When Moving Ego meets Moving Time in Finnish

Abstract The Finnish construction tulla vastaan ‘come from the opposite direction’ combines the deictic motion verb tulla ‘come’ with the spatial gram vastaan ‘in the opposite direction’. The construction indicates a spatial or a temporal relation where Figure and Ground move toward each other. In the temporal use, Figure is a temporal entity and Ground is the Ego experiencing time. We argue that semantically and grammatically, the nearest spatial equivalent of the temporal use combines fictive motion by Figure with actual motion by Ground (‘We walked until a river came from the opposite direction’). We also argue that the temporal use constitutes a counterexample to the received view that Ego and a temporal entity cannot both be construed as moving