Oksana Gakman

M.A. Student

CHERNIVTSI YURIY FEDKOVYCH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

ON CONCEPTUALIZING TIME-MEASURE IN ENGLISH

The paper is focused on the conceptualization of time-measure.

A characteristic feature of time is that it is closely associated with change.

The idea of time has been discussed by a number of philosophers, including Aristotle, Hume, Descartes, Kant, Spencer, and Bergson. Different views are found among the philosophers as to what kinds of changes are most important for the notion of time. Changes may be continuous or discontinuous, and some changes are periodic, while others are not. However, all changes mean that different phenomena or phases of a process are related to each other.

Celestial bodies — the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars — have provided us a reference for measuring the passage of time throughout our existence. Ancient civilizations relied upon the apparent motion of these bodies through the sky to determine seasons, months, and years.

The Sumerian culture was lost without passing on its knowledge, but the Egyptians were apparently the next to formally divide their day into parts something like our hours. Obelisks (slender, tapering, four-sided monuments) were built as early as 3500 BCE. Their moving shadows formed a kind of sundial, enabling people to partition the day into morning and afternoon. Obelisks also showed the year's longest and shortest days when the shadow at noon was the shortest or longest of the year.

Another Egyptian shadow clock or sundial, possibly the first portable timepiece, came into use around 1500 BCE. This device divided a sunlit day into 10 parts plus two "twilight hours" in the morning and evening. When the long stem with 5 variably spaced marks was oriented east and west in the morning, an elevated crossbar on the east end cast a moving shadow over the marks. At noon, the device was turned in the opposite direction to measure the afternoon "hours."

Water clocks were among the earliest timekeepers that didn't depend on the observation of celestial bodies. One of the oldest was found in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I, buried around 1500 BCE. Later named clepsydras ("water thieves") by the Greeks, who began using them about 325 BCE, these were stone vessels with sloping sides that allowed water to drip at a nearly constant rate from a small hole near the bottom.

In Europe during most of the Middle Ages (roughly 500 CE to 1500 CE), technological advancement virtually ceased. Sundial styles evolved, but didn't move far from ancient Egyptian principles.

During these times, simple sundials placed above doorways were used to identify midday and four "tides" (important times or periods) of the sunlit day. By the 10th century, several types of pocket sundials were used. One English model even compensated for seasonal changes of the Sun's altitude.

Then, in the first half of the 14th century, large mechanical clocks began to appear in the towers of several large Italian cities. We have no evidence or record of the working models preceding these public clocks, which were weight-driven and regulated by a verge-and-foliot escapement. Variations of the verge-and-foliot mechanism reigned for more than 300 years, but all had the same basic problem: the period of oscillation of the escapement depended heavily on the amount of driving force and the amount of friction in the drive. Like water flow, the rate was difficult to regulate.

In 1656, Christian Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum clock, regulated by a mechanism with a "natural" period of oscillation.

Numerical attitudes are established at measurement between measured in size and the elected unit of measurements - the standard. Measurement can have the direct character, thus to occur with the help of simple comparison of the standard and measured. [1: 43-44].

Measures of time were the natural units taken by the person from world around. It is day and night, month, year.

There are twenty-four hours in a day. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. There are seven days in a week. The seven days of the week are named in honor of the sun, the moon and five of the planets.

The planets were named after Roman gods and goddesses. The beginning of the day is dawn or daybreak, and then comes morning, noon (12 o’clock), afternoon, evening and night. We cannot change the length of the day. The day is made for us by turning of the earth on its axis.

The sun rises in the east in the morning and sets in the west in the evening. When the sun shines it is light. When the sun sets it is dark, except for the light of the moon and the stars. We can tell the time by means of watches and clocks. The first timepiece anyone made was a sundial. A sundial tells the time by shadows. The oldest sundial was made in Egypt about 3,500 years ago. It was common practice to divide the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 equal parts, or hours.

The water clock was invented as long ago as the sundial. But they often went wrong.

The sand-glass is another timepiece that was invented long ago.

Before true clocks were invented, fire was also used to measure the time.

The first true clocks were made nearly 1.000 years ago. The first watches were made about 500 years ago.

We know that the time is not the same all over the world. For this reason the world has been divided into time zones. All the places in each zone have the same time. It is called standard time.

The list of the literature:

1. Швачко C.O., Кобякова І.К. Вступ до мовознавства (курс лекцій): Посібник. - Вінниця: Нова книга, 2006. - 224с.

2.Цыбульський В.В.Календари и хронология стран мира: (Книга для учащихся).-М.: Просвещение, 1982.-128с.