Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 109:3 (2011) 307326

EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN: FEELINGS WERE CONTAINERS,

MOVEMENTS AND THINGS POSSESSED1
By CHIARA FEDRIANI
University of Pavia

ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned with three metaphorical schemas frequently used in Latin to
encode experiential situations: EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED, STATES ARE CONTAINERS, and EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS. Besides describing these metaphorical mappings, this
paper also provides corpus-based evidence for conceiving of metaphorical constructions
not as sporadic forms motivated by communicative demands but rather as consistent
parts of semantically-related networks of concepts. Therefore, one of the results of the
present work is a description of the regularities and extensions, as well as the relative
frequency and the diachronic productivity, of dierent metaphorical options in Latin,
together with some comparison with parallel structures in other Indo-European
languages.
1. INTRODUCTION
In this paper I follow a cognitivist approach to metaphors. This approach was worked out in
the 1980s by George Lako and Ronald Langacker, paving the way for a great number of
subsequent studies (for a comprehensive survey of the cognitivist view of emotion metaphors,
see Kovecses 2000: ch. 2; for a wide-ranging sample of current approaches to metaphor in
Cognitive Linguistics, see also the papers collected in Gibbs & Steen 1999).
Within this approach, metaphors are conceived as conventionalized cognitive items which
presuppose a mapping link from a source domain (which is literal and concrete) to a target
domain that we try to understand (which, in turn, is more abstract). As is well known, this
kind of mapping is usually unidirectional: a basic and concrete event frame which occurs in
everyday life can constitute the semantic scenario of a more abstract situation, and this is
particularly true in the case of mental experiences, which are much less clearly delineated than
our bodily functions. As Lako & Johnson (1980: 25) write,
When things are not clearly discrete or bounded, we still categorize them as such. [] Our
experience with physical objects (especially our own bodies) provide the basis for an
extraordinarily wide variety of ontological metaphors, that is, ways of viewing events,
activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances.
In general, the Lakovian view of metaphors has received widespread cross-linguistic
support, and a variety of scholars have worked in this tradition focusing on a wide range of
emotional elds (see e.g. the relevant papers in Niemeier & Dirven 1997; Athanasiadou &
1
I would like to thank Johanna Bardal, Eystein Dahl, Anna Giacalone Ramat, Silvia Luraghi, Michele Prandi and
Paolo Ramat for commenting on an earlier version of this paper and for stimulating discussions at dierent stages. I
also thank Paul Rowlett, the editors of this issue as well as two anonymous reviewers for helpful and insightful
remarks. Of course, any remaining errors are my responsibility.

 The authors 2011. Transactions of the Philological Society  The Philological Society 2011. Published by Blackwell Publishing,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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Tabaskowska 1998). However, it might be asked whether there have emerged regular and
preferred paths of mapping from the concrete world of objects and actions to the abstract,
psychological world. The answer, of course, is yes. This paper aims to provide evidence for
such regularities, with special regard to Latin experiential metaphors, and in some cases
taking a comparative look at other ancient and modern Indo-European languages.
What is distinctive about the cognitive-functional constructional approach advocated here
is that constructions are taken to be formfunction pairings linked to each other via semantic
and conceptual networks: the grammar of a language is thus conceived of as a structured
inventory of conventional linguistic units (e.g. Langacker 1987: 57; Goldberg 1995; Croft
2001). The notion of structured inventory entails certain logical, semantic and conceptual
relationships among linguistic items within constructional schemas. Hence, linguistic
knowledge is seen as an interconnected network of linguistic units (Dabrowska 2004: 210).
Goldberg compares lexical polysemy with the semantic similarity holding between
constructions and families of constructions: Several constructions can be shown to be
associated with a family of distinct but related senses, much like the polysemy recognized
in lexical items. Moreover, these constructions themselves are shown to be interrelated
(1995: 4).
Given that metaphorization is analogical in essence and operates between domains
(Sweetser 1990, quoted in Traugott & Dasher 2002: 1.3), constructional projections,
overlapping, borrowings and extensions among structural domains are only to be expected,
thus yielding an increase in the semantic scope of schemas extended across dierent
constructional elds. For example, the ABSTRACT POSSESSION construction is motivated by the
fact that experiencing a sensation can be conceived of as having something, and therefore
the Experiencer can in many languages be syntactically expressed as a possessor of
properties (see Nss 2007: ch. 6, and 3 below). In the course of discussion we will see that
metaphorical mappings are not sporadic forms motivated by communicative urges but
rather consistent parts of a multidimensional and interconnected structured network arising
naturally from experience (Lako & Johnson 1980: 85), and their regularity rests on
conceptually motivated paths of comparison of sources and targets across semantic
domains.
For a better understanding of the Latin data, some theoretical and methodological
considerations are in order. They will be provided in the next section.
2. THEORETICAL

