The embodied sources of purpose expressions in

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This is a contribution from Embodiment in Latin Semantics. Edited by William Michael Short. © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com Tables of Contents, abstracts and guidelines are available at www.benjamins.com

The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin* Luisa Brucale & Egle Mocciaro University of Palermo

This chapter examines the phrasal means of encoding the semantic role of purpose in Latin. After discussing the notion of semantic role and its use in cognitive linguistics, we illustrate the conceptual relation between the notional domains of space and causation. On this basis, we analyze the source of purpose expressions in Latin, which are mainly based on direction (bare dative and the allative markers, i.e. ad/in + accusative), but also include prepositional phrases metaphorically derived from location (e.g. per + accusative, prō + ablative, propter + accusative), or metonymically spreading from reason to purpose (as in the case of causal markers such as genitive + causā and gratiā). Keywords: purpose; phrasal constructions; prepositional phrases; space; causation; direction; location; reason; metaphor; metonymy

1. Introduction This chapter describes various means of encoding purpose throughout the history of Latin. More specifically, we deal with a number of adpositional phrases (and, marginally, a bare case) expressing this semantic role, leaving aside purpose clauses and, hence, the domain of subordination.1 The notion of purpose has received a great deal of attention from classical antiquity up to modern linguistics. We will mainly refer to Croft’s (1991: 179) definition of purpose and to the treatment of finality proposed in Prandi et al. (2005). The latter define purpose as “the content of an intention”, while underlining the complexity of this concept, * The whole paper results from the close collaboration of the authors. However, Luisa Brucale is responsible for 3 and 5; Egle Mocciaro for 2, 4, 6, 7. The introductory and the final sections represent a joint effort on the part of both authors. 1. We do, however, include constructions consisting of a preposition + a non-finite verbal form (e.g., ad + gerundive, see 3). An extensive discussion of purpose clauses in Latin can be found in Cabrillana 2011.

DOI 10.1075/slcs.174.04bru © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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which may be better characterized as an aggregation of heterogeneous notions applying to distinct, though related areas (Prandi et al. 2005: 17, 213). Because of this complexity, it should not be surprising that Latin (as well as many other languages) lacks dedicated means of expressing purpose, whose linguistic encoding is entrusted instead to markers normally used to express other (related) functions. As for phrasal expression of purpose, we can arrange these markers according to their position along a causal chain of events which has its metaphorical source in the space domain or, better, in the coordinates defining the organization of space: that is, source, location, and direction (Croft 1991; Luraghi 2001). Throughout the history of Latin, purpose expressions are mainly based on direction (i.e., the bare dative and the allative markers ad/in “towards, to” + accusative) and, secondly, on location (e.g. prō “in front of ” + ablative, per “through” and propter “close to” + accusative). As detailed below, these two sets of linguistics means developed along different paths: while there is a strong metaphorical basis in the case of direction, the encoding of purpose based on location requires a more articulated analysis in terms of progressive metonymical shifts. Moreover, Latin occasionally expresses purpose via postpositions originating from nouns (i.e., causā “cause” and gratiā “favor” + genitive), which cannot be associated with an original spatial meaning and, hence, appear to be excluded in principle from an “embodied” explanation. We will show, however, that such markers can be harmoniously placed within the overall range of linguistic means expressing purpose. Above all, the entire set of markers of purpose can be coherently explained by means of a unique metaphorical-metonymical interpretative model. The description we propose is based on the analysis of representative samples of Latin, derived from the survey of two electronic corpora covering the third century bce to the fourth century ce (PHI5; IDL). This corpus permits a diachronic perspective on Latin data, at the same time including different literary genres and styles. More research will surely be needed to explain the specific conditions of use of the various means of encoding purpose.2 However, the corpus is wide enough to account for the variation of such means in terms of frequency over time and, on the whole, offers a comprehensive picture of Latin phrasal purpose expressions. The chapter is organized as follows: in Section 2, we outline our theoretical background; in Sections 3 to 6, we analyze the origin of the embodied expressions 2. As one of our anonymous reviewers correctly observes, certain philological and sociolinguistic considerations – such as the differences between prose and poetry or the degree to which specific examples of prose reflect oral speech – would need also to be taken into account in a complete analysis. However, our main concern is to provide general map of the linguistic resources on which various authors at different stages of the language were able to draw.

