(Cognitive Linguistics Research, Vol. 47) Margaret E. Winters, Heli Tissari, Kathryn Allan-Historical Cognitive Linguistics-De Gruyter Mouton (2010) PDF

Historical Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics Research

47
Editors
Dirk Geeraerts
John R. Taylor
Honorary editors
René Dirven
Ronald W. Langacker
De Gruyter Mouton
Historical Cognitive
Linguistics
Edited by
Margaret E. Winters
Heli Tissari
Kathryn Allan
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-022643-0
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022644-7
ISSN 1861-4132
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Historical cognitive linguistics / edited by Margaret E. Winters, Heli

Tissari, Kathryn Allan.
p. cm. ⫺ (Cognitive linguistics research ; 47)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-11-022643-0 (alk. paper)
1. Linguisic change. 2. Cognitive grammar. 3. Historical lin-
guistics. I. Winters, Margaret E. II. Tissari, Heli. III. Allan,
Kathryn.
P142.H47 2010
4171.7⫺dc22
2010039818
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
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Table of contents
Preface vii
1. History and Development
Introduction: On the emergence of diachronic cognitive linguistics

Margaret E. Winters 3
2. The Evolution of Language
On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics

(HCL): Some theoretical considerations
Roslyn M. Frank and Nathalie Gontier 31
Metaphor in discourse history
Andreas Musolff 70
3. Cognitive Approaches to Syntactic Change
Where do beneficiaries come from and how do they come about?

Sources for beneficiary expressions in Classical Greek and
the typology of beneficiary
Silvia Luraghi 93
Finite and gerundive complementation in Modern and
Present-day English: Semantics, variation and change
Liesbet Heyvaert and Hubert Cuyckens 132
4. Cognitive Approaches to Meaning
Tracing metonymic polysemy through time:

material for object mappings in the OED
Kathryn Allan 163
The roles of reader construal and lexicographic authority
in the interpretation of Middle English texts
Louise Sylvester 197
vi Table of contents
5. The Expression of Emotions over Time
Conceptual networking theory in metaphor evolution:

Diachronic variation in models of love
Richard Trim 223
Cognitive historical approaches to emotions: Pride
Małgorzata Fabiszak and Anna Hebda 261
English words for emotions and their metaphors
Heli Tissari 298
6. Afterword
Prospects for the past:
Perspectives for cognitive diachronic semantics
Dirk Geeraerts 333
Index 357
Preface
The rapid success of Cognitive Linguistics as a theory, from the mid-1980s on,
has led to continued exploration of many subfields of Linguistics through its
lens. Diachronic work has not been exempt from this general interest, although
here, as within other theories, it has not attracted the attention given to syn-
chronic studies. To the best knowledge of the organizers, in fact, the diachronic
session at the meeting at Krakow in August of 2007 was the first to focus di-
rectly on historical questions at an International Cognitive Linguistics confer-
ence. The first goal of this theme session was, therefore, a simple one: to bring
historical linguists working within this framework together to report on their
various strands of research. The result, the organizers (and present editors)
hoped, would be more interaction among those doing diachronic research and
more awareness among cognitive linguists of historical studies. In addition we
hoped to start a conversation about the interaction between diachrony and syn-
chrony, thus stimulating wider discussion about what each of these approaches
might contribute to the other.
Not all of the presenters at the conference are represented in this collection
of papers, although most of them are, and one additional paper was also in-
cluded (by Silvia Luraghi). The organizers decided against formal respondents,
assigned to each paper, but rather ended the day-long session with a panel dis-
cussion where all the papers were commented on as a group. The focus of this
final panel was, however, the future of diachronic cognitive linguistics. More
specifically, there was dialog about what might develop from the approaches
underlying the presentations and what needed more attention in the future.
There was no attempt to capture this multi-faceted conversation in this volume;
rather a final paper by Dirk Geeraerts, who was one of the panelists, has been
included.
As editors we have listed ourselves in reverse alphabetical order. This some-
what unusal order was chosen in order to emphasize the very collaborative
relationship we have enjoyed as session organizers and editors.
There are many people we would like to thank, starting with ElĪbieta Ta-
bakowska who organized the Krakow conference. We are grateful to her for
the idea which has led not only to the conference session and, ultimately, this
volume, but also to a new collaboration and indeed friendship for the editors.
We thank all the participants in the session, those whose papers are in the
volume and those who for various reasons did not participate further; it was a
stimulating and satisfying day! Anke Beck from Mouton de Gruyter and Dirk
Geeraerts, in his role as editor of the Cognitive Linguistic Research series, en-
viii Preface
couraged us to think about publication from the very beginning and have been
sources of support all along, as has Birgit Sievert, also of Mouton de Gruyter.
We want to thank all those as well who read and commented on drafts of the
papers; the volume in its final form is greatly enriched as a result.
Päivi Koivisto-Alanko, also an organizer of the conference session, was un-
able to stay with us to the end in the editing of the volume, but her contributions
at the beginning were indeed valuable. We missed her advice and her good
sense after she had to withdraw from the project.
Each of us has personal expressions of gratitude which serve as well as the
dedication of this volume. Margaret Winters would like to thank, as always,
Geoff Nathan who never fails to support her undertakings. Heli Tissari wants
to thank her mother, Leena Tissari, for always listening patiently to any long
and detailed descriptions of university life. The result is that not only has her
mother encouraged her professionally, but also has begun to read philosophy of
science herself, among other things. Kathryn Allan would like to thank Philip
Durkin for all his support and encouragement during the preparation of the
volume and for the many, many cups of tea.
1. History and Develoment
Introduction: On the emergence of diachronic
cognitive linguistics1
Margaret E. Winters
Abstract
While 1987 might be considered a pivotal year in the development cognitive linguis-
tics (Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1987; Langacker 1987), the actuation of the
theory must be dated somewhat earlier. Kemmer (1992) refers, in fact, to Ross (1972)
on fuzzy grammatical categories as an early analysis of phenomena which have be-
come central to the contemporary theory. While little was published in a specifically
cognitive vein in the 1970s, it is certainly the case that explicitly cognitive papers
were appearing and being noticed in the early and mid-1980s and that a few of these
were already taking up a diachronic approach (see Sweetser 1982; Geeraerts 1983;
Winters 1987a and b). These papers explored, variously, conceptual (Sweetser) and
lexical change (Geeraerts), as well as a methodology for talking about grammatical
evolution (Winters). At that time – and to a lesser extent still – historical approaches
were considered somewhat secondary to synchronic studies, in part because connec-
tions between synchrony and diachrony were ignored or even actively denied in other
theories. This was never the case in cognitive grammar. To be particularly noted is
Sweetser’s (1990) far-ranging consideration of the relationship between synchrony
and diachrony with attention to the semantic elements and processes common to both
(cf. Kemmer 1992 as well).
By the end of the 1980s, in part precisely because the theory has always posited
crucial conceptual and linguistic relationships between language history and current
language use (in addition to Sweetser 1990, see Langacker 1987), other issues like the
expression of emotions and grammaticalization were being approached diachronic-
ally as well as synchronically. There was not, however, extensive attention paid by the
cognitive community to language history. One exceptional conference in 1990 was
dedicated to the relationship between diachrony and synchrony (cf. Kellermann and
Morrissey 1992 and the papers within it both by cognitivists and by others with sym-
pathy for the already growing body of cognitive scholarship), while the Milwaukee
Symposium on Historical Linguistics drew several cognitive grammar contributions
(cf. Kemmer 1992 and others). To the best of this author’s knowledge, however, the
theme session at the International Conference on Cognitive Linguistics 10 (Krakow
1 This chapter has benefited from discussion with my co-editors and with others at
the conference at Krakow. I would particularly like to thank Geoffrey Nathan and
Dirk Geeraerts for their insights and suggestions.
4 Margaret E. Winters
2007) was the first session at either an otherwise cognitive or a diachronic conference
dedicated to the intersection of language history and cognitive theory.
This paper reviews this body of work across time in terms of its thematic contribu-
tions both to cognitive grammar and the study of language history. It also considers
where the papers were presented and published, that is, to uncover to what extent cog-
nitivists were interested in language change and specialists in diachronic linguistics
were interested in cognitive grammar. In a final section it provides an overview of the
papers in the volume, commenting on how they fit into the approaches discussed in
earlier parts of this paper and how they break new ground.
1. Introduction
In their proposal for a theme session at the International Cognitive Linguistics

Association meeting in Krakow, Poland (July 2007), the editors of the present
volume wrote: “the purpose of this [proposed] workshop is to bring together
researchers in the field of historical linguistics in order to facilitate their mutual
interaction, and to contribute to various strands of cognitive linguistics on a
larger scale by comparing the diachronic approach with contemporary theory
and discussion.” The workshop took place as proposed, and this volume is
the most concrete result, a collection of papers, presented for the most part at
the Krakow conference, which look both at the practice of historical cognitive
linguistics and also, more broadly, at the ways in which the fields of historical
linguistics and cognitive linguistics have – and continue to – interact.
The goal of this introductory chapter is to provide, first of all, an overview
of what has already been accomplished by approaching historical matters
through a cognitive linguistics lens. It will look in particular at the earliest
attempts to employ the then-emerging theory to elucidate change, by consid-
ering what emerged as the first subjects of inquiry, where these studies were
presented, and, although this is often less important, by whom. Rather than at-
tempting an état présent of all the many extensions of this theory, the next part
of the chapter will provide a view of how historical approaches and cognitive
linguistics have interacted and, from that interaction, how a diachronic ap-
proach and an emerging theory have informed each other. Finally, the chapter
contains a digest of the rest of the papers in this volume, with the goal of con-
textualizing them within these various interactions of diachronic and cognitive
approaches.2
2 A word is appropriate here as to sources: as with most historical studies. even those
of relatively shallow time depth, this one relies whenever possible on written re-
sources and attempts to avoid too much reliance on the memory of the author,
Introduction 5
2. The development of cognitive linguistics
2.1. Early synchronic approaches
It is hard to say when cognitive linguistics took shape as a theory; it is prob-

ably most accurate to state that it gradually coalesced out of a series of dispa-
rate but converging ideas into a recognizably unified whole. The theory (or set
of theories) falls clearly, of course, into the class of approaches to language
use (perception and production) which are semantics-based. One could argue,
as has been elsewhere (Lakoff 1987: 581–585; also Winters Ms.), that among
other origins it is an heir at least in the United States to the tradition of the
formal theory – or rather constellation of theoretical approaches (John Lawler,
p. c.) – called generative semantics. It is not a question of direct development,
however, since all varieties of generative semantics held, as a fundamental
claim, that deep structure, in the sense of transformational-generative gram-
mar, is equivalent to the semantic representation of the sentence. As such
generative semantics was taking a stance, from within the transformational
paradigm, against the equally formal approach labeled interpretative seman-
tics, what one might call the mainstream theory of the 1960s (for example,
Chomsky 1965). Cognitive linguistics diverges much further from that par-
ticular mainstream in that it sees syntax serving entirely as the symbolization
of meaning (Langacker 1987: 38). While further discussion of the entire ques-
tion of the relationship between cognitive linguistics and generative semantics
would take us far afield, it is worth noting that Kemmer (1990) cites one of
the formative papers of the Generative Semantics movement as one of the first
papers in the cognitive tradition (Ross 1972 on the notion of squishes, that is,
indeterminate boundaries rather than rigid divisions in the definition of parts
of speech). Ross proposes in that paper that it would be impossible ever to
define noun or verb as a set of necessary criteria, foreshadowing the use of
fuzzy sets several years later to characterize the meaning of grammatical –
and other – expressions.
Generative semantics has by no means been the only source identified for
cognitive linguistics. Dirk Geeraerts, in an early paper (1988), considers its
affinities with what he calls the historical-philological approach of the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Three aspects of the approach (again, as with
generative semantics, it is probably better described as an interconnected net-
despite the fact that I was a participant from the early years in historical cognitive
linguistics. For matters where I had to rely on my memory, I apologize in advance
for errors, particularly those of omission.
work of approaches) are particularly salient in this regard. First, it has, like
other linguistic theories of that era, a historical orientation; it also displays a
psychological orientation, and, finally, can be characterized as a hermeneuti-
cal discipline. As will be discussed immediately below and throughout this
introduction, cognitive linguistics has never been primarily historical in its
approach. It does, however, share this psychological orientation. Through its
place among what are called sciences humaines (as compared to natural sci-
ences), it looks for the “expressive intention behind …forms of expressions.”
(Geeraerts 1988: 652). Early European cognitive linguistics arises therefore
as something of a return to this pre-structuralist approach to semantics, in
part as a reaction against the strictures of structuralist linguistics. It is note-
worthy that whether the impetus toward a cognitive approach was an anti-
generativist or an anti-structuralist stance, there was agreement from the be-
ginning as to the need for a firmly entrenched psychological component to
the theory.
2.2. Diachronic cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics, like twentieth-century linguistic theories in general, was

at first developed from a purely synchronic point of view. Early work addressed
categorization and radial sets (leading to Lakoff 1987), and the meaning of
words normally dismissed as more or less meaningless in other frameworks,
most notably prepositions (Lindner 1982; Brugman 1981). Since one of the
earliest claims to be proposed and defended was that most linguistic units are
polysemous, there was quite a bit of attention paid from the beginning to how
the various meanings of a unit might be related one to another. Metaphor there-
fore played a crucial role as well from the earliest of these explorations, as did
some more traditional semantic fundamentals like the relationship between
root and epistemic meaning (cf. Sweetser whose 1990 book was the refinement
of her earlier work).
The earliest diachronic forays into cognitive linguistics followed rather
quickly in the early 1980s.3 During that decade cognitive historical research
3 In the following discussion I use a combination of publication dates and, whenever

possible, the date of the conference at which a given presentation was made. The
latter is obviously a better date in cases where the same research was first pre-
sented orally and then in written form, since what is of interest here is how early
diachronic ideas were made public rather than when they were published on paper.
This is particularly true for the earliest cognitive conferences where a good per-
Introduction 7
might be seen to fall generally into three categories of approaches. Of im-

mediate interest were prototype theory and categorization around prototypes,
grasped quite early as a way of discussing the development over time of rather
complex units. Geeraerts (1983) and Winters (1987) made similar proposals
for how change took place, but, rather than examining lexical data as Geer-
aerts was doing, Winters made a first attempt at organizing the varying uses
of the French subjunctive, both medieval and modern, as prototype catego-
ries. Her claim, sketched out in the conference paper first presented in 1985,
was that change in meaning (and grammatical meaning) could be analyzed as
change both in the configuration of any given radial set and also in the nature
of the prototypical meaning itself. Geeraerts was interested, from the earliest
of his work, in such questions as well and, additionally, in the interaction of
such semantic sets with each other, leading as they did to overlap and some
indeterminacy in the choice of lexical items with related meanings. A slightly
later discussion of grammatical change and its varying motivations is found
in Kemmer (1990) where voice (and particularly the middle) is the semantic
focus.
A second theme of early cognitive inquiry was the directionality of seman-
tic extension and change. It would not, however, be fair to state that the desire
of scholars to go beyond the notion that every word has its own history is an
innovation at this time. Pre-structuralist linguists had already posed the ques-
tion of general directional trends (Geeraerts 1988 explores their work) and
this exploration continues to the present (cf. Lehrer 1985 for a modern, non-
cognitive example). The line between cognitive theory and related approaches
is not a clear one. Elizabeth Traugott, for example, while not necessarily iden-
tifying herself as fully within the cognitive linguistics movement, published
papers on the meaning of adverbs – and their development over time from
root to epistemic uses (1982) – as well as other papers on directionality and
grammaticalization (1985). Eve Sweetser (1982) also follows in this line of re-
search with an approach to the often studied English conjunctions and modal
verbs using the notion of root and epistemic meaning in a cognitive frame-
work. One of her significant contributions in this early work is the proposal of
a third category, the “speech act” meaning brought to bear to explicate certain
modal and other uses which were neither root nor epistemic, but still clearly
meanings of the same modals and conjunctions. A paraphrase of one of her
centage of those exploring the possibilities of the new theory (not a large number at
first although it grew quickly) attended the same conferences and became aware of
research when it was still unpublished.
illustrative examples (Sweetser 1990) shows the uses of because in these three
different modalities of “causality”:
(1) a. She typed his dissertation because she loves him (root causality ex-
pressing an external cause for this action)
b. She loves him because she typed his dissertation (epistemic causality
expressing the source [or cause] of the speaker’s knowledge that she
loves him)
c. What are you doing tonight? – because there’s a good movie on
(speech act causality expressing why the speaker is asking the ques-
tion in the first half of the utterance)
Also of importance in the early to mid 1980s was Dirven (1985), addressing
specifically the role of metaphor in semantic extensions. The paper pro-
vides a typology of domains for extension, ranging from sounds (via sound
symbolism) to entire discourse (Orwell’s Animal Farm as an elaborately ex-
tended metaphor). Also of note among these early papers is Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk (1985) which considers a view of semantics where meaning
goes beyond truth-conditionality to include the interactional, the affective,
and the cognitive.
Finally, a new and particularly thought-provoking theme in some of the
earliest historical cognitive work consists of explorations of the relationship
between synchrony and diachrony.4 Sweetser (1990) approaches this often dif-
ficult – and too easily dismissed – topic directly. Her thesis is that, because of
the structure of the human mind, we can find the same kinds of directional-
ity of semantic elaboration, often yielding metaphors, both in current English
(where, for example, speakers use grasp or – more recently – get in the sense
of ‘understand’) and also in the diachronic development of these terms and
others. In parallel fashion, Langacker (1987) often hypothesizes on these same
relationships, not always in a fully developed exposition, but in notes and short,
sometimes sketchy, analyses and musing about how polysemy lends itself to a
panchronic approach. One such is his discussion of the development of to go
4 It has been pointed out to me by Dirk Geeraerts (p. c.) that this theme and the
immediately preceding one cannot be clearly separated, one from another. It is
the case, after all, that the relationship between synchrony and diachrony emerges
precisely from the nature of extension. What I find important here, however, is the
overt claim (Sweetser 1990 and elsewhere) that synchrony and diachrony interact
in intricate ways and that they should be studied together rather than kept distinct
as they were – and are – in much of Structuralism and other formal theories.
Introduction 9
in English and aller in French where they are similar markers of the future
(developed in detail in Langacker 1999). In both cases, the concept of motion
expressed in the verbs is still associated with the future marker as well and can
be recreated by prompting native speakers, although the ideas of futurity and
motion have become otherwise largely distinct. As a result the interrelationship
of the spatial and temporal meanings is neither strictly synchronic nor com-
pletely diachronic, but the steps which are necessary for a synchronic explana-
tion of this relationship are very much the same ones that can be seen to have
occurred diachronically in the development of these future markers. This third
area of inquiry is, of course, not clearly to be separated from the questions of
directionality that were mentioned above.
2.3. Papers, Publications, and Conferences
Before the founding of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association and

the first of its biennial meetings in 1989, a certain number of papers were pre-
sented at conferences not specifically organized around cognitive approaches.
One of the first conferences to include relevant papers took place in Poland
in 1984. It was organized around the theme of historical semantics and, more
specifically, word formation. Among those to present there and see their pa-
pers in print (Fisiak 1985) were Dirk Geeraerts and Barbara Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk. Most of the other presenters were either semanticists working in
other frameworks (Wolfgang Dressler, for example) or more general historical
linguists (Charles Li or Dieter Kastovsky).
One of the earliest organizations to show interest in this emerging theory
through the acceptance of abstracts was the International Conference on His-
torical Linguistics. In 1985 at least two relevant papers were presented (Win-
ters and Croft et al., both published in the proceedings volume in 1987), while
Traugott’s paper (also 1987) was certainly in the spirit of the theory as well.
Five years later, in 1990, the Milwaukee Symposium on Historical Linguis-
tics took place. Both Kemmer (published in 1992) and Winters (unpublished)
made presentations there in a diachronic cognitive framework, as did several
students of Kemmer’s who had participated as a group in a seminar she had
given the previous year at the University of California San Diego. Kemmer
specifically explored the nature of categories and their extension to grammati-
cal categories (it is here that she cites Ross 1972 as a very early cognitive pa-
per). She argued for prototype-based categories as a better way of defining
relationships among meanings than the prevalent Aristotelian model, and sug-
gested an exploration of grammatical categories as parallel to color categories.
It is my memory that presenters did not feel the need to set out the basic tenets
of cognitive linguistics as a theory; enough had circulated by then to allow us
an assumption of some basic knowledge on the part of the broader audience of
historical linguists who, indeed, confirmed that knowledge through their ques-
tions and comments.
In 1990, as well, the first conference that one might think of as specific to
diachronic cognitive issues was held in Duisburg, Germany. Entitled “Dia-
chrony within Synchrony: Language History and Cognition”, it drew partici-
pants who had been developing diachronic theoretical views within cognitive
linguistics as well as other historians whose approaches might be thought of as
less generative and more functional, or perhaps as not fitting fully into either
of these loose but prevalent divisions of linguistic theory. Among those who
had by 1990 considered themselves as affiliated with the cognitive enterprise
were Dirk Geeraerts, Brigitte Nerlich, Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszcsyk,
and Margaret Winters. However the discussion was not just theory-specific.
Rather, in tune with the theme of the conference, there was a great deal of ex-
ploration of different ways of looking at the interrelation between synchrony
and diachrony; I remember in particular a great deal of discussion of Keller’s
(1990) use of the concept of the invisible hand to explain the actuation of
change.5
Other participants were not cognitivists; of them, two should be mentioned.
First, R. Anttila made a presentation in which he set out ways in which cogni-
tive theory follows from a strong Cartesian tradition and is therefore not as new
as claimed. This kind of argumentation is, of course, often difficult to refute
or fully substantiate given the amount of interpretation needed to establish the
parallelism of different approaches, philosophical or linguistic, even when the
subject matter of the two theories being compared is the same. The more the
objects of analysis diverge, the more tenuous conclusions turn out to be. The
importance here, however, is that the cognitive approach was being considered
and analyzed by a diachronic linguist who also studied the philosophy and his-
tory of linguistics. Secondly, Dieter Kastovsky gave a talk on morphological
and typological considerations in changes in English. Kastovsky spoke from
the viewpoint of Natural Morphology, a somewhat different approach within
the general category of functional linguistics but, one which has been sympa-
thetic to the cognitive enterprise (cf. Dressler 1990; Winters 1994). The final
paper was given by Dirk Geeraerts who summed up the state of diachronic
cognitive linguistics as it was presented and discussed at the conference. He
provided an overview of how the notion of the prototype could be put to use in
5 Winters and Nathan (2000) was initially inspired by this discussion.

Introduction 11
diachronic semantics, touching on its attractiveness for linguistic descriptions

and for its explanatory force. Of particular interest is his view of the proto-
type as allowing both for structural stability and flexible extensibility, that is,
as furnishing the link between synchrony and diachrony. In the case of this
conference, as with others mentioned here, cognitive ideas were considered by
the participants in general to be one of many possible approaches to studying
semantic change.
It is not the intent of this introduction to mention (even if it were possible)
every historical paper produced with the growth of cognitive linguistics from
around 1990. The theory itself expanded rapidly, both in the number of those
for whom it has shaped their views on language (or found compatibility with
views they already had) and also in the number of linguistic subfields where the
theory has been adapted and applied. Language change has certainly been the
focus of some parallel increase in interest as well, but diachronics has never-
theless remained a rather marginal aspect of this theory as it has in linguistics
in general. One can attribute it at least in part to the dominance of certain
aspects of Chomskyan linguistics; lack of interest in diachronic topics derives
especially from the long-held notion that since human beings do not possess
knowledge of language history as an aspect of linguistic cognition, the subject
takes second place to synchronic studies whatever the theory in which they
are undertaken. With the increase in the number and sophistication of kinds
of computational support for research, corpus-based studies have become in-
creasingly popular, but even there too the tendency has been to look principally
at corpora of modern language to elucidate variation. Here we might posit the
influence of sociolinguistics, another area to grow widely during the 1980’s
and 1990’s, as well as the relative absence of diachronic data. The result of this
comparative lack of interest in diachrony is reflected by and large in cognitive
linguistics. Rather than historical studies, what most linguists find interesting
within the framework is that it has thrown new light on synchronic themes such
as the semantics of grammatical constructions, while also turning to phono-
logical studies, and continuing explorations into lexical semantics. Disserta-
tions in these areas have appeared, written by students of the first generation
of cognitivists who in turn finished their degrees and became active in the
field. There has also been an expansion within the framework into language
acquisition and second language learning, literary semantics, and a number
of approaches to the psychological underpinnings of language perception and
production.
Publication, not surprisingly, started somewhat slowly, although Metaphors
We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) was an early and highly influential
volume. A series of new books, all published in 1987, might be said to have
changed the landscape of cognitive linguistics; in that same year Ronald Lan-
gacker, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson all saw major books appear. In
1990, the first issue of the journal Cognitive Linguistics appeared. Individual
publications grew during the late 1980s as well, including proceedings vol-
umes from the early International Cognitive Linguistics Association meetings.
On the European side, Geeraerts (1983) was, to the best of my knowledge, the
– or one of the – earliest work in English.
For a very informal and totally unscientific survey of publications, I went
through the tables of contents of two journals, one dedicated to the linguistic
subfield of historical linguistics (Diachronica) and the other to the theory of
cognitive linguistics (Cognitive Linguistics). Diachronica, which is one of the
most widely read journals dedicated to studies of language change, publishes
articles based in a wide variety of theories. Since its founding there have been
two articles in a cognitive framework, one by Margaret Winters (1987) on the
history of French negation and the other by Janice Aski (2001) on prototype
categories and phonological split. In addition there have been reviews of ex-
plicitly cognitive volumes, one of Laura Janda’s 1996 book (reviewed by Raimo
Anttila 1997) and the other (2003 by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy) of William
Croft (2002).6 As the title implies, Cognitive Linguistics is the principle jour-
nal dedicated to this specific framework and publishes articles based in a wide
variety of approaches to the study of language, synchronic and diachronic.
Since 1994 it has published, by my count, six diachronic articles (Bybee 1994;
Rohdenburg 1996; Ziegler 1997; Winters 1997; Györi 2002; and Ziegler 2004).
With Bybee’s article on phonology and Winters’s on analogical change, the
other four have been on the semantics of grammar and grammaticalization.
There have, in addition, been a few reviews of historical works.
As another sign of growing interest in cognitive linguistics, the International
Cognitive Linguistics Association was founded in the late 1980s and held its
first conference, in Duisburg, Germany, in 1989. Conferences have taken place
every two years since, with an ever-expanding number of participants (about 70
at the first conference and almost 500 in Krakow, 2007). The range of linguis-
tic themes has increased as well from each one to the next, a clear reflection of
the expansion in the influence of the theory. There have never been, however,
many diachronic papers, neither in regular sessions nor in the increasing num-
ber of special topic – or theme – sessions.7 This is not to say that diachrony was
totally absent but, while there were a few diachronic papers at every confer-
6 Neither reviewer identifies himself as working within Cognitive Linguistics.

7 At the second ICLA conference (Santa Cruz, California 1991; proceedings Casad
1996) two papers out of nearly 30 addressed language change directly (Györi and
Introduction 13
ence, I do not remember any specified subsection of the general session or any
theme sessions devoted to this approach until the conference that has given rise
to this volume.
Two conferences with historical focus should be recalled here. The first,
Diachrony in Synchrony (Duisburg 1990), has already been discussed. The
second symposium, called Historical Semantics and Cognition, took place
several years later (Berlin 1996) and once again addressed the relationship
between synchrony and diachrony. The organizers made a conscious attempt
as well, through the invitation of both European and American speakers, to
create a trans-Atlantic dialogue, but found that the “expected synergetic effects
were perhaps not as intensive as we had hoped” (1999: v). Like the Duisburg
conference, this one brought together established cognitive linguists (Geer-
aerts, Langacker, and the co-editors Andreas Blank and Peter Koch) with oth-
ers who are perhaps better seen as sympathetic, but do not do all their research
in a cognitive framework, like Elisabeth Traugott, Brigitte Nerlich and David
Clarke. The papers approached the interaction of synchrony and diachrony
from various directions. They included rather abstract discussions; for example
both Langacker and Traugott questioned the degree to which lines of historical
development and of synchronic relatedness are truly parallel in their direction-
ality. Both papers concluded that the strict parallelism is not necessarily pres-
ent in all cases, with the result that historical precedence does not always lead
to perception of the same order of synchronic basic and extended meaning. At
the other end of the scale of abstractness there were, in addition, several data-
oriented case studies, one a lexical study of the evolution of body part names
from Latin and other sources in Romance (Thomas Krefeld) and another, lean-
ing more toward the grammatical, on the semantics of have and be in a range
of languages (Peter Koch).
The attraction of cognitive linguistic theory was clear from the beginning to
those working in the history of language or of specific languages. As was said
above, however, there was not, in the 1990s – that is, the period of most notice-
able growth for the theory – a great deal of interest in language change per se.
As a result, although language historians were turning to cognitive approaches,
there simply were not very many of us. This is not to say, however, that dia-
chronic matters never came up in other ways, either related to specific matters
of change (but not looking broadly at change itself) or through semantic analy-
ses which did not make specifically cognitive claims. One of the most obvi-
ous connections was to the growing area of research into grammaticalization;
Ravid) while two others (Janda and Kemmer & Schylkrot) had some diachronic
discussion in what were otherwise generally synchronic papers.
here the notion of semantic extension was put to work, explicitly or not, in the
description of the development of grammatical particles and affixes from inde-
pendent morphemes (for example, Britten 1990). There also began to be con-
nections made between cognitive theory and typology (Croft 1990) and with
corpus-based linguistics (Schönefeld 1999), that is, areas with a relationship
to diachronics without necessarily being diachronic themselves. Typology, on
the one hand, can be looked at both diachronically and synchronically; it can
be thought of as an area where the line between the two is almost necessarily
blurred. At the same time it addresses broadly the existence of grammatical
features and their relationship to each other, another part of the research pro-
gram which would attract cognitive approaches. Corpora, on the other hand,
serve as the basis of many kinds of investigation and find their affinity with
cognitive theory in the openness of this theory to real-life, “messy” data.
Both grammaticalization research and work in typology have served to shed
light on both diachronic theory and on cognitive semantics. Other approaches
as well demonstrate the interconnectedness of synchrony and diachrony and, at
the same time, point up the necessity of opening cognitive linguistics to wider
diachronic studies. One of these might be called cultural variation, the study
of human behavior and its linguistic expression as depending on the wider con-
text; Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995), for example, questions the universality
of such metaphors as anger as heat by suggesting that they are culturally
transmitted. Also variationist in its approach is what can be thought of as cog-
nitive sociolinguistics (Kristiansen and Dirven 2008 and the papers contained
in this volume). Variation has long been recognized as the basis for the spread
of change (Weinreich et al. 1968 is the foundational paper) and again bridges
synchrony and diachrony in important ways.
While virtually all aspects of language are now being looked at through cog-
nitive linguistics, meaning continues to be a (or perhaps the) central concern
of the theory. The radially configured semantic set (Lakoff 1987: 83–84 and
passim) remains a point of departure, and both lexical and grammatical units
have been analyzed as to both their relationship to the prototype and to each
other. Since metaphor is the primary (although not sole) source of extension of
items within the set, a natural extension of the field has been to the diachronic
inquiry into the birth of metaphors and, at the other end of their lifespan (a met-
aphor in itself), the nature of so-called “dead” metaphors. As a subcategory,
the expression of emotion and its development/disappearance have figured in
recent diachronic work (two comparatively early instances are Fabiszak 2001
and Tissari 2003).
Introduction 15
3. Cognitive linguistics and diachronic theory
The discussion thus far has dealt with the development of diachronic cognitive
linguistics, the aspects of it that first caught the attention of researchers and the
development of this historical subfield in the early days of the broader theory.
The remaining sections of the paper will be devoted to the present – and per-
haps future – of these areas of investigation. More specifically, it will consist
of an overview of the papers in the volume, with some comments about how
they may be either continuing the development of the various strands of inquiry
already mentioned or else extending the investigation of language change in
new directions. In many instances, of course, these two possibilities – continu-
ation and extension – are not mutually exclusive. Before turning to this preview
of the rest of the volume, it is worth pausing for a few moments to talk more
broadly about the intersection of cognitive linguistics with the development of
linguistic theories of historical change.
A large part of the research in cognitive historical linguistics has followed,
in a certain broad sense, the lead of other frameworks; here as in other cases,
entities which were first posited synchronically are looked at in terms of how
they might have changed over time: emerging, being modified, or disappear-
ing. A clear example of this pattern can be seen in early diachronic work within
the framework of a relatively early version of generative grammar (for an over-
view, see King 1969). Since in this formulation grammar consisted of underly-
ing forms (the deep structure) and transformations or rules, change takes place
generally through the addition, loss, or reordering of these transformational
rules with eventual permanent reshaping, across generations, of the underlying
forms in deep structure. A more modern formal example of the same general
approach is the notion of change within Optimality Theory. Here the reorder-
ing of constraints results in the identification of a different “best candidate”
among the infinitude of candidates as the outcome of each process (Jacobs
1995). In both these cases and, as we will see, in cognitive theory as well, enti-
ties in the synchronic description of language (transformations, optimality-the-
oretic constraints) constitute the engines of language change. The relationship
is causal: it is because these specific entities change that wider language change
occurs. While this is a very brief (almost disrespectfully brief) summary of
what is considered change, it points up the all too easy use of description within
a theory to take the place of cause.
Cognitive explorations have often taken the same general path. The enti-
ties here are, of course, the internal components of the radially configured
semantic set – the prototype and extensions at varying distances from the pro-
totype – and the set itself. Change has been characterized as movement of vari-
ous extensions within the set into and out of sets or nearer to or farther from the
prototype. There are also changes that come from the interaction of sets with
each other: overlap, merger (partial or complete), or the split of one set into two
or more (Winters 1992). A final locus of change is in the connections which
link extensions to the prototype and to each other. Here too change is change
in the expression of these connections, often metaphors or metonymies (Sweet-
ser 1990 is one of the first to discuss this diachronic point at length although
Dirven 1985 provides a panchronic typology of extension types). All of these
entities, sets, prototypes, extensions and the lines of connection among them,
can be described as evolving from one state (using the term very informally) to
another across time. There is, however, little light shed on what change really
consists of and, like the transformations and constraints of other theories, the
realignment of semantic sets and their internal configurations are more accu-
rately to be viewed as the results of change rather than the cause.
In order to identify what cognitive linguistics has contributed to broader the-
ories of change, we need to look beyond the purely linguistic to the cognitive.
The major claim of Lakoff’s work (1987 in an elaborated statement) is that the
cognitive phenomenon of categorization is key to how language is understood
and produced. Most of the conclusions which have been drawn about cognitive
function are completely synchronic, in part because all experimentation with
speakers is carried out necessarily on contemporary forms of language and in
part because the relationship between language and the brain is investigated in
the great majority of instances by researchers who are not historians. Probably
more important, however, is the fact that most if not all brain structure has been
invariant over even the most extensive span of time considered in diachronic
linguistics (to the extent that time depth can be accurately established), in fact
since the evolution of other related species into homo sapiens. As a result of this
pervasive cognitive invariance, we must proceed with caution in exploring how
to characterize language change in its relationship to cognitive processing. As
far as we can tell through what direct evidence exists and through the judicious
use of the uniformitarian hypothesis, humanity categorizes today as we have
always categorized, in both linguistic and non-linguistic matters.
The same dilemma prevails if we look not just at the process of categoriza-
tion, but at the ways in which human beings populate and arrange categories
around degrees of proximity to the prototypical member(s) of the category.
Recent work has centered on the notion of emergence, that is the way in which
understanding arises through the assignment of units to categories, not through
specific pre-existent mental structures, but by continuous application of these
processes. Conventionalization may at times be the ultimate result of repeated
assignment for some specific community of speakers, but this is secondary
Introduction 17
to on-going (emergent) determination of meaning. The frequency with which

language users encounter meanings is paramount in the way these meanings
are structured within categories (work by Bybee including 2007 explicates in
detail the idea of emergence and its cognitive role). Clearly the recognition
of frequency as a clue to emergent structure is a primary cognitive function
in children’s acquisition of a first language, but also plays a salient role in the
interaction of any language user at any degree of linguistic maturity with any
unit (lexical or grammatical of any size) which s/he must understand and may
choose to use. As with categorization itself, emergence is built into linguistic
and non-linguistic processing and production and has not changed over time as
a human strategy.
However, what is categorized and into what categories may indeed change
over time, based in part on what may at a certain moment be of high enough
frequency to motivate the emergence of meaning and structure.8 It is here,
I believe, that we find the first and most important part of the answer to the
question of cognitive linguistics’s broader interaction with diachronic theory.
Cognitive linguistics brings a strong sense of psychological reality to histori-
cal studies precisely both by calling attention to categorization, that part of
cognitive function where change can indeed be measured, and also by relating
it to both the linguistic and non-linguistic behavior of human beings. Work
cited above (for example Geeraerts 1983; Winters 1992) demonstrates how
changes can be seen within this kind of cognitive framework. The conclu-
sions drawn in Winters (1992) and other papers at the time, however, were
only indirectly cognitive in this respect, since the goal was to characterize
change in each case in terms of theoretical entities which were already es-
tablished. In retrospect, however, and in light of more recent work, we can
go further: if categorization is a process engaged in universally (over time
as well as over space) and categories can be considered mental structures
(cf., saliently, Lakoff 1987; Fauconnier 1994; Wanner 2006), then the locus of
language change lies within and across cognitive categories. That being said,
Geeraerts can talk with psychological plausibility about merging and splitting
categories, Winters about changes in prototypes, changes in membership of
categories, and the relative distance of the extensions from the prototype, and
Bybee (2007) about how changes in the frequency of expressions interacts
with dynamic mental categories. Because cognitive linguistics is so strongly
8 It seems increasingly clear that frequency alone is not the motivating factor for
change, since frequency is rather the result of some other phenomenon. I would
suggest that salience is more basic, but this discussion goes beyond the scope of the
present paper.
psychologically real, claims of these kinds are not only descriptively useful,
but anchor language change in cognition.
Viewing cognitive function as essential to language prepares the way for
an important further step in diachronic theory, a way of relating synchrony
and diachrony which goes beyond a simple list of changes to a unified theory
of language. Recognition of the centrality of cognition is an important com-
ponent of this insight. It provides strong evidence for a non-modular and, in
many ways, atemporal view of language. Categorization and recategorization
underlie variation and therefore the actuation of change, while recent views on
frequency of usage have shed light on acquisition, the link between social fac-
tors such as prestige and variation, and, diachronically, the spread of change;
Bybee (2007) provides an overview. What is most important here is, again, that
these cognitive functions go beyond language itself and in doing so provide
an extra-linguistic framework for explaining diachrony, a perspective that is
usually lacking because work on language history has traditionally remained
enmeshed in the linguistic and the social.
A final way in which cognitive linguistics might be said to contribute to the-
ories of language change has to do again with the nature of human cognition.
In this case, the insights have to do not so much with the content of categories
or their internal or external relationships, but rather with the manner in which
they are constructed. Most of the ways in which the connections among units
within a radial set develop derive from mental transformations or leaps of vari-
ous kinds: comparison (metaphor), viewing the part as representing the whole
(metonymy), and others (among them, image schema transformations [Lakoff
1987: 440–444]). Any of these, often unexpected and – at first – novel ways of
seeing relationships, can motivate extensions from the prototype outward in a
semantic set or inward from outside the set toward the center. These changes
can all be viewed as resulting from variations on analogical (or abductive; cf.
Andersen 1973) thinking, that is, precisely, this mental leap or transformation,
not via syllogistic inductive or deductive reasoning, but rather through such
comparatively low-level mental operations as juxtaposition and comparison
(Winters 1997; Wanner 2006).
Analogical thinking, then, as it is defined in a broad sense both as extension
and also as leveling, becomes crucially important under this view of language
change. Its importance is that it results in the expansion of categories, either
within the category or through the development of new ones, in the child or
even the adult speaker/hearer. It is these associations which, over time, be-
come the driving force behind diachronic shifts. Among other consequences
of viewing this cognitive process as central, in fact, is the very necessity of
seeing language change as taking place within the purview of both children
Introduction 19
acquiring language and also of adult speaker/hearers; analogically based

comparisons and extensions occur to language users at all stages of develop-
ment including in the mature speaker’s production. Whether any one ana-
logical leap, expressed as a leveled paradigm or a semantic extension in the
form of a new metaphor, might lead to permanent change is a function of the
complex of other linguistic and social circumstances in relation to which the
new form or meaning was uttered and heard. We cannot neglect any of these
factors in analyzing change, but fundamental to a great deal of change is this
basic cognitive process of analogical thinking (Wanner 2006 is an extended
study of this notion).
To summarize this section, then, I would argue that cognitive linguistics
has made substantive contributions to diachronics, going beyond theory-in-
ternal specific analyses. If the claims of cognitive theory are correct (and
there is mounting evidence that they are well on the way toward shedding
greater light on connections between the human mind and human language
production and perception), then students of language change are at a point
of being able to take into account in a much more direct way what is happen-
ing in the mind of speakers rather than being limited (although the results of
these analyses are important too) to what has changed in the structure and
meaning of language as a quasi-independent entity. This is not to say that
bringing mental activity to explanation in diachronic linguistics started with
modern cognitive approaches; on the contrary there have been and continue
to be other “mentalist” approaches (this was also a major point of Kipar-
sky’s 1968 classic “How abstract is phonology?” as well as King 1969; Jacobs
1995).9 What is different here are the claims of non-modularity (the cognitive
functions described as part of linguistic activity are also part of non-linguis-
tic interaction with the physical and mental world) and the ways in which
synchronic language use and language change connect, not just in the spread
of change (delineated most prominently via social criteria in Weinreich et al.
1968) but also in actuation.
9 In a paper presented at the International Cognitive Linguistics meeting in Santa

Barbara (Winters 2001), it was suggested, for example, that the so-called infinitude
of candidates in Optimality Theory would best be understood rather as a cline
from the most to the least prototypical solutions to interacting constraints. It was
not necessary, then, to claim that the number of candidates was infinite, but rather
that the human mind could judge degrees of prototypicality and make decisions on
the “best” solution to competing possibilities. This was an attempt to demonstrate
that cognitive findings had the potential to transcend theoretical boundaries and be
applied within other, generally unrelated approaches to language.
4. Overview of the present volume
The papers in the present volume examine and expand on many of the themes
discussed above. In the last section of this Introduction they will be briefly pre-
sented, with a word or two on their content but, more importantly, with a view
of how they fit into and interact with the aspects of cognitive linguistics laid out
above. Of greatest importance is the relationship between language and mind
as envisioned in this framework and how cognitive theory may blur the lines
between synchrony and diachrony.
The volume is arranged in five sections, admittedly loose groupings of dia-
chronic themes, ranging from papers on the development of this very point
of convergence of historical linguistics and cognitive semantics (the pres-
ent paper) and language evolution (Frank & Gontier; Sylvester; Mulsolff), to
more specific analyses of syntactic change (Luraghi; Heyvaert & Cuyckens),
of semantic change (Allan), and the expression of emotions over time (Trim;
Fabiszak & Hebda; Tissari). An Afterword by Dirk Geeraerts looks forward
to the potential for historical cognitive linguistics to extend further, with the
consequent enrichment of both diachronic linguistics in general and what we
might call panchronic cognitive linguistics.
The section on evolution and change looks at language history from the point
of view of analytic techniques as well as the results of analysis. Roslyn Frank
and Nathalie Gontier (“On Reconstructing a Research Model for Historical
Cognitive Linguistics [HCL]: Some Theoretical Considerations”) present a dis-
cussion of the methodology of Complex Adaptive Systems, coming from the
Biological Sciences and its potential for shedding light on human linguistic be-
havior in shorter time periods. This approach lends itself to interaction with the
notion of emergence and also tends toward a panchronic viewpoint as well as
looking at language use in specific temporal and social settings, another theme
central to cognitive linguistics. Louise Sylvester, more specifically again, is
interested in the individual’s mind, centering her paper (“The roles of reader
construal and lexicographic authority in the interpretation of Middle English
texts”) on how meaning is calculated when one has the resources of dictionar-
ies of older varieties as well as one’s mental constructions. Language change,
therefore, as understood by individuals, is change in conceptual structure as
well as being linguistic. Finally in this area, Andreas Musolff (“Metaphor in
discourse history”) looks at the evolution of a class of conceptual metaphors
(state/society as a body), again showing the strength of panchronic analysis.
Studies of syntax change are relatively rare whatever the theoretical frame-
work, although not as rare as they were in the past. Two papers here undertake
analyses of grammar change, in both cases adopting the now well-established
Introduction 21
cognitive linguistic point of view (cf. Langacker 1987 for an early expression
of it) that syntax is symbolic of meaning and that, therefore, grammar change
is a special form of semantic development. Both Silvia Luraghi (“Where do
beneficiaries come from and how do they come about? Sources for beneficiary
expressions in Classical Greek and the typology of beneficiary”) and Liesbet
Heyvaert and Hubert Cuyckens (“Finite and gerundive complementation in
Modern and Present-day English: Semantics, variation and change”) explore
the interaction of the conceptual and the purely linguistic, the former in a paper
on beneficiary expressions in Greek and the latter in the development of clausal
complements in English. Heyvaert and Cuyckens, like Allan, consider as well
questions of directionality, a diachronic issue which is addressed in a wide
number of theories. They return as well to one of the formative topics of cogni-
tive linguistics, the meaningfulness of grammatico-lexical items and phrases
which are considered purely syntactic in other approaches.
The section on the lexicon and semantic change contains one paper, although
one could argue that semantic change writ large pervades the volume. Kathryn
Allan (“Tracing metonymic polysemy through time: material for object
mappings in the OED”) looks at metonymy (in particular the well-exemplified
material for object) to consider the question of whether metonymies persist
over time or whether they are recreated in every generation of speakers. Her
topic, then, is again the blurring of synchrony and diachrony; she also touches
on other historical and cognitive issues, specifically directionality of change
and the line – if there is a clear one – between metaphor and metonymy, re-
spectively.
The last section transcends from a certain point of view the purely linguistic
nature of the volume since it deals with the expression of emotion (cf. La-
koff 1987, an early example of this kind of undertaking, where anger and its
expression are looked at in detail). Richard Trim’s focus is the development
of English metaphors pertaining to love (“Conceptual networking theory in
metaphor evolution: Diachronic variation in models of love”); he calls upon
both conceptual networks and the time-specific setting of linguistic use in his
discussion. Like Allan, he also explores the notion of salience as an indicator of
likelihood for change; this notion and frequency (Bybee 2007) should be seen
to complement rather than compete with each other in explanations of change.
The last two papers, by Małgorzata Fabiszak and Anna Hebda (“Cognitive
historical approaches to emotions: Pride”) and by Heli Tissari (“English words
for emotions and their metaphors”) add one more dimension to the breadth of
approaches in that they both use corpora as sources of data. As was said above,
this is a fast-growing aspect of cognitive research, both synchronic and dia-
chronic. Fabiszak and Hebda discuss the concept of pride, again situating the
expression of emotion in its socio-temporal setting. Tissari looks more broadly

at the expression of emotional states in English across time, comparing positive
and negative emotions and the metaphors used to articulate them.
5. Conclusions
The above discussion serves to demonstrate several things: first, language

change has been a topic of interest within the cognitive framework from the
early years of the development of this theory. At the beginning it took propos-
als first set forth synchronically and showed how they could be adapted to dia-
chronic study. In time, however, historical cognitive linguistics has expanded
its scope, and not just parallel to synchronic developments, in moving from
lexical meaning to the semantics of grammar and from intuitions about data to
wider corpus studies. A second major point is precisely that: it has, through its
increasingly panchronic viewpoint (although this stance is already delineated
as early as Sweetser 1990), been able to contribute more directly to the develop-
ment of synchronic studies. The papers in this volume, then, look backwards
to the first insights of cognitive linguistics (essential meaningfulness of all
units and the pervasiveness of metaphor) and look forward as well, to a richer
understanding of the relationship between concept and linguistic expression
and of the tension between universal, panchronic cognitive phenomena and the
role of specific time and place, and hence situated variation, within diachrony.
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2. The Evolution of Language
On constructing a research model for historical
cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical
considerations
Roslyn M. Frank and Nathalie Gontier
Abstract
This paper examines how historical cognitive linguistics can benefit methodologically
through the application of the notion of language as a complex adaptive system. The idea
that languages are complex adaptive systems (CAS) was introduced initially in computa-
tional evolutionary linguistics, a discipline that was and remains inspired by biological,
systems theoretical approaches to the evolution of life. Here the way that the CAS ap-
proach serves to replace older historical linguistic notions of languages as organisms and
languages as species is explained as well as how the CAS approach can be generalized
to encompass linguistic domains. Specifically, an overview of the CAS approach and its
implementation in linguistics is provided with an emphasis on stigmergic, embodied,
usage-based and socio-culturally situated language studies in particular.
Scientific revolutions are, in fact, metaphoric revolutions, and theoreti-

cal models should be seen as metaphoric redescriptions of the domain of
phenomena. (Arbid and Hesse 1986: 156)
Languages meander like great rivers leaving oxbow traces over forgot-
ten beds, to be seen only from the air or by scholars. Language is like
some infinitely inter-fertile family of species spreading or mysteriously
declining over time, shamelessly and endlessly hybridizing, changing its
own rules as it goes. Words are used as signs, as stand-ins, arbitrary and
temporary, even as language reflects (and informs) the shifting values of
the peoples whose minds it inhabits and glides through. We have faith in
‘meaning’ like we might believe in wolverines – putting trust in the oc-
casional reports of others, or on the authority of once seeing a pelt. But
it is sometimes worth tracking this trickster back. (Snyder 1992: 24–25)
1. Introduction
Our paper begins by focusing on theoretical issues relating to 19th and 20th
century conceptual cross-fertilization between linguistics and evolutionary bi-
32 Roslyn M. Frank and Nathalie Gontier
ology, namely, the way that aspects of research models utilized by the natural
sciences, most particularly biology, have intersected with theories of language
evolution, and hence, the manner in which the traditional research paradigm of
historical linguistics was constructed in terms of the way that “language” was
conceptualized (Bugarski 1999; Frank 2008b; Janda and Joseph 2003). Most
particularly, we examine the three points of intersection. First, we will look at
the analogy of “language” as an “organism”; second, we will explore the way
that “language” came to be viewed simultaneously as an “organism” and “spe-
cies”; and third, we will conclude by taking up the most recent position that
views “language” as a “complex adaptive system”. Initially, we provide a brief
review of the way these disciplinary interactions have shaped how we think
about “language” and by implication the role played by these conceptualiza-
tions of the phenomenon of “language” in historical linguistics, including the
heuristic applications of evolutionary biological thinking to linguistics, and to
the nature of variation and language change (Croft 2000, 2002; Mufwene 2001,
2005). Finally, in this first section we introduce the “complex adaptive system”
(CAS) approach (cf. Lansing 2003), a framework currently gaining ground in
the theoretical discourse of genomics as well as many other fields.
In the next section of the paper we turn our attention to the question of how
those of us interested in constructing a research model for historical cogni-
tive linguistics (henceforth HCL) might profit from recognizing the remarkable
conceptual connections holding between these allied disciplines and our own
concerns with language change. By gaining a better understanding of the way
that metaphors/analogies have flowed back and forth, heuristically, across dis-
ciplinary boundaries, specifically between biology and linguistics, we will be
able to appreciate better how the phenomena under analysis in each field have
undergone modification over time, e. g., how “language” first was analogized to
an “organism”, later on compared to a “species” (Gontier 2006a, b, 2008) and
how it has come to be viewed as “activity-process” (Frank 2008b).
Finally we address the contributions that HCL might make to research cur-
rently being carried out in related disciplines concerned with the evolution of
language and culture, if HCL were to frame its findings in more cross-discipli-
narily recognized terminology and adopt the more inter-disciplinary theoreti-
cal approach of CAS, given that the latter is recognized across a number of
allied disciplines. In short, we will outline the advantages that this framework
might have as we begin the joint task of developing a research model and meth-
odology for use in HCL.
On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics 33
2. Three stages of analogical intersections
In order to better address the theoretical aspects of our research framework,

one of the first questions that we need to formulate concerns the nature of
“language” itself, more specifically, how we conceptualize the object of our
research: What is “language”? As Steels (1999: 143) has pointed out: “[For
some time now] linguists have been trying to pin down what kind of object
[…] language is, but this has turned out to be far from obvious.” Moreover, we
might ask whether that question itself is properly formulated; whether it would
not be better to ask “What type of activity language is” instead of “What type
of object language is?” The reformulation of this question will help us to come
up with a systems approach to its answer.
Before entering into a more detailed discussion of this issue and its relation-
ship to the way we think about language, in this section we will briefly review
the impact of evolutionary biological thinking and the analogical transference
of some of the concepts from this field to the field of linguistics. Evolutionary
biology has inspired the conceptualization of language in three different ways
which can be characterized as three basic tropes. They can be expressed as
falling into three stages, each of which corresponds to particular developments
in the field of biology: 1) language understood as an organism; 2) language
viewed as a species and; 3) language considered as a complex adaptive system.
Quite obviously this summary requires us to generalize somewhat concerning
these modes of thinking about language. If examined with a greater granular-
ity each stage would demonstrate more variation, that is, in terms of the empha-
sis and focus each conceptualization received from their respective proponents
(and critics) (Morpurgo-Davies 1992: 83–97).
2.1. Stage 1: Language as an organism
In the 18th and 19th centuries in biology we find both Lamarckian (Lamarck
[1809] 1999) and Social Darwinian models (e. g., Darwin 1871; Spencer [1879]
1978). Both of these models focus on the individual organism and how it relates
to other organisms and the environment through competition for resources. The
model was constructed through recourse to the dominant “organic” or “organi-
cism” root metaphor of the epoch (Pepper 1942). As a result, focus was on an
essentialist, internalized law-governed orthogenesis of the organism. Inspired
by these evolutionary ideas, linguists regularly viewed languages as bounded
“living beings”. The model was one characterized by Linnaean typological and
genealogical categorization models with vertical (tree-branching) axis.
During this period we find the consolidation of the “language-as-organism”

trope which was linked to essentialist, typological thinking about the nature of
language (Alter 1999; Frank 2008b; Morpurgo-Davies 1992; Richards 2002).
We also discover the existence of loose analogical equivalencies between the
concepts of “language(s)”, “species”, “races”, and “ethnicities”. These resulted
in a blend consisting of the equation of “language” to the concepts of “species”
and “race”, “race” being a concept that was often synonymous with “ethnic-
ity”, whereas “species” was viewed in essentialist terms as a type rather than
more broadly as a population of individuals. The “species: race” equivalency
dates back to the latter half of the 19th century. It was in this period that the
earlier 18th and 19th century “language-as-organism” metaphor got caught up
in the “species: race” equivalency, fostered by the racial anthropology which
was rapidly gaining ascendency alongside its ideological counterpart of Social
Darwinism. The conflation of “species” with “race” was facilitated by the fact
that the term “race” was often used in biology as an equivalent to “species”
(Frank 2008b). Only later did the word “race” acquire its current 20th century
meaning in English, i. e., “a local geographic or global human population dis-
tinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical
characteristics” (Morris 1969).
Over the course of the 19th century there was a tendency for “language” to
be viewed as a “living being” while language “families” were identified with
human collectives to such a point that in linguistics terms for languages, races
and species became equivalent and were often used interchangeably. But at the
same time biology was being inspired by linguistics. During his voyage with
the Beagle, Darwin read the linguistic works of von Humboldt, which helped
him think about how species interrelate with one another. Tree models, nowa-
days a common way to depict genealogical and historical relations between
species and languages, were first drawn both by Darwin (1859) and Schleicher
(1853, 1863). Schleicher argued that languages, like organisms, compete with
one another, come into being and die. His linguistic tree models of the Indo-
European language family would eventually inspire the taxonomist Haeckel
to draw the first non-hypothetical “tree of life”, ideas that would again inspire
Darwin (Richards 1987: 200–206). In fact, Darwin would take language evo-
lution to be an exemplar for the evolution of species, while linguists such as
Schleicher would use the evolution of species to demonstrate that languages are
similar to species (Hull 2002).
In this way, genealogical tree models of language relatedness replicated,
conceptually speaking, the hierarchy of nature:
phyla ĺ classes ĺ orders ĺ genera ĺ families ĺ species ĺ organisms

For example, we find Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) stating: “We give
the name genus [genera] to the groups of races, called species, brought to-
gether following a consideration of their interconnections […] all the races
(what are called the species) which belong to a kingdom of living creatures”
(Lamarck [1809] 1999). In short, in the writings of 18th and 19th century
biologists race and species were commonly used as synonyms. It would not
be until nearly a century later that the English term “race” would acquire
its more narrow modern meaning.1 Even at the time that Charles Darwin
(1809–1882) was composing his major opus, the older equivalency was still
operating. In contrast, today most readers misconstrue the meaning of the
latter half of the full title of his work: On the Origin of the Species by Means
of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle
for Life (1859). The second half of the title shows that Darwin was merely
talking about “races” of pigeons, among other things. In addition, we may
cite Schleicher’s equivalencies. Clearly influenced by Linnaeus’ taxonomy as
well as by Darwin’s 1859 work, Schleicher in his Die Darwinishche Theo-
rie und die Sprachwissenschaft [Darwinian Theory and the Science of Lan-
guage] (1863) explicitly equates language families with genera, languages
with species, dialects with races, and idiolects with individual organisms
(McMahon 1994: 319; Richards 2002).2
1 Under “race” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language lists
the following entries, which reflect the semantic shift that has taken place in the
term’s core meanings since the mid-19th century. At that point in time what are
today the fourth, fifth and sixth entries of the following definition would have been
among the first to come to mind: “1. A local geographic or global human population
distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical
characteristics; 2. Mankind as a whole; 3. Any group of people united or classified
together on the basis of common history, nationality or geographical distribution;
4. A genealogical line, lineage, family; 5. Any group of people more or less distinct
from all others, the race of statesmen; 6. Biology a. a plant or animal population
that differs from others of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits,
subspecies; b. a breed or strain of domestic animals” (Morris 1969: 1074–1075). An
even greater appreciation of the depth of these shifting currents can be gained by
consulting the relevant entries in the Oxford English Dictionary.
2 A few years later this essay was translated into English and published, in 1869,
under the title of Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language (1869).
2.2. Stage 2: Language as species
In the first half of the 20th century we encounter the emergence of the Mod-
ern Synthesis and the development of population genetics wherein evolution
is mathematically modeled (Mayr 1975). Over time, progress in the field of
population genetics would come to influence the field of linguistics and would
eventually give rise to the “language-as-species” trope we have today where
“species” is understood in its modern, biological sense.3 Indeed, by 2000, we
find this new type of population thinking and concept of “language-as-species”
being applied to modeling language, as exemplified by the research on this
topic by Croft (2000) and Mufwene (2001). At this point language is defined
as “a population of utterances”. Hence, we discover a shift in emphasis. In
the case of the older “language-as-organism” trope, focus was on global level
structure and internal agency; language was viewed as a closed, bounded and
finely balanced object. In contrast, at the end of the 20th century when the
“language-as-species” trope comes on the scene, we find increasing empha-
sis being placed on local level structure and external agency: language usage.
Moreover, language comes to be viewed more and more as an open, unbounded
and constantly changing object. Nonetheless, from this perspective language
still is conceptualized primarily as an object, albeit a highly mutable one, rath-
er than as activity.
2.3. Stage 3: Language as a complex adaptive system
Although many instances of system-based thinking can already be found that

precede Bertalanffy’s (1950) famous article on general systems theory, the lat-
ter biologist is mostly regarded as the founder of biological systems theory.
Biological systems theory would inspire anthropologists (e. g., Gregory Bate-
son 1972) as well as sociologists (e. g., Nicholas Luhmann 1984). Typical for
systems theory is that it studies biological organisms or cultures as dynamic
systems, characterized by the capacity to self-organize and maintain them-
selves over long periods of time. Nonlinear dynamical systems theory also
inspired a new formulation of language: the “language-as-complex-adaptive-
system” (CAS) trope. Indeed, the study of complex adaptive systems, a subset
3 As was pointed out in the previous section, the terms “species” and “races” used
to be synonymous. Furthermore, especially in Scholastic philosophical discussions
of this topic, “species” was a concept used to refer to (essential, bounded) types
(Wilkins 2003).
of nonlinear dynamical systems, has become a major focus of interdisciplinary

research in the social and natural sciences and more recently in “evolutionary
linguistics” (cf. Lansing 2003; Sole et al. 2005; Steels 2000).
3. An overview of the complex adaptive systems approach and its

implementation in linguistics
3.1. General features of a complex adaptive system
Complex adaptive systems are ubiquitous in nature. Typical examples include

social insects, the ecosystem, the brain and the cell, the Internet, and also, in
general, any human social group-based endeavor that takes place in a socio-
cultural system. Broadly defined, a complex adaptive system is one that is self-
organizing in which there are multiple interactions between many different
components while the components themselves can consist of networks that in
turn operate as complex (sub)systems. Since the global and local levels are
coupled, this coupling also drives the system to be dynamic at the global level
(Hashimoto 1998).
In short, a complex adaptive system is: 1) self-organizing, that is, it is con-
stantly constructed and reconstructed by its users; 2) characterized by distrib-
uted control, that is, control is distributed throughout the system. Stated dif-
ferently, the system has no centralized mechanism of control. CAS thinking is
concerned with understanding the global behavior arising from local interac-
tions among a large number of agents. Very often, this global behavior or emer-
gent dynamics is complex; it is neither specified by prior design nor subject to
centralized mechanisms of control. And, consequently, it is often difficult or
impossible to predict solely from knowledge of the system’s constituent parts
what the emergent global level properties of the system will be. Complex sys-
tems are systems that constantly evolve over time. Thus change is an integral
element of their functioning. Complex adaptive systems are adaptive in that
they have the capacity to evolve in response to a changing environment (also
known as adaptability, cf. Conrad 1983). Since complex adaptive systems arise
in a wide range of contexts (from the individual cell to the biosphere to culture
or the Internet), this theoretical framework is rapidly gaining ground in a vari-
ety of disciplinary areas.
Of particular note is the close working relationship that already exists be-
tween the field of complex adaptive systems thinking and Artificial Life (A-
Life), while applications of CAS and related developmental systems approaches
to 21st century post-genomic and other types of research problems in the bio-
logical sciences are becoming increasingly common (Griffiths 2002; Griffiths

and Gray 2000; Kay 2000; Lansing 2003; Oyama 2000; Strohman 1997). In
all of these areas the principles of emergence and self-organization are funda-
mental: complex global patterns with new properties can emerge from local
interactions. CAS thinking and the related term complexity science are used
to refer to the loosely organized and highly interdisciplinary academic field
that has grown out of the study of such systems, even though the specific theo-
retical frameworks of the disciplines, fields or subfields in question may differ
significantly.
While CAS oriented investigations often tend to be of a highly quantita-
tive nature, as has occurred in the instance of other disciplines, a less quan-
titatively oriented CAS modeling approach can be adopted for investigating
natural language and the formation of metaphors in discourse. In fact, our dis-
cussion of the way the analogy of language as “organism” and as “species”
developed over time may be viewed as a prototypical example of the workings
of a socio-culturally situated multi-agent system, that is, how complex changes
in meaning can be viewed as evolving within a complex, socio-culturally en-
trenched dynamic system. Thus, rather than functioning solely as a tool for un-
derstanding the dynamics of artificial factual worlds and computer simulations
of language evolution, as has been the case in “evolutionary linguistics” (Steels
2004), the CAS approach can also be appropriated to explore the evolution and
socio-cultural entailments found in natural languages (Sharifian forthcoming),
as well as to trace the entailments associated with language change itself, most
particularly those that leave behind abundant traces in the written record.
3.2. The CAS approach to language
Perhaps one of the most well known initiatives in evolutionary and compu-
tational linguistics is that of Luc Steels and his team of researchers working
at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). Steels founded
the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (http://arti.vub.ac.be/) in 1983 where lab-
members carry out projects in collaboration with the research units of Sony
CSL in Paris. Over the past decade, they have investigated ways in which artifi-
cial agents can provide windows on certain aspects of language evolution such
as concept and category formation, recursion, compositionality and phonology.
Central to their research projects is the hypothesis that language is a complex
adaptive system, one that emerges through adaptive interactions between the
artificial agents and one that over time continues to evolve as a self-organizing
system, adapting itself to the needs and capabilities of the agents. At the same
time the system is being structured by the actions of the individual agents.
Other related initiatives include the simulation and synthesis of living systems,
along with simulations of the co-evolution of language and social structure
using various computational frameworks. In some cases the data used in the
simulation is itself simulated, while in other cases the data is drawn from natu-
ral language(s) and then often modeled or cross-checked using artificial agents
(Gong et al. 2004; Hashimoto 1998; Li 1998; Wang, Ke and Minett 2004).4
The CAS approach to language states that global order derives from local
interactions. Language agents are carriers of individual linguistic knowledge
which becomes overt behavior in local interactions between agents. Through
these local level (microscopic) interactions agents construct and acquire indi-
vidual ontologies, lexicons and grammars. When the latter are sufficiently en-
trenched within the system, they become part of the global level (macroscopic)
properties of collective ontologies, lexicons and grammars of the speech com-
munity. Actually, the process is even non-linear in the sense that individual
ontologies, lexicons and grammars continuously contribute to and, in turn, are
influenced by the global level. This shift in perspective provides us with a
different view of language in which it is understood as a constantly evolving
system that defies simplistic taxonomic, essentialist categorization. In short,
language is understood as a multi-agent complex adaptive system in which
emergent phenomena result from behaviors of embodied, (socio-culturally)
situated agents.5
As stated, the phenomenon of language is best viewed as a complex adaptive
system that is constantly constructed and reconstructed by its users. Therefore,
language should be considered an emergent phenomenon, the result of activity,
the collective, cumulative behavior of language agents over time. These emer-
gent phenomena have a strong causal impact on the behavior and learning of
each individual language agent. Hence, there is a type of recursiveness to the
4 We should also mention the research being carried out in computational evolu-
tionary linguistics and simulations of living systems at the Santa Fe Institute; the
ongoing investigations taking place at the Language Evolution and Computation
Research Unit, located at the University of Edinburgh; the Ikegami Laboratory at
the University of Tokyo under the direction of Takashi Ikegami (cf. Ikegami and
Zlatev 2007), as well as and Language Engineering Laboratory, located in the Chi-
nese University of Hong Kong.
5 These dialectics are also pointed out at the psychological level by Herbert Clark
(1996: 100–120) when he introduces his famous distinction between personal and
communal common ground. And also Tomasello’s (2004: 4) characterization of
cumulative cultural evolution as a kind of ratchet effect can be interpreted as an
attempt to capture these dynamics.
system in which feedback mechanisms operate as an intrinsic aspect of it. The

functioning of these feedback loops is referred to as “circular” or “recursive
causality”. At the local level the individual language agent’s behaviors (utter-
ances) determine language, that is, language understood at the global level.
Similarly, at the local level the resulting emergent global level structures of
language co-determine the range of behaviors of the agents, that is, the range
of possible interactions at the local or microscopic level.
This top-down influence is established in several ways. First, we need to
keep in mind that the global level systemic structures of language are already
in existence prior to the entrance of the local agents. As such, they act as a
strong constraint on the linguistic behavior of individual language agents.
While the latter acquire their local level understandings of this already existing
system as their idiolect, these are understandings that can be renewed, restruc-
tured over and over again in the course of the individual’s lifetime. Then we see
that the bottom-up influence is established in the following manner. The local
level systemic structure of language constantly acts to bring about emergent
structure, that is, change, from the bottom-up, so to speak. While the speaker –
the individual language agent – has to abide by the structures provided by the
system at the risk of not being understood, there is always a degree of flexibility
to expand the existing system.6 Although the structures are to some extent in
constant flux, in communicative practice, the speaker is capable of: 1) choos-
ing to draw, consciously or unconsciously, from among them and 2) selecting
from amongst those structures that are present in the “feature bank” of her
idiolect, her microstructural “knowledge” of the global level macrostructures.
From this perspective, in the case of bilingual language agents they can draw
on additional microstructural “knowledge” that, in turn, can act to set in mo-
tion perturbations in the emergent global level structures.
We must also stress that the above description is somewhat simplified to
clarify both the global and local levels. In fact, no linear chain of events can
be distinguished. Rather, there is an intrinsic coupling between both levels:
both constantly reshape, constrain and influence one another. And also within
6 The close parallels holding between this CAS model and usage-based approaches
to language are found in the following discussion of “units of language” where
the latter are defined as “not fixed but dynamic, subject to creative extension and
reshaping with use. Usage events are crucial to the ongoing structuring and opera-
tion of the linguistic system. Language productions are not only products of the
speaker’s linguistic system, but they also provide input for other speakers’ systems
(as well as, reflexively, for the speaker’s own), not just in initial acquisition but in
language use throughout life” (Kemmer and Barlow 2000: ix).
the local (between language agents) and within the global level (between lan-
guage communities), interaction is the rule rather than the exception. These
interactions again, in a non-linear manner, influence the future of the language
system.
3.3. The difference between a CAS

and a “species/population” approach to language
At this juncture we might compare the CAS model to Croft’s “language-as-

species” approach. Rather than employing a single, fused dynamical systems
model with input from language agents directly internalized to it, Croft’s lan-
guage-as-species approach operates with two separate conceptual frames. On
the one hand, “language” is defined as “a population of utterances” and, on the
other, the term “language system” is “used where necessary to distinguish the
population definition of language from the view that a language is a system of
conventions” (Croft 2000: 239). Croft refers to his model as the theory of utter-
ance selection (TUS) which takes its starting point from neo-Darwinian evo-
lutionary theory. As Croft explains, it was inspired by the generalized theory
of selection developed by the philosopher of science, David Hull (1984, 1988).
Hull convincingly argues that besides its applications in the study of life, the
theory of evolution by means of natural selection can also be implemented in
the study of the evolution of culture (e. g., science, language, etc.). He argues
that evolution by means of natural selection occurs when replicators (units of
selection such as genes or memes) vary due to the differential environmental
interactions their carriers undergo (vehicles such as organisms). Such interac-
tions are the stuff selection can work upon and as such they lead to different
lineages (populations, demes). By analogy, Croft (2000) argues that language
evolution can be characterized by a process whereby linguemes (linguistic
memes, units of language evolution) vary differentially because of the way the
speakers use the linguemes differentially and the way they interact in the lin-
guistic environment. As such, different demes, i. e. populations of utterances,
are created and natural selection can work upon them.
Although Croft recognizes the presence of speaker differences and popu-
lations of utterances, his early model (2000) does not operate from a CAS
perspective and the notion of language as a multi-agent system. Therefore,
conceptually his theory does not distinguish the local level from the global
level of the same system and/or speak of their inseparability and constant in-
teraction in the way that the CAS model does. For example, TUS tends to re-
fer to the “speaker’s knowledge of grammar” on the one hand and on the other
to the “language system”, i. e. an overall system of language conventions. The

two concepts are still treated separately, rather than as representing the local
and global levels of a single unified dynamic system. Yet there are striking
similarities between Croft’s language-as-species approach and the perspective
afforded by the CAS model. For instance, in 2000, when speaking against
the older structuralist (organicist) model of language, Croft stated: “Instead,
as implied in this book, the linguistic system is not rigid, homogeneous, self-
contained, or ‘finely balanced’” (Croft 2000: 231). More recently Croft has de-
scribed the social cognitive linguistic basis for analyzing language as a com-
plex adaptive system and, in a collaborative effort with the physicist Richard
Blythe, he has brought forward a mathematical model of language change that
combines the CAS approach with the utterance selection model (Baxter et al.
2006; Blythe and Croft 2008).
In short, a “species” approach to language is entirely compatible with a CAS
approach, a topic treated in considerable depth by Steels (1999). Scholars such
as Campbell (1960), Cziko (1995), Dawkins (1983), Dennett (1995) and Hull
(1988) have demonstrated how a selectionist methodology can be introduced to
study not only the evolution of living organisms but also cognition and culture.
They convincingly argue that similarly to life, the evolution of culture and cog-
nition also occurs via the selective retention of adaptive variation. Both Croft
(2000, 2002) and Mufwene (2001) have incorporated these approaches into
their own work. Indeed, Croft (2000, 2002, 2006, 2008) speaks at length of the
need to undertake investigations in the area of “evolutionary linguistics” and
sets forth an innovative model for doing so. And although Mufwene principally
characterizes languages as species, he already toyed with the idea of languages
as CAS in his 2001 book. However, Mufwene (2001: 157) exclusively refers to
the ecological CAS approach and does not mention the ongoing CAS oriented
research in fields such as AI which focus on problems in evolutionary linguis-
tics (Kirby 2009; Steels 1999, 2002).
In sum, given that the two sets of research objectives are quite similar in
nature, hopefully researchers will begin to synthesize the two approaches.7
7 The search for analogies between selectionist evolution on the one hand and cogni-
tive and cultural evolution on the other is a research avenue that has been undertak-
en multiple times in the past. This attempt was first systematized in the discipline
called “evolutionary epistemology” (Campbell 1960; Gontier 2006b).
4. The potential of the CAS approach for the study of natural languages
As Briscoe (2002: 1) has observed, “Evolutionary ideas, biological metaphors

and analogies have had a rather checkered history within linguistic theory de-
spite their close mutual influence in the nineteenth century”. Although a cer-
tain amount of linguistic work was influenced by evolutionary and cultural
anthropological theory during the fifties and sixties, it is not until the 1980s
that we discover the insight that languages per se could be studied as com-
plex (culturally) evolving self-organized systems.8 This position came about
in linguistics after the modern synthesis in biology and the mathematical and
computational work in the field of dynamical systems. Today taking an evo-
lutionary perspective on the origins and development of human language and
on linguistic variation and change is becoming more and more widespread.
However, for the most part these complex adaptive system initiatives have been
restricted to computational and mathematical simulations of language, rather
than being integrated theoretically into research on, and concrete descriptions
of, natural language systems and, more specifically, diachronic studies of lan-
guage change.
Scholars working within the field of AI have demonstrated that the selec-
tionist approaches, introduced in the previous section of this study, can be dy-
namized further when they are integrated into complex adaptive system ap-
proaches. In this regard, multi-agent computer simulations of language have
also been introduced. Unfortunately, as Briscoe (2002: 3) has observed, the
complex dynamical systems approach to language still has not had significant
impact in mainstream linguistic theory, perhaps partly because only recently
have researchers utilizing this theory started to address questions seen as cen-
tral to linguistic theory and more specifically to (cognitive) historical linguistics
(leaving aside the contributions of Croft and Mufwene discussed previously).
Nonetheless, the shift in viewpoint characterizing many of these ongoing
research initiatives in (cognitive) linguistics suggests the following: that in ad-
dition to its applications in computer simulations of change (based on multiple
8 The fact that historical linguistics and historical biology can be recognized as two
specific areas of a general theory of evolution and viewed through complex sys-
tems theory was discussed early on by Stevick (1963: 169), who asserted that “they
were particular developments of a general model of persistence with modification
of complex systems”. In other words, languages and species are both systems which
exist and persist through time, while changing as they do (cf. McMahon 1994:
314–340, esp. 335). Furthermore, in the works of Boas (1928) and especially Kroe-
ber (1923), language was already recognized as a self-organizing, “superorganic”
structure.
interactions between artificial agents), a more widespread application of the

CAS model to the analysis of natural language and concrete long-term lan-
guage change is not far off. Computer simulations based on the CAS approach
provide valuable insights into collective and distributed models of cognition
and language evolution, but still researchers are presently unable to build into
their computer models the kinds of interactions inherent to the complex socio-
cultural networks that characterize natural language change over extended pe-
riods of time and in real rather than artificial settings (cf. Hurford 2002). Thus,
it is conceivable that the results of empirical studies informed by CAS and
focused on tracking change over time in real language settings, i. e. longitu-
dinal studies of natural language data, could provide useful new insights into
how one might go about improving these computer simulations of language
evolution. And, finally, these insights might lead to collaborative studies where
the results of investigations on specific changes in a natural language are then
modeled, simulated or otherwise cross-checked.9
In this way, once we cease viewing language as a closed, bounded “organ-
ism” and/or, alternatively, from an exclusively individualistic framework, and
begin to contemplate it from a CAS perspective, it would appear that discus-
sions of the mechanisms operating to produce language change(s) could feed
into: 1) larger discussions of cognition from a comparative and evolutionary
perspective; 2) examinations of the relationship holding between language and
culture, where culture, too, is viewed from an evolutionary and cognitive per-
spective; and finally 3) where the analysis of language change allows insights
into the distributed and collective nature of cognition. All of these approaches
could be conceptualized from within an integrated or holistic ecological, so-
cial, and cultural perspective.
5. Some examples of how one can implement CAS modeling
It is our belief that those working in HCL can profit from becoming more
familiar with the work in these allied disciplines of cognitive science which
is informed by CAS approaches. More specifically, simulations that integrate
CAS modeling and its central notion of self-organization – as it is laid out and
discussed by Frank (2008b, 2009) and by evolutionary linguists such as Steels
(2004) – are closely aligned with the view of language as “distributed cogni-
9 The article by Li (1998) is particularly exemplary in this respect, for it combines

cognitive linguistics methodology and computer simulations in the exploration of a
specific instance of language change.
tion” and with concepts such as “cultural conceptualizations” (Sharifian 2003,

