The two-Mover hypothesis and the significance of “direction of motion” in temporal metaphors

It is claimed that expressions that instantiate sequence is relative position on a path (e.g. Spring follows winter) are the only type of temporal expression in English in which two distinct entities metaphorically move. A possible motivation for why we do not find two Times-as-Movers going the opposite “direction” may be that people are not disposed to tracking two “nows”. It is further hypothesized that this could be a crosslinguistically common or universal tendency, and data relevant to the constraint are discussed for Japanese and Wolof (West Africa). This exercise documents and categorizes certain semantic relations (such as ahead/behind) that are relevant to the study of direction of motion in metaphors of time.