Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 109:3 (2011) 307–326 

EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN: FEELINGS WERE CONTAINERS, 

MOVEMENTS AND THINGS POSSESSED 1 

By CHIARA FEDRIANI 

University of Pavia 

ABSTRACT 

This paper is concerned with three metaphorical schemas frequently used in Latin to 

encode experiential situations: EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED, STATES ARE CONTAIN- 

ERS, and EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS. Besides describing these metaphorical mappings, this 

paper also provides corpus-based evidence for conceiving of metaphorical constructions 

not as sporadic forms motivated by communicative demands but rather as consistent 

parts of semantically-related networks of concepts. Therefore, one of the results of the 

present work is a description of the regularities and extensions, as well as the relative 

frequency and the diachronic productivity, of different metaphorical options in Latin, 

together with some comparison with parallel structures in other Indo-European 

languages. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

In this paper I follow a cognitivist approach to metaphors. This approach was worked out in 

the 1980s by George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker, paving the way for a great number of 

subsequent studies (for a comprehensive survey of the cognitivist view of emotion metaphors, 

see Ko¨ vecses 2000: ch. 2; for a wide-ranging sample of current approaches to metaphor in 

Cognitive Linguistics, see also the papers collected in Gibbs & Steen 1999). 

Within this approach, metaphors are conceived as conventionalized cognitive items which 

presuppose a mapping link from a source domain (which is literal and concrete) to a target 

domain that we try to understand (which, in turn, is more abstract). As is well known, this 

kind of mapping is usually unidirectional: a basic and concrete event frame which occurs in 

everyday life can constitute the semantic scenario of a more abstract situation, and this is 

particularly true in the case of mental experiences, which are much less clearly delineated than 

our bodily functions. As Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 25) write, 

When things are not clearly discrete or bounded, we still categorize them as such. […] Our 

experience with physical objects (especially our own bodies) provide the basis for an 

extraordinarily wide variety of ontological metaphors, that is, ways of viewing events, 

activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances. 

In general, the Lakovian view of metaphors has received widespread cross-linguistic 

support, and a variety of scholars have worked in this tradition focusing on a wide range of 

emotional fields (see e.g. the relevant papers in Niemeier & Dirven 1997; Athanasiadou & 

1 I would like to thank Jo´ hanna Barðdal, Eystein Dahl, Anna Giacalone Ramat, Silvia Luraghi, Michele Prandi and 

Paolo Ramat for commenting on an earlier version of this paper and for stimulating discussions at different stages. I 

also thank Paul Rowlett, the editors of this issue as well as two anonymous reviewers for helpful and insightful 

remarks. Of course, any remaining errors are my responsibility. 

Ó The authors 2011. Transactions of the Philological Society Ó The Philological Society 2011. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

308 

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 109, 2011 

Tabaskowska 1998). However, it might be asked whether there have emerged regular and 

preferred paths of mapping from the concrete world of objects and actions to the abstract, 

psychological world. The answer, of course, is yes. This paper aims to provide evidence for 

such regularities, with special regard to Latin experiential metaphors, and in some cases 

taking a comparative look at other ancient and modern Indo-European languages. 

What is distinctive about the cognitive-functional constructional approach advocated here 

is that constructions are taken to be form–function pairings linked to each other via semantic 

and conceptual networks: the grammar of a language is thus conceived of as a structured 

inventory of conventional linguistic units (e.g. Langacker 1987: 57; Goldberg 1995; Croft 

2001). The notion of structured inventory entails certain logical, semantic and conceptual 

relationships among linguistic items within constructional schemas. Hence, linguistic 

knowledge is seen as an interconnected network of linguistic units (Da˛browska 2004: 210). 

Goldberg compares lexical polysemy with the semantic similarity holding between 

constructions and families of constructions: ‘Several constructions can be shown to be 

associated with a family of distinct but related senses, much like the polysemy recognized 

in lexical items. Moreover, these constructions themselves are shown to be interrelated’ 

(1995: 4). 

Given that metaphorization is analogical in essence and operates ‘between domains’ 

(Sweetser 1990, quoted in Traugott & Dasher 2002: §1.3), constructional projections, 

overlapping, borrowings and extensions among structural domains are only to be expected, 

thus yielding an increase in the semantic scope of schemas extended across different 

constructional fields. For example, the ABSTRACT POSSESSION construction is motivated by the 

fact that experiencing a sensation can be conceived of as having something, and therefore 

the Experiencer can in many languages be syntactically expressed as a possessor of 

properties (see Næss 2007: ch. 6, and §3 below). In the course of discussion we will see that 

metaphorical mappings are not sporadic forms motivated by communicative urges but 

rather consistent parts of a multidimensional and interconnected structured network arising 

naturally from experience (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 85), and their regularity rests on 

conceptually motivated paths of comparison of sources and targets across semantic 

domains. 

For a better understanding of the Latin data, some theoretical and methodological 

considerations are in order. They will be provided in the next section. 

2. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL REMARKS 

In this section I provide a brief overview of relevant key concepts regarding the notion of 

productivity applied to metaphorical schemas. I take productivity to be the ability of a 

syntactic pattern to be extended to other (semantically related) types and constructions (see 

Barðdal 2008 for discussion). Drawing on the general assumptions presented in the previous 

section, I go on to argue that a productivity study of constructional schemas can be suggested 

using Latin data. More specifically, along the lines of Clausner & Croft (1997), I compare 

some Latin metaphorical schemas and argue for different degrees of schematicity and 

productivity in metaphors, given the fact that ‘semantic productivity can be characterized in 

the same way as morphological productivity, suggesting that form and meaning are organized 

by the same principles’ (Clausner & Croft 1997: 247; cf. also Langacker 1987: §2.2). Therefore, 

this article explores possible extensions of constructional schemas in Latin, and shows how 

constructional schemas can be used to assemble new experiential metaphors. More 

specifically, I suggest that productivity in metaphors is determined by three parameters (see 

e.g. Croft & Cruse 2004):

• schematicity: a measure of the schema’s generality, i.e. the relationship between a 

superordinate schema and a subordinate instantiation; 

• entrenchment: a measure of the independent storage of a linguistic unit in the mind of 

speakers; 

• lexical exploitation: a measure of the actual instantiation of expressions with regard to 

the potential range of forms semantically compatible with the schema. 

Productivity is gradient (see Barðdal 2008: esp. §2.5), and metaphorical schemas vary in 

productivity: ‘metaphor productivity may be defined in terms of the number of roughly 

synonymous expressions which manifest this range of metaphorical concepts’ (Clausner & 

Croft 1997: 263). However, I argue that the expressions created through a metaphorical schema 

are not necessarily synonymous. Rather, they are expected to share the same kind of tropical 

mapping from the source domain to the target domain, thus displaying the same conceptual 

shift in encoding even slightly different experiences. For example, Latin metaphors like 

in memoriam redeo ‘I recollect’, lit. ‘I come back to memory’ and in dubium venio ‘I come to 

doubt’ are comparable and pertain to the same tropical pattern, because they both instantiate 

the schema INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS (§5). The 

three main types of metaphorical schemas investigated in this paper are: 

STATES ARE CONTAINERS 

EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS 

EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED 

FEDRIANI – EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN 309 

I describe each metaphor in more detail in the following sections, giving an overview of its 

general semantics, its use in Latin, and a discussion of its level of schematicity, lexical 

exploitation and entrenchment, with a view to comparing their degrees of productivity. 

