Conceptualizing Duration: A Corpus-Based Study of Distance and Quantity Metaphors of Time in Japanese

Languages differ in how they describe temporal duration, often drawing on metaphors of spatial distance (e.g., long/short) or quantity (e.g., much/little). Previous cross-linguistic comparisons have relied on search frequencies for a limited set of expressions, potentially overlooking the lexical diversity and contextual variation of temporal metaphors. This study investigates the distribution of distance- and quantity-based duration metaphors in Japanese using the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ). Through dependency parsing, we systematically extracted adjectives modifying jikan ('time') and manually examined their contexts to identify and classify metaphorical expressions of duration. Of the 1,035 expressions identified, 839 (81.1%) were distance-based, whereas 196 (18.9%) were quantity-based. Distance metaphors were dominated by nagai ('long') and mijikai ('short'), while quantity metaphors involved a wider variety of less frequent adjectives. These findings demonstrate a clear preference for distance-based expressions in Japanese, resembling patterns previously reported for English. More importantly, our approach reveals patterns of metaphorical usage that cannot be adequately captured by simple searches for predetermined expressions. By combining dependency parsing with contextual analysis, this study provides a more comprehensive and systematic method for investigating temporal metaphors, offering a basis for more precise cross-linguistic comparisons.