AND METHODOLOGICAL REMARKS

In this section I provide a brief overview of relevant key concepts regarding the notion of
productivity applied to metaphorical schemas. I take productivity to be the ability of a
syntactic pattern to be extended to other (semantically related) types and constructions (see
Bardal 2008 for discussion). Drawing on the general assumptions presented in the previous
section, I go on to argue that a productivity study of constructional schemas can be suggested
using Latin data. More specically, along the lines of Clausner & Croft (1997), I compare
some Latin metaphorical schemas and argue for dierent degrees of schematicity and
productivity in metaphors, given the fact that semantic productivity can be characterized in
the same way as morphological productivity, suggesting that form and meaning are organized
by the same principles (Clausner & Croft 1997: 247; cf. also Langacker 1987: 2.2). Therefore,
this article explores possible extensions of constructional schemas in Latin, and shows how
constructional schemas can be used to assemble new experiential metaphors. More
specically, I suggest that productivity in metaphors is determined by three parameters (see
e.g. Croft & Cruse 2004):

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schematicity: a measure of the schemas generality, i.e. the relationship between a

superordinate schema and a subordinate instantiation;
entrenchment: a measure of the independent storage of a linguistic unit in the mind of
speakers;
lexical exploitation: a measure of the actual instantiation of expressions with regard to
the potential range of forms semantically compatible with the schema.
Productivity is gradient (see Bardal 2008: esp. 2.5), and metaphorical schemas vary in
productivity: metaphor productivity may be dened in terms of the number of roughly
synonymous expressions which manifest this range of metaphorical concepts (Clausner &
Croft 1997: 263). However, I argue that the expressions created through a metaphorical schema
are not necessarily synonymous. Rather, they are expected to share the same kind of tropical
mapping from the source domain to the target domain, thus displaying the same conceptual
shift in encoding even slightly dierent experiences. For example, Latin metaphors like
in memoriam redeo I recollect, lit. I come back to memory and in dubium venio I come to
doubt are comparable and pertain to the same tropical pattern, because they both instantiate
the schema INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS (5). The
three main types of metaphorical schemas investigated in this paper are:
STATES ARE CONTAINERS
EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS
EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED

I describe each metaphor in more detail in the following sections, giving an overview of its
general semantics, its use in Latin, and a discussion of its level of schematicity, lexical
exploitation and entrenchment, with a view to comparing their degrees of productivity.
Moreover, I show that in some cases a metaphorical schema (e.g. EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS) is
too generic and covers a conceptual range which is too wide to account for the productivity of
metaphors in the experiential domain. Therefore, such general metaphors have to be
semantically redened. Only when cast at a proper level of schematicity is the schema capable
of accounting for the attested range of compatible metaphors (Clausner & Croft 1997: 2.2;
and 5 below).
This investigation is based on the Antiquitas section of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina
corpus, which contains approximately 5.7 million words and takes into account texts from the
origins up to the second century CE.2 One of the aims of the present paper is to show that a
corpus-based approach to metaphors enables one to deal with a broader range of data, to
constraint and account for their systematic variation and to avoid generalizations drawn on
the basis of personal introspection (cf. Deignan 2005: ch. 4; Stefanowitsch 2006a). In order to
identify experiential metaphors in my Latin corpus, I have adopted a target-oriented
methodology. I have thus selected and searched for lexical items expressing target concepts,
i.e. emotions, and subsequently veried whether the retrieved elements occurred within
metaphorical schemas.3
2

Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL) Online, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009, accessed between May and October 2010.
For a complete list of the Greek and Latin titles published in the BT series, see http: www.degruyter.com
cont print serial.cfm?rc=36366&l=En&type=ser. The distribution of the relevant authors across dierent centuries
is as follows: 27 (17%) lived in the 2nd century BCE, 74 (46%) in the 1st century BCE, 36 (23%) in the 1st century CE,
and 22 (14%) in the 2nd century CE. The corpus contains 416 dierent works: 194 (47%) poetry texts and 222 (53%)
prose texts.
3
It should be remarked that I have limited my analysis to a unique constructional pattern type which exhibits a
nominative Experiencer. Therefore, I did not take into account several metaphorical schemas showing dierent
structural features, e.g. those expressing stimuli or body parts as subjects, which may entail other types of
conceptualisation of the experience itself.

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The remainder of this article is organised as follows. Section 3 provides an analysis of

the metaphorical schema EXPERIENCES ARE THINGS POSSESSED, while section 4 is particularly
concerned with investigating the STATES ARE CONTAINERS patterns. Section 5 looks at the
EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS metaphor. I close the paper with a summary of its main points
and conclusions, with a view to providing some insights into the fruitful relation
between cognitive linguistics, a corpus-based approach to metaphors, and classical
philology (6).
3. THE

POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTION: A CASE OF DIACHRONIC GROWTH IN PRODUCTIVITY

It is widely appreciated that the linguistic category of possession does not reduce to any
single, familiar value, such as ownership. A moments thought reveals the extraordinary
variety of the relationships coded by possessive constructions (Langacker 1991: 169). This
point is simple but worth stressing: experiencing something can be conceived through the
basic event schema of possessing something (Nikiforidou 1991: 3.2; Stolz et al. 2008:
108). What we have is a situation of typological variation, in the sense that languages
extend the possessive construction type into neighbouring semantic domains to varying
degrees.
However, possessing an experience is something dierent from possessing, let us say, a
bicycle. In prototypical possession, the possessor is by denition animate, the possessum is
concrete and the possessor can use the possessum. In having an experience, the only
feature which is maintained concerns the animacy of the possessor (i.e. the Experiencer),
all other things being altered (Heine 1997). Given the impalpable essence of experiential
objects, linguists have usually maintained the general label of Abstract Possession to refer
to this peculiar construction to indicate that it lacks most of the semantic features that
tend to show up in the case of prototypical possession (Konig & Haspelmath 1998;
Stassen 2009). The Abstract Possession construction interacts transitively with the IDEAS
ARE OBJECTS METAPHOR (Kovecses 2000: 89), where the mind is conceptualized as something
that looks like a container, while ideas, feelings and beliefs are conceived of as objects
kept in it. As Seiler points out, after all, abstract nouns pertain to a linguistic technique
that allows actions and processes to be treated as if they were things (Seiler 1983: 52), as
in the following examples from English:
We share our ideas.
I gave the idea to my mother.
I have an idea.
I took the idea from John.
As is well known, in Latin two dierent strategies are used to encode possession: the Dative
possession copular construction (e.g. liber mihi est I have a book, lit. a book me.DAT is)
and the transitive construction with the verb habeo I have. In the former type, the Dativemarked possessor is ascribed a possessum: this is a very ancient option in Indo-European and
displays several parallel structures in many other Indo-European languages (Ernout &
Thomas 1972 [1951]: 73; Benveniste 1960: 223; on the two competing strategies in Latin, see
Magni 1999; Baldi & Nuti 2010: esp. 2). As we see below, the have-possessive construction
started out as more concrete, preferably used to denote temporary possession, subsequently
developing more abstract senses such as experiencing physical feelings and emotions (cf. e.g.
Lofstedt 1963; see also Baldi 2002).
Latin Experiential constructions featuring either or both the possessive schemas are listed
below:

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Table 1. The Abstract Possession constructions in Latin

Dative possessive construction
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi

fames est, I have hunger

morbus est, I have sickness
insania est, I have madness
metus est, I have fear
ira est, I have anger
dolor est, I have pain
verecundia est, I have shame
pudor est, I have shame
dubium est, I have a doubt
febris est, I have fever
odium est, I have hate

mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi
mihi

sitis est, I have thirst

aegritudo est, I have illness
laetitia est, I have happiness
gaudium est, I have joy
fastidium est, I have nausea

Have-possessive construction
famem habeo
morbum habeo
insaniam habeo
metus habeo
iram habeo
dolorem habeo
verecundiam habeo
pudorem habeo
dubium habeo
febrim habeo
odium habeo

It is worth noting that there is a strong correlation between the range of stimuli lling the
two dierent constructions. More precisely, if a stimulus can be expressed through the habeo
pattern, it is also expressed through the construction with the Dative-marked possessor, while
the opposite implication does not hold. I would suggest that we are looking at a process of
constructional substitution: the Dative possessive construction constituted the most ancient
option in Indo-European, and in Latin it coexisted in synchrony with the habeo construction,
which must also be regarded as an ancient structure in Indo-European (Stassen 2009: 564).
However, in Early Romance languages only the latter survived. In the historical period we are
dealing with here, the strategy of using the habeo construction to express Abstract Possession
was not fully established yet. While Lofstedt (1963: 768) maintains that it was only from the
beginning of the Christian era that the have-possessive started to be used in the encoding of
Abstract Possession, I found that already in Early Latin this schema was employed to cover
expressions denoting impalpable possessed things. Consider the following example, in which
even concrete entities such os and lingua metaphorically denote abstract concepts:4
(1) Os
habet, linguam,
perdiam,
malitiam
impudence.ACC has
tongue.ACC perdiousness.ACC malice.ACC
atque audaciam
and
boldness.ACC
(she) has impudence, readiness in speech, perdiousness, malice and boldness
(Plautus, Miles 189a)
Probably this use of habere began after that the verb came to express inalienable possession of
the body-part and kinship type (Heine 1997: 109), according to the following hierarchy:
alienable and concrete > inalienable concrete abstract > abstract
A word of caution must be inserted at this point: most of the stimuli occur with the
have-possessive construction from Classical Latin onwards, while in an earlier period the
4
The following abbreviations are used: ABL = ablative; ACC = accusative; DAT = dative; FUT = future;
GEN = genitive; IMP = imperative; IMPF = imperfect; INF = innitive; PERF = perfect; PP = past participle;
PPF = pluperfect; REL = relative; SUBJ = subjunctive; VOC = vocative.