Moreover, I show that in some cases a metaphorical schema (e.g. EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS)is 

too generic and covers a conceptual range which is too wide to account for the productivity of 

metaphors in the experiential domain. Therefore, such general metaphors have to be 

semantically redefined. Only when cast at a proper level of schematicity is the schema capable 

of accounting for the attested range of compatible metaphors (Clausner & Croft 1997: §2.2; 

and §5 below). 

This investigation is based on the Antiquitas section of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina 

corpus, which contains approximately 5.7 million words and takes into account texts from the 

origins up to the second century CE. 2 One of the aims of the present paper is to show that a 

corpus-based approach to metaphors enables one to deal with a broader range of data, to 

constraint and account for their systematic variation and to avoid generalizations drawn on 

the basis of personal introspection (cf. Deignan 2005: ch. 4; Stefanowitsch 2006a). In order to 

identify experiential metaphors in my Latin corpus, I have adopted a target-oriented 

methodology. I have thus selected and searched for lexical items expressing target concepts, 

i.e. emotions, and subsequently verified whether the retrieved elements occurred within 

metaphorical schemas. 3 

2 Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL) Online, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009, accessed between May and October 2010. 

For a complete list of the Greek and Latin titles published in the BT series, see http: ⁄⁄www.degruyter.com ⁄ 

cont ⁄ print ⁄ serial.cfm?rc=36366&l=En&type=ser. The distribution of the relevant authors across different centuries 

is as follows: 27 (17%) lived in the 2nd century BCE, 74 (46%) in the 1st century BCE, 36 (23%) in the 1st century CE, 

and 22 (14%) in the 2nd century CE. The corpus contains 416 different works: 194 (47%) poetry texts and 222 (53%) 

prose texts. 

3 It should be remarked that I have limited my analysis to a unique constructional pattern type which exhibits a 

nominative Experiencer. Therefore, I did not take into account several metaphorical schemas showing different 

structural features, e.g. those expressing stimuli or body parts as subjects, which may entail other types of 

conceptualisation of the experience itself.

310 

The remainder of this article is organised as follows. Section 3 provides an analysis of 

the metaphorical schema EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED, while section 4 is particularly 

concerned with investigating the STATES ARE CONTAINERS patterns. Section 5 looks at the 

EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS metaphor. I close the paper with a summary of its main points 

and conclusions, with a view to providing some insights into the fruitful relation 

between cognitive linguistics, a corpus-based approach to metaphors, and classical 

philology (§6). 

3. THE POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTION: A CASE OF DIACHRONIC GROWTH IN PRODUCTIVITY 

‘It is widely appreciated that the linguistic category of possession does not reduce to any 

single, familiar value, such as ownership. A moment’s thought reveals the extraordinary 

variety of the relationships coded by possessive constructions’ (Langacker 1991: 169). This 

point is simple but worth stressing: experiencing something can be conceived through the 

basic event schema of possessing something (Nikiforidou 1991: §3.2; Stolz et al. 2008: 

108). What we have is a situation of typological variation, in the sense that languages 

extend the possessive construction type into neighbouring semantic domains to varying 

degrees. 

However, possessing an experience is something different from possessing, let us say, a 

bicycle. In prototypical possession, the possessor is by definition animate, the possessum is 

concrete and the possessor can use the possessum. In having an experience, the only 

feature which is maintained concerns the animacy of the possessor (i.e. the Experiencer), 

all other things being altered (Heine 1997). Given the impalpable essence of experiential 

objects, linguists have usually maintained the general label of Abstract Possession to refer 

to this peculiar construction to indicate that it lacks most of the semantic features that 

tend to show up in the case of prototypical possession (Ko¨ nig & Haspelmath 1998; 

Stassen 2009). The Abstract Possession construction interacts transitively with the IDEAS 

ARE OBJECTS METAPHOR (Ko¨ vecses 2000: 89), where the mind is conceptualized as something 

that looks like a container, while ideas, feelings and beliefs are conceived of as objects 

kept in it. As Seiler points out, ‘after all, abstract nouns pertain to a linguistic technique 

that allows actions and processes to be treated as if they were things’ (Seiler 1983: 52), as 

in the following examples from English: 

We share our ideas. 

I gave the idea to my mother. 

I have an idea. 

I took the idea from John. 


As is well known, in Latin two different strategies are used to encode possession: the Dative 

possession copular construction (e.g. liber mihi est ‘I have a book’, lit. ‘a book me.DAT is’) 

and the transitive construction with the verb habeo ‘I have’. In the former type, the Dativemarked 

possessor is ascribed a possessum: this is a very ancient option in Indo-European and 

displays several parallel structures in many other Indo-European languages (Ernout & 

Thomas 1972 [1951]: 73; Benveniste 1960: 223; on the two competing strategies in Latin, see 

Magni 1999; Baldi & Nuti 2010: esp. §2). As we see below, the ‘have’-possessive construction 

started out as more concrete, preferably used to denote temporary possession, subsequently 

developing more abstract senses such as experiencing physical feelings and emotions (cf. e.g. 

Lo¨ fstedt 1963; see also Baldi 2002). 

Latin Experiential constructions featuring either or both the possessive schemas are listed 

below:


Table 1. The Abstract Possession constructions in Latin 

Dative possessive construction ‘Have’-possessive construction 

mihi fames est, ‘I have hunger’ famem habeo 

mihi morbus est, ‘I have sickness’ morbum habeo 

mihi insania est, ‘I have madness’ insaniam habeo 

mihi metus est, ‘I have fear’ metus habeo 

mihi ira est, ‘I have anger’ iram habeo 

mihi dolor est, ‘I have pain’ dolorem habeo 

mihi verecundia est, ‘I have shame’ verecundiam habeo 

mihi pudor est, ‘I have shame’ pudorem habeo 

mihi dubium est, ‘I have a doubt’ dubium habeo 

mihi febris est, ‘I have fever’ febrim habeo 

mihi odium est, ‘I have hate’ 

mihi sitis est, ‘I have thirst’ 

mihi aegritudo est, ‘I have illness’ 

mihi laetitia est, ‘I have happiness’ 

mihi gaudium est, ‘I have joy’ 

mihi fastidium est, ‘I have nausea’ 

odium habeo 

It is worth noting that there is a strong correlation between the range of stimuli filling the 

two different constructions. More precisely, if a stimulus can be expressed through the habeo 

pattern, it is also expressed through the construction with the Dative-marked possessor, while 

the opposite implication does not hold. I would suggest that we are looking at a process of 

constructional substitution: the Dative possessive construction constituted the most ancient 

option in Indo-European, and in Latin it coexisted in synchrony with the habeo construction, 

which must also be regarded as an ancient structure in Indo-European (Stassen 2009: 564). 

