Embodiment in Latin Semantics: (174 Studies in Language Companion Series)

Embodiment in Latin Semantics introduces theories of embodied meaning developed in the cognitive sciences to the study of Latin semantics. Bringing together contributions from an international group of scholars, the volume demonstrates the pervasive role that embodied cognitive structures and processes play in conventional Latin expression across levels of lexical, syntactic, and textual meaning construction. It shows not only the extent to which universal aspects of human embodiment are reflected in Latin’s semantics, but also the ways in which Latin speakers capitalize on embodied understanding to express imaginative and culture-specific forms of meaning. In this way, the volume makes good on the potential of the embodiment hypothesis to enrich our understanding of meaning making in the Latin language, from the level of word sense to that of literary thematics. It should interest anyone concerned with how people, including in historical societies, create meaning through language.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction (by Short, William Michael); 2. A matter of perspective: Aspect, deixis, and textual exploitation in the prototype semantics of eo and venio (by Nuti, Andrea); 3. Vertical scales in temporal sub constructions in Latin (by Knighton, Erik); 4. The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin (by Brucale, Luisa); 5. Ontological and orientational metaphors in Latin: Evidence from the semantics of feelings and emotions (by Fedriani, Chiara); 6. The metaphorical structuring of kinship in Latin (by Buccheri, Alessandro); 7. Abstract and embodied colors in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (by Wharton, David); 8. Embodiment in Latin technical texts (by Roby, Courtney Ann); 9. Embodied historiography: Models for reasoning in Tacitus' Annales (by Devereaux, Jennifer J.); 10. Index

Review :
English, in some ways an unusual language, is the most over-studied language in the history of the world. But English itself was highly influenced by Romance languages, and Romance languages account for a vast swath of the world’s most influential literature. Research into the cognitively modern human mind and its communicative possibilities cannot do better than focusing on Latin. This volume is the first major book-length effort in that direction. This volume is equally indispensable for students of Latin, Romance philologists and cognitive linguistics. Although closely linked to recent developments in embodied semantics, the essays in Embodiment in Latin Semantics are exploratory rather than doctrinaire. They should be of great interest to students of Latin language and of literature, religion, kinship, and culture more generally in the Latin-speaking world. The editor has done an impressive job of assembling an intellectually diverse group of scholars with a shared outlook on the relationship between language and embodiment. This collection of essays breaks new ground in the application of cutting-edge cognitive science to the semantic structures of classical Latin. The volume’s international cast of contributors are pioneers in a field that promises to revolutionise not just Latin linguistics but the study of Latin literature in general. Their emphasis on embodiment in the ways that Latin and the authors who use it construct meaning goes beyond existing studies of (e.g.) cognitive metaphor in Latin and Greek to deploy a wider and more systematic range of cognitive linguistic concepts, providing a theoretically sophisticated perspective on the way that individual authors deploy the conceptual patterns that are embedded in the Latin language and in Roman life and thought.