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

The common thread interconnecting the work of Enlightenment grammarian Nicolas Beauzee (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.