2008, forthcoming), “socio-cultural situatedness” (Frank et al. 2008) and the
“extended mind” (Clark 1997; Clark and Chalmers 1998).
The ramifications of CAS approaches to modeling language, namely, ap-
proaches that integrate the notion of “distributed cognition” and “socio-cul-
tural situatedness”, are further reflected in Croft’s discussions about the need
to construct “a social cognitive linguistics” (Croft 2008, 2009, forthcoming a).
Furthermore, in this respect we would argue that the development of “cognitive
sociolinguistics” is an important example of the convergence between the CAS
approach and cognitive linguistics (Kristiansen and Dirven 2008). In addition,
we would emphasize the fact that cognitive linguistics is witnessing a “social
turn” towards variationist studies (Geeraerts 2005). In this sense, it is difficult
to imagine language conceptualized as a CAS without taking into account the
social structure of language and language communities, i. e. everything that
has to do with language variation among social groups. Moreover, with the
CAS model these social and variational factors would be viewed as operating
dynamically at the global and local levels, as discussed in 3.2.10
5.1. Stigmergy: Feedback loops, living systems and language
The kind of feedback loops we have discussed in reference to a CAS modeling

of language are not unusual in living systems which are, themselves, self-orga-
nizing and complex. In the case of self-organizing systems, feedback loops are
sometimes characterized as constituting a form of “circular causality” or they
can be viewed as examples of stigmergy (Steels 2000; Susi and Ziemke 2001)
which is a particular form of distributed cognition. At this point, however, little
attention has been paid to the heuristic and inferential potential of stigmer-
gic analogies by those working in cognitive linguistics (Steels 2004). Yet this
potential is there since the analogies holding between the concept of stigmer-
gy and language as an “activity” or as “activity-oriented”, that is, language
understood as a complex adaptive system characterized by self-organization
(emergent structure, top-down/bottom-up causality, feedback loops) are quite
obvious (Bonabeau 1997; Bonabeau, Dorigo and Theraulaz 1999; Theraulaz
and Bonabeau 1999):
10 We would like to express our appreciation to the anonymous reviewer for his/her
suggestions concerning the conceptual linkages holding between a CAS approach
to language and recent directions in social and variational studies within cognitive
linguistics.
For example, the path formed by an ant society is an emergent phenomenon of the
actions of the individual ants. There is no global coordination nor supervision and
the individual ants cannot oversee the total path. Nevertheless the path is more
than an epiphenomenon. It plays a causal role in the behavior of the individual ants.
The path is formed by pheromones deposited by the ants as they follow the already
existing trail. The more ants deposit pheromone the stronger the path becomes and
the more the path causally impacts the behavior of the individual ants. Without the
path the ants would move in all directions. (Steels 1999: 144)
Stigmergy can be understood as a distributed communication paradigm. When

applied to natural language, we might view it as a situation in which natural
agents through their individual linguistic choices at the local level interact in-
directly with each other and where higher frequency patterns of usage are more
likely to prevail. Over time the cumulative effect of the (inter-)actions of the
members of the speech community serve to transform (or maintain) the shape
and/or meaning of a given lexeme or morpho-syntactic feature, that is, by con-
tributing to its (momentary) stability at the global level, again comparable to
what Tomasello (2004) describes as the ratchet effect. Thus, there are subtle
feedback mechanisms operating over space and time involving socio-cultural-
ly situated decision-making processes.
In short, the language system is constantly evolving. The advantage that
accrues from studying these stigmergic patterns which are found in natural
language is that they are left behind because of the actions of natural human
agents. Thus, for us it is not necessarily a matter of studying the way robots
and artificial agents should be programmed to make choices and interact with
their environments. Rather our attention as cognitive linguists can focus on
exploring how to extract these patterns from natural language in meaningful
ways, so that the cognitive processes that went into creating them in the past
become accessible to us. However, to date, outside of those working in the
field of computer simulations of language, i. e., those oriented towards “evo-
lutionary linguistics”, few have theorized about natural language processes
and change from this perspective, i. e., using analogies to other stigmergic
processes found in nature and reflecting on the “activity-oriented” nature of
language.
Nevertheless, earlier expressions of stigmergic thinking can be found in
Keller (1994) in his discussion of “paths” in relationship to the nature of lan-
guage change and more recently in Mufwene (2003). Although neither of
these authors makes any overt mention of the concept of stigmergy, the lan-
guage phenomena they are describing as well as the way in which they are
attempting to model the linguistic phenomena under discussion could easily
be termed stigmergic. Moreover, in the case of the formation and evolution
of discourse metaphors (Musolff 2008; Zinken, Hellsten and Nerlich 2008),

e. g., such as “language as an organism” and/or “language as a species” (Frank
2008b), clearly more than one path is being followed at any one time by the
speech community in question and the result is a Borgian-like territory, laced
with forking and criss-crossing paths, where some paths gain in salience
through repeated use while other tracks fade from view over time through
disuse. A similar view could be taken with respect to the formation and evo-
lution of word meaning(s) over time. And, basic to the concept of stigmergy,
there is the broader notion of “distributed cognition” and “systems thinking”
which has been adapted already by those working in many disciplines within
the cognitive sciences.
The possible advantages of adapting the concept of stigmergy and stig-
mergic thinking and integrating it into the field of cognitive linguistics are
readily apparent. With respect to usage-based theories the frequency of use
correlates with the notion of “entrenchment” and its effects on different kinds
of linguistic units. Indeed, the long term effects of entrenchment on change
(and stability) of a given unit have been taken up by a number of researchers.
Likewise, the main types of frequency effects cited in CL literature would
fit neatly into the usage patterns characterized by stigmergy, i. e., “token fre-
quency” and “type frequency”, both of which bring about the entrenchment
or stigmergic patterning of different sorts of linguistic units (Croft and Cruse
2004). However, the long term effects of these frequency patterns – the effects
of the entrenchment of a given linguistic unit – are not necessarily uniform,
as Bybee has demonstrated, all of which suggests that more research needs to
be carried on the impact that high frequency (or low frequency) can have on
the linguistic unit in question (Bybee 2003, 2006; Bybee and Hopper 2001).
These questions in turn require recognition of the distributed two-level nature
of the cognitive processes under discussion as well as the way that the forms
are transmitted across time and space, from one language agent to another,
from one generation of speakers to the next and/or from one speech commu-
nity to the next, in which there is a constant interaction between the local and
global levels of language.
5.2. Language as distributed and situated cognition
The CAS approach to modeling natural language is also closely linked to

and aligned with ideas about the embodiment of mind and the environmen-
tal situatedness of human cognition, as well as to concepts such as “socio-
cultural situatedness”, “situated cognition”, “distributed cognition”, “cognitive
artifacts” and “collective cultural conceptualization”. These are notions that

are increasingly central to research not only in the areas of AI and A-Life,
but also in usage-based investigative approaches encountered in cognitive lin-
guistics. Similarly, there is a greater awareness of the intrinsically diachronic
aspect of language as a system and the relative futility of attempts at describ-
ing the ontology, lexicon, morphology and syntax of a given language solely
from a synchronic perspective, suggesting that, conceptually, the synchronic/
diachronic dichotomy is fundamentally flawed when applied to natural lan-
guages as systems.
The applicability of complex systems thinking to cognitive processes in
general and those found in language is relatively easy to see. More particu-
larly, viewing language as distributed cognition provides a valuable theoretical
framework especially when carrying out diachronic analyses of linguistic data.
This can be seen in the summary of Waloszek (2003) who lists the characteris-
tics of a systems approach to cognition as follows:
The first principle concerns the boundaries of the unit of analysis for cognition:
• Distributed cognition looks for cognitive processes in the functional re-
lationships between elements that participate together in a process – the
traditional cognitive unit of analysis is the individual.
The second principle concerns the range of mechanisms that may be assumed
to take part in cognitive processes:
• While traditional views look for cognitive events in the manipulation of
symbols inside individual actors, distributed cognition looks for a broader
class of cognitive events and does not expect all such events to be encom-
passed by the skin or skull of an individual.
When one applies these principles to the observation of human activity, various
distributions of cognitive processes become apparent. The following three are
of particular interest:
• Cognitive processes may be distributed across members of a social group.
• Cognitive processes may involve coordination between internal and exter-
nal (material, environment) structure.
• Cognitive processes may be distributed through time, so that the products
of earlier events can transform the nature of later events.
In Table 1 we find various aspects of the traditional view of language con-

trasted with the systems-oriented approach which integrates the notion of dis-
tributed cognition.
Table 1. Adapted from Hollan, Hutchins and Kirsh (2000).
Traditional view Distributed cognition view

Unit of individual person all – the system is larger than individuals,
analysis all sizes of social-group networks; speech
communities
Mechanism manipulation of symbols functional systems, groups, emphasis on
and linguistic artifacts space/time, diachronic dimension
by individual actors;
synchronic emphasis
Methodology controlled experiments, language viewed as a complex adaptive
emphasis on cognitive system, emphasis on cognitive properties
properties of individuals of systems, dynamical systems approach,
socio-cultural situatedness, ethnography
5.3. Usage-based models
The investigations by Kemmer & Barlow (2000) on usage-based models of

language are pertinent, especially the following observations that:
• linguistic structure is intimately tied to language use, i. e., speaking and un-
derstanding language; it is not encapsulated in a language-specific module,
unaffected by language use after childhood;
• cognitive representations take the form of schemas abstracted over instanc-
es of language use, based on entrenched cognitive routines that represent
the commonalities found in similar usage events;
• greater frequency of particular types of instances leads to greater cognitive
entrenchment, i. e., that frequency of usages in the community shapes the
systems speakers learn and use, and in turn usage generates the frequency
patterns observed, in a feedback loop;
• usage events play a double role in the system: they both result from and also
shape, the linguistic system itself in a kind of feedback loop;
• linguistic entities (categories, structures, etc.) are emergent, and not stored
as fixed entities;
• language use and cognition are grounded in the speakers’ bodily and socio-
cultural experience.
In short, we find their assertion that an analysis of discourse reveals emergent

patterns of interaction that align with cultural schemas highly relevant. More-
over, it is clear that linguistic knowledge is an indissociable part of the human
cognitive system. In this sense, both linguistic knowledge and its cognitive
matrix are processing systems, rather than static representational systems or

entified superorganic structures, while “language” becomes “activity” (Döring
and Nerlich 2005).
5.4. Socio-culturally situated approaches
In addition, although terms such as “language ecology” and “ecolinguistics”

are increasingly common in the literature, writers have tended to use “the
terms loosely and in a generally ill-defined manner” (Garner 2005: 91), rather
than developing a fully socio-culturally situated view of language. Nonethe-
less, taken together, all of these approaches show the dynamic nature of human
cognitive processing and lead us to a more comprehensive picture of the cogni-
tive, embodied, situated, and cultural aspects of human language as well as the
importance of the distributed multi-agent aspect of cognition and language.
With respect to efforts to create greater granularity in the definition of con-
cepts such as “language ecology” and “ecolinguistics” we should mention the
interdisciplinary nature of the work of cognitive linguists, most particularly
that of Sinha (1988, 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2009), Sinha and Jensen de López
(2000) and, for example, Sinha’s International Cognitive Linguistics Confer-
ence 2007 Plenary Address entitled “Language as biocultural niche and social
institution” (published as Sinha 2009). In this paper, Sinha examines questions
such as: how can culture be conceptualized from an evolutionary and ecologi-
cal point of view, what are the relations between biology and culture, and how
do theories of biology and culture bear upon theories of language? Thus, it is
now quite clear that cognitive linguists are beginning to appreciate the heuris-
tic value of appropriating biological concepts, such as “emergence” and “bio-
cultural niche”, into discussions of language change and language evolution.
In this respect we should mention the early ground-breaking work by Hop-
per on “emergent grammar” (Hopper 1987) as well as his more recent contri-
butions (Bybee and Hopper 2001; Hopper 2008; Hopper and Traugott 2005;
Weber 1997). We should note in particular that Hopper’s research deals with
“emergence” in relation to historical language change and grammaticalization.
Also there are the important research initiatives undertaken by Cowley, co-
coordinator of the Distributed Language Group (DLG) (Cowley and Kravchen-
ko 2007; Crowley 2007). DLG is dedicated to exploring applications of the
theoretical framework of distributed cognitive systems and the notion of the
“extended mind” (Clark 1997; Clark and Chalmers 1998) to language. In a
similar vein we should mention that significant work has been carried out by
investigators concerned with bringing about closer theoretical ties and thus
increasing our ability to communicate more effectively across adjacent fields

of cognitive science, efforts that in the future could result in far greater inter-
disciplinary cooperation and synergy (Kramsch 2000; Lantolf 2005; Larsen-
Freeman 1997, 2002).
It should be noted, however, that these researchers have been concerned pri-
marily with adopting terminology and concepts drawn from complex systems
theory and/or dynamical systems theory and then applying them to specific
problems in usage-based linguistics and/or first and second language acqui-
sition and socialization, instead of developing an overall CAS approach and
defining the phenomenon of “language” through recourse to it. Therefore, al-
though certainly of significant value, until now, for the most part studies car-
ried out on these topics have not taken up the broader question of how a CAS
theoretical model might be applied globally to the concept of “language” itself.
However, this situation is about to change. We refer to the fact that a special
issue of Language Learning dedicated entirely to “Language as a Complex
Adaptive System” (LaCAS) is about to appear (Beckner et al. in prep.). The
volume will contain papers given at the first conference focusing solely on this
topic, held November 7–9, 2008, at the University of Michigan and organized
by Nick C. Ellis. The conference proceedings include a contribution by John
Holland, one of the pioneers and foremost researchers in the field of CAS and
its applications (Holland 1995, 1998, 2005, 2006).11
As Ellis observes in his introductory remarks to the conference participants,
in the past there has been a disciplinary tendency toward separation and frag-
mentation of language-related research, increased specialization which has re-
sulted in the investigation of different parts or aspects of language in isolation,
even as parsed into separate disciplines. He states that we find “lexis devoid
of syntax; we study speech sciences as a separate discipline, psycholinguis-
tics divorced from universal grammar and generative approaches; synchronics
from diachronics; we study language structure separate from aspects of social
usage or change” (Ellis 2008). By investigating language as a complex adaptive
system emphasis is put on the recognition that it is from the interactions among
these aspects that patterns of language use arise. Therefore, we believe that
“language structure, language acquisition, processing and usage, and language
change are not independent from another, but are facets of the same complex
adaptive system” (Ellis 2008). In short, recent research in the cognitive sci-
ences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is
11 Readers wishing more information on the conference are directed to http://elicor-

pora.info/LLC and http://www.wiley.com/bw/podcast/lang.asp where the podcast
of papers from the conference is available.
acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent from one
another but are aspects of “the same complex adaptive system (CAS)” (Beck-
ner et al. in prep). Hence, we allege that the CAS approach reveals commonali-
ties across many areas of language research, including historical linguistics,
psycholinguistics, language evolution, first and second language acquisition
and computational modeling.
5.5. Genetically-inspired linguistic models
As Beckner et al. (in prep.) point out, the “CAS approach reveals commonali-
ties in many areas of language research, including first and second language
acquisition, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, language evolution and
computational modeling”. Moreover, another advantage of CAS thinking is
that it provides conceptual structure and terminology that is well recognized
across the disciplines, while it also avoids some of the pitfalls of more geneti-
cally-inspired linguistic models, those that tighten the blend, so to speak, to in-
clude, for example, linguistic counterparts of DNA, or even the “genes/memes/
linguemes” analogical sequence proposed by Croft (2000). In some instances
the heuristic afforded by the biological source can be perceived as exercising
excessive control over the conceptual shape of the resulting analogically con-
ceived linguistic target (Ansaldo 2003). Naturally, in the process of developing
new conceptual tools for examining language change and exploring the field
of evolutionary linguistics, these cross-disciplinary analogies will continue to
be developed. At the same time, however, the analogies elicited can give rise
to problems concerning their suitability, the one-to-one applicability of the
biological source to a particular language phenomenon.
For example, it is difficult to characterize the unit of language evolution.
Croft, when introducing the notion of a lingueme, recognizes that “In biological
evolution, the gene determines to a great extent the structure of the organism,
that is, the organism’s phenotype. […] In language use, it seems to be the other
way around: the speaker’s grammatical knowledge, also called her grammar,
determines to a great extent the structure of the linguemes” (Croft forthcoming
b). Moreover, when speaking of linguistic models that draw heavily on the heu-
ristic provided by biological sources, for those working in cognitive linguistics
a certain level of discomfort or even distrust might be elicited by models that
have their roots too firmly planted in the Chomskyan modular paradigm, e. g.,
the genes/memes analogy where language is sometimes viewed as a “meme”
or “virus of the mind”, or more broadly, where language change is viewed as
a process of “exact replication of linguistic information” between individu-
als and from one generation to the next, another type of epidemiology and a
position that dominates in certain sectors of traditional cognitivist thinking
(Christiansen 1994: 125–126, in prep.; Deacon 1997: 110–115; Hohenberger
2002; Jenkins 1997, 2000). In contrast we could cite the work of researchers
working from within somewhat different frameworks such as Enfield (2003),
Gontier (2006a, 2007, 2008) and Sperber (1996, 2000)12 where the emphasis is
on analogies to “horizontal” or epidemiological transfers. A similar perspec-
tive is found in recent work on “discourse metaphor” (Chilton 2005; Musolff
2006, 2008; Musolff and Zinken 2009; Zinken, Hellsten and Nerlich 2008).
But the hardest problem we are faced with is the difficulty in locating the
site of agency in language. This issue has often been compared to the problem
of agency associated with “the theory of the invisible hand”, while language
itself has been categorized as “a phenomenon of the third kind”, based on the
fact that it looks like something that was brought about by prior design, but was
not (Keller 1994: 61–107). According to Keller, “phenomena of the third kind”
can be perceived and described on the micro-level as well as on a macro-level,
while he compares language itself to something much more highly complex
than a system of footpaths, yet similar in its constitution, an analogy that reso-
nates strongly with complex adaptive systems thinking, the notion of circular
causality, as well as that of stigmergy (cf. also Mufwene 2003). Moreover, today
many of the systems that Keller listed as belonging to this class of “phenenoma
of the third kind” are regularly modeled using a complex adaptive systems
framework where agency becomes distributed throughout the system.13
6. Concluding thoughts
Over the past two decades developments in the field of cognitive science have
brought together pre-existing methodologies and theoretical approaches from
a wide variety of disciplines and at the same time promoted cross-disciplinary
dialogue relating to the development of new methodologies and theoretical
frameworks (cf. Bono 1990, 1993, 1995). As we have noted, this cross-fertil-
ization has been particularly rich in the case of researchers concerned with
modeling language in a number of new settings, e. g., those involved in working
with artificial distributed agents associated with research projects in AI and
12 Most readers will also be familiar with the seminal work by Sperber and Wilson
(2004).
13 For additional discussion of agency in language as well as the difficulties associ-
ated with the gene-meme-lingueme equivalencies, cf. Frank (2008b).
A-Life, as well as in the area of ecolinguistics, biosemiotics and theoretical

biology. Whereas a great deal of attention and effort has been placed on devel-
oping such models in these subfields of cognitive science, to date less work has
been carried out by cognitive linguists. Until now there have been few attempts
to develop ways of modeling the entity called “language” through cross-fertil-
ization with frameworks being developed in the hard sciences, specifically, the
integration of CAS theory. Nonetheless, in recent years a number of impor-
tant steps have been taken in this direction, e. g., Croft (2000), Steels (2000),
and Bernárdez (2001) and most recently Sharifian (2003, 2008, forthcoming).
These initiatives represent a conscious move away from the linear, Cartesian-
Newtonian mode of thinking and the linear conceptualization of causality
characteristic of earlier models of language and language change and, as such,
these steps represent movement toward descriptions of the phenomenon of lan-
guage more in terms of a self-organizing, dynamic system.
As we have noted, the notion of a self-organizing, dynamic system is central
to complex systems theory, also known as dynamical systems theory (Clark
1997). The model now serves as an explanatory device utilized to describe a
wide range of natural phenomena and has been adopted also by various dis-
ciplines in the human sciences, although not yet by those working in the field
of historical cognitive linguistics. Likewise in AI and A-Life it has taken on a
central role. Similarly, attempts to model language-like interactions using ro-
botic technology have become commonplace, even the modeling of “artificial
societies”.14 Given the possible heuristic advantages that derive from develop-
ing a cross-disciplinary vocabulary, a mutually intelligible set of descriptive
terms, we believe serious attention needs to be paid to this CAS option as we
move forward with the task of elaborating a methodological and theoretical
framework for historical cognitive linguistics.
We have explored some of the ways in which CAS thinking might be ap-
propriated to describe the phenomenon of language and language change
more effectively. Thus, we have pointed out, albeit quite tentatively, some of
the paths that might open up when Croft’s “population thinking” approach
to describing language is slightly modified in order to bring its conceptual
tools more into line, analogically, with the CAS approach. Finally, the linkages
holding between the CAS model and current models in cognitive linguistics
have been highlighted, e. g., concepts such as “socio-cultural situatedness”
14 Of particular note are the following centers working on “artificial societies”: the
Santa Fe Institute, the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex
Systems and the Brookings Institution. Cf. also the Journal of Artificial Societies
and Social Simulation and Epstein & Axtell (1996).
(Frank 2008a), “distributed cognition” (Hutchins 1995; Sharifian 2003; Susi

and Ziemke 2001) and “usage-based models” (Barlow and Kemmer 2000).
In this way, the explanatory power of CAS theory for developing models of
natural language has been demonstrated as well as the importance of cross-
disciplinary dialogue.
Also, we want to emphasize that our observations concerning the “popula-
tion thinking” model should not be understood as a rejection of the model
as it has been put forward by researchers such as Croft (2000, 2002, 2006)
and Mufwene (2001, 2005). Rather we have offered these comments in an
attempt to identify ways in which this “population thinking” model could
be modified, supplemented and its explanatory power increased by the adop-
tion of the heuristic of CAS thinking: language conceptualized as a complex
adaptive system.15 Indeed, Croft has set forth the groundwork for an “evolu-
tionary model” (Croft 2002, 2006) while his own research already integrates
many aspects of the CAS approach to modeling language. And, as we have
noted, Mufwene (2001: 157) briefly mentions the CAS approach to language
but from a macro-ecological viewpoint. Exactly how this methodological and
theoretical revision might be accomplished is far beyond the scope of this
short paper although hopefully the topic will be taken up and elaborated upon
in more depth in the future.
Given the fact that we are currently engaged in developing innovative meth-
odological approaches and endeavoring to construct theoretical framework(s)
appropriate for this new subfield of cognitive linguistics, this juncture presents
us with a unique opportunity. It is an opportunity that could allow us to join
with the larger community of cognitive scientists who are exploring the role of
language in cognition as well as the situated and collectively distributed nature
of cognition and language evolution in general, the latter notion being under-
stood as referring both to the origins and evolution of language as well as to the
cognitive and cultural processes that give rise to language change.
15 The same would hold for the possibility of enriching approaches put forward by
Mufwene (2001) and Keller (1994). In this sense, while Croft appropriates the
terminology utilized by Hull, relatively uncritically, Mufwene distances himself
somewhat more, drawing on the language-as-species trope, but making it crys-
tal clear in his writings that this metaphorical-analogical appropriation of terms
should not be excessively tightened nor understood too literally. In turn, he fre-
quently brings up the many disanalogies that come into play when applying this
trope and the heuristic disadvantages of it. In addition, he occasionally brings into
play concepts and terminology associated with non-linear systems. At the same
time, Croft, too, often expresses his own reservations. Cf. Ansaldo (2003: 123) for
further relevant discussion of Croft’s model.
More concretely, while those working in AI and A-Life are attempting to

simulate language evolution, inventing multi-agent interactions that give rise to
linguistic structure, often in a highly ingenious and noteworthy fashion, those
of us investigating diachronic and usage-based questions are surrounded by
a vast array of robust data sets that if properly mined would give us insights
into natural language events. These evolutionary operations are brought about
by concrete populations of flesh and blood speakers whose cognitive acts are
imprinted on the data. Hence, the interactions studied are carried out by con-
crete social collectives over time, rather than being based on simulations using
artificial or robotic agents which, admittedly, are run using what are high-
ly complex and sophisticated evolutionary algorithms. In other words, HCL
would be modeling the effects of real-world cognition, emergent behaviors and
stigmergic effects.
Stated differently, in contrast to the data supplied by studies of “artificial
agents” (studies that “feed” on linguistic data) we have access to data sets from
natural languages which are the results of interactions of “natural agents”.
These human agents embody another feature that is of particular importance
when reconstructing pathways of change over time: these natural agents are
characterized by their socio-cultural embeddedness and their ability to re-
spond to a complex and constantly changing environment. To do this they
adapt their linguistic artifacts in ways that seem appropriate to them, that is,
by the specific communicative needs of the individual agents within the given
setting, at the local level. Hence, it is not merely the interactions between the
natural agents that give rise to the reshaping of their linguistic tools, but rather
and perhaps more importantly the way that the agents respond, simultaneously,
to each other and the shifting demands represented by their socio-cultural situ-
atedness.
Today there is great interest across the disciplines in modeling the evolution
of culture, not only the developmental aspects of material artifacts, but also the
way cognitive artifacts and material metaphors evolve over time. The follow-
ing discussion is typical of the manner in which these research questions are
currently formulated:
Culture involves inheritance: a stable transmission of cultural items – such as ideas,

skills or artifacts – from individual to individual by social learning. At the same
time, culture changes and it often changes in a cumulative and gradual manner.
The results of this process include cultural items that are ‘adaptive’ from the point
of view of the culture bearers, apt for the goals the individuals have, who produce
and select the cultural items according to their goals. In this sense, cultural change
can be seen as analogous to adaptive organic evolution. Cultural change is cultural
evolution. (Kronfeldner 2007: 493)
Little would need to be changed in the above paragraph in order to make it ap-
ply to language and language change, other than substituting a word here and
there, e. g., “language” for “culture”, “linguistic artifacts” for “cultural items”,
etc.
Thus, there are significant benefits that would accrue by adapting a CAS
modeling technique for conceptualizing language, not the least of which would
be the fact that by using a framework whose terminology is recognized across
the disciplines we would obtain a kind of passport that would allow HCL re-
search to more readily cross these disciplinary boundaries. At the same time
the adoption and application of such CAS terminology and associated con-
cepts, e. g., “extended mind”, “cultural conceptualizations” and “feedback
loops”, to linguistic data would allow us to begin communicating in what is al-
ready rapidly becoming the lingua franca of social and behavioral sciences. In
sum, CAS approaches are already part of a cross-disciplinary research frame-
work that is circulating in many subfields within the biological and informa-
tion sciences. And perhaps more importantly, it is gradually gaining currency
in many other related subfields brought together under the umbrella term of
cognitive science. In short, since the CAS framework and its related terminol-
ogy are already widespread in many fields of cognitive science, our adoption of
this framework and terminology in HCL would allow for fluid communication
across the disciplines and perhaps bring about unexpected synergist results.
Acknowledgements
We wish to express our sincere thanks to Joachim De Beule of the Artificial

Intelligence Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel for his helpful comments and
suggestions on a draft version of this paper as well as our kind appreciation to
the anonymous reviewer at Mouton for additional valuable suggestions.
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Metaphor in discourse history1
Andreas Musolff
Abstract
How can diachronic variation be accounted for in cognitive metaphor theory? Should
it be viewed as an accidental aspect of “mere” language use, or as a significant aspect
of historical semantics? If the latter – how does the cognitive approach relate to the
research traditions of conceptual history/history of ideas? The paper discusses these
questions with regard to the history of the metaphor of a state is a (human) body. Its
use can be traced back to medieval times and even to antiquity but the metaphor is also
productive in present-day political discourse. Does such continuity of use constitute
a “historical” tradition in an empirically testable sense, or are we just dealing with
successive instances of a fundamentally ahistorical cognitive operation? The paper
concludes with a proposal to view cognitive, historical and discursive dimensions of
metaphor analysis as complementary aspects.
I am a mere toenail in the body politic. (Boris Johnson, MP, quoted in

The Independent on Sunday, 20 November 2005)
You, the great toe of this assembly … being one o’ the lowest, basest,
poorest, Of this most wise rebellion, thou go’st foremost (Shakespeare,
Coriolanus, Act I, Scene 1)
1. Introduction
Four centuries separate the two quotations cited above; the latter is a pun at-
tached to the famous “fable of the belly”, which the Roman Senator Menenius
in Shakespeare’s play uses to pacify rebellious plebeians. The fable, which
can be traced back to the Aesopian tradition and was popular with Roman
historians since Livy’s History of Rome (Shakespeare’s source) explains that
seemingly idle rulers are entitled to receive their revenues to redistribute them
1 This paper has benefited greatly from comments on earlier versions by participants
of the ICLC 10 workshop on “Historical Cognitive Linguistics” as well as by Jörg
Zinken, Zoltán KĘvecses and Felicity Rash and two anonymous reviewers.
Metaphor in discourse history 71
justly to all other “organs of state”, in analogy to the seemingly “idle” belly or
stomach in a human body that takes all the nourishment from the “working”
limbs. The lesson of the fable is the maxim that if the body members rebel
and do not pass the food to the belly for redistribution, they all die together.2
The Tory Mayor of London since 2008, Boris Johnson, might have approved
of the conservative slant of the fable but he likened himself self-deprecatingly
to an even “lower” body part than the one which Menenius used to denigrate
the leader of the Plebeian rebellion: the toenail, just as the toe, stands low in
the hierarchy of the human anatomy.
2. Metaphor in discourse history
How should we connect these two metaphors, which are evidently based on
similar mappings of source and target concepts? Cognitive metaphor analysis,
whether in the form of conceptual metaphor theory or blending theory (Grady,
Oakley and Coulson 1999; Fauconnier and Turner 2002), can deal with the toe-
and toenail-metaphors as near-parallel cases, as far as the conceptual domains
or mental spaces and the implied body hierarchy are concerned. Of course,
the discursive and social contexts of Menenius and Johnson’s utterances are
extremely divergent, but does this matter for the analysis of metaphor as a
cognitive phenomenon? If yes, how does the cognitive approach relate to the re-
search traditions of conceptual history/history of ideas and discourse history?
This paper attempts to outline theoretical and methodological issues that may
be of relevance in answering these questions.
Historical investigations have not been the foremost concern of cognitive
metaphor analysis so far. Even if the historicity of conceptual metaphor systems
such as the Great Chain of Being was acknowledged, as in Lakoff and Turner
(1989: 166–167), the main emphasis was put on the synchronic investigation
of the metaphor’s “basic version” that is “largely unconscious and so funda-
mental to our thinking that we barely notice it” and that “occurs throughout a
wide range of the world’s cultures” (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 167). In cognitive
“embodiment” theory, the role of the body as the experiential and physiologi-
cal basis of perception and conceptualization has been explored further, with
special regard to its biological foundations in neurological structures and to
2 For the tradition of the “fable of the belly” see Hale (1971: 25–27), Guldin (2000:
101–103).
72 Andreas Musolff
primary experiential scenes in ontogenesis.3 On this basis, we can de-construct

the metaphor a state is a (human) body as the complexion of a more gen-
eral, perhaps universal, conceptual metaphor complex (social) systems are
bodies and the metonymy of bodies-as-persons. Again, the semantics of the
metaphor is explained ahistorically as an “extension” of a fundamental cogni-
tive process.
Over the past decade or so, however, a renewed interest in the diachronic
dimension has emerged. On the one hand, the cognitive focus on universal
conceptual structures has led to more detailed investigations into the cross-cul-
tural variation of metaphor systems. The conceptual metaphor emotions are
fluids in a container, for instance, appears to be linked to the concept of
four bodily “humors” that dominated Western culture for more than a millen-
nium and whose terminological traces can still be found in modern European
languages in the vocabulary of “temperaments”.4 By contrast, Chinese idioms
seem to rely on a conceptual metaphor anger is gas in a heated container,
which in turn can be related to the theories of yin-yang and five elements of
traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine.5 Other conceptual metaphors,
e. g. quality is wealth, a state is a body/a person, politics is war, as used
in present-day Western media and political discourse, have also been linked to
culture-specific theories or ideologies.6
Furthermore, “naturalistic” approaches liken diachronic changes in meta-
phor use to the biological concept of “evolution”. Croft and Cruse (2004),
for instance, speak, bio-metaphorically, of the “life cycle” of a metaphor that
runs from its first coinage, as an instance of semantic innovation, which they
compare to a mutation or altered replication of genetic information, through
a “process of semantic drift” to the end point where “the expression’s meta-
phorical nature fades and eventually disappears” (Croft and Cruse 2004:
204–205). This notion of a metaphor’s life cycle fits well into the generalized
theory of the evolution of linguistic units (so-called “linguemes”, coined after
the model of Dawkins’ “memes”; cf. Dawkins 1989; Croft 2000: 13–39). But
what would be the frame of reference for judging either of them to be “faded”
or having “disappeared”? Expressions such as head of state/government or
body politic may be deemed to have “faded” in terms of their metaphoric-
3 See Johnson (1987); Lakoff and Johnson (1999); Grady and Johnson (2002); Gibbs
(2006).
4 See Kövecses (1995), (2005), (2006); Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995); Gevaert
(2005).
5 See Yu (2008: 401–403).
6 See Fabiszak (2007); Goatly (2007); Musolff (2004b), (2008).
ity as they have become lexialised, but this does not concern the underlying
conceptual mapping a state is a body. Some extensions of this mapping,
especially the extension social order of a state is health of a body, have
been applied in 20th century and current political discourse in Europe and
the USA to give emphatic expression to strongly biased ideological perspec-
tives (see below, 3.3). The course of semantic “fading” thus seems to have
been reversed – is this the start of a new “life cycle” for the metaphor or just
a “revival” of its original resonance? Is such a “revival” only to be treated as
evidence of the universality of the respective embodied source concepts, or do
we need to take culture-specific discourse traditions into account as parts of
the cognitive analysis?
3. Religion, politics and racism: scenes from the life of the Body Politic
To find ways of answering these questions, linguists have to take notice of the
research findings in disciplines such as historical semantics, conceptual his-
tory and political philosophy, whilst reflecting the methodological differences
and resulting mediation problems. In Cultural and Political History, the term
body politic is still used to denote political and social entities or groups of
them.7 Building on classic accounts of the body politic concept in the “history
of ideas” by F. W. Maitland, E. M. W. Tillyard and E. H. Kantorowicz and oth-
ers, which were first published in the 1930s–50s,8 a vibrant research tradition
on this topic area has emerged that still continues in the studies of Hale (1971),
Harris (1998), Soll (2002), Banks (2009), Zavadil (2009), Mouton (2009), to
name but a few. Most of these studies are not written from a specifically cogni-
tive perspective (with the exception of Mouton’s in-depth critique of ahistoric
tendencies in parts of cognitive theory) and many of the methodological and
theoretical tenets of conceptual history have changed since the early “history
of ideas” studies.9 Neo-Hegelian assumptions concerning an idea’s immanent
“dialectic” working through its manifestations in history, or an era’s character-
istic “world picture” have been largely discarded. Still the project of writing an
idea’s history presupposes a narrative schema that imposes its own logic on the
7 See, for instance, de Baeque (1997); Egan (1999); Olwig (2002); Morissey (2006);
Musselmann (2006).
8 See Tillyard (1982), Kantorowicz (1997), Maitland (2003).
9 See the seminal critique of the early “history of ideas” approaches in Skinner (1978,
vol. 1: x–xv); for a detailed debate see the contributions in Hampsher-Monk, Til-
mans, and van Vree (1998).
74 Andreas Musolff
analysis, which poses fundamental methodological questions for the historiog-

raphy of conceptual metaphors.
To gain a sense of these methodological issues, we shall study three prom-
inent uses of the body-state metaphor in the remainder of this section. These
sketches are extremely selective in view of the vast material – Hale’s (1971)
overview alone (which focuses on the body politic metaphor in the English
Renaissance) names more than 160 primary authors. A comprehensive corpus
of the historical uses of this metaphor would have to include most of Western
political literatures/cultures over more than two millennia, if we take into
consideration that the earliest sources quoted are pre-Socratic thinkers and
the Aesopian fables, then Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, crucially the Neo-
Platonists, Biblical traditions (especially St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans
and Corinthians), St. Augustine’s City of God and other texts by the “church
fathers” up to the Middle Ages; since then most of the Western political phi-
losophies, plus a huge amount of propaganda and ideological texts. Further-
more, the body politic metaphor was integrated in the above-mentioned vast
conceptual complex of the Great Chain of Being that linked religious, cos-
mological, socio-political and natural domains in an all-encompassing sys-
tem of “gradation”/“hierarchy,” “continuity” and “plenitude” (Lovejoy 1936:
35–61). By contrast, the following discussion is limited to three historical
snap-shots, one from the Middle Ages, one from the 17th century and one
from the 20th century. The purpose of these case studies is to illustrate how
historical data of metaphor use can contribute to the understanding of the
metaphorical body-state mapping, and thus to the development of cognitive
metaphor analysis.
3.1. The body politic in the Middle Ages: John of Salisbury’s Policraticus
The conceptualisation of state and society as a kind of anatomical hierarchy,

which was implicit in Shakespeare’s as well as Boris Johnson’s uses of the
toe/toenail image is not of modern origin but can be traced in English politi-
cal discourse back to the 12th century philosopher, cleric and diplomat John
of Salisbury (c. 1115–1180). In his Latin treatise Policraticus (c. 1159), which
was dedicated to the then Chancellor and later Archbishop of Canterbury,
Thomas Becket, John depicted Christian feudal society in terms of analogies
with the human body that combined a hierarchical view of the body from the
head “down” to the feet with a strong emphasis on the church’s commanding
role as the soul of the whole organism and on the mutual duty of care among
all body parts:
(1) For a republic is, as Plutarch declares, a sort of body […] The position of
the head of the republic is occupied by a prince subject only to God and
to those who act in His place on earth, inasmuch as in the human body
the head is stimulated and ruled by the soul. The place of the heart is
occupied by the senate […] the feet coincide with peasants perpetually
bound to the soil, for whom it is all the more necessary that the head take
precautions, in that they more often meet with accidents while they walk
on the earth […]. Remove from the fittest body the aid of the feet; it does
not proceed under its own power, but either crawls shamefully, uselessly
and offensively on its hands or else is moved with the assistance of brute
animals. (John of Salisbury 1990: 66–67).10
On account of his head-to-feet depiction of the res publica, John’s text was
judged by E. M. W. Tillyard as “one of the most elaborate medieval statements”
of the body-state analogy within the Great Chain of Being (Tillyard 1982:
103). For Tillyard, the “world picture” of the Middle Ages “was that of an or-
dered universe arranged in a fixed system of hierarchies but modified by man’s
sin and the hope of his redemption”; it was a system of “correspondences” that
could be compared “with a gigantic game where everything is included and ev-
ery act is conducted under the most complicated system of rules” (1982: 13–14).
He contrasts this idealized medieval worldview with that of the “Elizabethans”
who “no longer allowed the details to take the form of minute mathematical
equivalences: they made the imagination use these for its own ends; equiva-
lences shaded off into resemblances” (1982: 107). The medieval worldview, in
this interpretation, did not allow for a truly metaphorical interpretation of the
Great Chain correspondences such as that between human anatomy and social
order: they belonged in a system of “equivalences” that was literally believed
in as an ontology underwritten by Christian doctrine.
However, when we look closer at the text of Policraticus, we find that some
aspects of John’s explication of the body-state analogy do not fit its interpre-
tation as a standard version of a stable, medieval-as-premodern “world pic-
ture”. It is true that the medieval feudal order is represented in the head-to-feet
anatomical hierarchy but this aspect is in fact counterbalanced by the maxim,
which John re-emphasizes throughout Policraticus (chapters 6–17 of Book V,
chapters 1–20 and 24–29 of Book VI), that, notwithstanding their different
10 For the Latin original of these and further examples from Policraticus see John
of Salisbury (1965). Most scholars have declared the reference to Plutarch to be
a literary fiction; see, for instance, Liebeschütz (1950: 23–24), Nederman (1990:
xxi).
76 Andreas Musolff
positions in the God-given hierarchy, all parts of the “political body” depend
on each other and must work together to enable the whole body to stay healthy
and function properly.11
Such relativisation of the seemingly static anatomy of the “political body” is
also evident in a further version of the body-state metaphor in Policraticus in
the form of the “fable of the belly”, which is presented as a moral-political les-
son taught to the author by Pope Adrian IV. According to John, he was prompt-
ed by the pontiff to report on complaints of corruption and simony against the
church and, after having done so, he challenged the Pope: “If you are father,
[…] why do you accept presents and payments from your children?” (John of
Salisbury 1990: 135). The Pope then told the fable as an instruction to “mea-
sure neither our harshness nor that of secular princes, but attend to the utility of
all” (1990: 136). Whilst the belly-v.-members version of the body-state map-
ping is obviously different to the head-to-feet version in terms of the source
domain concepts, the argumentative import is arguably similar, i. e. a double
focus on the obedience that the lower members owe their secular and spiritual
authorities and at the same time on the duty of all body members to co-operate.
But the Policraticus presents a further body politic model which is the very
opposite of a well-ordered political universe; this is the “republic of the impi-
ous”:
(2) Its tyrannical head […] is the image of the devil; its soul is formed of
heretical, schismatic and sacrilegious priests […]; the heart of impious
counsellors is like a senate of iniquity; its eyes, ears, tongue and un-
armed hand are unjust officials, judges and laws; its armed hand is vio-
lent soldiers […] its feet are those among the more humble occupations
who oppose the precepts of the Lord and legitimate institutions. (John of
Salisbury 1990: 193–194)
Here, the body-state analogy receives the opposite target input to that of a
Christian kingdom. From the head down to the feet, the devil’s anti-state forms
a body mirroring that of the proper state, but now the function of every body
part is destructive. That such a devilish res publica was not just a theoretical
horror vision becomes clear when we read John’s advice to the Prince in case
11 These anti-hierarchical aspects have been linked to the reformist 12th century
“medieval humanism” movement, see Liebeschütz (1950: 22); Nederman (1990:
xvi), Bass (1997: 203–210); Guldin (2000: 57–58) and to John’s condemnation of
“tyranny” in book IV of the Policraticus and his involvement in the conflict be-
tween the Crown and the Archbishops of Canterbury (Struve 1978, 1984: 309).
any of his subject body parts does rebel. Relying on the authority of the famous
passage from the New Testament (Matthew, 18: 9, “If your eye or your foot of-
fend you, root it out and cast it away from you”), John explains what seems to
him to be the only possible solution:
(3) I think this is to be observed by the prince in regard to all of the mem-
bers to the extent that not only are they to be rooted out, broken off and
thrown far away, if they give offence to the faith or public security, but
they are to be destroyed utterly so that the security of the corporate com-
munity may be procured by the extermination of the one member. Who
will be spared, I say, by him who is commanded to do violence against
even his own eyes? (John of Salisbury 1990: 140–141)
By highlighting such drastic measures to heal the body politic, as well as by

painting the horror picture of the devil’s state and bringing biblical allusions
into play, John uses the body-state metaphor not so much as the well-ordered
classificatory schema, as stipulated by Tillyard, but instead as a stylistically
sophisticated form of dialectical argumentation, designed to drive home spe-
cific and radical conclusions. His zealous plea in favour of amputation and
utter destruction of revolting members of the political body is anything but the
invocation of a “harmoniously ordered”, well-balanced Christian state; rather,
it exposes the precarious and highly unstable condition of such a notion.
The Policraticus thus provides neither a mere extension of a general ahistor-
ic body-state mapping nor a simple application of “the” medieval worldview.
So, is John of Salisbury’s particular use just an idiosyncratic version, which
puts so much emphasis on combating the “republic of the impious” that the
ideal notion of the healthy body politic is almost overshadowed? This ques-
tion cannot be decided until we consult contrastive uses of the metaphor. Ta-
kashi Shogimen (2008) has compared the corporeal and medical metaphors in
Western and Japanese medieval political treatises and pointed out that whilst
the basic body-state mapping and its implied scenario of a therapy for an
unhealthy state were shared by European and Japanese political theorists,
their conclusions on how to deal with political crises were almost diametrically
opposed: the medieval “European notion of medical treatment as the eradi-
cation of the causes of diseases highlighted coercive and punitive aspects of
government […] while the Japanese notion of medical treatment as controlling
physical conditions seems to create the image of government as an art of daily
healthcare and preventative medicine” (Shogimen 2008: 103).
In Shogimen’s analysis, John of Salisbury figures prominently as the first in
the line of Western medieval thinkers which includes also Thomas Aquinas,
78 Andreas Musolff
Ptolemy of Lucca, Giles of Rome, Marsilius of Padua, John Wyclyf and Nicho-
las of Cusa, who advocated amputation or strong medication as a means of
curing the body politic from its illnesses (Shogimen 2008: 89–91). There are of
course also differences between the treatises of the 12th century Anglo-French
Bishop John of Salisbury and the 15th century Cardinal of Cusa but they and
others seem to share the culture-specific preference for radical crisis solution/
therapy in their application of the body-state metaphor. Shogimen traces this
European tradition back to the early medieval reception of ancient Latin and
Greek literature, e. g. Cicero’s concept of the medicus rei publicae in On Du-
ties, which in turn was based on the metaphor of “punishment as cure” in Ar-
istotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (2008: 91–92). For the Japanese side, the political
healthcare imagery had its roots in religious and legal restrictions of traditional
Japanese medicine; in the course of the 18th–19th centuries, both the source
knowledge system and its metaphorical application “gave way to the Western
counterpart of the eradication of pathological causes” (2008: 102–103).
Shogimen thus demonstrates that culture-specific traditions in the develop-
ment of a conceptual metaphor can be reconstructed and plausibly motivated
with reference to specific textual continuities that differ across cultures. They
help to make sense of an otherwise seemingly idiosyncratic variation of the
metaphor and they provide testable hypotheses about cultural differences in
the development of key concepts in politics. Further empirical corrobora-
tion is needed, e. g. for the “Western”/“European” side as regards other likely
candidates for originator texts for body imagery such as the Pauline biblical
tradition,12 with similar provisos for the Japanese side. But such a reconstruc-
tion offers a new way of generalizing over cultural and periodic ensembles of
texts without pressing them into the straitjacket of a supposedly “worldview”
of a particular age. Crucially, they are specific enough to formulate empirical
hypotheses about metaphor variation at the concrete level of documented texts
that build up to discourse traditions.
3.2. The body politic in the 17th century: Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan
If Shogimen’s findings indicate a general Western focus on punitive-coercive

political therapies, Susan Sontag, in her famous essay Illness as Metaphor, dis-
tinguished within Western culture a “classical” tradition “from Plato to, say,
12 For the medieval reception of biblical and patristic traditions of the political body
metaphor see Nedermann and Forhan (1993); Bass (1997); Kantorowicz (1997:
42–86); Kempshall 1999.
Hobbes”, which was based on the analogy of medical/physiological and politi-

cal “balance” and implied a prognosis that was “always, in principle, optimis-
tic” from “modern” diagnoses of fatal diseases in the body politic that led to the
totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century which favoured images of disastrous
“master illnesses” such as cancer and required matching “radical cures” (Son-
tag 1978: 75, 78, 81–84). In view of John of Salisbury’s admiration for amputa-
tion measures cited earlier, the hypothesis of such a contrast may seem highly
questionable but it could conceivably be defended by reference to Policraticus’
main purpose of warning the leaders of State and Church against rebellions-as-
diseases so as to be able to avoid them. According to Sontag in the “classical”
tradition, “the analogy between disease and civil disorder [was] proposed to
encourage rulers to pursue a more rational policy” (Sontag 1978: 76).
What, then, about the end-point of the classical tradition, as Sontag saw it,
i. e., Thomas Hobbes’s analysis of the state in terms of an “Artificiall Man;
though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall” in his opus mag-
num of 1651, Leviathan (Hobbes 1996: 9)? Body imagery is evident throughout
this work; even the frontispiece gives a first, graphic presentation: it shows
a crowned figure, holding a sword and a crosier in his hands, with the arms
and the trunk consisting of a mass of miniature heads symbolizing the whole
“Common-wealth”.13 The introductory chapter then provides a whole list of
body-state mappings:
(4) […] the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion
to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of Judicature
and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment […] are the
Nerves […] The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the
Strength; Salus Populi (the peoples safety) its Businesse; Counsellors
[…] are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificiall Reason and Will;
Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civill war, Death. […] the
Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at
first made […] resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced
by God in the Creation (Hobbes 1996: 9–10).
This complex analogy extends the mapping a state is a body to a state is a

person, including as it does source concepts such as memory, reason and will.
13 For the interpretation of the frontispiece see Brandt (1987); Mintz (1989); Mal-
colm (2002: 220–233); for the central function of the body-state metaphor in
Hobbes’s political philosophy: Johnston (1986); Bertman (1991); Mintz (1996);
Skinner (1996: 387–390), (2002: 177–208).
80 Andreas Musolff
At the same time it alludes to the tradition of contrasting the body natural and
the body politic, which had acquired constitutional status to differentiate the
personal and political obligations of the King in 16th century England (Kan-
torowicz 1997: 7–41 and passim). In chapter 23 of Leviathan, Hobbes gives
a further list that matches “parts Organicall” with “Publique ministers”, e. g.,
“Protectors, Vice-Roys, and Governors” as “Nerves, and Tendons”, teachers,
moral instructors and judges as the “Voice”, officers of justice as “Hands”,
ambassadors and spies as “Eyes” and receivers of petitions as the “Eare”
(Hobbes 1996: 167–169). There are some overlaps between the two lists of
elements in these body/person-state analogies; the nerves, for instance, ap-
pear twice, once as Reward and Punishment, in the first list and then as the
top echelon of “Publique Ministers” in the second. Curiously, head and heart
are not included in the anatomy of the body politic in the text of Leviathan.14
Taken together, the two lists present a more differentiated political physiology
than the one used in the Policraticus, as many more organs and bodily pro-
cesses are mentioned. Furthermore, Hobbes’s physiological body concept is to
some extent mechanistic: he thinks of the body’s life as “a motion of Limbs”
and asks, rhetorically, “what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but
so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the
whole Body?” (1996: 9). It follows that if the “body natural” can be thought of
as a mechanism, so can the artificial “body politic” of the state.
This perspective on bodies natural and politic as machines has been con-
nected with the gradual replacement of traditional Galenic theories of medi-
cine based on the notion of the “four humors” by the theory of blood circula-
tion and to the general advent of mechanistic models in the sciences in the
17th century.15 Such motivations indicate a further explanatory dimension for
the analysis of diachronic metaphor variation: source-related innovations can
motivate changes in the metaphoric mapping and thus lead to new target con-
cepts. However, some methodological caution is called for against a one-sided
emphasis on the influence of new, scientific source-knowledge. Despite his
well-documented acquaintance with the contemporary mechanical concep-
tion of the body promoted by René Descartes (1596–1650), and his admiration
for William Harvey’s (1578–1657) theory of blood circulation,16 Hobbes falls
back on pre-modern humoral terminology whenever it suits him, for instance
when he describes political illnesses and diseases in chapter 29 of Leviathan.
For instance, he likens conspiracies to “Wens, Biles, and Apostemes, engen-
14 The crowned sovereign’s head is, however, visually present in the frontispiece.
15 See Hale (1971: 129–130); Harris (1998: 141–142); Guldin (2000: 89–91).
16 See Johnston (1986: 123–124); Guldin (2000: 80–89).
dered by the unnaturall conflux of evill humours” and “Popularity of a potent

Subject” to “the effects of Witchcraft” (1996: 165, 230).
His treatment of political illnesses is structured not by a specific scientific
system but rather by commonsense assumptions about the degree of danger
of illnesses and their occurrence in the human life cycle. He thus starts with
Defectuous Procreation, i. e., lack of power of the sovereign (1996: 222).
The next dangerous “Diseases of a Common-wealth” are caused by “the
poison of seditious doctrines”, e. g. the “Example of different Government”
in other nations, which is so seductive that the afflicted nation, like people
with “hot blouds, that having gotten the itch”, “tear themselves with their
own nayles”, or the “Reading of the books […] of the antient Greeks, and
Romans” that incite Tyrannophobia which he compares to “the biting of a
mad Dogge” (1996: 223–226). Those who claim the Church’s “Supremacy”
over a worldly sovereign are likened to “Doctors, that hold there be three
Soules in a man” (1996: 226), and the effects of divided sovereignty are
compared to “Epilepsie, or Falling-sicknesse” or to the condition of siblings
joined at birth (1996: 228). Further political diseases are described partly
in terms of the new blood circulation theory (e. g. the “difficulty of raising
Mony” as congestion of arteries obstructing the “passage for the Bloud”) but
also in traditional terminology, e. g. “pleurisie”, “Lethargy”, “Consumption”
(1996: 229–230).
Overall, the body-state mapping and its political illnesses extensions in
Leviathan represent an eclectic collection of physiological/medical notions
of diverse provenance, all which are used to drive home the political conclu-
sions that Hobbes is interested in. He retains the aspects of interdependence
and hierarchy and the illness-therapy scenario that John of Salisbury had al-
ready highlighted. However, in comparison, Hobbes’s worst-case scenarios of
political illnesses, e. g. Defectuous Procreation, Tyrannophobia, Epilepsie or
Conjoined siblings are at least as drastic and shocking as John’s amputation
scenes and fit Sontag’s view of the classical tradition of principally “optimis-
tic” uses of political illness imagery even less than those of the 12th century
(despite the residual presence of “humoral” concepts). As in the case of the
Policraticus, close analysis of the textual metaphor in Leviathan puts into
question any general assumption of a clear-cut change from one metaphoric
concept to another. Hobbes’s depiction of the state as a body/person adds to
and substantially modifies the traditional mappings but does not replace them
completely. It includes scientific insights (in popularized form) but does not
substitute them wholly for the more ancient source domain: besides blood cir-
culation and machine anatomy, Galenic notions of the four humors and even
witchcraft are still contenders for source input.
82 Andreas Musolff
3.3. Healing the body politic as a “justification”

for genocide in the twentieth century
The most infamous instance of political body/illness imagery in the 20th century
can be found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and in Nazi propaganda in general. Its
traumatic memory is strong enough to be rekindled to this day; thus, a German
politician who spoke of the “homogeneity of the German national body” (Homo-
genität des deutschen Volkskörpers) in the immigration debate was accused of
“pouring oil into the fire” of racial conflicts (Die Zeit, 18 June 1998); President
Ahmadinejad of Iran elicited outraged comparisons with Hitler for denouncing
the state of Israel as a tumour that must be eradicated (The Times 9 December
2005). What is it that made Hitler’s use of body-state mappings so powerful
that they resonate as a distinct form of rhetoric for several generations?
For Hitler, the body-state mapping was less a “metaphor” in the rhetorical
sense than the basis for his whole worldview. According to this ideology, Ger-
many was threatened by a deadly disease that had been caused by the racial
poisoning of its Nordic-Aryan populace by its Jewish enemy race:
(5) This poison [‘of Jewish origin’] was able to penetrate the bloodstream of
our people unhindered and to do its work, and the state was not strong
enough to master the disease. (Hitler 1933: 268; 1992: 224).
(6) [The Jew] is and remains the typical parasite, a sponger who, like an
infectious bacillus, keeps spreading as soon as a favourable medium
invites him. And the effect of his existence is also similar to that of
spongers: wherever he appears, the host nation dies out after a shorter or
longer period. (Hitler 1933: 334; 1992: 277).
From these two passages, we can already identify a fundamental dichotomy

of national health (= maximum race homogeneity) vs. fatal blood poisoning
(= race mix), allegedly caused by the invasion of the “lowest” form of life, i. e.
a hostile parasite (= “the Jew”). Deliverance from this perceived threat to the
German nation’s life would come only if Hitler was empowered, as the healer,
to destroy the supposed agent of disease.17 Behind this vision of a continuous
fight for the nation’s survival lay a crude version of a theory of human races
within the framework of popularized social darwinism, with the so-called
“Nordic” or “Aryan” peoples as the only true “culture-creating” elite and the
17 For detailed analyses of Hitler’s biological and medical metaphor system see
Hawkins (2001); Rash (2005), (2006: 160–169); Chilton (2005), Musolff (2007).
“Jewish” race as its “culture-destroying” opposite.18 The associated healing

narrative has also close conceptual links to the religious scenario of Man’s fall
and redemption.19 In fighting the “Jew” as a poisonous parasite, Hitler claimed
to fulfil “the will of the Almighty Creator” (Hitler 1933: 70; 1992: 60).
It would be tempting to interpret this scenario of a desperate national/racial
illness and a matching radical cure by way of genocide as the perverted version
of a once respectable conceptual metaphor. Such a reading has in fact been
hinted at by the early historians of ideas: Lovejoy, Tillyard and Kantorowicz
all mention the topicality of aspects of Great Chain of Being and Body Politic
metaphors to 1930s–40s politics.20 However, to tell the body politic metaphor’s
history as a tragic life cycle ending in disgrace would be grossly over-simpli-
fying. As we have already noted, the use of body-/illness-related metaphors
in the context of racism and anti-Semitism is commonly judged since 1945 in
Germany (but also internationally) to be akin to or reminiscent of Nazi ide-
ology; such utterances are routinely criticized as following in the discursive
and ideological footsteps of Hitler. We thus have some evidence of discourse-
historical memory influencing the continued use (or, in this case, discontinued
use) of specific applications of political body-/illness metaphors.
Side by side with this historically indexed (indeed, stigmatized) extension
of the body-state mapping we also find ubiquitous use of metaphors from the
same source domain: not just “paled” political terminology (body politic, head
of state etc.) but also all matter of applications of body concepts to political
topics.21 In addition, we find stylistically marked, ironic uses such as in Boris
Johnson’s self-mockery as the toenail in the body politic (see above). In an his-
torical article, the German magazine Der Spiegel described Germanic tribes
that had settled in the Roman Empire as “ulcers/tumours in the body politic” of
Rome (Geschwüre im Staatskörper von Rom; Der Spiegel 11/2007).
Such uses cannot be linked directly to specific predecessor texts, for we un-
derstand them without necessarily connecting the toenail extension to Shake-
speare’s Coriolanus or the imperial ulcers/tumours to genocidal ideology. On
the other hand, a vaguely allusive sense is retained in these cases; after all, they
18 See Weindling (1989); Weikart (2004); for critical assessment of the degree of
influence of social darwinism see Evans (1997: 137–144).
19 See Friedländer (1998: 87); Bärsch (2002: 291–298).
20 See Lovejoy (1936: 313); Tillyard (1982: 117); Kantorowicz (1997: xviii–xix).
21 See Musolff (2004a: 83–114, 2004b) for examples from the context of British and
German debates on EU politics; e. g., anorexia, arteries, birth, blood clot, cya-
nide, death, fever, gall bladder, heart, head, health, liver, muscles, pill, poison,
paralysis, sclerosis, surgery.
84 Andreas Musolff
are not “everyday” uses but rhetorically highly sophisticated instantiations of

the body-state mapping that involve background knowledge (e. g. on body
politic hierarchy, scenarios of fatal illnesses/history of Roman Empire etc.). A
naïve ahistorical, purely “naturalist” reading of such uses would miss the prag-
matic effect almost completely. The current uses of the body-state mapping
thus include a mix of lexicalised metaphors, creative extensions of specific
source concepts and reflective/allusive instances.
4. Conclusions: Historical memory and traditions of metaphor use
The preceding sketches of three stages in the history of the body politic meta-
phor are not intended to suggest an overall narrative of its conceptual devel-
opment: they leave open large gaps in chronology and inter-textual traditions.
Nevertheless, these case studies can help us to outline some of the contours of a
cognitively informed discourse history. On the one hand, they show continuities
in the discursive (especially, argumentative and ideological) purposes and ef-
fects of the body politic metaphor and its extensions into illness-, therapy-, and
specifically, radical cure-scenarios, which allow us to conceive of the feasibility
in principle of reconstructing the discourse history of the metaphor. On the other
hand, some early “history of ideas” hypotheses about the metaphor’s overall
“life cycle” have been put in question, if not refuted. Medieval texts, such as John
of Salisbury’s Policraticus did not prove to be less conceptually flexible and re-
flective than Renaissance uses nor did they or Hobbes’s Leviathan provide more
“balanced”, optimistic conceptualisations of radical cures for an afflicted body
than Hitler’s horror-scenarios of racial therapy. In comparison, the latter use
might even be viewed as being the least “metaphorical” one in a rhetorical sense,
when we consider its “literal” implementation in the Holocaust.
The continued use of the metaphor after its conceptual nadir in Nazi pro-
paganda, both in its reflective, historically indexed form and in ideologically
unmarked contexts, provides a strong incentive to discard the “life-cycle” met-
aphor for conceptual history altogether, both in its “history of ideas” version
and in an ahistorical cognitive understanding (see above, section 2). The model
of a metaphor coinage or “meme” that turns into a “faded” terminological ex-
pression and is perhaps “revived” through renewed interpretation (on the basis
of universal “embodied” cognitive structures) simply does not do justice to the
complexity of co-existing uses at various levels of the metaphoric mapping,
e. g., in the form of “faded” terminology (head of state) and in original coin-
ages (toenail of body politic) and in history-sensitive, reflective uses (nation’s
body = reminiscent of Nazi-rhetoric). In particular, the documented judgements
about what is “politically correct” to say and what is not (e. g. the stigmatized
status of the term Volkskörper in German public debate) provide empirical
evidence of collective memories of the body-state metaphor’s historical role
that are carried forward as a kind of historical stigma-index in all further uses.
Taking account of this historical dimension does not mean at all that cogni-
tive analysis is superfluous: on the contrary, it is indispensable to explicate the
core mappings and scenarios that are required for the metaphor to be used.
But it needs to be complemented by conceptual history and discourse history
perspectives that allow us to reconstruct inter-textual relationships in text-
ensembles, which form historical discourse traditions. The evidence for such
traditions can be found in the socio-cultural memory of speakers and hearers
who remember, for instance, that certain illness-scenarios are “politically in-
correct” or that expressions such as body politic have a quasi-terminological
historical resonance. Such memories may vary in relation to historical exper-
tise, political interest, etc., but some residual degree of memory can in my view
be expected for most users but evidently, further empirical research is needed
in this regard.
According to this view, cognitive and historical analyses do not contradict or
exclude each other; their necessary mediation can be provided by a discourse
history that relates the argumentative bias of metaphoric mappings and sce-
narios to the communicative effects in the socio-historical contexts. It is, after
all, only in empirical discourses that continuities and discontinuities in the
patterns of metaphor use can be identified. These diachronic patterns may be
interpreted as “selective variation” in Croft’s (2000) model of language “evolu-
tion”: the discourse-historical approach thus need not exclude an “evolutionist”
perspective either. However, the conditions for such variation and its results
(i. e. the competitive success of certain metaphor versions over others) need to
be socio-culturally situated and motivated, in order to become accessible to
theoretical modelling and to critical reflection.
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3. Cognitive Approaches to Syntactic Change
Where do beneficiaries come from and how do they
come about? Sources for beneficiary expressions in
Classical Greek and the typology of beneficiary
Silvia Luraghi
Abstract
In this paper, I examine two ways of coding beneficiary expressions in Ancient Greek:
the plain dative and various prepositional phrases. The coding of Beneficiary through
the dative case is attested throughout the history of the Greek language, and appears to
be inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Prepositional phrases, on the other hand, are a
more recent means of expression; their extension from space to more abstract relations
is often documented in texts from different periods.
My discussion addresses the following points:
• Types of beneficiary: benefactive (as in Mary bought a book for John), behalf (as in
I came on my friend’s behalf ), and malefactive (as in My horse died on me).
• The relation between recipient and various types of beneficiary: the dative and the
preposition eis can indicate recipient, besides they can extend to both benefactive
and malefactive. When other prepositions occur, which are not connected with re-
cipient, benefactive and malefactive are based on different spatial metaphors.
• A close connection is sometimes assumed to exist between benefactive and re-
cipient: however, in Greek the most frequently used means of encoding benefactive
(and behalf) do not also encode recipient.
• Greek offers evidence for a possible connection between benefactive/behalf, and
purpose, to the exclusion of recipient.
The diachrony of beneficiary expressions in Ancient Greek can be followed by com-

paring the Homeric poems with Classical prose texts. Frequently used prepositions
that encode both benefactive and behalf are pró (spatial meaning: ‘in front of’), hupér
(spatial meaning ‘above’, virtually limited to behalf), and prós with the genitive (spatial
meaning ‘from’); malefactive is coded by prepositions that indicate directional motion
and/or contact, such as epí with the dative (‘on’), katá with the genitive (‘against’), and
prós with the accusative (‘toward’). Often, semantic extension is not yet attested in
Homer, and one can see its development in later literature.
Having classified types of beneficiary, their means of coding, and the patterns of
polysemy involved, I examine my findings under the assumption that different con-
structions convey different meanings. In this perspective, I attempt an explanation of
different patterns of polysemy described above among recipient, benefactive, and mal-
efactive.
94 Silvia Luraghi
1. Introduction*
In this paper, I analyze different ways of coding beneficiary in Ancient Greek:

through the plain dative and through prepositional phrases. The coding of ben-
eficiary through the dative case is attested throughout the history of the Greek
language,1 and appears to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Preposi-
tional phrases, on the other hand, are a more recent means of expression. Greek
prepositions originate from spatial adverbs; the extension of their meaning
from space to more abstract relations is often documented in texts from dif-
ferent periods.2
Different coding possibilities for beneficiary have been the matter of previ-
ous research, which I survey in the course of this paper. In addition, I describe
various types of beneficiary. The paper is organized as follows. In section
2 I sketch a brief typology of beneficiary roles. In section 3 I describe the
Greek data, which are of special interest because they offer the possibility
of following the diachronic development of beneficiary expressions from Ho-
meric to Classical Greek. In section 4 I discuss the evidence provided by such
diachronic analysis. The results are two-fold: in the first place, I suggest that
Ancient Greek underwent a change with respect to the typology sketched in
section 2. In the second place, I discuss different patterns of polysemy for
various types of beneficiary, depending on the choice between dative coding
and prepositional coding. In section 5 I summarize the findings and add some
conclusions.
* I thank Seppo Kittilä and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an ear-
lier version of this paper.
1 That is, during the time span that precedes the loss of the dative case in Byzantine
Greek.
2 See Luraghi (2003).
Sources for beneficiary expressions in Classical Greek 95
2. The semantic role beneficiary
2.1. Prototypical and non-protypical beneficiary
Following current definitions, beneficiary is the semantic role of a human par-

ticipant who benefits from a state of affairs, such as for my mom in (1):
(1) I bought a present for my mom.
Typically, from the syntactic point of view, beneficiary is a role taken by ad-
verbials, rather than by arguments, that is, beneficiary constituents are non-
obligatory. Accordingly, (2) is also possible:
(2) I bought a present.
Lehmann et al. (2000: 68) describe the prototypical beneficiary situation3 as

“a controlled one, it contains an actor, which is here the beneficient. In ad-
dition, a prototypical beneficiary situation includes an undergoer, which is
made as benefactum to the benefit of the beneficiary. Beneficiary situations
without beneficient or benefactum are not prototypical”.4 According to this
definition, (1) refers to a prototypical beneficiary situation, because it contains
a beneficient (the agent NP I), and a benefactum (the object NP a present). Non-
prototypical situations are those in (3) and (4):5
(3) This handbook is very useful for my students.6
(4) The lawyer spoke for his client.
3 ‘Situation’ is used here and in the rest of the paper to indicate all types of state of
affairs.
4 “eine kontrollierte, enthält also einen Actor, der hier der Benefizient ist. In einer
prototypischen benefaktiven Situation ist weiterhin ein Undergoer eingeschlossen,
der als Benefaktum zugunsten des Benefiziärs geschaffen […] wird. […] Bene-
faktive Situationen ohne Benefizient oder ohne Benefaktum sind nicht prototy-
pisch.”
5 Lehmann et al. (2000) do not add examples of these two types of non-prototypical
beneficiary situations.
6 Note that This handbook is very useful is also possible: I do not consider such sen-
tences here because the beneficiary is not expressed, albeit implied (if something is
useful, it must necessarily be useful for somebody).
96 Silvia Luraghi
Example (3) does not contain a beneficient (there is no agent NP), but it does
contain a benefactum, which here is syntactically the subject, i. e. the NP this
book. Example (4), on the other hand, does not contain a benefactum, but it
does contain a beneficient, the agent/subject NP the lawyer. Note further that
example (4) may have the two readings in (4a) and (4b):
(4a) The lawyer spoke in favor of his client.

(4b) The lawyer spoke on behalf of his client.
I will elaborate on the difference between the two possible interpretations (and
the two possible states of affairs) in the next section.
2.2. Agentive and event beneficiary
Smith (2005) focuses on the difference between beneficiary in the case that the
state of affairs in which the beneficiary occurs is brought about by an agent or
not, and writes that “One type [of beneficiary construction] always includes an
agent, and it expresses the idea that the agent intentionally carries out the act
for the affectee, and the act is presented as good for the affectee. I refer to this
type as the ‘agentive benefactive’ construction. The other covers more general
benefactive events, and I call this type the ‘event benefactive’ construction […]
whenever an event is agentless, it is always expressed by an event benefactive
construction” (2005: 41).7
Event beneficiary corresponds to non-prototypical cases in which, using the
terminology in Lehmann et al. (2000), no beneficient occurs; agentive ben-
eficiary, on the other hand, may correspond to prototypical beneficiary, if a
benefactum also occurs, or it may correspond to non-prototypical beneficiary
in which there is an agent, but no benefactum. So, with respect to the examples
in section 2.1, agentive beneficiary includes beneficiaries in (1), (4a) and (4b),
while event beneficiary corresponds to the beneficiary in (3).
It needs to be remarked at this point that all types of agentive beneficiary, i. e.
all beneficiary situations that contain a human beneficient, either prototypical
or not, contain a possible controller, under whose intentionality the situation is
brought about. As we will see in sections 3 and 4, the feature of intentionality
plays an important role in the coding of beneficiary in Classical Greek, even
where no activity is overtly indicated (i. e. with states).
7 I borrow Smith’s terminology in the rest of this paper, with some differences de-
scribed below.
Note that my definition of event beneficiary in this paper does not corre-
spond exactly to the definition in Smith (2005), because it does not include
situations in which neither a beneficient nor a benefactum occur, such as the
ones in (5) and (6) (from Smith 2010):
(5) ame ga yande-kure-ta

rain subj stop-give-pst
‘It stopped raining (and I am thankful for that).’ (Japanese)
(6) I get to go to the beach this weekend.
Rather, I consider instances of event beneficiary only those that do contain

a benefactum, as shown in (3). As I will show in sections 3 and 4, possible
occurrence or non-occurrence of a benefactum is one of the parameters that
determines the choice of specific coding devices in Classical Greek.
Let us now turn to conceptual differences between the three possible situ-
ations in which agentive beneficiary occurs. A crucial difference in the role
taken by the beneficient emerges between (1) and (4a) on the one hand, and
(4b) on the other. Both in the prototypical beneficiary situation (as in [1]) and
in the case of (4a), the beneficient acts to the benefit of the beneficiary, but not
in his/her place. In (4b), which I will call “behalf beneficiary”, the beneficient
acts in the place of the beneficiary, that is, the beneficient substitutes for the
beneficiary. In occurrences such as (4b) it is implied that the beneficient cannot
perform the action and needs the beneficient to perform it in his/her place.8
Indeed, behalf beneficiary is not restricted to occurrences in which there is
no benefactum, since one can say for example:
(7) I wrote a letter on his behalf
However, the relation of the benefactum to the beneficiary is complex: in (7)

it is said that the letter was written on behalf of somebody, but this does not
imply that the beneficiary will ever also be a possible recipient of the letter, or
will gain control over it in some other way, while a normal reading of the proto-
typical beneficiary situation, as the one in (1), is that the beneficiary is also the
intended recipient of the benefactum (even if this is not necessarily so). This
point is made clear by example (8):
8 This type of beneficiary is also called “deputative-benefactive”; see Van Valin and
LaPolla (1997: 384).
98 Silvia Luraghi
(8) The vice president delivered a speech on behalf of the president, who
was absent.
Here, the beneficiary benefits from the activity of the agent as a whole, rather
than from the benefactum. The existence of a benefactum remains on the back-
ground, because the important fact in this case is substitution. This is also
remarked in Kittilä (2005: 273), who writes: “whether the result of the event
is regarded as beneficial is less relevant here”. Thus, events containing behalf
beneficiary are similar to non-prototypical beneficiary events that do not con-
tain a benefactum, even in cases in which a concrete object is made or effected
to the benefit of the beneficiary.
Indeed, as noted in Lehmann et al. (2000: 93), a beneficiary is prototypically
conceived of as exerting some degree of control over the benefactum. This
feature of beneficiary is common both to prototypical beneficiary, and to event
beneficiary, thus overriding the possible occurrence of a beneficient.
From the above discussion, it appears that there are two possible poles of the
beneficiary event that may be profiled: either the beneficient or the benefactum.
I will return to the relevance of this possible contrast in the next two sections.
2.3. Recipient and beneficiary
A typology of beneficiary expressions has recently been put forward in Kittilä

(2005).9 I will briefly summarize it here.
Kittilä takes as his starting point the remark that, as commonly noted in
research about beneficiaries, beneficiary is conceptually similar to another se-
mantic role, recipient. Syntactically, the obvious difference between the two
roles is that recipient is the role of an obligatory constituent, while beneficiary
is non-obligatory (see also Kittilä and Zúñiga 2010). Let us now turn to the
conceptual similarity.
As remarked in the literature about beneficiary, in the prototypical benefi-
ciary situation there may be no actual transfer (see Goldberg 1995: 37); still,
under normal conditions it is assumed that the intention of the beneficient is to
actually transfer the benefactum to the beneficiary. This makes the beneficiary
similar to a recipient: the intentions of a beneficient are similar to the intentions
of a giver, even if the beneficient does not necessarily also act as a giver. Such
9 See further Kittilä and Zúñiga (2010). An earlier typology of beneficiary can be
found in Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 382–384).
similarity is mirrored by the fact that in several languages, including English,

this type of beneficiary can be encoded as recipient:
(9) I bought my mom a present.10
Kittilä uses the term “recipient-beneficiary” for beneficiaries such as my mom

in (1) and (9). He then turns to beneficiaries that do not, in any case, gain con-
trol of a concrete entity as a result of benefaction. The latter broadly correspond
to non-prototypical beneficiaries that occur in situations in which there is no
benefactum, as defined in Lehmann et al. (2000: 68), and are agentive benefi-
ciaries in the terms of Smith (2005). This type of beneficiary is exemplified in
(4); a further example is (10):
(10) I told a lie for him (= in order to help him).
As we have already seen in section 2.1, beneficiaries of this type do not gain
control over a concrete entity as a result of benefaction; still, the situation pro-
vides them with some concrete benefaction. I will use the term concrete ben-
eficiaries for beneficiaries as the one in (10).11
As I have argued in 2.2, a further possible feature of benefaction is substi-
tution. Substitution holds in states of affairs in which a person carries out an
action on behalf of somebody else, as in (4b) and (8). According to Kittilä, this
type of beneficiary, i. e. behalf beneficiary in my terminology, groups together
with the second type (non-recipient, concrete beneficiary) in the coding of ben-
eficiary role crosslinguistically. However, the Greek evidence points toward the
existence of a distinction between the two, as we will see in sections 3 and 4.
Based on a sample of genetically unrelated languages, Kittilä finds the fol-
lowing possible types of coding:
(a) tripartite languages, which code recipient, recipient-beneficiary, and other
types of beneficiary in three different ways;
(b) recipient prominent languages, in which recipient-beneficiary is always
coded in the same way as recipient;
10 This sentence, which contains a beneficiary in the dative-shift construction, has

a pragmatic implication as opposed to the corresponding sentence in which the
beneficiary is indicated by a PP (I bought a present for my mom); see e. g. Goldberg
(1995). This feature of the construction goes beyond the scope of the present paper.
11 Newman (1996: 220) speaks of “true” benefactives in cases in which there is no
benefactum, because only in such cases it is possible to rule out a recipient inter-
pretation.
100 Silvia Luraghi
(c) beneficiary prominent languages, in which all types of beneficiary are

coded in the same way, but not in the same way as recipient;
(d) neutral languages, in which recipient and all types of beneficiary are coded
in the same way.
In addition, some of the languages that mostly behave as those in one of the
four types above, may be “fluid”, i. e. occasionally display features of one of the
other types, especially in cases in which possible ambiguity may arise. An ex-
ample, according to Kittilä (2005: 289–290), is Vietnamese, a “typical neutral
language”, in which “there is an unambiguous encoding mechanism available
for the role of beneficiary”.
English conforms to type (a). In English, recipient-beneficiary can be coded
in the same way as recipient, i. e. with a dative shift construction, but when
prepositional phrases are used, recipient takes to, while recipient-beneficiary
takes for, in much the same way as other types of beneficiary. However, the
latter cannot be coded with dative shift, as shown in the examples below (from
Kittilä 2005: 278):
(11) a. s/he gave the book to me

b. s/he gave me the book
c. s/he baked a cake for me
d. s/he baked me a cake
e. s/he went to the marked for me
f. *s/he went me to the market
In Kittilä’s sample, the only two languages which conform to type (a) are Eng-
lish and Icelandic.12
Note that in his (2005) paper, Kittilä does not mention the other non-proto-
typical type of beneficiary situation mentioned in Lehmann et al. (2000), which
I have called event beneficiary adapting the terminology in Smith (2005), i. e.
the one exemplified in (3), in which there is no agent (no beneficient).
12 Indeed most modern Indo-European languages that have an inflectional dative,

such as German, the Slavic languages, and the Romance languages (which have
an inflectional dative limited to certain pronouns), seem to conform to this type. I
cannot discuss this matter here, since it goes beyond the scope of this paper, but it
certainly deserves to be pursued further.
2.4. A typology of beneficiary
From the above discussion, relevant features for the typology of beneficiary
appear to be the following:
(a) presence/absence of an entity over which the beneficiary gains control and
that s/he may receive as a result of benefaction;
(b) presence/absence of an agent or possible controller by whose intention the
event of benefaction is brought about;
(c) substitution of the beneficiary by another agent.
Combining Kittilä’s typology with the remarks in Lehmann et al. (2000) and in
Smith (2005), I will make use of the following types of beneficiary role:
• recipient beneficiary (RB), as in (1): it occurs in prototypical beneficiary
events, when both a beneficient and a benefactum also occur;
• concrete beneficiary (CB), further subdivided into:
° concrete beneficiary/agentive (agentive CB): it occurs in beneficiary
events in which a beneficient also occurs, but not a benefactum, as in (4a);
° concrete beneficiary/event (event CB): it occurs in beneficiary events in
which a benefactum also occurs, but there is no beneficient (i. e. there is
no agent), as in (3);
• behalf beneficiary (BB), as in (4b), (7), and (8).
As we will see in section 3, this typology does not account for all possible types
of beneficiary in Classical Greek. Consequently, I will argue for the existence
of a further type of event CB (see especially section 3.3.2).
2.5. Malefactive
Also connected with beneficiary, albeit often only mentioned with no further
discussion,13 is malefactive, the role of the entity (normally a human being) to
the detriment of which a state of affairs is brought about, as in (12):
(12) John cheated on Mary.
In many languages of Europe, in which beneficiary is coded through the dative

case, malefactive can also be coded in the same way. An example is Italian:
13 Cf. Kittilä and Zúñiga (2010).

