William M Short
Dr. Short's research seeks to combine theories and methods of classical studies with those of sociocultural anthropology and cognitive linguistics. His doctoral dissertation, "Sermo, Sanguis, Semen: An Anthropology of Language in Roman Culture", explores the relation of the terms patrius sermo and purus sermo in Roman culture as a function of perceived correspondences between language and blood/semen in the construction and mediation of identity. Along with article-length projects on topics in Roman religion and Roman folk belief, Dr. Short is currently preparing a research monograph examining the role of metaphor in the interconnectedness of language, thought and behavior in Roman society.
In addition to his research, Dr. Short is also interested in language pedagogy, particularly in how language communicates meaning within contexts and how context itself, both literary and cultural, contributes to linguistic comprehension.
Furthermore, as a contributing member of the international Gruppo di Ricerca in Mitologia e Mitographia, Dr. Short participates in the development of the Etymological Dictionary of Greek Mythology (DEMGOL), and is faculty advisor to the Classics Club at UTSA.
Phone: (210) 458-5972
Address: University of Texas at San Antonio
Department of Philosophy and Classics
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio TX, 78249
In addition to his research, Dr. Short is also interested in language pedagogy, particularly in how language communicates meaning within contexts and how context itself, both literary and cultural, contributes to linguistic comprehension.
Furthermore, as a contributing member of the international Gruppo di Ricerca in Mitologia e Mitographia, Dr. Short participates in the development of the Etymological Dictionary of Greek Mythology (DEMGOL), and is faculty advisor to the Classics Club at UTSA.
Phone: (210) 458-5972
Address: University of Texas at San Antonio
Department of Philosophy and Classics
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio TX, 78249
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Papers by William M Short
Certain modern scholars, however, purposefully juxtapose Roman culture and Greek culture, with the possibility then of comparing these cultures with others both ancient and modern. Rather than predetermine the meaning of any specific cultural configuration by placing it alongside supposedly analogous representations, this new comparativism actively constructs meaning through juxtapositions and comparisons of what is different between cultures. To illustrate this approach, we compare metaphorical linguistic expressions in Greek and Latin in a cognitive anthropological perspective, arguing that it is possible to tease out significant differences not only in how speakers of these languages conceived of certain experiences, but also in their attitudes and values towards those experiences. Here, metaphors of mistakenness in are discussed to suggest that Latin’s “wandering” metaphor has not only widespread semantic effects, but also recognizable cultural implications.
In this paper, we analyze the metalanguage of epic poetry from a cognitive linguistic perspective, demonstrating that a constellation of conceptual metaphors in Greek delivers a view of the tradition as rigid, immovable, and unbroken. Specifically, we show that metaphors drawing on concepts of physical uprightness, ordered sequences, linkage, and building construction, though recruiting images from different domains and so failing to provide a consistent overall image to conceptualization, jointly portray the tradition in these terms. This metaphorically defined understanding of the tradition can be contrasted with the view of performance captured by derivatives of ῥαψῳδ- which portray the poem as “stitched together” extemporaneously from “stock” elements, as well as with ancient descriptions of epic composition which noticeably omit reference to formulaic structure. In this sense, these metaphors function as a “hidden ideology”, obfuscating the true nature of the oral-formulaic tradition, and permitting it to take on a degree of social authority that it might not otherwise possess.
In this paper, I show first how an entire domain in Latin can be structured through a single metaphor. Specifically, I show that ways of speaking about ‘acquiring,’ ‘relinquishing’ and ‘having’ thoughts in Latin are given through the metaphors of “moving toward,” “moving from” and “being in”. In Latin’s phrasal lexicon, concepts such as “formulating a plan”, “agreeing with an opinion”, “considering an idea” and “conceiving a notion”, for example, are construed metaphorically as physical movement toward or into a location. Likewise, concepts of ‘relinquishing’ or ‘giving up’ thoughts are conveyed metaphorically by words referring to movement from a location, and ‘having’ a thought in mind is expressed by position in. That is to say, spatial motion is inextricably part of how the conceptual domain and vocabulary of mental activity is structured in Latin. This metaphorical structuring is systematic, moreover: next, I show that much of Latin’s basic lexicon of “thinking” is in fact given by the same metaphor. For instance, sententia (“thought, opinion”) is analyzable from the root *sen- found in other Indo-European languages, in words that all denote physical motion along a path. Similarly, considerare (“think, consider, ponder”) can be plausibly derived from the root *sides- (cf. sedes), referring to physical position.
