Spatialization of time as a scientification strategy: Beauzée, Guillaume and the conceptual school of cognitive linguistics

The common thread interconnecting the work of Enlightenment grammarian Nicolas Beauzée (1717–1789), the typically modernist "psychomechanics" of Gustave Guillaume (1883–1960), and the conceptual school of cognitive linguistics emerging from the tumultuous 1970s American scene (e.g. George Lakoff, Leonard Talmy, Elizabeth Traugott, Ronald Langacker), is far from obvious. Yet, as I demonstrate in this essay, despite their dissimilarities these three moments in the history of linguistics exemplify a common theoretical gesture: construing grammatical time in terms of spatial concepts, which, I argue, functions in all three cases as a robust scientification strategy, meant to reinforce grammar's claim to scientificity