Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change: Motion Verbs from Latin to Romance

272 Pages·2015·1.63 MB·English

by  Natalya I. Stolova

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND LEXICAL CHANGE
CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY
OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE – Series IV
issn 0304-0763
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Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie
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University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Volume 331
Natalya I. Stolova
Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change. Motion Verbs from Latin to Romance
COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS
AND LEXICAL CHANGE
MOTION VERBS FROM LATIN TO ROMANCE
NATALYA I. STOLOVA
Colgate University
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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Table of contents
Preface & Acknowledgments vii
chapter 1
Objectives and key concepts 1
1.1 Goals of the present study 1
1.2 Motion verbs in the Romance language family 3
1.3 Levels of lexical change: Onomasiology and semasiology 5
1.4 The historical cognitive linguistics framework as a new type of diachrony 7
chapter 2
Cognitive onomasiology and cognitive typology of motion encoding 1 7
2.1 Cognitive onomasiology 1 7
2.2 Cognitive typology of motion encoding 1 9
chapter 3
Latin and Romance verb biographies 2 5
3.1 Generic motion 2 5
3.2 Direction-specific motion 3 0
3.3 Manner-specific motion 4 7
3.4 Biographical overview 5 1
chapter 4
Patterns of onomasiological continuity and change from Latin to Romance 5 3
4.1 Lexical continuity and lexical loss from Latin to Romance 5 3
4.2 Romance innovative lexical creation 6 4
4.3 Latin and Romance motion verbs as part of constructions 8 5
chapter 5
Cognitive semasiology and conceptual metaphor theory 8 9
5.1 Conceptual metaphor and motion source domain 8 9
5.2 Conceptual metaphor and the evolution of the Romance languages 9 4
 Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change
chapter 6
Semantic continuity and loss from Latin to Romance 101
6.1 Motion-based mappings shared by Latin and Romance 101
6.2 Motion-based semantic continuity and loss within a wider context 146
chapter 7
Romance innovative semantic developments 149
7.1 Pan-Romance semantic innovations 149
7.2 Language-specific semantic innovations 159
7.3 Semantic innovations through borrowing 161
7.4 Written evidence and the latent state 165
7.5 Motion-based semantic innovations within a wider context 167
chapter 8
Implications for the cognitive typology of motion encoding 169
8.1 Refining the cognitive typology of motion encoding across languages 169
8.2 Toward a diachrony-inclusive cognitive typology of motion encoding 177
chapter 9
Implications for the conceptual metaphor theory 191
9.1 Conceptual metaphors across language families 191
9.2 Universal and language-specific conceptual metaphors:
Historical Latin and Romance data as testing ground 195
chapter 10
Conclusions 199
References 209
Index of languages and language families 255
Index of subjects and terms 257
Preface & Acknowledgments
My interest in the development of motion verbs from Latin to Romance goes back
to my doctoral dissertation of 2003 at the University of Pennsylvania under the
supervision of Paul M. Lloyd. His passionate interest in historical Romance lin-
guistics and his distinguished scholarship, especially his monumental From Latin
to Spanish (1987), have been a great source of inspiration for me.
An important point in the writing process of the present monograph was my
participation in the 8th International Conference on Late and Vulgar Latin held at
St Catherine’s College, Oxford in September 2006. It offered me the first opportunity
to present some of the study’s key findings. I am especially grateful to the conference
organizer and editor of its proceedings, Roger Wright (University of Liverpool), for
his comments on my paper (Stolova 2008) and for discussing with me on several
occasions my progress on this book. I am also thankful to the president of the ses-
sion at which I gave my paper, Benjamín García-Hernández (Universidad Autónoma
de Madrid), for providing me with his publications on Latin preverbation.
Another venue which provided me with helpful feedback on some of the pres-
ent study’s main findings was the session on historical and contrastive description
of the Romance languages at the 25th International Congress on Romance Lin-
guistics and Philology held at the University of Innsbruck in September 2007. I am
particularly grateful to the session’s president, Peter Koch (University of Tübingen),
for taking his time to discuss with me at length my presentation which was later
published in the Congress’ proceedings (Stolova 2010a).1
My gratitude also goes to Joel Rini (University of Virginia), Donald Tuten
(Emory University), Yanira B. Paz and Haralambos Symeonidis (both at the Uni-
versity of Kentucky), who were the organizers of the sessions on Hispanic and
Romance linguistics at the annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference which
I have been attending since 2006. Although at the University of Kentucky I spoke
mostly on topics other than the topic of the present book, I always tried to inte-
grate historical Romance data with cognitive linguistics, posing the following
questions: (1) How can the cognitive framework help us explain the developments
attested from Latin to Romance and (2) How can the developments attested from
1. Earlier, in 2004, Prof. Koch had kindly provided me with papers of his on cognitive his-
