Languages as Ontologies II: 5 Construal of Time and Temporality

Processes unfold, participants exist, space situates them, and causality governs their interactions. But how events are ordered, patterned, and experienced in time is another domain where languages enact profoundly different ontologies. Relational ontology reminds us: languages do not simply “mark clock time”; they pattern the experience of becoming itself.

1. How unfolding is patterned

Languages vary in how they construe temporality:

• Tenseless languages vs. heavily tensed systems: Some languages, such as Yucatec Maya or Pirahã, do not obligatorily encode tense. Temporal relations are inferred from context, aspect, or evidential markers, foregrounding the relational and emergent nature of events. In contrast, English and Romance languages grammaticise past, present, and future, giving time a linear, segmentable structure.

• Aspect-first languages vs. event-structure-first languages: In Slavic languages, aspect (completed vs. ongoing) dominates, shaping how the event’s internal unfolding is perceived. Aspect is not optional; it structures how participants experience the event’s temporal profile.

• Cyclic, spatial, or phase-based temporal systems: Some African and Oceanic languages encode time as spatial, circular, or experiential cycles, such as Amharic, where temporal relations often reference habitual or cyclical patterns rather than linear sequencing.

The key insight: what counts as “before,” “after,” or “during” is patterned by linguistic possibility, not universally given.

2. Temporality construal as ontology

Through these systems, languages enact different default ontologies of becoming:

• Linear, segmentable time (English, French) — events are sequential, with explicit markers; unfolding is predictable and narratively structurable.

• Aspectual or phase-oriented time (Slavic, Japanese) — the quality of the event’s internal structure matters more than its chronological location.

• Relational or cyclic time (Pirahã, Amharic) — temporal experience is contextual, emergent, and tied to patterns of recurrence rather than discrete points.

This demonstrates that temporality is not an external metric, but a relational field within which processes, participants, and causality are actualised.

3. Implications for narrative and cognition

• Storytelling: Linear-time languages favor plot-driven narratives with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. Aspect-focused or cyclic-time languages foreground processes, repetition, and relational patterns, creating narratives that feel emergent, reflective, or cyclical.

• Cognition: Habitual temporal construal affects prediction, memory, and planning. Speakers internalise not just sequences, but the rhythm and salience of events, their completion, and their relational positioning.

4. Closing reflection

Temporal construal is a cut into experience itself. Languages pattern how becoming can be perceived, remembered, and narrated, shaping both thought and story. Time is not a universal backdrop; it is enacted through language, a medium through which events, agents, and relations are made intelligible.