Finally, I suggest that by showing how metaphors in Latin can be systematic, teachers are able to explain the seemingly arbitrary meanings of certain expressions and to give students invaluable skills of semantic prediction. For instance, while every Latin student knows that the word locus means either “a location, a place” or “an idea, an argument, a topic of discourse”, how are they to understand the relationship between its literal and figurative senses? As demonstrated, it is the consistent and coherent organization of Latin’s vocabulary of mental activity in terms of spatial motion that determines this word’s potential meanings. Furthermore, it is knowledge of the metaphor that provides both Latin speakers the possibility of speaking meaningfully about mental activity and Latin students the capability of making informed inferences about the meaning of words, particularly idiomatic, idiosyncratic or imaginative expressions (e.g., Cic. Har. resp. 52, quid existimatis eum esse facturum, qui tam libenter in opinionem gratiae inrepat?). In other words, a familiarity with Latin’s unique metaphors represents a crucial part of a student’s ability to understand the Latin language and Latin literature."
Certain modern scholars, however, purposefully juxtapose Roman culture and Greek culture, with the possibility then of comparing these cultures with others both ancient and modern. Rather than predetermine the meaning of any specific cultural configuration by placing it alongside supposedly analogous representations, this new comparativism actively constructs meaning through juxtapositions and comparisons of what is different between cultures. To illustrate this approach, we compare metaphorical linguistic expressions in Greek and Latin in a cognitive anthropological perspective, arguing that it is possible to tease out significant differences not only in how speakers of these languages conceived of certain experiences, but also in their attitudes and values towards those experiences. Here, metaphors of mistakenness in are discussed to suggest that Latin’s “wandering” metaphor has not only widespread semantic effects, but also recognizable cultural implications.
In this paper, we analyze the metalanguage of epic poetry from a cognitive linguistic perspective, demonstrating that a constellation of conceptual metaphors in Greek delivers a view of the tradition as rigid, immovable, and unbroken. Specifically, we show that metaphors drawing on concepts of physical uprightness, ordered sequences, linkage, and building construction, though recruiting images from different domains and so failing to provide a consistent overall image to conceptualization, jointly portray the tradition in these terms. This metaphorically defined understanding of the tradition can be contrasted with the view of performance captured by derivatives of ῥαψῳδ- which portray the poem as “stitched together” extemporaneously from “stock” elements, as well as with ancient descriptions of epic composition which noticeably omit reference to formulaic structure. In this sense, these metaphors function as a “hidden ideology”, obfuscating the true nature of the oral-formulaic tradition, and permitting it to take on a degree of social authority that it might not otherwise possess.
In this paper, I show first how an entire domain in Latin can be structured through a single metaphor. Specifically, I show that ways of speaking about ‘acquiring,’ ‘relinquishing’ and ‘having’ thoughts in Latin are given through the metaphors of “moving toward,” “moving from” and “being in”. In Latin’s phrasal lexicon, concepts such as “formulating a plan”, “agreeing with an opinion”, “considering an idea” and “conceiving a notion”, for example, are construed metaphorically as physical movement toward or into a location. Likewise, concepts of ‘relinquishing’ or ‘giving up’ thoughts are conveyed metaphorically by words referring to movement from a location, and ‘having’ a thought in mind is expressed by position in. That is to say, spatial motion is inextricably part of how the conceptual domain and vocabulary of mental activity is structured in Latin. This metaphorical structuring is systematic, moreover: next, I show that much of Latin’s basic lexicon of “thinking” is in fact given by the same metaphor. For instance, sententia (“thought, opinion”) is analyzable from the root *sen- found in other Indo-European languages, in words that all denote physical motion along a path. Similarly, considerare (“think, consider, ponder”) can be plausibly derived from the root *sides- (cf. sedes), referring to physical position.
