perspective views music as an art form that exists only in and through the unfolding of time; the second views music as capable of evoking a static temporality, referred to by many scholars as a sense of stasis or timelessness. Discussions on the relationship between time and music typically engage with a subset of overlapping and interacting positions on time. Time is sometimes analysed as external and objective, but can also be construed as internal and subjective. Finally, time is also understood to be created or represented by music, an idea encapsulated by the term ‘musical time’. References to timelessness in music engage with these latter two views on time, specifically music’s ability to represent temporal concepts associated with specific structures (musical time) and perceptual mechanisms related to certain musical features that result in a subjective experience interpreted as timelessness. Using the dual lenses of psychology and philosophy, I argue that timelessness is an inherent part of the multiple systems of temporal production and perception that underlie the way we experience and discuss time in music.

Delimiting durative events with manner

Durative events by default are atelic. However, temporal targets are typically required for durative verbs with a rushing manner, such as ‘We are catching the 3:30 flight’ and ‘The farmer rushed to harvest before the storm’. Why and how does manner introduce delimiting temporal concepts to durative verbs? This puzzle is addressed by our current study of two near-synonymous Mandarin durative verbs describing events carried out in a rushing manner: 赶 gǎn and 抢 qiǎng. Our event-base account will examine both their compositional meanings and their constructional patterns. We will show that 赶 gǎn and 抢 qiǎng not only coerce eventive readings from their nominal objects, but also require certain delineating temporal targets. The verb 赶 gǎn requires an understood deadline, while the verb 抢 qiǎng requires the presupposition of the limited availability of the object. As neither temporal targets mark the time of the actual activities, these are exceptional cases of aktionsart. We will show that the different ways to delineate event meanings of the constructions [gǎn/qiǎng+ noun] can be predicted from the lexical meaning of the two verbs and can in turn predict the event types represented by the object with the MARVS theory. Based on this lexical semantic representation, we further show that the Generative Lexicon theory predicts the coercions of the rushing meaning from the original activity verb senses, and that the Construction Grammar theory accounts for their sharing of the same syntactic configuration.

Design and assessment of a teaching program to address temporal concepts in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education using stories

In the educational field, there is a discussion about how to teach temporal concepts within Social Science in Early Childhood Education and in Primary Education. This debate arises from the young age of the students, which shows the need to make use of different teaching approaches from those used in other higher educational levels. As stories have been proved as an effective teaching method used in this educational level for the past 30 years, the research problem revolves around the following question: is it possible to teach temporal concepts in Early Childhood Education using a non-specific story to teach social sciences? For this reason, the purpose of this study was to design, implement, and assess a teaching program for the temporal concepts past/present/future, before/after, and change/transformation in the third year of Early Childhood Education using a non-specific story to teach social sciences. For a better understanding of the program, a brief explanation of the Spanish Educational system has been included. The participants of the study were the 47 students of an Early Childhood and Primary Education Center in Molina de Segura, Murcia, Spain. Quantitative data were analyzed using the software program SPSS v. 24. With the goal of evaluating the students’ achievement of each activity’s objectives, as well as the teaching program as a whole, percentages and frequencies of the assessment charts’ different components were calculated. Once the data from the brainstorming session on the students’ prior knowledge of temporal concepts had been collected, it was transcribed and organized in the corresponding chart. In this way, a primary text document was created. Together with the Initial Questionnaire on Temporal Concepts (IQTC) and the Final Self-assessment Questionnaire (FSQ), which did not require transcription, three hermeneutic categories were created, one for each document, using the program ATLAS.ti (version 7.5.2). The results showed a high percentage of fulfillment of the objectives, with somewhat significant differences between one class and another. These results lead us to conclude that the temporal concepts chosen for this teaching program can be taught in third-year Early Childhood Education classes using the story Ramona la mona by Aitana Carrasco.

Funkcjonalność pojęć temporalnych w dyskursie prawnym i urzędowym

Functionality of Temporal Concepts in Legal and Public Administration Discourse The article is dedicated to the concept of time in the context of its potential to organize legal interactions. The subject of the study includes time markers in Polish legislative, official and court documents. The aim of the article is to describe the temporal terminology used in legal and official communication, and to find pragmatic characteristics that make it possible for the concept of time to organize extralinguistic reality in many different aspects. The author of the article analyses both fixed language constructs and language units with an open and occasional structure.

The Effectiveness of An Educational Program Based on Pictures and Graphics in Developing Some Spatial and Temporal Concepts among Kindergarten Children

The study aimed to identify the effectiveness of an educational program based on images and graphics in developing some spatial and temporal concepts among kindergarten children. The researchers used the semi-experimental approach, and the sample of the study, chosen randomly, consisted of (50) children and distributed among the two study groups (25) groups. Experimental and (25) control groups. The researchers prepared the study tools represented by the educational program and a test that measures temporal and spatial concepts after confirming their validity and stability. The results of the study showed statistically significant differences between the members of the two groups in favor of the experimental group, and the study recommended including this program in kindergarten curricula.

Implicit cognitive meanings of the spatial prepositions in, on, and at in English

Learning English prepositions is deemed as a difficult task for EFL learners (Cheng, 2006) because some English prepositions have many similar but slightly different meanings (Boers & Demecheleer, 1998; Radden, 1985). EFL leaners face difficulty in using English prepositions because they may only learn the linguistic forms but not the conceptual meanings embedded in prepositions. The purpose of this research is to investigate English spatial prepositions in, on, and at from a cognitive perspective, e.g. the theory of conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and cognitive grammar (Langacker, 2008). The investigation of the present study was mainly done with document analysis (Bowen, 2009; O’Leary, 2014). After reviewing many primary and previous studies (Dikken, 1995; Freeborn, 1987; Lindstromberg, 1996, 2010; Nishimura, 2005; Radden, 1985), the findings show that English prepositions in, on, and at have not only their prototypical meanings but also implicit meanings, which may be extended by metaphors. It is also found that there is an intimate relationship between the spatial and temporal meanings of prepositions. Besides, the prototypical meanings of in, on, and at can be the foundation to learn other spatial or temporal concepts. Therefore, it is suggested that understanding metaphors and the implicit meanings embedded in prepositions can help EFL students’ learning of English language.

Timing

Part One introduces the concept of timing and develops a specific theory of narrative timing, which offers a better starting point for analyzing IR’s temporal discourse and for teasing out the temporal dynamics of IR’s knowledge genres. Chapter one surveys several problems with current ways of theorizing time before adapting a novel approach from Norbert Elias’ process sociology. Building on his provocative claim that all “times” emanate from practical and social timing activities—efforts to relate and coordinate important change continua so that they unfold in particular ways—it sketches a basic account of how timing works, covering timing standards, active vs. passive timing, and how we respond to breakdowns in timing. It also shows how symbolic descriptions of timing activities communicate knowledge about these efforts but also bury their practical, processual roots under substantive and reified concepts of “time.” This chapter highlights the political power of timing as a particular and purposeful act of synthesis. Finally, it shows how to unpack from temporal symbols those dynamics intrinsic to both politics and theory. Neutral, homogeneous temporal concepts indicate successful, mostly subconscious timing; while references to the problem of Time suggest more challenging timing efforts.