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

of purpose, as well as the metonymical extension from cause to purpose undergone by postpositions. Finally, in Section  7, we summarize the results of our investigation. 2. Semantic roles: A cognitive linguistic view We have referred to “semantic roles”, without specifying either the nature of this concept or its utility for explaining purpose expressions. These points, however, deserve attention, as the concept of semantic role is anything but univocal within linguistic theory. As León Araúz et al. (2012: 123) observe, “Although most linguists tend to believe that they exist, at least in some form, there is a considerable disagreement as to their number, nature, and function”. It is beyond the scope of this paper to trace the entire debate, but some discussion is warranted of the theoretical assumptions forming the background of the argumentation, especially as the concept has played out within cognitive linguistics. In general terms, the concept of semantic role pertains to the way in which the relation involving an event and its participants is conceptualized. An event is a cognitive model schematically representing “our experience and our conception of the world” (Langacker 1991: 282); the participants are the conceptual entities playing a specific role in the situation described by the event. Thus, strictly speaking, the concept does not refer to linguistic expression; rather, it represents a category of cognition “translated” into the morphosyntactic level by means of various grammatical markers. According to cognitive grammar, semantic roles are archetypes, that is, pre-linguistic concepts grounded in our experience. Among them, Langacker (1991: 285) singles out agent, patient, instrument, experiencer, and mover – but this “archetypal” inventory may be increased with other roles. The archetypal characterization does not imply that semantic roles are univocally and identically instantiated in languages: “[R]ole archetypes are not like a row of statues in an art museum, but are instead analogous to the highest peaks in a mountain range”. Thus, they serve as a schematic – and hence partially underdetermined – model for languages to structure meanings. In this respect, they are of little explanatory value if used as the sole analytical tool to describe linguistic phenomena.3

3. Croft 1991: 163 claims that “a finite set of primitives may not succeed in capturing the complexity of our experience (and, as a consequence, the linguistic expression of experience). We may avoid this problem by recognizing that a ‘semantic primitive’ describes a conceptualization of experience, not the complex structure of experience itself: the conceptual processes

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As Luraghi (2010: 20–21) notes, not all semantic roles are grammaticalized in a given language. Moreover, different languages may encode the same semantic role in different ways. Luraghi also observes that the grammaticalization of semantic roles in a specific language exhibits prototype effects, in that some linguistic instantiations are more central than others. That is, while the prototypical examples correspond to the cognitive model in many or all respects, other examples meet the requirements for prototypical items only partially. As we will see, the spread from the center to the periphery of the category may proceed through generalization, metonymy, or other phenomena of intra-domain contiguity. Consequently, linguistic analysis should occupy a place between conceptualization and linguistic expression. As Rudzka-Ostyn (1995) observes, “The conceptual and grammatical planes are not only complementary. They are, in fact, inseparable”. Semantic roles are mainly expressed by cases and adpositions.4 In cognitive grammar, such grammatical means are conceived of as meaningful elements expressing the spatial relation between two entities: a “trajector” (tr), which is a foregrounded entity, and the “landmark” (lm), that is, a backgrounded entity serving as a reference point for locating tr. This less salient entity – the lm – is encoded by the nominal following the adposition (e.g. [the railway]TR is through [the garden]LM) or to which a specific case is attributed (nisi me civitateLM expulissent (“If they had not expelled me from the state”), Cic. Att. 10, 4, 1). The relation between tr and lm is atemporal, that is, static or merely locational. Figure 1 illustrates an atemporal relation linking two distinct entities: tr

lm

Figure 1. Atemporal relation (adapted from Langacker 1987: 215)

