28.306, Review: Latin; Cognitive Sci; Historical Ling; Ling Theories; Semantics: Short (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-306. Mon Jan 16 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.306, Review: Latin; Cognitive Sci; Historical Ling; Ling Theories; Semantics: Short (2016)

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Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 11:53:33
From: Berta González Saavedra [bgonzalezsaavedra at gmail.com]
Subject: Embodiment in Latin Semantics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2410.html

EDITOR: William Michael  Short
TITLE: Embodiment in Latin Semantics
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Language Companion Series 174
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Berta González Saavedra, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

Summary 

Embodiment is a part of the so-called “second generation” of cognitive science
theories (Garbani & Adenzato 2004). It is a theory which emerged in cognitive
semantics from the idea that people's capacity to talk about experiences is
supported by conceptual structures that are developed by human interaction
with the environment we inhabit. In this sense, every abstract thought
produced in our minds can have a concrete background based on our interplay
with the world. The studies based on embodiment try to individualize the
concrete images from which emerge the metaphor that underlies the abstract
thoughts.

The volume reviewed is a collection of eight chapters plus an introduction and
index, including the main and most recent research about the embodiment theory
applied to Latin semantics.
In the introduction, Michael Short talks about the importance of this
theoretical approach and exposes the aim of the volume: “Their common interest
(of the chapters) rests, moreover, not only in the extent to which universal
aspects of human embodiment are reflected in the semantics of Latin, but also
in the ways in which Latin speakers capitalize on embodied understanding to
express culture-specific forms of meaning” (pag. 1).

The first chapter, “A matter of perspective”, talks about the Latin verbs
“venio” and “eo” ('come' and 'go', respectively). In it Andrea Nuti
(University of Pisa) presents the data concerning these two verbs in a big
diachronic corpus, in order to see how their semantics develops in the course
of the years. Data show a change in the meaning of “venio” (but not in “eo”),
from marking aspect (in Plautus and Terence “venio” indicates not only ‘to
come’ but also ‘to arrive’, so it has a perfective aspect) to marking deixis
(in Cicero and other later authors “venio” indicates the movement to the
speaker, so it does not involve aspect anymore). This semantic change is not
so evident in the case of “eo”, which means ‘to go’, or easily ‘to move’.

The title of the second chapter is “Vertical scales in temporal sub
constructions in Latin”, and its content is the study of four different
constructions using the Latin preposition “sub” with the nouns “nox” and
“dies” in accusative and ablative (“sub” is a preposition that can appear with
both cases). The goal of the Erik Knighton (Case Western University) is to
reanalyse these constructions, because the traditional translations given to
them are not correct, in his opinion. He postulates that the meaning of these
constructions is related to the embodied experience of being “sub”, so covered
by the darkness and by the light, following the principle that the local
expressions are used in most languages to express time (as already shown
Martin Haspelmath 1997) with an embodied perspective.

Luisa Brucale and Egle Mocciaro from the University of Palermo are the authors
of the third chapter. Its title is “The embodied sources of purpose
expressions in Latin” and it is about the underlying metaphors behind the use
of the prepositions “per”, “pro” and “propter” and the nouns “gratia” and
“causa” to express purpose. The local experience of the speaker is utilized to
express abstract thoughts, and in the particular cases of these three
prepositions, different metaphors help change their original local meaning to
purpose expression (for every preposition a different metaphor is applied). In
the case of the nouns “gratia” and “causa”, no local metaphor can be applied
to the meaning change, but the metaphor is the shift from reason to purpose. 

The author of the fourth chapter is Chiara Fedriani from the University of
Bergamo. This chapter, “Ontological and orientational metaphors in Latin”,
continues the line already exposed in the preceding chapters about the local
experience of human beings applied to the expression of more abstract
thoughts. In this case, the study is focused on the semantics of feelings and
emotions and the data speak for themselves: the “up-down” metaphor and the
“emotions and feelings are objects” metaphor help explain why some nouns
related to feelings and emotions appear systematically with verbs meaning “to
fall”.

The fifth chapter, “The metaphorical structuring of kinship in Latin”, is an
explanation of how the Latin speakers conceive and structure the words related
to family. According to Alessandro Buccheri (EHESS, Paris- University of
Siena), they conceive family using two images: space and plants. Terms like
“cognatus” (with a common birth) or “stirps” (stock) are related to the
vocabulary of plants, and other terms like “proavus” and “tritavus” show the
conception of family members as locations and as steps in a row of time.

The chapter “Abstract and embodied colors in Pliny the Elder’s Natural
History” written by David Wharton (University of North Carolina at Greenboro)
tries to refuse the most recent theories about colour in Latin: that Romans
did not have words for the colours, but they conceived colour as linked to the
materials the Latin words refer to. To do it, he chooses some colour terms and
studies their use in Pliny the Elder’s text. He reaches the conclusion that
the colour terms can be applied to any kind of object (and not only in a
metaphorical way). In the final paragraphs of the chapter Wharton explains
some expressions related to colours (change colour, etc.) with the metaphor
“colours are liquids”, which at the same time is linked with the dye world,
one of the ways Romans interacted with colours.

Courtney Ann Roby’s chapter (Cornell University), “Embodiment in Latin
technical texts”, is an application of the embodiment theory to explain the
composition of the textual representations of landscapes, instructions to
measure fields and other technical activities. She describes the most frequent
linguistic resources to achieve the objective, i.e. the involvement of the
reader in the activity described in the text: features of verbs, use of the
same point of reference in orientation (Rome), among others, so that the
reader can feel he is in the geographical situation described by the author.

