Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

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318 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 109, 2011 ‘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).
FEDRIANI – EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN 319 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,
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Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

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