Contents › Section 3: Semantics and pragmatics › answer 15 of 24
Why does "before" mean both "in front of" and "prior to"?
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The etymology is fairly straightforward. The temporal meaning of before is secondary to the spatial meaning. This is very common across all prepositions of time: at (5am), in (5 mins), on (Wednesday), between (3 and 4), from - to, through.
The Conceptual Metaphor theory posits a TIME IS SPACE metaphor that is present across many languages and many parts of the language. It is not limited to preposition. You will find it in adverbs as well as in things people say about time: 'time went by quickly', 'time slips away', 'we need to move the meeting back/forward', 'we need a chunk of time', 'give me space to figure things out'. This is bolstered by the associated metaphor of TIME IS AN OBJECT: 'give me time', 'take 5 minutes', 'employees steal time by going on Facebook', etc.
This often explained by our experience of space and objects being somehow more physically and physiologically primary but I suspect that this is more of a reach.
© Dominik Lukeš. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Originally published on Linguistics Stack Exchange, attributed there to Dominik Lukes (profile).