37.2196, Reviews: This is the Thing: Michael Fortescue (2026)

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Subject: 37.2196, Reviews: This is the Thing: Michael Fortescue (2026)

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Date: 27-Jun-2026
From: Chloé Debouzie [cdebouzie at gmail.com]
Subject: Michael Fortescue (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-542

Title: This is the Thing
Subtitle: A cognitive/typological investigation into the concept of
‘thinghood’
Series Title: Human Cognitive Processing   79
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: John Benjamins
           http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/hcp.79

Author(s): Michael Fortescue

Reviewer: Chloé Debouzie

SUMMARY
“This is the Thing, A cognitive/typological investigation into the
concept of ‘thinghood’” is a monograph written by Michael Fortescue
which was published in 2026. The 220-page volume contains fifteen
chapters, followed by a full references list, two appendixes (‘Words
for body and animal’ and ‘Words for shape, form and figure’), a
Subject, a Name, and a Language Index. Before the first chapter, a
short preface describes the author’s incentive to undergo this study
of ‘thing’ words and his intentions with this book.
The first chapter is a brief 3.5-page introduction, in which Fortescue
clearly announces the aim of the book: to investigate how the notion
of ‘things’ is conceived and expressed in different world languages.
Then, the outline of the book (pp. 2–4) briefly summarizes each
chapter.
In Chapter 2, “The historical origins of ‘thing’ words”, Fortescue
posits a distinction between two degrees of abstraction of ‘thing’
words: Abstract 1, a distance from the real, sensory world, referring
to facts, affairs, acts, circumstances, matters, events; and Abstract
2, a generalization across sensorial categories of material objects
(Fortescue 2017). Reviewing etymological and historical data, and the
semantic developments of the terms, notably with regard to the
relationships between these two levels of abstraction, the author
presents words for ‘thing’ in Indo-European (IE) (section 2.1), and
non-IE hunter-gatherer languages, including Sign Languages (section
2.2). He ends this overview by noting that, despite having different
etymological origins, ‘thing’ words share some common semantic
features, such as referring to material objects, and expanding to
abstract generalizations.
Chapter 3 deals with the semantics of ‘thing’ words and what counts as
‘thinghood’. In 3.1, Fortescue explores the development of the
earliest senses of ‘thing’ words, first used to refer to tangible
material objects, then extended to possession, tools and instruments,
later generalized to more abstract senses. The author also looks at
child acquisition of ‘thing’ words to illustrate the various semantic
shifts of these words across languages and posits the existence of a
word for ‘something’ often appearing first because of pragmatic
reasons. Regarding English ‘thing’, Fortescue concludes that
‘thinghood’ can refer to entities, concepts, facts or ideas
constituting “some kind of whole representing a Figure standing out
against a Ground” (p. 27). Section 3.2 deals with semantic extensions
of ‘thing’ words using semantic maps to illustrate the shifts from
Abstract 2 (referring to material objects or belongings) to Abstract 1
(“distant from sensory experience”), although reverse semantic shifts
(from Abstract 1 to Abstract 2) are also observed across historical
data.
In Chapter 4, “The abstractness of ‘thing’ words”, Fortescue examines
abstract words’ degrees of detachment from sensory reality and shows
that all languages can categorize sensory experience at various levels
of generalization or ‘schematization’ (Langacker 2008). He then
discusses various theories of categorization and concludes that the
basic meaning of English ‘thing’ refers to material objects, forming
“the prototype from which more abstract senses have extended out into
different ‘domains’” (p. 42). Through an investigation of the words
for ‘house’ and ‘furniture’ in Polar Eskimo (pp. 43–46), the author
exemplifies how languages may develop different degrees of
generalization, typically organized around prototypes and extending
from a “base level”.
The fifth chapter considers the ‘thing’ within Gestalt theory, whose
principles show how material and abstract ‘things’ are typically
perceived as whole entities, or “Figures”, that are singled out
against general, neutral surrounding “Grounds” (Koffka 1935). In the
second part of the chapter Fortescue uses examples from Central
Alaskan Yup’ik to show the application of the Figure vs Background
relationship within Cognitive Linguistics.
Extending the notion of ‘grounds’, Fortescue turns to “Things in
context” (Chapter 6). In 6.1, he analyzes the nuances of meanings of
‘thing(s)’ in dialogues from Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” according
to the context in which they occur. Section 6.2 provides
generalizations about the context’s influence on the meaning of words:
according to Fortescue, the senses in context are open-ended. In