102 Silvia Luraghi
(13) Lo sciopero dei treni mi ha reso impossibile il ritorno

the strike of+the trains me:dat has made impossible the return
‘The train strike made my return trip impossible.’
This pattern is typical of most Indo-European languages; a discussion of cod-

ing patterns with further examples can be found in Radetzky and Smith (2010).
Alternatively, prepositions can occur, as in:
(14) The soldiers fought against the enemy.14
In the latter case, prepositions that code beneficiary and malefactive are differ-
ent: in other words, when more semantic content is expressed the two opposite
notions of benefaction and malefaction are kept distinct. I will elaborate on this
topic below, discussing the Greek data (sec. 3 and 4).
3. The Greek evidence
Classical Greek is the language of Attic-Ionic writers active approximately in

the 5th century BCE. Earlier literary evidence is provided mainly by the Ho-
meric poems, written in the 8th century BCE, but composed orally about three
centuries earlier. The term Ancient Greek is used to refer to the complex of an-
cient Greek texts, starting with the earliest ones and up to the end of antiquity.
Ancient Greek has an inflectional case system which comprises nominative,
accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative. Cases code grammatical relations
and partly semantic roles; besides, semantic roles are coded by adpositions
(pre- or postpositions in Homeric Greek, later prepositions).
In this section, I first survey the Classical Greek data, and show that Classi-
cal Greek conforms to type (a) in Kittilä (2005). Then I proceed to the Homeric
evidence, and show that the extent to which the dative could code beneficiary
was larger than in Classical Greek. Homeric Greek conformed to type (d), that
is, neutral languages, with some fluid features needed for the coding of BB. As
we will see, in the change from Homeric to Classical Greek a relevant role is
played by features of different types of CB.
14 Note that expressions such as fight against somebody are not normally treated in
discussions about the malefactive. However, they clearly should be, given the fact
that the parallel expression fight for somebody is usually regarded as containing a
beneficiary.
3.1. The dative
The dative case typically codes recipient and addressee in Ancient Greek.15
Third arguments of verbs of giving and verbs of communication, which bear
such semantic roles, take the dative, as shown in (15) and (16):
(15) dôka dé hoi NUƝWrUD

give:aor.1sg ptc 3sg.dat mixing.bowl:acc
‘I gave him a mixing bowl.’ (Hom. Od. 24.275);
(16) all’ áge moi tóde eipè

ptc carry:imp.2sg 1sg.dat dem.n/a say:imp.2sg
‘but come on, tell me this’ (Hom. Od. 1.169).
In (15) the dative hoi ‘to him’ is the third argument of the verb dôka ‘I gave’
and has the semantic role recipient, while in example (16) the dative moi ‘to
me’ is the third argument of the verb eipé ‘tell’ and has the semantic role ad-
dressee. Note that the recipient in (15) can be regarded as the prototypical in-
stance of this semantic role, as argued in Kittilä (2005: 274). The construction
in (15) is the prototypical instance of the “give-construction” in Greek.16
To a limited extent, verbs whose argument structure conforms to the give-
construction may take a PP formed by the preposition eis (Attic) or es (Ionic)
with the accusative.17 This preposition means ‘to’, and usually codes direction
with motion verbs. The occurrence of eis with verbs of giving follows a com-
mon semantic extension, also shown by English to, which conceives of human
beings as destinations, in case they are the target of an event of transfer.
In Classical Greek, eis with the accusative extends to events of transfer lim-
ited to cases where transfer is abstract, as shown in (17) below. Besides, it can
extend to events of communication, which can also be conceived of as abstract
transfer. In (17) eis with the accusative occurs with the verb parékhein ‘offer’,
15 See Schwyzer (1950) for general reference on the use of Greek cases; for further
reference on Homeric Greek, see Chantraine (1953). On the coding of semantic
roles in Homeric and Classical Greek, see Luraghi (2003).
16 See Newman (1998) on recipients and the give-construction.
17 Greek prepositions may take one, two or three different cases. Of the ones consid-
ered in this paper, eis always takes the accusative and pró always takes the geni-
tive, hupér and katá may take either the genitive or the accusative, while prós and
epí may take one of three cases, genitive, dative, or accusative. On the complex
semantic differences connected with case variation in Greek, see Luraghi (2003).
104 Silvia Luraghi
which typically takes the dative, while in (18) it occurs with the verb légein
‘say’:
(17) ouk àn aiskhúnoio eis toùs +pOOƝQDV

neg ptc be.ashamed:opt.prs.m/p.2sg to art.acc.pl Greek:acc.pl
sautòn VRSKLVWƝQ SDUpNKǀQ?
refl.2sg.acc sophist:acc present:part.prs.nom
‘Would you not be ashamed to present yourself before the Greeks as a
sophist?’ (Pl. Prt. 312a);
(18) kaì álla OpJǀQ es autòn thumalgéa

and indef.n/a.pl tell:part.prs.nom to dem.acc heart.grieving:n/a.pl
épea
word:n/a.pl
‘and telling him other bitter words, […]’ (Hdt. 1.129.1).
As I argued in Luraghi (2003: 112–116), eis with the accusative in such pas-
sages is not semantically equivalent to the dative. The preposition profiles a
unidirectional trajectory, while the dative case simply indicates a certain de-
gree of affectedness in Greek (see Luraghi 2003: 63–64). For example, in (18)
the context makes it clear that the passage refers to unidirectional communica-
tion; see Luraghi (2003: 112).
The notion of spatial trajectory is mapped on an abstract plane onto the no-
tion of relation: indeed, eis is common in passages where a relation between
human beings is described as holding from one person toward the other, as in
philía eis tiná ‘friendship towards somebody’.18 Besides, eis with the accusative
does not occur with the verb GtGǀPL ‘give’, i. e. it does not code the prototypical
recipient. Thus, one cannot consider the preposition eis with the accusative as a
possible alternative to the dative for the coding of recipient or addressee. This
type of PP should rather be viewed as providing a coding means for some sort
of other participant, which is similar to recipient or addressee, but occurs in a
construction in which the profiled feature is not reception, but rather a relation,
conceptualized as an (abstract) trajectory.
Closely connected with beneficiary is the so-called dativus sympatheticus,
which occurs in constructions that contain external possessors. Such construc-
18 Note further that eis does not code a concrete direction in events of motion with
the singular of human landmarks in Classical Greek: with such landmarks, this
type of PPs only codes abstract direction, in examples such as the ones mentioned
in this section. See section 4.2.1 for further details.
tions are referred to by Lehmann et al. (2000: 69) as containing an “inherent

relation” between beneficiary and benefactum. External possessor is typical
of many ancient and modern Indo-European languages.19 An example from
Homeric Greek is (19):
(19) têi per G۸GHND paîdes enì megároisin ólonto

dem.dat ptc twelve child:acc.pl in palace:dat.pl die:aor.mid.3pl
‘Twelve of her children died in the palace. / Twelve children died on her
in the palace.’ (Hom. Od. 24.603).
The German example below is from Lehmann et al. (2000: 69):20
(20) Ihm ist der Vater gestorben

3sg.dat be:3sg art.nom father die:part
‘His father died.’ lit.: ‘The father died on him.’
The fact that the dative can be employed in such constructions is clearly related
with its use in prototypical beneficiary and malefactive expressions. I am not
going to discuss this matter here, because my main interest is in the meaning
of alternative types of expression (i. e. on the semantic extension undergone by
prepositions, as alternative to the dative).
3.2. Recipient beneficiary
Recipient beneficiary, as described in Kittilä (2005), occurs in what Lehmann

et al. (2000) regard as the prototypical beneficiary situation. It is coded through
the dative case:
(21) têi idíai aretêi NRLQ‫ں‬Q W‫ں‬Q eleutherían kaì

art.dat own:dat merit:dat common:acc art.acc freedom:acc also
toîs állois HNW‫ڼ‬VDQWR
art.dat.pl other:dat.pl gain:aor.mid.3pl
‘Through their own merit they also obtained freedom for all others.’
(Lys. 2.44);
19 See Haspelmath (1999) for reference on the languages of Europe, and Havers
(1911) on the ancient Indo-European languages, including Greek.
20 Note that both examples can also be considered occurrences of malefactive.
106 Silvia Luraghi
(22) phaínetai dè kaì Samíois Ameinoklês

appear:prs.3sg ptc also Samian:dat.pl Ameinocles:nom
Korínthios QDXSƝJzV naûs SRL‫ڼ‬VDV
Corinthian:nom shipwright:nom ship:acc.pl make:part.aor.nom
téssaras
four:acc
‘It appears that Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, made four ships
for the Samians.’ (Th. 1.13.3);
(23) ho d’ ekéleue autoùs oikía te KHǀXW{L

dem.nom ptc order:impf.3sg 3pl.acc house:n/a.pl ptc rfl.dat
áxia tês EDVLOƝtƝV oikodomêsai
worthy:n/a.pl art.gen royal:gen build:inf.aor
‘He ordered them to build him houses worthy of his royal power.’
(Hdt. 1.98.2).
In (21) the dative NP toîs állois ‘the others’ is a RB and the direct object W‫ں‬Q
HOHXWKHUtDQ ‘freedom’ is the object received through benefaction; in (22)
Samíois ‘the Samians’ is the RB of naûs téssaras ‘four ships’, and in (23) the
pronoun KHǀXW{L ‘him’ is the RB of oikía ‘houses’.
In addition, the preposition es/eis can also code recipient beneficiary to some
extent, as shown in the following examples:
(24) ho Kroîsos tò pân es autòn HSHSRL‫ڼ‬NHH

art.nom Croesus:nom art.n/a all:n/a to 3sg.acc make:plpf.3sg
‘Croesus had done all that he could for him.’ (Hdt. 1.85.1);
(25) theôn mèn eis DQWKU۸SRXV dósis

god:gen.pl ptc to man:acc.pl gift:nom
‘It is a gift of the gods for mankind.’ (Pl. Phlb. 16c);
(26) SOHtǀ d’ ‫ں‬ khília tálanta PiWƝQ eis toùs

more ptc than thousand talent:n/a.pl in.vain to art.acc.pl
xénous DQƝOǀNyWHV
mercenary:acc.pl pay:part.pf.nom.pl
‘We have paid at random more than a thousand talents for the mercenar-
ies.’ (Isocr. Areop. 10).
In the above examples, the relation of benefaction is conceived of as unidirec-

tional motion along a spatial trajectory.21 The occurrence of the preposition
adds some semantic content, profiling the direction of the relation. In (26) the
meaning may be close to purpose, as I will argue below, in section 4.3.
3.3. Concrete beneficiary
In this section, I describe ways of coding agentive CB and event CB in Classi-

cal Greek. As remarked above, section 2.4, it turns out from the evidence that
the division into these two sub-types of CB does not account for all relevant
distinctions made in this language. As we will see in section 3.3.2, event CBs
may contain some features of agency, even when the situation is not an agent-
ful one.
3.3.1. Agentive CB
When an agent, or beneficient, is present, CB is most often coded through the
preposition hupér ‘over’ with the genitive, as shown in (27) and (28):
(27) kaì gàr pollà hupèr emoû eîpe ERƝWK{Q

also ptc many:n/a.pl over 1sg.gen say:aor.3sg help:part.prs.nom
emoí
1sg.dat
‘And indeed he said many things in my favor, supporting me.’
(Pl. Protag. 309b);
(28) allà toùs tethneôtas en tôi SROpPǀL

but art.acc.pl die:part.pf.acc.pl in art.dat war:dat
axioûntes tôn QRPL]RPpQǀQ tugkhánein
deserve:part.prs.acc.pl art.gen.pl think:part.prs.gen.pl receive:inf.prs
pròs toùs hetérous hupèr DPSKRWpUǀQ ekindúneusan,
toward art.acc.pl other:acc.pl over both:gen.pl run.risk:aor.3pl
hupèr mèn tôn, hína PƝNpWL eis toùs
over ptc art.gen.pl in.order no.longer to art.acc.pl
21 Note that the noun GyVLV ‘gift’ is based on the verb GtGǀPL ‘I give’, which takes a
recipient NP in the dative as its third argument; however, the verbal noun can also
occur without a complement. Thus, HLVDQWKU۸SRXV is an optional constituent.
108 Silvia Luraghi
tethneôtas examartánontes SOHtǀ perì toùs

die:part.pf.acc.pl fail:part.prs.nom.pl longer about art.acc.pl
theoùs H[XEUtVǀVLQ, hupèr dè tôn KHWpUǀQ,
god:acc.pl outrage:prs.3pl over ptc art.gen.pl other:gen.pl
hína P‫ ں‬próteron eis W‫ں‬Q hautôn DSpOWKǀVL
in.order not before to art.acc rfl.gen.pl leave:aor.3sg
patríou timês DWXNK‫ڼ‬VDQWHV
homeland:gen honor:gen fail:part.aor.nom.pl
‘[…] but thinking it right that those who had died in the war should
receive the customary treatment, they risked combat against one of the
parties in the interest of both: for the former, that they should cease from
outraging the gods by their trespass against the dead, and for the latter,
that they should not hasten away to their own land frustrated of an an-
cestral honor.’ (Lys. 2.9).
In (27) the CB hupèr emoû ‘for me’ benefits from the event; note that the con-
text makes clear that the agent helped the speaker in a discussion, rather than
speak in his place. Thus, this is not an instance of BB. Example (28) contains
various instances of CB: KXSqUDPSKRWpUǀQ ‘for both’, hupèr mèn tôn ‘for the
former’, hupèr dè tôn ‘for the latter’. Again, these are not instances of BB: the
passage does not say that the agent acts on behalf of the beneficiary, that is in
the place of the beneficiary, but rather that the agent acts to the benefit of the
beneficiary.
3.3.2. Event CB
Let us now turn to occurrences which do not contain an agent, or beneficient.
Especially with the verb ‘be’, CB can also be coded through the proposition
prós with the genitive, as in (29):
(29) elpísas pròs KHǀXWR tòn NKUƝVPzQ eînai

hope:part.aor.nom from rfl.3sg.gen art.acc oracle:acc be:inf.prs
‘Having thought that the oracle was in his favor.’ (Hdt. 1.75.2).
The spatial meaning of prós with the genitive is ‘from the side of’, and it usu-
ally occurs with human landmarks; another extension of its meaning is ‘by’ in
agent phrases. I will discuss the extension to beneficiary below, in section 4.
Note that (29) does not contain an agent; rather, it seems to be an occur-
rence of event beneficiary. However, an oracle is an entity which may exert
influence, and thus, to some extent, control, over a human being. This point
is made clearer in (30), also with the verb be, where some agency is implied,
albeit not clearly indicated (the subject of the verb be is not an agent), because
the favorable entity is a human being, and the feature of agency implied here
is intentionality:
(30) Kallías mèn dokeî moi mála pròs 3UǀWDJyURX

Callias:nom ptc seem:prs.3sg 1sg.dat very toward Protagors:gen
eînai
be:inf.prs
‘It seems to me that Callias is all for supporting Protagoras.’
(Pl. Protag. 336d).
That the occurrences in (29) and (30) are not completely agentless is also shown
by the fact that where no influence of some possible agent is implied we find
another construction, which is the dative or a PP with eis and the accusative.
Note that coding in this case is the same as for RB. Example (31) contains co-
ordinated occurrences of both constructions:
(31) dokeîn oûn sphísi kaì nûn ámeinon eînai tèn

seem:inf.prs ptc 3pl.dat and now better:n/a be:inf.prs art.acc
heautôn pólin teîkhos ékhein, kaì idíai toîs
refl.gen.pl city:acc wall:n/a have:inf.prs and particularly art.dat.pl
polítais kaì es toùs pántas xummákhous
citizen:dat.pl and to art.acc.pl all:acc.pl ally:acc.pl
ǀSKHOLP۸WHURQ ésesthai
useful:cmpr.n/a be:inf.fut
‘[…] that they now thought it fit that their city should have a wall, and
that this would be more beneficial to both the citizens themselves and all
allies.’ (Th. 1.91.6).
In (31) event CB is coded once through the dative (toîs polítais ‘for the citi-
zens’), and the second time through a PP formed by es with the accusative (es
toùs pántas xummákhous ‘for all the allies’).
The examples discussed show that not all CBs in this section are the same
regarding the event/agentive parameter. None of the examples discussed con-
tains an acting beneficient; still, in (29) and (30) a potential beneficient is men-
tioned, who is not actively involved in the situation, but still exerts a relevant
feature of agency, that is intentionality as in (30) or control as in (29). Note that
neither (29) nor (30) contain a benefactum (in fact, they contain an intransitive
predicate that indicates a state, the verb ‘be’).
110 Silvia Luraghi
In (31), on the other hand, we find the adjective ǀSKHOLP۸WHURQ ‘more useful’,
a benefactum, teîkhos ‘a wall’, but no mention is made of an agent or benefi-
cient. Thus, only this last example contains a real event CB.
3.3.3. Means of coding and types of CB

To sum up, CB is coded through hupér with the genitive in case it occurs with
an agent who brings about the state of affairs which is beneficial for the ben-
eficiary.
In cases of event beneficiary, the coding is twofold. CB may be coded as RB,
that is, either through the dative or through a PP constituted by eis with the ac-
cusative. This type of coding occurs when no mention is made of any human
entity (or entity somehow capable of control) other than the beneficiary. I will
refer only to this type of CB as “event CB”. In the case some controlling entity
is mentioned, which in spite of not having an active role in bringing about the
benefit for the beneficiary can influence the situation through intentionality, prós
with the genitive is used. I will refer to this type of CB as “semi-agentive CB”.
3.4. Behalf beneficiary
Similar to CB, BB is also coded through hupér with the genitive, as shown in
(32) and (33):
(32) kaì SD~VƝVWK¶ autòs mèn oudèn hékastos SRL‫ڼ‬VHLQ

and stop:inf.m/p 3sg.nom ptc neg each:nom make:inf.aor
HOSt]ǀQ, tòn dè SOƝVtRQ pánth’ hupèr autoû
hope:part.prs.nom art.acc ptc neighbor:acc all:n/a over 3sg.gen
práxein
do:inf.aor
‘and if each man will cease to expect that, while he does nothing him-
self, his neighbor will do everything for him.’ (Dem. 4.7);
(33) ouk éni d’ autòn argoûnt’ oudè toîs

neg one:dat ptc 3sg.acc be.idle:part.prs.acc neg art.dat.pl
phílois epitáttein hupèr hautoû ti poieîn
friend:dat.pl order:inf.prs over refl.gen indef.n/a do:inf.prs
‘One who is himself idle cannot possibly call upon his friends to do
something in his place.’ (Dem. 2.23).
Both in (32) and in (33) reference is made to an agent who acts not only to the
benefit, but in the place of the beneficiary, thus substituting for the beneficiary.
3.5. Malefactive
Similar to beneficiary, malefactive (sometimes also called “maleficiary”, see

Kittilä and Zúñiga 2010) is often coded through the dative case. An example is
autoîs ‘to them’ in (34):
(34) anth’hôn ho tòn nómon titheìs

for rel.gen.pl art.nom art.acc law:acc make:part.prs.nom
thánaton autoîs HSRtƝVH W‫ں‬Q ]ƝPtDQ
death:acc 3pl.dat make:aor.3sg art.acc penalty:acc
‘For these reasons the legislator established the death penalty for them.’
(Lys. 1.34).
Depending on specific verbs, malefactive can also be coded through eis with
the accusative, again similar to RB, as in (35):
(35) examartánein eis W‫ں‬Q gunaîka W‫ں‬Q HP‫ں‬Q

wrong:inf.prs to art.acc woman:acc art.acc poss.1sg.acc
‘to wrong my wife’ (Lys. 1.26).
In (35) the occurrence of the preposition is conditioned by the verb examar-

tánein ‘to wrong somebody’; note however that the eis NP is not obligatory.22
Other ways to code malefactive include a number of prepositional phrases,
with prepositions that indicate directional motion and mean ‘against’:
(36) ei Phílippos láboi kath’ KƝP{Q toioûton kairón

if Philip:nom take:opt.aor.3sg against 1pl.gen such:acc chance:acc
‘If Philip had such a chance against us.’ (Dem. 1.24);
(37) hoì ouk epì nóon poiéousi 3pUVƝLVL

rel.nom.pl neg on mind:acc make:prs.3pl Persian:dat.pl
strateúesthai epì Ludoús
fight:inf.prs.m/p on Lydian:acc.pl
22 The verb examartánein ‘to wrong’ is not attested in Homer; consequently a dia-
chrony of the constructions in which it occurs cannot be provided.
112 Silvia Luraghi
‘(the gods), who do not put into the Persians’ mind to do an expedition
against the Lydians’ (Hdt. 1.71.4);
(38) all’ DJǀQL]yPHQRV pròs álla V۸PDWD kaì

but fight:part.prs.nom toward other:n/a.pl body:n/a.pl and
makhómenos anankázoito diágein tòn bíon?
fight:part.prs.nom be.forced:opt.prs.3sg lead:prs.inf art.acc life:acc
‘(if) he were forced to pass his days in contention and strife with other
people?’ (Pl. Rep. 579d).
In (36) malefactive is coded through katá with the genitive (NDWK¶KƝP{Q

‘against us’); in (37) we find a malefactive coded through epí with the accu-
sative (epì Ludoús ‘against the Lydians’); finally, in (38) the malefactive PP
contains prós with the accusative (SUzViOODV۸PDWD ‘against other people’); a
further occurrence of this type of PP is pròs toùs hetérous ‘against one of the
parties’ in (28).
3.6. Beneficiary in Homeric Greek
3.6.1. Recipient beneficiary

In Homeric Greek, the extent to which the dative can code beneficiary is wider
than in later prose writers. In the first place, the dative codes RB, as in (39) and
(40):
(39) têi d’ ára díphron heloûsa

dem.dat ptc ptc seat:acc take:part.aor.nom
‘having fetched a seat for her’ (Hom. Il. 3.424);
(40) álloisin dè súas siálous DQWLWiOOǀ édmenai

other:dat.pl ptc pig:acc.pl fat:acc.pl feed:prs.1sg eat:inf.prs.m/p
‘I feed fat pigs for others to eat.’ (Hom. Od. 14.41).
Contrary to Classical Greek, RB cannot be coded through eis with the accusa-
tive in Homeric Greek. Thus, RB is always coded in the same way as recipient.
3.6.2. Concrete beneficiary

The dative can code both agentive and event CB in Homeric Greek:
(41) toîsin dè .KU~VƝV megál’ eúkheto

dem.dat.pl ptc Cryses:nom greatly pary:impf.3sg
‘For them Cryses prayed greatly.’ (Hom. Il. 1.450);
(42) kaì tót’ épeitá toi eîmi Diòs potì […]

and then immediately 2sg.dat go:prs.1sg Zeus:gen toward
dô
palace:acc.pl
‘and then I will immediately go for you to Zeus’ palace.’
(Hom. Il. 1.426);
(43) ouk àn emoí ge HOSRPpQǀL tà génoit’

neg ptc 1sg.dat ptc hope:part.prs.dat dem.n/a be:aor.opt.3sg
‘Those things will not become true for me, albeit hoping.’
(Hom. Od. 3.228–229).
In section 3.3 we saw that the dative can code event CB. In Homer, the dative
occurs both with event CB, as in (43), and with agentive CB. In (41) it is said
that an agent, Cryses, performs the action of praying to the benefit of some-
one. Similarly, in (42) the speaker promises to go to Zeus to the benefit of the
hearer.23
The Homeric data does not seem to support the existence of a specific cod-
ing for semi-agentive CB, as described in sections 3.3.2 and 3.3.3. In passages
where prós with the genitive occurs with the verb ‘be’ and with human or di-
vine landmarks, the PP rather indicates source, as I will show below in section
4.2.3.
It must also be remarked that PPs with eis and the accusative do not occur in
any type of beneficiary expression in Homeric Greek. As we have seen above,
in Classical Geek, eis with the accusative provides an alternative both for RB
and for event CB.
With verbs of fighting, one finds a small number of occurrences such as the
one in (44):
(44) mémasan dè kaì hôs husmîni mákhesthai khreioî

be.eager:plpf.3pl ptc and so battle:dat fight:inf.prs necessity:dat
23 Note that neither in (41) nor in (42) is it implied that the agent acted in the benefi-
ciary’s place, because the beneficiary could not perform the action; in other words,
the context makes it clear that these are not occurrences of behalf beneficiary.
114 Silvia Luraghi
DQDQNDtƝL, pró te SDtGǀQ kaì prò gunaikôn

urgent:dat before ptc child:gen.pl and before wife:gen.pl
‘But even so were they eager to fight for utter need, for their children’s
sake and their wives.’ (Hom. Il. 8.56–57).
The PP SUyWHSDtGǀQNDuSUzJXQDLN{Q ‘for their children and wives’ indicates

an agentive CB in (44). Note that the dative usually occurs with the same verb,
as shown in (45):
(45) KySSǀV KRL SDUj QƝXVu sóoi makhéointo

how 3sg.dat by ship:dat.pl safe:nom.pl fight:prs.opt.3pl
Akhaioí
Achaean:nom.pl
‘how the Achaeans fight safely for him by the ships’ (Hom. Il. 1.344).
The spatial meaning of pró is ‘before’, ‘in front of’. I will discuss the semantic
extension in section 4. Here I would like to point out that the limited extent to
which this type of coding occurs indicates that the semantic extension is based
on a metaphor that has not undergone grammaticalization. Thus, it does not
constitute a stable meaning of the preposition, and this type of PP cannot be
considered a way of coding agentive CB in Homer.
3.6.3. Behalf beneficiary
In Homeric Greek, BB is coded through hupér with the genitive, as in Classical

Greek. This is shown in (46):
(46) 3KRtEǀL WK¶ KLHU‫ڼ‬Q KHNDWyPEƝQ UKp[DL KXSqU

Phoebus:dat ptc sacred:acc sacrifice:acc offer:inf.aor over
'DQD{Q
Greek:gen.pl
‘to offer a sacred sacrifice to Phoebus on behalf of the Greeks’
(Hom. Il. 1.444).
As we have seen in section 3.3.1, this type of PP could also code agentive CB
in Classical Greek. This is not true of Homeric Greek, where agentive CB is
coded through the dative.
In a small number of occurrences, BB is coded through prós with the geni-
tive, as in (47):
(47) hoí te thémistas pròs Diòs eirúatai

dem.nom.pl ptc law:acc.pl.f toward Z.:gen guard:prs.m/p.3pl
‘They uphold judgments on behalf of Zeus.’ (Il. 1.238–239).
Note that in example (47) the beneficiary is intentionally involved in the situ-
ation, i. e. the beneficient acts on behalf of the beneficiary because this is the
beneficiary’s intention. In (46), on the other hand, intentionality is not neces-
sarily present on the side of the beneficiary: the beneficient may act on behalf
of the benficiary even if the latter is unaware of this, or not in accordance. The
difference is also made clear by the meaning of prós with the genitive in source
expressions, which will be examined in section 4.2.3.
As we have seen in section 3.3.2, prós with the genitive rather codes semi-
agentive CB in Classical Greek. So in the case of the two PPs in (46) and (47),
i. e. hupér with the genitive and prós with the genitive, we find an extension
from BB to CB, albeit in different conditions and with different types of CB:
while hupér with the genitive extends to agentive CB, prós with the genitive
extends to semi-agentive CB. A further difference is that hupér with the geni-
tive still codes BB in Classical Greek, while prós with the genitive does not.
In sum, Homeric Greek displays a wide use of the dative not only for RB, but
for CB as well; however, it presents a well established distinct coding for BB.
This fact provides evidence for a special status of BB.
3.6.4. Malefactive
Malefactive can be coded through the dative, as shown in (48) and (49):
(48) NDNj Gq 7U۸HVVL PHGpVWKƝQ

ill:n/a.pl ptc Trojan:dat.pl devise:impf.m/p.3pl
‘They were devising ills for the Trojans.’ (Hom. Il. 4.21);
(49) W{LGH G¶ HJ۶Q DXWzV WKǀU‫[ڼ‬RPDL

dem.dat ptc 1sg.nom self:nom arm:fut.m/p.1sg
‘I myself will put on my armor against him.’ (Hom. Il. 7.101).
Otherwise, malefactive can be coded through prós with the accusative, as in

(50):
(50) pròs Trôas mákheai

toward Trojan:acc.pl fight:prs.2sg
“you fight against the Trojans” (Hom. Il. 17.471).
116 Silvia Luraghi
Classical Greek continues the same constructions as in Homeric Greek for the
coding of malefactive, and adds some other prepositional phrases which, as we
will see in section 4, have a directional meaning similar to the meaning of prós
with the accusative.
4. A diachrony of Ancient Greek beneficiary
In the present section, I give a diachronic evaluation of the data surveyed in

section 3. In section 4.1 I discuss the Greek evidence in the framework of the
typology of beneficiaries sketched in section 2. In section 4.2 I describe the
semantic extension to beneficiary and malefactive of the relevant prepositions,
starting from their concrete spatial meaning.
4.1. From Homeric to Classical Greek
4.1.1. Homeric Greek: primarily a neutral language

The Homeric Greek data attest to a situation in which most types of beneficiary
could be coded through the dative, with some prepositional phrases occurring
possibly in passages which need disambiguation. Only BB displayed a more
complex coding, requiring a preposition. With respect to the typology in Kit-
tilä (2005), Homeric Greek is a neutral language, i. e. it belongs to the type in
which recipient and all types of beneficiary are coded in the same way, with
some fluid features, which concern BB.
One may wonder why BB displays such a special status. In the first place, one
may observe that, when BB is coded in the same way as CB, ambiguity may
arise, as shown by the two possible interpretations of example (4) discussed in
section 2.1. However, this is not the only answer. Indeed, BB is different from
all other types of beneficiary because it adds the notion of substitution to the
notion of benefit. This makes BB the type of beneficiary which is cognitively
most complex; consequently it needs more complex coding.
Note further that the dative can also code malefactive, even though PPs are
also comparatively frequent.
4.1.2. Classical Greek: a tripartite language

In Classical Greek, prepositional coding is also established for CB, with a dis-
tinction between agentive CB and event CB. In addition, event CB presents
two possible codings that indicate the existence of different types, event CB
and semi-agentive CB. A further difference is constituted by the fact that RB is
still most frequently coded through the dative, but an alternative construction,
eis with the accusative, also occurs, which can further code event CB. Thus,
Classical Greek is a tripartite language, in the terminology of Kittilä (2005).24
Changes are summarized in the following two tables:
Table 1. Recipient and beneficiary coding in Homeric Greek
dative prepositional phrase

recipient + –
recipient beneficiary + –
concrete beneficiary + –
behalf beneficiary – +
malefactive + +
Table 2. Recipient and beneficiary coding in Classical Greek
dative es+acc other prepositions

recipient + – –
recipient beneficiary + + –
concrete beneficiary/event + + –
concrete beneficiary/semi-agentive – – +
concrete beneficiary/agentive – – +
behalf beneficiary – – +
malefactive + + +
4.1.3. Degrees of beneficient vs. benefactum relevance

The three-fold way of coding CB points toward two possible participants of a
beneficiary event besides the beneficiary, i. e. the beneficient, or agent, and the
benefactum, or object. Note that agent CB is coded in the same way as BB. As
I have remarked in section 4.1.1, BB has a special status, because it substitutes
for the beneficiary. Indeed, as we have seen in 2.2, the notion of substitution is
so relevant for BB that it overrides the parameter connected with the presence/
absence of a benefactum. Thus, BB is the type of beneficiary for which the
activity of the beneficient is viewed as most relevant.
24 As we have seen in section 3.1, PPs with eis are not a possible alternative for re-
cipient. When they occur in constructions that normally contain a dative, they add
some different semantic content; in addition, they never occur with the verb ‘give’.
118 Silvia Luraghi
Next is agentive CB: since there is no concrete benefactum of which the ben-
eficiary can possibly gain control, benefit only derives from the beneficient’s
activity. In the case of semi-agentive CB there is no overt mention of an activity
performed by the beneficient; still a possible controller who could play the role
of beneficient is mentioned, although it is not conceptualized as an agent or
actor. Again, there is no benefactum, so the beneficiary only benefits from the
intentions of the possible beneficient.
In the case of event CB, no mention of any controlling entity is made. On the
other hand, this type of CB may occur with a benefactum; thus, the beneficiary
may get control over a concrete entity, much in the same way as in cases of
prototypical beneficiary, that is, RB. The similarity regards the existence of a
benefactum: accordingly, both RB and event CB are possible recipients, and
can be coded as such at all stages of the Ancient Greek language.
With RB, both the beneficient and the benefactum occur. In principle, the
beneficiary benefits from both the activity of the beneficient and the eventual
control over the benefactum. However, it is the second type of benefit which
seems to be cognitively more salient, as shown by the fact that this type of ben-
eficiary is frequently coded as a recipient crosslinguistically.
Thus, a scale can be drawn that represents degrees of salience for beneficient
and benefactum:
beneficient salient benefactum salient

+beneficient/–benefactum25 –beneficient/+benefactum +beneficient/+benefactum
6 4 4 4 44 7 44444 8 (prototypical beneficiary)
BB agent CB event CB2 event CB1 RB
Figure 1. Beneficient vs. benefactum salience
4.2. Semantic extension of prepositions
Prepositions involved in beneficiary and malefactive coding are eis with the
accusative, pró with the genitive, prós with the genitive, hupér with the geni-
tive, katá with the genitive, epí with the accusative, and prós with the accusa-
tive. Greek prepositions derive from adverbs which, as shown by the Homeric
Greek evidence and evidence from the other Indo-European languages, origi-
nally had spatial meaning (cf. Chantraine 1953: 82). Thus, abstract meanings
have been acquired in the course of time through metaphorical semantic exten-
sion, as I will show in the next sections.
25 In the case of BB, as noted in section 2.2.

4.2.1. Es/eis
The preposition eis with the accusative is the most common way of coding
direction, both in Homer and in later writers. An example is (51):
(51) NDu JjU HW~JNKDQRQ SU۸LPƝQ HLV iVWX RtNRWKHQ

and ptc happen:impf.1sg yesterday to town:n/a from.home
DQL۶Q
climb:part.prs.nom
‘Yesterday, I happened to be going up to town from home.’
(Pl. Symp. 172a).
A further occurrence can be found in example (61), section 4.2.5.

In Homeric Greek, human landmarks can also occur with this preposition,
while later eis remains mostly limited to non-human landmarks in direction
expressions (see section 3.1). On the other hand, as I have shown in section
3.1, this preposition occurs with human landmarks in cases in which a rela-
tion between human beings is indicated, and in cases in which a participant,
which could normally be coded as recipient or addressee, is conceived of as
being the target of an abstract trajectory. Thus, the relation of one human
being to another is conceived of as a trajectory, and the human landmark is
conceived of as the destination of the trajectory. The same holds when eis is
extended to beneficiary, as well as to malefactive: note that the beneficiary
or malefactive reading depends on other semantic information provided by
the context, and not on the meaning of the preposition, in much the same
way as in the case of the dative, which can also code both roles.
It must be remarked, as highlighted in section 3, that eis did extend to
beneficiary after Homer, including RB, but it did not extend to recipient;
it occurs with verbs that usually take a recipient only in exceptional oc-
currences, and not with the verb give. Indeed eis did eventually extend to
recipient in Byzantine and Medieval Greek, so extension to beneficiary pre-
ceded extension to recipient. This order of extension is in accordance with
findings regarding Nilo-Saharan languages described in Heine (1990). Ac-
cording to Heine, semantic extension concerning the roles mentioned here
is as shown in Figure 2.
The difference between allative and goal, as defined in Heine (1990), is
that goal occurs with abstract landmarks and gerunds. Dative refers to all se-
mantic roles typical of the dative case, thus including recipient. I will discuss
the relation between allative, beneficiary and purpose in section 4.3.
120 Silvia Luraghi
allative
goal …
purpose benefactive
reason dative
…
Figure 2. Semantic extension of allative markers in Nilo-Saharan languages
(from Heine 1990: 131)
Another abstract meaning of eis, already present in Homeric Greek, is purpose,

as in (52):
(52) Kr PH PiO¶ HLV iWƝQ NRLP‫ڼ‬VDWH

ptc 1sg.acc much to damage:acc put.to.sleep:aor.2pl
QƝOpw K~SQǀL
harmful:dat sleep:dat
‘You put me to sleep to my damage with harmful sleep.’
(Hom. Od. 12.372).
I will return to this example in section 4.3.
4.2.2. Hupér+genitive
The spatial meaning of hupér with the genitive is ‘over’, ‘above’: the preposi-
tion profiles a relation of verticality without contact between a trajector and a
landmark. An example is QƝzVK~SHU ‘over the ship’ in (53):
(53) G‫ ں‬WyWH NXDQpƝQ QHSKpOƝQ pVWƝVH .URQtǀQ

ptc then dark:acc cloud:acc lay:aor.3sg of.Cronos:nom
QƝzV K~SHU
ship:gen over
‘The son of Cronos laid a dark cloud over the ship.’
(Hom. Od. 12.405–406).
Note that a trajector placed above or over a landmark may hide it from sight.
This explains the occurrence of the same PP in (54):
(54) teîkhos eteikhíssanto neôn húper

wall:n/a build:aor.mid.3pl ship:gen.pl over
‘They built a wall to defend the ships.’ (Il. 7.449).
In (54), the wall is built in order to protect the ships, and hide them from the
enemy, but it is not placed above them. However, the relevant feature here is the
covering relation: the trajector hides the landmark from the sight of a possible
viewer, as shown in figure 3:
trajector landmark
Figure 3. Covering relation between trajector and landmark in example (54)
Covering also means that the trajector is seen by a viewer as if it were in the
place of the landmark: in other words, for a viewer the trajector substitutes for
the landmark. The notion of substitution provides a further path of extension
that brings the preposition to code BB. A BB is typically an agent that acts in
the place of somebody else, i. e. as his/her substitute. As shown in section 3.6,
this extension had already taken place in Homeric Greek. Later on, in Classi-
cal Greek prose, hupér with the genitive also extended to agentive CB. Both
a BB and a CB receive a benefit from somebody else’s activity. In addition, in
the case of BB, the activity is performed in the place of the beneficiary. The
extension from BB to CB is possible if the notion of substitution is left on the
background, and only the notion of agency is profiled.
In addition, hupér with the genitive also extends to purpose after Homer, as
shown in (55) and (56):
(55) HWyOPƝVDQ gàr […] ou mónon hupèr tês hautôn

dare:aor.3pl ptc neg only over art.gen rfl.gen.pl
VǀWƝUtDV kinduneúein, allà kaì hupèr tês tôn
safety:gen run.risk:inf.prs but also over art.gen art.gen.pl
SROHPtǀQ eleutherías DSRWKQ‫ڼ‬LVNHLQ
enemy:gen.pl freedom:gen die:inf.prs
‘Not only did they dare to run risk for their own safety, they also died for
the enemy’s freedom.’ (Lys. 2.68);
122 Silvia Luraghi
(56) KyWL QQ RX SHUu Gy[ƝV RXG¶ KXSqU PpURXV NK۸UDV
that now neg about glory:gen neg over part:gen land:gen
SROHPRVLQ
fight:prs.3pl
‘[…] that now they are not fighting for glory or for a piece of land.’
(Dem. 1.5).
In the above examples, it is the notion of substitution or exchange that enables

extension of the PP to purpose. The purpose of the agent’s activity is conceived
of as the entity that the agent receives in exchange for the activity. Thus, in (55)
safety is what the agent could receive in exchange for running risks; similarly,
in (56) it is said that someone will not receive freedom or a piece of land as
exchange for the activity of fighting. I will return to the meaning of hupér with
the genitive below in section 4.3.
4.2.3. Prós+genitive
The meaning of prós is ‘(near)by’, ‘on the side of’. PPs formed by prós with the
genitive indicate motion originating near a landmark, most often human or di-
vine. They frequently occur in expressions of origin, usually where no concrete
motion is indicated, as in (57):
(57) SUzV JjU 'LyV HLVLQ KiSDQWHV [HvQRt WH

toward ptc Z.:gen be:prs.3pl all:nom.pl stranger:nom.pl ptc
SWǀNKRt WH
poor:nom.pl ptc
‘From Zeus come all strangers and poor people.’ (Od. 6.207).
In example (57), Zeus is conceived as the origin of strangers and the poor.
The translation is only partly accurate: the verb in the sentence is the verb
‘be’, which, together with the preposition, acquires the meaning of English
‘to be from’. Indeed, origin can be conceived of as a type of abstract motion:
if one is from somewhere, he or she must have been at his or her original
location at some moment in the past. In Homer, as shown in section 3.6, this
type of PP extends to BB. Let us now see how this semantic extension comes
about.
In an event of motion, the starting point of a trajectory is known, as opposed
to its ending point, which can only be known after the motion has ended, as
shown in figure 4:
Origin trajector Goal
×
Figure 4. Source/origin and direction/goal in motion events
The origin is conceived of as a region from which a trajector moves. Because

the origin is normally known, it can be conceived of as controlling the entity
(trajector) it originates. In cases such as (57), a human or divine landmark is
conceived of as holding control over a state of affairs, albeit not acting. Note
that control is one of the prototypical features of agents: consequently, the no-
tion of behalf in this case implies that the beneficiary has some role in bringing
about the state of affairs, rather than simply having a benefit from it.
Already in Homer, prós with the genitive acquired the meaning of a locative,
‘on the side of’, with nouns denoting spatial regions or cardinal directions, as
shown in example (58):
(58) G~ǀ Gp Wp KRL WK~UDL HLVtQ KDL PqQ

two ptc ptc 3sg.dat gate:nom.pl be:prs.3pl dem.nom.pl ptc
SUzV %RUpDR NDWDLEDWDu DQWKU۸SRLVLQ KDL
toward north.wind:gen descending:nom.pl man:dat.pl dem.nom.pl
G¶ D SUzV 1yWRX HLVu WKH۸WHUDL
ptc ptc toward south.wind:gen be:prs.3pl sacred:nom.pl
‘It has two gates, one toward the North Wind, by which men go down,
but that toward the South Wind is sacred.’ (Hom. Od. 13.109–110).
This locative meaning later extended to human landmarks, especially in cases

of abstract location (as shown in example [30], discussed in section 3.3), and
hence to beneficiary. Rather than indicating BB as it did in Homer, prós with
the genitive indicates semi-agentive CB: it occurs with the verb be, where it is
said that someone is in favor (or on the side of) somebody else. To be on some-
one’s side usually means to be in favor of someone: for example, if one fights
on the same side as somebody else, the two of them fight together, while if they
are on opposite side they fight against each other.
As I have remarked in section 3.3, in BB expressions with prós in Homer the
feature of intentionality had special relevance. In Classical Greek, only this
feature remains: the beneficient is not conceived as performing some concrete
action, but rather as having a favorable attitude toward the beneficiary. Note
that again, as in the case of hupér, BB precedes CB.
124 Silvia Luraghi
4.2.4. Pró+genitive
PPs formed by pró with the genitive profile a spatial relation in which a trajec-
tor stands in front of a landmark. An example is (59):
(59) ándra … eîdon prò ptólios dedaïgménon

man:acc see:aor.1sg before city:gen slay:part.pf.m/p.acc
oxéï khalkôi
sharp.dat bronze:dat
‘I saw my husband slain with the sharp bronze before our city.’
(Il. 19.291–292);
Somebody fighting in front of a landmark can be conceived of as defending

the landmark; this explains the sporadic extension to agentive CB, described
in section 3.6.2 (example [45]). As already remarked, however, this type of
expression did not become grammaticalized as a possible way of coding ben-
eficiary.
4.2.5. Malefactive
Besides the dative, the malefactive is coded through prós with the accusative
both in Homer and in later writers. This type of PP indicates direction, as
shown in (60):
(60) KƝ PqQ pEƝ SUzV G{PD

dem.nom ptc go:aor.3sg toward home:n/a
‘She went home.’ (Hom. Od. 5.242).
As I have shown in 3.5, three other types of PP occur in malefactive expressions,

i. e. eis with the accusative, epí with the accusative and katá with the genitive.
I have already discussed the spatial meaning of eis with the accusative, which,
besides extending to malefactive, also extends to beneficiary; as we have seen
in section 4.2.1 it is the directional meaning of this PP that provides the path for
semantic extension to beneficiary. The same holds for the malefactive. It must
further be remarked that eis with the accusative extends to all constructions in
which the dative is also possible, that is RB, event CB, and malefactive.
The other two types of PP also code direction, but they profile different rela-
tions between the trajector and the landmark. Epí means ‘on’, and it indicates
that a trajector moves along a trajectory that leads it on the (upper side) of the
landmark, as shown in (61):
(61) DQHNK۸UƝVDQ KRL PqQ HV W‫ں‬Q SyOLQ KRL

return:aor.3pl dem.nom.pl ptc to art.acc city:acc dem.nom.pl
Gq epì naús
ptc on ship:acc.pl
‘They returned, the one party to the city, the other to the ships.’
(Th. 3.91.5).
The preposition katá means ‘downwards’, and it indicates that a trajector fol-
lows a downward trajectory, which leads it to a landmark, as in (62):
(62) RvQRQ HSLVSHtVǀVL NDWj W{Q NHSKDOpǀQ

wine:acc pour:subj.aor.3pl down art.gen.pl head:gen.pl
‘They pour wine on the men’s heads.’ (Hdt. 4.62.3).
The four prepositions which may code malefactive in Ancient Greek have dif-
ferent meanings; however, they all have in common the fact that they indicate
direction. In the extension to malefactive, only this feature remains relevant: a
malefactive is conceived of as the endpoint of a trajectory. This process of se-
mantic extension, by which one single feature of the meaning remains relevant
for the new meaning, follows the well known Gestalt effect first described in
Lakoff (1977).
4.3. Beneficiary and purpose
As we have seen above, two of the PPs that can code beneficiary also extend to
purpose. The diachrony of the two extensions is different: in the case of eis, an
allative preposition (typically indicating direction with motion verbs), purpose
already occurs in Homer, while beneficiary only occurs later; in the case of hu-
pér beneficiary precedes purpose. The path of extension from space to abstract
relations is also different, given that hupér with the genitive is not a means of
coding direction.
The relation between beneficiary and purpose has been touched upon in
various works, since polysemy including the two roles is comparatively fre-
quent cross-linguistically (see Schmidtke 2010). However, its complexity does
not seem to have been investigated in a satisfactory way, since similarity of the
two roles is often taken for granted. For example, Rice and Kabata (2007: 481)
write that “benefactive seems to be an obvious special case of purpose; when
one acts for the benefit of another […], he or she is usually acting purposefully”.
Note that this view of beneficiary does not consider event beneficiary. Besides,
126 Silvia Luraghi
the fact that one acts purposefully embraces many other situations (typically all
actions), so the above remark does not seem to cast much light on the relation
between the two roles.
4.3.1. Allative, purpose, beneficiary

The change by which an allative marker, such as Greek eis with the accusative,
extends to purpose is widely studied (see for example Rice and Kataba 2007).
The Greek evidence indicates that extension to beneficiary is later. However,
there is no positive evidence that these two semantic extensions of allative are
connected with each other: one can view the extension from allative to purpose
and from allative to beneficiary as independent, in spite of being chronologi-
cally ordered. Note further that there may be ambiguity between purpose and
beneficiary, as in the case of example (26), discussed in section 3.2. This ex-
ample also shows that the occurrence of a human participant does not rule out
the possibility of a purpose interpretation. Thus, at least in the case of eis with
the accusative, one cannot say that the beneficiary or purpose interpretation is
forced by the animacy feature of the participant involved.
That the two extensions are independent of each other is also in accordance
with the findings described in Heine (1990) and mentioned earlier in section
4.2.1. When an allative marker extends to purpose and beneficiary, the latter two
roles are conceived of as targets of motion along a trajectory. The common meta-
phor may be expressed as purposes or beneficiaries are destinations.26
4.3.2. Substitution, beneficiary and purpose

The case in which extension to beneficiary is provided by the notion of sub-
stitution has not attracted much attention. However, it is not only attested in
the case of Ancient Greek hupér with the genitive. For example, the same se-
mantic extension occurred in the case of the Latin preposition pro ‘before’, ‘in
exchange for’, which extended to BB and later to other types of beneficiary (see
Luraghi 2005a). Contrary to Greek hupér with the genitive, Latin pro did not
extend to purpose, but to cause, thus showing that the relation between benefi-
ciary and purpose is not so obvious as some authors hold it to be.
Let us go back to the Greek development. The notion of substitution con-
veyed by hupér with the genitive does not only explain extension to BB; it is
26 The metaphor purposes are destinations is described in Lakoff and Johnson

(1999). The authors provide bodily foundations for this metaphor, connected with
directional motion.
also clear in cases in which this type of PP codes purpose, as in examples (55)
and (56) in section 4.2.2. Both passages can be interpreted as implying that an
agent acts in exchange of what he or she envisages as the purpose of his or her
acting.
It must also be remembered that hupér with the genitive also extends to
agentive CB. If we go back to the passages in which this role is coded, we can
see that the mental attitude of the agent toward the beneficiary is similar to the
attitude of the agent toward the purpose in (27) and (28). Both purpose and
beneficiary, as conceptualized by hupér with the genitive, can be regarded as
instances of another semantic role, reason. That this is the case is shown by
occurrences in which hupér with the genitive cannot be viewed as indicating a
beneficiary or a purpose, but rather the cause of mental state, as in (63):
(63) WtV RXN jQ WKH{Q ƝOpƝVHQ DXWRV KXSqU

int.nom neg ptc god:gen.pl pity:subj.aor.3sg 3pl.acc over
WR PHJpWKRXV WR NLQG~QRX"
art.gen greatness:gen art.gen risk:gen
‘Which god would not have pitied them for the greatness of the risk?’
(Lys. 2.40).
The cause of a mental state corresponds to the semantic role reason. In (63)
hupér indicates exchange: this notion provides a link for all occurrences which
contain hupér with the genitive. A reason is conceived of as an entity that an
agent receives or achieves in exchange for his or her activity. This semantic role
may play a role in bringing about polysemy involving cause, purpose and ben-
eficiary, as I have shown in Luraghi (2005b). Note that in cases in which benefi-
ciary and purpose are connected through the notion of reason, possible means of
coding are prepositions that indicate location, rather than directional motion.27
5. Summary and conclusions
In this paper, various ways of coding beneficiary in Homeric and in Classical

Greek are described, in connection with the coding of neighboring semantic
roles. The data point in the direction of a typology of beneficiary based on the
occurrence or non-occurrence of other possible participants of the beneficiary
situation, that is, a beneficent and a benefactum. Based on findings in Kittilä
27 I cannot elaborate on this topic here, but see Luraghi (2001) and (2005b) for fur-
ther discussion.
128 Silvia Luraghi
(2005) concerning coding similarities between beneficiary and recipient, I sug-

gest the following types of beneficiary:
• RB or recipient beneficiary, which co-occurs with both a beneficient and a
benefactum;
• event CB or event concrete beneficiary, which co-occurs with a benefactum
but not with a beneficient;
• agentive CB or agentive beneficiary, which co-occurs with a beneficient but
not with a benefactum;
• BB or behalf beneficiary, which co-occurs with a beneficient acting on be-
half of the beneficiary.
In Homeric Greek, most types of beneficiary are coded though the dative, in
the same way as recipient, except for BB, which is coded through PPs. Fol-
lowing the typology in Kittilä (2005), Homeric Greek belongs to the neutral/
fluid category. In Classical Greek, several other ways of coding beneficiary
have emerged, which point towards a typology even more complex than the
one suggested above. While recipient is still coded through the dative case, RB
and event CB1 are coded through the dative or through the allative marker eis
with the accusative. Event CB2, agentive CB and BB are coded though various
PPs. Following the typology in Kittilä (2005), Classical Greek belongs to the
tripartite category.
The distinction between event CB1 and event CB2 is based on the occur-
rence of an inactive possible beneficient in event CB2, whose intention is rel-
evant for the benefit received by the beneficiary. Differences in coding point to-
ward varying degrees of relevance of either the beneficient or the benefactum.
Malefactive can also be coded as RB and event CB1, that is through the da-
tive or eis with the accusative, or it can be coded by means of more specific
prepositions, which mean ‘against’. In the latter case, the coding diverges from
the coding of beneficiary.
Spatial metaphors underlying beneficiary coding are of two types, depend-
ing on whether they involve a preposition that indicates direction, namely the
allative marker eis with the accusative, or a locative marker, either hupér with
the genitive or prós with the genitive. Both types of metaphor also extend to
purpose, the latter limited to hupér with the genitive.
In the case of the allative marker, extension to purpose precedes extension
to beneficiary; both types of semantic extension are based on the notion of
abstract motion along a trajectory. In the case of the locative marker hupér
with the genitive, on the contrary, extension to beneficiary precedes extension
to purpose. The first type of beneficiary to be coded through hupér with the
genitive is BB, indicating the relevance of the notion of substitution for this
metaphor. The connecting link between beneficiary and purpose in the case
of hupér with the genitive is the notion of exchange, and the semantic space in
which the two roles overlap is that of reason.
Abbreviations
Grammatical glosses
1 first person m/p medio-passive
2 second person n/a nominative/accusative neuter
3 third person neg negation
acc accusative nom nominative
aor aorist opt optative
art article p passive
comp comparative part participle
dat dative pf perfect
dem demonstrative pl plural
fut future plpf pluperfect
gen genitive poss possessive
imp imperative prs present
impf imperfect ptc particle
indef indefinite rel relative
inf infinitive rfl reflexive
instr instrumental sg singular
int interrogative subj subjunctive
mid middle
Note: For the sake of brevity, singular number is not indicated for nominal
categories (except for personal and possessive pronouns), while active diathe-
sis and indicative mood are not indicated for verbal categories; medio-passive
diathesis is indicated only when it is relevant (i. e. not in the case of media
tantum); gender is not indicated except in the case of nominative-accusative
neuter, which has a special gloss (n/a).
Classical authors
Dem. Demosthenes Lys. Lysias
Hdt. Herodotus Pl. Plato
Hom. Homer Th. Thucydides
Isoc. Isocrates
130 Silvia Luraghi
Works
Il. Iliad Phlb. Philebus

Od. Odyssey Rep. The Republic
Protag. Protagoras Symp. Symposium
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Finite and gerundive complementation
in Modern and Present-day English:
Semantics, variation and change
Liesbet Heyvaert and Hubert Cuyckens1
Abstract
This paper focuses on variation and diachronic change in the semantics and lexico-
grammar of that-clauses and so-called gerundive nominalizations (Lees 1960) func-
tioning as clausal complements (CCs) of factive predicates (Kiparsky and Kiparsky
1971), as in the following examples in Present-day English:
(1) As I said I regret that it all happened and I just want to move on from it. (CB)
(2) I don’t regret helping her start out (…). (CB)
Most attention has thus far been devoted to the relationship between that-CCs and the
to-infinitive (see, e. g. Rohdenburg 1996, Los 2005) and to that between infinitival and
gerundive complementation (Duffley 1999; Smith 2002; De Smet 2004). In this paper,
we show that the distribution of that-CCs and gerundives can also be profitably exam-
ined from a diachronic perspective. We consider factive predicates (such as regret, ad-
mit, accept, acknowledge) because this is a set of verbs where the alternation between
that and -ing is quite systematically found.
It is argued that in general, throughout their evolution, the that- and -ing comple-
mentation systems encode a different semantics which ties in with the diachronic ori-
gins of each of these systems. As such, that-CCs have, from early on, coded a proposi-
tion which is holistically construed, and later, more specific/specialized uses – such as
the metalinguistic use of predicate + that in (3) – are in line with this diachronic origin.
1 Liesbet Heyvaert would like to thank the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders
for the postdoctoral grant that made this paper possible. Both authors would also
like to acknowledge the financial support of the Interuniversity Attraction Poles
Programme – Belgian State – Belgian Science Policy, project P6/44, Grammatical-
ization and (inter)subjectification, as well as the support of the Spanish Ministry
of Education and Science (grant no. HUM2007-60706/FILO) and the European
Regional Development Fund. Sincere thanks also go to Heli Tissari, Kathryn Al-
lan, Päivi Koivisto-Alanko and Margaret E. Winters, for organizing the Workshop
Historical Linguistics in a Cognitive Framework: From the Present to the Past and
Back at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference held at the Universi-
ty of Krakow in July 2007. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers
for their suggestions for improvement which our paper has greatly benefited from.
Finite and gerundive complementation in Modern and Present-day English 133
(3) regret that = ‘to feel sorry that one says/has to say that’
My lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel; and beg to be
excused having the honour of seeing you. (CLMET 1780)
As well, gerundive -ing CCs, which originally derive from action nouns in –ing, typi-
cally continue the ‘action semantics’ of the action nouns which they originate from,
through control by the subject of the matrix clause (‘S of matrix clause Verb-s having
been/being involved in a certain action’), as in (4):
(4a) but before the words were well out of my mouth, I regretted having uttered
them. (CLMET 1780)
(4b) I slackened my pace, but next moment regretted having done so. (CB)
At the same time, it can be observed that the distribution of gerundive -ing CCs has
come to (partially) overlap with that-CCs because gerundive -ing CCs, in spite of their
origin in action nouns in -ing, have come to profile the more schematic instantiation of
a process by a subject, which is also implied in the grounded process types of that-CCs
(Heyvaert 2006).
In our paper we present an analysis of Late Modern English and Present-day Eng-
lish corpus data which tries to shed light on the emergence of that- and -ing CCs with
factive predicates, we identify the factors that seem to have influenced their varying
distribution, and we point to some interesting implications for the analysis of comple-
mentation structures in general.
1. Introduction
In this paper, we will consider variation and change in the distribution of that-
clauses and gerundive -ing clauses functioning as clausal complements, as in the
following examples with the complement-taking predicates regret and admit:
(1) As I said I regret [that it all happened]. (CB)

(2) I don’t regret [helping her start out]. (CB)
(3) They readily admit [that they lack the sophisticated arsenal that Israel
has]. (CB)
(4) Mr Lippett said Treptow admitted [being in the utility and firing the shots].
(CB)
This study will focus on a number of specific complement-taking predicates

showing alternation between these two clausal complement types. In particu-
lar, it will be concerned with two types of predicates where this alternation
is found quite systematically, i. e. “cognitive” or “propositional attitude predi-
cates” (“expressing an attitude regarding the truth of the proposition expressed
134 Liesbet Heyvaert and Hubert Cuyckens
as their complement”, Noonan 1985: 113) such as agree ‘have the same opinion
as someone else’ and admit ‘agree unwillingly’; and ‘emotive’ or “commenta-
tive” predicates (providing “a comment on the complement proposition which
takes the form of an emotional reaction”, Noonan 1985: 117), such as regret
and resent. Both the cognitive and emotive type of predicates can be classified
as “factive”(Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971) in that they are, at least in some
uses, followed by a proposition which is “pre-existent to the relation in which
it participates” (Davidse 2003: 126). Their factive status, Davidse (2003: 126)
has argued, implies that either the speaker and/or a second consciousness (e. g.
the processor of the cognitive/emotive predicate) is committed to its truth.2
Because it shows many interesting resemblances with the complementation of
regret and resent, we also included complementation of the emotive adjective
sorry as in be/feel sorry for/that in our analysis.
The alternation between that- and -ing complement clauses (henceforth also
called that-CCs and -ing-CCs) has hardly been researched yet. Most attention
has thus far gone to the distribution of that- and to-infinitive complements
(see, among others, Rohdenburg 1996; Los 2005) and to the distribution of
to-infinitive and gerundive (see, among others, Declerck 1991; Fanego 1996;
Duffley 1999; Smith 2002; Mair 2003; De Smet 2004). We will show in this
paper that the distribution of that-CCs and gerundives, too, can be profitably
examined from a diachronic perspective and that the cognitive and emotive
predicates under investigation show both interesting parallels and differences
in their use of that- and -ing CCs.
This paper firstly has a descriptive purpose in that it intends to show how
the complementation by that- and -ing-CCs of the cognitive and emotive predi-
cates agree, admit, regret, resent and sorry has evolved from Early Modern
English to Present-day English (spread, varying distribution). In that respect, it
will be seen that these predicates occurred earliest with that-CCs. When -ing-
CCs first became a possible alternative in Late Modern English (LModE), they
showed semantic and structural overlap with that-CCs in a good deal of their
occurrences. Interestingly, in the period from LModE to Present-day English,
we can observe a growing semantic and lexicogrammatical division of labor
between that-CCs and gerundive -ing-CCs, whereby the former tend to express
2 As such, factive predicates differ from non-factive complements as in (1) and (2),
where the that-clauses are primarily true for the cognizant whose process of con-
sciousness is represented (as in [1]) or for the sayer of the verbal process of telling
in (2) – not necessarily for the speaker:
(1) Mark supposes that it is raining.
(2) Anne told us that he has been found guilty.
a state of affairs that the subject of the matrix clause is not itself responsible
for or involved in (typically encoded by an inanimate subject of the that-CC
which is different from the matrix clause subject), and the latter increasingly
express “action” semantics in a control environment. In addition to describing
the variation, through time, between that-CCs and -ing-CCs with agree, admit,
regret, resent and sorry, we will try to identify the factors that have played
a role in this varying distribution. In that respect, the semantic and lexico-
grammatical specialization that that-CCs and -ing-CCs have each increasingly
exploited will be seen to play an important role. Outside of the factor “special-
ization” other factors that we will show may account for the changing distri-
bution between that-CCs and -ing-CCs relate to the formal characteristics of
the that-CC or to processes of semantic extension and semantic divergence in
the matrix predicate. Finally, we will argue that the development of -ing-CCs,
showing increasing syntactic and semantic bonding with the predicates they
are used with, can be seen as an instance of increasing grammaticalization.
After introducing the corpora that we consulted in section 2, we briefly sum-
marize what is known of the diachronic origins of that- and -ing-CCs in section
3. In section 4, then, we present the results of our corpus analysis and discuss
the factors that we argue can account for the changing distribution between
that- and -ing-CCs following regret, resent, admit, agree and be sorry.
2. A note on our corpus data
For our analysis, we relied on quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis and
made use of the following corpora:
1. CEECS or the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler: 1418–
1680: 450,000 words
2. CEMET or the Corpus of Early Modern English Texts: 1640–1705:
2,000,000 words
3. CLMET or the Corpus of Late Modern English texts (compiled by Hendrik
De Smet):
1710–1780: 3,037,607 words
1780–1850: 5,723,988 words
1850–1920: 6,251,564 words
4. COBUILD or the Collins Birmingham University International Language
Database: 1990s: 56,000,000 words
We searched the CEECS, CEMET and CLMET corpora by means of the

WordSmith concordancing software; for the COBUILD corpus we made use
of the remote log-in system of the corpus itself. We opted for “broad” search
strings so as to avoid missing out on interesting data. In particular, the search
horizons for the complementizers that and -ing were set at three words to the
right of the search word (searches for that-CCs in the COBUILD corpus were
somewhat less broad to keep the number of hits manageable). In Tables 1–4
below, we give an overview of the types of searches that we carried out and the
number of useful instances that we ended up analyzing in detail (notice that, in
order to reduce the data to a somewhat more manageable size, we reduced the
COBUILD hits for admit followed by that and -ing and for agree with that to
200 instances each).3 Among the hits that we ignored in our analysis were that-
and -ing structures that did not turn out to function as complementizers, as in
(5) to (7) and predicates that turned out to function as nouns, as in (8).
(5) These reports we always resented with becoming spirit. (CLMET,

1710–1780)
(6) (…) what even with this sort of Rolls Royce announcements and that
sort of thing? Yes even with Rolls Royce erm I must admit being in Not-
tingham. (CB)
(7) Those who were afloat will all agree with that statement. (CLMET,
1850–1920)
(8) My one regret is that our time together doesn’t stretch before us like
some vast, expansive prairie. (CB)
Table 1. An overview of the CEECS data
CEECS Advanced search – Useful data

max. 3rd word to the right of target item
Regret that 0
*ing 0
Resent that 0
*ing 0
Be sorry that 10
*ing 0
Admit that 0
*ing 0
Agree that 3
*ing 0
3 The normalized figures for these COBUILD data, which signal frequency across
the entire corpus, were readjusted for the relative proportion of useful and spurious
hits in the 200-hit sample.
Table 2. An overview of the CEMET data
CEMET Advanced search – Useful data

Regret that 0
*ing 0
Resent that 0
*ing 0
Be sorry that 11
*ing 1
Admit that 2
*ing 0
Agree that 16
*ing 2
Table 3. An overview of the CLMET data
CLMET Advanced search – Useful data

Regret that 126
*ing 38
Resent that 3
*ing 10
Be sorry that 106
*ing 9
Admit that 286
*ing 3
Agree that 214
*ing 3
Table 4. An overview of the COBUILD data
COBUILD Search string Useful data

Regret regret*+0,2that 108
regret*+0,3VBG 147
Resent resent*+0,2that 5
resent*+0,3VBG 73
Be sorry sorry*+0,2that 76
sorry*+0,3VBG 31
Admit admit*+0,2that 200
admit*+0,3VBG 200
Agree agree*+0,2that 200
agree*+0,3VBG 52
3. Gerundive and that-complementation: diachronic origins
In order to be able to fully appreciate the distributional changes of that-CCs

and gerundive -ing-CCs with the complement-taking predicates regret, admit,
resent, agree, be sorry from Early Modern English (EModE) to Present-day
English (PDE), it seems appropriate to first present a brief overview of the
diachronic origin and development of that- and -ing-complements themselves.
3.1. that-complementation
Although this is not entirely uncontested (see Fischer 2007: 221), that-com-
plements have been argued to go back to a pattern of “demonstrative pronoun
+ resumptive demonstrative pronoun” in Old English (Hopper and Traugott
2003: 191), as in
(9) Ða on morgenne gehierdun þæt þæs cyninges

When in morning heard.pl dem that.gen king’s
Þegnas þe him beæftan wærun þæt se cyning
thanes who him behind were comp the king
ofslægen wæs, þa ridon hie þider.
slain was then rode they thither
‘When in the morning the king’s thanes who had been left behind heard
that: that he had been killed, then they rode up there.’
As Hopper and Traugott (2003: 192) point out, “Such features are reminiscent
of oral language and of strategies clarifying interdependencies in the flow of
speech […]”.
The diachronic origin of that-clauses in a pronoun pointing forward to a
state of affairs ties in with Langacker’s view of Present-Day that-clauses (see
also Croft 2002). Langacker emphasizes that in PDE, “the finite clause comple-
ment is construed holistically as a unitary entity” (1991: 449), with the comple-
mentizer that imposing “an atemporal or even nominal [i. e., nonprocessual]
construal on the finite clause” (1991: 448). At the same time he emphasizes
that internally, or “at the level of constituency where that has not yet been
appended”, that-CCs display a complex structure and have “a processual pro-
file” (1991: 448), including the various grounding options of a finite clause.
Given that, over time, that-CCs have seen little lexicogrammatical or semantic
change, the characterization Langacker offers for PDE that-CCs can usefully
be applied to that-CCs in earlier stages of the language.
3.2. -ing complementation
Gerundive -ing complements can be traced back to an Old English derivative

in -ing which functioned as a full noun. This Old English derivative has been
labelled action nominal because it could (and still can) only be used with predi-
cates expressing an action (Lees 1960):
(10) ðurh ðæra sacerda blawunge toburston ða wallas (c. 1000, Visser
1963–73: 1165)
‘through the blowing of the priests, the walls broke down’
(11) He hadde i-trespassed, and dredde [the chastisynge of his master]. (Fa-
nego 2004: 6)
In the course of Middle English, a new type of -ing nominals developed with
clausal properties (e. g. subject-predicate-like structure; direct object or com-
plement instead of of-phrase; adverbial modification; tense and voice distinc-
tions) (see, among others, Fanego 1996, 1998, 2004; De Smet 2008):
(12) Master Blifil objected to [the sending away the servant]. (Jespersen
1940, part IV)
(13) The mooste noble and valiant princis of Grece often tymes, to recreate
their spirites, and in augmenting their courage, enbraced instrumentes
musicall. (1531, Thomas Elyot [HC]); quoted in De Smet 2007: 100)
In particular from late Modern English onwards, this new, gerundive system of
-ing nominalization was increasingly used. Note that, like ordinary clauses, it
can be construed with both action and state verbs:
(14) I resent [you fluffing the pillows and playing lady of the manor]. (CB)
(15) She had very much regretted [being from home]. (CLMET 1780–1850)
The gerundive system of -ing nominalization now constitutes a relatively stable

system with only one striking nominal lexicogrammatical feature left, i. e. the
possibility of using a possessive/genitive determiner to express the subject:
(16) Some researchers have felt that having a mental illness would lead to
[the individual’s occupying a position in a lower social class]. (CB)
As the gerundive system of -ing nominalization has been relatively unchanged

since LModE, its characterization for PDE, as in Heyvaert 2008, can easily
be applied to the entire period from LModE to PDE. In particular, the gerun-
dive system can be said to centre on two fundamental constructional options
(Heyvaert 2008), viz. to link up the atemporalized clausal -ing unit which it is
based on to a subject (explicitly realized or implied through control) or leave
it as such, without subject (Heyvaert 2003, 2008). Its semantics has shifted
from being exclusively “action”-oriented to a somewhat more schematic mean-
ing, i. e. that of type specification (without S) or instantiation (of a particular
atemporalized process type by a specific subject) (Langacker 1991; Davidse
1991; Heyvaert 2008). Examples (17) and (18) show gerundive nominals with
type-specifying meaning:
(17) [Going to the beach] is enjoyable. (Schachter 1976: 215)

(18) Kavanagh star John Thaw was seen on January 3 defending a student
accused of [raping a housewife]. (CB)
Notice that the gerundive nominalization raping a housewife is type-specify-

ing in (18), denoting a type of crime, but designates an instance in He was con-
victed for [raping a housewife], where the subject of the raping is the subject
of the matrix clause.
Gerundives focusing on the instantiation of the process type are given in
(19) to (20):
(19) […] the industry was relieved at [escaping a crackdown] […]). (CB)
(20) My husband speaks very well, but his job involves [my answering the
phone on his behalf quite a bit of the time]. (CB)
4. that- and -ing complementation of cognitive and emotive predicates:

a corpus study
4.1. Frequency of occurrence: some general diachronic tendencies
Table 5 below presents the frequency of occurrence of the that-CC and -ing-CC
in the period from EModE to PDE. The data include raw frequencies (RawF;
repeated from Tables 1–4), relative frequencies (RelF) of -ing-CCs vs. that-
CCs and normalized frequencies (NormF; normalized per 100,000 words).
The figures in Table 5 suggest, firstly, that in general that-CCs arose earliest as
factive complements but, like -ing CCs, remained infrequent up until the begin-
ning of the 18th century (cf. the CLMET data). A search of the verb admit, for in-
stance, in the 17th century CEMET corpus reveals that in all except two instances
it is complemented by an NP (21), PP (22) or NP + to-infinitive structure (23).
Table 5. The use of that- and -ing complements with regret, resent, sorry, admit and
agree. A diachronic overview of their frequency of occurrence
Regret Resent Sorry Admit Agree

that -ing that -ing that -ing that -ing that -ing
CEECS RawF 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 3 0
RelF 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 0% 0% 0% 100% 0%
NormF 0 0 0 0 2.22 0 0 0 0.66 0
CEMET RawF 0 0 0 0 11 1 2 0 16 2
RelF 0% 0% 0% 0% 91.7% 8.3% 100% 0% 88.9% 11.1%
NormF 0 0 0 0 0.55 0.05 0.1 0 0.8 0.1
CLMET RawF 126 38 3 10 106 9 286 3 214 3
RelF 76.8% 23.2% 23.1% 76.9% 92.2% 7.8% 99% 1% 98.6% 1.4%
NormF 0.839 0.253 0.019 0.06 0.706 0.06 1.904 0.02 1.42 0.02
COBUILD RawF 108 147 5 73 76 31 200 200 200 52
RelF 42.4% 57.6% 6.4% 93.4% 71% 29% 50% 50% 79.4% 20.6%
NormF 0.192 0.262 0.009 0.13 0.135 0.055 2.91 1.717 2.857 0.083
(21) Admit me, sacred maid, admit me again to those soft delights […]
(CEMET)
(22) Your passion, madam, will admit of no farther reasoning; but here’s a
silent witness of your acquaintance. (CEMET)
(23) Well, but passing this; my leisure will admit me to stay, and therefore
pray tell me what it is that makes you think that Mr. Badman is gone to
Hell. (CEMET)
Gerundive CCs are only found from Late Modern English, and then especial-
ly from the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th century onwards (cf. the
CLMET data). Second, while -ing-CCs were later entering the language than
that-CCs, their relative share vs. that-CCs increases substantially over time
with all complement-taking predicates.4 In addition, as the normalized figures
4 Other interesting observations can be gathered from this table. For instance, which
pattern is currently most frequent – -ing or that – , which turns out to be different
for each of the matrix verbs that we analyzed. While the cognitive predicates agree
and admit both show a clear preference for that-CCs, the emotive predicates regret,
resent and sorry differ substantially in their complementational patterns: resent
has come to prefer -ing; regret and sorry both show a strong decrease of that-CCs.
While sorry still prefers that, however, regret is now used more frequently with
-ing than with that-CCs. Our current data sample does not allow us to provide a
satisfactory answer to the questions raised by these findings. The sudden drop in
that-CCs with regret and sorry, for instance, might have to be attributed to their
common elision of that as a complementizer, a factor we cannot investigate as our
data only includes that-CCs with an explicitly expressed complementizer that.
suggest, the -ing-CCs themselves show a significant increase in Present-day

