The Conceptualization of ‘Time’ in Persian Grammatical Constructions from Cognitive Grammar Perspective

Document Type : Original Article

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Associate Professor, Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Language and Literature, Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran.

Abstract

The present study examined the mental representation and conceptualization of time in Persian through the framework of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (1987). The author attempted to demonstrate that ‘time’ in language is a cognitive, experienced, and culturally mediated phenomenon that takes shape within grammatical and discursive constructions. The purpose was to explain how temporal structures are organized and conceptually imaged in the minds of Persian speakers, and to identify the cognitive operations involved—such as scanning, profiling, reference-point, and viewpoint. The methodological nature of this qualitative study was descriptive–analytical, drawing on naturally occurring data from spoken and written Persian. The results showed that Persian conceptualizes time through a wide range of metaphorical and cognitive patterns, including time as flow, wind, healer, field of action, plannable domain, and perceptual magnitude. These representations demonstrated that temporal experience is not fixed but dynamic and multi-scalar, and that language highlights this multiplicity through image-schemas, agentive personification, dynamic scanning, and various profiling strategies. The findings indicated that Cognitive Grammar provides a powerful explanatory framework for understanding the cultural, affective, and perceptual mechanisms involved in temporal representation in Persian, offering new insights for the study of temporal constructions in Iranian languages.

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