Last chapter shares the perspective of application of the embodiment theory
already seen in the seventh chapter. In it, Jennifer J. Devereaux (University
of California) describes the main resources used by Tacitus in Annales   to
lead the reader to envision the reality he wants to show. Specific vocabulary
and other rhetorical effects are used by the author to make the reader/hearer
interact with the story and to evaluate the facts according to the author’s
will.

Evaluation

The volume is very interesting and well organized. The first chapters talk
about local metaphors that help Latin speakers to develop several parts of
their thought. In the second part (the last two chapters) the embodiment
theory is applied to an extra linguistic field, the way an author makes the
reader (or the hearer) follow the narration and involve himself in the action
of the discourse. 
The introduction provides enough information to the reader to place the
embodiment theory in the appropriate linguistic frame, and explains
satisfactorily the advantages of this theoretical approach to explain some
semantic features that have not been well described, as, for example, the use
of prepositions in controversial uses (Silvia Luraghi does it, cf. Luraghi
2003 to see the application of the local theory to explain the uses of
prepositions and cases for ancient Greek). However, I miss a final summary and
evaluation of the enhancements achieved through applying the theories in this
volume to such a concrete part of the Latin semantics.

The first chapter sheds some new light on the semantics of two of the most
important Latin verbs, and the data presented here are very explanatory: the
meaning change in “venio” is evident. However, I still have a question: is the
absence of “eo” in the later authors (Cicero, Caesar, and so on) related to
the type of the texts they have written? In comedy, where movement is
continuous, the presence of “eo” and “venio” is very frequent, but in letters
addressed to families and friends (for example), it would be normal that “eo”
does not appear so frequently as “venio”.

The second chapter is very interesting, because in some cases the tradition
cannot explain the meaning of prepositional constructions, and in the case of
“sub” with “nox” and “dies” the metaphor by which the time is conceived as a
place can help explain how this preposition works. However, more could be said
about the distribution of cases (accusative and ablative), the implicit
movement of the construction with the accusative and the two meanings the
constructions can have: being at night or in daylight, and being at dawn or at
dusk. Further study  of the distribution of cases and meanings of the
constructions might be useful.

In the third chapter the embodiment theory is applied in a similar way as in
the second chapter, but the purpose of its application is different: The
chapter about “sub” tries to clarify the meaning of the preposition in some
specific contexts, and in this one the goal is to understand the use of some
prepositions. However, in both cases the local metaphors help understand the
shift from local to more abstract expressions. The results presented in this
third chapter are thought-provoking, because the use of some prepositions in
Latin for expressing purpose has not been explained until now. Nevertheless, I
do not agree that we should speak of “gratia” and “causa” as postpositions,
because the grammaticalization process was never completed in Latin (González
Saavedra 2013) and I think its is more correct to talk simply of “nouns”.

Chiara Fedriani's chapter is clear and convincing. As she explains, the
metaphors acting in Latin also act in other languages, not only languages 
from the Indo-European family. Thus the chapter is interesting, not only to
Latin scholars, but also to typologists.

The chapter about the Latin terms for family clearly shows how Romans
structured kinship. Moreover, when terms are not easy to understand, the
author collects all the bibliography related to those words and tries to
explain the etymology using embodiment. Once again, embodiment is a way to
understand some realities that are not obviously conceived in our minds, in
this case,  the words related to family steps directly linked to the “ego”.

David Wharton has written an interesting chapter about a topic which is quite
well known (the bibliography about colour is very extensive) from a new
perspective and the results shed new light on this part of the lexicon. In
this case, the embodiment theory helps explain how colour vocabulary is
related to the experience of dying, and it conforms to the way colour is
conceived.

The content of Courtney Ann Roby’s chapter is not related to the other
chapters content. Its perspective is not semantic, but more textual. The data
she presents are very interesting and show that the embodiment theory can be
applied to different semantic fields, not only to single items. However, I
recommend including the translation of Latin sentences and paragraphs, in
order to make the chapter also available to scholars without Latin knowledges.

Jennifer J. Devereaux’s chapter is well structured and readable. The contents
and the data presented show that this kind of analysis of communicative acts
can shed new light by adding a psychological interpretation of the linguistic
features used by the writer. The chapter lacks only translations for Latin and
Greek sentences embedded in the paragraphs, so the chapter could be read
byother scholars interested in text analysis.

References:

Garbani, Francesca & Adenzato, Mauro. 2004. At the root of embodied cognition.
Brain and Cognition 56(1): 100-106.

González Saavedra, Berta. 2013. “Procesos de lexicalización en latín vulgar y
tardío: causa, gratia y opera en los corpora de Plauto, Marcial y Petronio”,
Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románicas
vol. 4, Berlin- Boston: De Gruyter Mouton (551-560). 

Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. From Space to Time. München- New Castle: Lincom
Europa.

Luraghi, Silvia. 2003. On the meaning of prepositions and cases [Studies in
Companion Series 67]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Berta González Saavedra has a PhD in Studies of the Ancient World by the
University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). Her PhD is a study of the semantics
of Latin ablative, the -then suffix in Greek and the Hittite ablative. She has
worked as a semantic annotator for the Index Thomisticus Treebank project and
at the present time is preparing a paper about Hittite ablative. She is
interested in Semantics and specially in grammaticalization processes.





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