English (cf. the Cobuild data for resent, admit, agree, and to some extent also
for regret). Note that these normalized figures need to be treated with some
caution because an increase over time in the frequency of the -ing-CC pattern
with a particular matrix verb may also result from an increase in the general
frequency of that verb.
In what follows, we will look in detail at the shifting distribution of that- and
-ing-CCs and try to shed light on the factors that might have motivated these
diachronic changes.
4.2. Specialization of that-CCs and -ing-CCs
As we pointed out in section 3, that-CCs consist of a proposition or state of

affairs – with a processual profile – that follows the complementizer that (orig-
inally demonstrative that) and which is construed as relatively independent
from the matrix predicate. In their capacity of denoting a process, that-CCs
encode actions as well as states; furthermore, as independent subject-predicate
structures, their subject may be either identical to or different from the ma-
trix subject. As has been observed as well, it is that-CCs that arose earliest as
factive complements, with gerundive -ing-complements only occurring from
LModE onwards. When gerundive -ing-CCs entered the language as an alter-
native to that-CCs, they had already developed their full lexicogrammatical
potential (cf. section 3.2), that is, they could refer both to actions and states,
and could explicitly express the subject of the -ing predicate. Indeed, gerun-
dives had gradually moved from an exclusive focus on “actions” to the more
schematic profile of the instantiation of a process by a subject (Heyvaert 2008).
Since both that-CCs and -ing-CCs could share a subject-predicate structure
and denote processes, they could be said to overlap structurally and semanti-
cally. As can be inferred from Table 6, the predicate regret in the CLMET
corpus (LModE) shows all the lexicogrammatical possibilities of that-clauses:
they can express identical and different subjects, and can express actions and
states, as also illustrated in (24) to (27) below.
Table 6. Types of -ing complements following regret in Late Modern English.
Regret+-ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 38 32 6 25 13
(24) How much do I regret [not having had more opportunities of showing
you my esteem and love (…)]. (CLMET, 1710–1780) [subject controlled]
(25) She is very kindly inquired after by her friends here, who all regret [her
not coming with her father and mother]. (CLMET, 1780–1850) [subject
expressed]
(26) […] I could not regret [having watched over and laboured to relieve
them]. (CLMET, 1780–1850) [action]
(27) […] she had very much regretted [being from home]. (CLMET, 1780–
1850) [state]
Note that the overlap we describe is an overlap in usage, and does not mean
that -ing-CCs and that-CCs are semantically identical. That-clauses are inde-
pendent, unitary entities, with an internal subject-predicate structure, while
-ing-CCs are atemporalized process types.
When comparing this situation of overlap with PDE, we see that the overlap
has become far less pronounced. Let us consider the cases of regret and resent.
Table 7. Types of -ing complements following regret in Present-day English compared

to Late Modern English
Regret+-ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 38 32 84.2% 6 15.8% 25 65.8% 13 34.2%
COBUILD 147 146 99.3% 1 0.7% 124 84.3% 23 15.7%
Table 8. Types of -ing complements following resent in Present-day English compared

to Late Modern English
Resent Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 10 4 40.0% 6 60.0% 2 20.0% 8 80.0%
COBUILD 73 47 64.4% 26 35.6% 32 43.8% 41 56.2%
With both predicates, -ing-CCs in Present-day English still exploit (almost) all
of the lexicogrammatical potential of that-CCs (i. e. they occur with different
and same subject, with states and actions); still, the number of -ing-CCs with a
different subject has decreased significantly. This skewed distribution seems to
suggest that the full lexicogrammatical potential of -ing-CCs has been drasti-
cally reduced, or has become specialized.
Interestingly, the skewed distribution of that-CCs and -ing-CCs, that is, the
specialization of that-CCs and -ing-CCs, was already visible, though less out-
spoken, in LModE – at the time when overlap between that-CCs and -ing-CCs
was at its highest. Indeed, in LModE, we already find a preference for that-CCs
– mostly expressing a state – whose subject is different from that of the matrix
subject. It is precisely in these lexicogrammatical patterns that involvement of
the matrix subject is not possible, and it is those that-CCs, therefore, that are
the candidates par excellence to encode dependence from the matrix.
The specialization of that-CCs for different subjects is continued into PDE,
where it can be observed from the COBUILD data that we analyzed that the
proportion “same subject” vs. “different subject” is clearly in favour of “differ-
ent subject” (the figures below first give the number of instances that we found
in the Cobuild data where the that-CC contains the same subject as the matrix
clause, followed by the number of instances where the that-subject is different).
Same subject Different subject
RawF RelF RawF RelF
Regret that: 32 29.6% 76 70.4%
Agree that: 20 10.0% 180 90.0%
Admit that: 62 31.0% 138 69.0%
Sorry that: 21 27.6% 55 72.4%
Here are some examples illustrating the most typical subject patterns with the
predicates regret, admit, agree and sorry:
(28) She regretted deeply [that he had not come a little earlier]. (CLMET,
1780)
(29) […] the women all agree [that having time for themselves is the big fac-
tor that has changed in their lives]. (CB)
(30) […] the Bonn Government admitted [that economic growth was turning
out to be far weaker than expected]. (CB)
(31) […] I am nonetheless very sorry [that Mrs. Costner left him after 20
years of marriage]. (CB)
Semantically speaking, the that-CC in these cases typically expresses a situation,

a state-of-affairs which the subject of the matrix clause regrets, admits, resents,
agrees on or is sorry about but is not itself responsible for or involved in as sub-
ject. For admit followed by a that-complement, for instance, the CLMET corpus
gives only 33 instances (out of 287) with an identical subject in the matrix and
complement clause. Of the CLMET instances of admit followed by -ing, on the
other hand, those that have the meaning of ‘say unwillingly’ (as opposed to that
of ‘allowing for, letting’) all have a controlled, and therefore implicit subject, as in
[…] not a few have admitted having suffered spiritual loss (CLMET, 1850–1920).
With regard to the proportion animate/inanimate subject, then, the that-
clauses in our COBUILD data are clearly in favour of inanimate subjects:
Animate subject Inanimate subject

RawF RelF RawF RelF
Regret that: 50 46.3% 58 53.7%
Agree that: 60 30.0% 140 70.0%
Admit that: 88 44.0% 112 56.0%
Sorry that: 56 31.8% 120 68.2%
(32) “I regret [that this has happened],” said Mr. Fitweiler […]. (CB)
(33) I agree [that the top needs to be clearly defined]. (CB)
(34) And he admits [that every sexy scene causes Eve pain]. (CB)
(35) […] but she feels sorry [that the British players had to be thrown out].
(CB)
The lack of responsibility and involvement on the part of the subject of regret,
admit, resent, agree on or be sorry about, it could be argued, is especially clear
when the (different) subject of the that-CC is inanimate.
Conversely, in LModE, -ing-clauses expressing an “action” with same/con-
trolled subjects (the typical way to express actual involvement from the matrix
subject) have already become predominant. Importantly, this specialization is
in line with the diachronic nominal origins of the -ing-CC, which focuses on
“action” and typically shows a control relationship (see De Smet 2007).
Recall that, when at the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th century gerun-
dive complements came into use after the predicates regret, resent, be sorry,
admit and agree, the system of gerundive nominalization had already under-
gone the shift from the action semantics of its nominal origin to the (more
schematic) semantics of the subject-predicate structure: it could take an action
or state process, be construed in the active or passive voice, take secondary
tense and have a subject expressed, as exemplified in (36) to (38):
(36) […] she had very much regretted [being from home]. (CLMET, 1710–
1780) [state]
(37) […] they now greatly resent [being saddled with the presence of an un-
known urchin]. (CLMET, 1780–1850) [passive]
(38) Every moment I have to regret [the frigates having left me]. (CLMET,
1780–1850) [oblique subject]
Interestingly, however, in the -ing CCs following emotive and cognitive predi-
cates that we considered, these clause-like options are certainly not prominent
and in most cases even on the decline. There is thus not only a striking decrease
in the use of the secondary tense or anteriority marker have after, for instance,
regret (compare I don’t regret [writing the series] with I regret [not having put
enough time into mothering]) (see also Table 9); with most predicates, we also
observe a significant decrease in the use of an explicit subject and in the use of
non-action verbs in the gerundive CC.
Table 9. The use of secondary tense marker have with regret
Regret Use of have to mark secondary tense

CLMET 38 22 57.9%
COBUILD 147 22 15.0%
As Table 10 below makes clear, the subject of the gerundive CCs that follow
regret, resent, admit and sorry (for/at/about) is typically controlled by the
main clause, i. e. it is the same as the subject or object of the main clause and
therefore no longer explicitly included in the gerundive.
Table 10. The status of gerundive CCs following regret, resent, admit and sorry
Regret Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 38 32 84.2% 6 15.8% 25 65.8% 13 34.2%
COBUILD 147 146 99.3% 1 0.7% 124 84.3% 23 15.7%
Resent Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 10 4 40% 6 60% 2 20% 8 80%
COBUILD 73 47 64.4% 26 35.6% 32 43.8% 41 56.2%
Admit Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 3 3 100% 0 0% 1 33.3% 2 66.7%
COBUILD 200 200 100% 0 0% 115 57.5% 85 42.5%
Sorry Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 9 8 88.9% 1 11.1% 7 77.8% 2 22.2%
COBUILD 31 24 77.4% 7 22.6% 23 74.2% 8 25.8%
Some examples that illustrate the use of regret, resent, admit and sorry with
controlled subjects are given in (39) to (42):
(39) I knew that, no matter how much I loved John, I would regret and prob-
ably ultimately resent [not having children]. (CB)
(40) “Gentlemen, I am very sorry for [having kept you waiting so long]”.
(CLMET, 1780–1850)
(41) He half admitted [having rushed to the palace on his road to me]. (CB)
(42) I have heart enough, sir, to do a deed that would make you regret [using
me thus]. (CLMET, 1710–1780)
Both regret and admit in Present-day English almost exclusively combine with
gerundive CCs with a controlled subject. As Table 10 moreover shows, they
have also come to prefer action to state verbs. In other words, when the English
language user opts for a gerundive CC after regret and admit, he or she will
typically regret or admit a situation which the subject of the main clause has
been actively involved in itself. This strong preference is further supported by
the distributional behaviour of the that-CC: when the situation that is regretted
or admitted involves a subject that is different from the one in the main clause
(and typically is also inanimate), it is much more likely that the language user
will choose a that-CC, witness also Table 11 below. It shows that the distinc-
tion between that- and -ing CCs following regret, admit and resent is to a large
extent based on the issue of subjecthood, viz. on whether the complements in-
clude a subject, and if so, whether that subject is similar to the subject or object
of the main clause or not. (Note that, of the gerundive CCs with an expressed
subject, only with resent do we find an example of a subject that is similar to
the subject of the main clause, The public resented [their having plays ill acted
when they knew they might have better]. [CLMET, 1710–1780]).
Table 11. The use of that- vs. gerundive CCs following regret, resent, admit and sorry
Regret + -ing Su-controlled Su-expr

CLMET 38 32 84.2% 6 15.8%
COBUILD 147 146 99.3% 1 0.7%
Regret + that Same subject Different subject
CLMET 126 57 45.2% 69 54.8%
COBUILD 108 32 29.6% 76 0.135 / 70.4%
Admit + -ing Su-controlled (N/100,000) Su-expr

CLMET 3 3 0.02 / 100% 0 0 0%
COBUILD 200 200 1.72 / 100% 0 0 0%
Admit + that Same subject (N/100,000) Different subject
CLMET 286 51 0.339 / 17.8% 235 1.565 / 82.2%
COBUILD 200 62 0.904 / 31.0% 138 2.013 / 69.0%
Resent + -ing Su-controlled (N/100,000) Su-expr

CLMET 10 4 0.026 / 40.0% 6 0.04 / 60.0%
COBUILD 73 47 0.083 / 64.4% 26 0.047 / 35.6%
Resent + that Same subject (N/100,000) Different subject
CLMET 3 1 0.0666 / 33.3% 2 0.013 / 66.7%
COBUILD 5 1 0.0018 / 20.0% 4 0.0071 / 80.0%
It is interesting to point out that the predicate admit in combination with a

gerundive CC not only systematically opts for a controlled subject, but also
seems to have undergone semantic specialization. Whereas in the CLMET
corpus, admit still carries the “neutral” semantics of ‘agree unwillingly that
something is true or that someone else is right’ (see examples [43] and [44]), in
the COBUILD corpus, an overwhelming majority of -ing CCs following admit
(and then especially following admitted and admitting)5 designates a crime, as
illustrated in (45) to (47):
(43) Not a few have admitted [having suffered spiritual loss and declension
through being mixed up (…)]. (CLMET, 1780–1850)
(44) He half admitted [having rushed to the palace on his road to me]. (CL-
MET, 1780–1850)
(45) No group has admitted [carrying out the attack]. (CB)
(46) […] he admitted [belonging to the illegal Kenya Patriotic Front]. (CB)
(47) Baghdad has admitted to [enriching Uranium]. (CB)
If we compare this to the occurrences of admit with that-CC, we notice that

even those that contain a subject that is similar to the one in the main clause
tend not to refer to crimes, but draw upon the neutral semantics of admit ‘agree
unwillingly’:
(48) I have to admit [that I’ve shed more than my fair share of tears watching
England’s cricketers at work in recent weeks]. (CB)
(49) But I must admit [that I was worried about the future]. (CB)
The phenomenon we are witnessing here could be called semantic divergence,

parallel to the divergence described in De Smet and Cuyckens (2007).
Note finally that, as far as agree is concerned, a distinction can be made be-
tween agree + -ing, agree to + -ing, agree with + -ing and agree on + -ing. As
shown in Table 12, only the latter construction seems to systematically opt for
a controlled subject in Present-day English (for an example, see [50] and [51]).
Put differently, when one agrees on something, what one agrees on is typically
the undertaking of a particular action by the subject of the agreeing.
5 Of the 136 instances of gerundive CCs following admitted, 106 designated crimes;
likewise, of the 12 cases with admitting, 7 referred to crimes.
Table 12. The status of gerundive CCs following agree, agree on/with/to
Agree -ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

CLMET 3 0 0.0% 3 100% 3 100% 0 0.0%
COBUILD 47 16 34.0% 22 46.8% 29 61.7% 18 38.3%
no subject: 9
Agree on –ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

COBUILD 8 8 100% 0 0.0% 5 62.5% 3 37.5%
no subject: /
Agree with -ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

COBUILD 17 1 5.9% 9 52.9% 11 64.7% 6 35.3%
no subject: 7
Agree to-ing Su-cont Su-expr Action State

COBUILD 22 7 31.8% 13 59.1% 13 59.1% 9 40.9%
no subject: 2
(50) […] how are they all going to decide when they all agree on [going to
war], if that’s the decision? (CB)
(51) […] the EC cannot agree on [cutting farm subsidies] and on a common
position in […]. (CB)
The situation is clearly different for agree with and agree to + -ing, which both
predominantly take gerundives with expressed subject (as illustrated in [52]
and [53] below). More interestingly, they both occur without any subject, i. e.
with gerundive CCs of the “type specifying” type (see Section 3.2, Heyvaert
2008). We include a number of examples of subjectless gerundives following
agree with and agree to in (54) and (55).
(52) I don’t agree with [anybody keeping a venomous snake under any cir-
cumstances]. (CB)
(53) […] your lender may agree to you paying back the arrears over an
agreed period […]. (CB)
(54) I do not agree with [shifting the Trust out of Old government House and
squeezing it into the remnant left of the (…)]. (CB) [no subject]
(55) […] and after sitting in the salient all this time, I am going to agree to
[limiting the progress of my troops at the outset on the first day?]. (CB)
[no subject]
By preferring an expressed subject when used with to and with, agree thus
seems to resemble agree followed by a that-CC and deviate from the pat-
tern that we identified for gerundive CCs following cognitive and emotive
predicates. However, we do recognize significant differences between agree
followed by that or by -ing. First, agree to has the specific meaning of ‘say yes
to a plan, idea or suggestion’ (see also [56]), which agree that does not seem
to have. When used with with, then, agree has a semantics that is comparable
to that of agree that, i. e. ‘have or express the same opinion about a situation’,
but our data shows that in almost half of the cases in which it occurs with a
gerundive CC, agree with opts for a subjectless, or type-specifying CC (as
illustrated in [57]):
(56) So we managed to get the faculty to agree to [giving the title minerals
engineering still to postgraduate degrees (…)]. (CB)
(57) I agree with [abolishing the House of Lords completely]. (CB) [no sub-
ject]
Agree with followed by a gerundive CC thus seems to offer the language user
the option to refer to a situation without including a precise subject, i. e. to
refer to a type of situation and leave the subject unidentified. In the finite
clause that functions within that-CCs this is not possible and a subject has to
be included.
Summing up this section, then, we can say that the change in distribution
of that and -ing following the factive predicates that we focus on can, at least
partly, be attributed to specialization, whereby, interestingly, the -ing-clause
and that-clause exploit their original semantics, with the -ing-clause typically
expressing an action in which the (usually unexpressed or controlled) subject
is actively involved, and with the that-clause encoding a proposition that is un-
ambiguously independent from the main clause matrix. With regard to the mo-
tivation for specialization, we would like to suggest “economy”. Even though
overlap in language is widely present, it seems more economical to have a
neat distinction between two CC-types (think of remember + to-infinitive vs.
remember + gerund).
The development of -ing-CCs from a structure with a fairly broad potential
(in that it could overlap with the lexicogrammatical potential of that-clauses)
to a specialized structure with a high degree of semantic and syntactic bond-
ing between matrix and complement structure opens up new perspectives for
grammaticalization research. Indeed, in a number of respects, the increasing
semantic and syntactic bonding between matrix and -ing-CC that we observed
in our data can be regarded as an instance of increasing grammaticalization.
1. Complement structures with tight semantic and syntactic bonding (no sec-
ondary tense, control) show a type of syntactic coalescence that can be
likened to morphological coalescence (one of the Lehmann’s [1982] gram-
maticalization criteria).
2. When in this shift from loose to tight bonding, finite clauses are replaced by
non-finite ones, or, as is the case here, when there is an increase in the rela-
tive proportion of non-finite (more bonded) structures to finite-structures
this development can be viewed as an instance of decategorialization (and
in particular, desententialization, cf. Lehmann 1988).
3. From the point of view of the matrix, the increasing preference with regret
and admit to encode an action in which the (usually unexpressed or con-
trolled) subject is actively involved by means of an –ing gerundive can be
viewed as increasing obligatorification.
Admittedly, this view of grammaticalization which includes clause combining

is still somewhat controversial. For one, it is a type of grammaticalization in-
volving abstract types (constructions) and not tokens (so, as Fischer 2007: 224
points out, “the usual grammaticalization reduction features such as semantic
bleaching, phonetic reduction […] scope decrease, etc. are more difficult to dis-
cern in this process”). At the same time, this view of grammaticalization ties
in with views such as Trousdale’s (2008a, 2008b), who suggests that schematic
constructions may also be subject to grammaticalization.
4.3. Formal complexity
So far, we have looked at lexicogrammatical patterns which, in principle, could

be expressed by a that-CC or an -ing-CC – we have amply shown, however,
that there is no balanced distribution between that-CCs and ing-CCs. Now,
given that that-CCs are the only constructions whose internal structure is iden-
tical to that of a matrix clause, they would also be the ideal constructions to
accommodate complex structures. Indeed, it turns out that that-CCs accom-
modate complex structures far more easily than gerundive CCs: they contain
preposed Adjuncts, as in (58) and (59):
(58) Others admit, [that if a nation could be separated from all the world, it
would be of (…)]. (CLMET, 1710–1780)
(59) She hesitated to admit [that to her Sophia was the least in the world
formidable]. (CLMET, 1850–1920)
… and they can take complex subjects, as shown in (60) and (61):
(60) I admit [that twice two makes four is an excellent thing]. (CB)
(61) However the Secretary of State did not agree [that a criterion of the
Structure Plan policy that a new settlement would “provide safe and
easy access to the A10” had been met]. (CB)
Illustrative of the fact that that-CCs form independent, unitary propositions

embedded within the matrix is also the use of adverbials and vocatives in be-
tween the matrix and the that-CC:
(62) She regretted, indeed, [that she had not instantly returned it to the cas-
tle]. (CLMET, 1780–1850)
(63) ‘I regretted so much [that I was not at home when you did me the hon-
our to call’], resumed Mrs. Cadurcis. (CLMET, 1780–1850)
(64) ‘You shall not regret, Walter,[that you have only a woman to help you’,
she paused (…)]. (CLMET, 1780–1850)
(65) ‘You gotta admit, son, [that it is kind of odd, when you think about it].
(CB)
No such interspersing seems possible with gerundives:
(66) […] she much regretted [having an engagement in London] […].

(CLMET, 1780–1850)
4.4. that-CCs and the rise of metalinguistic uses
In addition to the factor “lexicogrammatical and semantic specialization”

and the factor “formal complexity”, there are other factors that account for
the changing distribution between that and -ing. However, in these cases, the
distribution between that and -ing does not fall out from the lexicogrammati-
cal division of labour between two CCs, but relates to changes in the [matrix-
clause + CC] combination which are outside of the realm of competition or
overlap between that and -ing.
A striking development that can thus be witnessed in the that-com-
plementation of both cognitive and emotive predicates is the rise of what
we will call “metalinguistic” uses of the predicate, as exemplified in the
examples in (67) to (69) below. The that-clause in that case no longer rep-
resents a pre-existent proposition which the matrix clause interacts with,
but expresses the projected content of what is basically a process of saying

(hence the term “metalinguistic”: the predicates themselves come to project
“metaphenomena” or representations of “linguistically processed phenomena”,
Halliday [1968: 195]). Importantly, it is no longer factive in that case (factivity
being defined by Halliday [1994: 250–262] as being necessarily realized by a
structurally “embedded” rather than “projected” unit) and does not seem to
have an equivalent in -ing. We can distinguish broadly between two subtypes
here. In a first type, the emotional stance expressed by the matrix verb (regret)
or adjective (sorry) comes to apply primarily to an implied speech act and the
clause can be paraphrased as I regret/am sorry to say that. Instances of this
type can be found under (67) to (69).
(67) I’m sorry [that I can’t be at the meeting this Friday]. (CB) [I’m sorry to
say that…]
(68) I am sorry [that with better heed and judgment I had not quoted him].
(CB) [I am sorry to say that…]
(69) “My lady and Miss Rachel regret [that they are engaged, Colonel]; and
beg to be excused having the honour of seeing you.” (CLMET, 1780–
1850) [they regret to say that…]
Notice the difference with uses like I’m sorry that I said you were assholes (CB)
or He was beginning to regret that he’d come along (CB), where the emotional
stance applies to the situation expressed by the that-clause. The metalinguistic
use of regret and sorry in the meaning of ‘regret to say’ and ‘be sorry to say’
seems to follow earlier uses in which the speech act verb was explicitly included:
(70) I am sorry to tell you […] [that, in this article, your first fact is false].
(OED, 1769)
(71) And I am sorry to say, [that too many of our dramatic performances are
of this latter] […]. (CLMET, 1710–1780)
Nowadays, the combination of ‘sorry to say’ and ‘regret to say’ appears to have
acquired the value of a fixed phrase with parenthetical status, added to a state-
ment as a polite way of saying that you are sorry or feel uncomfortable about
what you have just said/ what you are saying:
(72) Her lack of co-operation is nothing new, I regret to say. (CB)

(73) I wrote several times, but they never replied, I am sorry to say. (CB)
(74) She flew, I regret to say, into a rage, and demanded-uh-requested that I
call you on the carpet. (CB)
A second metalinguistic use of that following cognitive/emotive predicates is

exemplified in (75) to (78). Here the that-clause seems to primarily convey
the content of the speech act that is part of the semantics of admitting and
regretting, the basic meaning of both predicates (admit ‘agree unwillingly that
something is true’ and regret ‘feel mental distress on account of’) being met-
onymically shifted to ‘saying with some reluctance’ (admit) and ‘saying with
some regret’ (regret).
(75) […] my mother came in, and created a diversion in my favour by her
loquacious and animated welcome of the reverend guest. She regret-
ted deeply [that he had not come a little earlier, in time for tea], but
offered to have some immediately prepared. (CLMET 1780–1850) [she
said (that she regretted) that…]
(76) Suenens admitted [that ‘it was one of the gravest decisions of my life’].
(CB) [Suenens said admittingly that…]
(77) Wilkinson himself admitted [that ‘our players didn’t get anywhere above
freezing point (…)]’. (CB) [Wilkinson said admittingly that…]
(78) […] they have to field a load of questions about whether Prince is really
a raving nutter and egomaniac. Funnily enough none of them thinks he
is. All of them agree [that the ‘bottom line is that Prince is the ‘boss’ but
they think that he deserves their ‘respect’ (…)]. (CB) [all of them said
agreeingly that]
Contexts in which (implicit or explicit) reference is made to the speech

event (as in [75], where her loquacious and animated welcome clearly sug-
gests that what follows is what my mother said), as well as contexts in
which the basic semantics of the matrix verb is backgrounded (e. g. in the
case of admit, ‘agreeing unwillingly with a proposition that has been sug-
gested/mentioned before’) contribute to the metalinguistic interpretation of
the that-clauses that follow. In (76) and (78), for instance, it is thus reason-
able to interpret the that-clause as merely expressing the content of what is
said by Suenens (in [76]) and Wilkinson (in [78]) without the proposition
necessarily being pre-existent. Interestingly, in examples (76) to (78) the
clause following that has been placed between quotation marks in the Co-
build corpus. We also found several instances of admit followed by direct
speech, as in (79):
(79) The former Argy skipper, who blatantly punched the ball into the net,
admits: “I realize that goal should not have stood and I am sorry for
what happened”. (CB)
The metalinguistic meanings seem to fit in with semantic change Tendency II

of the grammaticalization process as described in Traugott (1989: 35) whereby
“meanings based in the external or internal described situation” shift towards
“meanings based in the textual and metalinguistic situation” (i. e. “the situ-
ation of performing a linguistic act”). The predicates no longer express “in-
ternal emotion”, but the “stating of internal emotion” (compare the develop-
ment of observe as verb denoting ‘perceive’ to a verb denoting ‘state that you
perceive’). The first type of metalinguistic meaning that we distinguished can
be argued to increasingly code speaker informativeness about his/her attitude
towards the content of what is said (“apology”) (Tissari [2007: 61] makes a
similar claim about the diachronic development of the phrases I fear that and
I’m afraid that). Importantly, our corpus data suggests the existence of “bridg-
ing contexts”, in which the basic semantic interpretation of the predicate, as
well as a new, metalinguistic, one is possible:
(80) […] sprung up of which we as yet have only seen what will one day be
considered the antediluvian prototypes of the race. We regret deeply
[that our knowledge both of natural history and of machinery is too
small to enable us to undertake the gigantic (…)]. (CLMET 1780–1850)
(81) […] was becoming direct and partisan in all of her public activities. She
denounced Republicans and defended the New Deal; she acknowledged
the gains American women had made in recent years but regretted [that
politics was ‘still a man’s world’]; and she began to attack racism and
sexism openly. (CB)
Note that the metalinguistic meanings tie in with the diachronic origin of that
as being used to express a proposition or projected unit. As predicates with
metalinguistic meanings, they are essentially “say” predicates, and in that re-
spect take their CCs by analogy with “say” verbs. The importance of analogy
in the diffusion of complements has, for instance, been described by De Smet
(2008) with respect to the development of for…to-infinitives.
5. Conclusions
In this paper we were concerned with the distribution of that- and -ing comple-
ments following the factive predicates regret, resent, admit, agree and be sor-
ry. To identify the spread and varying distribution of their that- and -ing-CCs
together with the factors that might have played a role in that distribution, we
looked at corpus data from Early Modern English to Present-day English. Our
data suggested firstly that in general that-CCs arose earliest as factive comple-
ments but, like -ing-CCs, remained infrequent up until the beginning of the
18th century. Gerundive CCs following regret, resent, admit, agree and be sor-
ry were found especially from the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th cen-
tury onwards. Even though significant semantic and structural overlap could be
expected between that- and -ing-CCs, we found that from early onwards both
complementation systems started to develop a specific division of labor. Of the
factors that we identified as determining the resulting (varying) distribution
of that and -ing-CCs, the exploitation of specific semantic and lexicogram-
matical properties of that- and -ing constructions (or “specialization”) was dis-
cussed first. Gerundive complementation, we showed, shifted from increasing
independence up until LModE (with the inclusion of a subject, and tense and
voice marking, cf. Givon 1980) to growing dependence (loss of explicit sub-
ject and secondary tense marking). The original “action” semantics of “action
nominals” was shown to have been “picked up” again in PDE, the [predicate
-ing-CC] combinations that we analyzed typically expressing the meaning of
‘S of matrix clause regrets/admits/is sorry for/agrees on having been/being/
getting involved in a certain action as an Agent’. That-CCs, on the other hand,
continue to exploit their original independent relation with the matrix (word
order, complexity of subject, interspersing) and show a strong tendency in PDE
to take a different inanimate subject. The increasing semantic and syntactic
bonding between matrix and -ing-CC that we observed, we suggested, can be
regarded as an instance of increasing grammaticalization, marked by syntactic
coalescence and decategorialization (or desentialization). As examples of more
specific cases of semantic and lexicogrammatical specialization, we discussed
admit and its “crime-related” semantics, and agree, which, depending on the
preposition it is combined with, prefers different types of gerundive construc-
tions, including the subjectless, type-specifying type. Finally, several matrix
predicates with that-CCs (regret, be sorry, admit, agree) were shown to be
developing metalinguistic (and therefore even more independent) usages – this
in line with their diachronic origin as projected units.
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4. Cognitive Approaches to Meaning
Tracing metonymic polysemy through time:
material for object mappings in the OED
Kathryn Allan
Abstract
There has been relatively little work investigating the diachronic development of me-
tonymy. Although it is often observed that metonymy is a common trigger for semantic
change (e. g. Traugott and Dasher 2005), it is not clear whether metonymical map-
pings commonly involve clear stages of semantic development that are diachronically
separate, or whether more often the nature of metonymy results in a much “messier”
situation where several metonymically related senses of a lexeme surface around the
same time. Other questions relating to how metonymical senses develop and change
remain open, such as how and why new senses are motivated at a particular time, why
some metonymically related senses become conventional but other apparently possible
ones do not, and why particular senses become obsolete. There is a need for a much
more detailed consideration of individual cases of metonymic polysemy (a term used
by Koch 1999), which takes account of established theories of lexical semantics along-
side cognitive theories of metonymy.
This paper considers issues relating to the development of particular convention-
alised metonymies in a diachronic context, using data from the Oxford English Dic-
tionary. Specifically, it traces the historical development of a small group of lexemes
that evidence metonymical senses of the type material for object, e. g. glass for
‘vessel’, and explores the extent to which metonymical mappings of a particular type
follow a similar pattern diachronically. It is argued that a diachronic perspective can
be helpful and valuable in formulating and testing theories of metonymy, and in under-
standing the relationship between metaphor, metonymy and literal language.
1. Introduction
Metonymy has long been recognised as a common trigger for semantic change,
and most (if not all) manuals of semantic and lexical change acknowledge met-
onymical processes as a central factor in the development of polysemy. For ex-
ample, Ullmann’s seminal handbook Principles of Semantics lists metonymy
as one of four “cardinal types” of associations that can initiate semantic change
(alongside metaphor, folk etymology and ellipsis; 1957: 79–80), and more re-
cently, Traugott and Dasher argue that it is a major mechanism of semantic
change (2005: 27–34). Blank and Koch suggest that “Nowadays, even manuals
164 Kathryn Allan
of historical linguistics refer to issues in cognitive research relevant to prob-

lems of diachrony” (1999: 10). However, the two disciplines do not appear to
have informed each other to the same extent, and in general there has been rela-
tively little examination of diachronic data within cognitive semantics. This
paper takes as a starting point Blank and Koch’s assertion that “investigation of
diachronic problems can […] sharpen our view for fundamental semantic pro-
cesses and should therefore be able to advance theorizing in cognitive linguis-
tics” (Blank and Koch 1999: 10). Work such as Tissari (2003), Gevaert (2005)
and Allan (2006) has shown the value of examining metaphorical mappings
diachronically, and it is suggested here that theories of metonymy can similarly
benefit from a diachronic perspective. What follows is a preliminary attempt to
explore a small amount of data for one specific type of metonymy, material
for object, as a way of considering wider issues related to metonymy and to
mapping processes.
2. Background to this study
2.1. Synchronic vs. diachronic perspectives on metonymy
Recent work on metonymy has distinguished several patterns of metonymy,

and these can be markedly different in the way they “behave” in discourse.
Some types of metonymical mappings are produced ad hoc in restricted con-
texts, and these are unlikely to become entrenched; Taylor cites the example
of waiters/waitresses referring to customers by the food they order in a restau-
rant, as in expressions like The pork chop left without paying (Taylor 2002:
325). However, other types of mappings are not restricted by context to the
same extent, and these often become conventionalised; for example, glass
‘vessel made from glass’ is common in English and tends to be recorded in
dictionaries. It is generally accepted that the synchronic relationship between
the related senses of polysemous lexemes like glass is the result of diachronic
processes of semantic change, and the term metonymy is commonly used
both to describe the diachronic process by which a particular set of related
senses evolve, and the synchronic property of metonymically related senses
that particular lexical items exhibit. This has led to a potentially confusing
lack of distinction between, on the one hand, the type of metonymy that is
available “online” (such as the restaurant example) and, on the other, conven-
tional, entrenched metonymy. To address the issue of the difference between
these, Koch proposes a helpful distinction between metonymy and metonymic
polysemy:
Tracing metonymic polysemy through time 165
To keep things clear, it would be better to call cases like Eng. bar (with respect to
its senses […]) ‘metonymic polysemy’. Nevertheless, there is a close relationship
between ad hoc metonymy […] and metonymic polysemy […]: just as polysemy in
general develops through ‘lexicalization’ of a semantic change ultimately triggered
by a contextual and/or expressive ad hoc usage of a word in discourse, metonymic
polysemy also develops through lexicalization out of ad hoc metonymic usage in
discourse – or put the other way round, metonymy constitutes an ad hoc innovation
that can potentially induce a ‘metonymic change’ in the meaning of the lexeme
concerned, which thereby becomes (metonymically) polysemous. (Koch 1999: 140)
The issues of how and why particular ad hoc metonymies develop into cases of
metonymic polysemy are not addressed by Koch, and appear to have received
little attention in the literature. This paper will examine a group of metonymi-
cal mappings that have become conventionalised, and in particular will con-
sider the following questions:
• Is there usually, or always, time delay between the attestation of the “source”
meaning of a lexical item and the emergence of any metonymically related
senses?
• In terms of diachronic development, do metonymies of a particular type
(i. e., the types identified in lists such as that presented in Radden and
Kövecses 1999 or Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006) behave in a similar way?
• Why do some lexemes develop more conventional metonymies than others?
The data used in this paper is taken exclusively from the Oxford English Dic-
tionary (henceforth OED), because of my focus on the diachronic develop-
ment of metonymic polysemy, i. e. on the results of metonymically motivated
change and the historical evidence for the way in which this change has oc-
curred through time. The OED is a particularly valuable source for this kind
of analysis, because it draws on a huge compilation of data on historical sense
development that spans a long historical period; as an individual researcher (or
as part of a small team) it would be impossible to replicate the results of the
OED’s reading and research by examining currently available diachronic cor-
pora and text databases. To a certain extent, using the OED as a data source ties
this study to a particular analysis of sense distinctions, although the illustrative
quotations provided in each entry allow one to “drill down” to some extent. It
would also be possible to use synchronic corpora to examine the relationship
between established senses and innovative metonymical senses (used by some
speakers but not in general conventional use); research of this kind might make
it possible to identify examples of change in progress, and allow the scholar to
use a synchronic snapshot to explore the mechanisms of change close-up. How-
ever, because my interest here is in the results of change and the time periods
166 Kathryn Allan
involved in this change, I have not further explored the potential for this kind
of work, which would certainly merit a study of its own.
2.2. What is metonymy?
Although metonymy has become an important focus for research in cogni-

tive linguistics in the past decade, there is still a high level of disagreement
about the nature of metonymy. This is well documented (see for example,
Haser 2005: 13–52) and is discussed only very briefly here. Generally, schol-
ars tend to define metonymy by comparing and contrasting it with metaphor,
but there remains difficulty about how best to distinguish between metaphor
and metonymy in a meaningful and theoretically viable way. Within cogni-
tive linguistics, it is common to make a distinction between metaphor as a
mapping across conceptual domains and metonymy as a mapping within a
single domain, or following Croft, within a single domain matrix (Croft 2002;
Barcelona 2002). Although this is a useful shorthand for the key difference
between the two types of mapping, it involves a subjective judgement about the
boundaries between domains, and several scholars (e. g. Peirsman and Geer-
aerts 2006) have pointed out that these boundaries are notoriously difficult to
ascertain. An alternative and perhaps more traditional approach is to make a
distinction between mappings that involve similarity, which are metaphorical
in nature, and those that involve conceptual “closeness”, or contiguity, between
source and target, which are metonymical. In cases of metonymy, there should
be no implied comparison between entities that are perceived as similar in
some way, so that metonymical mapping commonly has a referential function
and does not imply or “say something new” about the target concept.1 Rather,
metonymy arises from associations between concepts that are closely related
in experience. Peirsman and Geeraerts (2006) suggest that contiguity might be
a more reliable criterion than the cross-domain/intra-domain distinction, but
they acknowledge that it also relies on subjective judgements about the concep-
tual “distance” between related concepts; in this respect, it shares some of the
limitations of the domain approach.
The issue of how to define and demarcate metonymy is further complicated
by the existence of mappings that involve both metaphor and metonymy (or
that can be analysed as either), such as metaphors motivated by metonymy or
blends that have both metaphorical and metonymical inputs.
1 However, recent work in the field has suggested that metonymy can also be non-
referential, since metonymy can occur on the predicational and illocutionary levels.
See Panther and Thornburg (2007: 236–263).
2.3. The metaphor-metonymy-literal language continuum
Scholars including Radden (2002) have observed that “the traditional distinc-
tion between metaphor and metonymy can no longer be upheld” (Radden 2002:
431). He proposes that the two types of mapping are most helpfully seen as
points on a mapping continuum, with “prototypical” metaphor at one extreme
and “prototypical” metonymy at the other. A prototypical instance of metaphor
might be one that is very clearly motivated by perceived similarity between
source and target, such as pig for ‘untidy person’; a prototypical instance of
metonymy might be one that is very clearly referential and motivated by conti-
guity between source and target, such as suit for ‘business man’. More difficult
cases, such as metaphor motivated by metonymy (e. g. an instance of primary
metaphor) can be placed somewhere in the middle of the continuum. Although
it is not the focus of his article, Radden also suggests that literal language is
part of the same continuum, and is located next to metonymy. He considers dif-
ferent uses of the attributive adjective high as illustrating a “gradual transition
from literalness via different stages of metonymy to metaphor” (2002: 409);
there are relatively clear examples of the literal, metonymical and metaphori-
cal use of high (in high tower, high temperature and high quality, respectively),
but also uses that appear to represent mid-points between these categories. He
argues that high tide is “‘partially’, or weakly, metonymic” (2002: 409) since
it refers to both vertical extension, i. e. the literal sense of high, but at the same
time also to horizontal extension, which he considers a metonymical use of the
lexeme. (High temperature is more clearly metonymical, since it maps the scale
of verticality to degrees of temperature.)
This study accepts the idea that neither metaphor nor metonymy are clear-
cut categories, and focuses on the relationship between metonymy and literal
language. A diachronic investigation of the material for object mapping
appears to support the view that metonymy and literal language are located on
a continuum, since some instances of the mapping are intuitively more clearly
metonymical than others (discussed further below). Metonymy might therefore
be viewed as the middle point of a continuum with prototypical metaphor at
one end and literal language at the other, as Radden suggests.
168 Kathryn Allan
3. Basis of this study
3.1. Data
The data that is examined here relates to one particular type of metonymy, the
mapping between material and object that is evident in examples like glass
(with the meaning ‘drinking vessel’) and iron (with the meaning ‘appliance
used to smooth clothes’). The material for object metonymy has been cho-
sen because it is uncontroversial in terms of any debate about the defining prop-
erties of metonymy as distinct from metaphor; it relies on the close conceptual
relationship between an object and one of the properties of that object, i. e., the
material from which it is constituted, and there is no sense in which these two
entities can be said to be similar (or to be perceived as similar). In terms of a
metaphor-metonymy continuum, therefore, instances of this type of mapping
would certainly be close to the metonymy end, and could perhaps be consid-
ered as fairly typical examples of metonymy. However, by comparison with
other “clear-cut” metonymies (in this sense), instances of this type of mapping
generally have a feature that is not typical, and this might prevent them from
being considered prototypical in some frameworks. Following scholars such as
Blank (1999) and Seto (1999), Peirsman and Geeraerts examine metonymy as
a category in itself, and suggest that it has a prototypical core focused on the
relationship of contiguity. The category extends from this core along two di-
mensions, “strength of contact” and “boundedness” (2006: 278–279); the most
prototypical examples of metonymy are those where the source and target have
the highest strength of contact (i. e. physical contact between the source and
target) and are both (physical or abstract) bounded entities. By this criteria,
spatial part & whole metonymies like the following form the prototypical
core for the category:
(1) Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of England.

(Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006: 280)
Here one bounded space, England, stands for another, the whole of the UK,
and these have the highest possible level of strength of contact because one is
physically part of the other. material for object metonymies are prototypi-
cal on the “strength of contact” criteria, since they are a specific type of part
for whole mapping, but they are non-prototypical in that they commonly
involve one bounded entity and one unbounded entity, and therefore a switch
from a mass noun to a count noun linguistically. For example, glass in its ma-
terial sense is a mass noun which stands for an unbounded entity, whereas a
glass ‘a vessel made of glass’ is bounded. This is discussed further in section

6 below.
Twenty lexemes denoting types of material have been chosen as the basis of
this study, and these are listed in table 1 below.
Table 1. MATERIAL FOR OBJECT lexemes included in this study
1. bronze 6. iron 11. nylon 16. steel

2. chalk 7. lead 12. paper 17. stone
3. copper 8. leather 13. plastic 18. vinyl
4. glass 9. marble 14. rubber 19. wood
5. hair 10. metal 15. silk 20. wool
For each item, data from the OED has been used to examine the following:
1. whether one or more conventional metonymically related senses develop;
2. if these metonymically related senses are found in general and lasting use;
3. when they are attested (relative to when the source meaning is attested),
whether there is a time delay between the recording of the source material
sense and the target object sense(s), and why this might be.
In this relatively brief article, the discussions below refer only to selected ex-
amples in considering each of these questions. A full list of the material for
object senses that have been included in the data appears in the Appendix.
3.2. Using dictionary material
The particular examples that have been included in the sample have been cho-
sen on the basis of intuition, partly because there are particular difficulties in
searching dictionaries (or corpora) for instances of metonymy. Markert and
Nissim (2006) discuss the way in which dictionaries treat the metonymical
senses of lexical items in their study of proper names, using data from Word-
net. They conclude that there are three issues that are particularly problematic
for those using dictionary material to study metonymy:2
Dictionaries necessarily include only conventional metonymic senses, whereas
metonymies are open-ended […] But even conventional metonymies are often not
2 They go on to say that it is also problematic that dictionaries do not always include
proper names, but this is not relevant to the present study.
170 Kathryn Allan
included systematically […] Even if literal and metonymic senses are both included
they are listed [in some dictionaries] as unrelated entries and the metonymic rela-
tionship between them is not expressed […] (Markert and Nissim 2006: 154)
The first of these issues, the inclusion of only conventionalised metonymy in

dictionaries, is unproblematic for the present study: the aim here is to focus on
the process by which metonymy develops into metonymic polysemy. This is
taken to have occurred when a material for object sense is recorded in the
OED entry for a particular lexeme. Because it is compiled on historical prin-
ciples, the OED’s policy on the inclusion of lexical items and senses of lexical
items is based on consistent criteria related to frequency, and this means it of-
fers the most reliable material currently available on what can be considered
conventional, since it is based on much larger and more consistent data samples
across time than other diachronic corpora at the present time. This addresses
Markert and Nissim’s second concern about systematicity.
The final point made by Markert and Nissim about the way in which diction-
aries handle the relationships between metonymically related senses is perhaps
the most relevant to my study and to other work on the diachronic develop-
ment of metonymy that uses dictionary material. Historical dictionaries like
the OED always present etymologically related senses of the same lexeme in
a single dictionary entry and treat these as examples of polysemy rather than
homonymy. This is where their practice diverges from that of synchronic dic-
tionaries, which generally adopt a basically intuitive approach to the difference
between polysemy and homonymy. Obviously this makes historical dictionar-
ies much more suitable for diachronic studies, where the semantic develop-
ment of any lexical item is crucially important. However, the way in which
the OED (and other dictionaries) present a word history does not necessarily
include information on why particular semantic developments occur, or label
semantic relationships with the kind of terminology that semanticists might
use. Since the main purpose of a historical dictionary is to document word his-
tories rather than analyse them, terms like metaphor and metonymy tend to be
used only when a particular semantic shift occurs which is in some way opaque
or doubtful and therefore requires explicit discussion or explanation.3 In fact,
the OED would normally try to avoid engagement with particular theoretical
3 At the time of writing, when entries from M - ramvert had been revised for the 3rd
edition, the online search of the OED recovered metonymy (or a related form) a to-
tal of 53 times in definitions and 15 times in etymologies as a term used to explain
the relationship between the senses of lexemes. Of these 68 instances, 48 occur
in new 3rd edition entries, suggesting that metonymy is used more frequently to
explain sense relationships than it was in the 2nd edition. It is likely that this is only
frameworks in the way it presents information. In cases such as material for

object metonymic polysemy, the relationship between the source and target is
fairly transparent conceptually, and this makes it unlikely that the OED would
use the term metonymy to explain a semantic shift. While this is entirely justifi-
able, it does make it very difficult to search for cases of metonymic polysemy
in any systematic way.
4. Degrees of polysemy and the importance of considering

intra- and extra-linguistic factors
The twenty lexemes included in the data all have metonymical object senses
at some point in their histories, although many of these senses are now obso-
lete (e. g. metal with the sense ‘weapon, armour’), and some are restricted to
particular discourse areas (e. g. iron and wood for particular types of golf club).
Strikingly, although all of these lexemes show patterns of metonymic poly-
semy of the same type, beyond this they vary enormously, to the extent that
it is problematic to present any kind of meaningful statistical analysis of the
data. Perhaps most basically, the lexemes differ in the degree of (material for
object) metonymic polysemy they exhibit, both synchronically and diachron-
ically.4 Some lexemes develop a single metonymical object sense across time,
e. g. vinyl for ‘record(s)’, nylons for ‘stockings or tights’,5 hair for ‘cloth, mat’.
However, this is relatively unusual, and the majority of the lexemes examined
develop many more than one metonymically related sense diachronically. No-
table examples are glass, for which the OED lists 17 different object senses
because it is a more generally used term currently, though; there is no evidence that
the OED has adopted a conscious policy of using terms like this more frequently.
4 My comments here relate to material for object metonymical polysemous sens-
es, but I would suggest that other metonymical and non-metonymical polysemous
senses are also absolutely relevant to the questions of motivation and convention-
alisation of material for object senses. As Allan (2008: 114–115) comments, it
seems likely that it is not possible for a lexeme to exhibit polysemy if this is likely to
result in confusion, and in practice if two meanings are conceptually close enough
to be confused (but distant enough to be distinct from one another) some kind of
change is likely to occur, so that either one sense will become obsolete, or one or
both senses will shift semantically.
5 Nylons always occurs in the plural with this sense; no metonymical sense is record-
ed for nylon singular. Presumably this is simply because items of clothing which
are worn on the legs and are close-fitting are conventionally given a plural name,
e. g. trousers, tights, culottes etc.
172 Kathryn Allan
in total, including ‘drinking vessel’, ‘pane of glass’, ‘mirror’, ‘lens’, ‘telescope’

and ‘barometer’; and iron, for which 16 are listed including senses as divergent
as ‘harpoon’, ‘golf club’, ‘money’ and ‘instrument used to smooth out linen
etc.’6 For most of these highly polysemous lexemes, several object senses co-
exist at any one point in the lexeme’s history; for example, between 1800 and
1899 there are attestations for nine different object senses of lead.
It is difficult to note this difference in the level of object metonymicity of
different lexemes without considering why it is the case, but equally difficult to
account for it in any detailed way without a more extended examination than
this study can afford. However, some relevant points can be suggested, and
these relate to both intra- and extra-linguistic factors. It must be noted that the
materials denoted by the lexemes are of widely different natures, and obviously
the range of objects they can constitute depends on their inherent character-
istics and versatility. A material like wood can be used for a wide range of
purposes, and the high number of object senses listed in the OED reflect this:
wood burns well, so can be used as fuel; it has a rigid structure and is water-
tight when treated, so can be used as a building material or to make vessels;
it is soft enough to be relatively easily worked, so can be finely carved into
decorative objects or instruments; and so on. By contrast, some materials are
less versatile and lend themselves most obviously to particular uses, and corre-
spondingly the lexemes that denote them have a low number of object senses.
The man-made material nylon is a classic example, since it was designed to
have properties that would make it suitable for use in textiles, and therefore
does not readily lend itself to other uses. A slightly different kind of example is
bronze, which is strongly associated with art and artworks; again, it is a man-
made material created for a particular purpose, but it is also interesting because
the lexeme was borrowed into English (from Italian via French) specifically for
artworks made of this material and for the material itself. It therefore seems
unsurprising that the lexeme does not denote a wide range of objects.
6 In general, I have taken OED definitions as definitive in considering the number

of metonymically related senses that develop for any lexeme, and used my own
judgement to pick out which senses can be considered to be material for object
metonymies. Beyond this, I have followed the OED’s division of senses with two
exceptions: if a form is very obviously an ellipsis (identified as such in the OED),
it has been excluded, e. g. bronze as an elliptical form of bronze medal (OED sense
1c); and in a very few cases, I have collapsed two senses into one for the purposes
of the study, e. g. in the OED, mirror sense 8 is divided into ‘a glass mirror’ (sense
8a) and ‘applied to a mirror of other material’ (sense 8b), but since in other cases a
similar distinction is not made I have not preserved this.
However, not all lexemes denoting materials that have very characteristic
properties of this kind have a small number of object senses, and to account
for this, intra-linguistic systemic factors must also be considered. One of the
most highly polysemous lexemes in the data is paper, for which the OED lists
21 distinct object senses (some of these are presented as subsenses of more
general categories of object in the OED’s analysis). Obviously paper as a ma-
terial has a very limited number of purposes; it can have symbols or pictures
marked on it in some way, or it can form a wrapper or envelope to cover or
enclose something, and the senses of the lexeme reflect this. However, the OED
entry lists a high number of specialised uses in particular discourse areas. For
example, all of the (plural) sub-senses in sense 12 denote official documents of
some kind, but each of these relate to what is salient within a certain context:7
for the crew of a ship, papers identify and legitimise a particular vessel or
signify an individual’s right to travel (sense 12a); within the military, papers
are certificates which must accompany applications to resign (12b); and for
a vet, papers establish an animal’s pedigree (sense 12c). These are classified
as subsenses in the OED because they are closely related in terms of etymol-
ogy, and develop one from another; the letters that label subsenses within 12
represent developments in a historical branching structure. In this particular
instance, these subsenses are also closely related semantically; in a traditional
classification, they might be regarded as context-dependent co-hyponyms of a
broader superordinate category ‘type of official document’. This close sense re-
lationship means that the OED subsenses would not be regarded as full senses
in some frameworks. Croft and Cruse (2004) discuss multiple meanings in
terms of the degree of autonomy between senses, and by their classification this
group of meanings of paper would be classified as microsenses, i. e. “distinct
sense units of a word that occur in different contexts and whose default con-
struals stand in a relation of mutual incompatability at the same hierarchical
level” (Croft and Cruse 2004: 128–129). These are not considered as full senses
because full senses (of the same lexical form) cannot be hyponyms of a super-
ordinate category, and therefore have a higher degree of autonomy. A similar
example, though one which perhaps demonstrates a more complex relationship
between multiple meanings, is the lexeme glass. A key characteristic of glass
is its transparency and the fact that it can be used to magnify images, so that it
is used to make lenses for different kinds of purposes. It can therefore denote
several lens-type objects including a pair of spectacles (in plural; sense 10a), a
telescope (10b) or a microscope (10c). Each of these uses involves a metonymi-
7 Kövecses and Radden’s (1998: 70) discussion of salience in terms of situational

relevance is useful here.
174 Kathryn Allan
cal chain, where there is material for object metonymic polysemy (glass
‘lens made of glass’) but also a part-whole mapping to the larger object that
has a lens as its salient feature.
It is also important to take into account the way in which systemic factors
make particular senses “available” for conventional use within the context of
a particular discourse area. Both iron and wood can denote types of golf club
(iron 4e; wood 7g), precisely because of the contrast between them; it would
not make sense to use one material for object metonymy in isolation to
describe a type of golf club, because if all golf clubs were made of the same
material this could not be used as the salient, defining feature that made a dis-
tinction between each type.
Although it is much more difficult to make suggestions about metonymical
senses that do not appear in the data, it seems relevant to consider why theo-
retically possible metonymies do not become conventionalised. As Geeraerts
(1997: 103) points out, there is a difference between extensions of meaning
that are possible or plausible, such as typical classes of mappings motivated
by metaphor or metonymy (like material for object) and those that are ac-
tualized and result in lexical-semantic change. It seems likely that cognitive
principles such as those mentioned in Kövecses and Radden (1998), which can
be seen to either “sanction” or constrain the occurrence of ad-hoc instances
of metonymy, will have an equally strong effect on whether or not a mapping
becomes conventionalised (resulting in metonymic polysemy). To some extent,
this can account for the specialised senses of material for object metony-
mies in particular contexts discussed in the previous paragraph. As well as this,
though, intra-systemic factors must be involved as additional and perhaps even
more powerful constraining mechanisms. Whether or not there are already de-
scriptively adequate lexemes to denote any object must be one of these factors;
if this is the case, it seems less likely that a material for object metonymy
will “stick” in the lexicon. One example might be the lack of any OED sense
‘table’ or ‘table-top’ for the lexeme wood. Table tops are most commonly made
of a large slab of wood, and this was even more usual in the past; given other
comparable examples of metonymic polysemy, notably mahogany for a table
made of mahogany wood, it seems fairly plausible that this kind of metonymi-
cal extension might occur. However, no ‘table’ or ‘table-top’ sense is recorded
for wood. It is notable that in different periods other lexemes have had this cen-
tral meaning. Before table became the dominant term for this concept in Eng-
lish, board was also used with the same meaning, and this can be found from
the Old English period onwards. Table is not attested until the Middle English
period, and came into English as part of the large scale borrowing of Romance
lexis that occurred in the period after the Norman Conquest. As a result of
this large scale borrowing, very many pairs of synonyms including board and
table arose; subsequently, these diverged, so that board shifted semantically
and is no longer used with the same meaning.8 Wood meaning ‘table’ may not
have become conventional simply because it would have been redundant, thus
violating the principle of efficiency in the lexicon where exact synonymy is
extremely rare (or perhaps non-existent).
Such examples clearly demonstrate the importance of looking beyond any
individual lexeme in examining metonymy and metonymic polysemy, a point
made by Geeraerts in his discussion of mechanisms of semantic change:
Although classifications of lexical-semantic change are often restricted to the sema-
siological perspective, such a strict distinction between the semasiological and the
onomasiological approaches is misleading. It should not be forgotten, in fact, that
the semasiological extension of the range of meanings of an existing word is itself
one of the major mechanisms of onomasiological change – one of the mechanisms,
that is, through which a concept to be expressed gets linked to a lexical expression.
(Geeraerts 1997: 94–95)
Several scholars share this view and have approached figurative language from
an onomasiological perspective (see, for example, Tissari 2005; Fabiszak and
Hebda, this volume). However, it is still the case that exclusively semasiological
approaches are more usual within cognitively-oriented studies of metonymy.
I would suggest that the study of onomasiological change is a key area for
development in the future, particularly as interest in motivation in language
increases. The recently completed Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English
Dictionary (Kay et al. 2009), compiled at the University of Glasgow, promises
to be a useful tool to facilitate diachronic onomasiological study, and is there-
fore likely to alleviate some of the difficulties of retrieving data discussed in
section 3.2.
5. Time delay in mapping from source to target
Apart from the differences in degrees of polysemy in the data, there is also
wide variation in the way metonymical mappings become established through
time. It is important to note that the dates of attestation listed in the OED can-
not be equated with dates of usage, and can only be taken to be very rough
indicators of the periods in which particular senses of each lexeme became
established or faded into obsolescence. There are several reasons for this. The
OED relies on written sources, and it is generally accepted that new lexemes
8 For a full discussion, see Durkin (2009: 231–233).

176 Kathryn Allan
and new senses of existing lexemes tend to be found first in spoken language,
making it difficult to track their earliest uses in modern times, and impossible
in earlier periods. Furthermore, the first attestations given in the OED are not
always the earliest attestations in print; since the first edition was finished in
1928, many earlier and later examples have been identified, and these will be
incorporated in the third edition, currently underway (see Durkin 2002 for a
discussion of how much this is likely to change the dates of attestation in the
OED as a whole). Finally, but most importantly, the OED records the language
in periods for which the surviving evidence is patchy at best, and this means
that some lexemes are not attested at particular times even though it seems
highly likely that they must have existed. A good example is provided by the
most common current material sense of chalk (OED sense 2), this is attested
in the compound chalkpit (Old English cealcpyt) in a 956 text, and then again
in c1400, but the OED does not list any attestations for the period between
these dates. It seems highly unlikely that this sense of the lexeme faded out
of use for 450 years (though it is possible), and the obvious conclusion is that
if there really are no examples in use this reflects the lack of evidence that
survives in early English. Overall, as Durkin asserts, “Caution is therefore ad-
visable when making use of [… existing OED] data for statistical purposes”
(Durkin 2002: 75).
Having said this, though, the dates of attestation for the material for ob-
ject metonyms presented in the OED do seem to provide some indication of
whether object senses occur significantly later than material senses for this
type of mapping. In some cases, little or no time delay is recorded between the
attestation of the literal sense of a lexeme and a metonymically-related object
sense: for example, nylon, discussed above, is attested earliest with the mean-
ings ‘Any of various synthetic thermoplastic polymers’ in 1938, ‘fabric made
from nylon yarn’ in 1940, and (in plural) ‘stockings or tights’ in 1940. This
clearly shows that the metonymical mapping of the lexeme (and the conscious
coining of the lexeme in the first place) was motivated by new technological
developments: when the new product, nylon hosiery, was created, the material
name was used to refer to it and immediately became conventional because this
name became generally known and used. Since the material was designed for
a particular purpose and used for this purpose immediately after its invention,
there is no discernable time delay between the attestation of the literal ‘fabric’
sense and the metonymical object sense (although a short time delay may
have occurred, this would be impossible to prove). This is a very straightfor-
ward example of a recognised principle of lexical change: when a new concept
emerges (or an existing concept changes in some significant way), either a new
term will be borrowed or created for this concept, or an existing lexeme will be
used with an “extended” sense, motivating semantic change and potentially the
development of polysemy for particular lexemes. A second example is provided
by sense 9 of lead, defined in the OED as ‘In the knitting machine: The lead or
tin socket holding the shanks of one or more needles’ and attested earliest in
1839. Obviously, a knitting machine is a very recent invention, and occasions
a need for new labels to refer to associated concepts such as constituent parts,
and the new sense of lead arises as a result.
However, in many instances it is much harder to account for the time delay
between the object and metonymical material senses of a lexeme without
doing much more thorough research on the concepts involved and on develop-
ments elsewhere in the lexicon. For example, it is difficult to account for the
time delay between the material sense of metal, which is attested from c1230
onwards, and any object sense, particularly since the material definition
draws attention to the nature of metal ‘esp. as used in the manufacture of ob-
jects, artefacts, and utensils’. The earliest object sense is defined as ‘A weap-
on, arms, or armour made of metal’. This is attested earliest in c1400 and latest
in 1663, but given that no quotations are listed for the 1500s, and the definition
covers several slightly different senses, this may be a fairly rare sense even
though the concepts it denotes would not have been new in the 15th century.
The next earliest attested object sense (in 1485) is ‘a medal, a coin’. Compared
to the other lexemes denoting metals in the data, metal has very few object
senses, and most of these do not appear to be attested over a particularly long
period; the only current senses are (in the plural form) ‘The rails of a railway
or tramway’ and ‘The guns or firepower of a warship, etc.’, which the OED
notes is chiefly found in the phrase weight of metal. By contrast, there is a much
shorter time delay between the material and object senses of steel, which
are both recorded in Old English, and steel has many more object senses with
generally longer periods of currency, although the current senses are also rela-
tively rare and specialised. One possibility is that metal is less used metonymi-
cally because it is a less specific term: steel, copper, bronze and iron all denote
particular types of metals, whereas metal can be used as a superordinate term
for a number of different materials. It is possible that for this reason it is less
likely to be strongly associated with particular objects, but this suggestion can
only be made very tentatively without evidence.
Overall, the huge variation in the diachronic relationship between material
and object senses of any lexeme suggests that there need not be significant
time delay between these; the emergence of metonymical senses appears to be
governed largely by extra-linguistic factors related to the nature of particular
entities and the cultural context (in the widest sense) in which they exist. Logi-
cally, object senses cannot emerge before material senses if the relation-
178 Kathryn Allan
ship between these senses is motivated by the prior existence of a material

sense, although it may be that in some cases not examined in this paper the
opposite relationship exists diachronically. One possible example is sack (Old
English sacc), which is recorded with both the senses ‘bag’ and ‘cloth’ in Old
English (with no difference in dates of attestation); its Latin etymon also has
both senses, making it difficult to say whether either sense can be regarded as
the primary “literal” sense. Sacks may be so called because they are made out
of sack, or sack may be so called because sacks are usually made out of it. It
may be that there are a small number of other examples of this kind, but again
further work would have to be done to find these.
6. Degrees of metonymicity
In his 2006 study of metaphor, Hanks observes that not all metaphors appear
to be equally metaphorical, and suggests that the notion of gradability is help-
ful in analysing examples of metaphor. He argues that the fewer properties
shared between the source and target (in his terminology, primary and sec-
ondary subject) of a metaphor, i. e. the greater semantic “distance” between
the two concepts, the greater the metaphoricity or semantic “resonance”. For
example, he compares the phrases “a desert of railway tracks” and “a desert
of barren obsession”. In the first phrase, the concepts involved in the metaphor
both relate to physical locations, and therefore this is a property they share; by
contrast, in the latter example, the target is an abstract quality, and therefore
is semantically further away from the source. He concludes that “a desert of
railway tracks” therefore has less semantic resonance, because
In the most metaphorical senses, the secondary subject shares fewest properties
with the primary subject. Therefore, the reader or hearer has to work correspond-
ingly harder to create a relevant interpretation. At the other extreme, the more
shared properties there are, the weaker the metaphoricity. (Hanks 2006: 22)
Although I am unsure about some of the terminology Hanks uses, a similar
phenomenon appears to occur in the material for object data, and to some
extent it seems possible to grade the “metonymicity” of the lexemes in the
data. There are some cases that are easy to classify as metonymic polysemy,
since the material and object senses are intuitively separate (although con-
nected). For example, OED sense 4b of plastic is ‘credit card’. Intuitively it is
easy to make a distinction between plastic as a material and credit cards; the
fact that credit cards are made of plastic is only one of their properties, and this
‘credit card’ sense of plastic could be reasonably clearly defined without refer-
ence to the material (though this is obviously evident from the lexeme itself).
In the terms in which polysemy is discussed in Croft and Cruse (2004), these
are sense units that exhibit a reasonable level of autonomy, and arguably they
might be considered as full senses which are “mutually exclusive as foci of at-
tention” (2004: 112). It is possible to think of examples that seem to illustrate
the degree of autonomy between the two senses, such as the following:
(2) I needed new chairs, so I used plastic.
This could mean either that new chairs were fashioned out of the material plas-
tic, or that new chairs were bought using a credit card. Although this is a fairly
contrived example, it does seem to show that in this (unlikely) example, the two
meanings of plastic are antagonistic, so that one reading excludes the other.
To an extent, the fact that most of the metonymical mappings in the data
involve a switch from mass noun to count noun (discussed in section 3.1 above)
separates the source and target and gives each sense a certain degree of auton-
omy; for example, iron ‘type of metal’ and iron ‘implement’ cannot be used in
the same way grammatically/syntactically (as the example above shows, plas-
tic meaning ‘credit cards’ plural is a notable exception, although the OED entry
includes examples where it is used in the singular with a preceding article).
This is one property that the sources and targets of material for object
mappings do not share. In other respects, though, the boundaries between some
of the material and object senses of lexemes in the data are fairly blurred,
and in some cases there is minimal conceptual difference between metonymi-
cal senses and senses that can be considered purely literal. For example, wood
has various closely related senses including OED senses 6b ‘as prepared for
and used in arts and crafts’, 6c ‘as used for fuel; FIREWOOD’, and 6e ‘As the
material of an idol or image (Biblical.)’. These are all listed as subsenses of
6, and are narrowed senses of 6a, ‘The substance of which the roots, trunks,
and branches of trees or shrubs consist’, but OED editors obviously perceived
enough of a difference (and found enough supporting evidence) to separate
each sense rather than simply regarding them as context-specific uses of the
general meaning 6 which did not require separate definitions. 6b, 6c and 6e
would not be considered to be full senses in Croft and Cruse’s framework, but
appear to meet at least some of the criteria to be considered as a possible “fac-
ets” of sense 6a, i. e. “distinguishable components of a global whole” (Croft and
Cruse 2004: 116). 6b and 6e both relate to slightly different uses of wood as a
constitutive material, 6b as a type of raw supply, and 6e a characteristic element
of one type of object. 6c relates to a completely different function of wood as a
type of fuel, and therefore appears to show some degree of autonomy of mean-
180 Kathryn Allan
ing. Firstly, it shows relational autonomy in that it participates in its own sense
relations (Croft and Cruse 2004: 117). It is a co-hyponym of other types of fuel,
e. g. coal, which could not be considered a co-hyponym of either 6b or 6e, and
arguably it is the superordinate for the hyponyms log and kindling; possible
co-hyponyms of 6b might be stone or leather, and types of wood such as cedar
and mahogany are usually hyponyms of this specific meaning. Secondly, 6b/e
and 6c appear to show compositional autonomy: it would be possible to find
predicates that could apply to the ‘fuel’ sense which would not be relevant to
the ‘constitutive material’ senses, such as dry, or vice versa, such as turned or
pliable. It appears to be more difficult to show that these OED subsenses could
be regarded as facets in terms of having autonomous cores, since it is difficult
to “isolate” the ‘constitutive material’ and ‘fuel’ subsenses in the way that the
[TEXT] facet of book can be isolated (Croft and Cruse 2004: 119), but on the
other hand, the subsenses do appear to be referentially distinct in the following
examples:9
(3a) I’ve got some wood to keep us warm. [FUEL]

