Figure and Ground in Temporal Sentences: The Role of the Adverbs<i>When</i>and<i>While</i>

Abstract

Abstract Multiclause sentences with the temporal adverbs whileor whenreferring to simultaneous events (e.g., “While [when] John was writing a letter, Mary comes into the room”) were compared in German and Spanish. Following Talmy (2001) Talmy, L. 2001. Toward a cognitive semantics. Concept structuring systems Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.. [Google Scholar], we assumed that the event in the main clause is the figure (F; the event to be located in time), and the event in the adverbial clause is the ground (G; the event used as temporal reference). Germans judged as more acceptable the while(während) sentences with the longer duration event as G (e.g., writing a letter) and the shorter duration event as F (e.g., coming into the room) than vice versa. However, they judged when(als) sentences quite acceptable in both duration conditions, suggesting that this adverb is temporally less constrained than while. Spaniards produced a similar, although less conspicuous, pattern. We discuss the results in terms of the temporal metrics that underlie F-G relations in adverbial sentences, as well as crosslinguistic differences between Spanish and German.