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Dative possessive option is preferred. The following examples illustrate this trend: the most
ancient pattern, which is the one usually employed by Plautus, is the Dative possessive
(sentences in (2a)); the counterpart with habeo begins to be widely used during the rst
century BCE or later (sentences in (2b)):
(2) a. Et eum
morbum
mi
esse,
ut qui me
opus
and that.ACC malady.ACC I.DAT be.INF that
I.ACC need.NOM
sit
insputarier?
be.SUBJ.PRES spit.upon.SUBJ.PASS
And that I have that malady, that its necessary for me to be spat upon?
(Plautus, Captivi 553)
b. quicquid est ubicumque est quodcumque agit renidet hunc
whatever is
whenever
is
whatever
does smiles this.ACC
habet morbum
has
disease.ACC
whatever is, whenever is whatever he does, he smiles: he has this disease
(Catullus, Carmina 39 incipit)
(3) a. si ei
forte
fuisset
febris
if he.DAT by chance has been.SUBJ.PPF fever
if by chance he has had a fever
b. si cui
venae sic moventur, is habet febrim
if REL veins so tremble
he has
fever.ACC
and if his veins tremble in this way, he has a fever

(Plautus, Miles 720)

(Cicero, De fato 15)

(4) a. Credam,
pudor si quoiquam lenoni
siet
I will believe shame if any
pimp.DAT is
I will believe it, if any pimp is ashamed (lit. has shame)
(Plautus, Curculio 58)
b. Si pudorem
haberes, ultimam mihi
pensionem remississes
If shame.ACC have
last
I.DAT payment
send back.SUBJ.PPF
If you were ashamed (lit.: had shame), you would send me back the last payment
(Seneca, De Beneciis 29.10)
My claim is in keeping with Baldi & Nutis study on the relationship holding between the
habeo and the mihi est strategies in the domain of experience: their data show that
in spite of the higher frequency of habeo x [in Early Latin], in Plautus we counted only
seven occurrences where the subject of the verb is a human participant that can somehow
be related to the semantic role of experiencer. This contrasts with 35 examples of this kind
with mihi est x. Such an inversion of the ratio suggests that the expression of an
experiencer relation, although not inconsistent with habeo, is a minor function of this
verb and is a primary function of the dative construction in an early author like Plautus.
(Baldi & Nuti 2010: 26061)
It is likely that the have-possessive construction gradually began to be regarded as the
more expressive option. Evidence comes for instance from Donatus commentary of
Terentius work Andria, where we nd a valuable annotation which give us a precise idea
about the greater expressiveness (plus dixit) of the metaphor in animo habeo compared to the
simple verb scio: Plus dixit in memoria habeo, quam si dixisset scio, I have in memory
means more than if one says I know (Commentum Terentii: Andria, 40). The incongruity of
possessing something abstract (e.g. a temperature) is clearly stressed by Seneca (Ep. 119.12):

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[] sic divitias habent quomodo habere dicimus febrem, cum illa nos habeat. E contrario
dicere solemus febris illum tenet: eodem modo dicendum est divitiae illum tenent.
(these individuals) have riches just as we say that we have a fever, when really the fever
has us. Conversely, we are accustomed to say: A fever grips him. And in the same way
we should say: Riches grip him.
Besides its being perceived as more expressive, it is likely that the motivation behind the high
productivity of this construction depends partially on syntactic factors: the habeo pattern
models the possessive situation by accommodating it to the syntax of two-participant events
that work on the basis of subject = Nominative and object = Accusative. Crucially, the
transitive pattern is the most ordinary and productive in Latin, and this is why this basic
transitive schema came to cover other, dierent types of two-participant situations (like
possessive ones), gradually supplanting the Dative possessive alternative option.
Evidence for the increasing generality of the have-possessive construction comes from
some modern Romance languages, which select this option in order to encode a multifaceted
range of experiences and feelings (sentences 5a,b) as well as other abstract and nonprototypical objects (sentence 5c; for a detailed discussion of this construction and its areal
distribution in European languages and beyond, see Bossong 1998; Haspelmath 2001;
Manzelli, Ramat & Roma 2002; Stolz et al. 2008: 2.3):
(5) a. French
Jai
faim
I have hunger
I am hungry, lit. I have hunger
b. Portuguese
Tenho frio
I have cold
I am cold, lit. I have cold
c. Italian
Ho
fretta, sonno
I have hurry, sleep
I am in a hurry, I am sleepy, lit. I have hurry, sleep
The high productivity of the abstract have-construction in modern Romance languages may
be understood as a consequence of the loss of the Dative possession copular construction
between Late Latin and Early Romance. The have-construction describes a situation from
the point of view of the possessor and is thus more consistent with depicting an Experienceroriented perspective: it is the Experiencer, instead of the stimulus, who is syntactically realized
as subject.
Before drawing some conclusions, let us briey touch on the issue of a parallel Possessive
construction which may have played a signicant role in the spread of the Abstract Possession
construction. The verb habeo, jointly with a Prepositional Phrase metaphorically denoting a
cognitive entity as a container, was used in Latin also to express the semantic eld of
remembering. This pattern was in use already from the second century BCE, with the
meaning of remember (6) as well as have in ones mind, also with the dynamic implication
of recall (7):
(6) In memoria habeo
In memory I have
I have in memory (Terentius, Andria 40)

