Some questions that may not have answers yet

[TomHChappell]

(I think the questions in this post, might require too much space to answer, to include it in the Linguistic Miscellany subtopic.)

I’m considering two Latin phrases from the Requiem.
From the Dies Irae com es “solvet saeclum in favila”.
From the Lacrimosa comes “resorgit ex favila”.

Also, two English phrases:
“dissolves the world into ashes” and “stands back up from the ashes”.

I notice the Latin prepositions “in” and “ex”, and the English prepositions “into” and “from”.

To my mind these are consistent with “the localist hypothesis”, which seems to have been supported by Charles Fillmore inter alia. (I could be wrong.)

Genetically both Latin and English are in the Indo-European family; Latin in the Italo-Celtic branch and English in the Germanic branch. (I could be wrong.)
Areally they’re both in the Standard Average European sprachbund, although English is marginally so. (I could be wrong.)
Typologically no similarities clearly relevant for my question come readily to mind at the moment. (I could be wrong.)

_____

So, as for my question(s):
How and/or why did it come about that in English we use prepositions like “in” and “to” and “into” and “from” and “out of”, and verbs like “turn”, to talk about changes of identity, such as turning something into ashes, or making something out of mud?
(These prepositions and verbs have to do with locations and directions and sources and destinations and motions.)

And is a very similar sort of thing also happening in Latin?

Is this phenomenon limited to Indo-European languages or not?
Or is it limited to the Standard Average European linguistic area, or not?
Or is it limited to some typological type, or not?

For that matter; how prevalent is it in I-E languages? A significant majority, or not?
And how prevalent is it in SAE languages? A significant majority, or not?
And are their typological characteristics, or simple combinations of them, which predict that an overwhelmingly greater-than-chance majority of languages which share those traits, will exhibit this phenomenon? If so, what are those characteristics or combinations of characteristics?

_____

Is there anything in the cognitive study of language which predicts or explains this phenomenon?
If so, what is the explanation?

……….

For all I know, there may very well not be an answer at all; or there may be a few or several answers none of which are accepted as most-probable by most academic linguist.
In either of those events, is there some mostly-accepted theoretical reason, that predicts no such answer will ever be found?
(Similar to a proof, in mathematical logic, that a given “theorem” is Formally Undecidable.)
OTOH if there is one explanation that most scholars accept as probable, or some smallish set of explanations that most scholars think probably includes the true explanation, what is (are) it (they)?

—————

Thanks to anyone who can shed any light on any of these questions!

[zompist]

How and/or why did it come about that in English we use prepositions like “in” and “to” and “into” and “from” and “out of”, and verbs like “turn”, to talk about changes of identity, such as turning something into ashes, or making something out of mud?

Metaphor. This particular one conceptualizes a physical transformation as a journey. The great advantage of metaphors is that you can use lexicon, ideas, and grammar in the new conceptual domain.

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

[Ketsuban]

Areally they’re both in the Standard Average European sprachbund, although English is marginally so. (I could be wrong.)

Sprachbünde are bounded in time as well as space and the features which characterise the Charlemagne Sprachbund mostly postdate Latin as a vernacular language, so it's not really correct to put Latin in it.

[hwhatting]

German and Russian similar use verbs for turning or movement for transformations and use similar pronouns. But both are part of SAE.

[Man in Space]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Does this suffice?

[WeepingElf]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Does this suffice?

Seems useful. Thank you!

[alice]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Does this suffice?

I notice Jane Espenson, sometime writer on BtVS, is credited there. That's an interesting parallel career.

[zompist]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Does this suffice?

Yes, thanks. The particular metaphor is CHANGE IS MOTION. Possibly more specific ones, see the file starting at page 15.

(Their convention is to capitalize metaphor names.)

[xxx]

And as a practical exercise,
how do you translate this into your favorite conlangs...

sarzaminzabankhod:
“solvet saeclum in favila”.
^¬0¬»O*±t¬ª‡ã®±ª
(all seen next as black given by breath burning...)
“resorgit ex favila”.
gN¬t¬ª­*±t¬ª­‡ã®±ª
(man undead given by black given by breath burning...)