However, in Early Romance languages only the latter survived. In the historical period we are 

dealing with here, the strategy of using the habeo construction to express Abstract Possession 

was not fully established yet. While Lo¨ fstedt (1963: 76–8) maintains that it was only from the 

beginning of the Christian era that the ‘have’-possessive started to be used in the encoding of 

Abstract Possession, I found that already in Early Latin this schema was employed to cover 

expressions denoting impalpable possessed things. Consider the following example, in which 

even concrete entities such os and lingua metaphorically denote abstract concepts: 4 

(1) Os habet, linguam, perfidiam, malitiam 

impudence.ACC has tongue.ACC perfidiousness.ACC malice.ACC 

atque audaciam 

and boldness.ACC 

‘(she) has impudence, readiness in speech, perfidiousness, malice and boldness’ 

(Plautus, Miles 189a) 

Probably this use of habere began after that the verb came to express inalienable possession of 

the body-part and kinship type (Heine 1997: 109), according to the following hierarchy: 

alienable and concrete > inalienable concrete ⁄ abstract > abstract 

A word of caution must be inserted at this point: most of the stimuli occur with the 

‘have’-possessive construction from Classical Latin onwards, while in an earlier period the 

4 The following abbreviations are used: ABL = ablative; ACC = accusative; DAT = dative; FUT = future; 

GEN = genitive; IMP = imperative; IMPF = imperfect; INF = infinitive; PERF = perfect; PP = past participle; 

PPF = pluperfect; REL = relative; SUBJ = subjunctive; VOC = vocative.

312 


Dative possessive option is preferred. The following examples illustrate this trend: the most 

ancient pattern, which is the one usually employed by Plautus, is the Dative possessive 

(sentences in (2a)); the counterpart with habeo begins to be widely used during the first 

century BCE or later (sentences in (2b)): 

(2) a. Et eum morbum mi esse, ut qui me opus 

and that.ACC malady.ACC I.DAT be.INF that I.ACC need.NOM 

sit insputarier? 

be.SUBJ.PRES spit.upon.SUBJ.PASS 

‘And that I have that malady, that it’s necessary for me to be spat upon?’ 

(Plautus, Captivi 553) 

b. quicquid est ubicumque est ⁄ quodcumque agit renidet hunc 

whatever is whenever is whatever does smiles this.ACC 

habet morbum 

has disease.ACC 

‘whatever is, whenever is ⁄ whatever he does, he smiles: he has this disease’ 

(Catullus, Carmina 39 incipit) 

(3) a. si ei forte fuisset febris 

if he.DAT by chance has been.SUBJ.PPF fever 

‘if by chance he has had a fever’ (Plautus, Miles 720) 

b. si cui venae sic moventur, is habet febrim 

if REL veins so tremble he has fever.ACC 

‘and if his veins tremble in this way, he has a fever’ (Cicero, De fato 15) 

(4) a. Credam, pudor si quoiquam lenoni siet 

I will believe shame if any pimp.DAT is 

‘I will believe it, if any pimp is ashamed (lit. ‘has shame’)’ (Plautus, Curculio 58) 

b. Si pudorem haberes, ultimam mihi pensionem remississes 

If shame.ACC have last I.DAT payment send back.SUBJ.PPF 

‘If you were ashamed (lit.: had shame), you would send me back the last payment’ 

(Seneca, De Beneficiis 29.10) 

My claim is in keeping with Baldi & Nuti’s study on the relationship holding between the 

habeo and the mihi est strategies in the domain of experience: their data show that 

in spite of the higher frequency of habeo x [in Early Latin], in Plautus we counted only 

seven occurrences where the subject of the verb is a human participant that can somehow 

be related to the semantic role of experiencer. This contrasts with 35 examples of this kind 

with mihi est x. Such an inversion of the ratio suggests that the expression of an 

experiencer relation, although not inconsistent with habeo, is a minor function of this 

verb and is a primary function of the dative construction in an early author like Plautus. 

(Baldi & Nuti 2010: 260–61) 

It is likely that the ‘have’-possessive construction gradually began to be regarded as the 

more expressive option. Evidence comes for instance from Donatus’ commentary of 

Terentius’ work Andria, where we find a valuable annotation which give us a precise idea 

about the greater expressiveness (plus dixit) of the metaphor in animo habeo compared to the 

simple verb scio: Plus dixit ‘in memoria habeo’, quam si dixisset ‘scio’, ‘‘‘I have in memory’’ 

means more than if one says ‘‘I know’’’ (Commentum Terentii: Andria, 40). The incongruity of 

possessing something abstract (e.g. a temperature) is clearly stressed by Seneca (Ep. 119.12):


[…] sic divitias habent quomodo habere dicimus febrem, cum illa nos habeat. E contrario 

dicere solemus ‘febris illum tenet’: eodem modo dicendum est ‘divitiae illum tenent’. 

‘(these individuals) have riches just as we say that ‘‘we have a fever’’, when really the fever 

has us. Conversely, we are accustomed to say: ‘‘A fever grips him’’. And in the same way 

we should say: ‘‘Riches grip him’’.’ 

Besides its being perceived as more expressive, it is likely that the motivation behind the high 

productivity of this construction depends partially on syntactic factors: the habeo pattern 

models the possessive situation by accommodating it to the syntax of two-participant events 

that work on the basis of subject = Nominative and object = Accusative. Crucially, the 

transitive pattern is the most ordinary and productive in Latin, and this is why this basic 

transitive schema came to cover other, different types of two-participant situations (like 

possessive ones), gradually supplanting the Dative possessive alternative option. 

Evidence for the increasing generality of the ‘have’-possessive construction comes from 

some modern Romance languages, which select this option in order to encode a multifaceted 

range of experiences and feelings (sentences 5a,b) as well as other abstract and nonprototypical 

objects (sentence 5c; for a detailed discussion of this construction and its areal 

distribution in European languages and beyond, see Bossong 1998; Haspelmath 2001; 

Manzelli, Ramat & Roma 2002; Stolz et al. 2008: §2.3): 

(5) a. French 

J’ai faim 

I have hunger 

‘I am hungry’, lit. ‘I have hunger’ 

b. Portuguese 

Tenho frio 

I have cold 

‘I am cold’, lit. ‘I have cold’ 

c. Italian 

Ho fretta, sonno 

I have hurry, sleep 

‘I am in a hurry, I am sleepy’, lit. ‘I have hurry, sleep’ 

The high productivity of the abstract ‘have’-construction in modern Romance languages may 

be understood as a consequence of the loss of the Dative possession copular construction 

between Late Latin and Early Romance. The ‘have’-construction describes a situation from 

the point of view of the possessor and is thus more consistent with depicting an Experienceroriented 

perspective: it is the Experiencer, instead of the stimulus, who is syntactically realized 

as subject. 

Before drawing some conclusions, let us briefly touch on the issue of a parallel Possessive 

construction which may have played a significant role in the spread of the Abstract Possession 

construction. The verb habeo, jointly with a Prepositional Phrase metaphorically denoting a 

cognitive entity as a container, was used in Latin also to express the semantic field of 

remembering. This pattern was in use already from the second century BCE, with the 

meaning of ‘remember’ (6) as well as ‘have in one’s mind’, also with the dynamic implication 

of ‘recall’ (7): 

(6) In memoria habeo 

In memory I have 

‘I have in memory’ (Terentius, Andria 40)

314 

(7) Patrue, facito in memoria habeas, tuam maiorem filiam 

Father.VOC do.IMP in memory have your older.ACC daughter.ACC 

mihi te despondisse 

I.DAT you.ACC promise.in.marriage.INF 

‘Uncle, see you remember that you have promised me your older daughter’ 

(Plautus, Poenulus 1278) 

Example (8) below shows further figurative use within the metaphorical schema in animo 

habere. In this case, the concrete referent aquam ‘water’ is also metaphorically thought of as 

an abstract entity: 

(8) aquam te in animo habere 

water you.ACC in mind have.INF 

‘you have water in your mind’ (Lucilius, Sat. Fragm. 764) 

To sum up, in animo habeo and in memoria habeo are frequently attested in my corpus (45 and 

6 tokens respectively). Conceivably, this construction may have initially established the 

abstract interpretation of the verb habeo with non-prototypical locations and ⁄ or objects, 

subsequently giving rise to other metaphorical exploitations. 