Section 6.3, the author presents his “eigenstate model”, a
three-dimensional representation of meanings (illustrated in Figure
2), which enables him to represent the “distinct ordering of different
senses extended ‘upwards’ from the prototypical core” (p. 68) and to
illustrate the increasing levels of abstractness.
In Chapter 7, with regard to the words for ‘soul’ and ‘mind’,
Fortescue argues that being neither Abstract 1 nor Abstract 2, these
terms do not refer to ‘things’ but are instances of “misplaced
concreteness” (Whitehead 1978). Fortescue differentiates the meanings
of ‘mind’, ‘soul’, and ‘spirit’, as used in the philosophies and
religions of European and animistic cultures. He then reveals a
cross-linguistic interdependence between the three notions: the ‘mind’
(i.e. the seat of thinking, intelligence, and higher levels of
consciousness) depends on feeling (i.e., the ‘soul’) which depends on
breathing and living (i.e., the ‘spirit’). The various extensions of
meanings and overlaps of the three terms across most languages reflect
this.
Chapter 8 focuses on the pronoun ‘it’ and similar grammatical neuter
pronouns used in world languages. First, Fortescue compares ‘it’ and
‘thing’, notably in terms of their anaphoric uses. He then illustrates
the semantic extension of demonstrative (or deictic), anaphoric, or
grammatical ‘it’, using a semantic map that contrasts several
languages, to demonstrate some parallelism with ‘thing’ words
(illustrated in Figure 4). The study of genders and classification
systems of nouns in IE languages shows a possible grammatical
extension of the neuter demonstrative pronouns to refer to less
tangible and more abstract ‘things’.
The next chapter considers indefinite pronouns such as ‘something’
(9.1) and ‘nothing’ (9.2) across languages in which these words (and
equivalent) exist. Following Haspelmath (1997), Fortescue shows the
development of ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ words from ‘generic’ nouns
and, mostly, interrogatives like ‘what’ to broader ranges of
grammatical and semantic uses, independently of ‘thing’ words.
Chapter 10 discusses further grammatical functions of ‘thing’ and
‘something’ words through grammaticalization processes, notably in
non-European languages. This is then extended to a cross-linguistic
examination of the verbal phrase ‘to do something’ which refers to a
maximal generalization of the verbal and the nominal abstract meanings
(cf. Langacker 2000).
Chapter 11 tackles how languages express the properties of things,
i.e., primary (e.g., form, weight, material) vs secondary (e.g.,
vision, hearing, touch) qualities, although the distinction between
the two types of properties is questioned. Fortescue shows that
languages which tend not to extend their words for material things to
more abstract concepts also tend to limit their extension of ‘thing’
words from concrete to more abstract entities. Section 11.2 looks at
the intrinsic shapes of objects, such as their spatial dimensions, and
spatial relationships. The discussion is then extended to the
expression of the “dimensions of Abstract 1 things”, with examples of
adpositions from English, German, French, Russian, Japanese, and
Chinese. Fortescue notes that these languages specify the position of
objects (and by extension of abstract things) in relation to each
other, whereas hunter-gatherer languages also indicate the
complement’s intrinsic shapes and dimensions (p. 147). Finally,
Section 11.3 deals with our ability to manipulate and interact with
things, relying on our knowledge of objects (thanks to our senses
and/or our memory) and their ‘affordance’, that is, their functional
properties (specifically regarding manmade and natural objects used as
tools).
In the first section of Chapter 12, “Changing philosophical positions
through the ages”, Fortescue broadly recalls how the notions of
‘thinghood’ and the nature of objects have evolved throughout western
history, from the Ancient Greeks to 20th century philosophers. In the
second part of the chapter, “A scientific perspective on the
perception of objects”, the author looks at the developments of
scientific research regarding the brain’s interpretation of sensory
experiences, notably regarding visual perception, detailing Crick’s
(1995) and Damasio’s (2006) work. Fortescue shows how modern science
understands the interaction between the human brain and external
objects and how we have been able to develop higher levels of
abstraction from our sensory perception and our uses of objects.
After dealing with philosophy and science, Fortescue moves on to “the
‘thing’ in art” (Chapter 13), exploring what is represented in visual
arts, notably as an “objet d’art” within the western Europe tradition.
The author provides an overview of the historical development of the
material objects represented and their purposes, from early cave
paintings to twentieth-century modern art and post-modernism movements
which challenge the notion of ‘thinghood’ itself and its
representation. European art is seen as a continuous search for the
“thing-in-itself”, i.e., “the true nature of ‘thinghood’ and the
magical means of ‘bringing it to life’” (p. 175) from an objective
