Perspective point (viewpointing) and events of motion in European Portuguese

Batoréo, Hanna

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/9331

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Authors

Batoréo, Hanna

Abstract(s)

We postulate that human cognition is not only rooted in the human body, but also inherently viewpointed in language, as defended by Dancygier & Sweetser 2012. We defend that we are dealing with a special sort of location of perspective point underlying events of motion, placing one’s “mental eye” to look out over the rest of the scene, as formalized by Talmy (2000, 1: 68, 216). In the present paper we shall discuss three different locations of perspective point (viewpointing) underlying events of motion in Portuguese: two of them are distinct motion perspectivizations in European Portuguese (EP), one physical and one fictive (both of them different from the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) usages), and the last one is the Portuguese systemic time-as-space perspectivization of the organization of a week unit of time. In the case of physical motion, and its metaphorical extention(s), we focus on some conceptual and contextual specificities underlying the EP expression ‘ao fundo’ (at/to the bottom; also: at/to the end) when used in space directions, where the prototypical vertical reference to depth gives place to (i) non-directioned, (ii) horizontal or even (iii) deictic viewpointed semantic extentions, indicating the end of the horizontal path getting as far as the speaker’s “mental eye” can reach (Batoréo and Ferrari (in press). In the case of fictive motion, we present two spatial highly polysemic expressions used currently in EP: ‘à frente’ (in front of; also: ahead, after) vs. ‘atrás’ (behind; also: back, at the back, before, above, among others) in the specific context of text construction and production (cf. Batoréo 2000, 2004, Teixeira 2001 and Silva & Batoréo 2011). In the third case, which discusses the Portuguese systemic time-as-space perspectivization, we shall show how the location of different perspective point in the chronological organization of the days of the week changes its conceptualization in Portuguese (i.e., both EP and BP) when compared with other languages.

Keywords

Talmyan cognitive semantics Events of motion Perspective point (viewpoint, vantage point) European Portuguese Expression of space Typology of space Interlinguistic studies Brazilian Portuguese Physical and fictive motion

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/9331

Citation

BATORÉO, Hanna Jakubowicz. 2014. Perspective point (viewpointing) and events of motion in European Portuguese. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics Volume 5, Issue 1, Nova Science Publishers Inc., 2014, 55-74. (Special issue: Consolidating a Map of Talmian Cognitive Semantics – Looking within, across, and beyond its systems, a theme session presented at ICLC-12, Edmonton, Canada, 2013). ISSN: 1949-4971.