Why Do Words for Space and Words for Time Converge in Languages? Answer: Space and Time Are Both Children of Movement

The convergence of words for space and words for time in languages has long been noted. Through the hypothesis of linguistic localism, authors express that space has cognitive primacy, and is used to talk about time. Based on our reflection on the (revisited) foundations of physics, we formulate a different hypothesis. We limit ourselves to an epistemological analysis, without in-depth work on specific linguistic situations. The common root of time and space is movement, which is also the source of language (our approach is based on embodied cognition, as well as on a relational epistemology: words are defined in opposition/composition to each other). In this understanding, there are not, in advance, words attributed to space on one side and, separately, words attributed to time on the other. There are only words of movement; there is a discourse of/in movement within which words, through comparisons between them, construct time and space. Following changes in context (more or less distant from our human scales, but revealing), we can imagine transformations from one to the other. We propose a graphic representation of comparisons between movements. At the heart of our article, it provides a framework for thought, to be compared with those proposed by the linguist G. Guillaume. It allows us to envisage a broad field in which to represent the different times and spaces that encompass the subject. We situate what we might call the past past, the present past, the present present, the present future, and the future future (the present of mountains does not have the same meaning as the present of clouds, nor as the present of mathematical physics, a simple reference point of limited material value). Some characteristics of how languages function in terms of verb aspects and tenses, and noun/verb duality, are briefly discussed in light of the proposed representation. The question of the multiplicity of spatio-temporal "strands" of the discourse, and their interweaving, alternating between visible/explicit and invisible/implicit parts, is discussed. The text proposes preliminary research directions to be tested and compared with other linguistic theories.