Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

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322 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 109, 2011 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 FEDRIANI – EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN 323 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
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Experiential metaphors in Latin - Wiley Online Library

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