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(7) Patrue,
facito in memoria habeas, tuam maiorem liam
Father.VOC do.IMP in memory have
your older.ACC daughter.ACC
mihi
te
despondisse
I.DAT you.ACC promise.in.marriage.INF
Uncle, see you remember that you have promised me your older daughter
(Plautus, Poenulus 1278)
Example (8) below shows further gurative use within the metaphorical schema in animo
habere. In this case, the concrete referent aquam water is also metaphorically thought of as
an abstract entity:
(8) aquam te
in animo habere
water you.ACC in mind have.INF
you have water in your mind

(Lucilius, Sat. Fragm. 764)

To sum up, in animo habeo and in memoria habeo are frequently attested in my corpus (45 and
6 tokens respectively). Conceivably, this construction may have initially established the
abstract interpretation of the verb habeo with non-prototypical locations and or objects,
subsequently giving rise to other metaphorical exploitations.
4. STATES

ARE CONTAINERS: A FULLY PRODUCTIVE SCHEMA IN LATIN

Within this metaphor, abstract mental states are interpreted as situations placed in reality: thus,
the psychological world as experienced and conceptualized by sentient humans is guratively
expressed in terms of concrete entities as they exist in the physical environment. In this case, the
source domain is a container and the target domain, metaphorically actualized in concrete
places, can involve several kinds of psychological states. Consider some English examples:
He is in love.
She is in a rage.
My uncle is in despair.
As can be noted, these metaphors are based on complex structures made up of a stative verb
and a gurative prepositional phrase which has a spatial origin.
This metaphorical mapping is well exploited in Latin. Several gurative schemas featuring
the container image are in fact attested (I provide in brackets their token frequency in my
corpus):
in
in
in
in
in
in
in
in
in
in
in

dubio sum I am in doubt

dubio haereo I am stuck in doubt
dubio iaceo I lie in doubt
dubio sto I stand in doubt
morbo sum I am in disease
morbo cubo I lie in sickness
timore sum I am in fear
terrore sum I am in fear
metu sum I am in fear
aegritudine sum I am in sickness
gaudio sum I am in joy

(3 tokens)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(6)
(1)
(4)
(1)
(11)
(4)
(1)

FEDRIANI

in
in
in
in
in
in

EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN

invidia sum I am in envy

desiderio sum I am in longing
maerore iaceo I lie in sorrow
maestitia sum I am in grief
frigore maneo I remain in coldness
dolore sum I am in pain

315

(4)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)

These constructional schemas display considerable semantic variation: rst of all, several
stative verbs are employed to express the locative source (esse, haerere, iacere, stare, cubare
and manere); moreover, this schema is lled up with a wide range of stimuli pertaining to the
emotional eld (maestitia, maeror, invidia, gaudium, timor, terror and metus), to bodily
sensations (aegritudo, frigor and dolor) and to the cognitive domain (dubium, desiderium).
A particularly well-exploited lexical subdomain is that of fear: three dierent stimuli enter
the schema as psychological locations, and the construction is already attested in Early
Latin:
(9) a. ita tota sum misera in metu
so all am pitiable in fear.ABL
Oh dear me, Im scared through and through!
b. nescis
quo in metu et quanto in periclo
do not know REL in fear
and great
in trial
You dont realize the worry and the danger we face.

(Plautus, Cistellaria 535)

simus
are
(Terence, Phormio 57)

Such expressions gave rise to further metaphorical exploitations. For example, Seneca
describes the situation of in metu vivere living in fear (De constantia sapientis 9.2).
Conversely, cognitive states expressed as locations are attested only later. In desiderio esse
to be in a state of longing is found in Cicero:
(10) non essem
tam diu in desiderio
rerum
mihi
carissimarum
not have been so long in longing.ABL things.GEN I.DAT beloved.GEN
if I had not so long been cut o from all that is dearest to me
(Cicero, Ep. ad Fam. 2, 12, 3)
In dubio sum I am in doubt, in danger may have paved the way for analogical extensions
such as in dubio haereo, in dubio iaceo and in dubio sto (I am stuck, I lie, I stand in doubt,
respectively). All of them are attested only once in Latin, in the rst century CE. In examples
(11) and (12), the Experiencer is metonymically expressed as a cognitive entity:
(11) conscientia () haeret in dubio
conscience
is stuck in doubt.ABL
conscience () is stuck in a state of doubt
(12) mens stetit in dubio
mind stood in doubt.ABL
(his) mind hesitated, lit. stood in doubt
(13) in dubio
vitae
lassa
Corinna iacet
in danger.ABL life.GEN languished Corinna lies
Corinna lies languishing in danger of life

(Quint., Decl. XIX maiores 9, 19)

(Lucanus, Pharsalia 7, 247)

(Ovidius, Amores 2, 13, 1)