[bradrn]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Speaking of Lakoff & Johnson, here’s another question I’ve been pondering for a while: why does their work seem to be so neglected in modern linguistics? In all the papers I’ve read in linguistics, I’ve barely seen this stuff mentioned at all — even though a lot of my interests are related to topics where metaphor is highly relevant, e.g. grammaticalisation. (For some hard numbers, searching through the 799 papers I have saved in Zotero, Lakoff is mentioned in exactly 1 of them. Though admittedly not all of them have full searchable text.)

What makes this all the more astonishing is the intuitive appeal of Lakoff’s framework for metaphors in language — I have lots of papers dealing with metaphor, but hardly any of them attempt to identify consistent generalisations as Lakoff suggests. Even the best metaphor-heavy work I know of — Schultze-Berndt’s Simple and Complex Verbs in Jaminjung — mentions Lakoff only in passing, and doesn’t attempt to identify any generalisations comparable to those identified by Lakoff. Perhaps it’s seen as too blatantly obvious? Or perhaps modern linguists resist attempts to link linguistic features to ways of thought?

[zompist]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Speaking of Lakoff & Johnson, here’s another question I’ve been pondering for a while: why does their work seem to be so neglected in modern linguistics? In all the papers I’ve read in linguistics, I’ve barely seen this stuff mentioned at all — even though a lot of my interests are related to topics where metaphor is highly relevant, e.g. grammaticalisation. (For some hard numbers, searching through the 799 papers I have saved in Zotero, Lakoff is mentioned in exactly 1 of them. Though admittedly not all of them have full searchable text.)

Good question! Maybe you're not reading the right books though. E.g I just checked Cullicover & Jackendoff, a 2005 syntax book more on the Chomskyan side (but not entirely so), and Lakoff is cited extensively. Tomasello's book on language acquisition cites him almost as much. Goldberg's Construction Grammar book: oodles of references. On the other hand, Chomsky's Minimalist Program: zilch. Like much of cognitive linguistics, there's just no room for the ideas in mainstream Chomskyanism.

If it's grammars you're reading, it could just be that metaphors are still considered a pretty advanced topic. They are relevant to grammaticalization, but if you're writing a grammar it's quite enough work to write down the phonology and morphology and maybe even the syntax. Pragmatics is often neglected as well.

[bradrn]

The standard work is Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; I expect they discuss and name this particular metaphor but they have no index so I can't find it offhand. Well worth reading the whole thing though. This sort of thing is very very common and basic to word-building and grammaticalization.

Speaking of Lakoff & Johnson, here’s another question I’ve been pondering for a while: why does their work seem to be so neglected in modern linguistics? In all the papers I’ve read in linguistics, I’ve barely seen this stuff mentioned at all — even though a lot of my interests are related to topics where metaphor is highly relevant, e.g. grammaticalisation. (For some hard numbers, searching through the 799 papers I have saved in Zotero, Lakoff is mentioned in exactly 1 of them. Though admittedly not all of them have full searchable text.)

Good question! Maybe you're not reading the right books though. E.g I just checked Cullicover & Jackendoff, a 2005 syntax book more on the Chomskyan side (but not entirely so), and Lakoff is cited extensively. Tomasello's book on language acquisition cites him almost as much. Goldberg's Construction Grammar book: oodles of references.

Huh, that’s good to hear. I need to read Goldberg in any case — the more I learn about Construction Grammar, the more I like it.

Another thought: Women, Fire and Dangerous Things was published in 1987. The thesis I linked is from only 12 years later. So maybe I just need to be reading more recent works! (e.g., I found a reference to Lakoff in Epps’s 2008 grammar of Hup, albeit only once in passing.)

If it's grammars you're reading, it could just be that metaphors are still considered a pretty advanced topic. They are relevant to grammaticalization, but if you're writing a grammar it's quite enough work to write down the phonology and morphology and maybe even the syntax. Pragmatics is often neglected as well.

Another good point. (I do wish grammars had more pragmatics!) That said, it’s hardly just grammars which I’m thinking of.

[xxx]

Some questions that may not have answers yet

don't forget that you hold with your mind the human universals to find clues,
and your conlang to test them, no matter if it's about reinventing the wheel,
what is more satisfying here below than receiving answers,
is to seek them by questioning the world...