4. STATES ARE CONTAINERS: A FULLY PRODUCTIVE SCHEMA IN LATIN 

Within this metaphor, abstract mental states are interpreted as situations placed in reality: thus, 

the psychological world as experienced and conceptualized by sentient humans is figuratively 

expressed in terms of concrete entities as they exist in the physical environment. In this case, the 

source domain is a container and the target domain, metaphorically actualized in concrete 

places, can involve several kinds of psychological states. Consider some English examples: 

He is in love. 

She is in a rage. 

My uncle is in despair. 


As can be noted, these metaphors are based on complex structures made up of a stative verb 

and a figurative prepositional phrase which has a spatial origin. 

This metaphorical mapping is well exploited in Latin. Several figurative schemas featuring 

the container image are in fact attested (I provide in brackets their token frequency in my 

corpus): 

in dubio sum ‘I am in doubt’ (3 tokens) 

in dubio haereo ‘I am stuck in doubt’ (1) 

in dubio iaceo ‘I lie in doubt’ (1) 

in dubio sto ‘I stand in doubt’ (1) 

in morbo sum ‘I am in disease’ (6) 

in morbo cubo ‘I lie in sickness’ (1) 

in timore sum ‘I am in fear’ (4) 

in terrore sum ‘I am in fear’ (1) 

in metu sum ‘I am in fear’ (11) 

in aegritudine sum ‘I am in sickness’ (4) 

in gaudio sum ‘I am in joy’ (1)

in invidia sum ‘I am in envy’ (4) 

in desiderio sum ‘I am in longing’ (3) 

in maerore iaceo ‘I lie in sorrow’ (1) 

in maestitia sum ‘I am in grief’ (1) 

in frigore maneo ‘I remain in coldness’ (1) 

in dolore sum ‘I am in pain’ (3) 


These constructional schemas display considerable semantic variation: first of all, several 

stative verbs are employed to express the locative source (esse, haerere, iacere, stare, cubare 

and manere); moreover, this schema is filled up with a wide range of stimuli pertaining to the 

emotional field (maestitia, maeror, invidia, gaudium, timor, terror and metus), to bodily 

sensations (aegritudo, frigor and dolor) and to the cognitive domain (dubium, desiderium). 

A particularly well-exploited lexical subdomain is that of fear: three different stimuli enter 

the schema as psychological locations, and the construction is already attested in Early 

Latin: 

(9) a. ita tota sum misera in metu 

so all am pitiable in fear.ABL 

‘Oh dear me, I’m scared through and through!’ (Plautus, Cistellaria 535) 

b. nescis quo in metu et ⁄ quanto in periclo simus 

do not know REL in fear and great in trial are 

‘You don’t realize the worry and the danger we face.’ (Terence, Phormio 57) 

Such expressions gave rise to further metaphorical exploitations. For example, Seneca 

describes the situation of in metu vivere ‘living in fear’ (De constantia sapientis 9.2). 

Conversely, cognitive states expressed as locations are attested only later. In desiderio esse 

‘to be in a state of longing’ is found in Cicero: 

(10) non essem tam diu in desiderio rerum mihi carissimarum 

not have been so long in longing.ABL things.GEN I.DAT beloved.GEN 

‘if I had not so long been cut off from all that is dearest to me’ 

(Cicero, Ep. ad Fam. 2, 12, 3) 

In dubio sum ‘I am in doubt, in danger’ may have paved the way for analogical extensions 

such as in dubio haereo, in dubio iaceo and in dubio sto (‘I am stuck, I lie, I stand in doubt’, 

respectively). All of them are attested only once in Latin, in the first century CE. In examples 

(11) and (12), the Experiencer is metonymically expressed as a cognitive entity: 

(11) conscientia (…) haeret in dubio 

conscience is stuck in doubt.ABL 

‘conscience (…) is stuck in a state of doubt’ (Quint., Decl. XIX maiores 9, 19) 

(12) mens stetit in dubio 

mind stood in doubt.ABL 

‘(his) mind hesitated, lit. stood in doubt’ (Lucanus, Pharsalia 7, 247) 

(13) in dubio vitae lassa Corinna iacet 

in danger.ABL life.GEN languished Corinna lies 

‘Corinna lies languishing in danger of life’ (Ovidius, Amores 2, 13, 1)

316 


Figure 1. The STATES ARE LOCATIONS metaphor in Latin 

The employment of this metaphor with different verbs provides evidence for the productivity 

of the schema. 

A model for representing schematicity and productivity in metaphors has been worked out 

by Clausner & Croft (1997). Following this model, I suggest the graphic representation shown 

in Fig. 1, to show the possible levels of schematicity and entrenchment of the STATES ARE 

LOCATIONS metaphor in Latin and its subordinate instantiations. This metaphor is highly 

productive, because the most schematic level, where we find what I label a ‘Basic Event Type 

Metaphor’, is itself productive, as the boxes in bold show. Hence, the schematic metaphor 

placed at the highest level of generality is capable of extending its syntactic pattern (and its 

conceptual counterpart) to other, semantically related schema-specific metaphors. Some of 

them are productive also, and give rise to a number of low-level metaphor instantiations (cf. 

in dubio sum fi in dubio haereo, in dubio iaceo, in dubio sto). The bold lines symbolize these 

productive relations by means of which the general schema is actualised by different 

constructions at lower-level degrees of schematicity. 

It is worth noting that the locative schema shows productive trends also at lower levels of 

schematicity. In the first case, the stimulus holds steady while the verb changes: for example, 

the in dubio sum schema extends its partially lexically filled pattern to other verb types, and 

one could take the fact that they share the same stative Aktionsart as an indication that this 

case of metaphorical extension is basically motivated by aspectual factors. In another case, a 

metaphorical schema characterized by low schematicity singles out synonymous constructions 

by substituting the stimulus and maintaining the basic verb esse. These novel forms are 

structurally and semantically similar, not to say identical, to the more schematic model, as in 

the case of in timore esse in terrore esse. However, if the modelled item turns out to be a 

hapax, as in the case of in terrore esse, in maerore iacere, the relation which the 

superordinate schema yields is only partially productive, and this situation is symbolised by 

dashed lines. 

5. EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS: AN EXAMPLE OF SEMI-PRODUCTIVITY IN LATIN METAPHORS 

The EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS schema constitutes a specific instantiation of the Event Structure 

Metaphor, which has been suggested by Lakoff and his associates in several works and 

subsequently studied in a number of languages, at least within the cognitivist approach (see 

e.g. Lakoff 1993; Emanatian 1992; Boers 1996; Radden 1998). The point of studies such as 

Lakoff (1993) is that ‘various aspects of event structure, including notions such as states, 

changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes and means, are characterized cognitively via


metaphor in terms of space, motion, and force’ (p. 219). In a nutshell, both events and 

movements are mobile extensions: while taking place, they usually occupy both space and 

time. 

The EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS schema is a very general and schematic metaphor whose source 

domain is semantically rich and with only few details filled in (initial location, movement and 

final location): therefore, it can be actualised in many different ways and used to represent a 

wide range of processes and situations (Ko¨ vecses 2002: 33). One of the main consequences of 

the semantic generality of this schema is that, arguably, it can be applied to a wide range of 

domains other than that of experience. As an example, one can quote the Latin expression 

tempus fugit (‘time flies’, lit. ‘escapes’), which, though metaphorically entering a motion 

schema, does not describe an experiential situation or process, but rather may be labelled as 

an instance of the sub-schema TIME PASSING IS MOTION OF AN OBJECT (see Ko¨ vecses 2002: 33), 

which also pertains to the general mapping EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS and represents a more 

specific – and thus less schematic – instantiation of it. To sum up, it is clear that the degree of 

semantic generality of the schema EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS is inherently too high for our 

purposes and needs to be further specified. In particular, I argue that Latin experiential 

constructions featuring a motion schema can be described as two less schematic metaphors, 

which I label: 

CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING 

INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS 

Semantically constrained in this way, the two subordinate patterns are cast at their proper 

degree of schematicity and can account for the Latin data. For instance, the metaphorical 

schema INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS imposes more 

constraints on the general schema, because INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES is a particular 

subtype of EVENT, and ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS constitute a specific subclass of the 

broader category MOVEMENTS which cast light on a unique semantic feature of the motion 

process, i.e. its last segment. Thus, generic metaphorical schemas differ from specific ones with 

regard to the degree of semantic generality (i.e. the number of details that could be filled in), 

the degree of schematicity (i.e. the number of subordinate instantiations the schema may be 

applied to) and what Ko¨ vecses (2000) called the SCOPE OF METAPHOR (i.e. the conceptual range 

within which the metaphor can be applied and exploited). 

The first sub-schema is CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING. Typically, this pattern 

combines a motion event and the entrance into a container, which expresses the specific 

psychological state and the final goal of the movement itself. Thus, this schema is meant to 

join two different metaphors: specifically, DISEASES ARE CONTAINERS and CONTRACTING A DISEASE 

IS A FALLING. It is instantiated by six different nouns denoting disease which combine with two 

verbs, cado ‘I fall’ and incido ‘I fall into’, which are structurally related: 

in morbum cado ⁄ incido ‘I fall into disease’ (10 tokens) 

in febrim incido ‘I fall into a temperature’ (1) 

in aegritudinem incido ‘I fall into sickness’ (1) 

in insaniam incido ‘I fall into madness’ (1) 

in dementiam incido ‘I fall into (mental) insanity’ (1) 

in iram incido ‘I fall into anger’ (3) 

‘Falling into disease’ is the most frequent (and, probably, entrenched) schema, and therefore it 

is likely to have paved the way for further extensions to other specific, semantically related 

types of stimuli, being extended to quasi-synonymic, but more specific, expressions (febris

318 


‘temperature’ and aegritudo ‘sickness, distress’). In addition, anger, psychological insanity and 

madness may be conceived of as mental diseases, which alter one’s cognitive skills and make 

one (mentally) ill. It is worth noting that this schema constitutes a specific instantiation of the 

orientational metaphor BAD IS DOWN (Lakoff & Johnson 1980): all the stimuli are oriented 

towards a negative pole, and one can fall only into bad states ⁄ containers. 5 

This metaphor is quite productive: it gave rise to novel forms which are basically extensions 

of the original conceptual association. This fact can be regarded as a semantic specialization 

process; notably, the six constructions share the semantic common ground of describing an 

entrance into a state of mental or physical damage as if it were a fall into a bounded area or, 

rather, into a container, as the following examples show: 

(14) Nam mihi et scriptum et nuntiatum est te in febrim 

indeed I.DAT and written.PP and foretold.PP is you.ACC in fever.ACC 

subito incidisse 

suddenly fell.INF.PERF. 

‘for I have been told both by letter and word of mouth that you have suddenly fallen 

into a fever’ (Cicero, Ep. ad Fam. 14, 8, 1) 

(15) in morbum gravem periculosumque incidit 

in disease.ACC serious.ACC dangerous.ACC-and fell 

‘(he) fell seriously and dangerously ill’ (Cicero, Pro Cluentio par. 198) 

Interestingly, with the filler aegritudo both schemas are allowed: the stimulus can be realized 

both as a container, as in sentence (16a), and as a falling subject hitting someone on the head, 

as in sentence (16b) (this pattern occurs eight times in Cicero, and once in Seneca, with a 

slightly different meaning, i.e. ‘to apply to’, ‘to be predicable of ’): 

(16) a. si sapiens in aegritudinem incidere posse 

if wise.NOM in distress.ACC fall.INF can.INF 

‘if the wise man could be capable of falling into distress’ (Cicero, Tusc. 3.9.20) 

b. non cadet ergo in sapientem aegritudo 

not applies.FUT thus in wise.ACC distress.NOM 

‘thus the wise man will not be susceptible of distress’ (Cicero, Tusc. 3.7.14) 

A similar construction, in which the stimulus is conceptualized as an object falling onto the 

Experiencer, is also attested twice in Terence and once in Cicero: aliquid mihi incidit in 

mentem ‘something falls into my mind’, probably an alternative lexical variant of the most 

frequently attested construction, aliquid mihi in mentem venit ‘something comes to my 

mind’: 

(17) a. mihi venit in mentem M. Catonis 

I.DAT came in mind.ACC M. Cato 

‘M. Cato came into my mind’ (lit. ‘to me came in mind of M.C.’) 

Cicero, In Verrem 2. 6.180) 

5 This generalisation my seem too strong at first glance. Doubters might claim e.g. that in English neutral or positive 

‘falling’ metaphors are also attested: beside falling ill one can also fall asleep or even fall in love. However, such 

instances can be understood in the light of the RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN schema, derived from the more 

general image CONTROL IS UP (and UNCONTROLLED IS DOWN; see Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 17).


b. quodquomque est, quom ei inciderit in mentem 

whatever is that he.DAT fell in mind.ACC 

‘whatever it is, that fell into his mind’ (Terence, Heaut. 484) 

Interestingly, the CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING metaphor is also attested in Greek (10a), 

in French (10b), and in some Italian varieties (10c) with reference to illness: 

(18) a. pı´ ptein es no´ son 

fall.INF to sickness.ACC 

‘to fall ill’ (Aeschylus, Prometheus 478) 

b. tomber malade 

fall ill 

‘to fall ill’ 

c. cadere malato 

fall ill 

‘to fall ill’ 

This comparison shows us that, although the conceptualization and the linguistic expression 

of emotions can vary cross-culturally (see Wierzbicka 1992; 1999; Ko¨ vecses 2000: ch. 9), 

speakers of Latin, like speakers of Greek and English, presumably used the same falling 

metaphoric schema to encode the processes of contracting physical diseases. In some way, 

they shared the same conceptual scenario. 

We now turn to an account of the second specific instantiation of the EVENTS ARE 

MOVEMENTS schematic metaphor, namely INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE 

ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS. In this case, the configuration of the event presupposes 

a focus on the final location of the motion process and the consequent reaching of the 

goal. The experiential metaphoric constructions belonging to this second subordinate 

schema are the following: 

in memoriam redigo ⁄ redeo ⁄ regredior ⁄ reduco (14 tokens) 

‘I come back to memory’ 

in dubium venio ‘I come to doubt’ (3) 

in invidiam venio ‘I come to envy’ (3) 

in rabiem verto ‘I turn to anger’ (1) 

in insaniam pervenio ‘I arrive at madness’ (2) 

venio in odium ‘I arrive at hate’ (4) 

in fame subvenio ad famem venio ‘I come to hunger’ (2) 

incurro in morbos ‘I run into diseases’ (1) 

As is readily apparent, the semantic scope of this metaphor is wider than that of ‘falling’: it 

applies to different categories of stimuli, namely physiological feelings (hunger, sickness), 

emotions (envy, fear, hate), anger as a kind of mental illness and, finally, cognitive processes 

(recalling something, being doubtful). Moreover, the schema is attested with different verb 

types: most frequently with venio ‘I come’, but also with more specific verbs like verto ‘I turn’, 

ago ‘I move towards, I make my way to’, incurro ‘I run into, I rush at’ and redigo ⁄ redeo 

‘I return to’. 