Atemporal relations are also asymmetric, as the location of tr is defined with respect to the lm and not vice versa. It should be stressed that asymmetry imposes the atemporal relation being oriented, but orientation (i.e., the relative position of tr and lm) does not entail motion, which is instead a category of processual

of granularity and idealization account for the abstraction to ‘primitives’”. The concept of granularity refers to the different possible levels of precision and detail in the conceptualization of the event (Croft 1991: 164). 4. Here, “case” means “morphological case”. As Luraghi 2008: 141 observes, however, “There is clearly a continuum between independent adverbs (often derived from nouns), adpositions, and cases, as shown by cross-linguistic evidence: different languages may have adpositions that encode functions encoded by case markers in other languages”.

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

relations denoted by verbs. In other words, a specific case marker or an adposition fundamentally describes the “place” occupied by a tr relative to a lm. A basic atemporal relation may be variously instantiated linguistically, depending on other contextual information, which highlights or obscures certain specifications of the general schema, thus allowing different construals of the same grammatical means. The various elaborations of the schematic import may consist either in metaphorical extensions, which map the basic spatial schema onto more abstract domains of the experience, or in metonymical spreads focusing or defocusing specific features or implications of the basic semantics. The possible metaphorical and/or metonymical extension of the semantic networks of prepositions and cases constitutes the basis for their polysemy. Croft (1991) has proposed a causal chain of events along which the various semantic roles may be arranged. The chain fundamentally separates antecedent roles (namely, cause, passive agent, comitative; means, instrument, and manner) from subsequent roles (result, benefactive/malefactive, and recipient, to which purpose may be added on the basis of other relevant parts of Croft’s work). These roles are respectively located before or after the realization of the event, which serves as a dividing line between them. Within this chain, close roles also show contiguity of meaning and may in fact merge in language through syncretism. The metaphorical relation between space and causation is captured by the ‘objects are locations’ metaphor, which predicts that ablative forms are used for antecedent oblique functions (e.g. The rabbit died from thirst), and allative forms for subsequent oblique functions (e.g. The house burned to cinders) (Croft 1991: 194–5). Luraghi (2001: 38) adds a third area within the causal chain, namely that of concomitant roles. If antecedent roles are based on the spatial notion source and the subsequent roles on direction, concomitant roles occupy a median position corresponding to location. This more complex organization is represented in Table 1: Table 1. Mapping the space on the domain of causation (adapted from Luraghi 2010: 68) source domain

target domain

space



causation

source



antecedent roles (agent, cause)

location



concomitant roles (instrument, means, etc.)

direction



subsequent roles (purpose, beneficiary, recipient)

