Do you think this relates to the written orientation of the language? The 'floating upwards' makes sense if you think of each unit of time as a written character (I was thinking of calendars) then if you read them downwards, one character at a time, the characters appear to move upwards past you. Equally the 'front year' and 'behind' year are in front of and behind other characters, not in front of or behind the obsever - ie, you have a series of characters passing you [<-up]....A B C D E...[->down] If you are in year C, D is 'coming' towards you, and B is 'departed' past you; but then A is 'in front of' B (there is an implication that you can still see B, but can't see A past it?), and E is 'behind' the approaching D. That seems to be internally consistent to me, and it would make sense that a language which has had a written form for as long as Chinese would be affected by that in its use of metaphor.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2004-06-10 03:31 am (UTC)Equally the 'front year' and 'behind' year are in front of and behind other characters, not in front of or behind the obsever - ie, you have a series of characters passing you
[<-up]....A B C D E...[->down]
If you are in year C, D is 'coming' towards you, and B is 'departed' past you; but then A is 'in front of' B (there is an implication that you can still see B, but can't see A past it?), and E is 'behind' the approaching D.
That seems to be internally consistent to me, and it would make sense that a language which has had a written form for as long as Chinese would be affected by that in its use of metaphor.