It is worth noting that we have morphological evidence to argue for a lexical aspectual 

shade of this metaphorical schema. Notably, some verbs featuring this pattern are formed 

with a telicising preverb, like in-, per- and re- (in the verbs incurro, pervenio, redigo and redeo,

320 


respectively). These preverbs have a perfective value, which adds to the verb a momentary 

aspect, yielding an opposition with the bare lexical semantics of the simple counterpart: venio 

‘I come’ vs. advenio ⁄ pervenio ‘I reach, I arrive at’ (on perfectivising preverbs in Latin, see e.g. 

Garcı´ a Herna´ ndez 1989; Haverling 2000; and the relevant papers collected in Moussy 2005). 

With simple verbs, the most used prepositions are in ‘to’ and ad ‘to, towards’, meaning in 

these constructions ‘reaching of, attaining to or being near the endpoint’ and focusing on the 

accomplishment of the goal. 

This aspectual specification ties in inherently with the claim that the subordinate schema 

under scrutiny, INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS, 

semantically casts light on a particular segment of the motion process, i.e. the reaching of the 

final goal, figuratively encoding a psychological state. Crucially, psychological states are 

metaphorically thought of as locations (§3 above). This means that we are dealing with a 

complex schema which can be further analysed as illustrated in Fig. 2. 

Figure 2. The INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS 

construction 

The telic aspect of the schema is sometimes lexically strengthened: for example, madness 

can be conceptualised as the final (ultimam) stage of a degenerative process, imagined as a fast 

path (via) leading to mental illness, as in the following sentences: 

(19) a. tunc illi dirus animi morbus ad insaniam pervenit ultimam 

thus that.GEN dread mind.GEN disease to madness.ACC reached last.ACC 

‘thus the dread disease of that man’s mind reached the furthest limit of madness’ 

(Seneca, De clementia 1.25.2) 

b. nulla celerior ad insaniam via est 

None quicker to madness.ACC road is 

‘there is no quicker road to madness’ (Seneca, De ira 2.36.4) 

As I have briefly mentioned above, a variety of stimuli can work as fillers of this metaphor. A 

particularly interesting case is that of bodily sensations such as hunger: 

(20) cum in ipsa fame subvenissent 

as in itself.ABL hunger.ABL arrived.SUBJ.PPF 

‘as they arrived in a state of actual famine’ (Cicero, De domo sua 11) 

(21) Alexander... inopia frumenti quoque prope ad famem ventum erat 

AlexanderNOM lack.ABL grain.GEN also close to starvation.ACC come.PP was 

‘Alexander had almost come close to starvation through lack of grain’ 

(Curtius Rufus, Hist. Alex. 7.4.22) 

In Italian a reverse conceptualisation is also attested, in which hunger ‘comes’ to the 

Experiencer:

(22) mi è venuta fame 

I.DAT is come.PP hunger 

‘hunger has come to me’ 


This double-faceted realization of the motion process is also attested with ira: as Seneca 

writes, 

(23) Saepe ad nos ira venit, saepius nos ad illam 

often to us.ACC anger comes more often we to that.ACC.F 

‘Anger often comes to us, but more often we go to it’ (Seneca, De ira 3.12.1) 

Another semantic field involved in this schema is that of cognition. First, memory as 

a cognitive location can figuratively denote the process of remembering, and therefore 

‘to come back to memory’ means ‘to recall’. Interestingly, in the following excerpt 

the ‘coming back’ pattern is repeated with two near-synonymous verbs, redeo and 

regredior: 

(24) Nunc demum in memoriam redeo, quom mecum cogito. 

Now indeed in memory.ACC come back when I.ABL-with think hard 

Nunc edepol demum in memoriam regredior audisse 

Now by Pollux indeed in memory.ACC come back hear.INF.PERF. 

‘And now I come back into memory, when I think hard to myself; And now I come 

back into memory to have heard ...’ (Plautus, Captivi 1022-3) 

The other situation depicted through the motion schema is that of becoming doubtful about 

something (de civitate, de sorte): 

(25) a. homo timidus inperitus que(...) ut de civitate in dubium veniret 

Man shy inexperienced and CONJ about city.ABL in doubt.ACC comes 

‘a shy and inexperienced man (…) coming into doubt about the city’ 

(Cicero, Pro A. Caecina oratio par. 18) 

b. Ei mihi, etiam de sorte nunc venio in dubium miser? 

Alas I.DAT also about fate.ABL now come in doubt.ACC poor 

‘Alas! Poor me, now I also come into doubt about fate?’ (Terentius, Adelphoe 242) 

This construction also allows structural variation. In (26), the Experiencer is encoded with the 

Dative case and what triggers the dubious reaction, i.e. the stimulus, is expressed as the 

syntactic subject. It is likely that the mihi venit in mentem (lit. ‘me.DAT comes in mind’) 

construction has once again played the role of general prototype, being able to extend its 

syntactic structure to other, semantically related construction types (recall also the abovementioned 

case of mihi incidit in mentem): 

(26) mihi veniat in dubium tua fides et constantia 

I.DAT may come in doubt.ACC your faith and firmness 

‘to me your faith and firmness may come into doubt’ 

(Cicero, Pro P. Quinctio Oratio par. 5) 

This last example shows how constructional schemas are interconnected and influence each 

other from both a semantic and a structural perspective. Of course, structural shaping exerted 

by one construction on another is expected if the two are conceptually linked in some way.

322 


This is the case with the above-mentioned examples: both share the semantics of an incoming 

psychological state. Structural variation is highly important in verifying a metaphorical 

schema’s productivity because it constitutes further evidence for the functional and formal 

openness of a given pattern. 

To sum up, the schema has shown itself to be flexible and open enough to be subsequently 

exploited and semantically refined in different ways. Hence, it came to express quite diverse 

meanings pertaining to different experiential subfields, as Fig. 3 shows. 

Figure 3. The EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS metaphor in Latin 

At the highest level of schematicity we find the ‘Basic Event Type Metaphor’, i.e. EVENTS 

ARE MOVEMENTS. At a lower level we have the two schema-specific metaphors CONTRACTING A 

DISEASE IS A FALLING and INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC 

MOVEMENTS, which are in bold boxes as they are more frequent, and were probably entrenched 

in the minds of speakers (token frequency determines the degree of entrenchment of a single 

word or construction: Croft & Cruse 2004: 308; see §11.3.1 for a detailed overview). 

Compelling evidence for this comes from the fact that they may give rise to novel, 

semantically related low-level metaphor instantiations and they partially admit formal 

variation. Bold lines indicate that these superordinate and more schematic constructions 

entail a productive relation with regard to less frequent and less entrenched schemas. 