Finally, I suggest that by showing how metaphors in Latin can be systematic, teachers are able to explain the seemingly arbitrary meanings of certain expressions and to give students invaluable skills of semantic prediction. For instance, while every Latin student knows that the word locus means either “a location, a place” or “an idea, an argument, a topic of discourse”, how are they to understand the relationship between its literal and figurative senses? As demonstrated, it is the consistent and coherent organization of Latin’s vocabulary of mental activity in terms of spatial motion that determines this word’s potential meanings. Furthermore, it is knowledge of the metaphor that provides both Latin speakers the possibility of speaking meaningfully about mental activity and Latin students the capability of making informed inferences about the meaning of words, particularly idiomatic, idiosyncratic or imaginative expressions (e.g., Cic. Har. resp. 52, quid existimatis eum esse facturum, qui tam libenter in opinionem gratiae inrepat?). In other words, a familiarity with Latin’s unique metaphors represents a crucial part of a student’s ability to understand the Latin language and Latin literature."
Session 10. Cylleneus: Next-gen corpus search for ancient languages
Thursday June 11, 17:00-18:15 CEST
This seminar introduces Cylleneus, an open-source extensible software library written in Python that implements advanced search functionality for corpora of ancient languages.
Using Cylleneus, texts in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin can be queried on the basis of their semantic and morpho-syntactic properties. This means that, for the first time, texts can be searched by the meanings of words as well as by the kinds of grammatical constructions they occur in.
For its semantic capabilities, Cylleneus takes advantage of the Sanskrit WordNet, Ancient Greek WordNet, and Latin WordNet, which are robust lexico-semantic databases under development by an international consortium of scholars at the University of Exeter, the University of Pavia, the Center for Hellenic Studies, and elsewhere.
Cylleneus delivers a powerful, flexible, and easily extensible system for constructing queries and can be integrated with any kind of structured or plain-text corpus.
The graduate students and junior researchers of the Centre for the Anthropology of the Ancient World at University of Siena announce the second edition of the seminar project Classicamente. Dialoghi senesi sul mondo antico (Classicamente. Sienese Dialogues on the Ancient World), focused on the different topics which have characterized our research centre since its foundation in 1986. The purpose of this project is to engage young researchers (up to 35 years of age) in a dialogue aimed at sharing and discussing their different approaches to the classical world (anthropological, philological, historical, archaeological, semiotic, etc.) and their research results. Candidates are requested to send an abstract of 300 words max. in pdf format by July 1st at the following address: [email protected]. The pdf file should not include any reference (in the title or in the text itself) to the candidate's identity, in order to ensure anonymity and fairness at the time of selection. All details (i.e.: name, surname, title, chosen thematic area, academic status and affiliation) should be mentioned in the text of the email. Each proposal should also include a brief CV of the candidate. For pre-doctoral students a reference letter is expected. Three or four papers will be selected by the scientific committee for each thematic area. Each session will be opened by a keynote speaker. Thereafter, the selected young researchers will deliver 30-40 min. papers, followed by a thorough discussion. Proposals for panels of two-three speakers are welcome. A general abstract presenting the panel is also necessary. The seminars will take place in Siena. Notice of acceptance will be given by the 30th of September.
In this pair of dialoguing papers, we explore KINSHIP RELATIONS from both perspectives in the hope of providing valuable anthropological insight into Roman ideas of kinship. Buccheri is thus concerned with Latin’s metaphors for KINSHIP. These are drawn from the domains of PLANTS, BLOOD, SPACE IMAGE, among others (consider, e.g., the term stirps for a ‘lineage’, suboles, satum, propago for ‘descendants’; and the notions of consanguinitas and propinquitas). Buccheri analyzes which concepts in particular are selected from those domains and will try to assess the rationale for this choice of mapping. He proposes that the structure of the ‘range of the target’ of KINSHIP metaphors in Latin reflects the importance of the idea of continuity and resemblance between the members of a linage we find expressed in Roman texts (cf., e.g., Bettini 1991).