verisimilitude in the representation of ‘things’ towards a more
individual expression of subjective and internalized reality. This is
then compared to traditional art by native people living in the
northwest coast of America, which also displays levels of
abstractness. Fortescue shows how these works of art represent
something fundamental regarding the notion of ‘thinghood’: it is open
to “decompositionality and ‘scaling’” (p. 179).
In Chapter 14, Fortescue returns to the issue of the semantic source
of ‘thing’ words. After a short discussion on semantic change by
widening, narrowing or figurative use, the author questions the
development of the meaning of the word ‘thing’ from the sense
‘assembly’, and hypothesizes that the meaning of the word might have
first evolved by metonymy, and later by widening to more abstract
notions such as ‘affairs’, ‘circumstances’, ‘matter’. Yet Fortescue
acknowledges some difficulties in explaining its development to any
material object (p. 183) and that “the changes undergone by ‘thing’
have been anything but straightforward” (p. 184). In the second part
of the chapter, he compares the meanings of alternative words for
‘things’, e.g., ‘object’, ‘article’, ‘entity’, ‘item’, ‘subject’,
‘particle’ and ‘element’ (both typically used in physics), ‘piece’ and
‘unit’ (which generally refer to parts rather than the whole),
‘commodity’, ‘affair’ and ‘business’, and ‘matter’. Fortescue notes
that all these near synonyms come from Latin or Latinate origin and
entered the English language via written scholarly texts, whereas
‘thing’ is of native origin.
Chapter 15 concludes the book and presents a summary of the possible
evolution of ‘thing’ words. Fortescue proposes a bi-directional model
that combines a cognitive dimension (from child language acquisition)
with a historical linguistics dimension. For a child, a ‘thing’ is
typically an object or artefact which can be “looked at, held, and
manipulated” (p. 191). Fortescue acknowledges that the historical
development of words (such as their meanings and uses) is complex,
resulting from a combination of multiple social, cultural, and
cross-linguistic influences, as well as various philosophical and
dogmatic changes. Finally, Fortescue suggests that the long
tradition--dating from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and later to
Romance and Germanic scholars or religious scribes--of discussing and
writing about Abstract 1 concepts could explain why the main sources
of western European ‘thing’ words are mostly of Abstract 1 type (p.
195).
EVALUATION
“This is the Thing” provides a comprehensive overview of ‘thing’ words
(and some compounds such as ‘something’ and ‘nothing’) across a wide
variety of IE and hunter-gatherer languages around the world.
Fortescue displays an in-depth knowledge of the topic: the arguments
are well presented, the different theoretical frameworks are clearly
explained, and the volume covers a wealth of data from various
languages, notably Eskimoan ones, in which he is an expert. Chapter
13, on “the ‘thing’ in art”, even contains illustrations of some of
the artworks discussed.
The book is well constructed, starting with the identification of a
problem in the Preface, i.e., how a Germanic word referring to a
‘judicial assembly’ developed to the more general sense of today’s
‘thing’, and answered in the conclusion, with an elaboration to a
range of world languages (Chapter 15). Fortescue’s goal is to
investigate the concept of ‘thinghood’ across a variety of languages
and contexts, which he adequately fulfills throughout the volume. His
approach combines typological and cognitive methods, drawing on child
language acquisition and theories of semantic change, and successfully
identifies core meanings of ‘thing’ words as well as their semantic
extensions and limits. Although the whole book is thoroughly
documented and the arguments are confidently discussed, Fortescue
humbly expresses his conclusion with hedges (“it would appear” and
“perhaps” p. 183) and does not pretend to have all the answers
(“though its development from there (if that was the case) to any
material object is more problematic” p. 183), which leaves room for
further research regarding the figurative extension of meaning to more
abstract concepts.
This book could interest linguists working on lexicology, world
language typology, and semantics. No specialist knowledge of
particular languages is required, as the author supplies an abundance
of examples in contexts. Readers less familiar with cognitive
approaches should equally find the explanations accessible and the
different theoretical views well summarized. Moreover, the references
provided throughout the volume offer a useful guide to further their
research. I particularly valued the diversity of approaches used in
the book: cognitive linguistics, child language acquisition, Gestalt
theory borrowed from psychology, the ‘eigenstates’ analogy from atomic
physics, discourse analysis (with the detailed examination of ‘thing’
words in Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”), as well as a review of