The data presented in this section point towards some generalizations. First, high token 

frequency of a metaphorical schema may promote a higher level of entrenchment. Second, 

high token frequency facilitates analogy (Barðdal 2008: 89ff.), here understood as the ability 

of a metaphorical schema compatible with very few verbs to extend its syntactic pattern to 

other metaphors, in view of the lexical similarity shared by the fillers of the model and 

the target constructions, respectively (e.g. they both trigger emotional states). Third, in 

order to be productive, a metaphorical schema needs to be cast at its proper degree of 

schematicity. In this case, the relation holding between the constructions in the bold boxes 

and the general metaphorical schema EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS is one of different levels of 

schematicity: the specific experiential subordinate schemas are relatively less schematic than 

the generic metaphor because they apply to a relatively narrow range of lexical 

constructions, all restricted to the domain of experience. Therefore, this schema seems to 

be semi-productive with regard to Latin experiential metaphors, as it instantiates only two 

productive patterns and does not fully exploit the potential range of forms in relation to the 

wide semantic domain that it actually covers, i.e. movements. Insofar as ‘productivity is the 

degree to which a schema is more entrenched than its instantiations’ (Clausner and Croft 

1997: 255), I suggest that this is not the case as the intermediate instantiations of the general

schema, i.e. the two schema-specific metaphors CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING and 

INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS are more productive 

than the superordinate and schematic metaphor EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS in the domain of 

experience. 

6. THE INTERPLAY OF STATE, MOTION AND POSSESSION SCHEMAS: SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS 

In this paper I have pointed out that three different conceptual schemas compete in Latin in 

encoding and framing physical and psychological feelings. Each schema displays different 

degrees of schematicity and productivity; they also differ from each other in terms of their 

inner structure and diachronic developments. The possessive schema does not show structural 

complexity from a synchronic perspective, but is instead subject to a process of constructional 

substitution between Latin and Romance languages (the loss of the Dative possessive 

construction and the subsequent substitution by the highly frequent ‘have’-possessive), thus 

providing compelling evidence of its high degree of productivity. The locative schema turns 

out to be also very productive: besides being continued in modern Romance languages, it 

provides several examples of constructional extensions at low levels of schematicity, thus 

giving rise to novel metaphors shaped by substituting either the noun or the verb of the model 

item, and revealing itself to be capable of accommodating new meanings and new 

circumstances of use. Last, the EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS schema is only partially productive, 

because, after being cast at its proper level of schematicity, it instantiates two productive 

patterns only, namely CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING and INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL 

STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS, and does not fully exploit the potential range of 

forms and functions of the semantic domain of motion events. 

One way of getting at the nature of these quite diverse results is to take into account 

differences in Aktionsart. This is of major concern here: while locative and possessive schemas 

are basically states, motion schemas represent inchoative options and depict dynamic 

processes, which, however, may be considered from their endpoint, so that a dynamic process 

may produce a final, atelic state. Given that feelings are basically states (see e.g. Voorst 1992), 

the greater productivity of stative schemas is only to be expected. 

This conclusion is supported by the fact that a comparison between the range of stimuli 

filling the three different metaphors reveals insightful correlations. More precisely, it may be 

remarked that, generally speaking, if a stimulus is realized with a pattern of motion, then it 

also shows up with a stative option, while the opposite correlation does not occur (Table 2 

below). 

Arguably, the above-mentioned correlation may be understood in terms of the following 

implicational hierarchy: 

STATES > MOTION 


This hierarchy acknowledges the fact that if a stimulus enters a motion schema, then it enters 

a stative schema too. Readers may have noted that while there is much truth in this view, 

three stimuli, namely dementia ‘madness’, rabies ‘anger’ and memoria ‘memory’ only occur 

with motion verbs. A reason why the motion schema is particularly invited by memoria may 

be that recalling something is by definition an inchoative process: basically, memory comes 

and goes. 

To sum up, the hierarchy above helps us gain some understanding of the general distribution 

of most of the attested stimuli on the basis of an aspectually based dichotomy. The basic 

organizing principle we shall see at work in encoding this functional domain is that, while 

states constitute the basic option, motion schemas represent a quite frequently exploited

324 


Table 2. Possible fillers in Motion, Location and Possession metaphors 

Motion Location Possession 

morbus morbus morbus 

invidia invidia invidia 

aegritudo aegritudo aegritudo 

dubium dubium dubium 

febris febris 

insania insania 

ira ira 

odium odium 

fames fames 

dementiam 

rabiem 

memoria 

metus metus 

gaudium gaudium 

desiderium desiderium 

dolor dolor 

timor 

terror 

maestitia 

maeror 

frigus 

fastidium 

sitis 

pudor 

verecundia 

laetitia 

alternative to express inchoative processes and a valid strategy for imposing a dynamic 

perspective on stative feelings. After all, this alternation in coding strategies is to be expected in 

semantic fields concerning experience, because the Experiencer–Stimulus relations show a wide 

variation of argument linking patterns and alternative metaphorical ways of conceptualizing 

the same experience (e.g. Bossong 1998; Croft 1998; Verhoeven 2007). Usually, languages do 

not limit themselves to a single syntactic option to conceptualise a situation with a one-to-one 

mapping between function and form, but instead display a wide inventory of lexical and 

syntactic strategies that allow a given situation to be portrayed in alternative ways (see 

Langacker 1991: 330). Conceivably, limits to variation do exist: in our case, for instance, the 

fact that timor ‘fear’, terror ‘fright’, pavor ‘fear’ and frigor ‘cold’ only occur with the Location 

schema tells us that fear and cold were preferably conceived of as containers ‘placed’ in the real 

world. Thus, the aspectual focus was cast on their stativity, durativity and atelicity, apparently 

excluding any type of inchoative reading. This shows that, generally speaking, experiential 

metaphors and grammatical constructions tend to be associated along preferred paths. 

In conclusion, in this article I have shown that tools provided by the cognitivist framework 

can shed considerable light on the synchronic and diachronic organization of a specific 

metaphorical domain, even for a ‘dead’ language such as Latin. From a theoretical 

perspective, the present cognitivist corpus-based study has allowed (i) to cover a wider range of 

data; (ii) to shed light on a patterned variation in Latin experiential metaphors, and to show 

that this variation is not randomly but rather conceptually motivated; (iii) to systematically 

describe some metaphoric networks in terms of productivity and schematicity, and to 

individuate which patterns worked as models for further extensions; (iv) to identify semantic 

and aspectual constraints in the applicability of different sources to different target domains, 

i.e. to highlight emotion-specific metaphors (cf. Stefanowitsch 2005b); and (v) to provide 

evidence for the cross-cultural reality of metaphorical mappings, which suggested that an 

experience can be metaphorically conceptualised in the same way across both space and time.

The challenge was to check whether applying (psycho)linguistic notions such as frequency, 

schematicity and entrenchment could be useful in order to adequately describe a structured 

inventory of metaphors from a dead language, and I hope to have shown that this theoretical 

question has a positive answer. 

Dipartimento di Linguistica teorica e applicata 

Universita` di Pavia 

Corso Strada Nuova 65 

I-27100 Pavia, Italy 

Email: chiara.fedriani@unipv.it 


References 

ATHANASIADOU, ANGELIKI & TABAKOWSKA, ELZBIETA (eds), 1998. Speaking of Emotions: Conceptualisation and 

Expression, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

BALDI,PHILIP, 2002. ‘Where does Latin habeo come from?’, in Fabrice Cavoto (ed.), A Festschrift for Alexis Manaster- 

Ramer, Munich: Lincom Europa, 23–32. 