(3b) The carpenter has run out of wood, but there are still logs for the fire.
[CONSTITUTIVE MATERIAL]
Although each of these OED subsenses of wood (sense 6) are literal, narrowed
(or specialized) senses rather than metonymies, they seem to “shade into” the
more clearly metonymical senses of wood listed separately as specific senses
of branch 7, which have a greater degree of autonomy. Branch 7 is assigned the
general meaning ‘something made of wood’, but the specific subsenses also
seem to vary in metonymicity, and in general there is a close relationship be-
tween the senses in branches 6 and 7. Sense 7f, ‘each of the bowls in the game
of bowls’, seems a much clearer case of metonymy than 7b, ‘a block of wood
used for engraving or printing, as distinguished from a metal plate or type,’
even though both can be used as count nouns. In the latter case, the material
seems to be the single defining property of the object, whereas in the former,
9 The fact that each of these OED subsenses relates to wood as a physical entity
makes it more difficult to judge the relevance of the notion of facet, particularly
since most of the lexemes that Croft and Cruse suggest possess facets are not com-
parable. Having said this, they do include the example chicken, which has the facets
[BIRD] and [FOOD], and this seems to be the most similar to wood. The two fac-
ets have different co-hyponyms (e. g. sparrow and pork respectively), and different
predicates can apply to each (e. g. a noisy chicken vs. a tasty bird); as with wood, it
seems more difficult to construct examples to show that these facets have autono-
mous cores.
it seems to be only one of several properties which happens to be useful as a

label; it would be possible to define a bowl without immediate reference to the
material it is made of, and therefore this sense of the lexeme wood appears to
be more separate from the literal meaning.
Ironically, perhaps the most clearly metonymical sense of wood is OED
sense 7g, ‘A golf club with a wooden head’. The fact that it is easily possible to
separate the source and target of this metonymy is proved by the subsequent
generalisation (or widening) that has occurred, leading to the current use of
this lexeme to describe any golf club of a particular weight, whether or not the
head is made of wood. Wood must have been the salient property of this type
of golf club originally (in comparison with other types of club), because only a
particular shape and weight of golf club was made of wood. When the nature of
the club changed so that it was not necessarily made of this particular material,
the metonymical label was sufficiently established to undergo a further stage
of semantic change and generalise so that wood the material was no longer a
necessary feature of the object. There are several other lexemes in the data with
senses that have generalised semantically so that they can be used to refer to
objects which are not made of the particular material denoted by their label.
Two of the most frequent current examples are marble sense 11a ‘A little ball
made originally of marble and now usually of glass, porcelain, baked clay, etc.,
used in a children’s game’, and iron sense 5, ‘An implement of iron used when
heated to smooth out linen, to press down the seams of cloth, etc. […] In recent
use: an electric iron’. In both cases, the objects denoted by these lexemes are
usually made of an entirely different material in modern times (usually glass
and a combination of materials including stainless steel, respectively); as the
nature of these objects have changed, the lexemes that denote them have be-
come less “literal”. Riemer uses the term “post-metonymy” to describe cases of
metonymy in which “originally metonymic semantic extensions […] have been
reinterpreted and conventionalised/generalised so that […] their contexts of use
have ‘overshot’ the domains of their original appropriateness” (Riemer 2002:
394). His study explores a very different set of data, but this term also seems
appropriate here. Cases of “post-metonymy” seem, paradoxically, to provide
some of the clearest cases of metonymy as a factor in diachronic meaning
change: because they involve a second stage of change which is a generalisa-
tion of meaning (from an object made of a specific material to any example of
that object) they show the clearest separation between the original source and
target of the mapping.
The difference in degree of metonymicity which appears to be apparent
in my data strongly supports the notion of a metonymy-literal language con-
182 Kathryn Allan
tinuum. Close to the metonymy end are the senses of material for object
lexemes that show the highest degree of autonomy from their source object
senses, such as plastic ‘credit card’ or paper ‘playing card’ (OED sense 16a).
Specialised literal senses of lexemes such as wood, which would not be consid-
ered to be full senses (or micro-senses) in frameworks such as Croft and Cruse
(2004), are near to the literal end of the continuum, but perhaps provide a mid-
point between non-specialised uses and straightforward metonymical senses.
This kind of model relates closely to Barcelona’s comments on “typical” and
“peripheral” metonymies:
The relative distinctness of source and target […] helps to distinguish ‘typical’ from
‘peripheral’ metonymies (or ‘relatively central’ metonymies from metonymies in
a ‘broad sense’), and is also useful as one of the factors that facilitate the conven-
tionalization of a given metonymy. ‘Typical’ metonymies are the ones closest to the
basic-level prototype on the metonymicity continuum: like prototypical metony-
mies, their target must be clearly distinguishable from their source […] (Barcelona
2003: 241)
I would distance my comments from those of Barcelona in as much as I am not
using the term “prototypical” in the same way here. My comments on proto-
typicality relate more to metonymies of this particular type; I would therefore
argue that there are more or less “central” metonymical types (since the catego-
ry of metonymy is structured like other categories with a prototypical “core”,
as Peirsman and Geeraerts [2006] argues), but that these types appear to span
areas of the metaphor-metonymy-literal language continuum. Within particu-
lar types or categories of metonymy, there are more or less central instances.
As a category, the material for object type of metonymy appears to span
a section of the continuum relatively near to the literal end of the metonymy
continuum, but within this “section” some instances are clearly further from
the literal end. It seems that particular instances of conventional metonymy
can move along the continuum over time, as the concepts that they denote be-
come more established or change. A good example of this is paper sense 10, ‘A
newspaper or journal. Also in pl., with the: newspapers collectively’. In its early
use (attested from 1642), this might be considered to be somewhere between
the poles of literalness and metonymy on a continuum, since the key property
of a physical newspaper is the material from which it is constituted. However,
technological advances mean that many newspapers now exist in electronic
format, and it is possible to use paper to denote the online version of a news-
paper.10 This sense is still closely related metonymically, but the concept of a
10 Many examples can be found via Google, including the following, which illus-
trates the ‘online’ sense very clearly:
newspaper has changed so that paper no longer has a literal element. In terms
of a historical perspective, a metonymically motivated meaning change has
resulted in a new sense (perhaps a microsense in Croft and Cruse’s framework),
which is in the process of becoming dissociated from its parent sense as a result
of technological change in the external world.
7. Conclusion
From a preliminary examination of the material for object data listed in

table 1, it is clear that metonymies of one particular type behave very differ-
ently diachronically. Even though the relationship between the material and
metonymic object senses of these lexemes are similar in terms of motivation,
it is difficult to identify any kind of patterns in their semantic development.
The data shows material for object metonymic polysemy is common, and
all of the lexemes in the data show this pattern of semantic development, but
the number of metonymic object senses that emerge for different material
lexemes varies from one to many. The timescale on which these become con-
ventional enough to be used repeatedly in written texts, and the life-span of a
particular metonymical object sense also varies enormously. It looks likely
that there is not necessarily any time delay between the emergence of mate-
rial and object senses, but in some cases metonymical object senses do not
become conventional until much later than material senses.
Perhaps most crucially, it is impossible to account for the diachronic develop-
ment of particular lexemes without considering both intra-linguistic systemic
factors, such as the existence of semantically related lexemes at any particular
point in time, and also extra-linguistic factors that are related to the concepts
these lexemes denote. Many of the factors that motivate the development of
metonymic polysemy are therefore specific to particular word histories. Trau-
gott and Dasher make this point in their study Regularity in Semantic Change,
which does not consider meaning change in nouns:
Irregular meaning changes seem to occur primarily in the nominal domain, which
is particularly susceptible to extra-linguistic factors such as change in the nature or
the social construction of the referent. For example, the referents of towns, armor,
When I finish reading my Sunday newspaper, I can’t help but think I’ve just com-
mitted an egregious environmental sin – all those poor trees that had to die so I
could titter over inane op-eds, guacamole recipes, and overpriced real estate list-
ings! The greener choice would be to read the paper online, correct? (From http://
www.slate.com/id/2185143/, accessed July 2008).
184 Kathryn Allan
rockets, vehicles, pens, communication devices, etc., have changed considerably

over time, as have concepts of disease, hence the meanings attached to the words
referring to them have changed in ways not subject to linguistic generalization.
(Traugott and Dasher 2005: 3)
While the irregularity and unpredictability of lexical semantic change poses
challenges for any consideration of material for object metonymic poly-
semy, and for the diachronic study of many other types of polysemy, I contend
that there is a need for this kind of research as a means of formulating and test-
ing theories of metonymy, which often neglect a diachronic perspective. The
cultural and historical contexts in which metonymy exists and becomes con-
ventionalised cannot be entirely separated from its purely “linguistic” proper-
ties, and therefore both linguisitic and extra-linguistic factors must be consid-
ered in any diachronic examination of the many types of metonymy.
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Appendix: Abridged OED entries
The following entries from the OED Online are abridged: only senses relevant
to the study have been included, and information on pronunciation, spelling
variation and etymology has been omitted, along with supporting quotations.
The date ranges supplied (on the basis of quotation dates) give the earliest and
latest OED attestations, with a dash indicating continuing use (–) and a plus
sign (+) indicating a gap in the record of 150 years or more. Senses which are
attested later than 1870 are marked as current (>)11.
11 However, it is not suggested that this is always a reliable criterion for current us-
age; there are a small number of senses that clearly survive into Present-Day use
but have earlier final attestations, e. g. glasses ‘spectacles’ (glass 10d).
1 BRONZE n
1. a. A brown-coloured alloy of copper and tin, sometimes also containing a little zinc
and lead. Formerly included under the term BRASS, q. v.; the name bronze was in-
troduced for the material of ancient works of art, or perhaps rather for the works of
art themselves: see sense 2. [1617] + 1739 >
2. (with pl.) A work of art, as a statue, etc., executed in bronze. a1721 >
4. (More fully bronze powder: see 7): A metallic powder (usually brass, copper, or tin)
used in painting, printing, and the like. 1753 >
2 CHALK n
2. An opaque white soft earthy limestone, which exists in deposits of vast extent and
thickness in the south-east of England, and forms high cliffs along the sea-shore.
956 + c1400 >
3. a. Applied to other earths resembling chalk.
b. spec. Applied to various coloured preparations resembling chalk in texture, and
used like it in the form of crayons for drawing. 1481-90 + c1790 >
3 COPPER n
I. 1. a. One of the well-known metals, distinguished by its peculiar red colour; it is
malleable, ductile, and very tenacious, and is found native as well as in many ores.
c1000 – c1050 + c1386 >
2. a. Copper money; with a and pl. (colloq.), a copper coin; a penny or halfpenny; a
cent of the United States. Still used of the bronze which has superseded the copper
coinage. [1588] + 1712 >
b. U. S. In Faro, orig. a copper coin used to ‘copper’ with (COPPER v.1 2); hence, a
small disk, token or check, now used for the same purpose. 1892 >
3. a. A vessel made of copper, particularly a large boiler for cooking or laundry pur-
poses, originally made of copper, but now more often of iron; in pl., esp. the large
boilers or cooking vessels on board ship. 1667 >
b. A copper mug or vessel for liquor. 1749 – 1809-12
4. a. A plate of copper on which a design is engraved or etched. Cf. COPPER-PLATE.
1668 >
b. A ceremonial copper sheet like a shield made and used by N. Amer. Indians.
[1814] + 1888 >
5. A copper implement like a cotton reel or bobbin hollow and open at the ends, used by
gold and silver wire-drawers in annealing: it is also borne by the Company in their
armorial ensign. 1828 >
6. The copper sheathing of a vessel. rare. 1836
188 Kathryn Allan
4 GLASS n
I. As a substance. 1. A substance, in its ordinary forms transparent, lustrous, hard,
and brittle, produced by fusing sand (silica) with soda or potash (or both), usually
with the addition of one or more other ingredients, esp. lime, alumina, lead oxide.
c888 >
3. a. The substance considered as made into articles of use or ornament (for which see
II). Hence as collect. sing. = things made of glass: e. g. vessels or ornaments of glass,
window-panes or lights. 1625 + 1833 – 1855
b. esp. as used in horticulture for greenhouses, frames. etc. Hence, greenhouses, etc.,
collectively. 1838 >
II. Something made of glass. 4. a. A glass vessel or receptacle. Also, the contents of
the vessel. The specific application as in 5 is now so predominant that the word is
now commonly applied only to vessels more or less resembling a drinking glass; a
glass bottle or jar, for instance, is no longer called ‘a glass’. But the wider use sur-
vives in the collective pl. a1225 >
b. = musical glasses (see MUSICAL). 1762
5. spec. A drinking-vessel made of glass; hence, the liquor contained, and fig. drink.
1392-3 – 1847
6. a. A SAND-GLASS for the measurement of time; esp. an HOUR-GLASS, and Naut.
the half-hour glass, the half-minute and quarter-minute glasses. [1515] + 1557 >
7. A pane of glass, esp. the window of a coach, etc.; the plate of glass covering a picture;
a glazed frame or case (e. g. for the protection of plants). 1439 – 1833
8. a. A glass mirror, a LOOKING-GLASS. c1300 >
b. applied to a mirror of other material. 1530 – 1615 + 1861
e. A magic mirror, a crystal, etc., used in magic art. Also glass of skill. c1566 – 1605
9. a. A piece of glass shaped for a special purpose, e. g. one of the glasses of a pair of
spectacles, a lens, a watch-glass. 1545 >
b. A burning-glass. a1631 – 1670
10. An optical instrument used as an aid to sight.
a. gen. 1700 – 1847
b. A telescope or other instrument for distant vision. More explicitly SPY-GLASS,
FIELD-GLASS, OPERA-GLASS, etc. 1613-16 >
c. A microscope. More explicitly magnifying-glass. 1646 >
d. An EYE-GLASS; also in pl. spectacles. 1660 – 1866
12. a. A WEATHER-GLASS, a barometer. 1688 – 1867
b. A thermometer. 1775
5 HAIR n
I. 1. a. One of the numerous fine and generally cylindrical filaments that grow from
the skin or integument of animals, esp. of most mammals, of which they form the
characteristic coat; applied also to similar-looking filamentous outgrowths from the
body of insects and other invertebrates, although these are generally of different
structure. a800 – c1000 + a1225 >
2. collect. a. The aggregate of hairs growing on the skin of an animal: spec. that
growing naturally upon the human head; also, hairs collectively or in the mass, as
used for manufacturing purposes and the like. c1000 + c1200 >
7. A cloth, mat, or other fabric of hair used for various purposes in some trades, e. g.
in hop-drying, extraction of oils, etc.; a haircloth. [Historically, the same word as
HAIRE, which, in losing the final e, has become identical in form with this.] 1485
– 1594 + 1848 >
6 IRON n
1. a. A metal, the most abundant and useful of those used in the metallic state; very
variously employed for tools, implements, machinery, constructions, and in many
other applications. a700 >
[NB other quotations supplied for various spelling forms]
4. a. An instrument, appliance, tool, utensil, or particular part of one, made of the met-
al. (Often with defining word prefixed, as CURLING-IRON, GRAPPLING-IRON,
etc.: see these words.) a700 – c1000 + 1297 >
b. esp. An iron instrument used for branding or cauterizing; a brand-iron. c1380 –
1613 + 1856
c. pl. Dies used in striking coins. Obs. 1483 – 1848
d. Whaling, etc. A harpoon. (= HARPING-IRON.) 1674 – 1853
e. Golf. A golf-club having an iron head which is more or less laid back in order to
loft the ball: see quot. 1890. 1857 >
f. slang. A portable fire-arm; a pistol. 1836 >
g. slang. Money. Cf. IRON-MAN 1c and d. 1785 >
h. pl. Iron supports to correct bow-legs, etc. 1838 >
i. (Usu. in pl.) A stirrup. Cf. STIRRUP-IRON 1. 1894 >
j. pl. Eating utensils. dial. and slang. 1905 >
k. slang. An old motor vehicle. 1935 >
l. Used as a form of currency in Sierra Leone. 1936 >
m. slang. A jemmy used in housebreaking. 1941 >
5. esp. An implement of iron used when heated to smooth out linen, to press down the
seams of cloth, etc.; defined according to shape and structure, as BOX-IRON, FLAT-
IRON, ITALIAN-IRON, etc. In recent use: an electric iron (see ELECTRIC a. 2b).
1613 – 1840
6. a. An iron weapon; a sword. Obs. b. Used (without an and pl.) in various allusive
expressions referring to warfare or slaughter. Cf. F. fer. c1000 + 1300 – 1665 + 1871 >
7. a. An iron shackle or fetter; usually in pl. Most freq. in phr. in irons, said of a person
having the feet or hands fettered. Formerly also, less definitely, in iron, in bonds, in
captivity. Cf. F. fers. c825 – a1000 + 1340 >
7 LEAD n
I. 1. a. The heaviest of the base metals, of a dull pale bluish-gray colour, fusible at a
low temperature, and very useful from its softness and malleability. Chemical sym-
bol Pb. c900 + c1205 >
190 Kathryn Allan
3. Short for BLACK LEAD n., graphite, or plumbago. Only with reference to its use as
a material for pencils. Hence, a small stick of graphite for filling an ‘ever-pointed’
pencil. 1816 >
4. a. The metal regarded as fashioned into some object, e. g. a seal, the plummet of a
plumb-line, a pipe or conduit, a leaden coffin, a bullet, the leaden part of anything.
(cold) lead, bullets. 1340 – c1380 + 1596 >
b. A plate of lead. Obs. 1523
5. a. A large pot, cauldron, or kettle; a large open vessel used in brewing and various
other operations. (Originally, one made of lead, but early used without reference to
the material.) Now only dial .a1100 + c1250 – 1639 + 1869
b. dial. A leaden milk-pan. 1750 >
6. a. A ‘bob’ or lump of lead suspended by a string to ascertain the depth of water; a
sounding-lead. Also, the leaden sinker of a net. c1440 – 1860
7. pl. a. The sheets or strips of lead used to cover a roof; often collect. for a lead flat, a
lead roof, occas. construed as sing. 1578-9 >
b. The lead frames of the panes in lattice or stained glass windows. 1705 >
8. Printing. A thin strip of type-metal or brass, less than type-high, of varying thick-
ness and length, used in type-composition to separate lines; before 1800 known as
space-line. 1808 >
9. In the knitting-machine: The lead or tin socket holding the shanks of one or more
needles. 1839
8 LEATHER n
1. a. Skin prepared for use by tanning, or some similar process. a1225 >
2. a. An article or appliance made of leather, e. g. a strap, a thong; a piece of leather for
a plaster or to tighten a tap; the leathern portion of a bellows, or of a pump-sucker; a
stirrup-leather. upper leather: see UPPER. c1400 >
b. pl. Articles for wear made of leather, e. g. shoes, slippers, leggings, breeches. Also
sing., a leather jacket or coat. 1837 >
c. Cricket and Football. The ball. 1868 >
e. slang. Various articles made of, or clad in, leather, such as (a) a wallet or purse; (b)
a leather-shod foot; hence a kick; (c) a boxing-glove; hence a punch or boxing. 1883 >
9 MARBLE n
A. n. I. Senses relating to the stone. 1. a. Limestone that has been recrystallized
by metamorphism and is capable of taking a polish; esp. one that is pure white or
has a mottled surface, such as is often used in sculpture and architecture. Also more
generally: any stone that will take a polish and can be used for decorative purposes
in building or sculpture. c1150 >
2. a. A piece, block, or slab of marble; a marble monument, statue, or sculpture; a
marble vessel (obs.). c1300 >
b. In pl. Archaeol. A collection of sculptures made of marble. [1624 – 1676] + a1684 >
3. As a count noun: a tomb or tombstone made of marble. Also as a mass noun (poet.):
marble as being the material of which a tomb or tombstone is made. Obs. ?a1400 – 1850
6. Specialized uses. [Chiefly after spec. uses of French marbre (1642 of a marble slab
upon which paints are ground, although only 1765 of a slab on which blown glass is
shaped; 1522 of a printer’s imposing-stone).] a. A slab of marble on which some-
thing can be worked; esp. one on which paints are ground, or on which blown glass
is shaped (cf. MARVER n.). Obs. 1671 – 1745
b. A printer’s imposing-stone. Obs. 1875 >
III. A little ball. 11. a. A little ball made originally of marble and now usually of
glass, porcelain, baked clay, etc., used in a children’s game; (in pl.) the game itself.
Occas.: a similar ball (for example of glass) used in other games. Also (in extended
use): any object of similar size and shape. 1681 >
10 METAL n
A. n. I. Senses relating to metallic substances. 1. a. Usually as a mass noun. Hard,
shiny, malleable material of the kind originally represented by gold, silver, copper,
etc. (see sense 1b), esp. as used in the manufacture of objects, artefacts, and utensils.
c1230 >
2. An object made of metal. a. A weapon, arms, or armour made of metal. Obs. c1400
– c1450 + a1616 – 1663
b. A medal; a coin. Cf. metallic history s. v. METALLIC a. 7. Obs. 1485 – 1650
c. A metal mirror of an astronomical reflecting telescope. Obs. 1693 – 1777
d. In pl. The rails of a railway or tramway. 1841 >
e. Electr. A conducting part of an early electric lamp. Obs. 1881
4. Gunnery. a. The metal forming the barrel of a gun; line of metal, a gunner’s line
of sight (see quot. 1859). Obs. 1591 – 1859
b. The guns or firepower of a warship, etc. Chiefly in weight of metal. Also fig. heavy
metal: see HEAVY a.1 6. 1751 >
11 NYLON n
A. n. I. Simple uses. 1. Any of various synthetic thermoplastic polymers with a
straight-chain polyamide structure, many of which are tough, lightweight, and re-
sistant to heat and chemicals, may be produced as filaments, sheets, or moulded ob-
jects, and are widely used for textile fabrics and industrially; esp. (more fully nylon
66) that made from adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine (each of which contains
six carbon atoms). 1938 >
2. Fabric made from nylon yarn. 1940 >
3. In pl. Stockings or tights made of nylon. 1940 >
12 PAPER n
I. Senses relating to the material. 1. a. Material in the form of thin, flexible sheets
used for writing, printing, or drawing on, or for wrapping, covering, etc., usually
192 Kathryn Allan
made from wood pulp which is dried, pressed, and (generally) bleached. Formerly
(and still occasionally) also made from rags or other fibrous matter. 1341-2 >
3. a. A piece of paper serving as a wrapper or receptacle, often including the contents;
a paper container of some commodity; spec. a dose or measure of a drug, esp. a nar-
cotic, contained in a paper wrapper. 1488 >
b. A sheet or leaf of paper, esp. for writing on. Now chiefly in technical use. 1548 >
c. Entomol. A triangular envelope made of folded paper for storing an insect speci-
men, esp. a butterfly. 1894 >
4. In pl. Curl-papers (see CURL-PAPER n.). Now rare. 1685 >
5. Wallpaper; a sheet of wallpaper. [1665] + 1750 >
6. Short for cigarette paper n. at CIGARETTE n. Compounds. [1904] + a1911 >
II. Paper bearing writing, illustrations, etc. 7. a. A piece, sheet, or leaf of paper bear-
ing writing or printing; esp. a legal or official document written or printed on paper.
In pl.: written notes, memoranda, letters, official documents, etc. [1364-5] + 1389 >
b. Paper bearing writing; written documents collectively. In some uses, not easily
distinguished from sense A. 1a. c1390 – c1400 + 1728 >
8. A notice fastened on the back of a criminal undergoing punishment, specifying his
or her offence. Obs. a1529 – 1688
9. In pl. State papers. Freq. in the titles of officers or departments concerned with the
conservation of state papers, as Office of His (also Her) Majesty’s Papers, Clerk
(also Keeper, Register) of the Papers, etc. 1612 >
10. A newspaper or journal. Also in pl., with the: newspapers collectively; the press.
1642 >
12. In pl. a. The documents carried by a ship indicating ownership, nationality, des-
tination, etc. (more fully ship’s papers); (also) documents attesting the identity or
credentials of a person, esp. as required for travel or employment. 1685-8 >
b. The certificates which accompany a military officer’s application for permission
to resign. Chiefly in to send in one’s papers: to resign. 1872 >
c. Documents establishing the pedigree of an animal, esp. a dog or horse. 1940 >
13. a. Negotiable documents, bills of exchange, promissory notes, etc., collectively;
banknotes as opposed to coins. commercial paper: see COMMERCIAL adj. and n.
Compounds. 1704 >
b. slang (chiefly U. S.). A forged or worthless cheque; a forged document. 1850 >
14. Theatre slang. Free tickets or passes to a theatrical performance; the people admit-
ted by free tickets or passes. As a count noun: such a ticket or pass. Cf. PAPER v. 4.
1785 >
15. A printed set of questions to be answered at one sitting in an examination; a candi-
date’s collection of written answers to such questions. 1835 >
16. U. S. slang. a. As a count noun: a playing card. 1842 >
b. As a mass noun: marked playing cards. 1894 >
17. U. S. colloq. Posters or similar publicity material collectively. Now rare. 1896 >
13 PLASTIC n
3. a. A solid substance that is easily moulded or shaped. Also fig. 1803 >
b. Any of a large and varied class of materials used widely in manufacturing, which are
organic polymers of high molecular weight based on synthetic materials, and may
be moulded, extruded, or cast when they are soft or liquid, and then set into a rigid or
slightly elastic form. Also as a mass noun: material of this kind. 1909 >
4. colloq. a. The material of which records are made, vinyl; (hence) vinyl records col-
lectively. Cf. VINYL n. 2c. Originally and freq. in on plastic: in the form of a record,
as a recording. 1969 >
b. A credit card, debit card, or similar; such cards collectively. Cf. plastic money n.
1975 >
14 RUBBER n
III. Ellipt. for INDIA-RUBBER. 11. a. Caoutchouc. Now also applied to any of a
large range of synthetic organic polymers having properties of elasticity, etc., resem-
bling those of natural rubber. 1855 >
b. pl. (a) Overshoes or galoshes made of indiarubber (orig. U. S.); (b) plimsolls, esp.
plimsolls worn for climbing. 1842 >
c. A rubber tyre for a wheel. Also collect., the tyres of a vehicle… Chiefly U. S. 1882 >
d. A piece of rubber for erasing pencil or ink marks. Also used of erasers made of
other substances. 1788-9 >
e. U. S. Baseball. (a) The home plate; (b) the pitcher’s plate (now the usual sense).
1891 >
f. slang. A contraceptive sheath made of rubber; a condom. Cf. rubber goods, shop
below. 1947 >
15 SILK n
I. 1. a. The strong, soft, lustrous fibre produced by the larvæ of certain bombycine
moths which feed upon mulberry leaves, etc., and by certain spiders; silken thread or
filament. c888 – c1000 + c1300 >
2. a. The cloth or textile fabric woven or made from this. c1000 + c1275 >
c. As the material of a jockey’s jacket. Esp. in phr. to sport, don, or wear silk: to ride
(in a race). 1884 >
d. A parachute; chiefly in phr. to take to or hit the silk, to bale out of an aircraft by
parachute. U. S. Air Force slang. 1933 >
3. a. With a and pl. A particular make of silk cloth or fabric. 1538 >
b. pl. Garments made of silk; silk stockings; spec. a jockey’s cap and jacket carrying
the horse-owner’s colours. Cf. sense 2c above. 1508 >
c. A lady’s silk dress. 1793 >
e. A silk hat. 1906 >
16 STEEL n
I. 1. a. A general name for certain artificially produced varieties of iron, distin-
guished from those known as ‘iron’ by certain physical properties, esp. greater hard-
194 Kathryn Allan
ness and elasticity, which render them suitable as material for cutting instruments,
and for various other industrial purposes. c725 – c825 + c1205 >
3. a. Steel in the form of weapons or cutting tools (occas. spurs, a trap, etc.). Hence in
particularized use, a sword, lance, bayonet, or the like. a1000 + c1205 – c1250 +
1581 >
4. Steel as the material of defensive armour. c1320 – 1842
5. As a material for plates engraved with drawings or designs to be reproduced by print-
ing. Hence, as a trade term: A steel engraving. 1843 >
7. The steel part of anything. c1450 – 1561 + 1816 >
8. As the name of various instruments made of steel. a. A piece of steel shaped for the
purpose of striking fire with a flint. In a pistol or firelock, the piece of steel which
is struck by the ‘cock’ carrying the flint. c1220 + 1589 >
b. A rod of steel, fluted or plain, fitted with a handle, used for sharpening table or
butchers’ knives. 1541 >
c. A steel mirror. Obs. (? nonce-use.) a1643
d. A flat-iron. Obs. exc. dial. 1638 + 1873 >
e. A needle; a knitting-needle. dial. [1784] + 1839 >
f. A stylet, a stylus. Obs. 1799
g. the steels = skates. 1875 >
9. Dress. a. A strip of steel used to give stiffness or support, or to expand a dress.
1608 + 1885 >
b. A dress trimming made of steel beads or ornaments. 1899 >
17 STONE n
1. a. A piece of rock or hard mineral substance (other than metal) of a small or moder-
ate size. c888 + c1175 >
2. a. The hard compact material of which stones and rocks consist; hard mineral sub-
stance other than metal.__1154 >
f. A mirror. Obs. rare 1. Cf. specular stone, SPECULAR a. 1, 1b. 1605
5. A piece of stone of a definite form and size (usually artificially shaped), used for some
special purpose. (Often as the second element of a compound: cf. definitions below.)
a. for building, or as a part or element of a building. (See also COPING-STONE,
CORNER-STONE, FOUNDATION-stone, etc.) c825 + c1200 + c1400 – 1867
b. for paving. (See also HEARTHSTONE, PAVING-STONE, etc.) 1427-8 + 1612 >
c. A block, slab, or pillar of stone set up as a memorial, to impart information, or for
some ceremonial purpose: e. g. as an altar, a monument, a boundary-mark, etc. See
also HOAR-STONE 2, MILESTONE, SHIRE-stone, STANDING STONE. 847 +
c1205 – 1831
d. spec. = GRAVESTONE 2, TOMBSTONE. c1300 >
e. As an object of idolatrous worship; chiefly pl. in conjunction with stocks: see
STOCK n. 1d. c1400
f. A gun-flint. Obs. 1611
g. A rounded stone or pebble formerly used as a missile in war, being thrown with the
hand, discharged from a sling, or shot from a fire-arm (cf. GUNSTONE) c1205 >
h. A shaped piece of stone for grinding or sharpening something, as a GRIND-

STONE, MILLSTONE, WHETSTONE. 1578 – 1599 + 1751 >
i. A flat slab or tablet for grinding something upon, or for smoothing or flatten-
ing something (see also FLATTENING-stone, SLEEKSTONE, etc.); in Printing =
IMPOSING-stone; also a slab of stone for lithography (see 2b). c1400 >
j. A heavy stone used in athletic sports. Phrases, to cast, put, or throw the stone: see
also PUT v.1 2, v.2 2. c1300 + 1518 – 1638 + 1816 >
6. A vessel of stone, or of stoneware; a stone jar, cistern, etc. Obs. (Cf. STEAN.) c1450
– 1470-85 + a1722
18 VINYL n
2. a. = POLYVINYL b. Freq. attrib. 1939 >
c. As the material of which gramophone records are made (so piece of vinyl). Also,
a record. colloq. 1976 >
19 WOOD n
I. 1. a. A tree. Obs. c725 – a1000 + c1220 + [1526]
b. transf. applied to objects made from trees or their branches, e. g. a ship (in OE.
freq.), a spear, the Cross. (Cf. TREE n. 3-6.) Obs. In mod.arch. use associated with
sense 7. a1000 + a1400-50 + 1866
II. 6. a. The substance of which the roots, trunks, and branches of trees or shrubs
consist; trunks or other parts of trees collectively (whether growing or cut down
ready for use). Also with qualification, as BRUSHWOOD 1, TALWOOD; small
wood, young wood. c897 – a1000 + c1205 + c1400 – 1855
b. as prepared for and used in arts and crafts. a1300 + 1551-2 – 1852
c. as used for fuel; FIREWOOD. Occas. collect. sing. faggots; locally, small coal
(quot. 1805). c888 + a1225 – 1639 + 1805 – 1808
e. As the material of an idol or image. (Biblical.) 1535 – 1682 + 1819
7. Something made of wood: spec. a. The wooden part of something, as the shaft of
a spear. 1683 – 1697
b. A block of wood used for engraving or printing, as distinguished from a metal
plate or type. 1839 – 1856
c. The cask or barrel as a receptacle for liquor, as distinguished from the bottle.
1822 >
d. slang. The pulpit. 1854 >
e. The wooden wind-instruments in an orchestra collectively (also called the wood-
wind: see 10 below). 1879 >
f. Each of the bowls in the game of bowls. 1884 >
g. A golf club with a wooden head; a shot made with such a club (more commonly
wood shot). 1915 >
h. The wooden frame or handle of a racquet, with reference to a shot in which these
parts are accidentally used instead of the strings. 1955 >
196 Kathryn Allan
20 WOOL n
1. a. The fine soft curly hair forming the fleecy coat of the domesticated sheep (and
similar animals), characterized by its property of felting (due to the imbricated sur-
face of the filaments) and used chiefly in a prepared state for making cloth; freq., the
material in a prepared state as a commodity. c725 >
b. The fleece or complete woolly covering of a sheep, etc.; out of the wool, shorn.
c1400 – 1572 + 1841
3. a. Woollen clothing or material; a woollen garment. Sc. phr. amang the woo’, in the
blankets. a1300 + 1534 – a1625 + 1818>
The roles of reader construal and lexicographic
authority in the interpretation of Middle English texts
Louise Sylvester
Abstract
The cognitive turn in linguistics suggests a need to address the ways in which mean-
ing in language is created and understood. This paper examines a vital aspect of this
question: the nature of the interaction between the semantic information offered in
dictionaries and individualistic construals of meaning made by readers of the literature
of early periods of the language.
Central to a cognitive paradigm of linguistic understanding is the assumption of a re-
lationship between meaning and encyclopaedic knowledge; in conceptual understand-
ing, entities are profiled against domain-based knowledge. A number of basic domains
have been posited (Langacker 1987), and the notion has recently been extended to
encompass cultural universals (Talmy 2000). These ideas of basic domains argue for a
collective experience that involves a shared conception of the ways in which experience
is conceptualized and encoded in language. It has been argued that this also applies to
our understanding of the language of literature (Gavins and Steen 2003). Writing on
cognitive poetics, Stockwell notes that the initial interpretations that form part of the
reading process can be simply wrong, consisting of mistakes, errors and miscues that
are demonstrably not supported by textual evidence. Fully-fledged readings, however,
are the result of arriving at a sense of the text that is personally acceptable, and they are
likely to combine individual factors as well as features that are common to the reader’s
interpretative community (2002: 7–8).
Cognitive semantics is said to have rehabilitated the epistemological role of the in-
dividual subject against that of the linguistic code; because cognitive semantics can
demonstrate that linguistic meaning is experientially grounded, the construction of
meaningfulness seems to depend on individual factors rather than on the structure of
the language as an abstract, supraindividual entity (Geeraerts 1993: 73). It has been
argued, however, that one limitation of cognitive semantics is that it focuses on indi-
viduals’ meanings of words to the exclusion of social aspects of language that should
also be accounted for within a cognitive programme. This argument raises the question
of linguistic power: who decides on what is the “correct meaning” of an expression in
society. A dictatorial power structure is said to arise when the social meanings of words
are determined by a group of linguistic experts writing dictionaries, encyclopaedias,
etc. (Gårdenfors 1999).
These ideas illustrate a conflict in our understanding of how meaning is generated.
This paper examines these questions with reference to readers’ construals of texts in
Middle English, which may be said to be diachronic and dynamic, and the role played
198 Louise Sylvester
by the historical dictionary which, despite occasional revisions, is generally perceived

as static in its content and approach to the language. If texts are the raw materials from
which the historical dictionary is constructed, does the dictionary then become the
authority which constructs the meanings of texts? This question addresses the central
concern of this paper, the nature of the negotiation between the individual construal of
meaning and the authority represented by the historical dictionary.
1. Introduction
In July 2004 a panel was convened at the New Chaucer Society congress to
celebrate the completion of the Middle English Dictionary and consider the
implications of this monumental lexicographical work for the study of Chau-
cer’s language. The relationship of author and dictionary implied by the panel’s
proposer elided the third participant in the activity of lexical and textual in-
terpretation: the reader. In this paper I explore the processes that take place
when the reader of a text in Middle English encounters a lexical item, the sense
of which is entirely or partially unknown, and begins to construct an idea of
the meaning of the term. This tentatively constructed meaning may then be
challenged by the discovery that it differs from the definitions encountered
in the dictionary. Consideration of this reading process led me to think about
the construction and interpretation of lexical meaning. Readers use dictionar-
ies ostensibly to discover the meaning of unfamiliar lexemes. More often, I
suspect, they are in fact checking the dictionary’s definition against a readerly
hunch about a word’s meaning.1 This process is an essential part of reading and
interpreting Middle English texts.
A number of approaches have been taken to the question of how individual
senses of lexemes are arrived at and how textual meanings are made out of
that understanding in a variety of disciplinary areas. These include lexicology,
theories of reading, cognitive linguistic investigations of the conceptual struc-
1 Frank Smith examines what happens when readers, especially beginners, encoun-
ter a word they do not recognize on sight. He observes that usually three alternative
courses of action are specified, with a very definite order of preference. The first
alternative is to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess
what the unknown word might be. And the final, and least preferred, alternative is
to sound the word out. Smith notes that the identification of every word is not neces-
sary for comprehension to take place. On the contrary, stopping to try and figure out
every unfamiliar word the moment it is encountered serves only to produce tunnel
vision, overloading short-term memory. Comprehension is bound to be lost in such
circumstances and learning becomes impossible (1985: 64–65).
The roles of reader in the interpretation of Middle English texts 199
tures underlying the mental lexicon, and considerations of meaning at the level
of the text most usually found in literary criticism and literary theory. This
raises the question of whether it is possible to offer a principled investigation
relating to lexical meaning and the processes of reading; a question which is
haunted by the notion that individual construal of meaning is untrammelled
and unconstrained. Those arguing that readerly construal plays a part in the
construction of textual meaning are clear, however, that this is not the case.
They contend that constraints on individual interpretations are many; they vary
in strength; and they may reinforce one another or cancel one another out.
These constraints may be overcome by cognitive effort, but the stronger the
constraint, the greater the cognitive effort required to impose a construal that
defies the constraint (Croft and Cruse 2004: 101). William Croft and D. Alan
Cruse propose that words and sentences do not really have meanings: mean-
ings are something that we construe using the properties of linguistic elements
as partial clues, alongside non-linguistic knowledge, information available
from context, knowledge and conjectures regarding the state of mind of hearers
(Croft and Cruse 2004: 98). This approach encompasses the “soft” properties
of meaning. Construals of meaning are constrained by the “hard” properties
of meaning which include sense relations such as hyponymy, and the existence
of structured semantic fields. One of the main aims of the dynamic construal
approach to word meaning is to achieve a unified account of both hard and soft
aspects of word meaning, both flexibility and rigidity, and to locate the ori-
gins of what are, at first sight, contradictory properties (Croft and Cruse 2004:
105). This paper investigates the relationships between lexical meaning and
the processes of reading drawing on data from the Middle English romances
Sir Degrevant, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Troilus and Criseyde,
and from the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary,
the historical dictionaries most likely to be used by a reader in quest of a full
understanding of a term in Middle English.
2. The role of construal
2.1. Individual construal in cognitive linguistics
In seeking to determine how much (if any) weight should be given to individu-
alistic interpretations of lexical items encountered in Middle English texts, we
may turn first to cognitive linguistics since it is an approach to language that in-
cludes individual construal as a primary object of investigation. One difficulty
in trying to make use of research within this framework is that discussions
in the literature on cognitive semantics are generally more concerned with

understanding in real-world contexts than they are with the problems of the
interpretation of literary texts.2 Psychological studies which build on the find-
ings of Eleanor Rosch and her collaborators are similarly concerned with their
subjects’ classifications of prototypes and marginal examples of familiar cat-
egories such as furniture, tools, vegetables or clothing (see, for example, Gate-
wood 1984; Kempton 1981; Rosch et al. 1976; Wierzbicka 1984). As George
Miller and Christiane Fellbaum observe, most of the psycholinguistic research
on the lexicon has been conducted on relatively small samples of words, often
concentrating on nouns that denote concrete objects (1992: 198).
Cognitive linguists tell us that the experience of the external world and the
articulation of that experience in language are mediated by the way the mind
understands the world, as encoded in mental representations. This theory is
not concerned with reference in the standard sense; rather, the corresponding
construct is the mind’s construal of the world (Jackendoff 1992: 12). Cognitive
linguistics thus asserts that, contrary to the traditional view in which the role
of language is to map elements of the external world onto linguistic forms, a
particular situation can be construed in different ways, and different ways of
encoding a situation constitute different conceptualizations (Lee 2001: 2; Tay-
lor 1999: 31). Included within this notion of construal is the idea that meaning,
particularly of complex concepts, presupposes knowledge systems (Langacker
1987: 184–185). It is to these knowledge systems, therefore, that we must look
when considering the understanding of lexical meaning. At the same time,
we must take into account the position, accepted within cognitive semantics,
that different languages may make available to their speakers different sets of
conventionalized modes of construal (Taylor 1999: 31). The cognitive linguis-
tic account of how readers understand texts indicates that understanding is a
product of both the text and the prior knowledge and viewpoint that the reader
brings to it. This allows the possibility of difference in comprehension between
individuals or between groups as a result of differences in prior experience.
Pragmatics has shown us how far even the most mundane communication re-
quires the hearer to make inferences that go beyond the semantic meaning of
the information given, and these insights may be mapped on to readers’ experi-
ences of comprehending meanings in texts. Mary Crawford and Roger Chap-
pin delineate this process, observing that initially, individual concepts that
are directly mentioned in a text are endowed with detailed properties that are
2 For example, one study focused on how semantic relations are represented in the
memory investigates how quickly subjects are able to confirm that a robin is a bird
(Rips, Shoben and Smith 1973: 1).
consistent with the context but that were not explicitly mentioned. In the next
stage, information not explicitly mentioned is inferred as part of the process of
understanding even at the level of individual sentences. Finally, information
necessary to interrelate parts of the text is inferred (1986: 8). Since understand-
ing is the product of both the text and readers’ prior knowledge, readers with
different backgrounds understand texts differently.
It is a basic tenet of developmental psychology that in real-world under-
standing, people mentally group objects together, treating them as instances
of a category instead of as unique individuals (Markman 1981: 199). This is
the kind of prior knowledge and viewpoint that readers bring to texts which
enables them to understand the words they read. We are still left with ques-
tions about the relationship of that prior knowledge to the interpretation of
vocabulary and of texts. Presumably, we understand the vocabulary of a text
in relation to our understanding of the categories of the real world and of the
English language both now and at a specific period, and also in relation to a
specific and individual understanding of the usages of a particular writer. The
difficulty lies in evaluating the roles played by these different elements in read-
ers’ interpretations of texts. It is equally difficult to evaluate the role played
by the evidence of lexical meaning provided by dictionaries in the formation
of textual interpretations. It has been suggested that the dominant theoretical
perspectives on reading instruction and research, the different discourse com-
munities of reading theory and education, have not adequately re-theorized
the reader as a social subject and the text as a social production. Instead, they
have fallen back either on an objectivist model that privileges, or gives priority
to, the text by assuming that it is the sole source of meaning; or, at the other
extreme, have embraced a subjective or expressivist model which privileges the
reader’s personal response (McCormick 1994: 4). These twin poles offer a re-
flection of the question discussed here; that is, how far readers are free to make
interpretations out of the background knowledge, at all levels, that they bring
to their encounters with Middle English lexical items and texts and, even more
crucially, how much of that initial readerly interpretation remains, or interferes
with, second-stage interpretations which take into account information about
the sense(s) of lexical items that is gained from dictionaries.
2.2. Individual construal and the language of literature
Describing the cognitive poetic approach to the language of literature in his

textbook Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction, Peter Stockwell argues for a dis-
tinction between the terms “reading” and “interpretation”. Interpretation, he
suggests, is what readers do as soon as (perhaps even partly before) they begin
to move through a text. Stockwell concludes that in contrast to interpretations,
readings are the process of arriving at a sense of the text that is personally ac-
ceptable. He adds that readings are likely to combine individual factors with
features that are common to the reader’s interpretative community (2002: 7–8).
This suggestion argues for the inclusion of both readerly construal of indi-
vidual lexical items and scholarly accounts of word meaning derived from dic-
tionaries in the production of readings, although it does not attempt to mediate
between these elements in the event that they clash.
It should be noted, too, that even readings (in Stockwell’s sense) of lexical
items remain open to dispute, as is shown by the studies that Jane Roberts
and I collected for Middle English Word Studies: A Word and Author Index
(2000). Some readings are contested on the grounds that they are based on pa-
laeographical misunderstanding, others suggest that words in Middle English
translations or adaptations appear to have been used without reference to their
senses in the source languages. Sometimes it is argued that both issues are
present in contested interpretations. Earl R Anderson (1994–1995), for exam-
ple, dismisses various editors’ emendations and/or interpretations of the term
ostriys in Pearl, instead proposing that the term is a variant form of hostri(e)
s, from Middle Latin hosteria ‘chamber’. Anderson cites Malory’s use of the
word in a form close to that used in Pearl and suggests that this usage might
be influenced by the Anglo-Norman loanword estre pl. estres ‘inward parts of
a building; chambers; walks, passages in a garden’. Although Malory’s editor
Eugène Vinaver glosses esturys ‘fish-ponds’, Anderson argues that Malory
regards estury and chamber as synonymous and ostriys should be retained
in Pearl and understood as ‘chamber’. Sometimes, a contested reading arises
from a failure to take into account all of the real-world evidence about a term.
In a discussion of the place-name Cookham, AH (1954) argues that, although
the original meaning of ham is usually held to be ‘an enclosure’, it refers so
often to flat land on a river, or even in the bend of a river, that ‘water-meadow’
must be one of the chief meanings of the word. In other instances, a new
reading is advanced on the basis that a metaphorical understanding of the
term has been overlooked: Paul Acker (1982) discusses the various meanings
offered for the term Wades boot in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, considers all
the traditions concerning Wade, and concludes that the phrase is likely to
constitute a metaphor for the male body, arguing that in Chaucer’s context
acquaintance with the male body is what distinguishes old widows from in-
experienced brides.
I suspect that we come across examples of clashing interpretations in our
own reading all the time. Here is one that I met with recently. At the begin-
ning of the romance Sir Degrevant, one of the things that we are told about the
eponymous hero is:
(1) Certes wyff wold he non,

Wench ne lemon
But as an anker in a ston
He lyved ever trew. (lines 61–64)
‘Certainly he did not wish for a wife or a lover, but he lived ever true
like an anchor in a stone.’3
The first two lines of this quotation seem clear; the third, however, is less so.
Edith Rickert adds a note on this to her translation: “as true to himself as the
anchor to its nature when it drops among stones?” (1908: 187). The first sense
listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and current throughout the medieval
period (and beyond) includes the idea of ‘An appliance for holding a ship, etc.,
fixed in a particular place’, a sense echoed in the meanings listed under 1. in
Middle English Dictionary : (a) A ship’s anchor; (b) a weight; (c) a fastening
device, a mooring. The metaphorical underpinning is thus affirmed: Degrevant
is fixed (like a dropped anchor) and remains true to his solitary way of life. The
term appears to be used figuratively here (though we should note Geeraerts’s
observation that the definitional demarcation of metaphor is deceptively simple
as long as we do not have a theory of figurativity [1990: 198]). The figurative
sense, in use from 1382, is listed in Oxford English Dictionary as ‘That which
gives the feeling of stability or security’. There is, however, another possible
meaning for anker: ‘an anchorite’. If anker means ‘anchorite’ in this text, as
Casson’s glossary to the EETS parallel text edition suggests, in a ston must
mean something like ‘in a cell’, a meaning for which we have no evidence. The
meaning ‘anchorite’, listed in the Middle English Dictionary as ‘A recluse or
hermit’, fits the textual context which refers to Degrevant not wishing for a wife
or other (female) companion. A decision may be arrived at by taking notice of
the word as which appears to signal a metaphorical usage. As the sense his-
tory of the term shows, there is a long-established pattern of metaphorical use
in relation to anchor. To press the sense ‘anchorite’ into service here is to state
not that Degrevant lived like an anchorite but rather that he was one; that is, it
appears to make use of the denotation rather than any metaphorical extension.
Moreover, the development of the romance narrative and the ensuing love story
would vitiate the picture of Degrevant as an honourable man if this sense were
preferred.
3 Translations are my own unless specified otherwise.

Another difficulty comes in trying to use the information supplied by dic-

tionaries in order to understand what may be going on in a text. I was recently
examining the verbs in the clauses which make up the bedroom scenes in the
Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I was interested in
how the action in these scenes is divided between the two participants and so I
was looking at the clauses which denote actions (material processes in the lan-
guage of functional grammar). In the final bedroom scene, there was only one
clause which seemed to encode a material process intention (that is, an action
undertaken deliberately) in which Gawain was the actor: this is the process by
which he refuses a ring that Lady Bertilak attempts to give him:
(2) Ho raʒt hym a riche rynk of red golde werkez,

Wyth a starande ston stondande alofte
Þat bere blusschande bemez as þe bryʒt sunne;
Wyt ʒe wel, hit watz worth wele ful hoge.
Bot þe renk hit renayed. (lines 1817–1821)
‘She offered4 him a precious ring worked of red gold with a sparkling
stone set above that shone with beams like the bright sun. Know well,
it was worth a great deal. But the man refused it.’
Even this one action is not self-evidently a material process. It is possible that
Gawain accomplishes the rejection of the proffered ring by uttering a formula
of refusal; that is, he might have done it by means of a verbal rather than a
material process. Turning to the Middle English Dictionary, we find that the
verb reneien is defined as having two senses: the first has to do with forsaking,
renouncing, or recanting religious beliefs (orthodox or heretical), or refusing to
acknowledge one’s king or master. The second, for which this moment in Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight provides one of the citations, is ‘2(a) to refuse
(a gift); refuse an invitation from (sb.)’. Included within the definition are also
‘(b) to forsake (an activity, a state); abandon (a place), refuse a mission to; (c) to
retract (a pledge)’. There is also a figurative sense: ‘(d) to withdraw (one’s heart)
from (devotion to sb.)’. With the exception of the first two senses under (b),
all of these activities seem most likely to be accomplished by words or even,
in the case of (d), by thoughts. The idea that Lady Bertilak gives the ring to
Gawain rather than just offering it to him, however, is supported by the Middle
4 Jessie Weston translates “she reached him a ring” which seems to avoid the issue;
Simon Armitage’s recent translation of the poem has “She offers him a ring” (2007:
84).
English Dictionary’s citation of the relevant line from Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight in illustration of sense 4(a) of the verb rechen: ‘To hand (sth. to
sb.), give; grant (a kingdom or dwelling to sb.); also, give (sb. a kiss)’. Here the
evidence for the meaning of a lexical item in one part of the dictionary seems
to clash with the sense of another lexical item in a context in which they co-
occur. The relevant Oxford English Dictionary definition, of the verb reach,
however, is sense 3: ‘To hold out or offer (a thing) to a person; to give; to pass’.
The editors note that the sense is also used figuratively, which is suggestive, but
such usage seems unlikely to figure where the referent is a material object, such
as a ring. Despite the ambiguity of the Middle English Dictionary evidence, it
seems as if a readerly construal in which Lady Bertilak actually hands the ring
to Gawain (a highly effective material process), instead of just offering it to him
or suggesting that she would like him to have it (a less effective material pro-
cess), would suggest that Lady Bertilak is more powerful in this moment than
is indicated by the prototypical sense of reneien, if not, perhaps, of rechen.
3. The role of the dictionary
3.1. The assignment of meaning
If we accept the idea that lexical and textual interpretations which lead to read-
ings of texts depend in part on individual construal and in part on the consen-
sus of an interpretative community which is likely to be made up of scholars
and lexicographers, we will eventually wish to consider the question of how
much weight is given to each of these elements. In his essay “Some tenets of
cognitive semantics”, Peter Gårdenfors suggests that in emphasising the mean-
ing that words have for individuals, cognitive semantics has forgotten about
the social structure of language (1999: 20). Gårdenfors’s argument resembles
that made for readings by Stockwell in its suggestion that senses are deter-
mined by the meanings that expressions have for individuals, together with the
meanings determined by those who wield linguistic power in the community.
For Gårdenfors, however, the problem posed by the presence of these two ele-
ments is the balance of power between them; that is, the question of who gets
to determine what is the “correct meaning” of an expression. He posits two
types of power structure: oligarchic and democratic. An oligarchic (or dictato-
rial) power structure arises when the meanings of words are determined by a
group of linguistic experts writing dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks,
etc. When in doubt about the meaning of a locution that falls under the realm
of the oligarchy, language users rely on the judgement of the experts. In con-
trast, a democratic power structure allows linguistic meaning to be identified

by “common usage”: a dictator or a small group of speakers cannot change the
meaning of an expression, it requires the consent of almost all language users
(1999: 28).
The editors of Language and Sexuality (Campbell-Kibler et al. 2002) simi-
larly link the assigning of meaning to lexical items with structures of power.
They argue that words do not have much meaning; they are assigned inter-
pretations when used, and the interpretations given to a particular word can
vary from one context to another. Raising the question of how one meaning
wins acceptance over the others, they suggest that the contestation of mean-
ing is intimately linked to the contestation of ideologies. Those with meaning-
making power (for example, the media) attempt to naturalize their own ideolo-
gies about the social category that a given label denotes. Dominant ideologies
that are naturalized become the literal meanings of the label (Campbell-Kibler
et al. 2002: 9). There is an obvious tension here between an approach which
suggests that meaning is primarily (or solely) constructed by readers, and one
which argues that senses can only be decided by experts and enshrined in lexi-
cographical resources such as dictionaries. Those working on meaning seem
to position themselves unconsciously in relation to this dichotomy. In her study
“Prototype theory and its implications for lexical analysis”, Adrienne Lehrer
acknowledges something similar when she says that the concerns of psycholo-
gists are not necessarily the same as those of linguists. The fact that proto-
typical members of a category are thought of more quickly or listed by more
people, for example, is not necessarily of linguistic relevance (1990: 368).
Discussions of readers’ confrontations with unfamiliar lexemes often em-
phasise the role of guessing the meaning of the unknown term from the co-text
in its immediate vicinity. In one study, the vast majority of students (89%)
reported that they regularly made use of guesswork in their reading. It was
also the case that 67% of students reported that their usual practice was to
look up every unfamiliar vocabulary item encountered in their reading. If we
assume that the figures are similar for those reading Middle English, that is,
we guess a lot of the time and usually look up unfamiliar lexical items, then it
would seem that rather than being inefficient guessers, in general we respond
to a training that exhorts us not to trust readerly hunches. Guessing is a useful
strategy, which can be taught and learned, but the author of the study is at pains
to conclude that it should not replace the role of the dictionary, since it is the
dictionary which is the repository of reliable definitions (Diab 1989: 77). Read-
ers’ construals may be complicated by the layered accretions of interpretations
of the medieval past and, increasingly perhaps, self-consciousness about those
interpretations. This kind of thinking is generally felt to be the domain of psy-
choanalytic literary theory, as expounded in books such as Gayle Margherita’s

The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English
Literature (1994), but it must be the case that our semantic understandings are
also influenced by it. Expectations of meanings within particular genres may
also be complicated by the after-life of that genre, and romance offers a par-
ticularly clear instance of this.
My next example comes from my continued reading of the romance Sir De-
grevant. When Degrevant sees Melidor (the love-interest) for the first time, we
are told:
(3) In hert trewly he hyeght

That he shall loue þat swet wyʒt,
Acheue how hit wold. (lines 478–480)
‘In his heart he promised faithfully that he would love that sweet crea-
ture however things would turn out.’
The sense of this passage is not immediately accessible. The lines “In hert
trewly he hyeght” may be read ‘In his heart he promised faithfully’. The glos-
sary to Casson’s edition suggests ‘promise, assure’ for hyeght and so it looks
as if the lines are tracking Degrevant’s thought processes in the moment of his
falling in love, especially since love is mentioned in the following line. A literal
translation of lines 478–79 is ‘in his heart he promised faithfully that he would
love that sweet creature’.5 The difficulty comes with the last line of the stanza.
Casson glosses acheue ‘terminate, result’, citing C line 480, and so the stanza
seems to conclude Degrevant’s thought with something like ‘however it would
end’, referring to his fight with Melidor’s father. The Oxford English Diction-
ary cites line 480 of Sir Degrevant to illustrate the intransitive sense of the verb
achieve: ‘To come to a natural end or conclusion; to end, result, turn out’. The
dictionary also shows that senses of the transitive form of achieve (for example,
‘To bring to a successful issue, to carry out successfully (an enterprize); to ac-
complish, perform’, ‘To succeed in gaining, to acquire by effort, to gain, win (a)
an abstract property or possession (b) a material acquisition’) are in use from
1325 and 1393 respectively. It is possible that modern readers may experience
interference from these other senses so that the lines suggest that Degrevant is
promising himself (in line with Casson’s suggested gloss) that he will ‘make
love to’ Melidor, ‘however it may be achieved’.
5 Rickert translates “he promised his own heart that he would be her servant” (1908:
115).
The first sense of the verb love in the Oxford English Dictionary concerns
the feelings of love: ‘1.a. To have or feel love towards (a person, a thing per-
sonified) (for a quality or attribute); to entertain a great affection, fondness,
or regard for; to hold dear’. Immediately following this, however, is ‘1. b. To
feel sexual love for (a person); to be in love with. In early use also: to fondle,
caress (obs.)’. This sense continues in use until the present day and so the idea
of sexual feelings appears to be a prototypical meaning for the verb love. The
physical expression of those feelings is represented as central to the meaning
of the term in the medieval period. The representation of the semantic space
occupied by the term given in the Middle English Dictionary is very different.
Senses 1–8 are concerned only with feelings of affection, with the possible
exception of the clause ‘behave lovingly towards’ which appears at sense 1 (a),
but the referents are a person or animal, and the clause forms part of a nexus of
ideas to do with friendship and affection. The senses continue this idea in rela-
tion to God or Christ (sense 2); a friend or Jesus (sense 3); wealth, the world, a
thing, place, soul, dead body, etc. or clothes, food, smells, musical instruments,
etc. (sense 4), and so on. It is not until the final sense (9) that we come to
(a) To love (sb. of the opposite sex), love (one’s husband, wife, mistress, etc.); also,
show affection for (sb.), behave lovingly toward; also, make love to (sb.), copulate
with (sb.), etc.; (b) to love (a living person); love (sb.) with sexual love; also, have
sexual relations with (sb.); also fig.; have sexual relations with (sb.); (c) used without
object: to be in love, make love; also, have intercourse; be mutually in love, make
love together, have intercourse; have a sexual relationship together; -- used fig.; (d)
to feel love; make love; (e) ppl. loving, amorous; ppl. loved, beloved; as noun: one
who is loved.
This variation in the presentation of the senses of love in the two historical
dictionaries offers two sharply contrasting views of how far the idea of sexual
feelings and sexual expression are prototypical for the verb love in the Middle
English period and therefore of how far a reading of the representation of Sir
Degrevant’s thoughts as he first sees Melidor which includes such feelings is
licensed.
3.2. The dictionary in use
The kind of dictionary activity that I am focusing on here is solely a function

of the desire to disambiguate lexical items found in Middle English texts. The
first prototype of a dictionary designed for this activity was the context-depen-
dent gloss, which was intended as an explanation of a text. The limited text-
bound usability of glosses changed with the advent of the second prototype in
which some of these glosses were collected together to produce longer lists of
lemmata with their explanations. This resulted in a loss of context sensitivity
and an increase in usability. The third prototype is the alphabetical glossary.
Although we sometimes find traces of source texts in the definitions even in
alphabetically arranged glosses, such dictionaries are no longer designed just
to explain the source texts: the definitions are designed to be applicable to any
reading process (Hüllen 1999: 103). David Burnley offers a point of view which
runs counter to that which is generally heard. He observes that the simplest
glossaries intended to help modern students to read medieval authors provide
a small range of possible meanings for each word, leaving it to the reader to
choose the most appropriate meaning for the context in which the word is puz-
zling. More ambitious glossaries give more meanings, perhaps with a short il-
lustrative context and line-references to the specific senses: readers using these
can be more certain that they are choosing the sense which is appropriate to
the context in which they have found the word. The use of such a sophisticated
glossary enables readers to choose the right sense from a range possible for a
word, but Burnley thinks that, paradoxically, the simple vocabulary, by its very
inadequacy, throws a heavier onus on readers, forcing them to think about the
context of occurrence of the word, to recall other encounters with it, and to ar-
rive at their own translations (1983: 201–202).
The Middle English Dictionary’s early editors were not unaware of these
two possibilities for their historical dictionary. Michael Adams observes that
the second editor, Thomas K. Knott, was never able to resolve in his own mind
(or anyone else’s) the question of whether the dictionary should serve as a re-
pository of information about the language as language, or if it would be a
fancy glossary of printed texts in Middle English (Adams 2002: 106). Hans
Kurath, who oversaw the first publication, appears to come down on the side of
the Middle English Dictionary being a storehouse of information about Middle
English as a language variety. He was evidently aware of the possibility of its
functioning as an inventory of glosses for lexical items in (presumably select-
ed) texts, but rejects this idea as being inappropriate to a large-scale dictionary.
Kurath also seems to suggest that including glosses of particular usages would
cause the dictionary to give inappropriate weight to individual construals of
lexical meaning which he distinguishes from separate senses:
It is the purpose of a dictionary […] to identify and to document types of meanings
rather than individual applications of words and phrases upon which the identifica-
tion of typical applications is based. The users of the MED will know enough about
the ways of language to realize that finer decimations can be made than it is profit-
able to introduce in a dictionary. Fine-spun distinctions, moreover, are apt to reflect
personal bias or fancy rather than distinct meanings. (Kurath 1954: 3)
Robert E. Lewis, the final editor of the completed Middle English Dictionary,
is clear that the guiding editorial principle of the dictionary in the latter years
of the project was to try to “capture the generality”; that is, to present what
Kurath called “types of meanings”. He does not abandon the idea of the reader
attempting to interpret a text, however, since he adds that the intention was
that the dictionary should, at the same time, give the reader as much help as
possible with difficult quotations and with subtleties of meaning (Lewis 2002:
81). The difficulty is that while historical, citation-based dictionaries like the
Middle English Dictionary are made out of the interpretations of words in
texts, the meanings produced are frozen in their moment of reading. Liter-
ary texts continue to be reinterpreted in every age, and reinterpretations are
sometimes made in the light of new evidence about the writer or the cultural
context of a text’s production. The evidence provided by dictionaries begins as
an aid to understanding but may become a straitjacket that works to constrain
new interpretations of texts. As Paula Treichler observes in her examination of
the significations attached to the term dictionary, if a discourse is the text from
which a dictionary is constructed, a dictionary becomes the text that, in turn,
constructs discourse (1989: 51).
I should now like to return to the reading experience outlined at the out-
set in which a reader, encountering an unfamiliar or entirely unknown lexi-
cal item, begins to construct an idea of the meaning of the term only to find
this construction challenged by the definition offered in the dictionary. Rather
than relying solely on my recollections of past reading experiences, I decided
to examine this process again. I returned to the Incipit and the first 100 lines
of Book II of Troilus and Criseyde, with a dictionary to hand. Of course, ev-
ery textual encounter is different, and this one was more self-conscious than
most. It was not, however, difficult words that gave me pause. The rarer words
seem to be exclusive to the context: the meaning of a Latinism is clear, as is
the intimation that it is contributing more to the style than the meaning of the
text. Rather, it turned out that it was the more familiar words which caused me
to wonder about sense development, collocations, metaphorical extension, etc.
My queries and notes were as follows:
Table 1. Troilus and Criseyde Book II (Incipit + first 100 lines)
Line reference Glossing in the The queries that Information and answers provided
Riverside Chaucer occurred to me by the Middle English Dictionary
as I read
Lines 3–4 connyng: Gloss at foot of Other meanings The meanings are the expected ones: ‘1. Ability
“For in this see the page offers the for this word? or skill; competence (in a profession or other
boot hath swych definition ‘skill’ Other words with activity), mastery (of an art); 2. Knowledge,
travaylle,/Of my and the gloss to the this meaning? understanding, (esp. as required by observation
connyng, that un- line ‘boat of my or reasoning); information, learning, erudition;
neth I it steere.” skill’ also, discernment, awareness; 3a (a) A branch
of knowledge or learning, a science or art; also,
science as a whole; 3b a craft; 4a (a) Ability to
understand, intelligence; wisdom, prudence;
(b) a mental faculty or quality; 5 Cleverness,
shrewdness, cunning.’ I do not understand how
to construe the meaning of this line, however,
and the dictionary did not help me with this,
though it is very possible that I asked the wrong
question.
Line 14 sentement Gloss at the foot When does this MED helpfully offers the following definition:
of the page: ‘Emo- definition date ‘personal experience or involvement; personal
tion, personal from? feeling or emotion’ and cites this line from
feeling’ T&C. All the citations for this particular defini-
tion are 1425–1450 with possible composition
dates of 1385, 1386 and 1405.
Line 17 lame Riverside does not Like a cripple? Offers the quotation from T&C for sense ‘(e) of
gloss Weak? When language, verse, meter: halting, defective’. The
does the meta- quotations are all from Chaucer and Lydgate.
phorical use date No overarching sense is given, the definitions
from? In use by refer to persons being crippled or maimed and
contemporaries to persons or things being incapacitated; the
of Chaucer’s? wits may be enfeebled or the reputation dam-
aged. Sense (f) refers to a crooked or ill-cut
gore in a garment. The dictionary does not en-
gage with the notion of a more widely available
metaphorical usage.
as I read
Line 24 nyce and No gloss at foot of Is this collocation The definitions of nice are: ‘1(a) Of persons:
straunge page. found elsewhere foolish, frivolous; ignorant; (b) of actions,
Nyce = ‘(1) fool- in Middle Eng- words, thoughts, faces, gestures, etc.: foolish,
ish; (2) scrupulous’ lish? absurd, senseless, mistaken; (c) ?wild, uncul-
Straunge = ‘(1) tivated; primitive.
foreign, strange, 2 (a) Sluggish, slothful; (b) faint-hearted,
unknown, dif- weak; cowardly, timid. 3 (a) Fastidious,
ferent, unusual, fussy; scrupulous; (b) dainty, delicate; (c)
surprising, exotic, strange, extraordinary, remarkable; (d) intri-
external, not of cate, ingenious; of persons: clever, cunning.
the family; (2) 4 (a) Of persons, their dress, habits, etc.:
distant, reserved, extravagant; self-indulgent; (b) of persons,
unfriendly’ actions, demeanor, etc.: wanton, dissolute,
dissipated, lascivious; also, inciting to lascivi-
ousness; (c) wicked, sinful, depraved.’
1(c) looks as if it is influenced by Chaucer’s
collocation. For (a) nyce is seen to collocate
with blynde in Chaucer (presumably it is the
other way round: Chaucer’s usage contributes
to the meaning, but how easy it is to slip into
thinking of the dictionary as the authority); in
fact, both quotations for (c) are from Trevisa
and refer to fig trees. This line from T&C
is not cited, and the collocation nyce and
straunge does not appear in any of the other
citations.
Line 38 game shent Shent = ‘ruined’ Which meaning MED very helpfully cites this line from
Game only glossed fits this context T&C. The definition offered: ‘Amorous play,
at back: ‘(1) joy, (no citation from love-making; esp. sexual intercourse’ does
happiness; (2) T&C II in Riv- not exactly match the gloss in the Riverside
amusement; (3) erside Chaucer Chaucer.
joke, jest’ glossary)
Line 58 shotes Not glossed at I am sure that The very full first definition in MED includes
keene foot of page or in I should know both ‘(a) A missile, such as an arrow, a dart,
glossary this, but shots? spear, cannon projectile, etc., also fig,’ and
Shoots? Arrows? ‘(d) a young branch, shoot, as well as (e) a
young weaned pig’. The line from T&C is
cited under 1 (a).
as I read
Line 129 faste Only glossed What is the sense Anticipating my difficulty, the MED appends
at back: ‘(1) development a note before the definitions: “The meaning
tightly, closely, of this word? of faste is largely contextual. In many pas-
firmly, strictly; Are any of these sages faste can be read as a modal adverb
(2) quickly; (3) senses just con- (i. e. with a specific meaning), as an adverb
close; (4) eagerly, textual glosses of degree, or as a mere intensive. MnE usage
heartily’ (check context of requires (or permits) the selection of many
citations; none in different adverbs for the various contexts.”
Riverside Chau- Only one citation from T&C and it is from
cer is T&C II) Bk III.
It is clear that with more time I would be able to discover a lot more about
Chaucer’s usage from the Middle English Dictionary than these brief notes
indicate. My guess was that the senses given for more unusual words would be
more closely tied to their immediate context of occurrence, presumably in the
same way that hapax legomena are glossed for Old English; in fact, many of
the lines that I had randomly selected were cited with the Middle English Dic-
tionary’s definitions. As readers progress through Chaucer’s texts, they acquire
a lot of collateral information about the style in which the texts are written.
This includes a growing familiarity with repetitions in Chaucer’s lexical choic-
es, some of which seem particularly prominent; for example, it does not require
extensive knowledge of the Chaucerian canon to spot that the phrase “pitee
renneth so[o]ne in gentil herte” appears in the Merchant’s Tale (line 1986), the
Squire’s Tale (line 479) and the Legend of Good Women (F line 503; G line
491). Greater familiarity with Chaucer’s writing is likely to cause readers to
become sensitized to the semantic associations suggested by recurring colloca-
tions and colligations in Chaucer’s texts and to the semantic prosody of seem-
ingly recurrent evaluations in his writing. As Hoey shows, lexical items may
be primed to co-occur with other lexical items, and they may also be primed to
occur in, or with, particular grammatical functions. Readers are likely to base
their guesses as to the meanings of lexical items on a sense of what is natural
for Middle English, perhaps specifically for Chaucer’s variety of Middle Eng-
lish, and that sense of naturalness arises from a sensitivity to lexical priming
likely to be unconscious but quite strong for experienced readers of the variety.
It seems that readers acquire knowledge of the prototypical structures of the
meanings of words, but less through the examination of dictionary entries, as
I have done here, than through repeated and frequent encounters with them in
a variety of contexts within the work of a single author and within the wider
corpus of a particular language variety.
It is this kind of familiarity, I believe, which leads readers to feel as if they
understand the texts they are reading even when the exact meaning of a term,
in its sense provided by a dictionary, is not known. We may compare this pro-
cess and its effect to what we are able to witness of Chaucer’s own encounters
with unfamiliar lexemes in his reading of foreign texts in languages which
were known to him. Such encounters are evident in his translations, and Olga
Fischer draws attention to the ways in which Chaucer makes use of loanwords
in his translation of Boethius (an expedient not employed by Alfred in his
translation of the same text into Old English). Although it is likely that an
English adaptation of an already familiar Latin or French word may have been
more readily understood than a new word made up from the native word stock,
Chaucer “is not always very discriminate in his use of loanwords” and Fischer
suggests that they are often on-the-spot adaptations of the Latin or French term
(1979: 632–633). Chaucer is engaging in the same activity as his readers; he
is employing his idea of the sense of his source text and the connotations of
lexical items in both the language he is working from and his native tongue.
Burnley offers support for this idea in his observation that, like the construals
of lexical meanings made by his later readers, Chaucer’s lexical selections in
his translations are drawn from a vocabulary which is built up of collocations,
sense relations and associations (1983: 219).
4. Conclusion
Individual construal (made up of background knowledge and information about

the specific language variety and, where possible, the idiolect of the author) is
crucial for the first reading of texts and has a part to play in the construction
of an interpretation. It has been suggested that prior to processing by a reader,
a written text lacks both the interaction and phonology levels; only when it is
activated by an actual reader can there be said to be an interaction between
reader and writer. This means that the text-as-object supplies a large resource
of potential semantic connections at both the word and clause level, but that it
takes the reader to activate the resource and select which connections to take
note of. The reader’s role, then, is rarely a passive one and, from many perspec-
tives, is a positively creative one (Hoey 1991: 221–222).
Making use of dictionary evidence to arrive at an idea of the prototypical
meaning structure of a lexical item, as I have done here, is not straightforward.
As Clara Molina points out (and despite her own very interesting work in this
area), only a few synchronic dictionaries and lexicological works have joined
cognitivist enterprises so far, while historical dictionaries have largely escaped
the influence of recent theoretical developments in cognitive linguistics (2008:
1). This means that in readings such as the ones proposed above, readers do
not have access to prototypically ordered dictionary definitions which would
enable the assessment of the semantic development of the terms within a cog-
nitivist framework. Discussing the ordering of senses, Robert E. Lewis notes
the traditional idea that the dominant sense of a word should come first in a
dictionary entry, that sense being the one which the majority of the speakers of
a language would think of first if presented with the word alone, without any
context. The Oxford English Dictionary originally used a logical ordering: its
main editor, James Murray, believed that if the historical record were complete,
the historical order and the natural or logical order would agree. If, based on
the available evidence, they did not, then the historical order had to be adjusted
to make it logical, that is, developmentally or derivationally logical. Murray’s
idea of logical ordering was of its time, however, in its embodiment of a set of
beliefs about the representation of sense development in dictionaries. These
included, for example, concrete precedes abstract; general precedes specific;
original precedes specific; concrete, general precedes abstract, metaphorical,
specific; literal precedes figurative or metaphorical; and simple verb precedes
phrasal verb (Lewis 2004: 152). In the Middle English Dictionary, the
major meanings [of a word] are presented in ‘logical’ rather than historical sequence
[…]. The inevitable unilinear presentation of the meanings obviously cannot reflect
their multilinear filiation and interrelationships. Since historical filiation of the mean-
ings usually remains obscure for want of sufficient documentation, such a presenta-
tion, even if feasible, would be highly conjectural in any event. (Kurath 1954: 3b)
The latest revision to the Oxford English Dictionary makes a much more rigor-
ous attempt to offer historical ordering:
The Oxford English Dictionary is based upon ‘historical principles’, and the mean-
ings of individual words entered in the Dictionary are therefore ordered chronologi-
cally, within a semantic framework resembling a family tree. Earlier meanings (or
related groups of meanings) of a word are placed before later ones, and it is typically
possible to track the semantic development of a word over time throughout an entry.
The First Edition of the Dictionary sometimes imposed a ‘logical’ ordering on the
documentary evidence, especially when it was felt that further information, if avail-
able, would confirm this interpretation. In the revised material, senses are ordered
systematically on the basis of the evidence now available. (Simpson 2009)
The historical dictionaries offer a breadth of scholarship about Middle English
that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for an individual reader to attain,
but senses in conventional dictionaries are fixed where textual interpretations
shift. Ultimately, both individual construal and lexicographic authority come

into play in understanding meaning at the level of the individual lexical item
up to the level of textual interpretation. Perhaps, however, we also need to take
account of Treichler’s conclusion that a dictionary is not an isolated institu-
tion that functions as the cultural authority for any given society. Rather, it is
constructed within a given culture, and it may variously embody that culture’s
values and practices (Treichler 1989: 58). As Lewis points out, the Middle Eng-
lish Dictionary stands as a record of historical lexicographical practice of a
particular time and place. Lexicography is subject to the ways in which tech-
nology has speeded up all connections, including that between dictionaries
and readers. John Simpson observes that now that dictionaries are increasingly
accessible to users through the internet, and so are published immediately, the
“user perspective” is becoming even more important in lexicography than it
has been in the past (Simpson 2002: 11). The stage is set for a more active role
for the reader within the dynamic created by the nexus of writer, reader and
dictionary.
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5. The Expression of Emotions over Time
Conceptual networking theory in metaphor
evolution: Diachronic variation in models of love
Richard Trim
Abstract
Based on empirical evidence of love metaphors in literary works, this paper suggests
that a large proportion of our figurative expressions evolve historically on the basis of a
process we shall term diachronic conceptual networking. The principle of this hypoth-
esis is that conceptual metaphors act as building blocks for different forms of metaphor
paths. Their existence depends on the potential conceptualisation of linguistic meta-
phors from base conceptual metaphors in a given cultural and historical environment.
A metaphor may come into existence and then become obsolete. However, the potential
to reconceptualise the metaphor may continue if the appropriate cultural environment
does not disappear, thereby producing latent and active phases in metaphor paths. This
variation is very common in linguistic metaphors but can also influence base concep-
tual structures which may either disappear or involve collocational switching in the
conceptual metaphor. As a result, networks may be of long or short term duration.
In addition, the factor of diachronic salience can vary considerably according to the
historical period concerned which, in turn, tends to make the nature of active phases
more complex.
The present study examines the historical origins of English love metaphors, most
of which appear to have followed a Latinate route from Antiquity to the Middle Eng-
lish period. The types of models found in different literary works reveal that many of
these are networked to today’s expressions with a considerable degree of regularity. A
common cultural heritage of love metaphors in European literature would thus support
the idea of a diachronic networking system. At the same time, the different historical
periods concerned have also had an effect on the degree of salience of certain mod-
els which raises such issues as time-specific paths and conceptual switching outlined
above. The two aspects of diachronic regularity and variation in metaphor evolution
will therefore form the focus of this analysis.
1. The search for historical models of evolution in meaning
An attempt at developing historical models in semantics is particularly dif-

ficult due to the extreme flexibility in the numbers of attributes which may be
assigned to any one particular lexical item. More than any other theoretical
framework, cognitive linguistics is a field which highlights this marked feature
224 Richard Trim
of flexibility. Models proposed by the Indo-European philologists of the 19th

century had a relative degree of success in their particular laws and principles
of language change since they were dealing with more “rigid” structures such
as phonology and syntax. Semantics was another story.
Indeed, later attempts during the early part of the 20th century to find similar
laws in literal meaning were doomed to be relatively limited, (cf. Stern’s law
([1931] 1968: 187) which claimed that all English adverbs in the Middle Ages
having the sense of ‘rapidly’ changed to ‘immediately’ after an intermediate
stage). Likewise, proposals for general principles of meaning change, although
useful as a global view of processes, tended to be rather limited to descriptions
such as extension, narrowing, amelioration, and so on (Ullman 1962: 197–210).
Very little attempt had been made at researching into historical models of
figurative language. Paradoxically, the field of cognitive linguistics, which fo-
cuses on the flexibility of meaning we have mentioned, also offers the op-
portunity of developing regular trends in diachronic metaphor evolution. To-
wards the end of the 20 th century, research was undertaken with regard to the
degree of regularity in individual metaphor histories, including the existence
of regular trends in metaphor paths. Theories of diachronic regularity can be
supported by research carried out in the metaphorisation of sensory percep-
tion verbs throughout the history of Indo-European languages. Physical sight,
for example, has often been metaphorised in the direction of knowledge: I see
becoming I understand, or hearing being regularly metaphorised to obeying,
as in I hear becoming I heed (Sweetser 1990: 32–37).
A general process of regularity in metaphorisation is the trend of a one-way
direction involving concrete to abstract or physical to mental conceptualisa-
tion. There are, however, exceptions. Cotton and Sharp (1998: 217) argue that
the concrete to abstract framework varies between metaphoric and metonymic
creation in Spanish verbs. The claim that meaning always changes historically
from concrete to abstract appears seldom true of metonymies but often true of
metaphor creation in Spanish. Metonymy frequently involves concrete to con-
crete which can also apply to metaphor on a smaller scale. Likewise, another
exception is in the case of mental understanding becoming physical hearing.
Latin intendere ‘stretch out, direct one’s attention to’ came to mean ‘under-
stand, take heed of’ in later Romance languages: Old French entendere and
Spanish entender. In modern French, however, the word entendre has come to
mean ‘hear’ (Sweetser 1990: 35).
Despite these exceptions, other diachronic changes, as in grammaticalisa-
tion, support the idea of regularity and uniformity in meaning change. There
appears to be a clear case of a trend towards subjectification in modals such as
must, whereby deontic conceptual structures become epistemic: they must be
Conceptual networking theory in metaphor evolution 225
married (I demand it) to they must be married (I am sure of it). Likewise, similar
regular changes tend to be unidirectional as in the SPATIAL > TEMPORAL >
CONDITIONAL trend of syntactic units as in as long as. In Old English, the
equivalent expression swa lange swa only had the spatial element whereas the
Modern English version has also developed the temporal and conditional fea-
tures in this unidirectional trend (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 36–37).
Furthermore, it has been suggested that languages and cultures tend to select
metaphorisation processes that follow specific grooves. In the field of emotions,
fear in English is usually based on two mental models: the EMPTY CON-
TAINER model (There was a hollow feeling in Bill’s stomach) or a FREEZ-
ING COLD image (Fear froze Angela to the ground). However, Ancient Greek
phobos (fear) uses a FLIGHT model with the notion of ‘panic-stricken flight’,
suggesting that emotion may follow several possible physiological or behav-
ioural routes according to the path a particular language might select (Aitchi-
son 1992: 37).
Although diachronic metaphor cannot be predicted, there is a certain degree
of logic in the evolution of metaphor. In the same way that metaphor creation
is generally logical if it is to make sense in a given conceptual system, SKI =
SWALLOW might seem odd in the hypothetical expression ‘the wine skied
down his throat’, languages tend to select relatively logical paths in the time
dimension. In the same vein, according to our analysis below of conceptual
networking in base concepts, it would be strange if a conceptual metaphor
of FLAT = UNINTERESTING created meanings at a later historical period
such as ‘passionate’ or ‘exciting’. The general notion of flatness is linked to a
pejorative quality that lacks significant points of interest, as in a flat landscape
which might appear more monotonous than rugged or mountainous terrain. A
connotation of ‘exciting’ would therefore not fit in here and this encourages a
certain degree of conceptual regularity in the way a path evolves. It remains
limited to a conceptual range and does not develop completely different or op-
posite meanings unless irony or some other application is involved.
Within this framework of regularity, metaphor can always produce forms of
ambiguity or have ironical effects. A similar situation may arise from opposite
meanings. The same situation of a lack of money in the conventional meta-
phors tight/loose, based on an original conceptual metaphor TIGHT = CON-
STRAINT/CONTROL (Trim 2007a: 116–118), may be the result of different
circumstances. ‘He is very tight with his money’ can mean he has very little to
spend, as in ‘a tight situation’. ‘He is very loose with his money’ may mean he
spends a lot and consequently leads to a similar situation in which he has no
money. Despite the ambiguity of similar situations, this binary concept follows
restricted metaphorisation in which the creation of relevant linguistic items are
226 Richard Trim
conceptually adapted to the CONSTRAINT and LACK OF CONSTRAINT

images, respectively. This thereby induces a general process of regularity in
diachronic conceptualisation.
Since the more recent cognitive approach has focused largely on the aspect
of figurative meaning, it has also paved the way for more research into regular
paths of in metaphor evolution. Within this notion of regularity, one major fea-
ture of metaphor creation which appears to stand out is the fact that large num-
bers of linguistic metaphors may be produced from a basic conceptual meta-
phor. We can therefore say that many items are chained to the core concept,
an example of which can be seen in Lakoff’s major work Women, Fire and
Dangerous Things with regard to radial chaining (1987: 79). The core concept
of mother, for example, may develop two categories of chained concepts rep-
resenting literal and figurative meaning. The former would include items such
as foster-mother and surrogate-mother while the latter would involve items of
metaphoric origin such as mother country or mother tongue. It would appear
that a large number of our metaphors are built up in this way and it represents
a starting-point for a theory of diachronic evolution in conceptual networking
proposed below (see Trim 2007a: 109–121).
Although the mother concept forms the base of a networking process, it is
clear that on a synchronic level there is a considerable amount of variation in
how metaphor groups are developed across languages. We shall be looking at
a number of variational parameters in this discussion of networks but a major
one which comes to mind is the feature of cross-cultural variation.
On the one hand, there is the hypothesis that a number of constructs have a
universal or near-universal trend. Different cognitive linguists have discussed
this issue in relation to bodily experience in metaphor conceptualisation such
as spatial orientation. The latter is referred to as image schemas involving theo-
ries such as the ‘spatialisation of form hypothesis’ (Lakoff 1987: 283). This
categorises conceptualisation of space into different formats such as LINK
schemas representing relational structures, UP-DOWN schemas being hierar-
chical, CENTRE-PERIPHERY being radial, and so on. In English, there are
typical expressions such as those being related to happiness that usually have
an UP orientation: my spirits rose, you’re in high spirits, etc. and those being
related to sadness as DOWN metaphors: I fell into a depression, my spirits
sank, etc. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 14–17).
This trend is confirmed in cross-cultural comparisons involving English and
Hungarian (Kövecses 2006: 156–157):
(1a) Ez a film feldobott

‘This film gave me a high/The film made me happy’
(1b) Majd elszáll a boldogságtól

Almost away-flies-he/she the happiness-from
‘He/she is on cloud nine’
On the other hand, there are clear variational patterns across languages and
cultures. Kövecses (2005: 88–113, 2006: 161–163) divides variation of meta-
phor conceptualisation into two types: cross-cultural and within-culture. The
first has a number of different forms. These could involve, among others,
roughly the same conceptual metaphors being shared between two languages
but that one culture/language shows a preference for some of those employed.
The example of symbolisation in figures described above may fit into this clas-
sification regarding the history of European languages.
The second type likewise has a number of variations. Kövecses (2005: 88–
113) suggests the categories of social, regional, stylistic, sub-cultural and indi-
vidual dimensions. It is clear from these labels that a number of variants may
be produced within one culture/language which are used by only a part of the
language community.
Kövecses defines the actual cultural context as “all the culturally unique and
salient concepts and values that characterize cultures, including, importantly,
the governing principles and the key concepts in a given culture or subculture”
(2006: 167). Historical variation would be the classical-medieval notion of the
“four humours”, as proposed by Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995: 162–169), as
a key component in the European conception of anger as a fluid in a pressurised
container, and discussed below in the debate on long and short-term metaphor
paths. This example would therefore be an example of a cause of metaphor vari-
ation. Among the causes, Kövecses also cites various sources which include,
among others, the communicative situation, the role of history, personal con-
cerns and interests, and so on (for further details, see Kövecses 2005: 231–258).
2. Diachronic networking
The aim of this theory is to propose a way in which many metaphors evolve.
Obviously, it cannot predict metaphor evolution but, given a networking pro-
cess within a specific conceptual environment, an historical analysis is able
to show that there is a potential, as well as the actual existence, for regular
metaphor paths originating in core conceptual metaphors. The limits of this
potential are thus bound to the interpretative nature and salience of metaphors
in a given culture, unless metaphors are borrowed from other languages with-
out the same conceptual capacities, in which case their future productivity is
228 Richard Trim
likely to cease. We shall be discussing the issues of this theory here but first
it would be useful to look at other recent research which supports the idea of
diachronic conceptual networking. One significant feature is the role played by
semantic fields, a notion which goes back to Trier (1931), who first suggested
that semantic change affects semantic fields. Although his theory was founded
before the debate on fuzzy boundaries in semantic categories, and therefore did
not take into account overlapping or polysemy, it did introduce the role played
by semantic fields in historical linguistics particularly in the relationship be-
tween general and subordinate categories.
As far as networking is concerned, studies on diachronic chaining have es-
tablished, for example, that metaphoric items are created chronologically with-
in the same semantic field. Bird species such as goose, cuckoo, pigeon, coot
and turkey had a chain reaction in creating a common attribute of foolishness
in English from the 16th century onwards (Lehrer 1985: 289). According to dic-
tionary attestations in this study, the metaphoric meaning of the first item was
introduced into the English language in 1547, the second on the list in 1580, the
third in 1593 and the others at a later historical period around the beginning of
the 19th century. Other studies of related attributes in the same semantic field
have revealed similar findings. Primates have a brutish attribute as in the case
of baboons, gorillas and apes. In fact, a large proportion of the mammal/bird
semantic field has tended to portray pejorative meanings throughout the his-
tory of English such as SNAKES = TREACHERY, SCAVENGER BIRDS =
GREED and MULE/DONKEY = OBSTINACY.
The trend of diachronic chaining in pejorative meanings is supported by
findings carried out by Allan (2003: 4–5). A diachronic model of ANIMALS/
BIRDS = STUPIDITY becomes clear from the figure of 92 dictionary items
out of a total of 99 dating between the 14th and 20th centuries and having the
attribute of stupidity. The figurative meaning of cleverness could only be at-
tributed to the remaining seven. Hence, we have names such as ape, sheep-
ish, mule, ass-headed, cuckoo, long-eared, gubbins, etc. In general European
cultural history, this trend can also be seen in other languages such as French:
the bird images of linotte (linnet), butor (bittern), bécasse (woodcock), dinde
(turkey) and oie (goose) have all introduced pejorative metaphoric meanings in
this semantic field at different points in history.
We may deduce from the findings of this particular aspect of diachronic
chaining that metaphor evolution does appear to follow specific directions ac-
cording to the conceptual system of the cultural environment. Not all birds
may be included in the diachronic pattern resulting from the base conceptual
metaphor of BIRDS = STUPIDITY. In fact, some have the opposite image
such as the wise owl due to its physical appearance and almost studious way of
looking. However, a very large number of the bird category could also be added
to the list in future. There is therefore a potential metaphorisation process in
secondary groups developing from birds which could have the same image on
account of their behaviour or looks. The presence of a large number of items in
this semantic field would help reinforce future additions to the network.
How can we generalise this process of networking? One way is to look at
very general concepts in our environment and first think of all the possible
metaphoric attributes which are associated with the concept in question. A
starting-point would be to take very basic concepts which have always ex-
isted in our process of conceptualisation: flat, rough, smooth, dry, wet, tight,
loose, and so on. These would be the types of concepts Lakoff (1987: 271)
would refer to as the category of basic-level properties. Take the case of flat.
If we think of the possible figurative senses connected to this concept, includ-
ing conventional senses, expressions such as flat beer, a flat tone, and so on,
would probably come to mind. The first would signify a beer without any
flavour and the second a rather monotonous tone. In fact, an analysis of the
historical evolution of dictionary attestations allows us to deduce that there is
a basic conceptual metaphor FLAT = UNINTERESTING in all the metaphor
paths associated with the concept of flat. The semantic field of flatness has
chained a large number of metaphors with this notion to its core concept. The
actual origin of this mapping may stem from the fact that flat objects, such as
landscapes, may be of less interest than those with many shapes and forms, as
in mountainous terrain.
At this point it should be mentioned that in the following analysis, we shall
be using a standard source/target pattern in conceptual metaphors. Instead of
listing the basic concept flat first and equating all attributes in secondary po-
sition, the source > target orientation will be adopted according to the form
a) = FLAT, b) = FLAT, and so on. An attribute such as uninteresting thus
represents the source domain and is mapped on to the target domain of a basic
concept like flat. We shall see further down that a source domain such as love
may be metaphorised in a multiple variety of target domains.
In our formulation of a diachronic model of networking, we can say that
the core concept serves as a “building block” for metaphor paths. The path
referring to taste, for example, was attested in 1626 with the expression:
“Spirit of wine burned […] tasteth nothing so hot in the mouth […] but flat and
dead” (OED). The notion of monotony has been applied to both people and
physical objects in the past, although the former notion of flat people appears
somewhat archaic: “I look for nothing from empty, dull, flat people” (OED:
1878). If this collocation is no longer in current usage, its present obsolete sta-
tus nevertheless has the potential of being regenerated in the future. This pro-
230 Richard Trim
cess therefore adds another dimension to the model: the states of activity and
dormancy in metaphor paths.
3. Active and dormant metaphor paths
At the outset, there may be a number of different reasons for the selection of
a path according to the cultural environment of the time but an examination
of basic concepts in our language does suggest that the existence of preceding
concepts often reinforces the creation of subsequent metaphors. In addition,
the same types of models keep recurring even if they remain absent in the
language for a considerable period of time. The aspect of dormancy implies,
in turn, that a number of scenarios are possible according to the historical pe-
riod. Long-term metaphor paths may begin early on in a language’s history and
continue until the modern period. Alternatively, shorter-term paths may begin
early on and become obsolete at a later date. A reverse situation may occur in
which metaphor paths are created in the modern period or have only a very
short life span. In other words, the period of “activity”, when the metaphor is
in actual language usage, varies enormously according to the metaphor path.
In applying this networking theory, we can also say that during the periods
when the metaphor path is not in usage, it is in a “dormant” phase, i. e. it has
the potential of being created, on the evidence supplied by its existence dur-
ing other historical periods (Trim 2007a: 109–112). This idea of regeneration
has been expressed before in other terms such as “metaphor retrieval” (Kit-
tay 1987: 20) or “semantic polygenesis” in literal and figurative meaning (see
Geeraerts 1997: 24 for a full explanation of this term).
If we divide up the evolution of the FLATNESS metaphor into three his-
torical periods: 1 (1200–1500AD), 2 (1500–1900AD) and 3 (1900AD–present-
day), the major paths cited above all begin during period 2. They are therefore
in a dormant phase in period 1, they become active in period 2 and then contin-
ue to the end of period 3. The exception is the flat people metaphor path which
has tended to die out before the end of period 3 and has therefore gone back
to a dormant phase in which it could potentially be regenerated later on. Each
pattern of activity and dormancy in metaphor paths evolving from conceptual
metaphors differs according to such historical periods.
Take the example of smoothness, whose figurative origins based on the same
procedure used for flatness, allow us to postulate a SMOOTH = ATTRAC-
TIVE/TRANQUIL conceptual metaphor. Smoothness has a much wider range
of interpretation and more diachronic variability. An analysis of the various
metaphoric derivations suggest categories of four primary clusters leading to
metaphor paths: a) friendly or polite (“with smothe smylyng” – OED: attest.