Short then explores metaphors of kinship: that is, how this domain is utilized for comprehending other sorts of relations in Latin. In particular, Short focuses on usage of concepts of ‘exogamic’ relations like sociare (sanguinem) (= ‘join (bloodlines) through marriage’) to signify either the act of conversation or the alliances of communities who speak the same language. Meanwhile, in expressions like coniungere lingua and coniunctio linguae, ‘endogamic’ relations metaphorically convey the concept of the linguistic relationship that exists between members of the same community.3 Short concludes that the structure of kinship relations served as a convenient metaphorical model for linguistic relations above all because of the importance of language, alongside blood, as a mechanism of identity in Roman society. This discussion therefore raises questions of an anthropological kind; at the same time, it suggests certain theoretical reflections: for instance, about the nature of concepts that serve both as source and target in metaphorical understanding. If in cognitive linguistics metaphors are supposed to be unidirectional, how do we account for cases like this where the same domain serves as both a literal concept structuring the comprehension of presumably more abstract experiences and as a metaphorical concept whose understanding is delivered by presumably more concrete ones?
in the cognitive sciences to linguistic analysis. We propose a new model that draws on concepts from cognitive semantics and that works independently of causal hypotheses. In a slogan, we propose a “metonymic” rather than “metaphorical” relation between sensorimotor representations and semantic fields, in which schematic experiential structures are “profiled” for certain traits. These representations encompass a wider field of experience than merely embodied image
schemas, including social embeddedness, and require a correspondingly widened understanding
of linguistic meaning that is not structured only in compositional “tree-like” ways, but where semantic connections are made across arbitrary points in a network, or, to appropriate the terminology of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1980), a rhizome.
In this paper, we analyze the metalanguage of epic poetry from a cognitive linguistic perspective (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2005, 2006), demonstrating that a constellation of conceptual metaphors in Greek delivers a view of the tradition as rigid, immovable, and unbroken. Specifically, we show that metaphors drawing on concepts of physical uprightness (cf., e.g., ποιέω < *kwei-u-, related to Skt. cinóti “to pile (up), erect”), ordered sequences (στίχος “row”), linkage (ὑμνέω < *siuH-mn- “tie, seam”? and μέλος, cf. Welsh cymmal, “joining”?), and building construction (οἴμη < *seh2-i- “bind”, related to ἱμάς, “beam”: Bader (1990) 36), though recruiting images from different domains and so failing to provide a consistent overall image to conceptualization, jointly portray the tradition in these terms. This metaphorically defined understanding of the tradition can be contrasted with the view of performance captured by derivatives of ῥαψῳδ- which portray the poem as “stitched together” extemporaneously from “stock” elements, as well as with ancient descriptions of epic composition which noticeably omit reference to formulaic structure. In this sense, these metaphors function as a “hidden ideology” (Goatly 2007), obfuscating the true nature of the oral-formulaic tradition, and permitting it to take on a degree of social authority that it might not otherwise possess.
The Roman folk model of oral “transmission”, by contrast, centers on a system of metaphor that recruits images of cooking, eating, and digesting to provide a coherent overall understanding of how information is communicated by one speaker to another. Thus Latin speakers talk about ‘producing’ and ‘sending’ ideas as “cooking up”, (con)coquere (e.g., Liv. AUC. 3.36.2, [consilia] secreto ab aliis coquebant; Sen. Ep. 84.7; Cic. Rosc. com. 15). An “uncooked” plan is therefore an ill-conceived one (cf., e.g., Plaut. Mil. 208, incoctum non expromet), whereas something “cooked” is worked out in detail (cf. Lucil. ap. Cic. Att. 13.52.1, cocto… sermone; Cic. Sen. 28.8, cocta… oratio). The same metaphorical logic motivates the use of words denoting “tasting” and “eating” to deliver concepts of ‘receiving’ ideas and of words referring to “chewing” and “digesting” to deliver concepts of ‘processing’ these ideas in the mind. This is why sapere (etym. “(have a sense of) taste”) and gustare can convey the sense of “(come to) have knowledge of, know”, and why it is possible to speak in Latin about “eating speech” (ēsse sermonem) or “devouring words” (devorare verba) to mean “hear; learn by hearing”. Reasoning by this metaphor, words referring to “digesting” (mandare, digerere, ruminari) are also used to mean “meditating upon” and “thinking over”. In this way, a logically coherent set of alimentary concepts is carried over systematically to oral experience to produce a correspondingly logically coherent conceptualization of “transmission” by verbal means. Moreover, while it is not the only metaphor available to Latin speakers in conceptualizing oral “transmission”, in providing a conceptual structure that was well defined, easily generalized, and susceptible of elaboration (cf. Short 2009), the alimentary model represents the privileged model for thinking orality in Roman culture. Indeed, this model even informs “expert” theorizing on how ideas are transmitted from person to person through written texts – as I demonstrate through an analysis of Seneca’s Moral Epistles (esp. 1.2.2-4) and Quintilian’s discussion of textual memorization (IO. 11.2.40-44).