BALDI, PHILIP &NUTI, ANDREA, 2010. ‘Possession’, in Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds), New Perspective on 

Historical Latin Syntax, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 239–388. 

BARðDAL, JO´ HANNA, 2008. Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic, Amsterdam: 

Benjamins. 

BENVENISTE, EMILE, 1960. ‘‘‘Eˆ tre’’ et ‘‘avoir’’ dans leurs fonctions linguistiques’, Bulletin de la Socie´te´ linguistique de 

Paris 55, 113–34; repr. in E. Benveniste, Proble`mes de linguistique ge´ne´rale I (Paris: Gallimard 1966), 187–207. 

BOERS, FRANK, 1996. Spatial Prepositions and Metaphor: A Cognitive Semantic Journey along the UP–DOWN and the 

FRONT–BACK Dimension, Tu¨bingen: Narr. 

BOSSONG, GEORG, 1998. ‘Le marquage de l’experient dans les langues de l’Europe’, in Jack Feuillet (ed.), Actance et 

valence dans les langues de l’Europe, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 259–94. 

CLAUSNER, TIMOTHY C. & CROFT, WILLIAM, 1997. ‘Productivity and schematicity in metaphors’, Cognitive Science 

21(3), 247–82. 

CROFT,WILLIAM, 1998. ‘Event structure in argument linking’, in Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geuder (eds), The Projection 

of Arguments: Lexical and Compositional Factors, Stanford, CA: CSLI, 21–63. 

CROFT, WILLIAM, 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective, Oxford: Oxford 

University Press. 

CROFT, WILLIAM &CRUSE, ALAN D., 2004. Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

DA˛ BROWSKA, EWA, 2004. Language, Mind and Brain: Some Psychological and Neurological Constraints on Theories of 

Grammar, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

DEIGNAN, ALICE, 2005. Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

EMANATIAN, MICHELE, 1992. ‘Chagga ‘‘come’’ and ‘‘go’’: metaphor and the development of tense-aspect’, Studies in 

Language 16(1), 1–33. 

ERNOUT, ALFRED &THOMAS, FRANC¸ OIS, 1972 [1951]. Syntaxe latine, Paris: Klincksieck. 

GARCI´ A-HERNÁNDEZ, BENJAMIN, 1989. ‘Les preverbes latins: notions latives et aspectuelles’, in Marius Lavency & 

Dominique Longree (eds), Actes du V-e Colloque de Linguistique latine, Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 149–59. 

GIBBS, RAYMOND &STEEN, GERARD (eds), 1999. Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

GOLDBERG, ADELE, 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure, Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press. 

GUMMERE, RICHARD M., 1917-25. Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Moral Epistles, 3 vols, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, 

MA: Harvard University Press. 

HASPELMATH, MARTIN, 2001. ‘Non-canonical marking of core arguments in European languages’, in Alexandra 

Aikhenvald, Robert M.W. Dixon & Masayuki Onishi (eds), Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects, 

Amsterdam: Benjamins, 53–83. 

HAVERLING, GERD, 2000. ‘On sco-verbs, prefixes and semantic functions: a study in the development of prefixed and 

unprefixed verbs from Early to Late Latin’, Gothenburg: Acta universitatis Gothoburgensis. 

HEINE, BERND, 1997. Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

KO¨ NIG, EKKERARD & HASPELMATH, MARTIN, 1998. ‘Les constructions à possesseur externe dans les langues de 

l’Europe’, in Jack Feuillet (ed.), Actance et valence dans les langues de l’Europe, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 525– 

606. 

KO¨ VECSES, ZOLTA ´ N, 2000. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture and Body in Human Body, Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press. 

KO¨ VECSES, ZOLTA ´ N, 2002. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

LAKOFF, GEORGE, 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: 

University Press.

326 


LAKOFF,GEORGE, 1993. ‘The contemporary theory of metaphor’, in Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd 

edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 202–51. 

LAKOFF, GEORGE &JOHNSON, MARK, 1980. Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

LANGACKER, RONALD W., 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites, Stanford, CA: 

Stanford University Press. 

LANGACKER, RONALD W., 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. II: Descriptive Application, Stanford, CA: 

Stanford University Press. 

LO¨ FSTEDT, BENGT, 1963. ‘Zum lateinischen possessiven Dativ’, Zeitschrift fu¨r vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft 78, 64– 

83. 

MAGNI, ELISABETTA, 1999. ‘La significazione del possesso in latino: il tipo mihi est aliquid come manifestazione della 

transitività ridotta’, Archivio glottologico italiano 84, 44–66. 

MANZELLI, GIANGUIDO, RAMAT, PAOLO &ROMA, ELISA, 2002. ‘Remarks on marginal possession: are feelings owned?’, 

in Paolo Ramat & Thomas Stolz (eds), Mediterranean Languages: Papers from the Medtyp Workshop, Tirrenia, 

June 2000, Bochum: Universitätsverlag Brockmeyer, 223–45. 

MATISOFF, JAMES, 1986. ‘Hearts and minds in South-East Asian languages and English: an essay in the comparative 

lexical semantics of psychocollocations’, Cahiers de linguistique Asie-orientale 15, 5–57. 

MOUSSY, CLAUDE (ed.), 2005. La composition et la pre´verbation en latin, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne. 

NÆSS, A˚ SHILD, 2007. Prototypical Transitivity, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

NIEMEYER, SUSANNE &DIRVEN, RENE´ (eds), 1997. The Language of Emotions: Conceptualization, Expression, and 

Theoretical Foundation, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

NIKIFORIDOU, KIKI, 1991. ‘The meanings of the genitive: a case study in semantic structure and semantic change’, 

Cognitive Linguistics 2(2), 149–205. 

RADDEN,GUNTER, 1998. ‘The conceptualisation of emotional causality by means of prepositional phrases’, in Angeliki 

Athanasiadou & Elzbieta Tabakowska (eds), Speaking of Emotions: Conceptualisation and Expression, Berlin: 

Mouton de Gruyter, 273–94. 

SEILER, HANSJAKOB, 1983. Possession as an Operational Dimension of Language, Tu¨ bingen: Narr. 

STASSEN, LEO, 2009. Predicative Possession, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

STEFANOWITSCH, ANATOL, 2006a. ‘Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy’, in Anatol Stefanowitsch & 

Stefan Th. Gries (eds), Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1–16. 

STEFANOWITSCH, ANATOL, 2006b. ‘Words and their metaphors: a corpus-based approach and metonymy’, in Anatol 

Stefanowitsch & Stefan Th. Gries (eds), Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy, Berlin: Mouton de 

Gruyter, 63–105. 

STOLZ, THOMAS, KETTLER, SONJA, STROH, CORNELIA &URDZE, AINA, 2008. Split Possession: An Areal-Linguistic Study 

of the Alienability Correlation and Related Phenomena in Languages of Europe, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

SWEETSER, EVE, 1990. From Etymology to Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

TRAUGOTT, ELIZABETH &DASHER, RICHARD, 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

VERHOEVEN, ELISABETH, 2007. Experiential Constructions in Yucatec Maya: A Typologically Based Analysis of a 

Functional Domain in a Mayan Language, Amsterdam: Benjamins. 

VOORST, JAN VAN, 1992. ‘The aspectual semantics of psychological verbs’, Linguistics and Philosophy 15, 65–92. 

WIERZBICKA, ANNA, 1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific 

Configurations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

WIERZBICKA, ANNA, 1999. Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals, Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press.

Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?