torical Romance onomasiology and semasiology.
 Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change
Latin to Romance help us refine and expand the cognitive framework? The fact
that my audience found these questions stimulating, gave me the inspiration to
advance these questions with regard to lexical change.
Another source of inspiration has been the work of Steven N. Dworkin
(University of Michigan) on Spanish and Romance lexical change. I am thankful
to him for providing me with his publications and for offering helpful comments
and suggestions on earlier versions of parts of the manuscript. I have also greatly
benefited from the conversations with David A. Pharies (University of Florida)
about Latin and Romance word-formation and with Christopher J. Pountain
(Queen Mary, University of London) about the phenomenon of capitalization. I
am likewise grateful to Mark Davies (Brigham Young University) for discussing
with me the textual composition, architecture, and interface of his Corpus del
Español (Davies 2007): a number of Spanish examples in Chapters 6 and 7 of the
book derive from this 100 million word historical corpus.
I would also like to thank several persons at my home University where I have
been working since 2003. I am grateful to the staff at the Inter-Library Loan Depart-
ment at Colgate library, particularly its Coordinator Ann Ackerson, for patiently
helping me access the difficult-to-get multi-volume materials. At the Department of
Romance Languages and Literatures I would like to thank my colleagues Frederick
Luciani, Fernando Plata Parga, Patrick Riley, and Franziska Merklin for answering
my questions about Spanish, French, and Italian. I am also thankful to Oana Patilea,
Colgate University Class of 2012 and a native speaker of Romanian, for sharing with
me her linguistic insights. My most sincere thanks also go to Patricia Ryan for going
over my manuscript with me and making excellent suggestions on its English style.
My work with both Ms. Patilea and Ms. Ryan was sponsored by the Colgate Univer-
sity Research Council, whose support I hereby gratefully acknowledge.
I have long admired the Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) series for
combining linguistic data with theoretical advances. Because this book is both
data-driven and theory-oriented, I would like to thank the General Editor of the
CILT series, E.F.K. Koerner, for taking on this project and for supporting my work
throughout all its stages with extraordinary dedication, remarkable patience, and
generous help. Special thanks are also due to the three anonymous referees who
read my manuscript with great care and offered detailed comments, constructive
criticism, and valuable suggestions, all of which allowed me to refine my ideas and
improve their presentation. Needless to say, I am the only one responsible for any
remaining shortcoming. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to
Anke de Looper and Patricia Leplae at John Benjamins for their most professional
assistance throughout the production process.
Hamilton, N.Y., March 2014 Natalya I. Stolova
chapter 1
Objectives and key concepts
1.1 Goals of the present study
This book explores the lexical change of motion verbs from Latin to Romance in
light of current advances in cognitive linguistics and examines the contribution of
Latin and Romance historical data to the cognitive linguistics framework. The re-
search on Latin and Romance verbs of motion (i.e., verbs like ‘go’, ‘enter’, ‘walk’)
that has been carried out so far is often scattered in dictionaries, grammars, arti-
cles, and monographs that treat the topic incidentally. The few articles and book-
length studies that actually do make these verbs their prime concern choose to
limit themselves to only one or a few lexical items, one language, and one point in
history. Besides that, within the Romance family, the amount of material available
to us on verbs that express movement varies from language to language. While
Spanish, French, and Italian have received more attention, Portuguese, Romanian,
and non-national Romance languages are left neglected. In addition, the existing
accounts tend to be atomistic as they treat only one of the two levels at which lexi-
cal change takes place (lexicology/onomasiology, semantics/semasiology) without
integrating them with one another. Furthermore, the focus of the existing studies
has been the description and classification of the developments that took place,
but not the analysis of the motivational mechanisms of the changes at hand. Con-
sequently, while these research efforts provide valuable insights, they do not offer
a balanced comprehensive picture.
How to see the forest for the trees? In this monograph, I argue that the theo-
retical approach known as historical cognitive linguistics is particularly well suited
to achieve this task. The present study applies the historical cognitive linguistics
framework to Latin and Romance verbs of motion in order to provide a unifying
and comprehensive perspective on the evolution of the lexical field of motion
verbs from Latin to the modern Romance languages. More specifically, the goal is
to assess the continuity of Latin verbs of motion and the Romance innovations as
far as lexical change is concerned and to examine how similar Pan-Romance ten-
dencies manifest themselves differently in each particular language. In addition,
my aim is not only to evaluate the developments that took place from Latin to
Romance, but also, through the application of the cognitive framework, to identify
the cognitive mechanisms involved and evaluate their role as enabling factors of