In this paper, I present evidence of the systematic structuring of Latin’s ways of speaking about “truth” through metaphors of movement in physical space. This structuring can be described in cognitive linguistic terms as a set of symbolic correspondences or mappings (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980) set up between concepts of truth and concepts of spatial motion, so that the logic of spatial experience is carried over systematically to an understanding of trueness. These mappings are not a property of individual words, however: almost the entire field of motion terms can be used in speaking metaphorically about the truth, because the mappings operate at a level of meaning that is supralinguistic. Indeed, it is possible to show that the metaphors characterizing trueness or falseness are specialized manifestations of the more general pattern in Latin whereby concepts of mental activity are delivered by spatial metaphor (cf. Short 2012). Moreover, when compared with other, similar metaphors – e.g., the material metaphor in which the truth or falsity of someone or something correlates to its heaviness or lightness (cf. Cic. Phil. 5.18.50, vera, gravis, solida gloria as against Lael. 25.91, vitium levium hominum atque fallacium) – the spatial metaphor appears to have the clear function of providing a basic structure to conceptualization, giving Latin speakers a convenient conceptual framework upon which to hang their understanding of relative truthfulness.
Topics covered in this wide-ranging collection include: cognitive linguistics applied to Homeric and early Greek texts, Roman cultural semantics, linguistic embodiment in Latin literature, group identities in Greek lyric, cognitive dissonance in historiography, kinesthetic empathy in Sappho, artificial intelligence in Hesiod and Greek drama, the enactivism of Roman statues and memory and art in the Roman Empire.
This ground-breaking work is the first to organize the field, allowing both scholars and students access to the methodologies, bibliographies and techniques of the cognitive sciences and how they have been applied to classics.
This volume gathers a series of papers that bring the study of grammatical and syntactic constructions in Greek and Latin under the perspective of theories of embodied meaning developed in cognitive linguistics. Building on the momentum currently enjoyed by cognitive-functional approaches to language within the field of Classics, its contributors adopt, in particular, a ‘constructional’ approach that treats morphosyntactic constructions as meaningful in and of themselves. Thus, they are able to address the role of human cognitive embodiment in determining the meanings of linguistic phenomena as diverse as verbal affixes, discourse particles, prepositional phrases, lexical items, and tense semantics in both Greek and Latin.
The culmination of a project aimed at showcasing, in a systematic way, the potential of applying anthropological perspectives to classical studies, this volume highlights the fundamental contribution this approach has to make to our understanding of ancient Roman culture. Through the close study of themes such as myth, polytheism, sacrifice, magic, space, kinship, the gift, friendship, economics, animals, plants, riddles, metaphors, and images in Roman society (often in comparison with Greece) - where the texts of ancient culture are allowed to speak in their own terms and where the experience of the natives (rather than the horizon of the observer) is privileged - a rich panorama emerges of the worldview, beliefs, and deep structures that shaped and guided this culture.
For forty years, American priest and friar Reginald Foster, O.C.C., worked in the Latin Letters office of the Roman Curia's Secretary of State in Vatican City. As Latinist of four popes, he soon emerged as an internationally recognised authority on the Latin language - some have said, the internationally recognised authority, consulted by scholars, priests, and laymen worldwide. In 1986, he began teaching an annual summer Latin course that attracted advanced students and professors from around the globe. This volume gathers contributions from some of his many students in honor of his enduring influence and achievements. Its chapters explore a wide range of linguistic and literary evidence from antiquity to the present day in a variety of theoretical perspectives. If the motivation for putting together this collection has been to reflect (and reflect upon) Foster's influences on Latin scholarship and pedagogy, its title alludes - via the medieval folk etymology of the word "labyrinthus" ("quasi labor intus") - to its theme: ambiguity in Latin literature.