Time and Timelines in Tibetan Sign Language Interactions in Lhasa

This chapter explores and analyses expressions of time in the Tibetan Sign Language (TSL) as used in Lhasa. Sign languages use metaphors of space to talk about time, as well as literally and physically express time in space, some-thing linguists have described in terms of ‘timelines’ (for example horizontal, sagittal or deictic timelines). This chapter complements linguistic and anthro-pological research with what I call the TSL ‘vertical semi-elliptical timeline’, in which both past and future are placed behind the signer’s body and the past is expressed upwardly and the future downwardly. Among the world’s documented signed and spoken languages and their co-speech gestures, this is an anthro-pologically interesting and typologically rare placement of time in space, espe-cially that of the future in TSL behind the body and downwards. Following a dual methodological and theoretical approach from anthropology and linguistics, the chapter describes this articulation of time in TSL and explores how it fits with broader conceptions and patterns of time and space in Tibet and the Himala-yas, in particular, broader meanings associated with the vertical dimension. The chapter also argues that the TSL vertical semi-elliptical timeline transcends the strictly-speaking ‘body-anchored’ timeline described by sign linguists. While it takes the body as a key referent, the vertical semi-elliptical timeline of TSL sits at the interface of the body and the wider cosmos and socio-cultural environment of Tibet.