Arrival linguist7/13/2023 ![]() ![]() When prompted with the Swedish word for duration ( tid), they estimated time using line length. Flexible bilingualsīut Spanish-Swedish bilinguals are flexible. If two containers fill up to different levels over the same time period, participants judge the container with the smaller amount to have filled in less time than it actually did and vice versa. Spanish and Greek monolinguals on the other hand are affected in their time estimations by physical quantity – how much a container has filled with liquid. If two lines stretch to different lengths over the same time period, participants judge the shorter line to have travelled for less time than it actually did and the longer line to have travelled for more time than it actually did. But Spanish and Greek speakers see it as quantity, as volume taking up space.Īs a consequence, English and Swedish monolinguals estimate how much time it takes for lines to lengthen across a computer screen based on how far the lines expand. Speakers of English and Swedish see time as a horizontal line, as distance travelled. But Greek and Spanish speakers tend to mark time by referring to physical quantities – a small break, a big party. For example, Swedish and English speakers prefer to mark the duration of events by referring to physical distances – a short break, a long party. Our study showed that these language differences have psycho-physical effects in the bilingual mind: they alter the way the same individual experiences the passage of time depending on the language context they are operating in. It seems that culture and meaning form a tight bond as this context-dependent shift in behaviour shows. But the same people arranged the pictures of Jet Li vertically, with young Jet Li appearing at the top and old Jet Li appearing at the bottom. They arranged the former horizontally, with the young Brad Pitt to the left and the old Brad Pitt to the right. In one study, Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to arrange pictures of a young, mature, and old Brad Pitt and Jet Li. This affects the way observers perceive the spatial unfolding of the ageing process. ![]() The word shàng (up) is used to talk about the past – so “last week” becomes “up one week”. The word xià (down) is used to talk about future events, so when referring to “next week” a Mandarin Chinese speaker would literally say “down week”. Mandarin Chinese employs a vertical time axis alongside a horizontal one. Those that are bilingual in Spanish (a future-in-front language like English) tend to make forward moving gestures, whereas those with little or no knowledge of Spanish gesture backwards (consistent with the Aymara future-is-behind pattern), when talking about the future. These differences in how time is visualised in the mind affect how Aymara speakers gesture about events. We look forward to the good times ahead and to leaving the past behind us.Īmy Adams as linguistics expert Louise Banks in Arrival. Visualising the future as in front of us (and the past as behind us) is also very common in English. For example, in Swedish, the word for future is framtid which literally means “front time”. Because time is so abstract, the only way to talk about it is by using the terminology from another, more concrete domain of experience, namely that of space. The really cool thing about time is the way we actually experience it is in some ways up to our imagination and our language. We cannot touch or see it but we organise our whole lives around it. Time is fascinating because it is very abstract. The way that bilinguals handle these different ways of thinking has long been a mystery to language researchers. But different languages also embody different worldviews and different ways of organising the world around us. We have known for some time that bilinguals go back and forth between their languages rapidly and often unconsciously – a phenomenon called code-switching. Our findings are the first psycho-physical evidence of cognitive flexibility in bilinguals. However, this study does show that learning a new way to talk about time really does rewire the brain. But unlike Hollywood, bilinguals sadly can’t see into the future. ![]() My new study – which I worked on with linguist Emanuel Bylund – shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. As one character in the movie says: “Learning a foreign language rewires your brain.” She discovers the way the aliens talk about time gives them the power to see into the future – so as Banks learns their language, she also begins to see through time. In the film Arrival, Amy Adams plays linguist Louise Banks who is trying to decipher an alien language. It turns out, Hollywood got it half right. ![]()
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