philosophical and spiritual views on ‘mind’ and ‘soul’, and a foray
into the history of visual arts.
However, I am more doubtful regarding the relevance of some lengthy
excursus on, e.g., the gender and classificatory systems in Section
8.3 or ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ words in Chapter 9. The author also
takes extensive detours, as with the analysis of ‘house’ and
‘furniture’ words in Polar Eskimo in Chapter 4 to illustrate variation
in levels of generalization. Furthermore, I found the assumptions in
his discussion of words for ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ (Chapter 7)
insufficient. Fortescue opens Chapter 7 with the following statement:
“Words treated dubiously in daily usage as if they were referring to
‘things’ include ‘soul’ and ‘mind’. I would argue that these are not
simply reifications but are subject to what Whitehead has termed
‘misplaced concreteness’”. Throughout the chapter (and the whole
volume), Fortescue ignores the various (and opposing) theories of
mind, such as Cartesian dualism, which states that the mind (and the
soul) is an immaterial, incorporeal substance, idealism, which
considers that all reality, i.e., the physical world, is fundamentally
mental or immaterial, panpsychism, which considers that the ‘mind’ is
built into the basic texture of reality, and materialism (or
physicalism), which denies the existence of the mind (and the soul) as
an immaterial entity. Due to progress in neuroscientific research,
present-day theories of mind focus on the correlations between brain
activity and states of consciousness. As today’s neurosciences treat
the mind as a material entity, Fortescue’s claim of “misplaced
concreteness” is questionable, and mental properties such as
consciousness (including perceptual and emotional experience) and
intentionality (including desires and beliefs) can all be referred to
as ‘things’.
Moreover, in Chapter 3, Fortescue says that he does not consider
‘substance’ a ‘thing’, contra, e.g., Langacker (2008) (p. 21-22). This
is a surprising decision, as words for ‘thing’ in other languages may
contain both terms in their English translation, e.g., Sanskrit
‘vastu’, meaning ‘thing, matter, substance’ (p. 10). Fortescue also
notes later that the etymology of ‘matter’ traces back to a
‘substance’ derived from ‘mother’ (Latin ‘māter’) (p. 34). However,
the Aristotelian view holds that a substance, as a unified entity made
of matter and having properties, exhibits typical ‘thinghood’
attributes. Consequently, I find the author’s decision not to consider
‘substance’ a ‘thing’ surprising, and I was not convinced by his
argument to deny it thinghood status.
A final shortcoming concerns the presence of a few typographical
errors and a general style that feels awkward and, at times,
cumbersome (e.g., “Their etymology is focused upon.” p. 2; “Chapter 12
[sic] the development of notions of ‘thinghood’ within the European
philosophical and scientific traditions is followed.” p. 3). Among the
mistakes, there is an incorrect internal reference to a “section 2.3”
(p. 138) which does not exist; it should be “3.2”. The word “for” is
written “fore” in the Preface. A few French words are misspelt (e.g.,
“réligion” p. 25 should not have an accent on the letter “e”, and the
word “faire” is misspelt twice in “se fair du café”, “se fair à” p.
132). Although the whole book is written using American English
spelling, there is one instance of a British spelling (“harbour” p. 46
instead of the expected “harbor”). Moreover, the phrase “Latinic
origin” (p. 195) is used when “Latinate” would be more common.
Finally, in the first chapter, the verb (singular ‘is’) does not agree
with the plural subject “The historical sources of indefinite
pronouns” (p. 3). In sum, it felt, at times, that the text had not
been carefully proofread.
REFERENCES
Crick, F. 1995. The Astonishing Hypothesis. London/New York:
Touchstone Books.
Damasio, A. 2006. Descartes’ Error. London: Vintage [first published
in 1994 by Putnam’s].
Fortescue, M. 2017. The Abstraction Engine. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
Benjamins.
Haspelmath, M. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Koffka, K. 1935. Principles of Gestalt Psychology. New York: Harcourt,
Brace & Company, Inc.
Langacker, R. W. 2000. Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Langacker, R. W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: a Basic Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whitehead, A. N. 1978. Process and Reality. New York: The Free Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Chloé Debouzie holds a PhD in Linguistics from Université Lumière Lyon
2, France. Her doctoral work investigates morphological competition in
the formation of new verbs in present-day English. Her research
interests include derivational morphology, semantics, onomasiological
approaches, morphological competition, contrastive studies
(French–English), sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. She has
taught widely across linguistics, applied linguistics, TESOL,
translation, and French as a foreign language.



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