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Figure 1. The

STATES ARE LOCATIONS

109, 2011

metaphor in Latin

The employment of this metaphor with dierent verbs provides evidence for the productivity
of the schema.
A model for representing schematicity and productivity in metaphors has been worked out
by Clausner & Croft (1997). Following this model, I suggest the graphic representation shown
in Fig. 1, to show the possible levels of schematicity and entrenchment of the STATES ARE
LOCATIONS metaphor in Latin and its subordinate instantiations. This metaphor is highly
productive, because the most schematic level, where we nd what I label a Basic Event Type
Metaphor, is itself productive, as the boxes in bold show. Hence, the schematic metaphor
placed at the highest level of generality is capable of extending its syntactic pattern (and its
conceptual counterpart) to other, semantically related schema-specic metaphors. Some of
them are productive also, and give rise to a number of low-level metaphor instantiations (cf.
in dubio sum in dubio haereo, in dubio iaceo, in dubio sto). The bold lines symbolize these
productive relations by means of which the general schema is actualised by dierent
constructions at lower-level degrees of schematicity.
It is worth noting that the locative schema shows productive trends also at lower levels of
schematicity. In the rst case, the stimulus holds steady while the verb changes: for example,
the in dubio sum schema extends its partially lexically lled pattern to other verb types, and
one could take the fact that they share the same stative Aktionsart as an indication that this
case of metaphorical extension is basically motivated by aspectual factors. In another case, a
metaphorical schema characterized by low schematicity singles out synonymous constructions by substituting the stimulus and maintaining the basic verb esse. These novel forms are
structurally and semantically similar, not to say identical, to the more schematic model, as in
the case of in timore esse  in terrore esse. However, if the modelled item turns out to be a
hapax, as in the case of in terrore esse, in maerore iacere, the relation which the
superordinate schema yields is only partially productive, and this situation is symbolised by
dashed lines.
5. EVENTS

ARE MOVEMENTS: AN EXAMPLE OF SEMI-PRODUCTIVITY IN LATIN METAPHORS

The EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS schema constitutes a specic instantiation of the Event Structure
Metaphor, which has been suggested by Lako and his associates in several works and
subsequently studied in a number of languages, at least within the cognitivist approach (see
e.g. Lako 1993; Emanatian 1992; Boers 1996; Radden 1998). The point of studies such as
Lako (1993) is that various aspects of event structure, including notions such as states,
changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes and means, are characterized cognitively via

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317

metaphor in terms of space, motion, and force (p. 219). In a nutshell, both events and
movements are mobile extensions: while taking place, they usually occupy both space and
time.
The EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS schema is a very general and schematic metaphor whose source
domain is semantically rich and with only few details lled in (initial location, movement and
nal location): therefore, it can be actualised in many dierent ways and used to represent a
wide range of processes and situations (Kovecses 2002: 33). One of the main consequences of
the semantic generality of this schema is that, arguably, it can be applied to a wide range of
domains other than that of experience. As an example, one can quote the Latin expression
tempus fugit (time ies, lit. escapes), which, though metaphorically entering a motion
schema, does not describe an experiential situation or process, but rather may be labelled as
an instance of the sub-schema TIME PASSING IS MOTION OF AN OBJECT (see Kovecses 2002: 33),
which also pertains to the general mapping EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS and represents a more
specic and thus less schematic instantiation of it. To sum up, it is clear that the degree of
semantic generality of the schema EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS is inherently too high for our
purposes and needs to be further specied. In particular, I argue that Latin experiential
constructions featuring a motion schema can be described as two less schematic metaphors,
which I label:
CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING
INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS

Semantically constrained in this way, the two subordinate patterns are cast at their proper
degree of schematicity and can account for the Latin data. For instance, the metaphorical
schema INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS imposes more
constraints on the general schema, because INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES is a particular
subtype of EVENT, and ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS constitute a specic subclass of the
broader category MOVEMENTS which cast light on a unique semantic feature of the motion
process, i.e. its last segment. Thus, generic metaphorical schemas dier from specic ones with
regard to the degree of semantic generality (i.e. the number of details that could be lled in),
the degree of schematicity (i.e. the number of subordinate instantiations the schema may be
applied to) and what Kovecses (2000) called the SCOPE OF METAPHOR (i.e. the conceptual range
within which the metaphor can be applied and exploited).
The rst sub-schema is CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING. Typically, this pattern
combines a motion event and the entrance into a container, which expresses the specic
psychological state and the nal goal of the movement itself. Thus, this schema is meant to
join two dierent metaphors: specically, DISEASES ARE CONTAINERS and CONTRACTING A DISEASE
IS A FALLING. It is instantiated by six dierent nouns denoting disease which combine with two
verbs, cado I fall and incido I fall into, which are structurally related:
in
in
in
in
in
in

morbum cado incido I fall into disease

febrim incido I fall into a temperature
aegritudinem incido I fall into sickness
insaniam incido I fall into madness
dementiam incido I fall into (mental) insanity
iram incido I fall into anger

(10 tokens)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)

Falling into disease is the most frequent (and, probably, entrenched) schema, and therefore it
is likely to have paved the way for further extensions to other specic, semantically related
types of stimuli, being extended to quasi-synonymic, but more specic, expressions (febris

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temperature and aegritudo sickness, distress). In addition, anger, psychological insanity and
madness may be conceived of as mental diseases, which alter ones cognitive skills and make
one (mentally) ill. It is worth noting that this schema constitutes a specic instantiation of the
orientational metaphor BAD IS DOWN (Lako & 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 ller 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 dierent 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
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. 3.9.20)

(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)

This generalisation my seem too strong at rst 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 Lako & Johnson 1980: 17).

