LINGUIST List 11.1255

Mon Jun 5 2000

Qs: Time Metaphors, Montessori Grammar Tools

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <>



  1. Denny Greenberg, Metaphors of Time in Mandarin or Cantonese
  2. Toby Ayer, Montessori grammar tools?

Message 1: Metaphors of Time in Mandarin or Cantonese

Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 16:40:02 +1000
From: Denny Greenberg <>
Subject: Metaphors of Time in Mandarin or Cantonese

I am looking for examples of the metaphors used in the conception of time
in Mandarin or Cantonese. I am concerned with these categories:
	time is a substance
	time is a container
	time is a valuable commodity
	time is labour
	early is up, late is down
	past is up, future is down
	past is in front, future is benhind

Does anyone know of a corpus of these metaphors? 

Denny Greenberg 

Message 2: Montessori grammar tools?

Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 10:00:33 +0100 (BST)
From: Toby Ayer <>
Subject: Montessori grammar tools?

I was looking through a catalogue of Montessori supplies, and was curious
about the language tools. The first one that caught my eye was a pair of
objects, one a black tetrahedron, one a red sphere, with the explanation
that they are for "the introduction of the noun and the verb." Then I saw
the whole set of little colored shapes, representing different parts of
speech, which are evidently combined to create sentence-forms, presumably
according to sequence rules. E.g. a full DP like [Det Num Adj N] would
be a series of triangles: [little-blue medium-blue medium-black

Anyway, it seems that this sort of abstract sentence construction is
exactly the sort of thing you *don't* need to help a toddling
language-learner with. On the other hand, it might help later on for
other things, like writing well or learning a second language.

Does anyone have experience with these tools, thoughts on them, or
pointers to interesting literature?


Toby Ayer