14th c.); b) a smart or polished style (“smothe folk […] to shewe two facys in
oon hood” – OED: attest. c. 1450); c) tranquil, i. e. free from excitement (“that
smooth and voluptuous satisfaction which the assured prospect of pleasure be-
stows” – OED: 1756); and d) free from sharpness, i. e. regarding sound (“it is
not age, but constant use, that is the means of producing a smooth, clear tone”
– OED: 1836).
The diachronic pattern resulting from these four metaphor paths is a varied
one in the history of English: a) was only active between 1500 and 1900 AD,
i. e. period 2; b) was active from an early period until the present-day, i. e. pe-
riods 1–3; while c) and d), according to dictionary attestations, were activated
after the Middle Ages and remained so until the present-day, i. e. periods 2–3.
It is clear from this analysis that metaphor paths involve a mixture of active
and dormant phases which are impossible to predict. The model does, how-
ever, display regular conceptual structures for ongoing metaphor creation.
4. Long and short-term conceptual metaphors
The notion of active and dormant phases also raises the question as to whether
metaphors are likely to last a long time or not. Metaphor paths may be very
short-lived or can go on indefinitely. We have seen that there is a considerable
degree of variation in their active and latent stages and the life of a conceptual
metaphor may also vary considerably in length.
The conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY has often been quoted as
not only being one which has had a long life, individual metaphor paths linked
to it can also last a long time as well. We can compare, for example, the follow-
ing metaphors between Antiquity and the Late Middle Ages:
(2) Spirits are assigned to less burdensome bodies on the journey of life
(Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae, 3, 19)
(3) In the middle of life’s road I found myself in a dark wood

(Dante, Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, I, 1–2)
Likewise, the journey metaphor has continued in specific areas such as friend-
ship:
(4) Their friendship has travelled some rough roads

(Kövecses 1995: 336)
232 Richard Trim
It would appear that conceptual metaphors of this kind have almost universal
features; they fit into a large number of different languages and last for cen-
turies. Studies of the emotions by Fabiszak (1999: 133–146) reveal that the
semantic field of joy in English offers long-term paths which are similar to the
types of universal trends described by Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980: 14–17) orien-
tational schemas whereby the direction upwards embodies positive values, as
opposed to down which is negative. Old English words for ‘joy’ are represented
by terms such as bliss, gefea and wynsumnesse:
(5) blisse astigan ‘rise, ascend’

gefea astigan ‘ascend’
wymsumnesse astigan ‘ascend’
Literally, joy rises or ascends in the same way as the modern English expres-
sion his spirits lifted. The upward movement has lasted from Old to Modern
English. If we look back at the LIFE IS A JOURNEY conceptual metaphor,
it also has a directional feeling about it. It keeps going forward, similar to
Lakoff’s (1987: 285) orientational schema SOURCE-PATH-GOAL which em-
bodies a scenario of an initial state, a sequence of events and a final state,
similar to birth, life and death.
Long-term metaphor paths may therefore be linked to the kinds of universal-
physiological features suggested by Lakoff with regard to our physiological
sensory perception of the environment. This may be orientational but can also
cover other features such as basic-level properties relating to flat, smooth, etc.
resulting from visual or tactile perception. Their respective conceptual meta-
phors, as we have seen, can last a very long time.
However, the term universal in the diachronic sense of ‘infinite’ calls for
a word of caution since the findings of some linguists would dispute the fact
that certain physiologically-based metaphors last for ever. A case in point is
the Lakoffian HEAT = ANGER metaphor (1987: 380–415) which appears
to be fairly universal as it can be seen in widely different languages such as
Japanese (Matsuki 1995: 140–142) and Chinese (Yu 1995: 66–71). Lakoff
describes this metaphor with the HEAT OF FLUID IN A CONTAINER
image, such as she got all steamed up or his pent-up anger welled up in-
side him. Although the HEAT = ANGER metaphor can be traced back a
long time, Gevaert (2001, 2002) would claim that early periods of Old Eng-
lish had a SWELL = ANGER conceptual metaphor and that English has
therefore changed this universal-based construct. The main reason is due to
external influence. The Germanic origins of English supplied the SWELL
metaphor:
(6) wæs ða gebolgen beorges hyrde

‘by then the barrow-snake was swollen with rage’
(Beowulf, l. 2304 [Chickering 1977: 186])
However, Old English underwent a considerable amount of influence from Lat-

inate sources during the period 850–950AD due primarily to translations into
Old English from Latin by King Alfred and others, as well as influence from
various biblical sources. Latin words for heat included incendere ‘to kindle’,
calere ‘to be warm’, fervor ‘heat’ and calor ‘heat’, all referring to anger (Ge-
vaert 2002: 275–299). Although Latin influence decreased during a subsequent
period between 950 and 1050AD, it increased again after the Norman invasion.
We can conclude that not only do active and latent metaphor paths vary
in length, their underlying conceptual metaphors do so as well and can thus
terminate all metaphor paths linked to them. In a discussion of conceptual
metaphor duration, we shall therefore include all those which have not always
existed in English, even though their duration may be relatively long.
5. Diachronic salience
Not only do conceptual and linguistic metaphors vary in length, the nature of
their active paths can fluctuate considerably. Indeed, another important issue
in the diachronic networking model concerns metaphoric salience. Limitations
in usage may have different origins such as slang, regional variants or idio-
lects but both linguistic and conceptual metaphors can vary in their cognitive
weighting throughout the language community at given points in time. This
feature becomes apparent in how metaphoric expressions are translated in the
literary works. An analysis of such translations shows that a translator often
hesitates or avoids using the same metaphoric expressions found in the source
language (Trim 2007b: 45–56). For example, the expression on a day which
had a summer face and a winter constitution, referring to what was probably a
sunny day with a cold wind or low temperatures in Thomas Hardy’s Far from
the Madding Crowd [1874] (1974: 62), was left out in a standard French transla-
tion (Zeys: 1980)
Diachronic salience can take on different forms. The introduction of a con-
ceptual or linguistic metaphor may be highly salient on inception and then
slowly become less salient through time until obsolescence. The level of sa-
lience may be reduced to one which introduces a degree of uncertainty as to its
current usage. Would a member of a language community really use the meta-
phor in question? These strange-sounding metaphors, which are more flexible
234 Richard Trim
in literary works than in technical texts, may refer to both an individual lin-
guistic item or to a conceptual metaphor that does not necessarily correspond
to society’s way of thinking at the time. On the other hand, it may correspond
to a certain section of a society or a minority in the linguistic community, in
which case the latter would reduce its salience even further. On a longer time-
scale, the diachronic patterns of salience may fluctuate in the same way as ac-
tive and dormant phases of metaphor paths may go through cyclic patterns. The
fashion for a particular type of metaphor may come back into common usage,
thereby increasing its salience level.
The exact mechanisms which are responsible for shifts, salience and regen-
eration are a complex issue and are, at least in some forms, intricately bound
up with the types of within-culture variation discussed above. Kövecses (2006:
167–171) suggests two categories of causes in metaphor variation: differential
experience and differential cognitive preferences (or styles). The first includes
the actual cultural context in its wider sense, i. e. the governing principles and
key concepts in a given culture or subculture. Related to this aspect are the
histories of a country or the personal histories of ordinary people. The latter
aspect, for example, comes to the fore in literary works. The second category
includes, among others, the notion of experiential focus. Although human be-
ings share a great deal of bodily experience on which they build, or could build,
universal metaphors, it is not utilised in the same way or to the same extent in
different languages and varieties. As we have seen, the conceptualisation of
anger in terms of heat is used in English, Japanese and Chinese, but the lat-
ter actually tends to have a prevalence for pressure rather than heat (Yu 1995:
59–92). Furthermore, we have also seen that the conceptualisation of anger in
terms of heat has not always been the case in English.
From a diachronic point of view, the conclusion of Kövecses’ experiential
focus theory is that it should not be expected that any of the conceptualised
responses associated with anger or other emotions remain constant throughout
the ages (2006: 171). He sums up this view as follows: “I believe the answer is
that universal physiological features provide only a potential basis for meta-
phorical conceptualisation without constraining what the specific metaphors
will be […] We should not expect any of the conceptualised responses associ-
ated with anger to remain constant in conceptualising anger (and the emotions
in general) throughout the ages” (2005: 248). This approach is clarified further
in his claim that there are several distinct components in universal embodiment
associated with a target domain. The conceptual metaphors that are created
may be based on one component at a certain point of time and on another at
another point. Parallel to this pattern, conceptual metaphors may be based on
one component in one culture and on another component in another culture.
It is clear that the focus of a body part very often changes from one historical
period to another. The cause may be, for example, a particular cultural focus at
the time, as in the case of religion. Jager (1990: 845–859) points out that pec-
torality was an important focus of the body in Old English and that the chest,
rather than the mouth, was the centre of verbal activity. This extended to the
psychological domain. One of the main reasons, he claims, is that the chest is
not only “the source of speech and the repository of God’s word and inspira-
tion but also […] the location of knowledge, belief, love, the Holy Spirit, and
the spirit or soul itself”. In the late Middle Ages, the pectoral focus was also
found in the works of writers such as Chaucer, Dante and Boccaccio. It may be
deduced that the shift in the decrease in pectorality in literary works after the
Middle Ages was probably due to a decline in the influence of religion.
Indeed, diachronic trends of cultural focus can be seen in other writers such
as American authors of the 17th to 20th centuries (1675–1975). Smith, Pollio and
Pitts (1981: 911–935) analysed these trends and concluded that different cul-
tural domains do, in fact, correlate with varying degrees of metaphoric activity
along the time dimension. Religion went into a steady decline in American
literature from the seventeenth century onwards, whereas the domain of na-
ture gradually increased, reaching a peak in the twentieth century. The reason
for this was that the early writers such as Matthews, Bradstreet, Edwards and
Franklin who lived in settled parts of the New World such as Boston and Phila-
delphia, did not have to come to terms with nature to the extent of later writers
such as Cooper, Emerson and Twain. The former group were focused more on
the dominant religious issues of the time whereas the latter were influenced by
19th century westward expansion and the problems of dealing with the Ameri-
can wilderness.
The interesting point about diachronic shift in the focus of conceptual met-
aphor with regard to body parts is that matches may be seen between very
different cultures/languages but they often occur in different periods of his-
tory. Padel (1992: 12–18) illustrates the fact that the focus of feeling in Ancient
Greece was the belly, a fact that is also demonstrated by Matsuki (1995: 142–
145) with regard to the modern Japanese concept hara (belly). Does this mean
that there are particular trends in the shift of body parts? It is difficult to answer
this question at the present time without analysing a large number of cultural
histories. It might be the case that each language, or group of languages, have
individual cultural histories and this may give diachronic trends in conceptual
metaphor at a global level a rather random pattern as far as shifts in body parts
are concerned.
The role of the history of the country, as in the case of the American writers
discussed above, can be seen in the theory of macro and micro-shifts discussed
236 Richard Trim
by Charteris-Black (2004: 80–84). The first is a reference to a conceptual shift

in the source domain and the second a shift in particular metaphors within
the same source domain. In a study of British political party manifestos dur-
ing the twentieth-century post-war period, it was observed that a macro-shift
took place in the use of conflict metaphors. These shifted from 32% in an early
corpus (1945–1970) to 43% in a later corpus (1974–1997). The cause of the
change was seen as a relative distance from the Second World War, so that as
the experience of war decreases, a conflict lexicon creates more tension. At the
same time, there was an increase in the use of building as a source domain dur-
ing the course of the early period while in the later period, the macro feature
of building decreased. However, micro variations took place in that the notion
of framework increased over that of structure. Explanations for these shifts are
therefore due to historical events of the country.
With regard to causes of salience, Charteris-Black (2004: 249) suggests that
historical experience is itself a factor influencing the persuasive role of meta-
phor. Experiences are seen as socially salient: salience can be stimulated by
distance in time since this can increase the distance between domains. Like-
wise, it can also be encouraged by immediate factors of social concern. Dia-
chronic fluctuation and salience therefore varies according to social contexts.
Acceptance of new metaphors takes place at different rates. It is difficult
to calibrate this process but it may operate in a similar way to Traugott and
Dasher’s model of the invited inferencing theory of semantic change (IITSC),
a theory which also includes metaphorisation (2002: 37). A new item enters the
language community from one source, is communicated between two or more
people, and finally spreads throughout the community until it becomes part
of an innovation in the language. The new item therefore starts off with low
salience and becomes highly salient when fully accepted. There may, however,
be instances where distribution in the language community may not necessar-
ily correspond to the level of interpretation or salience of a metaphor in a given
text (see below).
Salience not only depends on various sections of the language community
according to within-culture variation, it may become suddenly less salient due
to cultural borrowing, as in the case of the SWELL = ANGER metaphor in
Old English being replaced by Latinate sources, or undergo a slow decline due
to cultural / social changes that take place as in the case of the shifts outlined
above.
Metaphors may be regenerated by reversing the trend of decreasing salience
or by coming back into usage after obsolescence. The former is likely to depend
on the repetition of historical and cultural events such as another war or the
revival of social customs. From a conceptual point of view, regeneration of an
obsolete metaphor depends on a number of factors which include the controver-

sial issue of metaphor death. This long debate is outside the scope of the pres-
ent paper (see Charteris-Black 2004: 18–19; Goatly 1997: 31–40; Searle 1979:
122 and Traugott 1985: 21, for aspects of this debate), but one example of an
obsolete metaphor which can not be regenerated is cited by Lakoff and Turner
(1989: 128–131). They claim that a truly dead metaphor is one which no longer
exists at either the conceptual or linguistic level. The word pedigree in English
was derived from Old French pied de grue, meaning the ‘foot of a crane’ (in the
ornithological sense). The image of a crane’s foot was mapped onto the image of
a family tree diagram to represent genealogical origins. This original metaphor
could no longer be regenerated. However, linguists such as Lakoff and Turner
would claim that conventional metaphors, that may not be considered metaphors
at the present time, are conceptually alive and can regenerate, at least, associ-
ated metaphors. Conventional metaphors would include verbal or prepositional
phrases such as conduit metaphors: to get across, it was hard to get that idea
across to him (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 10–11; Reddy 1979: 284–324).
It would appear that salience normally implies that there has to be a strong
link between metaphorical and non-metaphorical expressions of the same con-
cept, both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Take the expression
used above: the wine skied down his throat. If it were used in a particular situa-
tion, such as in a parallel use for a skier who hurriedly finishes his glass of wine
in a restaurant before going back to the ski slopes, it is unlikely to have much
salience in most other situations. For the same reason, it would also unlikely to
be used at a later historical period, unless a similar isolated situation arose as in
the example of the restaurant on the ski slopes. The synchronic and diachronic
dimensions are therefore linked. In addition, the fact that UNINTERESTING
= FLAT has a selected specific groove in English would suggest that an op-
posing semantic equation, such as INTERESTING = FLAT, is unlikely both
synchronically and diachronically.
The exception to this is if a different groove or related set of words arises
either internally or through borrowing. An historical reason can often be found
for radical changes. An analysis of metaphorical meanings of the colour green
in the history of English reveals that many expressions are linked to immatu-
rity, as in he is a bit green behind the ears. A radical change occurred in the
1970’s when the mapping ECOLOGY = GREEN was calqued into many Euro-
pean languages from the new German political party of the 1970’s. The colour
metaphor has been extended to a number of domains relating to ecology and
therefore represents a substantial diachronic innovation.
This is relevant to the networking theory described above. A large number of
basic concepts appear to have metaphoric meanings which can be traced back
238 Richard Trim
to a single common denominator. However, concepts such as the colour green

have more than one network which may be traced back to different origins that
are created in different time zones.
These are fairly clear-cut cases but there is also an area of intermediate
branches in metaphor history in which it may not be clear if a meaning origi-
nated in one particular network or another. Very often, a certain amount of in-
terpretation of the different links is needed. In the case of the TIGHT/LOOSE
binary concept mentioned above, modern English loose has had a number of
metaphorised elements based on a LOOSE = LACK OF CONSTRAINT /
CONTROL common denominator, in contrast to TIGHT metaphors having an
opposite set of attributes. Thus, loose in modern English can refer to someone
who is lacking (in the control) of morals or is unchaste. In 16th century English,
however, loose also meant ‘naked’:
(7) They are excedynge swyfte of foote by reason of theyr loose goinge
from theyr chyldes age (OED: 1555)
Does naked belong to the “constraint” network? At first sight, interpretation of

this metaphor, LOOSE = NAKED, may require more effort at the present day
but, on closer analysis, a possible link can be seen in the fact that nakedness
may have been frowned upon more so than today. Hence a link between loose-
ness and immorality. However, this is non-conclusive since there is the possi-
bility that LOOSE in this case simply means ‘not being constrained by clothes’,
rather than a link to immorality. Hence they are able to run faster.
At this stage, we are only able to offer tentative hypotheses on the internal
semantic structures of diachronic salience. It appears that salience depends on
the degree to which metaphorised elements of a given concept are linked to
a common source. The more paths there are, the more salient the network is
likely to be at a given point in time. Since clusters vary through time, however,
the level of salience also tends to fluctuate diachronically. An additional fac-
tor, therefore, which probably stabilises metaphorisation and salience is the
strength of a metaphor in relation to non-metaphorical expressions in the same
concept. This would tend to follow the lines of prototype metaphor (Tourange-
au & Sternberg 1982).
The discussion so far has thus attempted to present a model of diachronic
networking responsible for a large proportion of metaphor creation and its on-
going historical evolution. With the aid of the different dimensions proposed
in this model, we shall now analyse a domain which lends itself to a survey of
diachronic metaphor on a large time-scale: the evolution of figurative senses in
love found in literary works. Love represents one of the fields discussed since
time immemorial and thereby offers a useful area of research into the history
of love metaphors in English.
We will propose here that present-day love metaphors have been networked
in literary works to patterns which can be traced back to the English literary
works of the Middle Ages and from there to primarily Latinate routes originat-
ing in Antiquity. These networks have, on the one hand, a remarkable degree
of regularity in diachronic models relating to common conceptual origins but,
on the other, quite clearly display the variational features discussed above of
activity/dormancy and diachronic salience.
6. Love and the emotions
A great deal of interest has been shown in recent years regarding emotions as
a basis for metaphor research. It is indeed a highly productive area for cogni-
tive research and metaphor creation. At the same time, it is not an easy field for
cognitive evaluation. Attempts have been made to set up a list of fundamental
emotions, as proposed by Izard and Buechler (1980: 165–187), which include
interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame/shyness
and guilt. Critics of this approach suggest that emotions have many similar
sub-groups according to the culture in question. Wierzbicka claims that the
exact boundaries between related feelings are language-specific (1986: 590).
Another approach to defining emotions is the proposal that they are valenced
reactions to three particular phenomena: events, agents and objects. The first are
people’s construals about things to happen; the second are objects viewed in their
capacity as objects and the third are things considered in the light of their actual
or presumed instrumentality in causing such events (Ortony, Clore and Collins
1988: 18–19). These definitions lead to summaries of emotions as follows:
(1) Consequences of events. These split emotions into two dichotomies of
pleased/displeased referring to implications for oneself or others. The re-
sulting emotions are happy for others, resentment, gloating, pity, joy dis-
tress, satisfaction, fears-confirmed, relief, disappointment, gratification,
remorse, gratitude and anger.
(2) Actions of agents. The same pattern occurs with a split between approving/
disapproving for self and others. This results in: pride, shame, admiration
and reproach. In addition, there is an overlap with the first category in that
gratification, remorse, gratitude, and anger can also result from agents.
(3) Aspects of objects. It is in this category that the emotion of love appears.
Objects cause a split into a general dichotomy of liking/disliking which
results in love and hate.
240 Richard Trim
The suggestion arising from this kind of analysis is that a cognitive study of
the origin of love would involve the reactions to a particular object which,
presumably, could be either animate or inanimate. The latter category would
thereby give rise to a further differentiation in love. If we now narrow down
our definitions of the emotions to love itself, suggestions have also been made
regarding its possible classification. Tissari (2003: 2) proposes a classification
of six major types with the use of Latin/Greek labels:
(1) storge: love within a family

(2) storge-eros: marital love
(3) eros: sexual love between lovers
(4) philia: love as experienced between friends
(5) agape: the participants of religious love
(6) khreia: the love of things, as in the case of inanimate love outlined above
In addition, there is a seventh type of love involving self-love and which there-
fore has only one participant. The study of love in this analysis will focus on
the love between two partners as in categories (2) and (3). Again, these types
of love, on a global scale, can be further sub-divided if non-Western cultures
are taken into account. Contemporary traditions do not necessarily include
marital love in marriage. Kövecses (1988: 11) describes how the Bemba tribe
of present-day Zimbabwe traditionally does not have the notion of love in their
marriages. This can also be seen, to a certain extent, in arranged marriages in
contemporary India.
De Rougemont (1972: 71–77) claims that there are fundamental differences
in the notion of love between two people which are related to religious groups
as, for example, in Western and Oriental religions. He suggests that a basic dif-
ference between these two groups concerns, first of all, category (5) above, or
the individual’s relationship to God. In Western religions, whose origins were
in the Middle East, there is not a complete union with God during the lifetime
of an individual except for communion in church. At this moment, the church
acts as a link between the two. In Oriental religions, whose origins were in
Asia, there is complete union with God, or in the case of Buddhism, a single
Universal Being.
The extent to which religious love has influenced marital love is not clear
but the two religious groups differentiate regarding the latter in that Christian-
ity developed the idea of passion which became predominant in twelfth-cen-
tury Europe. Oriental religions, as in China, have had the notion of fondness
in human relations rather than the idea of passion. This is supported by the
fact that pre-Christian Greece did not have this notion, as can be seen in the
concept of Platonic love (derived from Plato’s Symposium). Human love at that
time was generally conceived to be for pleasurable aims while passion, from
a tragic or painful point of view, was generally despised. This is a very dif-
ferent approach to the conceptualisation of love, for example, in the European
medieval period.
It can be seen, therefore, that notions of love can vary both cross-culturally
and diachronically. As far as metaphor models are concerned, some are logi-
cally influenced by variational changes in conceptualisation whereas others
seem, at least from a diachronic point of view within one particular cultural
history, to survive social changes. We shall now examine the origins of present-
day English metaphors of love and discuss how they have evolved diachronic-
ally according to the networking theories outlined above.
7. The diachronic network of human love
In this historical analysis, we are fortunate enough to have a sizeable amount of

research findings from contemporary patterns of English as a starting-point in
our investigation. Among those cognitive linguists who have devoted a consid-
erable amount of attention to metaphor and the emotions in present-day Eng-
lish is Kövecses (1988, 2000). Most of his corpus stems from spoken American
English but when we investigate historical patterns, we are naturally limited to
the written word which can often influence the type of register we encounter in
historical research. It is difficult to estimate the impact of the written word on
ordinary, everyday language in the past but we are nevertheless able to have an
idea of how conceptualisation was operating in former times.
The following analysis will thereby investigate the extent to which present-
day metaphors may be traced back to former historical periods in the form of
diachronic networks. A large number of Kövecses’ conceptual metaphors can
indeed be traced to the Middle Ages and beyond. Many of these love metaphors
may be linked to conceptual metaphors involving common denominators such
as fire, unity, treasure, nutrient/food, blindness and madness. Kövecses cites
some of the following examples:
(8) LOVE = FIRE: she is his latest flame

LOVE = UNITY: the perfect match
LOVE = TREASURE: hello, my precious
LOVE = NUTRIENT/FOOD: she’s the cream in my coffee
LOVE = BLINDNESS: he was blinded by love
LOVE = MADNESS: she drives me out of my mind
242 Richard Trim
8. Long-term love metaphors
An historical analysis of the list above shows that the conceptual metaphors
involved are long-term and an analysis of literary works shows that they have
been linked through different languages and contacts between authors since
Antiquity. We therefore have ongoing links in the evolution of these models. As
a first step back in time, a study of Chaucer’s writings from the Middle English
period reveals a good many of the metaphoric patterns outlined above.
As would be expected, the first image of FIRE is also to be found in
medieval literature. The fire symbols in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Hieatt
& Hieatt: 1976) appear to be mostly associated with physiological features
in which heat, as in Lakoff’s examples of Modern English, corresponds to
intense emotion. An example taken from the “Franklin’s Tale” refers to fyr
as passion:
(9) Ye knowen wel, lord, that right as hir desyr

Is to be quiked and lighted of your fyr (310: ll. 321–322)
‘You know well, lord, that just as her desire
Is to be quickened and lighted by your fire’
A very common notion of love in Middle English was also the symbol of unity,
as in the second example in Kövecses’ list, and is often used by Chaucer. The
“Merchant’s Tale” has numerous examples of being united or bound together:
(10) Whan that the preest to yow my body bond (285: l. 948)
‘When the priest bound my body to you’
Unity is a very basic notion of matching partners and is likely to be a universal

trend diachronically. A perusal of historical periods between Middle English
and the modern period would probably reveal other such examples in liter-
ary works. Kövecses (1988: 18) suggests that the unity metaphor goes back at
least to Plato but since then has undergone many changes. The mythological
version implies that unity of two human beings was the notion of originally
being one. Later versions in history embody other kinds of unity in the form
of complementary chemical or physical parts which fit together or in the form
of biological parts living in symbiosis. This kind of unity is also used in recent
expressions relating to how people work together, for example, in which terms
such as physical chemistry are used.
A common notion to all historical periods might be the metaphor of trea-
sure, listed as the third item on the list taken from Kövecses’ data above. The
loved one is considered a precious entity as can be seen in another example

taken from the “Merchant’s Tale”:
(11) Thanne is a wyf the fruit of his tresor (248: l.26)

‘Then a wife is the best part of his treasure’
Related to the idea of treasure is also the concept of gifts which was considered
to come from God:
(12) A wyf is Goddes yifte verraily (244: l.67)

‘A wife is truly a gift of God’
The three models of fire, unity and treasure thus appear to be common no-
tions of love in medieval literature. The fourth correspondence is the LOVE =
NUTRIENT/FOOD metaphor. Chaucer also used this kind of imagery in the
“Merchant’s Tale” when the main character, January, who was advanced in
years, told his friends that he was seeking a wife who had to be very young:
(13) “But o thing warne I yow, my freendes dere;

I wol non old wyf han in no manere;
She shal nat passe twenty yeer, certayn;
Old fish and yong flesh wolde I have ful fayn.
Bet is,” quod he, “a pyk than a pikerel;
And bet than old boef is the tendre veel:
I wol no womman thritty yeer of age –
It is but bene-straw and greet forage” (248–250: ll. 171–178)
“But I warn you of one thing, dear friends; I won’t have any kind of old
wife; she shall not be over twenty, for certain; I would very willingly
have old fish but fresh meat. A pike is better than a pickerel”, he said,
“but tender veal is better than old beef. I don’t want any woman thirty
years of age; that’s nothing but straw and coarse fodder”
The idea of love being equated with food was therefore a clear image in Chau-
cer’s mind. Many expressions also occur with the image of sweetness in the
Canterbury Tales, mariage honey-swete (“The Merchant’s Tale”), in the same
way as modern-day expressions, honey, honey-pie, sugar, and so on. The oth-
er two correspondences on the list above are likewise found in Chaucer. A
LOVE = BLINDNESS model occurs in the “Merchant’s Tale”:
(14) for Love is blind al day and may nat see (258: l. 354)
‘for love is for ever blind and cannot see’
244 Richard Trim
The LOVE = MADNESS metaphor, to denote lack of control in love, can be

found in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”
(15) But Palamon that love destreyneth so,

That wood out of his wit he gooth for wo (69: l. 598)
‘But love afflicted Palamon so much that he was completely out of his
mind’
The examples of fire, unity, treasure, food, blindness and madness thus show
that these images have probably remained in the conceptual systems of the
English language for a long period of time. In accordance with our theories on
diachronic networking, it could be argued that some of Kövecses’ examples
of love have been networked to the conceptual directions of former medieval
models. It should be pointed out at this stage that the existence of such meta-
phors in the modern period could also be due to two other factors in this theory.
The first is that pre-existing metaphors in a language’s history have reinforced
their multiple variations today. The second is that, even if these metaphors
had not existed before, they may very well have come into existence due to the
potential creativity of a given conceptual system mentioned above. There may
therefore be two influences at work: reinforcement of existing metaphors on the
one hand and, on the other, natural creation due to the universal nature of such
long-term metaphors regardless of their activated or latent states beforehand.
An analysis of comparative medieval literature does show that the different
contacts between writers of the time probably had a continuing influence in
notions of medieval courtly love, for instance. The origins of medieval love
metaphors in English point to a Latinate source.
9. Latinate sources of English medieval metaphors
It would be a logical assumption that many present-day English love metaphors

can be traced back through Latinate sources and ultimately to the literature of
Antiquity, given the fact that the latter is a primary source of the English cul-
tural heritage. However, a perusal of early manuscripts also provides evidence
for this fact. Chaucer was strongly influenced by both French and Italian medi-
eval literature. On the one hand, he was influenced by the anonymous allegory
Roman de la Rose, which he was purported to have translated and, on the other,
Italian authors such as Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Various links have been established between the respective works of Chau-
cer and his Italian counterpart Boccaccio. One link has been demonstrated by
the source of the “Franklin’s Tale” being associated with Boccaccio’s Filocolo.
Edwards (1996: 141–162) claims that the source is specifically linked to the
section known as the Love Questions of his work. He views the “Franklin’s
Tale” as a form of cultural translation of the Filocolo and the result is that so-
cial customs of love are thereby transferred.
Likewise, links have been made between the “Merchant’s Tale” and Boccac-
cio’s Decameron. Although scholars have often refuted such a correspondence,
Beidler (1973: 266–284) claims that the plots of specific parts of both stories
are almost identical. Many of the conceptual metaphors used in the range of
love categories nevertheless appear to be the same and incorporate the models
of the time.
Among the long-term metaphor paths, we can find the models of fire and
treasure in the Old French texts of the Roman:
(16) Et tout adés en regardant

Recouverras le feu ardant.
Qui ce qu’il aime plus regarde
Plus alume son cuer et larde (ll. 2343–2346)
‘And while you look at her, you will rekindle the burning fires. The
more you look at the object of your love, the more you open up and set
your heart afire.’
Likewise the concept of treasure linked to the object of love:
(17) Je mens: trop y a chier cheté! (l. 2468)

‘I am telling a lie: it is such a valuable treasure to have!’
The historical links between Chaucer, Boccaccio and Petrarch have been well
documented in the past (see, for example, Wilkins 1963). A number of Kövec-
ses’ long-term models can thus be found in Petrarch’s sonnets:
(18) Canzon, I’ non fu’ mai quel nuvol d’oro

Che poi discese in pretïosa pioggia
Si che ’l foco di Giove in parte spense
Ma fui ben fiamma ch’un bel guardo accense (sonnet 23)
‘O song, I was never that golden cloud that once fell as a precious
shower, so that Jove’s flame was quenched a little, but I have been the
fire that a lovely look kindled’
Some of Kövecses’ list can therefore be retraced to Petrarch’s poetry and an ex-
amination of Chaucer’s metaphors show similar trends due to his close contacts
246 Richard Trim
with French and Italian literature. If we go back further in time, we are able
to see that these models logically originate at the birthplace of our civilization
in Antiquity. Many Latin examples, which ultimately stem from the Ancient
Greek epics, may illustrate their early history but we shall restrict our discus-
sion of the classical period to the FIRE model.
10. Links to Antiquity
In his revival of classical studies, Petrarch actually started writing in Latin as

well as medieval Italian. He became one of the most well-known figures of
the revival which was certainly helped by the fact that he was appointed the
equivalent of the Poet Laureate in Rome in 1341. In addition, Petrarch de-
rived his definition of courtly love from Ovid, adding his own personal expe-
rience to it (Thomson 1959: 324), and an analysis of Ovid’s work shows that
this was one of the main sources of the types of medieval metaphors we have
been discussing. The FIRE (HEAT) = PASSION and ANGER metaphor routes
seem to be clearly linked to classical sources. Ovid’s work, Metamorphoses,
has an equivalent not only for these models but for many other long-term paths.
Kaufhold (1997: 66–71) describes some of these metaphors in relation to spe-
cific characters in the epic poem such as Tereus who nurtures and sustains the
fires of his passion (Latin: ignes ipse suos nutrit) with thoughts of Philomela.
Procne “boils over in her seething rage” (exaestuat) and “burns” with anger
(ardet) at Tereus’s deeds. The figurative fire becomes an almost objective real-
ity when Procne feels like burning the royal house with Tereus in it.
Kaufhold’s analysis also highlights the fact that many of these metaphor
models often combine two characteristics such as FIRE = PASSION with
FIRE = FOOD. Ovid combines both food and fire: Tereus boils with passion
which continues to feed (nutrit) his desires. As the title Metamorphoses sug-
gests, Ovid’s work is a constant play between the literal and the figurative
world. In the same way as Procne wishes to burn the royal house after feeling
the fire of anger, the fire and food metaphor precedes the preparation of a
banquet scene.
Another image of fire used in Ovid’s work is a funerary one. Just as fire was
used more often for religious purposes, within the context of the symbolisa-
tion of the flames of hell during the classical and medieval periods, it was also
associated with torches used at funerary settings (de funere raptas) (Kauf-
hold 1997: 67). This additional use of the image would thus appear to be more
specific to that period and raises the issue of those conceptual and linguistic
metaphors being more limited in duration.
11. Short-term paths and diachronic salience
In our discussion of the effects of salience on long and short-term paths of

historical metaphors, we shall look at two major aspects: a) the influence of cul-
tural and, in this case, literary thought on metaphor evolution and b) the aspect
of what we shall term here “internal semantic structures” of the language. By
the second term, we shall refer to frequency rates and semasiological change.
With regard to the first aspect of cultural and literary factors, a number of
metaphor models occur in the writings of Chaucer that suggest they are more
restricted to the Middle Ages. This is to be expected since attitudes towards
love were often very different at that time. One of the first concepts which
springs to mind, when thinking of the medieval period, is courtly love. The
features of this type of love have been fully discussed in literary criticism. An
aspect which is less clear is the extent to which aspirations about courtly love
have continued into modern society.
This point is important if we wish to differentiate between obsolete meta-
phor creation in time-specific paths and fluctuating diachronic salience. Con-
ceptual metaphors more specific to the medieval period would appear to be
those equating love with, for example, subservience (11), law (12) and pain
(13):
(19) Servant in love and lord in mariage (“Franklin’s Tale”, 298: l. 65)
(20) Unnethe mighte they the statut holde

In which that they were bounden unto me (“Wife of Bath’s Tale”, 190:
l. 198)
‘They were scarcely able to keep the statute by which they were bound
to me’
(21) Love hath his fyry dart so brenningly

Y-striked thurgh my trewe careful herte (“Knight’s Tale”, 74: ll.
706–707)
‘Love has so ardently thrust his fiery dart through my faithful, troubled
heart’
The notions of servants in love and amorous legal aspects are not a common
part of everyday language today but were certainly a part of courtly love of
the Middle Ages. All of these examples can be related to similar metaphors in
other medieval European literature, as in the French and Italian texts above,
but they probably do not go further back in time except for the association of
248 Richard Trim
pain in (13) which had another implication in Antiquity and has also continued
today in a different light.
It is difficult to ascertain the exact relationship between particular love meta-
phors and cultural models characteristic of the period in which the metaphors
are used. This would require a lot more literary analysis in the case of Chau-
cer’s metaphors as well as further research. However, several comments could
be made here.
The first is that the use of metaphors in literature represent a “within-do-
mains” variant, and that Chaucer may have used particular love metaphors for a
special effect. It is, of course, impossible to know how many of these metaphors
would have been used in ordinary spoken conversation at the time. We therefore
have the literary versus spoken language dichotomy to contend with and, since
we only have literary texts as evidence for metaphors during earlier historical
periods, we need to look at the relevant authors’ attitudes towards their writing.
With regard to Chaucer’s metaphors designated as “short-term” above, a start-
ing point would be to look at his attitudes towards love and marriage, an issue
which has been long debated in literary criticism of the medieval period. A useful
comparison would be to analyse the notions of subservience and law in the ser-
vant and statute metaphors. These are employed in two different types of genres
found in the Franklin’s and Wife of Bath’s narratives of the Canterbury Tales.
The first involves courtly love and its “high” ideals, although Chaucer seems to
hesitate about the inclusion of subservience in the following context on marriage:
(22) Here one may see a humble, wise agreement:

she has thus accepted her servant and her lord,
servant in love and lord in marriage;
he was, then, both in lordship and in servitude.
servitude? No, but in the higher state of lordship,
since he had both his lady and his love;
his lady, certainly, and his wife too,
which is in accordance with the law of love (p. 298, ll. 296–303).
The second appears to use irony and forms part of the bawdy, slapstick com-
edies which developed during the Middle Ages. A good example of this genre
is also used in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The reference of a “statute” in the
Wife’s tale is a spouse’s obligation to satisfy a partner in physical love as the
following context shows:
(23) Now, sirs, I’ll go on with my tale. – As ever I hope to drink wine or ale,
I’ll tell the truth; of those husbands that I had,
three of them were good, and rich, and old;

they were scarcely able to keep the statute
by which they were bound to me –
you know quite well what I mean by this, by heaven!
So help me God, I laugh when I think
how pitifully I made them work at night (p. 190, ll. 193–202).
The “higher” ideals of courtly love originate from troubadours’ love lyrics.
The second variant can be traced back through different genres originating in
Cicero’s argumentum, a “fictitious event which nevertheless could have hap-
pened, as in the case of comedies” (Davenport 2004: 11), to the French fabliaux
of the late Middle Ages that were parodies of romance in their treatment of
love and sex. However, the different types of literary criticism on Chaucer’s
attitude to these topics have often made the issue unclear. As a result, his use
of metaphor may also cast a doubt on its interpretation and could thus reinforce
“within-culture” variation.
Literary critics often feel that Chaucer was trying to express his ideas on
love and marriage through his writings. However, he probably tried to please
both the aristocracy and the new social ideas of the bourgeoisie which were
developing in urban areas such as London during the 14th century. In reality, he
may have been hesitant to accept the type of perfection, such as chastity in love
and marriage, that the Church was teaching, raising the argument that he was
“ahead of his time” (Howard 1960: 232).
The definition of courtly love itself has also been a problematic one. It has
been suggested that the rejection of courtly ideals by invoking irony or humour
entails the notion of the medieval concept fine amor used in medieval liter-
ary works, although this is controversial and fine amor could also be simply
considered as a variant of courtly love (Burnley 1980: 129). Scholars also dif-
fer on the actual purpose of courtly love: “The questions of whether courtly
love served as an actual social code; whether adultery was necessary; whether
marriage was a goal of courtly service; indeed, whether the entire concept
was an ironic satire or parody – all of these are questions which are largely
unresolved” (Boardman 1977: 568–569). In a narrative as chivalrous as the
“Knight’s Tale”, for example, it is felt that there is a clear exploitation of the
social inadequacy of courtly ideals.
Whatever the definitions of courtly love may be, Clubb suggests scales of
medieval love from “low” to “high” with reference to the Decameron: a) simple
lust, b) love with a total lack of affection; c) courteous banter with elegant lyrics
and d) the highest level which adds virtue to desire, tenderness and self-denial
(1960: 188). We could therefore assume that the distinction between slapstick
250 Richard Trim
love comedy and traditional concepts of courtly love, according to his view,
join up or overlap somewhere along his scale of medieval love.
One major conclusion from this brief survey is that attitudes to love in the
Middle Ages, at least in literary works, appear to be very varied. Somewhere
along the line, a metaphor may either have had a serious intention or was iron-
ic in nature. Conceptual metaphors of love such as legality and subservience
clearly existed in the culture of the period. Poets and writers, however, were
probably coming to terms with specific frames of conceptualisation and seri-
ous treatment or parodies of love reflected authors’ views towards the subject.
At the same time, Chaucer would probably have handled material from con-
temporary thinking according to his own views with an eye on different sec-
tions of readership. This is evident in the role of prologues as in the “Miller’s
Tale”. By including both comic and bawdy material in the story, Chaucer dis-
tanced himself in the prologue from the relevant story-teller, in this case the
Miller, who is described rather pejoratively as a “churl”. The reader is invited to
go onto another tale if it is thought not to be suitable (whoever does not like it,
turn over the page and choose another tale): “and therefore, whoso list it nat y-
here, turne over the leef and chese another tale”, “Miller’s Prologue”, ll. 68–69,
(see Davenport 2004: 34).
With regard to general principles of synchronic “within-variation” concep-
tualisation, metaphor interpretation can vary even within one category such
as serious intent, in contrast to the effects of parody. The result is that it may
lead to ambiguity. Deignan (1997: 28–29) observes that words such as twinge
and stab, particularly in describing women’s desire in modern fiction, can also
represent pleasant sensations:
(24) I had felt a twinge of desire.

A stab of pleasure, or its anticipation, pierced her. She felt weak with
desire.
This modern conceptual metaphor of PAIN = LOVE reminds us of the pain

that should be felt in medieval courtly love, which was also considered to be
prestigious. This raises the issue of the diachronic dimension. Exactly how did
changes in cultural models take place?
This is another complex area but one basic feature is apparent: it seems that
attitudes towards metaphoric imagery change through time (see Padel [2002]
for an interesting account of metaphoric imagery in Ancient Greece). One
thought-provoking idea in Padel’s work is that, although we may have the same
metaphoric images today as the Greeks had in the 5th century BC, we may not
actually feel the perception of these images in the same way as the Greeks did.
We may perceive the effects of metaphoric mapping but we do not necessarily

experience the same physiological effect. Padel makes the analogy with the
commercial field regarding the passion for spices in the early medieval period.
This passion, in many cases, slowly disappeared in many parts of Europe, but
the commercial trade routes and networks remained in place.
The Ancient Greeks, according to Padel, did not distinguish literal from
metaphoric meaning in the same way as we do. They often expressed their
ideas through the medium of metaphor without thinking they were metaphors.
Kittay (1987: 19) supports this view. A contemporary reader would construe
the Homeric phrase the rosy-fingered dawn as metaphorical. However, the An-
cient Greeks believed the dawn to be a goddess and Homer may have conceived
this image as a literal one.
With regard to love in Indo-European languages, it is clear that cultural
models changed but parallel models both in serious intent and parody appeared
to continue from Antiquity to modern times. An example of attitudes to change
in the PAIN = LOVE model appeared to develop according to the following
pattern: PAIN = CONTEMPT (Antiquity), PAIN = ESTEEM (Middle Ages),
PAIN = UNDESIRABLENESS (Modern period). In the pre-Christian, hedo-
nistic times of Ancient Greece, love was far from being considered as an object
of suffering; rather, it was an attitude to be avoided at all costs and even held
in contempt. This evidently changed completely in the medieval period under
the strong influence of Christian thought. Suffering through love was a high
ideal and perhaps the main objective. Good examples of this can be found in
the poetry of Petrarch who personally suffered from unrequited love for a long
period of his life. Since Chaucer was also influenced by the work of Petrarch,
a comparison of the two poets reveals that Chaucer incorporated some of the
latter’s metaphors into his own work. In modern times, pain induced by love
is probably considered to be undesirable by most people, as reflected in many
contemporary songs. An outcome of this is that the subservient models of love
in the Middle Ages were often a reference to the authority of God and, as this
slowly diminished, cultural models in the form of pain, etc., were modified
through time.
To a certain extent, however, courtly love has continued in modern Western
society. As Burns (2001: 23) puts it: “the legacy of courtly love […] has been
widely absorbed into American popular culture, attested variously in love-
lorn laments of country-western song lyrics or in chivalrous valentines where
beloved ladies are touted as having ultimate control over the male’s delicate
heartstrings”. It is regarded more as a romantic type of love, similar to Kövec-
ses’ distinction between ideal (romantic) and typical models in modern Ameri-
can society (1988: 56–83). Within this redefinition of courtly love, metaphor
252 Richard Trim
models such as LOVE = PAIN today are seen to be undesirable, whereas the
medieval model was regarded in high esteem.
The medieval courtly ideal was, for example, to suffer, as in the notion of
unrequited love, and a form of conceptualization which was closely related
to religious love. This is very different from the pre-Christian era in which
the pain of love was actually held in contempt. The trend of the conceptual
metaphor of pain has therefore gone through chronological phases of contempt,
esteem and undesirability. It has continued to exist as a physiological model but
in different forms.
This raises the question of active and latent stages dependent on social atti-
tudes of the historical period in question and their respective level of salience. A
certain section of the language community may still believe in courtly ideals in
which love does entail subservience and legal aspects, in which case the concep-
tual metaphor paths have not died out but the level of salience would be lower.
The comic side of this development can be seen in modern productions of mu-
sicals such as “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” in the production “Camelot”:
(25) Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?

Where are all those adoring daring boys?
Where’s the knight pining so for me?
He leaps to death in woe for me?
Oh where are a maiden’s simple joys?
However, the types of linguistic metaphors used by Chaucer in these models

are less likely. The pain model has probably died out in the form of esteem but
continues in another form. In this way, cultural symbols of love originating in
Antiquity, such as Cupid’s arrows, have continued in love songs and Valentine
cards today with changing forms of symbolisation.
If we now turn to the aspect of internal semantic structures, the question
arises as to the importance of frequency in relation to salience at any given
point in time. A tentative suggestion here is that, although a higher level of fre-
quency often correlates with synchronic and diachronic salience, as in the case
of Traugott & Dasher’s (2002: 34 ff) model of the invited inferencing theory
of semantic change outlined above, its frequency in the language community
as a whole may not necessarily be an important factor in its interpretation or
salience of a given text. If a given cultural context, for example, makes it clear
to a reader that an innovative metaphor in a literary text refers to a particular
context, it may have a relatively high frequency in the text in question but is
probably not used by the public at large. Furthermore, it may not actually have
a high frequency in the text but happens to be particularly salient regarding
the contents. However, it may have a high frequency ration in comparison with
other polysemes.
So far, we have been considering salience to mean how “common” or how
“strange-sounding” an item may appear in a language community. There are,
however, different approaches as to its definition. In the field of diachronic pro-
totype semantics, Geeraerts refers to salience as the prototypical weighting of
an item in a given category. We are therefore taking into account the language’s
internal semantics in this case. Semantic change can take place due to evolving
structures in semasiology (polysemy) or onomasiology (synonymy). The for-
mer, for example, can take place through interlocking and overlapping readings
of attributes and there are differences in structural weight as in the frequent
loss of peripheral meanings (Geeraerts 1997: 23–24). The result is that certain
meanings are likely to have a higher frequency compared to others in the same
category and that patterns of semasiological load, as a term given to this type
of feature, would indicate how definitions of words can evolve through time.
It has been claimed that this prototypical approach to meaning change would
provide dictionary users greater insight into the histories of words (Molina
2003: 1–22).
To provide some answers on the diachronic salience of love metaphors us-
ing this approach, a considerable amount of additional corpus research on data
frequency and meaning ratios would be needed. A number of possible patterns
may, however, occur.
The semasiological load of long-term metaphors would generally be expect-
ed to be high in order for metaphor paths to survive. A random search using
the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (CMEPV - University of Michi-
gan: www.hti.umich.edu/c/cme) comes up with a number of results concerning
some (but not all) of the items mentioned above. The term fyr (ex. 1) in the
Canterbury Tales has 32 occurrences, 11 of which are linked to love. These
statistics would need further verification with other corpora but, if it is correct,
it means that the semasiological load (S. L.) compared to other metaphoric or
non-metaphoric meanings in the category stands at approx. 33%. The term
bond (ex. 2) has 19 occurrences, 10 of which are linked to love, and therefore
an S. L. of approx. 50%. Tresor (ex. 3) has 16 occurrences with 4 linked to love
and an S. L. of 25%. Yifte (ex. 4) has 10 occurrences with 5 linked to love and
thus an S. L. of 50%.
The nature of time-specific metaphors in this respect is a little more com-
plex since they may be related to two different types of “within-culture” vari-
ation. On the one hand, they may be the result of the cultural context of the
time, such as in the case of the servant in love in courtly love, or of individual
innovation, as is possibly the case of statute. In the first item, the CMEPV
254 Richard Trim
cites the term servant in the Canterbury Tales as having 24 occurrences, 8

of which are linked to love, i. e. an S. L. of 33%. However, statute only has 3
occurrences, all of which are linked to the duty of physical love in marriage
outlined above. On this basis, its S. L. would be 100%. This suggests that it
could be a comic effect used by Chaucer and therefore a personal innovation.
However, the term can be highly salient due to its comic effect, even though
its frequency is very low.
In order to have a true diachronic analysis, S. L.s of two historical periods
would be required using comparable contexts and the whole referential range.
Statute no doubt had a number of different uses during the Middle Ages and
this particular use of the term probably has, in reality, a relatively low sema-
siological load. If it is simply a comic effect, it could be attributed to the type
of peripheral meanings which Geeraerts (1997: 20) suggests is frequently lost
during semantic change. The true relationship between frequency and sema-
siological load in diachronic salience undoubtedly requires further research.
12. Conclusions
If we draw together the different threads discussed so far involving network-

ing theory, how can we summarise principles of metaphor evolution within a
cognitive framework?
It does appear that a large part of our figurative language evolves in set
directions. Many associated concepts are linked to base mapping procedures
which act as “building blocks” for the development of metaphoric networks.
An analysis of many base concepts reveals such common denominators in the
form of conceptual metaphors. It is thus important to distinguish between a
conceptual metaphor, such as LOVE = FIRE, and a linguistic metaphor, such
as she is his latest flame.
Both types of metaphor can be long or short-term. By “short-term” is also
meant those diachronic paths of figurative language which do not necessarily
last for ever. However, some metaphors, which are physiologically based, do
appear to have an infinite characteristic such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY.
These paths follow directions which are cognitively acceptable in a given
conceptual environment, otherwise they will not generate future metaphors
along the same lines. An original metaphor may lose its potential to create
new metaphors if it does not fit into the conceptual system. This can happen
through borrowing. An example is Humbley’s example of genetic “splicing”
(2004: 199–212). This term originally came from American scientists who also
used to use the term for splicing film in making their own home movies. This
was apparently wrongly translated into French épissure (used for the splicing
of ropes) rather than into montage, which would have conveyed the original
“splice” metaphor in English. The choice of the wrong concept in borrowing,
perhaps due to a lack of knowledge about the source culture, would therefore
prevent further metaphor creation taking place in the same direction.
Given a specific conceptual environment, paths may be of long or short du-
ration according to different social and cultural aspects. The fact that a path
exists at a given point in time would suggest that it could also be potentially
used at a time when it categorised as obsolete. We therefore have different
phases of activity and dormancy which vary according to conceptual and lin-
guistic metaphors. The former tend to change at a slower rate while the latter
are logically far more varied. There may be an infinite number of linguistic
paths linked to a conceptual metaphor.
A feature which can often occur in conceptual metaphors is that the mapping
procedure undergoes a change in collocations. We have seen that the notion of
swelling was originally used in the anger metaphor in Old English. Swelling in
the emotions has not disappeared but has tended to change to other emotions in
English such as in the swelling of pride.
Furthermore, an important factor in the two categories of conceptual and
linguistic metaphors is the notion of salience. This is a feature which is hard to
measure and appears to fluctuate with time. It is not always clear if a concep-
tual metaphor has completely died out or whether it would still form part of the
conceptualization of a section of the language community.
These models may be demonstrated by the networks of love metaphors
which have been part of European literature since time immemorial. Pres-
ent-day English metaphors, within the framework of long-term paths, can be
traced back to English literature of the Middle Ages. Literary studies show that
there have been links between English medieval literature and other European
works at the time, which form part of our cultural heritage since the Roman
and Greek epics of Antiquity. A comparison of metaphors between medieval
and ancient languages via a Latinate route reveals the links and diachronic net-
works. At the same time, certain conceptual metaphors, depending on social
and religious aspects of the time, tend to be more salient during one period
rather than another. Such is the case of medieval courtly love and the concep-
tual metaphors of subservience or law which produce linguistic metaphors in
Chaucer’s works that sound less salient today.
Conceptual networking thus represents one theoretical framework in which
the evolution of metaphor may be studied. It allows us to establish principles
of regularity which depend on the different parameters discussed in this study.
Although not all metaphor creation may be included in networking, this pro-
256 Richard Trim
cess probably covers a very large proportion of our everyday metaphors. As in

the case of the analysis of love, it helps to explain where they have come from.
This basic construct would no doubt serve as a useful tool for further research
in the metaphor history of other semantic fields.
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Cognitive historical approaches to emotions: Pride
Małgorzata Fabiszak and Anna Hebda
Abstract
Emotions are complex human experiences that have aroused much interdisciplinary
interest. They have been studied by psychologists, historians and linguists. Stearns and
Stearns (1988: 7) introduce a distinction between emotional experience and the socio-
psychological construal of emotions, and go on to say that “it becomes increasingly
obvious that emotional standards – what [we] the editors have urged be labelled ‘emo-
tionology’ – change more rapidly and completely than emotional experience does”.
Emotionology understood as a set of beliefs, scenarios or cognitive models for under-
standing and expressing emotions in socially transparent and acceptable ways is closely
linked to values and is shared by a given community. Investigations of these links
from a historical perspective are represented by several scholars: C. Stearns (1988)
on the onset of emotional control in the Enlightenment; Gillis (1988) on love in Early
Modern times and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; P. Stearns (1988) on the
rise of sibling jealousy; and Demos (1996) on guilt and shame in Early New England.
Within cognitive linguistics (CL) the lead in the study of emotions goes to Kövecses
(1986, 1990, 1998), who in his numerous studies is setting trends in CL approaches to
emotionology.
Historical linguists have also shown steady interest in reconstructing emotional sce-
narios on the basis of the extant historical texts (notably Diller 1996, 2002a, 2002b). Some
historical linguists have employed CL tools to the study of past emotionologies (Tissari
2001, 2003; Fabiszak 2001, 2002). This kind of work shows the mutual benefits for both
disciplines that can result from conducting historical linguistic analyses within a cognitive
framework. On the one hand, the reconstructed scenarios may show how the emphasis on
different aspects of the construal of emotions changed over time as an effect of the change
in social values. This social dimension of emotions seems to have been so far neglected in
CL, as pointed out by Tissari (2006a). However, with the new stress on the socio-cultural
part of the experiential bases of human conceptualisation of the world (Bernárdez 2007;
Sinha 2005; Zlatev 2005) historical linguistic studies have much to contribute to CL.
The present paper will be bi-partite. The first part will offer a revision of the state-
of-the-art of cognitive historical approaches to emotions. The second part will pres-
ent a case study of pride in medieval English. Old English data will come from the
Toronto Corpus and Middle English data from the Helsinki Corpus. The analysis will
be genre-specific and will utilize the methodology developed in Fabiszak and Hebda
(2007) which is a cognitively informed lexico-grammatical analysis. We hope that the
investigation will show how the scenario for pride in medieval times differed from the
contemporary one and contribute to the better understanding of the metonymic sources
of metaphorical mappings.
262 Małgorzata Fabiszak and Anna Hebda
1. Cognitive linguistics and the social dimension of language
Cognitive linguistics originated as a strongly mentalistic approach focusing

on the human conceptual system and attempting to incorporate the findings of
cognitive psychology into linguistic theory. Its major premise has been that the
cognitive processes discovered for perception and cognition in general should
underlie those mental processes which are responsible for language compre-
hension and production. It rejected the Chomskyan claim about the existence
of a language-specific module separate from other cognitive processes (e. g.
Langacker 1987).
Conceptual metaphor theory, a branch of cognitive linguistics, emphasized
that abstract thinking is metaphorically based and that conceptual metaphors
are bodily based. The most recent developments in cognitive linguistics call
for introducing the social dimension into the investigation of conceptual se-
mantics. Sinha (2005), for instance, proposes the notion of distributed cog-
nition and stresses that meaning is not only constructed individually in the
speaker’s or hearer’s private mental space, but that it is actually co-operatively
constructed by discourse participants in a contextualised social, linguistic and
extra-linguistic act of communication.
Bernardez (2007) takes this proposal a step further and attempts to incor-
porate Bordieu’s notion of “habitus” into the theory of conceptualisation. He
stresses the role of the meaning constructed in the socio-historical cultural
process and calls such an enriched understanding of meaning “synergic cogni-
tion”. He summarises the views on cognition in the following diagram:
– “Autonomous” cognition (AC)

– AC + “body” ĺ embodied cognition (EC)
– EC + “situation” ĺ situated cognition (SC)
– SC + “other individuals/tools” ĺ distributed cognition (DC)
– DC + “socio-cultural historical development” ĺ synergic cognition (SC)
(Bernardez 2007: 33)
A selection of papers published in Kristiansen et al. (2006) investigates the

current applications and potential future areas of study originating from the
cognitive linguistic approach. They all stress a need for empirical research
testing the possibility of applying theoretical findings to real linguistic usage
(see in particular Geeraerts 2006; Rohrer 2006; Gibbs and Perlman 2006 and
Barnden 2006).
One such possibility is offered by corpus-based studies, which investigate
and describe patterns of behaviour of attested linguistic examples. In such
Cognitive historical approaches to emotions 263
analyses, based on historical linguistic corpora, it is possible also to retrieve

some cultural knowledge, for example, in so far as text genres are identified.
Text genres provide information on the text producer, text recipient and the
goal that motivated text production, which all together combine to expand our
perspective on the extra-linguistic, cultural context of word use.
Conceptual metaphor theorists from the very start underscored the impor-
tance of culture in cognition. For example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 4–5) in
their discussion of the conceptual metaphor argument is war and hypotheti-
cal argument is dance showed that different cultures facilitate the formation
of different conceptual metaphors, which, in turn, result in various forms of so-
cial interaction. Despite this claim, most conceptual metaphor theory analyses
that we are aware of have focussed primarily on the conceptual representation
of meanings, proposing idealised cognitive models, frames or scenarios focus-
sing on the role conceptual metaphor plays in these structures. It seems that
the major aim of these analyses has been to emphasize the role of conceptual
metaphor in the understanding of abstract notions in order to substantiate the
claim of its ubiquity, not to elucidate the meaning of these notions as such.1
For example Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), Kövec-
ses (1986, 2000) adapt the stimulus – emotion labelling – emotional reaction
scenario for understanding emotions, describe the possible causes of particular
emotions and the physiological (even if folk theoretical) reactions to emotional
arousal, but the thrust of their analyses is on the metaphorical conceptualisa-
tion of these abstract notions. They do not try to situate their investigations in a
broader social or historical context. They neither elaborate on the social func-
tion of metaphorically understood emotions, nor on their historical grounding.2
More recent work by Kövecses (2005) does indeed do justice to the role of
culture and cultural variation in the study of metaphor. But it is not aimed at
explaining the meaning of emotion concepts. Emotion concepts are considered
as structured by conceptual metaphors and the focus of the study is not on how
our understanding of culture and metaphor contribute to our understanding
of emotions, but on which aspects of conceptual metaphors are most likely to
show cultural variation.
Our belief is that historical linguistics, with its longstanding tradition of ana-
lysing the intertwining of the external and internal history of a language can
enhance conceptual metaphor theory-informed research with respect to these
1 Murphy (1997) criticizes conceptual metaphor theory analysts for not attempting
non-metaphorical explanation of polysemy.
2 Taylor (2002) also criticizes conceptual metaphor theory for its complete ahistori-
cism.
two aspects. The present paper will focus on emotions. First we will present
a short and necessarily selective review of diachronic linguistic approaches to
emotions and then present a case study of pride in Old English.
2. A selective review of historical linguistic approaches to emotions
Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995) argue for a historical perspective in culture

oriented linguistic studies and present their analysis of the grounding of the
contemporary conceptual metaphor emotion is a fluid in a container in
the humour theory originating in Hippocrates, developed by Galen and popular
in medicine as well as common knowledge of the functioning of human body
and personality through the Middle Ages and Renaissance (see, for example,
Ben Johnson’s Induction to Every man out of his humour). They also point out
that the status of certain conceptualisations may shift from literal – reflecting
the workings of nature as it was understood at a given point in history, to meta-
phorical – when the previously held theories become undermined or falsified.3
Diller (1996 and later publications) stresses the importance of genre in the
study of emotions. Kövecses (2000) also presents a genre-sensitive study of
love in popular glossy magazines, but the majority of analyses in his book refer
to American English in general. He does, however, identify the sources of his
evidence, i. e. interviews conducted by his students with white middle-class
Americans.
Diller has proposed a number of historical analyses of emotion words, such
as joy, mirth, wynne in Middle English and in Old English (1996), or the shift
of meaning of happy between the 14th and 19th centuries (Diller 2008). In the
former investigation he notices that the words show some genre specificity and
puts forward a tentative hypothesis concerning Anglo-Saxon emotional cul-
ture. In the latter he observes the shift from “the favourable external conditions
one is in due to chance” through “conditions one actually values” to “valuing
the conditions one is under”.
Gevaert (2002) investigated the lexical field of anger in Old English and
combined historical semantic, prototype semantic and cognitive semantic per-
spectives. She attempted to show to what extent the conceptualisation of anger
was culturally determined. She discovered that wrath appeared in biblical texts
(with one exception, when it appeared in the Lives of Saints) and was most
3 Zinken (2004) in his discussion of BartmiĔski (e. g. 1999) shows that what the eth-
nographers may consider symbolic representations of gods, for the participants of a
given culture may be quite literally gods themselves.
frequently attributed to God. She also noticed that 70% of anger lexemes
used before 850 AD alliterated so that their choice could have been stylisti-
cally rather than purely semantically related. She also found out that in the
period 850–950 AD both type and token frequency of the conceptual domain
of heat and wrong emotion increased significantly, while fierceness and
affliction, common in the earlier period, decreased. She linked this develop-
ment to the influence of the translations from Latin begun by King Alfred and
continued by his followers (such translations constituted 84 % of the corpus).
Between 950–1050 Gevaert observed a reversal of the trend, which she called
a “redressing of the balance” (Gevaert 2002: 276), and related it to the decrease
in the number of translations from Latin and an increase in the number of
original vernacular texts.
The conclusions from Gevaert (2002) are further developed in Geeraerts
and Gevaert (2008). They analyse the compounds with Old English KHRUWH and
PǀG and various lexical realizations of the concept of anger. Their results
stress the importance of onomasiological studies, which are indispensible for
the understanding of the embodied nature of metaphors as well as their cultural
variants.
Tissari has conducted numerous conceptual-metaphor-informed historical
linguistic studies of emotions. For example, Tissari (2006a) investigated the
cognitive scenario of VKDPH in the period 1418–1991. She identified certain
physiological reactions which gave rise to metonymies, e. g. interference
with normal mental functioning (stress, forgetfulness) for shame, in-
creased heart rate for shame and redness in the face for shame. She
noted that metonymies facilitated the construction of metaphors, e. g. shame
is an illness/a physical injury and shame is in the front/face/heart.
She also emphasized that emotions should be treated both as a cognitive and a
social phenomenon.
In her study on pride, Tissari (2006b) analyzes the change in its conceptuali-
sation in the same period as she did for shame. She discovers a shift of mean-
ing from the moral domain to the emotion domain. In the earliest investigated
period the lexeme denotes a sin, later it is considered as either vice or virtue,
to become more clearly an emotion term in PDE. Tissari notes changes not
only in its status and evaluation, but also in the possible triggers of pride. One
interesting theme is that of military pride, present already in Shakespeare, and,
related to it, national pride, which seems to have become one of the three most
frequent types in the 19th century and today.
In the present study we will try to shed some light on the behaviour of the
words from the lexical field of SULGH in Old English. Before we do this, though,
we would like to summarise what methods historical linguists have used in
their study of emotions. First, all the semantic studies were based on historical
language corpora, as, for obvious reasons, they could not be intuition-guided
to the extent that studies concerning Present-Day English are. They are not
so much concept-based asking how a given emotion is expressed in language
or to paraphrase Kövecses (2000) “How do Americans conceptualise love?”,
but rather they concentrate on particular lexical items (e. g. onomasiological
studies of Tissari [2003, 2006a and 2006b] on love, shame, pride; Fabiszak
and Hebda [2007] on shame and guilt) or on lexical fields of words referring
to a particular “universal” emotion (e. g. more semasiologically oriented stud-
ies Diller [1996] on joy; Fabiszak [2001] on joy, Fabiszak [2002] on anger;
Gevaert [2002] on anger). All of these historical cognitive studies conducted
genre-sensitive collocational analysis to arrive at emotional scenarios and to
posit the metonymies and the metaphors structuring them. Finally, they all
attempted to link the observed changes with the socio-cultural background.
Some also indicated how the described conceptualisations might influence the
socialisation pattern of the period.
3. The selection of pride lexemes and data source
The original design was to investigate the lexeme pryd*/pryt*/prut*/prud*4 in

its various forms in the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dia-
lectal (henceforth Helsinki Corpus) and to describe its meaning and the role
of the concept in Anglo-Saxon society. The choice of the corpus was dictated
by its genre division, and also by the results of our previous study into shame
and guilt which has yielded very promising results (Fabiszak and Hebda 2007).
However, there were only 2 occurrences of pryd*/pryt*/prut*/prud* in the Old
English part of the Helsinki Corpus. Thus, we consulted The Dictionary of Old
English (henceforth DOE) Corpus, which rendered 45 results. As a result, our
hypotheses concerning the use of the lexeme pryd*/pryt*/prut*/prud* will be
based on the DOE Corpus. We have also consulted the Old English Thesau-
rus for related words and extended our search with the three most common
synonyms: oferhygd*/oferhyd*, wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc*, and RIHUPƝW* glossed
as ‘pride, haughtiness, arrogance, vainglory’. The qualitative analysis of the
results of the searches in the Helsinki Corpus suggested gielp*/gelp*/gylp*/
gilp* ‘boast’ as an additional, metonymically motivated word for pride. In this
way, our study was originally planned as an onomasiological investigation of
4 The wildcard * stands for all the potential endings of the given form. We have built
our analyses on all word categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
pride, in part concerning the Old English (OE) period, shifted towards a lim-
ited semasiological study of selected lexemes denoting pride. Before, however,
we analyse the corpus data, we will turn to the Oxford English Dictionary
(henceforth OED) to see what it reveals about the etymology of the lexemes
pride < OE SUшG, yelp < OE gielp and wlonk < OE wlanc.
4. The development of senses of pride, yelp and wlonk as attested

in the Oxford English Dictionary
The earliest readings attested in OED of the term SUшG are clearly negative
and involve (i) ‘a high, esp. an excessively high, opinion of one’s own worth or
importance which gives rise to a feeling or attitude of superiority over others;
inordinate self-esteem’ (including “the first of the seven deadly sins”), (ii) ‘ar-
rogant, haughty, or overbearing behaviour, demeanour, or treatment of others,
esp. as exhibiting an inordinately high opinion of oneself’, as well as (iii) ‘mag-
nificence, splendour; pomp, ostentation, display’, as illustrated below:
(i) OE Homily: Be Biscophadum (Cleo. B.xiii) in A. S. Napier Wulfstan

(1883) 178 Se ðe for his prydan gode nele hyran.
(ii) OE tr. Chrodegang of Metz Regula Canonicorum (Corpus Cambr. 191)
lxxix. 323 And eow gebyrað þæt ge framion swiðor þonne ge wealdon
mid pryton.
(iii) OE tr. Chrodegang of Metz Regula Canonicorum (Corpus Cambr. 191)
lii. 281 And gif reafes pryto synn nære, nateshwon sanctus Petrus an
his ærendgewryte wifum ne styrde reafa wlences, þa he þus cwæð, ‘Ne
gescryde ge eow mid deorwurðum reafe.’
Sense (ii) has been widely discussed in relation to the morality plays of the 14th
century, when it was considered an attempt to undermine the God-given social
hierarchy. This idea will be discussed in more detail in Section 7 of this paper.
The first attestation of a positive sense of the lexeme pride dates back to the 13th
century and reads (iv) ‘honour, glory’:
(iv) c1275 (?a1200) /$‫ڻ‬$021 Brut (Calig.) 4176 Scullen alle mine Bruttes
mid baldere prute liðen to Lundene.
This sense will be elaborated on later in a terms of military and national pride
(Sections 5, 6 and 7).
The 14th century witnesses a considerable extension of the core meaning of

pride, which, more and more often, seems to pertain to an outward display of
one’s affluence or prominence. The term in question now comes to cover (v) ‘a
consciousness of what befits, is due to, or is worthy of oneself or one’s position;
self-respect; self-esteem, esp. of a legitimate or healthy kind or degree’, (vi) ‘a
person of whom, or thing of which, any person or group of people is proud; that
which causes a feeling of pride in its possessor; (hence) the foremost, best, or
most distinguished of a class, country, etc.’, (vii) ‘love of display or ostentation’,
(viii) ‘magnificent, splendid, or ostentatious adornment or ornamentation’, (ix)
‘proud or exalted position or status’, and (x) ‘vitality, mettle, or spirit in an ani-
mal, esp. a horse’, as follows from the following:
(v) c1325 (c1300) Chron. Robert of Gloucester (Calig. A. 11) 3393 9RUìH
EUXWRQVQROGHXRUSUXWHDIWHUìHHUOGR9RUKHQDVQR‫ݤ‬WNLQJ ìHUXRUH
ìHZRUVHKRPFRPWR.
(vi) c1330 (?a1300) Arthour & Merlin (Auch.) (1973) 641 þe deuels..fel out
of heuen Wiþ her pride, Lucifer.
(viii) c1350 How Good Wife taught her Daughter (Emmanuel) 108 Mikel
schame beo hem wourth..þat maket here lordes pouere with here mi-
chele pride.
(ix) a1393 GOWER Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) IV. 1313 The Sadles were of
such a Pride..So riche syh sche nevere non.
(x) a1300 in C. Brown Eng. Lyrics 13th Cent. (1932) 70 þeyh he were so
riche mon as henry vre kyng, And al so veyr as absalon..Al were sone
his prute a-gon, hit nere on ende wrþ on heryng.
(xi) c1330 (?c1300) Bevis of Hampton (Auch.) 2161 þat hors..wente in to þe
kourt wel kof And neide & made miche pride.
As regards the OE gielp (‘vainglory, pride’ = OS gelp ‘defiant or arrogant

speech’, OHG MHG gelph, gelf ‘loud crying, outcry, cheerfulness, exuber-
ance’, ON. gjalp ‘?boasting, noise of the sea’), since the very beginning, i. e.
approximately the 8th century, the term is attested in the sense ‘boasting, vain-
glorious speaking’ (now obsolete), as in (i) or (ii) below:
(i) Beowulf 2521 ‫ݤ‬LILFZLVWHKXZLèèDPD‫ݤ‬O FHDQHOOHVPHDKWHҊ\OSHZLè

JULSDQ.
(ii) c888 ÆLFRED Boeth. xix. §1 +Z WIRUVWHQWHRZìRQQHVHҊLOS?
In the 14th century another (closely related and likewise obsolete) reading de-
velops, namely ‘an object of boasting’:
(iii) c1320 Cast. Love 1364 ìLVLVYUHFKLOGDQGYUHKHOS9UHVWUHQJìHDQG

YUHҊHOS.
Beginning with the 16th century, the lexeme can be interpreted as ‘a cry char-
acteristic of dogs and some other animals, resembling a bark but distinguished
from it by being sharp and shrill’, that sense, however, being of no significance
for the purpose of the present paper. The last attestations of the relevant senses
of the term date back to the 15th century.
The OE wlanc, wlonc (related to OS. wlank) is ambiguous to a certain ex-
tent, for its negative (‘pride, proud, haughty’) as well as positive (‘rich, splendid,
fine, magnificent’) readings appear in English at approximately the same time:
(i) Beowulf 341 (OOHQURIZODQF:HGHUDOHRGKHDUGXQGHUKHOPH.