FEDRIANI

EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN

b. quodquomque est, quom ei

whatever
is
that
he.DAT
whatever it is, that fell into his mind

inciderit
fell

in
in

319

mentem
mind.ACC
(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. p ptein es noson
fall.INF to sickness.ACC
to fall ill
b. tomber malade
fall
ill
to fall ill
c. cadere malato
fall
ill
to fall ill

(Aeschylus, Prometheus 478)

This comparison shows us that, although the conceptualization and the linguistic expression
of emotions can vary cross-culturally (see Wierzbicka 1992; 1999; Kovecses 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 specic instantiation of the EVENTS ARE
MOVEMENTS schematic metaphor, namely INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE
ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS. In this case, the conguration of the event presupposes
a focus on the nal 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 dierent categories of stimuli, namely physiological feelings (hunger, sickness),
emotions (envy, fear, hate), anger as a kind of mental illness and, nally, cognitive processes
(recalling something, being doubtful). Moreover, the schema is attested with dierent verb
types: most frequently with venio I come, but also with more specic 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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respectively). These preverbs have a perfective value, which adds to the verb a momentary
aspect, yielding an opposition with the bare lexical semantics of the simple counterpart: venio
I come vs. advenio pervenio I reach, I arrive at (on perfectivising preverbs in Latin, see e.g.
Garc a Hernandez 1989; Haverling 2000; and the relevant papers collected in Moussy 2005).
With simple verbs, the most used prepositions are in to and ad to, towards, meaning in
these constructions reaching of, attaining to or being near the endpoint and focusing on the
accomplishment of the goal.
This aspectual specication ties in inherently with the claim that the subordinate schema
under scrutiny, INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS,
semantically casts light on a particular segment of the motion process, i.e. the reaching of the
nal goal, guratively encoding a psychological state. Crucially, psychological states are
metaphorically thought of as locations (3 above). This means that we are dealing with a
complex schema which can be further analysed as illustrated in Fig. 2.

Figure 2. The
construction

INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS

The telic aspect of the schema is sometimes lexically strengthened: for example, madness
can be conceptualised as the nal (ultimam) stage of a degenerative process, imagined as a fast
path (via) leading to mental illness, as in the following sentences:
(19) a. tunc illi
dirus animi
morbus ad insaniam
pervenit ultimam
thus that.GEN dread mind.GEN disease to madness.ACC reached last.ACC
thus the dread disease of that mans mind reached the furthest limit of madness
(Seneca, De clementia 1.25.2)
b. nulla celerior ad insaniam
via
est
None quicker to madness.ACC road is
there is no quicker road to madness
(Seneca, De ira 2.36.4)
As I have briey mentioned above, a variety of stimuli can work as llers of this metaphor. A
particularly interesting case is that of bodily sensations such as hunger:
(20) cum in ipsa
fame
subvenissent
as
in itself.ABL hunger.ABL arrived.SUBJ.PPF
as they arrived in a state of actual famine

(Cicero, De domo sua 11)

(21) Alexander...
inopia
frumenti
quoque prope ad famem
ventum erat
AlexanderNOM lack.ABL grain.GEN also
close to starvation.ACC come.PP was
Alexander had almost come close to starvation through lack of grain
(Curtius Rufus, Hist. Alex. 7.4.22)
In Italian a reverse conceptualisation is also attested, in which hunger comes to the
Experiencer:

FEDRIANI

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321

(22) mi
e` venuta fame
I.DAT is come.PP hunger
hunger has come to me
This double-faceted realization of the motion process is also attested with ira: as Seneca
writes,
(23) Saepe ad nos ira venit, saepius nos
ad illam
often to us.ACC anger comes more often we to that.ACC.F
Anger often comes to us, but more often we go to it
(Seneca, De ira 3.12.1)
Another semantic eld involved in this schema is that of cognition. First, memory as
a cognitive location can guratively denote the process of remembering, and therefore
to come back to memory means to recall. Interestingly, in the following excerpt
the coming back pattern is repeated with two near-synonymous verbs, redeo and
regredior:
(24) Nunc demum in memoriam redeo,
quom mecum
<re>cogito.
Now indeed in memory.ACC come back when I.ABL-with think hard
Nunc edepol
demum
in memoriam
regredior
audisse
Now by Pollux
indeed
in memory.ACC come back
hear.INF.PERF.
And now I come back into memory, when I think hard to myself; And now I come
back into memory to have heard ...
(Plautus, Captivi 1022-3)
The other situation depicted through the motion schema is that of becoming doubtful about
something (de civitate, de sorte):
(25) a. homo timidus inperitus
que(...) ut
de
civitate in dubium
veniret
Man shy
inexperienced and
CONJ about city.ABL in doubt.ACC comes
a shy and inexperienced man () coming into doubt about the city
(Cicero, Pro A. Caecina oratio par. 18)
b. Ei
mihi,
etiam de
sorte
nunc venio in dubium
miser?
Alas I.DAT also
about fate.ABL now come in doubt.ACC poor
Alas! Poor me, now I also come into doubt about fate? (Terentius, Adelphoe 242)
This construction also allows structural variation. In (26), the Experiencer is encoded with the
Dative case and what triggers the dubious reaction, i.e. the stimulus, is expressed as the
syntactic subject. It is likely that the mihi venit in mentem (lit. me.DAT comes in mind)
construction has once again played the role of general prototype, being able to extend its
syntactic structure to other, semantically related construction types (recall also the abovementioned case of mihi incidit in mentem):
(26) mihi
veniat
in dubium
tua des et constantia
I.DAT may come in doubt.ACC your faith and rmness
to me your faith and rmness may come into doubt
(Cicero, Pro P. Quinctio Oratio par. 5)
This last example shows how constructional schemas are interconnected and inuence each
other from both a semantic and a structural perspective. Of course, structural shaping exerted
by one construction on another is expected if the two are conceptually linked in some way.

