TINCULT · Time and quantification in cognition, communication and cultural practice
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-09-01 → 2024-10-03
- EU contribution
- €214,159
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Time and quantification in cognition, communication and cultural practice
The TINCULT project explores the interplay of time and number in human cognition, focusing on how these concepts are culturally and linguistically framed in indigenous societies. Although fundamental to cognition, the expression of time and number varies greatly across cultures, and research has primarily focused on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) populations, leaving a gap in understanding traditional societies. For the Huni Kuĩ, Kamaiurá, and Awetý of Brazil, time is not tracked with clocks or calendars, and their number systems involve fewer than 20 terms. TINCULT examines how these communities conceptualise time and number, challenging assumptions of universality in cognitive science. Importance for Society Preserving Endangered Cultures: TINCULT documents and revitalises endangered languages and cultural knowledge, helping maintain global diversity. Challenging Cognitive Universality: Findings from non-WEIRD populations challenge cognitive science assumptions, enriching anthropology and linguistics. Cultural and Educational Impact: Research results support bilingual education and cultural preservation efforts, contributing to inclusive education and intercultural understanding. Broader Societal Relevance: Insights can enhance cross-cultural communication, supporting a nuanced view of time and number’s role across societies. Overall Objectives Advance Scientific Understanding: Deepen knowledge of cultural variability in time and number conceptualisation in traditional societies. Document and Revitalize Languages: Contribute to the preservation of the Huni Kuĩ, Kamaiurá, and Awetý languages, including curriculum materials for indigenous schools. Inform Cognitive Science Debates: Examine non-Western perspectives to challenge cognitive constructs like the mental number line and timeline. Create Educational Resources: Develop materials for local schools, scientific publications, and public engagement activities. TINCULT has documented unique ways of conceptualising time and number, revealing the use of non-metric time systems and minimal number systems in daily life through language, gestures, and artefacts. The project contributes to endangered language revitalisation with educational materials, challenges universality assumptions in cognitive science, and will share findings with academic and public audiences through publications, podcasts, and workshops.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project investigates the relationship between time and number in human cognition, focusing on how this relationship is culturally and linguistically configured. This area remains under-researched in traditional societies speaking endangered languages. The experienced researcher will carry out a field-based investigation in three indigenous minority communities of Brazil. The languages of these communities have small number systems with less than five basic numerals, have no metric time systems in which time is quantified as clock or calendar time, and use exclusively event-based time intervals, in which the time interval is indexed to an event or activity. The cognitive domains of time and number both manifest cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences and their spatialisation in thought, language and familiar cultural artefacts is a key topic in cognitive science. Cultural artefacts for time reckoning (e.g. calendars, clocks) are numerically as well as spatially organised. The project will look at the role of number in event-based time reckoning, analysing it not only in language but also in gestural communication. Speakers do not use spatial metaphors for past and future – instead, they use embodied psychological metaphors such as REMEMBERING IS SEEING. This suggests that the linguistic spatialisation of time is a consequence of cultural practices and artefacts. The project combines methods employing linguistic and non-linguistic experimental tasks, gesture analysis and ethnographic observation. As well as being highly innovative in its scientific impact in the interdisciplinary field of language, cognition and culture, it will generate information to be used in indigenous education and language/culture revitalisation and is important for understanding human-environment relations in traditional non-Western societies. The project findings will be communicated through scientific articles, and to wider audiences through the production of a documentary.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN · BergenCoordinatorNorway
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union