Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

The messenger is in Istanbul.The money is Fred's.The light is red.The meeting is at 3:00.Good Ideas 353The metaphor also works in sentences about causing something toremain in a state:The gang kept the messenger in Istanbul.Fred kept the money.The cop kept the light red.Emilio kept the meeting on Monday.Why do we make these analogies? It is not just to co-opt words but toco-opt their inferential machinery. Some deductions that apply to motionand space also apply nicely to possession, circumstances, and time. Thatallows the deductive machinery for space to be borrowed for reasoningabout other subjects. For example, if we know that X went to Y, we caninfer that X was not at Y beforehand but is there now. By analogy, if weknow that a possession goes to a person, we can infer that the person didnot own the possession beforehand but owns it now. The analogy isclose, though it is never exact: as a messenger travels he occupies aseries of locations between Paris and Istanbul, but as Fred inherits themoney it does not gradually come into his possession to varying degreesas the will is being read; the transfer is instantaneous. So the concept oflocation must not be allowed to merge with the concepts of possession,circumstance, and time, but it can lend them some of its inferentialrules. This sharing is what makes the analogies between location andother concepts good for something, and not just resemblances that catchour eye.The mind couches abstract concepts in concrete terms. It is not onlywords that are borrowed for metaphors, but entire grammatical constructions.The double-object construction—Minnie sent Mary the marbles—is dedicated to sentences about giving. But the construction can beco-opted for talking about communication:Minnie told Mary a story.Alex asked Annie a question.Carol wrote Connie a letter.