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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
schemas 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 exible and open enough to be subsequently
exploited and semantically rened in dierent ways. Hence, it came to express quite diverse
meanings pertaining to dierent experiential subelds, as Fig. 3 shows.

Figure 3. The

EVENTS ARE MOVEMENTS

metaphor in Latin

At the highest level of schematicity we nd the Basic Event Type Metaphor, i.e. EVENTS
At a lower level we have the two schema-specic 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 (Bardal 2008: 89.), 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 llers 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 dierent levels of
schematicity: the specic 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
ARE MOVEMENTS.

FEDRIANI

EXPERIENTIAL METAPHORS IN LATIN

schema, i.e. the two schema-specic metaphors

323

and
are more productive
MOVEMENTS in the domain of

CONTRACTING A DISEASE IS A FALLING

INCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES ARE ENDPOINTS OF TELIC MOVEMENTS

than the superordinate and schematic metaphor

experience.
6. THE

EVENTS ARE

INTERPLAY OF STATE, MOTION AND POSSESSION SCHEMAS: SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this paper I have pointed out that three dierent conceptual schemas compete in Latin in
encoding and framing physical and psychological feelings. Each schema displays dierent
degrees of schematicity and productivity; they also dier 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
dierences 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 nal, 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
lling the three dierent 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

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 denition 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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Table 2. Possible llers in Motion, Location and Possession metaphors

Motion

Location

Possession

morbus
invidia
aegritudo
dubium
febris
insania
ira
odium
fames
dementiam
rabiem
memoria

morbus
invidia
aegritudo
dubium

morbus
invidia
aegritudo
dubium
febris
insania
ira
odium
fames

metus
gaudium
desiderium
dolor
timor
terror
maestitia
maeror
frigus

metus
gaudium
desiderium
dolor

fastidium
sitis
pudor
verecundia
laetitia

alternative to express inchoative processes and a valid strategy for imposing a dynamic
perspective on stative feelings. After all, this alternation in coding strategies is to be expected in
semantic elds concerning experience, because the ExperiencerStimulus relations show a wide
variation of argument linking patterns and alternative metaphorical ways of conceptualizing
the same experience (e.g. Bossong 1998; Croft 1998; Verhoeven 2007). Usually, languages do
not limit themselves to a single syntactic option to conceptualise a situation with a one-to-one
mapping between function and form, but instead display a wide inventory of lexical and
syntactic strategies that allow a given situation to be portrayed in alternative ways (see
Langacker 1991: 330). Conceivably, limits to variation do exist: in our case, for instance, the
fact that timor fear, terror fright, pavor fear and frigor cold only occur with the Location
schema tells us that fear and cold were preferably conceived of as containers placed in the real
world. Thus, the aspectual focus was cast on their stativity, durativity and atelicity, apparently
excluding any type of inchoative reading. This shows that, generally speaking, experiential
metaphors and grammatical constructions tend to be associated along preferred paths.
In conclusion, in this article I have shown that tools provided by the cognitivist framework
can shed considerable light on the synchronic and diachronic organization of a specic
metaphorical domain, even for a dead language such as Latin. From a theoretical
perspective, the present cognitivist corpus-based study has allowed (i) to cover a wider range of
data; (ii) to shed light on a patterned variation in Latin experiential metaphors, and to show
that this variation is not randomly but rather conceptually motivated; (iii) to systematically
describe some metaphoric networks in terms of productivity and schematicity, and to
individuate which patterns worked as models for further extensions; (iv) to identify semantic
and aspectual constraints in the applicability of dierent sources to dierent target domains,
i.e. to highlight emotion-specic metaphors (cf. Stefanowitsch 2005b); and (v) to provide
evidence for the cross-cultural reality of metaphorical mappings, which suggested that an
experience can be metaphorically conceptualised in the same way across both space and time.

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325

The challenge was to check whether applying (psycho)linguistic notions such as frequency,
schematicity and entrenchment could be useful in order to adequately describe a structured
inventory of metaphors from a dead language, and I hope to have shown that this theoretical
question has a positive answer.
Dipartimento di Linguistica teorica e applicata
Universita` di Pavia
Corso Strada Nuova 65
I-27100 Pavia, Italy
Email: chiara.fedriani@unipv.it
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