The Literary Mind.pdf

148 THE LITERARY MIND
"Mary threw the stone out the window" and "Mary threw the job out the window."
The first is a small spatial story. The second is not at all spatial. The
nonspatial story has structure projected from the spatial story. The grammatical
construction has structure projected from the spatial story. Therefore, the grammatical
construction represents both the spatial story and the nonspatial story.
This phenomenon—the same grammatical construction for expressing stories
of profoundly different features—is such an indispensable part of our thought
and language as to seem unproblematic. But something this profound requires
an explanation, and the explanation is parable.
A great range of things that are not prototypical objects, events, agents, or
actions in a story can be conceived by projection as if they were. For example,
times are not moving objects, but by parable we can think of them so, and this
target can then be expressed by the grammatical construction that corresponds
to the source: We say "The deadline is approaching" in the same way we say "The
car is approaching."
The event of thinking is a process, not an object or an agent, but it can be
conceived as an object-agent through parable. Conceived in this way, the target
can be expressed by the grammatical constructions that correspond to the source
story: We say "His thinking is moving in the wrong direction" just as we say
"His truck is moving in the wrong direction." We say "I cannot grasp the idea"
just as we say "I cannot grasp the handle." We say "I am turning it over in my
mind" just as we say "I am turning it over in the pot." We say "I grasped the
idea" just as we say "I grasped the object." We say "He accepted the explanation"
just as we say "He accepted the gift."
There are other ways in which rudimentary language can be extended. A
grammatical construction like Subject Noun Phrase that arose by projection from
one part of story structure like Agent can be exploited to express related parts of
story structure like Instrument: "John broke the stick" has a grammatical construction
that can be exploited to say, "The stone broke the stick."
Where the patient in a small spatial story seems itself active in an activity
induced by an agent, we may exploit the Subject position to express not the principal
agent but rather the "active" patient: "The stick broke."
And so on. For parable to be the root of language means that it supplied the
beginning of language. That beginning was developed and was exploited for the
great additional range of communicative purposes.
Let us take, as an example of how grammar comes from parable, some features
of tense in English. I pick tense as an illustration because although it has been
studied explicitly, intensively, and intelligently for at least two and a half millen-