(ii) c1175 Lamb. Hom. 35 +HZHVSUXG ZORQF.
(iii) Beowulf 2833 0DèP KWDZORQF.
(iv) a1000 Phœnix 100 )X‫ݤ‬HOIHìUXPZORQF.
In the 14th century the meaning of wlonc is extended to cover the sense ‘rich in
moisture, rank, lush’, as in:
(v) 1398 TREVISA Barth. De P. R. XI . xi. (Tollem. MS.), Snow..norische

and fede good herbes and make hem wlonke [orig. impinguit; ed. 1495
cranke; ed. 1535 ranke].
A century later the lexeme is attested denoting ‘a fair or beautiful one’:
(vi) ?a1400 Morte Arth. 3338, I went to that wlonke, and wynly hire gretis.
Now obsolete, the term dies out in the 16th century; however different senses
are lost gradually. In the sense ‘pride, proud, haughty’, wlonk is last attested in
the 14th century.
Let us now turn to the corpus analysis.
5. A corpus analysis of the pride lexemes in Old English
The corpus-based analysis presented below differs from that based on the
OED in that it attempts to show some genre sensitivity as postulated by Diller
(1996). Unlike a dictionary, which concentrates on individual words and treats
their senses separately from other words and their senses (which is due to the
traditional alphabetical order of dictionary entries), the analysis below, while

analyzing uses of a number of words, aims at combining these analyses into a
coherent interpretation of the meaning of the concept of pride. The first step in
these investigations is an examination of the genre distribution of the selected
lexemes.
The genre distribution in the Helsinki Corpus of all the 5 words for the Old
English period is given in Table 1 below.
Table 1. Genre distribution5 of pryd*/pryt*/prut*/prud*, oferhygd*/oferhyd*, wlenc*/

wlanc*/wlonc*, RIHUPƝW*, gielp*/gelp*/gylp*/gilp* in the Helsinki Corpus,
Old English.
(1050–1150)
(950–1050)
(850–950)
OE III
OE IV
(–850)
OE II
OE I
Genre Total
35‫ 'ܡ‬35‫ܡ‬7 35ǋ7 35ǋ' 35‫ 'ܡ‬35‫ܡ‬7 35ǋ7 35ǋ'

/HJDOWH[WVDQGKLVWRULHV
5HOLJLRXVDQGSKLORVRSKLFDO
)LFWLRQDQGWUDYHORJXH
2)(5+<*' 2)(5+‫ 'ܡ‬ 2)(5+<*' 2)(5+‫ 'ܡ‬
2)(50Ɯ7 2)(50Ɯ7
:/(1& :/$1& :/21& :/(1& :/$1& :/21&
*,(/3 *(/3 *</3 *,/3 *,(/3 *(/3 *</3 *,/3
5 The division of the texts into genres here follows the one we used in Fabiszak and
Hebda (2007) and is based on our own analyses of the texts in terms of their liter-
ary classification as well as text type (compare Biber 1988; Diller 1996), so that a
sample of a text identified as Lives of Saints could either be categorized as history,
if the relevant excerpt related the life events of the Saint or it could be categorized
as religious, if it concerned religious deliberations.
The genre distribution clearly shows that SUшG*/SUшW*/SUǌW*/SUǌG*, RIHUK\JG*/

RIHUKшG*, and RIHUPƝW* predominantly appear in the religious (and philosophi-
cal) writings. Wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc* and gielp*/gylp*/gilp*/gelp* differ no-
ticeably in their genre distribution. The frequency of wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc* in
fiction and travelogue doubles the occurrences in religious writings, while for
gielp*/gylp*/gilp*/gelp* this number is almost half of the religious frequency.
It seems that the distinctive behaviour of these two lexemes in terms of genre
distribution is also reflected in their qualitative analysis, as they show certain
atypical uses. Due to the fragmentary nature of Old English data, it is difficult
to claim with any degree of confidence that the other words would not have
similar non-religious meanings had they appeared in non-religious texts. On
the other hand, this divergence in distributional patterns may be indicative of
the prototypical meaning range of the investigated items.
The qualitative analysis of selected examples from the DOE and Helsinki
corpora has shown that in both religious and non-religious texts SUшG*/SUшW*/
SUǌW*/SUǌG*, RIHUK\JG*/RIHUKшG*, and RIHUPƝW* appear in negatively loaded
contexts. Tissari (2006b) has analysed the Biblical examples based on the Early
Modern translations very carefully and suggested the up – down schema, in
which unjustified pride raises people above their position (up), but almighty
God casts them down into the Pit for their trespasses (down)6, as example (1)
shows:
(1) Vs clipað þæt halige gewrit & þus cwyð to us, ælc þæra þe hine silfne
mid prytum up ahefð, he bið genyðrod & se þe hine sylfne geeaðmet,
he bið up ahafen & gewurðod. (Chrodegang of Metz, Regula Canonico-
rum, ChrodR 1)
‘The Holy Writ thus tells us that each of those who heave themselves
(up) with pride, [he] will be humbled; he who humbles himself, [he] will
be heaved up and praised.’
Often pride is regarded as a moral shortcoming and listed together with a num-
ber of sins, as in example (2):
(2) And scyld þe wið ofermettas and with ærætas and wið gitsunge and
wið oferdruncen and wið andan and wið galnysse and wið weamod-
nysse and wið tælnysse and wið lease gewitnysse and wið manaðas and
sleacnysse godes cyricean to secenne and wið ealle unþeawas þæs þe þu
mage wealdan. (Formulas and Directions for the Use of Confessors)
6 On the relationship between the up-down schema and Christian values see also
Section 4.
‘Guard yourself against pride and against too early meals and against
greediness and against excessive drinking and against envy and against
lust and against anger and against slander and against false testimony
and against perjuries and laziness in seeking God’s church and against
all sins, which you may commit.’
These two excerpts from the religious genre clearly illustrate the values of
the medieval society. The highly hierarchical social structure towards the late
Middle Ages became quite fossilized and the teaching of the Church empha-
sized the necessity of being content with one’s place in life, a place set by God.
Thus humility and meekness are the most important virtues, while pride (su-
perbia) is the major sin (LeGoff 1996), which may turn into a subversive power
undermining the social structure. The two emotions are often juxtaposed. For
example, in Aelfric’s Lives of Saints a significant contrast is established be-
tween the Christian humbleness of the martyr and the misguided pride of their
pagan persecutors (Sauer 2007).
The non-religious occurrences of wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc* and gielp*/gelp*/
gylp*/gilp* behave in a different way than SUшW* and RIHUPƝW* in the religious
genre. They seem to be close in meaning to ‘courage’7 and carry positive valu-
ations related to the warrior’s agility in battle. The following examples from
Beowulf exemplify this:
(3) Ic eom on mode from þæt ic wið þone guðflogan gylp ofersitte.
(Beowulf)
‘I am bold in spirit that I against the war-flier forbear from boast.’
(http://alliteration.net/beoIndex.htm [date of access 23.06.2007])
(4) Wen ic þæt ge for wlenco, nalles for wræcsiðum, ac for [higeþrymmum]
Hroðgar sohton. Him þa ellenrof andswarode, wlanc Wedera leod, word
æfter spræc, heard under helme: We synt Higelaces beodgeneatas; Be-
owulf is min nama. (Beowulf)
‘I expect that you from valour, not from exile, but from greatness of
heart have sought out Hrothgar. Then him the renowned one answered –
that proud prince of the Wedera nation – spoke thereafter words, severe
beneath his helmet: We are Hygelac’s companions at table; Beowulf is
my name.’
(http://alliteration.net/beoIndex.htm [date of access 23.06.2007])
7 Gevaert (2002) notes that ‘anger’, ‘pride’ and ‘battle courage’ are often the related
senses of the same lexemes.
These examples may testify to the earlier, pre-Christian conceptualization of

pride, which had a positive value and was related to battle valour and glory ex-
pressed in the richness of the warriors’ attire as well as in the boasting contests.
Cronan (2004: 33–34) in his analysis of poetic words writes:
Wlenco is attributed the poetic meaning ‘bravado’ by Clark Hall and ‘high spirits’
by Klaeber; both definitions are apparently attempts to distinguish the poetic mean-
ing of the word from the pejorative ‘pride, arrogance’, which is more common in the
surviving texts and which appears to have developed under Christian influence. […]
Wlenco […] appears to have been a great-spirited courage which could lead one to
daring undertakings for the good of others or to reckless endevours that produce
unnecessary risk. It thus may be useful to distinguish the two meanings of the word:
the heroic/poetic ‘recklessness’ […] and the Christian ‘pride, arrogance’. As in the
case of other heroic words that implied the aggressive self-assertiveness, such as
gylp, beot, and lofgeorn the meaning of wlenco was probably devalued under the
influence of Christianity.
Cronan thus strengthens the results of our linguistic analysis and the claim that
in fiction (what he calls poetic/heroic meaning) the pre-Christian positively
evaluated sense of pride was preserved.
A close reading of the textual examples facilitates the identification of the
causes and the behavioural reaction to pride. As for the causes, they are very
similar to those discovered for the later periods of English, i. e. vain pleasure
in clothing (example 5), pride in one’s descent and wealth (example 6), pride
caused by one’s good deeds (example 7). The behavioural reaction to pride, as
indicated in examples 7 and 9 is boasting on the part of the proud person and
flattery from his/her interlocutors. As the collocational analysis presented be-
low shows, it also involves assuming an erect posture (PLGRIHUPƝWWHDèLQGDQ
‘to swell up with pride’).
(5) & gif reafes pryto synn nære, nateshwon Sanctus Petrus an his ærend-
gewyrte wifum ne styrde reafa wlences, þa he þus cwæð, Ne gescryde
ge eow mid deorwurðum reafe. (Chrodegang of Metz, Regula Canoni-
corum, ChrodR 1)
‘& if pride in [one’s] garment were not a sin, Saint Peter, in his first letter,
would by no means reprove women for taking pride in their robes, upon
which he said: “do not clothe yourselves in precious clothes”.’
(6) Ac sume men syndan, þe for heora prytan & eac for gebyrdan forho-
giað þæt hy hyran godcundan ealdran, swa swa hy sceoldan, gif hy
riht woldan, & agynnað oft hyrwan þæt hy scoldan herian, & taliað þe
wyrsan for heanan gebyrdan þa ðe heora yldran on worolde ne wurdan
welige ne wlance þurh woroldglenge ne on lænan liffæce rance ne rice.

(Grið, LawGrið)
‘But there are men who, because of their pride & their descent, disre-
gard [the fact] that they [should] obey religious authorities, which they
should [do] if they want to be righteous, & they often begin to ill-treat
what they should praise, & [they] consider those whose forefathers were
neither of great wealth nor of high estate in the world, neither proud nor
rich in this transitory lifetime, worse than those of noble birth.’
(7) sæde be rihtwisnysse mægene mid nanre pryte þu ofermodiga be godum

dædum na beo þu uppahafen & be godum weorcum na gylp þu. (Defen-
sor, Liber scintillarum, LibSc)
‘[Isidorus] said [the following] about righteousness: may you not swell
with pride in good deeds [for you] will not be exalted & [may you not]
boast of good actions.’
The qualitative analysis of wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc* seems to indicate that it of-

ten appears in the context of clothing, as in (8) and (9) below:
(8) Ic seah wyhte wrætlice twa undearnunga ute plegan hæmedlaces; hwit-
loc anfeng wlanc under wædum, gif þæs weorces speow, fæmne fyllo.
(Riddles 42, Rid 42)8
‘I saw two elegant creatures openly playing outside in coitus; the fair-
haired [one] proud under the clothing, if [it] succeeded in this work, the
female received fullness.’
(9) & on wlence ic ferde þurh þæt idele wuldor & manna lyffetunge ic lu-
fode to swiðe & on menigfealdre glencge ic glencgde minne lichaman &
mid sweartum synnum mine sawle awlætte & wolde beon wið utan swa
þeah wurðlic ge þuht. (Forms of Confession and Absolution, Conf 9.3.2)
‘& in pride I fared through that vain splendour & I loved people’s flat-
tery too much & I adorned my body with numerous ornaments & I de-
filed my soul with evil sins & nevertheless wanted to be thought worthy.’
However, the collocational analysis, consisting in counting and analysing the

results returned by the Antconc concordancer, does not confirm this intuition.
The results of the collocational analysis run on the DOE Corpus for SUшG*/
8 As has been suggested by Prof. Marcin Krygier (p. c.) riddles are a reservoir of the
Anglo-Saxon humor and can be treated as an insight into their pre-Christian values.
SUшW*/SUǌW*/SUǌG* and on the Helsinki Corpus for the remaining 4 words with
the Antconc free concordancer are given below:
35‫*'ܡ‬/35‫ܡ‬7*
ELì × 4 (3 sg present indicative of EƝRQ ‘to be’)

GZϾVDQ × 3 ‘the foolish ones’ (co-occurrence)
EHRUJDQ × 3 ‘to save, guard, defend’ (co-occurrence)
PDJRQ × 3 (pret. pl. of PDJDQ ‘to have permission or power’)
(1 collocation, 1 co-occurrence)
P VVH × 2 ‘mass’ (co-occurrence)
Z VWP × 2 ‘growth, produce, fruit’ (co-occurrence)
WǀèXQGHQ × 2 ‘swelled up, puffed up’ (co-occurrence)
ZLèHUZHDUGQHV × 2 ‘opposition, arrogance, perversity, calamity’
XQZHRUè × 2 ‘unworthy’
JHQ\èURG × 2 ‘condemned, humbled’
ǌWDZ\USè × 2 (3 sg present indicative of ǌWDZHRUSDQ ‘cast away, cast out,
degrade, reject’)
The concordancer is a software tool, which can, among other things, calculate
with what frequency the investigated word appears in the vicinity of any other
word, i. e. it produces a list of words, which were used within a distance of 5
words to the left and to the right of the search word.9 Obviously, the computer
program cannot determine if any grammatical or semantic relations obtain
between the search word and the words appearing in its vicinity. This is why
making claims about the contribution of the words from the frequency lists to
the meaning of the investigated item without analysing the broader context of
use can render infelicitous results. For example, the word GZϾVDQ ‘the foolish
ones’ appears on the list with a high frequency of 3. However, entering the
broader context of our Old English examples shows that there is no semantic-
grammatical relation between SUшG and GZϾVDQ. This is why a distinction is
made in corpus-based studies between a collocation, involving a semantic-
grammatical relation between the search word and the words appearing in its
vicinity, and a co-occurrence, which does not involve such a relation. (10) be-
low is an example of co-occurrence:
9 This distance is determined by the researcher, however Sinclair (1991) suggested

that a 5 × 5 window span renders the most meaningful results.
(10) And þurh þæt þe man swa deð þæt man eal hyrweð þæt man scolde
heregian & to forð laðet þæt man scolde lufian, þurh þæt man gebringeð
ealles to manege on yfelan geþance & on undæde, swa þæt hy ne scamað
na þeah hy syngian swyðe & wið God sylfne forwyrcan hy mid ealle,
ac for idelan onscytan hy scamað þæt hy betan heora misdæda, swa swa
bec tæcan, gelice þam dwæsan þe for heora prytan lewe nellað beorgan
ær hy na ne magan, þeah hy eal willan.
‘And because men do that, entirely abusing all that they should praise
and hating too much all that they ought to love, therefore they bring
entirely too many to evil intentions and to misdeeds, so that they are
never ashamed though they sin greatly and commit wrongs even against
God himself. But on account of idle attacks they are ashamed to repent
for their misdeeds, just as the books teach, like those foolish men who
on account of their pride will not protect themselves from injury before
they might no longer do so, although they all wish for it.’
There are also a number of related concepts, which do not really form colloca-
tions, but appear in larger units of discourse and influence the understanding
of pride. These are wiðerweardnes ‘arrogance’, unweorð ‘unworthy’, genyðrod
‘condemned, humbled’, ǌWDZ\USDQ ‘cast away, reject’, which emphasize the
negative evaluation of pride within the Christian ethic (see also section 4).
Below we present only the meaningful collocates of oferhygd*, RIHUPƝW*
and wlenc*.
2)(5+<*'*/2)(5+‫*'ܡ‬
in × 7
(a)hebban ‘lift up, exalt, raise’ × 3
æfest ‘hatred, malice, envy’ × 11 (co-occurrence)
The prepositional phrase in oferhygd ‘in pride’ is evidence for the underlying
metaphor emotion is a container. As has been shown in conceptual meta-
phor studies many times before (Lakoff and Johnson 1980 and later; Kövecses
1987 and later), emotions can be conceptualized as containers which the hu-
man experience enters and thus is engrossed by the emotion. The phrase ofer-
hygd ahefeþ ‘pride exalts’ is motivated by the conceptual metaphor pride is up.
It is used to account for the emotion, which makes a person feel they are above
others in the social hierarchy. There is also some evidence for this metaphor
in the derivation of RIHUK\JG*/RIHUKшG* and RIHUPƝW* as the first morpheme
of these words means ‘over’. The word æfest ‘hatred, malice, envy’ can be
considered as representing a related concept, which strengthens the negative

evaluation of pride.
2)(50Ɯ7*
RQ × 21 ‘in’
XSDKHEEDQ ‘exalt, lift up’ × 2
ƝDèPǀGQHV ‘meekness, humility’ × 2 (co-occurrence)
OϾUDQ ‘teach, instruct, guide’ × 3 (1 collocation, 2 co-occurrences)
DèLQGDQ ‘puff up, swell, inflate’ × 6
JHQLèHULDQ ‘put down, bring low, humiliate, subdue, condemn’ × 2
The collocational analysis of RIHUPƝW* yields further support to the emotion

is a container metaphor. The collocation RQ RIHUPƝWWR XSDKHEEDQ rein-
forces the pride is up metaphor, while co-occurrence with JHQLèHULDQ ‘bring
low, humiliate’ converges with Tissari’s (2006b) claim that those who elevate
themselves through unjustified pride will be brought down by God. The co-
occurrence of DèLQGDQ and RIHUPƝW* testifies to the existence of the pride is
increasing in size metaphor as a specification of a more general an excess
of something is an increase in size10.
wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc*
in × 1
on ‘in’ × 8
The only meaningful collocations attested for wlenc*, i. e. prepositional phras-

es with in and on ‘in’ offer additional evidence for the emotion is a contain-
er conceptual metaphor.
Some indication has also been found for the part of the emotional scenario,
which calls for emotional control:
(11) & eow gebyrað þæt ge framion swiðor þonne ge wealdon mid pryton,
þæt ge magon gestreon & mede bringon of eowre mangunge. (Chrode-
gang of Metz, Regula Canonicorum, ChrodR 1)
10 We would like to thank our anonymous reviewer for warning us against seeing
conceptual metaphors in every conventional expression and for suggesting the
more general formulation an excess of something is an increase in size as an
alternative explanation of the data.
‘& it happens so that you [may] profit more from the control of pride,
that you may bring wealth and reward of your dealing’
The co-occurrence of the pride set with ƝDèPǀG ‘humble’, ƝDèPǀGQHVV ‘meek-
ness, humility’ and æfest ‘hatred’, which have been discussed above, consti-
tutes additional evidence for the conceptualisation of pride in terms of morality
and sin. It is also transparent from the collocations with OϾUDQ, as in (12):
(12) Diofol us lærað ofermetto (Sawl/ and ðus cweð, gehyrsta, hearda
lichoma?, HomM 14.2)
‘The devil teaches us pride.’
Whether such phrasing could be considered evidence for a metaphorical map-

ping devil is the teacher of pride is difficult to prove. It certainly is a per-
sistent discourse metaphor.11
6. Overview of the Old English data and discussion
The present study has shown that the metonymically based conceptual meta-
phor an excess of something is increasing in size, which can be applied to
pride, finds linguistic support also in the Old English data testifying to the rela-
tive diachronic stability of such metaphors. Similarly, emotion is a contain-
er has also been identified in Old English texts. The value system transpiring
from the Anglo-Saxon writings appears to be undergoing a shift from the, at
least partially, positive evaluation of pride, as in examples (3) and (4) from
Beowulf, to aligning it with sinful character features in Christian texts. This
seems to be a case of semantic reorganization of the concept (see Geeraerts
1997) under the influence of a new ideology. The hypothesized sense – lexeme
relations are given in Table 2 below.
Table 2. Sense – lexeme relations for the concept of pride in Old English
Sense 1: negatively evaluated pride Sense 2: positive pride, self-esteem,

based on the up-down schema valour
Lexemes SU٦GRIHUK\JGRIHUPƝWWR ZODQFJHOS
11 Zinken et al. (2008) emphasise the difference between conceptual metaphors and
discourse metaphors. Conceptual metaphors are certain principles of human cog-
nitive structure, stable projection patterns between cognitive domains. Discourse
metaphors are recurrent linguistic patterns of organization at the level of text.
This polarization of word distribution may be related to what Krzeszowski

(1997: 261–273) describes as the Christian reversal of values in the Sermon on
the Mount (Blessed are the poor in spirit: For theirs is the kingdom of heav-
en […], King James Version, Matthew 5, 3). Krzeszowski (1997: 262) starts
his discussion of the language of Christian ethics with identifying three ba-
sic underlying metaphors: ethical behaviour is a business transaction,
ethical behaviour is lawful behaviour and the mountain metaphor,
as a version of life is journey metaphor, i. e. human life is a (wartime,
nocturnal) mountain expedition. He further claims that in the Biblical
and patristic writing, “the concept of evil is metaphorically understood in
terms of the three metaphors, respectively, as creating the budgetary imbal-
ance, as breaking the law, and as falling down or slipping down the hill”
(Krzeszowski 1997: 269). This last case is of utmost importance for the un-
derstanding of the concept of pride in the religious context. Additionally, the
reversal of values mentioned earlier rejects the negative evaluation of such
concepts as poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, thirst and persecution and
redefines them in terms of Christian virtues. In this light, pride is up in the
pre-Christian axiology, but it is down in the Christian value system. How-
ever, the positive evaluation of the pride related to warrior valour does not
become extinct. Quite to the contrary, it finds its continuation in the military
pride and national pride identified by Tissari (2006b) in later periods. It then
becomes the backbone of the Glory of War Myth, so often enacted in nation
building rallies.
7. Pride in Middle English
All the five lexical items investigated for the Old English period continued in
Middle English. The data for this period come from the Helsinki Corpus, so
that the claims made below concern this particular set of data. Broader scope
analyses could refine our present findings.
The frequency of SUшG* in the Helsinki Corpus grew steadily throughout
Middle English, while that of RIHUK\JG*/RIHUKшG*, wlenc*/wlanc*/wlonc*,
RIHUPƝW* and gielp*/gelp*/gylp*/gilp* decreased dramatically so that concor-
dance searches after ME II (1250–1350) did not return any finds. Consequently,
at this point our study returns to the original design, i. e. to the (predominantly)
onomastic analysis of the lexeme SUшG*. The genre distribution of the items is
presented in Table 3 below:
Table 3. Genre distribution of SUƯG*, RIHUKƯG*, RIHUPƝW*, ZORQF*, JLOS* in the Helsinki
Corpus, Middle English
0(, 0(,, 0(,,, *HQUH7RWDO

± ± ±
35,' 3528' 3587 35,'
35<' 358' 35('
358<' 358<7
2)(5+<' 2)(5+<'
2)(50(7 2)(50(7
:/21. :/21& :/21. :/21&
*,/3 *(/3 *,/3 *(/3
Similarly to Old English, SUшG* appeared predominantly in religious texts. ME

II, though, diverges from this pattern, as in this subperiod the religious texts
account for only 47.83% of the occurrences, while legal texts constitute 21.74%
of the finds and fiction and travelogue 30.43%. To check if this is not an artifact
of the corpus we have calculated the size of each of the three genres in every
subperiod by comparing the size of the texts contributing to each genre. In this
way we were hoping to control for the uneven distribution of genres between
the periods. Our calculations are shown in Table 4.
12 We only analyse three out of four sub-periods of Middle English in the Helsinki
Corpus, because the fourth sub-period ME IV overlaps with Tissari’s (2006b)
study which covers 1418–1991.
13 Numbers in brackets are the distribution of SUшG relative to the size of a particular
genre in the corpus. It has been calculated only for SUшW as the remaining three
lexemes are too rare for the discussion of their distribution to be meaningful.
Table 4. A percentage share of the genres in the

three subperiods of Middle English
ME1
Legal documents & histories: 33.90%
Religious & philosophical: 66.10%
ME2
Legal documents & histories: 20.69%
Religious: 35.99%
Fiction and travelogue: 43.31%
ME3
Legal: 36.70%
Religious: 52.51%
Fiction: 10.77%
As for the remaining four lexical items, their frequencies were so low that
hypothesizing about the meaning of their genre distribution would be rather
dubious.
The qualitative analysis of all the 138 uses of SUшG* in the three subperiods
of Middle English testifies to a certain stability in the conceptualisation of
pride. Similarly to Old English, the prevalent element of the scenario was the
religious or moral dimension expressed by the up - down schema identified
by Tissari (2006b), as transpires from the excerpt below from the Helsinki
Corpus14:
(13) ‘þa þat heyes þam, þai sal be mekid; & þai þat mekes þam sal be heyed.’
Vre lord saide þat it es pride in þaim þat hyes þaim. (Benedictine Rule,
cmbenrul)
‘Those who exalt themselves shall be condemned and those who humble
themselves shall be exalted; our Lord said that there is pride in those
who exalt themselves.’
This religion-related scenario describes pride as an effect of temptation by the

devil. If a person yields to the temptation they either “fall or leap into pride”
( IDOOHQLQSULGH, OƝSHQLQWRSULGH) and if they do not perform appropriate pen-
14 The abbreviations given after quotation references are the identifier codes used in
the Helsinki Corpus. A full list is available at http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manu-
als/HC/INDEX.HTM.
ance (14) they will suffer pain in hell (15). They may be condemned or even
lose their souls (16). The excerpts below illustrate this:
(14) $KXìHQQH‫ݤ‬LIKZDLVVZDVXQIXODQGPLGGHRÀHELXRQìHWQXOOHIRUKLV
RXHUPRGRèHUIRUKLVSUXGHRèHUKLVIXOHKHRUWHZLOKLVVFULIWLKDOGHQ
ìHQQHVHJJHLFHRXWRVRèHìHWQLVKLWQDQìHUìHWPHKHURQìLVVHOLXH
IRUKLVVDXOHELGGHSDWHUQRVWHU (Lambeth Homilies, cmlambet)
‘How then, if a person is so sinful and guided by the devil that they do
not want to perform penance for their haughtiness or for their pride or
their foul hearts. To tell you the truth, there is no one in this life (world)
for whose soul I would say my prayer.’
(15) DKKHRQDOGHQHIUHQDQRèHUJRGGRQ(OPHV‫ݤ‬HRUQQHVKHRQHIUHDK
SUXGKHRZHVVZLèHDQGPRGLDQGOL‫ݤ‬HUHDQGVZLNHODQGZUHèIXODQG
RQWIXODQGIRUèLKHRELèZXQLHQGHLQQHìLVVHSLQH (Lambeth Homilies,
cmlambet)
‘But she has never done any good. She was never eager to give alms. But
she was very proud and haughty. And deceitful and false. And envious
and easily enraged. And for this reason she is dwelling in this torture/
torment/pain.’
(16) DQGìD‫ݤ‬HWìXPDKWXQGHUVWRQGHQìHQQHìXVWRQGHVWHWKLVEXULHQHVVH
ìHWKHZHVSUXGDQGZORQFVZDìXHUWQXDQGìXIRUZXUèHVWHFDVZD
KHLVQXDOWRQRKWHDQGìXQDVWQHXUHKZHQQH/HRIZHVKHRQOLXHDQG
ODèLVKHQXèHDQGìDZUHFFKHVDXOHIRUORUHQ […] (Lambeth Homilies,
cmlambet)
‘And yet you must understand, now that you are standing at his grave,
that he was proud and haughty. And so are you now. And you are con-
demned. So he has now become nothing. And you never know when;
When alive, he was respected, and at this moment he is hideous/foul.
And the wretched soul is lost […]’
The status of pride as sin and the related pejorative connotations are strength-
ened by the negatively loaded words with which it co-occurs, such as WXKDEEH
SUXGHRQGHRèHUZUHDèèH. ҊLVFHXQJHRèHUZDFZLOO (Hali Maidhad, cmhali)
‘you have pride, envy or wrath, avarice or weak will’, on þisse liue ne beo þu
þereuore prud ne wilde ne sterc ne wemod ne ouer modi (Lambeth Homilies,
cmlambet) ‘in this life, therefore, do not be proud or immoral/sinful or ar-
rogant or angry or haughty’, DKSUXGKHRZHVVZLèHDQGPRGLDQGOLҊHUH DQG
VZLNHODQGZUHèIXODQGRQWIXO (Lambeth Homilies, cmlambet) ‘But she was
very proud and haughty. And deceitful and false. And envious and easily en-
raged.’ Further lexical analysis shows that pride can also be classified as vice
(untheu), and be close in meaning to vanity and conceit (renk). It is antonymous
to bliss (blis[se]) and goodness (JǀG).
In her critical literary analysis of the 14th century morality play The Pride of
Life Sikorska (2001) stresses that pride is the most notorious sin of the Middle
Ages, which contradicts the Christian ideal of nobility and meekness. It is a re-
bellion against the authority and its hierarchical nature, and it threatens God’s
order. Humility is the utmost human virtue, while pride fools people into cov-
eting wealth, health or power, all of which are transitory. The sinners guilty of
pride are chastised when they lose their cherished possessions in the face of
death.
A similar moral value is present in the didactic romance of identity Robert
of Cisyle (Sikorska 2007). For medieval people pride was the root of all evil.
When combined with anger it could take the form of arrogance, haughtiness
and boasting, or even a disdain and defiance of one’s superiors. As princes
should be the moral models for the lower social strata they should practice
restraint and humility. Lack of these virtues in Robert of Cisyle brings about
his fall and humiliation. His pride does not allow him to accept God’s will but
breeds anger and wrath, which only intensifies his indignity and mortification.
The close reading of textual excerpts allowed us to identify the particular
causes of pride. As in Old English and in the following periods, it could be trig-
gered by social position, good looks, skills, intelligence and wealth. Splendid
clothes can both be considered the reason and the expression of pride. Other
forms of social display of pride found in the excerpts from the Helsinki Corpus
in Middle English were verbal manifestations, such as a particular manner of
speaking, chiding and mocking others, as well as boasting of one’s own deeds
and demanding excessive reverence in forms of address. Also, pride could lead
to mistreating others including appropriating their possessions, or even pro-
voking battles and wars. A passage illustrating the behaviour of the proud and
attempting to define the nature of pride is given in (17) below:
(17) Now been ther two maneres of Pride: that oon of hem is withinne the
herte of man, and that oother is withoute. Of whiche, soothly, thise fors-
eyde thynges, and mo than I have seyd, apertenen to Pride that is in the
herte of man; and that othere speces of Pride been withoute. But nathe-
les that oon of thise speces of Pride is signe of that oother, right as the
gaye leefsel atte taverne is signe of the wyn that is in the celer. And this
is in manye thynges: as in speche and contenaunce, and in outrageous
array of clothyng. (The Parson’s Tale, cmctpros)
‘There are two types of pride: one of them is in the heart of man and the
other – outside. The things I have already mentioned, and more, pertain
to the pride that is there in the heart of man; and other types of pride are
outside the heart. Nonetheless, one type of pride indicates the other, just
like the merry atmosphere at the tavern is a sign of the presence of wine
in the cellar. And this is in many things: speech, behavior and clothing.’
Clearly, in this simile, the merry atmosphere in the tavern stands for the exter-
nal manifestation of pride, which, like wine in the cellar, is hidden inside the
human heart.15
The most common experiencers of pride appearing in ME texts are people
of high social rank16, e. g. princes, earls (þe proude eorl of artoys), raiders (þe
prikyares prude), knights (knyhtes proude) or women (prud meiden). While for
the first group pride may lead to destruction and bloodshed that other people
may fall victim to, in the case of women, pride is related with the covetousness
and fleshly desires they may arouse in others and may bring about their own
disgrace.
Some of the excerpts featuring pride and warriors seem to present evidence
for the early attestations of the uses similar to what Tissari (2006b) calls the up-
surge in the frequency of items concerning national pride, which she places in
the 19th century. In ME II (1250–1350) we find the collocations of pride/proud
and nationality labels, e. g. Moni proud scot (The Execution of Sir Simon Fra-
ser, cmpoemh) ‘many proud Scots’, þis proude freinsshe eorles, huere knyhtes,
& huere sweynes (The Flemish Insurrection, cmpoem) ‘these proud French
earls, their knights & their soldiers’.17 Interestingly, it seems that the author
of The Execution of Sir Simon Fraser approves of the proud Scots, while the
author of The Flemish Insurrection (1302) disparages the French. While the
Scots seem to be proud and valiant, the French are presented as rather proud
and conceited.18 This juxtaposition clearly stems from the dichotomy between
the Self and the Other or the distinction between the in-group and out-group.
As shown by van Dijk (2002), the negative qualities are usually ascribed of the
15 More on the heart as the seat of pride, below.

16 See LeGoff (1996 and 1997) on pride (superbia) as the sin of the nobility.
17 In fact, the first example attested in the Helsinki Corpus of a collocation of words
denoting pride and a nation comes from Beowulf (OE III) and reads as follows
wlanc Wedera leod ‘the proud Weders’. That seems to provide a further link be-
tween the national and military pride described in Tissari (2006b) and the early
warrior related uses of the pride words.
18 On a similar phenomenon of representing soldiers from an in-group vs. an out-
group perspective in present day media reports see Fabiszak (2007).
other, their positive features being diminished, while the in-group is attributed
the positive qualities and its shortcomings are overlooked or played down.
The qualitative analysis, the results of which are presented above, has been
supplemented with an analysis of a frequency list of collocations performed on
the Helsinki Corpus with Antconc free concordancer. Some of the results ren-
dered further support to the findings from the qualitative analysis. The inves-
tigated lexemes tended to collocate with negatively loaded words, such as idel
gylp ‘vain boasting’ (3 times), ivel (oferhyd/ofermetto) ‘evil pride’ (2 times),
wratthe ‘anger’ (5 times), auvarice ‘greed’ (2 times), OǀWKHQ ‘to loath’ (2 times),
OǀWK, adj. (1 time). But the frequency list also shows a relatively high co-occur-
rence with bold ‘brave’ (4 times) which may be strengthening the claim, made
already for the Old English period, that pride in relation to warriors’ deeds was
not considered sinful, but close to well-deserved self-esteem.
The high co-occurrence with JǀVWOƯ ‘spiritual’ (8 times) and ERGƯOƯ ‘physical’
(9 times) testifies to the predominant religious conceptualisation of pride in
terms of the dichotomous opposition between the soul and the body, virtues
and vices.
The premodification of the pride words common in ME II and ME III and
exemplified with bodyly prude, gostly prude, wrangwis pride, foule pryde, fowl
pruyde may prompt an interpretation that perhaps pride in and by itself was
not necessarily inherently pejorative if it required premodification with nega-
tive modifiers. A re-analysis of the Old English data rendered similar phrases
in OE III and OE IV: yfel RIHUPƝWWR ‘evil/ill pride’, ƯGHO SUшG ‘vain pride’, ƯGHO
gielp ‘vain pride’, unnyt(t) gielp ‘vain pride’, egeslic gielp ‘horrible/awful/fear-
ful pride’, so this phenomenon was present throughout medieval times and is
not indicative of the onset of change between Old English and Middle English.
An alternative interpretation of these data is also possible. That is, the nega-
tive modifiers may be seen as intensifiers, the role of which is not to alter the
axiological value of pride but rather to reinforce it. Still, the data concerning
military pride seems to corroborate the first interpretation.
A combination of close reading and collocation searches facilitated the at-
tempt to reconstruct the metaphorical structure of pride in Middle English. As
has been shown elsewhere (e. g. Kövecses 1986, 2000), emotions, like other
states of mind, are often conceptualised as containers. The use of preposi-
tions, such as in (7 times), into (2 times), out of (3 times) with the word pride
confirms this claim. A glance at the verb phrases in which they appear is even
more interesting. These are: fallen into pride ‘fall into pride’, OƝSHQ into pride
‘leap into pride’. The first VP is similar to the one co-occurring with love and
emphasizes the lack of control on the part of the experiencer, while the second
VP underlies the dynamic nature of the experiencer’s involvement.
Also, pride is conceptualised as a substance filling the body of the experienc-

ers, as evidenced by the phrase PDQ\NQLҊWKZHOIXORISULGH ‘many knights full
of pride’ (the body is the container for pride). The heart and the breast
are considered the seats of pride, as in tu habbe prude. onde oðer wreaððe.
ҊLVFHXQJH oðer wac wil inwið heorte ‘you have pride, envy or wrath, avarice
or weak will inside the heart’ (the heart is the container for pride). The
combination of two attested phrases: ÀƝQ SULGH ‘flee from pride’ and WƝPHQ
SULGH ‘tame pride’ may be considered evidence for a conceptual metaphor
pride is a dangerous animal.19
Pride resulting from the devil’s temptation is referred to as his spear, as in
the excerpt below:
(18) :HD‫ݤ‬HQWRXQGHUVWRQGHQKZHWERèìHZHSQHìHWDGDPZHVPLGHIRU
ZXQGHGPLGìDLONHZHSQHZHERèIRUZXQGHGPLGVSHUHRISUXGHRI
‫ݤ‬LWFXQJHRI‫ݤ‬LIHUQHVVHRIHRUUHRIKRUGRPHPLGRQGHPLGDVZRONH
QHVVH ìLV ERè ìD ZHSQH ìHW DGDP ZDV PLGH IRUZXQGHG. (Lambeth
Homilies, cmlambet)
‘We need to understand what the weapons with which Adam was
wounded are. It is with the same weapons that we are wounded. With the
spear of pride, of avarice, of gluttony, of anger, of whoredom, with envy,
with laziness. These are the weapons with which Adam was wounded.’
This passage clearly refers to the image of the world as a battlefield in a war
between God and the Devil, on which they fight for human souls. In this fight
the deadly sins, pride among them, are the weapons of the Devil.
Another elaborated religious metaphor presents Christ as the well of living,
and pride as venom poisoning the human soul, as in (19):
(19) $OOHZHDWWHUGUDJHQRIIXUHHOGHUHèHEURNHQGULJWLQQHVZRUGèXUJèH
QHGGUHèHUèXUJKDXHèPDQNLQERèHQQLèDQGZLQJROVLSHDQGJLVFLQJ
JLXHUQHVVHDQGZLVVLQJSULGHDQGRXHUZHQHVZLOFDWWHULPHQH2IWH
ZHEUHQQHQLQPRGDQGZXUèHQVRZHZHUHQZRGèDQQHZHèXVEUHQ
19 While we agree with our anonymous reviewer that two phrases are too few to posit
a conceptual metaphor understood as a stable representation in the mind of the
speakers, the reason why we do this is that, to the best of our knowledge, ÀƝQ and
WƝPHQ in ME were used in relation to animals. Also, slightly a-chronologically,
we assumed that if such a metaphor is well attested for the later periods of English
and we find two phrases supporting it in a limited set of 138 passages analysed, we
could tentatively propose the metaphor as well.
QHQELKRXHèXVWRUHQQHQWRFULVWHVTXLNHZHOOHèDWZHQHJRQWRKHOOH
GULQNHQKLVZLVVLQJLWTXHQFKHWLOFVLQLJLQJ; […] (Bestiary, cmbestia)
‘We all draw poison from our elders, who broke the word given to the
Lord through the serpent; where-through mankind has both envy and
strife, lasciviousness and greediness, gluttony and lust, pride and ar-
rogance; such (kinds of) venom together. We often burn in rage, and
become as if we were mad; when we thus burn we should run to Christ’s
living well and drink his instruction so that we do not go to hell; it
quenches each sin […]’
It is difficult to ascertain to what extent we could claim that the above two
religious metaphors were stable cognitive patterns in the minds of the Middle
English native speakers. Thus, we make no claims concerning their status as
conceptual metaphors. They may have been, however, stable discourse patterns
in the religious writing of the time.
8. Overview of pride in Middle English
As for the scenario of pride in Middle English it seems to be similar to that of

Old English and later periods as far as the causes and social display of the emo-
tion are concerned. Our most important findings concern the significance of the
genre composition of the corpus as well as the distribution of the investigated
words between the genres. Despite the overwhelming evidence for the predom-
inance of the religious meaning of pride, the dominance of the religious texts
in our data may diminish the strength of this claim. That is, although the extant
data seem to show that pride was principally a moral concept, this result may
be an artifact of the corpus. The analysis of premodification, of the national
and military pride as well as the patterns of distribution and use of wlenc* and
gielp* in Old English may, in fact, be indicating that the conceptualisation of
pride in Old and Middle English did not differ greatly from that of PDE.
9. Conclusion
The present study contributes to cognitive historical linguistics in two ways.

On the level of particular case studies it offers an analysis of the concept of
pride in the earliest stages of English. At a more general level, it suggests in
what ways historical linguistics can contribute to conceptual metaphor theory.
Table 5 below presents the summary of the results for the religious and non-
religious texts in Old English and Middle English.
Table 5. Pride in religious and non-religious genres in Old and Middle English
288
Old English Middle English

Religious and philosophical texts Non-religious texts Religious and philosophical texts Non-religious texts
Causes • foolishness • (noble) descent • temptation by the devil • belonging to a particular nation
of pride • possessions • possessions • long-lasting prosperity • wealth
• knowledge and learning • power • spiritual gifts • honour
• good social status (wealth) • achievements (victories) • youth • achievements (victories)
• good appearance • belonging to a prestigious • worthiness • good appearance
(beauty, handsome attire) group • knowledge and intelligence • (noble) descent
• moral qualities (feeling closer • good social status • beauty • good social status
to God than “ordinary” people) • foolishness • belonging to a prestigious group
• achievements (good deeds) • self-confidence and • power
lack of experience
• taking vengeance on a foe
• seducing a maiden or a married lady
Małgorzata Fabiszak and Anna Hebda
Behavioural • boasting • boasting • exaltation • ostentation

reaction • loving others’ flattery • despising the poor and • avoiding God’s love • wearing heavily adorned clothes
• adorning oneself with ornaments those of lower social status • arrogance • boastful speech
• wearing precious clothes • chiding others • breaking the law
• exaltation • boasting • abusing one’s authority
• disobeying God • being sinful • stealing from the poor
• ignoring God’s laws • following one’s desires
• criticizing priests
• criticizing God
• having a lot of household servants
• organizing feasts
• selling your body to others
• inquisitiveness
Table 5. (continued)
Old English Middle English

Religious and philosophical texts Non-religious texts Religious and philosophical texts Non-religious texts
Behavioural • curiosity
reaction • desiring wealth
• desiring being honoured,
respected and flattered
• ignoring God’s laws
• having the will to destroy
• feeling body heat (desire)
Consequences • condemnation — • condemnation —
• chastisement • humiliation
• punishment • dwelling in torment and pain
• death of the soul
• need to perform penance
• withdrawal of God’s grace
• being thrown out of Paradise
• suffering misfortune
• falling into sin
• being brought down
• losing one’s friends
Cognitive historical approaches to emotions
289
The qualitative analysis of the contexts of the use of SUшG* and its selected
synonyms showed that, unlike in the case of shame and guilt analysed in Fa-
biszak and Hebda (2007), the distinction between legal texts and fiction is here
irrelevant and that these two categories can be collapsed into a single category
of non-religious texts. The close reading of the examples demonstrates that
the causes and the manifestations of pride in religious and non-religious texts
largely overlap in both investigated periods. As there is more data from reli-
gious than from non-religious texts, the greater number of particular stimuli
has been identified in the religious genre. Still, because of the fragmentary
nature of our data we cannot make any far-fetched claims about the nature of
the conceptualization or its potentially more religious character. Moreover, the
specific causes can be subsumed under one of the seven categories identified
by Kövecses (1986: 44, 1990: 93–94, also quoted in Tissari 2006b: 19), such as
(1) achievements, (2) possessions, (3) belonging to a prestigious group, (4) good
appearance, (5) physical or mental capabilities, skills and properties, (6) moral
qualities, (7) good social status.
The difference between the genres does not reside in the divergent distri-
bution of sources of pride and its manifestations, but in the axiological value
attributed to pride. In particular, the military pride, including the boasting
contests as its manifestation, and the reputation won on the battlefield clearly
receives positive value in non-religious texts, especially in the Anglo-Saxon
heroic poetry and in both Old English and Middle English histories and chron-
icles. The unambiguously negative evaluation of pride in the religious writings
can also be seen in the last row of Table 5 above, which enumerates the dire
consequences that these texts predict for those who fall prey to pride. Namely,
the conceptual metaphor pride is up undergoes the Christian reversal of values
(see Section 3 and 4 for the discussion of Krzeszowski’s findings), which results
in the up-down schema for the religious perspective on pride.
Introduction of Christianity may be the language external cause for the cre-
ation of the bi-polar conceptualisation of pride. If this were indeed so, the con-
cept of pride would have two conflicting axiological values. Such ambivalent
axiology is by no means exceptional. An image schema of container (Krz-
eszowski 1997) can also be evaluated either positively, and then realized as for
example shelter, or negatively, and then realized as jail. Krzeszowski (1997:
42) explains this ambivalence as motivated by the experience of being born.
On the one hand it can be constructed as leaving the safe and warm shelter of
the mother’s womb and entering the dangerous, cold and unknown world or,
on the other hand, it can be viewed as freeing oneself from the confines of the
womb restricting the freedom of motion and breaking into the world as an act
of gaining independence.
In the case of pride the motivation behind the conflicting representations

may be related to the primary metaphor important is big and the general
image an excess in something is increasing in size. While it is positive
to be big and important, it is negative to be small and unimportant. Thus we
tend to evaluate big and important in “us” as individuals or groups as posi-
tive, while in others who, by increasing in size, invade “our” physical space
and by increasing in importance “our” social space – as negative. In this way,
a combination of the interaction of primary metaphors, image schemata with
their inherent axiology (big is good) and in-group vs. out-group perspective
contribute to the bi-polar nature of pride. Christian religion, through the re-
versal of values discussed above, is the driving force behind the attempt at
achieving semantic isomorphism (Geeraerts 1997) in the conceptualization of
pride by restructuring it around one negatively evaluated prototypical centre.
The tension between the in-group and out-group perspective as well as the
borrowing of the French word vanity into Middle English, prevents such a
reconceptualisation.
A quick search into the Helsinki Corpus and consulting the OED show that
vanity is the preferred realization for the negatively evaluated pride since Mid-
dle English onwards. It is only in the religious writing where the word pride is
used in the strongly negatively evaluated contexts. It seems that this loanword
together with the tension between the in-group and out-group perspective may
be responsible for the gradual ousting of the other Old English words for pride:
RIHUPƝWWR, oferhygd, wlanc and gielp. Interestingly enough, it is pride and not
wlonc, which survives as the lexical realization of military ability and com-
petes with another French loanword into Middle English: glory. The part of
the meaning of wlonc related to the high self-esteem expressed through rich,
but appropriate to one’s position, clothing has been taken up by vanity as in
example (20) below, which however, is completely negatively evaluated.
(20) $VWRWKH¿UVWV\QQHWKDWLVLQVXSHUÀXLWHHRIFORWK\QJHZKLFKWKDWPD
NHWKLWVRGHHUHWRKDUPRIWKHSHSOHQDWRRQO\WKHFRVWRIHPEURZG\QJH
WKH GHJLVH HQGHQW\QJH RU EDUU\QJH RZQG\QJH SDO\QJH Z\QG\QJH RU
EHQG\QJHDQGVHPEODEOHZDVWRIFORRWKLQYDQLWHHEXWWKHULVDOVRFRV
WOHZHIXUU\QJHLQKLUJRZQHVVRPXFKHSRZQVRQ\QJHRIFKLVHOVWRPDNHQ
KROHVVRPXFKHGDJJ\QJHRIVKHUHV; (The Parson’s Tale, cmctpros)
‘As to the first sin, it lies in the superfluity of clothing, which makes cloth
so dear, to the harm of the people; not only the cost of embroidering, the
elaborate notching or barring, the waved lines, the stripes, the twists,
the diagonal bars, and similar waste of cloth in vanity; but there is also
the costly furring of gowns, so much perforating with scissors to make
holes, so much slashing with shears;’ (http://classiclit.about.com/library/

bl-etexts/gchaucer/bl-gchau-can-parson.htm [date of access 17.07.2009])
The lexical field of pride is further complicated by the borrowing of the word
fame. A detailed analysis of the role of borrowings in the restructuring of the
semantic representation of pride in Middle English requires a comprehensive
analysis, which calls for a separate paper. Suffice it to say here that a similar in-
fluence of French borrowings into Middle English has been noticed by Molina
(2005) in the conceptualization of suffering. She discovered that the introduc-
tion of the borrowing pain has resulted in a discontinuation of the homonymic
merger of Old English VƗU and VRUJ. In the conceptualization of pride an analo-
gous discontinuation of the development observed in Old English has taken
place. That is a reconceptualization of pride as a negative concept has been
halted; the Old English lexemes were lost, while the French loanwords neces-
sitated a redefinition of pride.
When it comes to the conceptual metaphors identified in the data, i. e. emo-
tion is a fluid in the container, heart is a container for emotions,
emotion is a container, pride is increasing in size and pride is a dan-
gerous animal, no cross-genre differences have been detected in their use.
The present study demonstrates that cognitively-informed historical linguis-
tic (HL) analysis can contribute to conceptual metaphor analyses of emotions
in three ways:
• HL adds diachronic depth to the conceptualisations,
• HL demonstrates the shifts in meaning of particular lexemes now consid-
ered emotion words indicating the initial sources of these concepts which
may influence their semantic structure20,
• HL links the internal representations reconstructed on the basis of corpus-
based, i. e. reproducible, analyses with their social function in a historical
period of the language culture.
There are, however, certain limitations of historical linguistic methodology,

especially for the earliest periods of recorded language. Unlike in cognitive lin-
guistics investigations of the relationship between conceptualizations and con-
temporary language, in historical linguistics we cannot conduct any psycho-
20 The present paper discusses the meaning of Anglo-Saxon pride/valour and Chris-
tian pride/arrogance, Tissari (2006b) starts with Early Modern English pride as
sin, and presents its development into Enlightenment pride categorised as either
vice or virtue to PDE’s justified and unjustified pride considered a peripheral in-
stance of emotions.
linguistic experiments, not even ethnographic interviews and questionnaires,

as there are no native speaker informants. Historical linguistics mostly relies
on written texts as the source of data. These data are extremely fragmentary,
and even though the DOE Corpus contains all the extant Old English texts, it
is a highly skewed corpus. The majority of texts are classified as the religious
genre. Thus it is difficult to talk about the prototypical meaning or folk sce-
narios of emotions for this period as the data we have was filtered through the
monastic scriptoria and is thus mostly representative of the views and values
of just one group of people. The data become more varied for the later periods
of English, when writing has become a more common skill and the texts show
a greater genre variation, so that the investigator can consult private letters,
diaries, court reports as well as a growing literature, which often took as its
aim to portray representatives of a number of social groups (e. g. The Canter-
bury Tales).21 Finally, our introspection-based analysis of Old English texts is
not free from the influence of our contemporary understanding of the investi-
gated meanings, as well as our bias caused by the stereotypes we hold about
the Middle Ages. Even though we aim for objectivity, we are aware of these
researcher-related shortcomings.
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English words for emotions and their metaphors
Heli Tissari
Abstract
This article discusses a number of emotion words, or rather, lexical groups, compar-
ing these with each other, and attempting to find both commonalities and points of
divergence. The final aim is twofold: first, to illustrate in what ways English words
for emotions could potentially be seen in terms of various continua, and second, to
combine old and new ways in which to look at emotions in cognitive linguistics. The
article discusses several issues from a historical point of view, taking into account
potential differences between two varieties of English, Early Modern (ca. 1500–1700)
and Present-Day English (1991). The lexical groups include the following pairs: happi-
ness, sadness; love, hate; hope, fear; pride, shame; calmness, anxiety; excitement and
respect. The following, specific research questions are dealt with: (1) When does a word
name an emotion? (2) Which emotions are desirable and how to assess this? (3) Do
certain emotions prefer reification to personification or vice versa? (4) Do the emotions
tend to be located inside the human body? (5) What kind of movement or direction is
associated with emotions?
1. Introduction1
1.1. Background
This background section is motivated by a desire to complement the introduc-

tion to this volume with respect to cognitive linguistic research into emotion,
and in particular, conceptual metaphors of emotion. Those already familiar
with the topic may consider moving directly to section 1.2. (Origins of the pres-
ent study) or 2. (Introducing the data, method and research questions).
There is a lot of research into conceptual metaphors of emotion words not
only as regards the English language but other languages as well. To mention
an individual researcher, Kövecses has probably written most on conceptual
metaphors of emotions in Present-Day English, in particular American Eng-
1 Here and throughout the article, for pragmatic reasons, I will use the term ‘emo-
tion’, as well as ‘feeling’, somewhat loosely, without giving a strict definition for
each.
English words for emotions and their metaphors 299
lish, pioneering in the field (1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1995, 2000). Loos et al.’s
summary of emotion metaphors in English is also quite useful in its simplicity
(1999).
In 1990, Sweetser touched on emotions in her work on historical and cultural
aspects of semantic structure. Yu was among the first scholars who focused on
metaphors of emotions in a language other than English, i. e. Chinese (1995).
Athanasiadou and Tabakowska’s volume on the conceptualisation and expres-
sion of emotions included articles on emotion metaphors in various languages
and a historical article by Györi (1998). Geeraerts and Grondelaers were among
the first to pay attention not only to the historical aspects of emotion metaphors
but their potential grounding in components of earlier world views such as the
humoural theory (1995), and Gevaert has continued work along similar lines,
focusing on the concept of anger in medieval English (2001, 2005). Stefanow-
itsch has developed a corpus-based approach to studying conceptual metaphors
of emotion (2004, 2006).
Love, happiness and anger are probably the favourite among emotions
studied by cognitive linguists (e. g. Fabiszak 2001/2002; Kövecses 1988; Ste-
fanowitsch 2004; Yu 1995). The centrality of anger as a topic can be explained
by the fact that it is discussed in an influential book by Lakoff (1987: 380–415).
To give a few more examples, Barcelona’s article on depression is an early
study on a slightly different topic (1986), and Peters has studied the vocabulary
of pain in a historical perspective (2004). This volume includes an article co-
authored by Fabiszak, who has written several historical linguistic studies on
emotions (e. g. 1999, 2000, 2001/2002). Diller (2007b) has recently referred to
Lakoff and Johnson’s early work on conceptual metaphors (1980) in his article
on the phrases with a mood and in a mood.
In general, cognitive linguistic research on conceptual metaphors of emo-
tions is nested in research on conceptual metaphors for various kinds of con-
cepts, on the one hand, and in a surge of interest in emotions and their lin-
guistic, cultural and anthropological aspects since the 1980s, on the other. To
give some examples, emotions have been included in but are not the focus of
Lakoff and Johnson’s early work (1980). Kövecses’s interest in metaphors of
emotions has led to research on many other concepts as well, and comparisons
between various concepts (e. g. 1995, 2005). Not only Kövecses (1986, 1990)
has expressed interest in prototypes for emotion words and concepts, for they
have also been studied by psychologists (Fehr & Russell 1984). Wierzbicka
has also been interested in emotions across languages and cultures (e. g. 1992,
1995, 1999). Russell, Fernández-Dols, Manstead and Wellenkamp’s volume
on psychological, anthropological and linguistic aspects of emotions includes
articles both by Kövecses and by Wierzbicka (1995). To conclude, we may note
300 Heli Tissari
that the Handbook of Emotions includes an article with metaphors in its title
(White 2004 [2000]).
1.2. Origins of the Present study
Tissari’s work on emotion words and concepts began with studies of the word
love in English, in a dissertation consisting of several research articles combined
through an introduction and discussion (Tissari 2003). Other work also includes
research on the emotion pairs of fear and hope (2004b, 2007), shame (2006a) and
pride (2006b), happiness (Heikkinen & Tissari 2002, Tissari, Pessi & Salmela
2008) and sadness (2008a), and on respect (2008b). Tissari has also conducted
research on the word like, as opposed to love (2004a), and published joint research
on the concepts of emotion versus reason (Koivisto-Alanko & Tissari 2006),
and on the concept of politeness (Nevalainen & Tissari 2006, 2010).
The aim of this article is to combine insights concerning single emotions into
a more holistic view; the positive versus negative evaluation of emotions is one
of their most basic and universal characteristics, as suggested, for example by
Ekman (2003) and Wierzbicka (1999).2 The article will return to and re-use old
data, and add some new data to complement it. However, as the discussion is
necessarily limited by space, what follows is an overview, rather than an in-
depth treatment, of issues that may be considered interesting and worth further
investigation. Although some of the insights that are presented may seem in-
stinctive in nature, they are built on over a dozen years of research in this field,
and may therefore have real value as regards evaluating the potential of research
in this area. If this article inspires someone else to develop and perhaps even cor-
rect any of my views, it has served its purpose.
2. Introducing the data, method and research questions
2.1. The data
Like Stefanowitsch’s research on conceptual metaphors for emotions (2004,

2006), my research is mainly based on computerized corpora of English texts,
2 Lee’s cognitive linguistic report on ‘feelings of the mind’ includes the piece of
information that her informants made a clear distinction between pleasurable and
displeasurable feelings, and even physically turned away from slips with words
which they considered “nasty” (2003: 244).
but in contrast to his work, I have looked not only at Present-Day English, but
also at Early Modern (ca. 1500–1700) and, in some cases, Late Middle (15th
century) and Late Modern English (ca. 1700–1900). This article is no excep-
tion, but also focuses on two historical periods, the Early Modern period, and
late 20th century English. The former is represented by the (Early Modern peri-
od) of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HCE, Kytö 1996), and the Corpus
of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS, Nurmi 1998). The latter
is represented by the Freiburg-Brown Corpus of American English (FROWN,
Hundt, Sand & Siemund 1998), and the Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British Eng-
lish (FLOB, Hundt, Sand & Skandera 1999), both dating to 1991. All of these
corpora are relatively small, the largest of them containing a million words
each (FROWN and FLOB). This means that some of the word searches re-
ported here only produced very few hits, allowing no significant conclusions
pertaining to single emotions. The main emphasis thus falls on bringing many
emotions together and sketching the kind of tendencies that (may) emerge from
looking at them collectively. For the sake of comparison, section 3.1 also deals
with entries for nouns for emotions in the new electronic version of the Oxford
English Dictionary (henceforth OED).
2.2. On the method and research questions
The basic method is relatively simple. The following emotion pairs were cho-
sen for investigation: happiness, sadness; love, hate; hope, fear; pride,
shame; calmness, anxiety; excitement and respect.3 Searches were made
not only for the respective nouns in each corpus, but for all the relevant nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs (e. g. sad [adj], sadden [v], sadly [adv], and sad-
ness [n]), apart from the category happiness, which here only includes the
adjective happy and the noun happiness. Each of the occurrences was then
printed and read in their immediate contexts, and a wider context checked if
necessary. The aim was to find answers to the following questions:
(1) When does a word name an emotion?

(2) Which emotions are desirable and how can this be assessed?
(3) Do certain emotions prefer reification to personification or vice versa?
(4) Do the emotions tend to be located inside the human body?
(5) What kind of movement or direction is associated with each emotion?
3 I use small caps to highlight a concept, and single quotation marks for a sense (of
a word) and double quotation marks for a lexical group, reserving italics for words
studied.
302 Heli Tissari
There are of course many ways to answer these questions. This article is simply
a particular attempt, first, to define what each of these questions involves, and,
second, to give an answer relating to such a definition. The claim is that this
highlights issues which have not yet been thoroughly discussed in cognitive
linguistic research.
3. On the naming of emotions
3.1. A look at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
The intention behind looking at the OED first is to provide a relatively fixed
point of reference for the nouns we are interested in. A look at an entry shows
that the OED may contain both senses relating to an emotion (“emotional”
senses), and other senses. The entry for sadness, for example, consists of two
distinct parts titled “I. Satiety, fullness; seriousness, steadfastness” (other) and
“II. Senses relating to sorrow” (emotional). The other senses include ‘satiety,
weariness’, ‘gravity of mind or demeanour; seriousness, soberness, staidness’,
‘steadfastness, constancy; firmness of faith’, ‘firmness, hardness, solidity’,
‘dignity, importance’, and ‘gloomy appearance, dark or sombre hue’. These
senses may come very close to a person’s emotional experience of sadness, but
the choice here is to rely on the classification of the OED as much as possible,
rather than to interpret it, e. g. in terms of metonymy.
The only criterion in distinguishing between emotional and other senses
was if (an) emotion, feel(ing) (verb or noun) or affection was mentioned as a
superordinate category or synonym (e. g. ‘senses relating to sorrow’; hate: ‘an
emotion of extreme dislike or aversion’). References to the mind or desire did
not suffice (e. g. anxiety: ‘uneasiness or trouble of mind about some uncertain
event’, ‘sexual desire or lust’). The mind/desire criterion is problematic, be-
cause it completely excludes not only anxiety but also happiness (as ‘the state
of pleasurable content of mind’) from the category of emotions, but including
all references to mind is problematic as well. Mind is so close to thought(s),
intention(s) etc., while desire would bring in the element of volition. (If lust
is treated as an emotion, all mentions of [dis]pleasure need to be included as
indicating emotion.)
Table 1 is based on the entries of the nouns.4 A relevant entry is an entry
which presents what we may consider the basic emotional sense(s) of each type,
for example ‘feeling’ and ‘expectation’ senses of hope, rather than senses con-
4 More specifically, printouts taken 26 June 2008.

cerning ‘enclosure’.5 This tends to be the first entry for each type. For the sake
of simplicity, the table only refers to senses marked with distinct numbers (1, 2,
3, 4 …), excluding their variants (a, b, c, d …). The only exception is calmness,
because it only involves a, b, and c.
Table 1. Nouns for emotions in the Oxford English Dictionary
Noun Emotional senses Other senses

Happiness 0 3
Sadness 1 6
Love 6 6
Hate 2 0
Hope 1 4
Fear 3 3
Pride 3 8
Shame 7 10
Calmness 1 2
Anxiety 0 5
Excitement 0 3
Respect 2 16
Total 26 66
Seen this way, the “nouns for emotions” have more non-emotional than emo-
tional senses. They are in fact not “nouns for emotions”, but rather, “nouns
which may name emotions, among other things”. This view is of course too
simplified: a discussion of the elements of (dis)pleasure, mind and volition on
the one hand, and of metonymy and metaphor on the other, would fill in the gap
that now seems to remain between one group of senses and the other.6
3.2. A look at corpora
This section complements the previous one by looking at a corresponding set

of lexical groups, including not just nouns, but also verbs, adjectives, and ad-
verbs, in data retrieved from the corpora. Let us begin with some notes con-
cerning the use of single emotion words. In an attempt to concisely elaborate
5 The OED also gives the noun hope the sense of ‘a piece of enclosed land’, where to
enclose means ‘marking off (land) with a fence or boundary’ (OED enclosure n.).
6 Another factor that contributes to the number of “other” senses is that the OED sec-
tions on compounds tend to involve relatively little information concerning mean-
ing, and thus seldom fulfill the criteria for “emotional senses”.
304 Heli Tissari
the description of large sets of data which have been read and annotated for
previous studies, these notes remain subject to correction through detailed fur-
ther analyses. They nevertheless introduce issues which need to be taken into
account in explicating the meaning of emotion words. What characterizes all
these uses is that it is difficult to discern a “pure” emotional meaning. The
meaning of emotion words tends to be tied either to the description and evalua-
tion of circumstances, or to moral and ethical considerations, or both.
In the Early Modern English data, “happiness” tends to involve good for-
tune, health, safety, and virtue, and often occurs in wishes in letters, while in
the Present-Day English data, it is a more general sign of positive evaluation.
Like “happiness” in wishes, “hope” appears in more or less formulaic uses in
the Early Modern English letters.7 In the Early Modern English data more gen-
erally, it often relates to people’s goals, plans, and requests. In the Present-Day
English data, the element of intention somewhat fades into the background,
and “hope” becomes more of a marker of good predictions, rather as “fear”
indicates estimation of risks (examples 1 and 2).
(1) Hang on in there with Wylie, he’s a great British songwriter currently
treading water and nothing more, hopefully. (FLOB: Cambridge Eve-
ning News [C15: 50])
(2) Also, these scientists fear that taking calcium with other foods may in-
terfere with the body’s absorption of certain minerals such as phosphate
and iron. (FROWN: Harper’s Magazine [G03: 32])
In the Early Modern English data, “fear of God” is positive rather than neg-
ative, and “pride” is associated with sin and vice, while in the Present-Day
English data, “pride” approaches “self-esteem” in meaning. “Shame” develops
from a strong marker of censure towards a marker of regret (example 3).
(3) I was busted smuggling cocaine and heroin into England. Shame really.
(FLOB: Cooper, Polo [R09: 41])
The Early Modern English data on “love” emphasizes the aspects of duty and
virtue more than the Present-Day English data, where “love” is rather seen as
a human need, and which more often refers to ‘sex’.
The question is how to capture such tendencies and developments in a cogni-
tive linguistic description. Table 2 provides a starting-point by presenting an
7 Example 5 below includes a wish introduced with the verb to hope.

educated estimation of the corpus data used for this article. It divides the lexi-
cal groups into four basic categories in order to answer the question “does this
lexical group name an emotion?”. These categories are: (1) The lexical group
always names an emotion (ca. 100% of the occurrences name an emotion).
(2) It usually names an emotion (in more than 50% of the occurrences). (3) It
sometimes names an emotion (in less than 50% of the occurrences). (4) Lastly
it may never name an emotion (the result is [close to] 0%).
Table 2 does not specify the percentages further, because the issue is in fact
rather complicated. This is indicated by the characterizations “potentially”,
and of the kinds of uses which appear, e. g. “positive evaluation”, “sin”. It re-
mains a matter of further interpretation to what extent specific instances of
pride used in lists of vices also involve emotion, or when happiness as ‘good
fortune’ also causes a positive emotion, and so on.
Table 2. Does this lexical group name an emotion? Always: ca. 100 %, usually: > 50 %,
sometimes: ≤ 50%, never: ca. 0 %. The numbers in brackets are raw numbers
of occurrences.
Lexical group CEECS HCE FROWN FLOB

(1418–1680) (1500–1710) (1991) (1991)
Happiness Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially
(178) > wishing sb (115) > good fortune; (120) > positive (188) > positive
well; safety, health virtue evaluation evaluation
Sadness Usually (55) Usually (31) Always (55) Always (73)
Love Always, potentially Always, potentially Always (528) > Always (478) >
(792) > duty, virtue (498) > duty, virtue basic need; sex basic need; sex
Hate Always (17) Always (62) Always (93) Always (68)
Hope Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially
(595) > formulaic in (221) > goal/plan, (283) > (good) (342) > (good)
letters wish/request prediction prediction
Fear Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially
(255) > estimation (211) > estimation (239) > estimation (177) > estimation
of risks; obedience of risks; obedience of risks of risks
to God to God
Pride Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially
(21) > sin, vice (44) > sin, vice (84) > self-esteem (74) > self-esteem
Shame Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially Always, potentially
([a]sham*) (43) > self-censure (104) > reproach, (36) > (moral) regret / (38) > (moral) regret /
censure censure censure
Calmness Sometimes (4) Usually (5) Usually (33) Always (44)
Anxiety No occurrences (0) Always (2) Always (53) Always (101)
Excitement No occurrences (0) Never (19) Usually (85) Usually (115)
Respect Sometimes (142) Sometimes (71) Sometimes (190) Sometimes (180)
306 Heli Tissari
Generalizing from Table 2, there seem to be four kinds of lexical groups:

(a) In the first set, all the relevant words always seem to name an emotion. The
only entry in this group is “hate”.
(b) In the second set, the whole lexical group is always potentially connected
with an emotion, but may be used not so much to talk about an emotion, as
for other purposes. This group includes “happiness”, “hope”, “fear”, “love”,
“pride”, and “shame”. It is particularly interesting from the point of view of
metonymy: some element of the emotion may be foregrounded so as to become
another sense of a word or lexical group, or vice versa. Example (4) comes from
the HC and shows how the adjective proud is used for moral evaluation:
(4) … ther was never any of them proud, covetouse, nor a traitor …
(Forman, Autobiography and Personal Diary [BIA FORMAN 3])
(c) In the third set, the status of the lexical groups as “labels for emotions” is
different in Early Modern English and Present-Day English. This set includes
“sadness”, “calmness”, “anxiety”, and “excitement”, the last three of which are
quite rare in the Early Modern English data, if they occur at all. In the Early
Modern English data, “excitement” is only understood in a physical sense (ex-
ample 5).8 “Sadness” always stands for an emotion in Present-Day English, but
some of the Early Modern English examples call for other interpretations; the
OED helps us to find relevant senses.
(5) We have found by Experiment, That a vigorous and well excited piece of
Amber will draw, not onely the powder of Amber, but less minute frag-
ments of it. (HCE: Boyle, Electricity & Magnetism [SCIO BOYLE 17])
(d) In the fourth set we have “respect” which maintains its status as sometimes
naming an emotion, sometimes not. It should be noted, however, that some of
its Early Modern English senses are no longer current in Present-Day English.
4. On the desirability of emotions
4.1. The desirability of an emotion and the desirability of its expression

Table 2 suggests that one may discuss both the desirability of an emotion per
se, and whether it is desirable to express an emotion. It may be desirable to talk
8 ‘To set in motion, stir up’, ‘to induce electric or magnetic activity in (a substance)’
(OED to excite v.).
about “happiness” when no particular happiness is felt, but there is a need to

emphasize one’s positive attitude, or to evaluate something positively. Example
(6) attests willingness:
(6) Some oil companies would be happy to run the product through their
refineries, although ethanol producers, undoubtedly, would object.
(FROWN: Chicago Tribune [B07: 23])
Similarly, “fear” or “hope” may be employed to talk about the future without
any (strong) presence of the corresponding emotion. Although “hope” is a posi-
tive, and “fear” a negative emotion, an accurate prediction can be much more
valuable than a faked positive emotion (cf. example 2).
“Pride” and “shame” can receive both “positive” and “negative” readings,
depending on whether they are understood to refer to something “healthy”
(‘proper self-esteem’, ‘sense of right and wrong’), or something that is “bad”
(sin-related readings are common for both in the Early Modern English data).
However, it may be desirable to condemn what is bad (cf. example 4, Tissari
2006a & b).
In this set of data, “love” mainly appears desirable, because people expect it
from themselves and others and even search for it. Consider examples (7) and
(8), respectively. Example (7) also involves (sadness,) “hope” and “happiness”
in what one may term an outburst of emotions: the author is balancing between
expressing sadness at the parting, and predicting good things for the departer,
both being tied to the suggestion that the author loves the departer. Emotions
occur not only on their own, but in (partly predictable) 9 clusters as well.
(7) I must bewail my one [= own] misfortune in parting with one that I soe
dearly love as I doe her but I doe much hope she will be very happy in
a good husband. (HCE: Elizabeth Oxinden’s letter [CORP EOXINDEN
333])
(8) Then three girls competed for the man and another couple, Pauline and
Glen, reported back from Spain. At first madly in love, she’d gone off
him since the last series. (FLOB: Daily Express [C04:82])
9 It would be interesting to develop such predictions, but I will not attempt it in this
article. Tomkins (1963: 184–260) has an interesting discussion of how shame com-
bines with what he calls other “affects”.
308 Heli Tissari
4.2. Categorizing corpus data
To understand better the semantics of emotion words, this section suggests

that on the one hand, emotions have something like a basic value on a “good”-
versus-“bad” scale, while on the other hand, further conditions also exist for
the desirability of the emotion. For example, returning to the previous, “love”
tends to be evaluated positively in the data, but in example (8) its initial expres-
sion does not match its later disappearance. This in turn is socially undesirable.
The idea of Table 3 is that further conditions for the desirability of an emo-
tion can be roughly divided into religious, social and emotional conditions. In
other words, it underlines that each of the emotions may be evaluated in terms
of religion or social interaction, rather than on how it feels. The generalisations
presented in the table represent my view of the occurrences of each lexical
group in the data, after analysing it for previous studies and conducting a final
overview for this article. The aim is to assess which of these conditions is the
most predominant. The criteria are my notes on what kind of conceptual meta-
phors, if any, occur with each lexeme, and what other kinds of expressions oc-
cur within their close context (e. g. evaluative adjectives such as terrible, verbal
forms such as paralyzing, and expressions concerning the cause of the emotion
or its expected future outcome). In addition, text type and genre certainly af-
fect the result. It is therefore good to take into account that the Early Modern
English data contains plenty of correspondence.
Table 3. Estimation on a scale from 1 to 3 (Is this emotion desirable? 1 = yes, 2 = some-
times, 3 = no). Conditions of desirability: religious = R: X is (un)desirable
depending on religious judgment; social = S: X is (un)desirable depending on
social judgement; emotional = E: X is (un)desirable depending on how good/
bad it feels to its experiencer.
Emotion EModE PDE

Happiness 1 (S) 1 (S)
Sadness 3 (E) 3 (E)
Love 1 (S) 1 (E)
Hate 3 (R) 3 (E)
Hope 1 (S) 1 (S)
Fear 2 (E) 3 (E)
Pride 3 (R) 1 (S)
Calmness 1 (S) 1 (S)
Anxiety 3 (R) 3 (E)
Excitement – 1 (E)
Respect 1 (S) 1 (S)
It is useful at this point to discuss a few examples in order to illustrate the con-
ditions of desirability. Firstly, note that Table 3 is closely connected to Table 2
and several of the examples above. The claim that the desirability of “happi-
ness” is above all social is based on it being used in contexts such as examples
(6) and (7), to indicate a positive attitude towards someone or something, either
by suggesting that one wishes them to be happy, is happy for or about them, or
that it makes the writer happy to do something for them.
That “sadness” in turn is more emotional is suggested by it being used to
describe how people feel about something, e. g. death in example (9), or hearing
something in example (10):
(9) Here dined with me also Mrs. Batters, poor woman, now left a sad wid-
ow by the drowning of her husband the other day. (HCE: Samuel Pepys,
The Diary [DIARY PEPYS VII, 417])
(10) I’m sad to hear that, Tim. (FLOB: Curtin, The Plastic Tomato Cutter
[K19: 53])
Although example (10) comes from a context which discusses religious issues,
the usage of “sadness” in the data does not indicate that it would have reli-
gious senses clearly separate from its other senses. The OED suggests one such
sense, ‘firmness of faith’, existed until the 16th century, but this sense does not
noticeably intermingle with the sense of ‘feeling sorrowful’ in the data.10
In contrast, the Early Modern English data on “pride” and “shame” con-
stantly discusses sin and vice alongside any potential emotional experience,
which is why these are characterized as (un)desirable depending on religious
judgment. More surprisingly, the usage of “hate” in the Early Modern English
data appears to be conditioned by religion. It suggests a set of religious guide-
lines as regards whom or what to hate. Consider examples (11) and (12).
(11) I defie the deuill, worship him? fie vpon him, I hate him with all my
hart. (HCE: Gifford, A Handbook on Witches and Witchcraft [HANDO
GIFFORD B2R])
(12) And if thou verely beleeuve it, thou mayest thereby thynke and learne
howe muche our sauyour and hys father both doeth hate sinne. (HCE:
Fisher, Sermons [SERM FISHER 1,398])
10 Interestingly, the speaker in example (10) is sad to hear that someone no longer
goes to Mass, which may suggest more ‘firmness of faith’ on his side. However,
I doubt whether any native speaker of English would give ‘firmness of faith’ as a
sense of sad(ness).
310 Heli Tissari
The reason why “love” is categorized as socially desirable in the Early Modern
English data is that it suggests a strong sense of duty alongside any emotion.
“Anxiety” is very tentatively marked as religiously conditioned in the Early
Modern English data, where it is only attested twice, once in a philosophical
work, and on another occasion in a religious context with the adjective calm
(example 13):
(13) [He] spoke of his conversion to God as a thing now grown up in him
to a setled and calm serenity. He was very anxious to known [sic] my
Opinion of a Death-Bed Repentance. (HCE: Burnet, Some Passages of
the Life and Death of … John, Earl of Rochester [BIO BURNETROC
140])
Example (14) shows how “calmness” may be socially desirable.
(14) There had been frequent rows about this issue before their marriage,
but Veronica had been hoping that their new status as husband and wife
would alleviate tensions and either make John a calmer and more con-
siderate person or give her the poise she needed to put up with his be-
haviour in a more gracious manner. (FLOB: Pfeiffer, How to Cope with
Splitting Up [F07: 14])
Again, the lexical groups may be divided into several sets:

(a) Firstly, some of them primarily appear to serve a social, or social-commu-
nicative, function. This mainly applies to the desirable “happiness”, “hope”,
“calmness”, and “respect”, but since “fear” is also used in “polite” phrases (e. g.
I fear [that] X), it could be included as well. The way in which these words
serve a social function varies, however. “Happiness” and “hope”, which are
used in wishes, among other things, are linguistic markers of a positive attitude
towards the reader, while “calmness” is necessary for social interaction to be
successful (that is why people sometimes need to calm down). “Respect” may
be used like “happiness” and “hope”, for example in formulaic expressions in
letters, but it also concerns social hierarchies.
(b) Secondly, two undesirable emotions, “sadness” and “fear”, appear to be
evaluated mainly on the basis of how (bad) they feel to their experiencers,
even if “fear” comes very close to primarily serving a social, or social-com-
municative function in predicting risks in order to negotiate plans of action,
for example (cf. example 2). This second group is particularly interesting when
seen in contrast to sets (c) and (d), where the Early Modern English data attests
a strong religious dimension. There, too, “fear” is on the border-line, because

the concept of “fear of God” is fairly strong in Early Modern English, and is
considered something desirable.
To nevertheless include Early Modern English “fear” in category (b) can be
motivated by the fact that many Early Modern English texts which attest “fear”
discuss imminent danger of death, which creates a strong emotional effect. The
risks predicted in the Present-Day English data also include serious threats
to people’s health and lives alongside lighter motives, and would, if realized,
potentially trigger strong undesirable emotions in the experiencers of “fear”.
Lastly, while “fear” is a dynamic state between the present and the anticipated
future, there is less inherent movement in “sadness”, which is presented as a
stable emotional state triggered by a past event (cf. section 7).
(c) Thirdly, the data suggests that both “pride” and “shame” move from an
Early Modern English religious to a Present-Day English social domain. The
distinction is not trivial, because it affects the whole meaning of each, and the
meaning of “pride” even more than the meaning of “shame”. Both traverse
from ‘sin, violation of God’s command’ -related senses to more secular but
nevertheless socially conditioned, rather than purely emotional, senses. This
is, however, a tentative claim. It is also true that both “pride” and “shame” are
more emotional in Present-Day English than in Early Modern English, and
consequently, there is clear overlap between categories (c) and (d).
(d) Fourthly, “hate” and “anxiety” seem to move from an Early Modern Eng-
lish religious to a Present-Day English emotional domain. The data on “anxi-
ety” is too small to make anything but a tentative claim, but it suggests that it
is human to be anxious, whereas God experiences total control (example 15).
(15) So then thou seest how many things that Man wanteth. For often he must
stand in need of Necessaries, he must be subject to great Anxieties …
(HCE: Preston’s Boethius [PHILO BOETHPR 126])
Present-Day English “anxiety” has a strong projection to future action, because

people tend to be anxious about something they wish to work for or to prevent.
Such future action may, of course, be desirable (example 16).
(16) He carried a suitcase and seemed anxious to catch the train for Kansas
City. (FROWN: Trust West [N26: 13])
As for “hate”, the Early Modern English data is in fact ambiguous: while “hate”
is a bad thing as such, it is nevertheless acceptable, even desirable, to hate that
312 Heli Tissari
which is bad, in a religious sense. In other words, an ideal world would exclude
bad things, which makes “hate” a bad signal, in that it is a signal for a non-ideal
world. However, assuming that we know this world is not ideal, it is good for
us to hate where the world is particularly bad. In doing so, we in fact identify
with God, who hates sin. To code both “anxiety” and “hate” as undesirable
emotions in Early Modern English underlines their conceptualization as results
of the Fall.
(e) Fifthly, Table 3 proposes a separate category for “love”, which tends to be
desirable and which, in spite of religious elements, appears to be a social mat-
ter in Early Modern English, because its expectancy regulates social conduct.
In other words, while it was morally and religiously wrong not to love one’s
family and friends in the Early Modern English period, the assessment of each
person’s behaviour had social consequences (cf. Tissari forthcoming).
The weakness of this claim is that the same could be said to apply to Early
Modern English “pride” and “shame”. However, “love” as a social bond ap-
pears to be more fundamental than “pride” and “shame”. In brief, if everyone
is assumed to have “fallen”, then to be accused in terms of either “pride” or
“shame” does not constitute a criterion for excluding someone from the com-
munity, unless their transgression is considered particularly grave. In contrast,
the answer to the question “whom should I love” is also an answer to the ques-
tion “to whom am I responsible”, which is also quite practical on an everyday
basis (example 17 below). It involves the idea that if I fail my responsibilities, I
should be ashamed. The reason may then be that I have been too self-centred,
i. e., proud.
(17) [Formulaic at the end of a letter:] My best love and service tendred to
your Lordship, I rest / Your very loving brother and servant, Rich. Ebor.
(CEECS: 1666 Richard Sterne [Cosin] [RSTERNE II, 157])
As for Present-Day English “love”, while it is still very much social as well as
emotional, there is more emphasis on its emotion-like qualities.
(f) Sixthly and lastly, “excitement”, which appears desirable, for example, be-
cause it occurs together with such words as happy and to enjoy (with pleased
in example 18). It is a different category, because in the present Early Modern
English data, it is not an emotion at all. The OED nevertheless records emo-
tional occurrences of “excitement” in Early Modern English.
(18) He looked pleased and excited to see them. (FROWN: McMillan, Wait-
ing to Exhale [K13: 34])
5. Reification and personification of emotions
A fundamental claim of cognitive linguistics is that emotions are conceptual-

ized in terms of metaphors. On a general level, this section discusses how fre-
quently such metaphors are realized when people write about emotions using
an emotion word. It is then a more specific issue whether these metaphors reify
or personify emotions.
The understanding of conceptual metaphor is rather broad here, accepting
such metaphors as in love (example 8), in the spirit of Lakoff and Johnson
(1980). Three basic kinds of metaphors are included under the rubric of “reifi-
cation”: entity metaphors, substance metaphors, and metaphors of contain-
ment, which include both the emotion being contained somewhere, and the
emotion as a container. A basic finding is that reifications naming actual
objects are not very common. In other words, emotions may be discussed as
if they were physical objects – one may refer to issues such as weight, size or
distance –, but metaphors like love is a chair or happiness is a table are
rare (cf. Szwedek 2007).
The category “personification” includes instances in which a concept is
presented in terms of human-like thought or action, for example as attacking
someone (an opponent), but very explicit personifications are difficult to find
in the data. This finding is contrary to an educated assumption that it is easy
for people to personify emotions. While this may be true, personification of
emotions seems not to be frequent.
Expressions which primarily imply a (natural or physical) force have
been excluded from Table 4, because they are not always easy to distinguish
from either reification or personification. In general, the metaphors operate on
a fairly abstract level, and can be signalled by a single word such as give (en-
tity), increase (substance), in (containment), or attend (personification).
Table 4 shows that not every emotion word goes with a metaphor, let alone
a particular type of metaphor. In the data, the average per corpus is between
10% and 20% of the tokens in an emotion-related lexical group attesting a
reification, while personifications are much less frequent. This is the reason
for choosing the threshold value of 10 %. Note that the analysis does not ex-
clude any instances of the words belonging to each lexical group, although
these may have senses other than the emotional sense which we are mostly
interested in.
314 Heli Tissari
Table 4. Are the concepts expressed by these words reified or personified? R = reified
in at least 10% of the cases (entity, substance and container metaphors),
P = personified in at least 10% of the cases.
Lexical group CEECS HCE FROWN FLOB

Happiness R R R –
Sadness – – – –
Love R R R R
Hate R – R R
Hope R – R R
Fear R R R R
Pride RP RP – R
Shame R R R R
Calmness R R – –
Anxiety – P R R
Excitement – – R –
Respect R R R R
To discuss Table 4 in more detail, the lexical groups are again divided into
different categories. In the following, I will use the verb reify to refer to an R
in the table (“reified in at least 10% of the cases”), and the verb personify to
refer to a P in the table (“personified in at least 10% of the cases”), not in an
absolute sense.
(a–b) “Fear”, “love”, “shame”, and “respect” are reified in all the corpora,
“respect” particularly heavily in CEECS which reifies it in six cases out of
ten. This finding for “respect” results from the noun respect occurring in set
phrases where it does not refer to an emotion (in all respects), and can be con-
tested by restricting the metaphoricity of the preposition in. “Fear” is different,
because it is more clearly an emotion. It is often conceptualized in terms of
quantity (great fears) or containment (in fear). Thus in fact these are two dif-
ferent categories: (a) reification may be very typical of an emotion word, or (b)
it may result from polysemy. “Love” and “shame” are closer to “fear” than to
“respect”.
The HC data provides some potential for adding a P for “shame”, because it
contains a sermon which repeats the phrase
(19) I speak it to your shame (SERM LATIMER 27)
which could be interpreted as speaking to people’s sense of shame personified.

It nevertheless seems more natural to interpret it in terms of causation.
(c) “Happiness”, “hate”, and “hope” are each reified in three corpora, which
suggests that these emotions are characterized by reification, but less so than
“fear” and “shame”, in particular in Early Modern English. In two cases out of
three, the corpus which contains no instances of reification is HC. Consider-
ing the text types included in the corpora one could say that informal Early
Modern English, such as contained in private letters, is closer to Present-Day
English in this regard. However, the matter is not as simple as that. “Hate” is
not reified in HC, because the verb to hate is more frequently found there than
the noun hate/hatred. “Hope” is not reified in HC because it tends to occur in
letters in this corpus (to hope), but the CEECS letters include such expressions
as in great hope (container + quantification).
(d) “Pride” and “anxiety” behave similarly in that they are both reified and
personified, but not in all the corpora. They also behave similarly in that the
findings concerning Early Modern English are different from those concerning
Present-Day English. “Pride” is “heavily metaphorized” in the Early Modern
English data, but less so in the Present-Day English data, which has more words,
which means that we could expect there to be more metaphors. Whether “anxi-
ety” is indeed personified in the very small Early Modern English data never-
theless depends on the interpretation of a single clause (repeated from [15]):
(15) he must be subject to great Anxieties (PHILO BOETHPR 126)
This attests a personification if Anxieties is understood to mean superiors to the

person spoken of as he.
(e) “Calmness” is reified only in the Early Modern English data. Whether it is
reified or not depends on the frequency of the noun calm as against other word
classes, and thus may or may not depend on the historical variety in question.
The OED tells us that the potential range of word classes for “calmness” was
not significantly different for Early Modern English than Present-Day English.
More empirical data is needed to establish whether the noun was more frequent
in Early Modern English than Present-Day English.
(f) “Sadness” is not reified or personified, because people tend to use the ad-
jective sad rather than the noun sadness. This is a further illustration of con-
ceptual differences between emotions resulting from differences between the
word classes used to talk about them.
To conclude, grammatical considerations are quite important as regards
reification, while personification is more typical of the Early Modern English
than the Present-Day English data.
316 Heli Tissari
6. Location of emotions inside the body
There are five ways in particular in which emotions can be metaphorically

located inside the human body: (1) using the preposition in to suggest that the
emotion is inside the body, (2) specifying the heart as the site of the emotion,
(3) specifying the eyes (or the face) as the site of the emotion, (4) using the
source domain force to suggest that something is happening in the body, and
(5) using the source domain illness in relation to the body. Options (1) to (3)
seem to be more frequent than options (4) and (5). It is also possible for the
options to overlap, for the preposition in to locate the experiencer inside the
emotion (example 8), or for the source domains force and illness to occur
outside the human body, for example by attacking it, or when referring to a
more general aspect of the role of the emotion in society (illness).11
All this could be discussed at length. Instead, Table 5 provides us with an
overview of the explicit location of emotions in the body, for example, in the
heart, in the eyes, or as a fluid in a container (options [1]–[3]). Corresponding
to the findings presented in the previous section, such explicitness seems to be
rare. For this reason, the threshold of five occurrences was chosen, and also
because some of the data were too limited.
Table 5. Does the data indicate that the emotion is metaphorically located inside the
body? YY = Yes, more than 5 times, Y = Yes, but less than 5 times, N= no. The
brackets indicate a result which requires the inclusion of adjectives of the type
emotion-ful (e. g. respectful), while the asterisks indicate a result which re-
quires the inclusion of spirit as part of the body.
Emotion CEECS HCE FROWN FLOB

Happiness N N Y Y
Sadness Y*Y* N Y Y
Love YY YY Y Y
Hate Y Y Y N
Hope Y (Y) Y YY
Fear Y Y(Y) Y YY
Pride Y Y Y YY
Shame Y Y Y Y
Calmness N Y Y N
Anxiety – N Y YY
Excitement – N Y YY
Respect N N (Y) (Y)
11 Hintikka (2007) discusses “Sickness as metaphor in Early Modern and Present-

Day English”.
Table 5 suggests three kinds of emotions:

(a) Those which tend to be located inside the body include “love”, “hope”,
“fear”, “pride”, and “shame”. This result suggests stability in conceptualiza-
tion. Although “love”, “pride”, and “shame” were evaluated differently in Early
Modern English than in Present-Day English (Table 3), people nevertheless
talked about them in terms of what we now might like to call the physiology
of emotions.
(b) Those which Present-Day English locates inside the body in contrast to
Early Modern English include “happiness”, “anxiety”, “excitement”, and “re-
spect”. This result suggests conceptual change: the meaning of these lexical
groups has become more emotional, at least as measured in terms of location
inside the body. This agrees with what sections 3 and 4 argued about “anxiety”
and “excitement” becoming more like emotions.
(c) Those which may or may not be located inside the body include “sadness”
and “calmness”. This ambiguity may in part result from the frequency of the
adjective sad as against the noun sadness, and from the noun calm having
weather-related senses. However, these lexical groups, “calmness” in particu-
lar, seem to call for more investigation. Another set of data which I have col-
lected on “calmness” shows important connections between controlling one’s
emotions and controlling one’s body.
7. Movement related to emotions
Lastly, let us look at which kinds of movement are associated with the emo-
tions. An answer to this question will help us to arrive at a fuller understanding
of question 4 (“Does the data indicate that the emotion is metaphorically lo-
cated inside or outside the human body?”), because the movement may concern
the body of the person who is the experiencer of the emotion. However, rather
than presenting a fully-fledged comparison between Early Modern English and
Present-Day English, I will simply sketch potential kinds of movement.
The movement associated with the emotion may be expressed by a single
preposition or it can be of a more general conceptual nature. The following
lists are not exhaustive, but will help us to see in what ways movement can be
associated with emotion.
318 Heli Tissari
7.1. Prepositions suggesting movement associated with an emotion
Beyond: This preposition may indicate a bad result regardless of the amount
of positive emotion and effort. Metaphorically speaking, one might talk of a
projection beyond the area contained by this emotion and effort. Example: be-
yond hope.
Behind: The Early Modern English data uses this preposition to conceptual-
ize hope as an entity which people may leave to others in a particular loca-
tion after they have left the location.
In: This preposition suggests movement into a container, in particular as
regards the phrase to fall in love.
Out of: This prepositional phrase suggests movement away from a con-
tainer, for example out of love. Note that the phrase is ambiguous: it can be
used either to suggest the end of love (a person who has fallen out of love is no
longer in love), or love as a cause (source) of something. The causal reading
also applies to out of fear.
Through: This preposition suggests movement into, along, and out of a con-
tainer. It is disputable whether such movement and the instrumental uses
of the preposition fit together. As regards through love, one might imagine a
“plunge” into a positive emotion which would result in a desire and a conse-
quent accomplishment.
(20) Through love neither God nor our fellow man/woman is a mere object to
us … (FLOB: The Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy
and Theology [D09: 6])
7.2. Movement of a more general conceptual nature
Note that the names suggested for each of these categories do not imply a con-
sequent use of the corresponding preposition or adverb in any actual context
of occurrence of a lexical item. They simply name the direction of movement.
The idea is to characterize different ways in which, for example, movement
away (from something or somebody) relates to the use of emotion words.12
12 By “exchange” and “increase” directions, I refer to metaphorical movement and

its direction (associating exchange with a movement between two recipients, and
increase with an upwards or spreading movement).
7.2.1. Physical movement (which may be but need not be metaphorical)
Away: It may be decrease of an emotion (cf. out of love), the opposite of in-
crease (cf. below), or loss of something. It may be movement away from the
cause(r) of the emotion. A desire to avoid the cause(r) of the emotion applies to
“fear” in particular, but also to “hate”. Furthermore, it may be movement away
from the person who would like to experience the emotion (cf. forwards), or
giving something away (cf. exchange).
Between: People may be conceptualized as oscillating between two emo-
tions such as “fear” and “hope”.
Downwards: Downwards movement applies in particular to negative experi-
ences such as “sadness”. It may metonymically reflect body movement, and it
may entail a moral or religious judgment, for example, predicting that a proud
person will fall.
Exchange: In a prototypical exchange, a person gives an entity to another
person. Positive emotions such as “love” and “respect” tend to be conceptual-
ized in terms of giving and receiving.
Forwards: When an emotion is personified or conceptualized as something
that a person strives after, it may be discussed in terms of forward motion. For
example, love and happiness may be “chased” in this manner.
Increase: People talk about increase of both positive and negative emotions.
A good example of a positive emotion is wishing increased happiness to the
recipient of a letter. For some reason, the HCE data on “sadness” tends to em-
phasize the increase of sadness. The verb sadden in itself comprehends the idea
of increased “sadness”. An emphasis on the increase of “fear” often indicates
that a situation is getting more and more dangerous or risky.
Outwards: Sometimes emotions are conceptualized as emanating from their
experiencers. This may apply to a positive emotion such as “happiness” or
“love” as well as to a negative emotion such as “hate” and “shame”, and it may
imply that the emotion is contagious. Emotions may also be conceptualized as
spreading without naming a source. Furthermore, emotions may be conceptu-
alized as emanating from a source other than a human being (e. g. God), or they
may themselves be conceptualized as sources (e. g. love being conceptualized
as a source of something good, cf. through).
Towards: This may be movement towards the object or cause(r) of the emo-
tion, e. g., a beloved person, or movement towards an emotion, e. g., the pursuit
of happiness (cf. forwards).
Upwards: This is, roughly, the mirror image of downwards movement. Meta-
phorically speaking, while sadness is down, happiness is up. Proud people aspire
upwards, but may fall downwards in shame, especially in Early Modern English.
320 Heli Tissari
7.2.2. Movement on a time-axis

Backwards: It may be typical of an emotion that it is only recognized in retro-
spect. This applies to “happiness”. Or, it may be typical of an emotion that its
cause is in the past. This applies to “sadness”.
Forwards: It is typical of “fear” and “hope” to anticipate the future. In the
CEECS data, people often wish for a happy meeting with someone in the fu-
ture. If Heaven is conceptualized as a place of happiness which one reaches
after one’s death, then “happiness” is also conceptualized as something in the
future; but this may apply to an anticipated happy marriage as well. A subtype
of forwards is continuous: It may be desirable that the emotion, in particular
the exchange of the emotion, remain the same as it is/was. This applies in
particular to “happiness”, to “love”, also in its Early Modern English sense of
‘peace between nations’, and to “respect”.
7.3. A final word on movement
People also conceptualize emotions in terms of stable direction, in terms of

depth, distance, and the front-back dimension (cf. behind). Depth tends to
stand for “sincerity” or “seriousness”, while the distance may concern the re-
lationship of two emotions. The front-back dimension involves such Biblical
concepts as “shame in front of one’s eyes” or “keeping the fear of God in front
of one’s eyes”.13
In sum, English words for emotions are associated with direction and move-
ment in many ways, which could certainly be examined in more detail, in spite
of the wealth of previous research on conceptual metaphors for emotions in
English. In particular, there is plenty of potential for comparing various his-
torical periods with one another, not to mention conducting a systematic study
of stability and changes from the earliest English texts to Present-Day English.
8. Discussion and conclusions
This section considers each question in turn, summarising the findings and ask-
ing what they suggest in terms of future research. Finally, we will arrive at eval-
uating the initial suggestion that we are dealing with various continua which
combine old and new ways of looking at emotions in cognitive linguistics.
13 Kela has recently written a comprehensive study of these kinds of metaphors in

Finnish Biblical translations (2007).
8.1. On the naming of emotions
A look at the Oxford English Dictionary revealed that words which we asso-
ciate with emotions have many non-emotional senses as well. An analysis of
their occurrences in corpora verified this, suggesting furthermore that there
are various kinds of uses for emotion words. The main purpose in using an
emotion word may not be the naming of an emotion, but rather, the fulfilling
of a social expectation, or conveying some idea associated with an emotion
(e. g. an idea of a negative or positive future prospect in terms of “fear” and
“hope”). This is not an entirely surprising or novel finding, but it is good to
take it into account in further studies of emotion words and concepts within the
framework of cognitive linguistics. There is still plenty of room for developing
such analyses, beginning from terminology for distinguishing between vari-
ous aspects of word uses, especially if one adheres to the claim that meaning
cannot be divided into semantic and pragmatic meaning:14 how, then, does one
account for these kinds of phenomena?
8.2. On the desirability of emotions
The same question becomes relevant when we look at the desirability of emo-
tions, as attested by usage of emotion words. The topic of desirability can be
divided into several sub-topics, beginning from distinguishing between the de-
sirability of the emotion itself and of mentioning it in particular contexts. This
article also discusses the idea that the desirability of each emotion depends
not only on how it feels, but on religious and social conditions, reflected in the
co-text. The Early Modern English data conveys religious values in particular,
while the Present-Day English data balances between feeling and the society.
In terms of future research, one might address the question of how this re-
lates to the encyclopaedic nature of meaning, as advanced by cognitive linguists
(e. g. Geeraerts 1997): To what extent should linguists venture into discussing
such conditioning? What kind of terminology ought they to use? How much
contextual information do they need for statements concerning such issues to
be reliable? Indeed, it seems that research questions such as (1) and (2) are at
least as relevant to our understanding of emotion concepts as question (3) (I am
referring to the research questions introduced in section 2.2).
14 I am referring to such claims as Evans and Green’s (2006: 211): “Cognitive seman-
ticists argue that the division of linguistic meaning into semantics (context-indepen-
dent meaning) and pragmatics (context-dependent meaning) is … problematic.”
322 Heli Tissari
8.3. Reification and personification of emotions
These findings concern the fundamental claim in cognitive linguistics that

metaphors underlie our basic understanding of concepts. In fact, the scarcity
of reification and, in particular, reification in the data analysed for this article
seems to challenge this claim. In our data, only an average of 10–20% of oc-
currences of emotion words attest a reification, while personifications are even
less frequent. Note also that this is the case though a rather broad definition of
“metaphor” is suggested.
In terms of future research, these findings call for investigations into fre-
quencies of conceptual metaphors in various kinds of data, and perhaps for
a re-assessment of the current definition of conceptual metaphor, at least as
applied to authentic data. In other words, we still seriously need to ask how to
identify metaphors, as has been done by the Pragglejazz Group, for example
(2007). My general hypothesis is that the number of concepts which English
speaking people consider as emotions occurring in the body has increased
since Early Modern English.
8.4. Location of emotions inside the body
The findings suggest a general hypothesis that the number of concepts which
(native) speakers of English consider as emotions occurring inside the body has
increased since Early Modern English. However, this claim will certainly need
to be modified if one takes into account the fundamental changes in the whole
conceptualization of emotions and of the body and of their functions between
medieval and our times. The key question is what are emotions and what do they
do to us. Even the very concept of “emotion” hardly existed in the 16th century.15
Considering this, the rest of the questions, e. g. question (1) about the naming
of emotions will be seen in a new light: Can we talk of naming an “emotion”
before the concept of “emotion” exists? The claim here is that such a question
may be relevant from our point of view when we wish to compare a number of
concepts. However, it must be noted that while it allows for simple diachronic
comparison, it is strictly speaking anachronistic.
15 For relevant research, see Diller (2007a). Dirk Geeraerts, Michele Goyens and
Annelies Bloem have conducted research on the birth of the word emotion, focus-
ing on the history of the French language. Furthermore, Diller and Tissari gave
papers on the English word and concept of emotion at the ISLE 2008 conference
in Freiburg.
8.5. Movement related to emotions
Movement is inherent in such classic notions of the conceptual metaphor the-

ory as containment and directionality. It nevertheless seems that emotions in-
volve several kinds of movement which have not been discussed very much
within cognitive linguistics. In particular, one might do more research on emo-
tional movement as expressed through specific prepositions and/or adverbs,
or non-metaphorical movement. One could also compare metaphorical with
non-metaphorical movement in more depth. In general, corpus-based, bottom-
up research on emotion words seems to highlight a different set of movement
types than more philosophically oriented, top-down research would.16
8.6. Axes and continua
Finally, we would like to suggest two things. Firstly, the kinds of questions
presented here, while potentially still too simple, allow us to glimpse emotion
words on several kinds of diachronic and synchronic axes and continua. De-
pending on context, the following may hold both diachronically and synchron-
ically: (1) the status of a word may oscillate between referring and not referring
to an emotion; (2) it may be associated with various kinds of things calling for
positive and negative associations; (3 & 4) partly depending on such associa-
tions, it may be accompanied by a changing set of metaphors; and (5) there may
also be changes as regards movement associated with the emotion word. This
study suggests that the clearest diachronic changes occur with respect to ques-
tions (1) and (2), and that question (5) in particular deserves further study. A
fully-fledged study of all these aspects could even include diagrams position-
ing the emotions on various scales, both separately and in combination.
8.7. Combining old and new ideas
As suggested at the beginning of this article, studying conceptual metaphors

for emotions is no longer a new enterprise. Historical studies have been con-
ducted ever since the beginning of conceptual metaphor theory in the 1980s.
However, they have always been a minority activity, and it seems that there are
still many aspects to cover if we wish to describe (let alone explain) diachronic
variation in emotion metaphors in English alone.
16 Kövecses (2008) comments on the differences between these two approaches.

324 Heli Tissari
This article suggests that it could be useful to combine diachronic studies of

emotion metaphors not only with corpus methods, but also with new kinds of
questions regarding various senses and uses of each emotion word. Even if the
questions are not entirely new, the combination of conceptual metaphor theory
with new aspects of emotion words would allow us to arrive at a fuller picture
of what emotions are and their potential linguistic and other functions. This
may raise issues that cognitive linguistics has not yet covered.
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6. Afterword
Prospects for the past:
Perspectives for cognitive diachronic semantics
Dirk Geeraerts
Abstract
Cognitive diachronic semantics is placed in a long-term historical perspective. It is

argued that prestructuralist historical semantics focused on two areas: the interplay
of system and usage, and the conceptual mechanisms of semantic change. It is shown
that these fields of investigation are also the main foci of current work in cognitive
diachronic semantics. With regard to future developments in diachronic cognitive se-
mantics, it is suggested that the dialectic relationship between system and usage is the
topic field where most progress can be expected.
1. Cognitive semantics in a historical perspective
Cognitive linguistics has a conception of language that implies a recognition

of the intrinsic historicity of language. Among the various central features of
cognitive linguistics (see Geeraerts 2006 for an attempt to present them syn-
thetically), two prime for a view of language as an inherently historical phe-
nomenon.
In the first place, the experiential nature of language involves a historically
specific experience. If language both shapes and reflects human experience,
then language is as historical as that experience: while part of the human expe-
rience is universal and biologically species-specific, another part is historical
and cultural.
In the second place, the usage-based nature of language implies that lan-
guage is inherently dynamic. In a usage-based model, the linguistic system
(Saussurean “langue”) and linguistic usage (Saussurean “parole”) entertain a
dialectic relationship. On the one hand, the existing regularities in the linguis-
tic behaviour of the speech community guide the way individual members use
their language: communicative efficiency requires that they make use of the
existing means of communication. On the other hand, language users adapt
the existing means to their communicative needs, and may so cumulatively
achieve a change in the conventional regularities. Language, in other words, is
334 Dirk Geeraerts
inherently historical, because the conditions for its replication – language us-
age – embody the causes of its possible transformation.
Given the intrinsic historicity of the conception of language fostered by
cognitive linguistics, could we summarize what the contributions of cognitive
linguistics to diachronic semantics have so far been? Admittedly (and perhaps
surprisingly), historical studies do not occupy a central position within cogni-
tive linguistics, but even so, it may be instructive to identify the points on which
specific progress has been made.
But progress with regard to what? As pointed out in Geeraerts (1988), cog-
nitive semantics shares a number of crucial features with the prestructuralist
tradition of historical semantics: the general interest in the flexibility and the
contextualized conception of meaning, and the more specific focus on seman-
tic phenomena like metaphor and polysemy, make clear that cognitive seman-
tics has closer links with the earliest tradition of semantic research in modern
linguistics than with any of the chronologically intervening theoretical frame-
works, be they structuralist, generativist, or neostructuralist. (For more details
on these stages in the history of semantics, see Geeraerts 2010.)
After twenty years, and after the explosive development of cognitive linguis-
tics, we may now have another look at the theoretical affinity between cogni-
tive semantics and the prestructuralist tradition. If we take the programme of
prestructuralist diachronic semantics as a point of departure, what has cogni-
tive linguistics contributed to the study of linguistic change, and particularly
(given the central role of semantics in the cognitive framework) to the study of
semantic change? This paper (which roughly covers the same ground as section
5.4 of Geeraerts 2010) will try to provide a synthetic answer to that question.
We will first briefly recall the essentials of the prestructuralist, “historical-phil-
ological” outlook. Then follows an overview of the innovations and extensions
brought by cognitive semantics, starting from the assumption that it implicitly
tries to emulate the research programme defined by the older tradition. Finally,
a number of open questions are identified: these are the areas where future im-
provements of our semantic study of the past may most profitably be situated.
2. The components of prestructuralist diachronic semantics
The historical-philological tradition (as we will now continue to call it) consists
of two conceptual building-blocks: on the one hand, a psychological concep-
tion of individual acts of meaning change as being based on specific cognitive
mechanisms, and on the other hand, a pragmatic conception of how such indi-
vidual acts contribute to global changes. We will illustrate the first aspect with
Prospects for the past 335
a reference to the work of Michel Bréal, and the second with a reference to the
views of Hermann Paul. Two points need to be clarified first, though. To begin
with, this nutshell presentation glosses over important differences within the
historical-philological tradition. Not all scholars working in that period share
the psychological view of mechanisms of change, and when they do share the
psychological perspective, the actual classification of mechanisms of change
differs considerably from author to author (see Nerlich 1992). Classifications of
semantic change are in fact the main empirical output of historical-philological
semantics, and an in-depth study of the historical-philological era would pri-
marily take the form of a classification of such classifications. This point in-
troduces the second caveat: the conceptual mechanisms of semantic extension
receive proportionately much more attention from the historical-philological
scholars than the relationship between individual and collective changes.
2.1. The conceptual mechanisms of semantic change
The psychological orientation of historical-philological semantics may be il-

lustrated with a few sample quotations from the work of Michel Bréal (1897),
not because Bréal is the first or the single most important exponent of his-
torical-philological semantics, but because his highly influential work clearly
expresses the dominant methodological ideas. First, he explicitly defines se-
mantics as a historical discipline. An adequate understanding of words in their
contemporary meaning requires a thorough knowledge of their semantic his-
tory: “L’histoire peut seule nous donner aux mots le degré de précision dont
nous avons besoin pour les bien comprendre” [‘Only history can give to the
words the degree of precision that we require to understand them adequately’]
(1897: 124).
Second, Bréal highlights the psychological orientation of the study of mean-
ing. There are actually two aspects to this: linguistic meaning in general is de-
fined as a psychological phenomenon, and more specifically, change of mean-
ing is the result of psychological processes. With regard to the first feature,
meanings are considered to be psychological entities, i. e. (a kind of) thoughts
or ideas: “[Le langage] objective la pensée” (‘Language makes thought objec-
tive’) (Bréal 1897: 273). The mental status of lexical meanings links up directly
with the overall function of thinking, i. e. with the function of cognition as a
reflection and reconstruction of experience. Language, one could say, has to
do with categorization: it stores cognitive categories with which human beings
make sense of the world: “Le langage est une traduction de la réalité, une trans-
position où les objets figurent déjà généralisés et classifiés par le travail de la
336 Dirk Geeraerts
pensée” [Language is a translation of reality, a transposition in which particu-

lar objects only appear through the intermediary of the generalizing and clas-
sificatory efforts of thought] (1897: 275). Language, then, is not autonomous; it
is linked with the total set of cognitive capacities that enable men to understand
the world with ever more refined conceptual tools, and it is embedded in their
experience of the world.
If meaning as such consists of cognitive categories – a psychological type of
entity – then meaning changes must be the result of psychological processes.
That is to say, the general mechanisms of semantic change that can be derived
from the classificatory study of the history of words (mechanisms like meta-
phor and metonymy, specialization and generalization) constitute patterns of
thought of the human mind. Bréal calls these mechanisms “les lois intellec-
tuelles du langage” [the conceptual laws of language], but he hastens to add
that “law” means something different here than in the natural sciences: a law
of semantic change is not a strict rule without exceptions, but it represents a
tendency of the human cognitive apparatus to function in a particular way. In
a passage that opposes restricting linguistics to the study of the formal aspects
of language, he remarks (1897: 338–339):
Nous ne doutons pas que la linguistique, revenant de ses paradoxes et de ses partis
pris, deviendra plus juste pour le premier moteur des langues, c’est-à-dire pour
nous-mêmes, pour l’intelligence humaine. Cette mystérieuse transformation qui
fait sortir le français du latin, comme le persan du zend et l’anglais de l’anglo-saxon,
et qui présente partout sur les faits essentiels un ensemble frappant de rencontres
et d’identités, n’est pas le simple produit de la décadence des sons et de l’usure des
flexions; sous ces phénomènes où tout nous parle de ruine, nous sentons l’action
d’une pensée qui se dégage de la forme à laquelle elle est enchaînée, qui travaille à
la modifier, et qui tire souvent avantage de ce qui semble d’abord perte et destruc-
tion. Mens agitat molem.
[We do not doubt that linguistics, giving up its paradoxical prejudices, will treat
more fairly the primary forces in languages, i. e. ourselves, human intelligence. The
mysterious transformation that makes French grow out of Latin (just as Persian out
of Zend, and English out of Anglo-Saxon), and that everywhere shows a remark-
able set of similarities and parallelisms with regard to its essentials, is not simply
the product of the decay of sounds and the wearing off of endings. Behind these
phenomena in which everything seems to speak of decay, we feel the active efforts
of human thought liberating itself from the form in which it is constrained, trying
to modify it, and very often turning to its advantage what at first sight appears to be
mere loss and destruction. Mind moves matter.]
The moving force of the human mind also shows up in the fact that the fun-
damental factor that brings the psychological mechanisms of semantic change
into action, consists of the communicative needs of the language user. Lan-
guages change because people try to express their thoughts as accurately and
satisfactorily as possible (1897: 8).
The psychological conception of meaning that is expressed by Bréal consti-
tutes the mainstream view of historical-philological semantics: by and large, it
is the view of writers like Wegener (1885), Hecht (1888), Hey (1892), Stöcklein
(1898), Thomas (1894, 1896), Waag (1908), Erdmann (1910) in Germany, Paris
(1887), Roudet (1921) and Esnault (1925) in France, Wellander (1917, 1921) in
Sweden, Nyrop (1901–1934, 1913) in Denmark, Van Helten (1912–1913) in The
Netherlands, Whitney (1875) and Oertel (1902) in the United States. As already
mentioned, the main product of their activity consists of classifications of se-
mantic change, varying in scope and specificity, and culminating in the clas-
sificatory systems of Carnoy (1927) and Stern (1931). These two works, which
close off the historical-philological period, present catalogues of remarkable
taxonomical depth: basic categories are divided into subclasses, which may
then be divided into further subclasses, and so on, almost ad infinitum.
2.2. The feedback loop of system and usage
If you focus on the individual creative acts that innovatively change the lan-
guage, what exactly is the relationship with “the language”, given that language
is indeed something more than a purely individual phenomenon? How does
innovative individual behaviour relate to language as a shared institution? Her-
mann Paul’s specification of a pragmatic conception of semantics, to which
we now turn, provides an answer to precisely that problem. (His views are
formulated in his influential introduction to historical linguistics, Prinzipien
der Sprachgeschichte, first published in 1880. The quotes below are from the
5th edition of 1920.)
The first pillar of Paul’s approach involves the distinction between the “usu-
al” and the “occasional” meaning of an expression. The usual meaning (usuelle
Bedeutung) is the established meaning as shared by the members of a language
community. The occasional meaning (okkasionelle Bedeutung) involves the
modulations that the usual meaning can undergo in actual speech (1920: 75).
Wir verstehen also unter usueller Bedeutung den gesamten Vorstellungsinhalt, der
sich für den Angehörigen einer Sprachgenossenschaft mit einem Worte verbindet,
unter okkasioneller Bedeutung denjenigen Vorstellungsinhalt, welchen der Reden-
de, indem er das Wort ausspricht, damit verbindet, und von welchem er erwartet,
dass ihn auch der Hörende damit verbinde.
[By “usual meaning”, we understand the total representational content that is as-
sociated with a word for any member of a speech community. By “occasional mean-
338 Dirk Geeraerts
ing”, we understand the representational content that an interlocutor associates with

a word when he uses it, and which he expects the hearer to associate with the word
as well.]
If the “usuelle Bedeutung” is like the semantic description that would be re-
corded in a dictionary (fairly general, and in principle known to all the speak-
ers of a language), then the “okkasionelle Bedeutung” is the concretization
that such a general concept receives in the context of a specific utterance. The
second pillar of Paul’s conception of semantics is the insight that context is
all-important to understand the shift from usual to occasional meaning. We
can easily appreciate this point if we look at a number of different types of oc-
casional meaning, and the way in which they derive from the usual meaning.
To begin with, let us note that there can be various usual meanings to a word:
if a word is polysemous, the usual meaning involves a set of related meanings,
a cluster of different well-established senses. The occasional meaning, on the
other hand, is always a single reading. In many cases, then, realizing the oc-
casional meaning amounts to selecting the appropriate reading from among
the multiple established senses of a word. Paul highlights the importance of
context in this process. German Blatt is likely to be interpreted differently in
the context of a bookshop than when you are having a walk in the woods: ‘sheet
of paper’ in the former case, ‘leaf’ in the latter.
In other cases, the contextualization of the usual meaning involves not a
selection of one reading from among many existing ones, but the concrete
specification of a more general sense. The word corn, for instance, used to be a
cover term for all kinds of grain, but was differently specialized to ‘wheat’ in
England, to ‘oats’ in Scotland, and to ‘maize’ in the United States, depending
on the dominant variety of grain grown in each of these countries. Again, it’s
the context of use that triggers the specialized meaning.
Finally, there are instances in which the contextualized meaning does not
contain all the features of the usual meaning. In a metaphorical expression like
das Feuer der Leidenschaft ‘the fire of passion’, the combination of “fire” with
“passion” signals that Feuer cannot be taken in its original reading.
So we see how the interplay of contextual triggers and usual meanings can
give rise to occasional meanings. But what about the reverse process? How can
occasional meanings give rise to usual meanings? The third pillar of Paul’s
views consists of a dialectic relationship between language structure and use:
occasional meanings that are used very often may themselves become usual,
i. e. they may acquire an independent status. So, on the one hand, usual mean-
ings are the basis for deriving occasional ones, but on the other, the contextual-
ized meanings may become conventional and decontextualized. The clearest
criterion for a shift from the occasional to the usual level is the possibility of
interpreting the new meaning independently. If corn evokes ‘wheat’ without

specific clues in the linguistic or the extra-linguistic environment, then we can
be sure that the sense ‘wheat’ has become conventionalized.
In this way, Paul develops a pragmatic, usage-based theory of semantic
change: the foundation of semantic change is the modulation of usual mean-
ings into occasional meanings. And the mechanisms of semantic change that
semanticians are so eager to classify, are essentially the same mechanisms that
allow speakers to modulate those usual meanings: in the corn and Feuer ex-
amples, we can see how specialization of meaning and metaphor (two types
of semantic change that would traditionally be mentioned in classifications of
semantic change) operate at the concrete utterance level.
3. System and usage in cognitive semantics
If we try to classify the major contributions of cognitive linguistics to dia-

chronic semantics, the two components of historical-philological semantics
provide a useful framework – not surprisingly, perhaps, given the overall af-
finity between historical-philological and cognitive semantics. In other words,
the advances presented by cognitive semantics relate nicely to the two crucial
questions investigated in the older tradition: what are the mechanisms underly-
ing individual meaning changes, and how do these specific changes interact
with the linguistic system? If we zoom in on the second question first, two
areas of research need to be mentioned.
In the first place, the invited inferencing theory of semantic change links the
overall usage-based model of change to Gricean pragmatics. We called Paul’s
conception of change a “pragmatic” one because it linked usage and conven-
tion, but pragmatics in the technical sense as a branch of linguistics developed
only after the historical-philological era. In the invited inferencing theory of
semantic change, then, we can see how the hypotheses developed within lin-
guistic pragmatics are introduced into a usage-based model of change that is
essentially the same as Paul’s.
In the second place, cognitive linguistics develops the fundamental idea that
a dialectic view of the relationship between system and usage has consequenc-
es for the way we think about the system. This is not just a structure of ele-
ments (words, constructions – any means of expression in the language) but the
relationship among the elements bears witness to their role at the level of usage.
More specifically, some of the elements in the structure are more important
than others (even though, from a conceptual point of view, they belong to the
same class or category) because they are more frequent in usage. In this way,
340 Dirk Geeraerts
the notion of structural weight as a reflection of frequency of use is introduced

into the description of change. This idea blurs the traditionally strict boundary
between structure and use: frequency effects at the usage level make their way
into the system as differences of structural weight. (Another term sometimes
used to refer to this phenomenon is “entrenchment”: see Langacker 1987: 59.)
In semantics, this idea specifically takes the form of prototype theory; in a
broader context of historical linguistics, it emerges in the form of frequency-
based and exemplar-based models of change.
3.1. Invited inference and pragmatics
As a usage-based approach to meaning in general, cognitive semantics obvi-

ously takes a usage-based approach to meaning change in particular: new ways
of using language emerge in the context of actual language use. Conceptually,
this implies a distinction between decontextualized, coded meanings (stored
in the language user’s semantic memory), and contextualized readings that are
realized in a specific discourse context. From a historical point of view, as we
have seen, this is not a novel idea: it is easily recognized as essentially the same
model that lies behind Paul’s distinction between an usuelle Bedeutung and an
okkasionelle Bedeutung. (That historical background is not often recognized
by the contemporary theorists, but that is an example of the more general phe-
nomenon that the scholarship that emerged in the historical-philological era
is not well known.) The overall model comes in a number of terminological
and theoretical guises, but the most articulate formulation is without doubt the
invited inferencing theory of semantic change initiated by Elizabeth Traugott
(1982, 1985, 1988, 1989) and described in systematic detail by Traugott and
Dasher (2005). A crucial advance in comparison to earlier or simpler formula-
tions of a usage-based model of change is the explicit reference to principles of
pragmatic reasoning in the invited inferencing theory of semantic change. In
fact, if new meanings arise at the level of discourse, the apparatus of linguistic
pragmatics should be applicable to the relevant processes. Simplifying, this
link with pragmatics takes two forms.
First, the contextualization of coded meanings takes shape through “invited
inferences”, interpretations that are not expressed explicitly but that are nev-
ertheless intended or at least allowed by the speaker/writer. In a standard case
of metonymy like Don’t forget to fill up the car, the conclusion that it is not
the entire car that needs to be filled with fuel is not an accident; it is intended
by the speaker/writer. To explain how and when such inferences come about,
Traugott and Dasher (2005) refer to the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles for-
mulated by Horn (1984). These principles distinguish between a “Q-heuristic”

(like the first Gricean maxim of Quantity: “make your contribution sufficiently
informative, and mean no more than that”), an R-heuristic (invoking the sec-
ond Gricean maxim of Quantity, and the maxim of Relevance: “say or write no
more than you must, and mean more by that”), and an M-heuristic (specifying
Manner: “marked expressions signal a marked meaning”). It is the application
of the R-heuristic that can result in semantic change of the invited inference
kind: the speaker/writer uses an expression that is less explicit than might be,
but the full interpretation can be safely retrieved by the hearer/reader.
Second, drawing on a distinction introduced by Levinson (1995), Traugott
and Dasher suggest the following path for the process by means of which such
invited inferences become conventionalized. As a first step, following the
mechanism that we just described, a conventional coded meaning gives rise
to an utterance-token meaning, in a particular context. As a second step, the
utterance-token meaning may crystallize into an utterance-type meaning, i. e. a
generalized invited inference that is the default interpretation of an expression
but that may still be cancelled. For instance, after in After the trip to Minnesota
she felt very tired would normally be interpreted as implying a causal link, but
that inference may be blocked in a sentence like After the trip to Minnesota
she felt very tired. It turned out that she had been sick for quite some time. In
the latter sentence, it is no longer implied that she felt tired because of the trip.
Finally, the utterance-type meaning may further stabilize into a new coded
meaning, existing alongside the original one and sometimes replacing it.
Note that the situation in which the inferences are activated together with
the original meaning function as a bridging context between the new and the
old meaning. A standard example of such a process of conventionalization of
implicature may be found in König and Traugott (1988). Utterances expressing
a temporal succession of events or situations may, by pragmatic inference, be
understood as expressing causality rather than just temporal sequence. This
shift from a temporal to the causative reading of the connectives is mediated
by instances of use in which both co-occur. In the following series of examples,
(b) is such a bridging context between (a) and (c):
(a) temporal: I have done quite a bit of writing since we last met
(b) temporal and causal: Since you lost your favourite fountain pen, you seem
to have been suffering from writer’s block
(c) causal: Since he didn’t want me to sign with a pencil, he lent me his pen
Although this example involves a metonymy, the model is a general one. Novel
metaphors too, for instance, may be seen as emerging in the form of invited
342 Dirk Geeraerts
inferences: a lover who addresses his beloved as squirrel triggers the implica-
tion that he sees her as lively and dynamic. Nevertheless, in the actual applica-
tions of the invited inferencing theory of semantic change, the emphasis is on
metonymic relations, and there may be a tendency to see invited inferences as
a particular type of metonymy only. To avoid terminological confusion, it may
be useful to distinguish between two levels that play a role here. On the level
of speech acts, an inference is by definition metonymic: the utterance Squir-
rel, I love you triggers the thought “He cannot mean that I am a rodent, so he
must mean that I am agile, industrious, and inquisitive”. That is a process that
is easily recognized as an example of a cause/effect metonymy. On the level of
the propositional meaning of the predicates, however, the relation between the
‘rodent’ reading and the figurative reading cannot be classified as metonymic.
3.2. Prototypicality and frequency effects
The prototype model of semasiological structure characteristically embodies

the idea that the elements in a structure (like the different readings of an ex-
pression, or the various types of referents that it may refer to) carry different
weights: some readings, or more generally, applications of an expression are
structurally more important than others. (The principles of prototype theory
need not be expounded here: see Taylor 2003 for a standard introduction.) The
relevance of prototype theory for the description and explanation of semasio-
logical changes is analysed at length by Geeraerts (1997). Various prototypi-
cality effects are shown to have specific consequences for diachronic seman-
tics. Without going into much detail, let us consider an example.
By emphasizing the extensional non-equality of lexical-semantic structure
(i. e. the fact that there are differences of structural weight within the sema-
siological range of an expression), prototype theory highlights the fact that
changes in the referential range of one specific word meaning may take the
form of modulations on the core cases within that referential range. Changes
in the extension of a single sense of a lexical item are likely to take the form of
an expansion of the prototypical centre of that extension. If the referents that
may be found in the range of application of a particular lexical meaning do
not have equal status, the more salient members will probably be more stable
(diachronically speaking) than the less salient ones. Changes will then take the
form of modulations on the central cases: if a particular meaning starts off as
a name for referents exhibiting the features abcde, the subsequent expansion of
the category will consist of variations on that type of referent. The further the
expansion extends, the fewer features the peripheral cases will have in com-
mon with the prototypical centre. A first layer of extensions, for instance, might
consist of referents exhibiting features abcd, bcde, or acde. A further growth
of the peripheral area could then involve feature sets abc, bcd, cde, or acd, to
name just a few.
In Geeraerts (1997), this hypothesis is supported by a case study involving
a close inspection of the development of the clothing term legging in Dutch
over the years 1988 to 1991. The term was introduced as a neologism in 1988,
as a name for close-fitting, long, elastic women’s trousers. Over the five years
studied, when the term was getting more and more popular, this initial type
remains the core of the concept, measured in terms of its frequency within the
category. At the same time, modulations of the core application make their ap-
pearance: leggings that are slightly less tight-fitting, or made of other materials
than the basic stretch fabric, or which are are shorter than the original type. As
predicted by the prototype model, these modulations on the prototype appear
gradually: over the years, the new types that are introduced are farther and
farther removed from the centre.
The prototype structure of semantic change in its various aspects is ac-
knowledged and illustrated in one form or another in many studies, among
them Dirven (1985), Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (1985), Casad (1992), Goos-
sens (1992), Nerlich and Clarke (1992), Dekeyser (1990), Soares da Silva (1999,
2003), Koivisto-Alanko (2000), De Mulder and Vanderheyden (2001), Tissari
(2003), Molina (2005).
4. Mechanisms and regularities in cognitive semantics
Cognitive semantics has given rise to a renewed interest in the possible regular-
ity of semantic change. Are there any constraints or tendencies on the evolution
of word meanings? Specifically, is there any directionality in semantic change,
in the sense that certain kinds of meaning would naturally evolve towards an-
other kind, but not the other way round? Two related lines of research illustrate
this approach.
4.1. Metaphorical and metonymical patterns
Subclassifications of the major types of semantic change, like metaphor and

metonymy, were quite common in the historical-philological period, but over-
all, the subclassifications of metonymy were situated at a more specific lev-
el than those of metaphor. In Waag (1908), for instance, one may find fairly
344 Dirk Geeraerts
specific metonymical patterns like part-whole, location-located, cause-

effect, event-subevent, characteristic-characterized entity, pro-
ducer-product, container-contained, action-participant. The meta-
phorical patterns mentioned by Waag are more general, like “metaphors based
on similarities of shape and experience”, “metaphors based on similarities of
structure”, “metaphors based on functional similarities”, or “metaphors relat-
ing space and time”. In cognitive linguistics, largely under the influence of
conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, see Kövecses 2002 for
an introduction), metaphor is studied at a more specific level, with well-known
patterns like anger is the heat of a fluid in a container, or more is up.
In line with this specific interest, diachronic work in cognitive semantics has
tended to look more in the direction of such low-level metaphorical patterns,
and more generally source/target alignments, rather than in the direction of
metonymical patterns (pace works like Allan 2009). The interest takes roughly
two different forms, a more purely historical one, and a typological one.
The historical approach, represented by works like Fabiszak (2001), Tissari
(2001), Gevaert (2005), Trim (2007), and several contributions in this volume,
takes the form of following a metaphorical pattern, or a subject field with an
expectedly high proportion of metaphors, like the emotions, through time. The
interest resides in possible changes in the conceptualization of the field, but
also, on a more general level, in the possible universality of the metaphorical
pattern. In fact, in spite of the experientialist nature of cognitive linguistics,
many proponents of conceptual metaphor theory tend to focus on allegedly
universal, possibly physiological interpretations of observed patterns, at the
expense of culturally specific explanations. Conventionalized phrases such as
I had reached the boiling point, she was seething with rage, he lost his cool,
you make my blood boil were subsumed by Lakoff and Kövecses (1987) un-
der the conceptual metaphor anger is heat, and were interpreted in terms of
physiological effects: increased body heat is taken to be a physiological effect
of being in a state of anger, and anger is metonymically conceptualized in
terms of its physiological effects. Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995), however,
drew attention to the plausibly culturally specific background of the expres-
sions mentioned as evidence by Lakoff and Kövecses. A historical analysis
suggests that these are lexical and conceptual relics of the theory of humours,
the highly influential doctrine that dominated medical thinking in Western
Europe for several centuries.
In recent years, the importance of culture for metaphor research has received
an increasing recognition, also among the major spokesmen of conceptual
metaphor theory: see Kövecses (2005). At the same time, the methodological
importance of adding a diachronic dimension to metaphor research has not yet
gained a wide acceptance, and historical studies such as the ones mentioned
above are still a minority in the context of conceptual metaphor theory.
The search for regular patterns of polysemy and semantic change may be ap-
proached from a typological perspective, by looking at regularities – possibly
even universals – in the historical relationship between (metaphorical) source
and target domains in as many languages as possible. If the pattern is dominant
in the languages of the world, occurring in many unrelated languages, it is a
good candidate for a universal mechanism. At that point, the question arises
what experiential factors might explain the salience of the association. This
kind of perspective lies at the basis of the grammaticalization theory developed
by Bernd Heine and his associates; important publications are Heine, Claudi
and Hünnemeyer (1991), Heine (1997), Heine and Kuteva (2002). The central
question of the paradigm involves the motivation behind the creation of gram-
matical categories: can we understand why particular ways of forming gram-
matical categories are crosslinguistically more common than others?
An example, taken from Heine (2004), may illustrate the perspective. Look-
ing at cardinal numbers in a wide variety of languages, Heine makes a number
of observations. First, numeral systems having “5”, “10” or “20” as the basis
of their system are statistically predominant in the languages of the world,
with systems based on “10” being most widespread. Second, the numerals for
“5” and “10” often have nominal characteristics, while numerals from “6” to
“9” often have a propositional, clause-like structure (like a phrase meaning
“add the big finger”, or “jump from one hand to the other”). Third, expressions
used for the mathematical operation of addition frequently find their source
in function words with the meaning ‘with’ or ‘on, upon’. These observations
find a plausible explanation in human experience. The hands provide an obvi-
ous model for structuring a counting system, and so, the most common struc-
ture in the world’s languages is one in which the expression for “5” is derived
from that for ‘hand’, the expression for “10” from that for ‘two hands’, and
the expression for “20” from that for ‘hands and feet’ or ‘whole person’. Even
when these numerals no longer have a nominal meaning but have become pure
numerals, they may still have morphological and grammatical properties that
show that they are relics from nouns. In a similar way, it seems plausible that
the expression of an abstract mental operation like arithmetical addition finds
its source in more concrete acts, like putting things together (‘with’) or on top
of each other (‘on, upon’).
But the search for regularity does not necessarily yield universal patterns
that occur in unrelated languages. It could just as well be the case that a giv-
en pattern is specific to a language family, or a language type, or a culture
(Wilkins 1996). An example of the latter situation is Vanhove’s typological
346 Dirk Geeraerts
study of the sources of verbs of mental perception (2008). She makes a distinc-
tion between the source domain of vision (I can see what you mean), hearing
as a source domain (will you listen to me, i. e. obey), and prehension verbs as a
source domain (he didn’t grasp her meaning). She notes that, contrary to the
suggestion in among others Sweetser (1990), the connection between vision
and knowledge is not dominant crossculturally.
The typological search for regularity also exists in a broader lexicogenetic
form. “Lexicogenesis” involves the mechanisms for introducing new pairs
of word forms and word meanings – all the traditional mechanisms, in other
words, like word formation, word creation, borrowing, blending, truncation,
ellipsis, folk etymology and others, that introduce new items into the onoma-
siological inventory of a language. Crucially, semasiological change is a ma-
jor mechanism of lexicogenesis, i. e. of introducing new pairings of forms and
meanings. Within the set of lexicogenetic mechanisms, some could be more
salient (i. e. might be used more often) than others. Superficially, this could
involve, for instance, an overall preference for borrowing rather than mor-
phological productivity as mechanisms for introducing new words, but from
a cognitive semantic perspective, there are other, more subtle questions to ask:
do the ways in which novel words and expressions are being coined, reveal
specific (and possibly preferred) ways of conceptualizing the onomasiological
targets? The etymological research project started by Andreas Blank and Peter
Koch (Koch 1997; Blank and Koch 1999, 2003; Gévaudan 2007), intends to
systematically explore motivational preferences in the etymological inventory
of the Romance languages. In comparison with much of the metaphor-oriented
research, the approach put forward by Blank and Koch takes into account all
possible pathways of lexicalization (and not just metaphor).
4.2. Subjectification
While metaphor is a traditional mechanism of semantic change, subjectifica-

tion is a newly introduced concept. The subjectification approach is closely
linked to the invited inferencing theory of semantic change, and was in fact
first formulated and developed by the same scholars. The background notion of
the theory is the recognition that some linguistic forms involve the subjective
perspective of the speaking subject more than others. Calling someone a boor
is more subjective than describing someone as a sales manager: whether the
latter description is correct may be settled objectively, but whether the former
ascription is appropriate is likely to be a matter of opinion and debate. Against
the background of this concept of subjectivity, subjectification is the process
through which words acquire more subjective senses. In the words of Traugott
(1999: 179),
If the meaning of a lexical item or construction is grounded in the socio-physical
world of reference, it is likely that over time, speakers will develop polysemies
grounded in the speakers’ world, whether reasoning, belief, or meta-textual atti-
tudes to the discourse. Subjectification, then, is the semasiological development of
meanings associated with a form such that it comes to mark subjectivity explicitly.
A standard example of subjectification is the development of the epistemic

senses of must. In the deontic reading, must expresses obligation: Mary must
go home now. In the epistemic reading, as in Mary must be home by now, it
expresses the speaking subject’s personal conviction rather than a situation that
exists independently of the speaker’s judgement: the speaker believes that he or
she can conclude with some certainty that Mary has reached her destination.
A precise analysis of the word’s history is required to establish whether the
alleged order of development is indeed correct, but also to identify bridging
contexts that support the idea that subjectification comes about through invited
inferences. Traugott and Dasher’s minute analysis of the history of must (2002:
120–137) includes a number of Middle English examples in which a deontic
and an epistemic reading seem to co-exist.
The general notion of subjectification encompasses a number of more specif-
ic types. One of these involves the emergence of evaluative meanings, such as
boor ‘unmannered person’ from boor ‘farmer’. Another, which features promi-
nently in Sweetser’s seminal monograph on semantic change and polysemy
patterns (1990), concerns the rise of textual and metalinguistic uses, such as
when in fact develops into a discourse marker. In a passage like the following,
in fact indicates that the second utterance is a more elaborate version of the
first one, in particular, a more precise formulation than the first: It’s purple. In
fact, it’s mauve. In cases like these, in fact signals the discourse relationship
between the two utterances, rather than describing any fact outside the text.
5. Gaps and directions
The previous pages have made clear that cognitive semantics contributes sub-
stantially to the research programme originally defined by historical-philolog-
ical semantics. But, taking this perspective for granted, where are the major
lacunae, and how could the programme be further developed? Critical gaps
seem to lie rather on the side of the interplay between system and usage than on
the side of the conceptual mechanisms of change. This is not to say that there
348 Dirk Geeraerts
is no room for further development in the field of metaphor and metonymy and
the other pathways of change, but rather that the fundamental issues are fairly
well identified in that area, and already guide the development of the research
efforts: what exactly are the dominant conceptual mechanisms of change, and
how universal are they? A rich spectrum of more specific topics for research
follows from this overall question, and if diachronic studies in cognitive se-
mantics gain momentum, we can look forward to an abundance of descriptions
and analyses in this field.
The papers collected in this volume amply testify to the fruitfulness of the
cognitive perspective (a feature that is put into a historical perspective in Mar-
garet Winters’s introductory chapter): the chapters by Małgorzata Fabiszak and
Anna Hebda, by Heli Tissari, by Richard Trim and by Andreas Musolff il-
lustrate the impact of cognitive linguistics on the historical study of metaphor,
while the chapter by Kathryn Allan advances our knowledge of metonymical
changes. The article contributed by Liesbet Heyvaert and Hubert Cuyckens,
and that by Silvia Luraghi, achieve a further extension of the perspective (and
one that received little attention in the overview presented in the pages above),
viz. towards the study of diachronic syntax – or more precisely, towards the
diachronic semantics of syntactic phenomena.
The other main perspective, relating to the interplay of system and usage,
is not absent from the present collection either. The paper by Louise Sylvester
shows how the attention for the conceptual mechanisms of change (the system
level) is directly relevant for the interpretation of older texts (the usage level).
While Sylvester’s paper is geared towards the practice of philological inter-
pretation, the paper by Roslyn Frank and Nathalie Gontier takes a theoretical
stance: it proposes a conceptual dynamic system view of language as an ap-
propriate model to deal with the interaction of structure and use.
Now, precisely with regard to these dialectics of system and usage, it is pos-
sible to point to two fundamental factors that will need to receive more atten-
tion to complete the picture: the importance of an onomasiological perspective,
and the importance of a social perspective.
Paying attention to the social mechanisms of language change is crucial
because the theoretical picture that we have at the moment still focuses pre-
dominantly on individual processes. Specifically, we need to be aware that the
invited inferencing theory of semantic change, is a refined model of the contex-
tual specification of meaning, but does not entirely explain the process of con-
ventionalization. If new meanings arise through the conventionalization of im-
plicatures, then the recognition of the implicature by the hearer/speaker is only
a first step: numerous language users have to do the same for the new reading to
become conventional. Rudi Keller (1994) has introduced a revealing terminol-
ogy to describe this kind of phenomenon. Borrowing a term from economical

theory, he suggests that linguistic change may be described as an “invisible
hand” process. As applied to economic theory, the invisible hand metaphor
involves two levels of analysis. On the micro-level, the economic life of a com-
munity consists of countless individual actions and transactions. Macro-eco-
nomically, however, these individual actions result in global phenomena, such
as inflation or an economic boom. Crucially, the individuals who engage in the
basic transactions do not have the conscious private intention of, for instance,
changing the rate of inflation. Nor do they act in accordance with a collective
decision. Rather, phenomena like inflation are a cumulative consequence on
the macro-level of a myriad of individual acts on the micro-level. Similarly,
changes spread through a linguistic community as if guided by an invisible
force, whereas the actual process involves a multitude of communicative acts.
The invisible hand metaphor, however, stops short of indicating precisely
how the transition from the individual level to the global level occurs. What ex-
actly are the mechanisms that enable the cumulative effects? Logically speak-
ing, two situations may occur: either the changes work in parallel, or they take
place serially. The first situation occurs when members of a speech community
are confronted with the same communicative, expressive problem, and inde-
pendently choose the same solution. The spread of a word like computer over
many languages may at least to some extent have proceeded in this way. More
or less simultaneously, a number of people face the problem of giving a name
to the new thing in their native language; independently of each other, they
then adopt the original name that comes with the newly introduced object. The
second type occurs when the members of a speech community imitate each
other. For instance, when one person introduces a loan word, a few others may
imitate the initiator, and they in turn may be imitated by others, and so on. In
the same way, the overall picture of a traffic jam is one in which a great number
of cars appear to be halted by an invisible hand, while what actually happens is
a cumulative process of individual actions: when the first car brakes to avoid a
dog running over the highway, the car behind him has to slow down to avoid an
accident, and so on. But while these models of parallel and serial development
are entirely plausible, our actual knowledge of the forces that determine how
specific concepts evolve, is still relatively poor: the social nature of semantic
conventionalization and linguistic change is generally acknowledged, but sel-
dom studied systematically.
In the broader context of cognitive linguistics, such a social reorientation of
diachronic studies will link up with the current emergence of a socially and
variationally oriented form of research: see Kristiansen and Dirven (2008),
Harder (2010), Geeraerts, Kristiansen and Peirsman (2010).
350 Dirk Geeraerts
Further, a social perspective on language change leads automatically to an

onomasiological perspective. In the history of diachronic semantics, the ono-
masiological perspective was never the dominant one, and where it came to
the fore (as in the Wörter und Sachen movement, or in the lexical field studies
of the structuralist era), it was primarily situated at the level of language struc-
ture, not at the level of language use. Even the “quantitative” onomasiological
perspective introduced by Blank and Koch’s typological lexicogenetics is still
situated at the level of language structure: the basic data are lexical items with
an entrenched position in a language, not the choices language users make at
the level of usage. The question this kind of research addresses is more read-
ily paraphrased as “Why did language x opt for such or such lexicogenetic
mechanism?”, rather than “Why do language users in a given context seem
to prefer alternative a instead of b?”. But if one looks more closely, the latter
question underlies the former: how specific lexicogenetic mechanisms reach
a dominant position within a language or a group of languages depends on
the onomasiological choices that language users make in specific usage con-
texts. Ultimately, the choices that language users make are not semasiologi-
cal choices about how to use a given expression, but onomasiological choices
about how to categorize something and which expression to use to communi-
cate that categorization.
Only such a pragmatic onomasiology might lead to an insight in the invis-
ible hand processes that promote a given onomasiological possibility to an
entrenched position in the language. Linguistic changes are always mediated
through onomasiological choices made on the level of actual language use.
Words and constructions die out because speakers refuse to choose them, and
expressions are added to the inventory of a language because some speak-
ers introduce them and others imitate these speakers; similarly, expressions
change their value within the language because people start using them in
different circumstances. Change, in other words, is the ouput of processes that
are properly studied in the context of pragmatic onomasiology. Such a prag-
matic, usage-based perspective includes a social point of view: in choosing
among existing alternatives, the individual language user takes into account
their sociolinguistic, non-referential value, and conversely, the expansion of
a change over a language community is the cumulative effect of individual
choices. In short, a socially enriched pragmatic onomasiology may well be
the major next step that needs to be taken in the development of a usage-based
model of linguistic change.
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Index
action nominals 139, 156 – of emotion 242–247, 263–265,

addressee 103–104, 119 276–278, 285–287, 298–299, 313,
affection 208, 249, 302 320, 323–324
allative 119–120, 125–126, 128 conceptual networking 227–229, 237–
analogy 18–19, 32–34, 52–56, 74–76, 239, 241
79–80, 155 concrete beneficiary (CB) 99, 107–110,
– analogical change 12 112–118, 127–128
construal 199–202
basic-level properties 229, 232 contiguity 166–168
benefactum 95–98, 117–118, 127–128 continuum (metaphor-metonymy-literal
beneficiary 95–101, 105–117, 125–127 language) 167–168, 182
– behalf beneficiary (BB) 97–99, conventionalization 16, 164–165, 174,
110, 114–115 182–184, 338–339, 341, 348–349
– proto-typical vs. non-prototypical core concepts 226, 229
95, 98–100 corpora and corpus data 135–136,
– recipient beneficiary (RB) 99–101, 262–263, 266–267, 301, 308
105–106, 112 – historical corpora 135, 165, 263,
beneficient 95–98, 101, 117–118, 128 266, 301
body 71–73, 235, 285–286, 316–317, 322 corpus linguistics 11, 14, 22
body politic 73–84 cyclic patterns 234
categorization 9, 16–18, 39, 182, 200– dative case 103–105, 112–115, 119–120
201, 228–229, 253, 335–336, 350 decategorialization 151, 156
– color see color categories description and evaluation of circum-
chaining 228–229 stances 304
Chaucer 211–214, 242–245, 247–254 dictionaries and dictionary data 165,
cognitive semantics 5–14, 200, 205, 169–170, 198, 201, 205–216, 338
224, 333–334, 339–340, 343–348 Dictionary of Old English Corpus 266,
cognitive sociolinguistics 14, 45 274, 293
see also social cognitive linguistics directionality of change 7–9, 224–225,
color categories 9, 237–238 254–255, 343
complements/complementation 133–135 discourse history/tradition 71–73, 83–85
complex adaptive systems (CAS) 36–45, distributed and situated cognition 45–
51–52, 54–55 52, 54–56, 85, 262
computational linguistics 38–39, 52 domains 166, 229, 234–237, 345
conceptual change 3, 20–21, 241, 265, 317 – domain matrix 166
conceptual history 70–71, 73, 84–85
conceptual metaphor 71–72, 226–235, Early Modern English 134, 138, 140,
255–256, 262–263, 298–299, 322, 304–306, 309–312, 315, 317, 321–322
344–345 emotion/ emotions 153–155, 225,
– long/short term 231–233, 242– 239–242, 263–266, 276–278, 298–
248, 253–255 304, 313–323
358 Index
– conceptual metaphors of emotion linguistic metaphor

see conceptual metaphor see metaphor
– desirability of emotions 306–312, literal language
321 see continuum (metonymy-literal
epistemic meaning 6–8, 224, 347 language)
evolution of language, evolutionary
linguistics 20, 36–38, 41–42, 46–47, malefactive 101–102, 111–112, 115–
55–56, 72, 85 116, 124–125
evolution of metaphors 46–47, 72, 85, material for object metonymy 168–
223–226 169, 171–175, 179–183
external possessor 104–105 meaning
extra-linguistic/language-external see epistemic meaning, root meaning,
factors in change 18, 171–175, 177, spatial meaning, speech act meaning,
183–184 texts and textual meaning
eyes 80, 316, 320 mechanisms of semantic change 165,
174–175, 234, 335–337, 339, 343–350
fable of the belly 70–71, 76 memes 41, 52
merger (discontinuation of) 292
Generative Grammar 10, 15, 51 metalinguistic predicates 152
Generative semantics 5 metaphor
genes 41, 52 – conceptual metaphor
genitive 93, 102–103, 115, 118, 120– see conceptual metaphor
125, 139 – discourse metaphor 47, 53, 278
gerundives 138–142, 145–152, 156 – linguistic metaphor 226, 233,
grammaticalization 13–14, 150–151, 254–255
155–156, 224, 345 – metaphor paths 224–226, 229–
Greek 78, 102, 112–118, 225, 246, 255 233, 247, 252–255
– metaphoric attributes 228–229,
Helsinki Corpus of English Texts 266, 253
301 – metaphorical extensions (of mean-
historical models 223–224, 230, 244– ing) 8, 14, 18–19, 84, 118–126,
245, 250–252 128, 174
– metaphor-metonymy continuum
image schema 18, 226, 290–291 see continuum
-ing- complements 133–135, 139–145, – metaphor-metonymy-literal
147–152, 155–156 language continuum
interpretative semantics 5 see continuum
intra-linguistic factors in semantic metonymy 178–184, 224, 265–266,
change 173, 183 306, 340–344
invited inference 236, 339, 340–342, – ad hoc 164–165, 174
347–348 – conventional/conventionalized 164–
165, 169–170, 174–176, 181–184
lexical fields – metonymicity 172, 178–183
see semantic/lexical field(s) metonymic polysemy 164–165, 171,
linguemes 41, 52, 72 174–175, 183–184
Index 359
– metonymy-literal language continuum reader (as participant in textual interpre-

see continuum tation) 198–202, 206, 209–210,
– post-metonymy 213–214, 341
see post-metonymy recipient 98–100, 117–119, 128
Middle English 139, 198–199, 208– see also recipient beneficiary
209, 242, 279–281, 285, 287–292 regeneration (of metaphor) 229–230,
Middle English Dictionary 198–199, 236–237
209–210, 215–216 regularity in semantic change 224–227,
motion events 122–123 255, 345–346
motivation 17–18, 80, 150, 165–167, reification 313–315, 322
176–178, 183, 291, 345–346 religious and non-religious texts/contexts
270–272, 280–281, 287–291, 308–
Natural Morphology 10 312
root meaning 6–8
obligatorification 151
Old English 213, 233, 266–267, 269– salience 47, 118, 173–174, 223, 233–
271, 278–279, 288–293 239, 247, 252–255, 342, 345–346
onomasiology 175, 253, 346, 350 scenario 81, 83–85, 263, 266, 287
Oxford English Dictionary 165, 170– semantic (radial) set 6–7, 14–16, 18
171, 176, 215, 269, 302 semantic change 155, 163–165,
183–184, 228, 252–254, 335–337,
personification 313–315, 322 339–348
polysemy 6, 8, 125, 163–164, 170, 253, semantic divergence 148
338, 345 semantic/lexical field(s) 199, 228–229,
– metonymic 265–266, 350
see metonymic polysemy semantic restructuring 291–292
post-metonymy 181 semantic roles 95, 102–103, 124–129
prepositions 6, 94, 100, 118–125, 156, semasiology, semasiological approach
285, 318 175, 253, 266–267, 342, 350
prestructuralist semantics 334 – semasiological load 253–254
prototype theory/prototype semantics social cognitive linguistics 42, 45
7, 253, 264, 342–343 see also cognitive sociolinguistics
prototypes/prototypicality 7, 10–11, – social factors in language change
15–18, 200, 206, 213–215, 293 18–19, 348
prototypical beneficiary – social perspective(s) on language
see beneficiary change/use 45, 206, 236, 292,
– prototypical metaphor and metony- 310–311, 348–350
my 167–168, 182, 238 socio-cultural situatedness 38–39, 45,
– prototypical weighting 253 50, 85, 262
purpose (as a semantic role) 125– spatial orientation/spatial meaning 9,
129 94, 118–124, 225–226
speech act meaning 7–8, 153–154,
radial chaining 226 342
radial set stigmergy 45–47
see semantic set subjectification 224, 346–347
360 Index
substitution (as a semantic notion) 97– universality/universal features of

99, 121–122, 126 language 14, 22, 72–73, 226, 232,
synchrony 5–6 234, 344–345
– relationship to diachrony 3, 8–16, usage-based models 47–49, 56, 333,
18–22, 48, 164–165, 237, 323 339–340, 350
synergic cognition 262
synonymy 175, 253 variation 14, 18, 45, 342, 349
syntactic coalescence 151, 156 – as a stage in language change 14, 18
system and usage 337–339, 347–348 – in complementation 133–135
– cross-cultural variation 226–227,
texts and textual meaning 78, 84–85, 263
198–202, 205, 210 – metaphor variation 72, 78, 80, 85,
that- complements 138–147, 152–155 226–227, 231–235, 250
typology 14, 345–346 – within-culture variation 227, 234,
– of beneficiary 101 250, 253

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Historical cognitive linguistics / edited by Margaret E. Winters, Heli

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

쑔 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York

1. History and Development

Introduction: On the emergence of diachronic cognitive linguistics

2. The Evolution of Language

On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics

3. Cognitive Approaches to Syntactic Change

Where do beneficiaries come from and how do they come about?

4. Cognitive Approaches to Meaning

Tracing metonymic polysemy through time:

5. The Expression of Emotions over Time

Conceptual networking theory in metaphor evolution:

In their proposal for a theme session at the International Cognitive Linguistics

2. The development of cognitive linguistics

2.1. Early synchronic approaches

It is hard to say when cognitive linguistics took shape as a theory; it is prob-

2.2. Diachronic cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics, like twentieth-century linguistic theories in general, was

3 In the following discussion I use a combination of publication dates and, whenever

might be seen to fall generally into three categories of approaches. Of im-

2.3. Papers, Publications, and Conferences

Before the founding of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association and

5 Winters and Nathan (2000) was initially inspired by this discussion.

diachronic semantics, touching on its attractiveness for linguistic descriptions

6 Neither reviewer identifies himself as working within Cognitive Linguistics.

3. Cognitive linguistics and diachronic theory

to on-going (emergent) determination of meaning. The frequency with which

acquiring language and also of adult speaker/hearers; analogically based

9 In a paper presented at the International Cognitive Linguistics meeting in Santa

4. Overview of the present volume

expression of emotion in its socio-temporal setting. Tissari looks more broadly

The above discussion serves to demonstrate several things: first, language

ten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 14.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter

Ross, John Robert

Papers from the VIIth International Conference on Historical Linguis-

Scientific revolutions are, in fact, metaphoric revolutions, and theoreti-

2. Three stages of analogical intersections

In order to better address the theoretical aspects of our research framework,

2.1. Stage 1: Language as an organism

During this period we find the consolidation of the “language-as-organism”

phyla ĺ classes ĺ orders ĺ genera ĺ families ĺ species ĺ organisms

2.2. Stage 2: Language as species

2.3. Stage 3: Language as a complex adaptive system

Although many instances of system-based thinking can already be found that

of nonlinear dynamical systems, has become a major focus of interdisciplinary

3. An overview of the complex adaptive systems approach and its

3.1. General features of a complex adaptive system

Complex adaptive systems are ubiquitous in nature. Typical examples include

logical sciences are becoming increasingly common (Griffiths 2002; Griffiths

3.2. The CAS approach to language

system in which feedback mechanisms operate as an intrinsic aspect of it. The

3.3. The difference between a CAS

At this juncture we might compare the CAS model to Croft’s “language-as-

to the “language system”, i. e. an overall system of language conventions. The

As Briscoe (2002: 1) has observed, “Evolutionary ideas, biological metaphors

interactions between artificial agents), a more widespread application of the

5. Some examples of how one can implement CAS modeling

9 The article by Li (1998) is particularly exemplary in this respect, for it combines

tion” and with concepts such as “cultural conceptualizations” (Sharifian 2003,