Radden & Dirven (2007: 326) classify purpose as a “non-participant” semantic role. This characterization is based on a distinction between roles covered by the nuclear © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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participants of the event (agent, experiencer, patient, etc.) and more peripheral roles specifying the setting of the event, such as space, time, circumstance, cause, reason, and purpose.5 As for the latter, they claim that “[W]e conceive of these notions as situations of their own, and they are often expressed as subordinate clauses. However, they are also, possibly even most frequently, expressed as prepositional phrases with abstract nouns. These reified nouns metonymically stand for situations. Thus, in He went on trial for murder, the noun murder stands for ‘being suspected of murder’”. This description captures the complexity inherent to the concept of purpose, which consists in an aggregation of heterogeneous notions (Prandi et al. 2005: 17). Consistently with many other descriptions of purpose, Schmidtke-Bode (2009: 19) individuates a few central features that define purpose: intentionality, targetdirectedness, future orientation, and a hypothetical result state. In what follows, we will mainly refer to Prandi et al.’s (2005) treatment of finality, comparing it to Croft’s (1991) model of causality. Prandi et al. (2005) claim that the conceptual nucleus of finality is linked to human action for two reasons. First, many actions cannot be motivated on the basis of past events, but starting from an intention whose content concerns the future. Second, human action is inherently finalized (and this model spreads to the domains of non-human beings and artefacts).6 Moreover, they identify a fundamental link between causes and purposes, which imposes a further distinction between causes and reasons (or motives, in their terms). Causes pertain to our spontaneous characterization of the phenomenal world, whereas reasons are connected to the domain of human action. This is consistent with Croft’s (1991: 179; 293 fn. 6) definition of such semantic roles, namely a Cause is an event (action or state) that causally precedes another, not necessary intentional event, while a Reason is the motivation prompting an agent to act. According to both Prandi et al. and Croft, Reason constitutes the linking area between Cause and Purpose, as the Purpose is in fact a kind of Reason. Prandi et al. (2005: 93–127) distinguish “prospective” reasons, which may correspond to a prevision (independent from the intentional subject, e.g., I take the umbrella because it’s going to rain), or to an intention (admitting both a causal and a final encoding, e.g., I take the umbrella because I want to get out/to get out). Thus, the prospective reason coincides with the content of the intention and does constitute a purpose.

5.

Radden & Dirven 2007 speak of “thematic” rather than “semantic” roles.

6. Although they do not explicitly refer to metaphor, this shift may be conceived of as based on an ‘objects are people’ metaphor (personification), as in trees have roots to feed, where the functional destination of the roots is construed as a human purpose.

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

Although highly conceptually relevant, the distinction between “cause” and “reason” does not have a linguistic correlate. This is explained by Croft (1991: 293), who claims that the semantic role of reason is not in fact a category of causation, but only pertains to intention, so that it “may represent events that causally follow the verb segment (a goal or a purpose) or precede (a source or motivation)”. For the same reason, Croft (1991: 179) attributes to purpose a different character than the other semantic roles, that is, a purpose is “[A]n event that is intended by an agentive initiator of the main verb causal segment to follow causally from the event denoted by the main verb causal segment. This role is technically on a different semantic plane from causal structure since intentions are completely different in semantic type from results”. The complexity of the concept of purpose may explain the wide range of linguistic means to express it, which comprise, as we show in what follows, almost all the categories of topological orientation, namely metaphors of direction (towards a goal), location, as well as more abstract concepts which cannot be reduced to space. 3. Purpose expressions based on direction: ad + accusative The purpose for which an action is performed can be expressed in Latin by means of a noun phrase in the bare dative or a prepositional phrase (PP) with ad or in + accusative. These two constructions share the same directional component which is precisely the feature that makes them suitable for expressing purpose: As evidenced by a large sample of languages (Heine & Kuteva 2002: 39–40), the extension of directional markers to the expression of purpose is quite frequent and cognitively and experientially grounded. Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 190–191) capture the generality of this connection through the metaphor ‘purposes are destinations’, according to which purpose-oriented actions are embodied as they are brought back to the primary image schema of directed motion in space. As Radden & Dirven (2007: 330) observe, “in the same way that destinations are goals to be reached by our motion, purposes are goals to be achieved by our actions. Destinations and purposes are linked in our experience: in order to attain a purpose we often have to go to a certain place”. The so-called dative of purpose (dativus finalis) is found in many languages of the world and frequently explained as a development of the directional value (Haspelmath 2003: 234).7 As for Latin, even in a naïve discussion

7. Although our focus is on adpositional expressions, we touch on the final dative for the sake of completeness. Unlike other sections, the data we report here are taken from the relevant literature.

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like Bennett’s (1914: 103), the final value is traced back to an original directional value, although this basic meaning is only sporadically attested (see the frequently quoted it clamor caelo, Verg. Aen. 5.451).8 According to van Hoecke (1996), the semantic network of the dative is structured around the notion of “pole of orientation”. Under this view, the dative indicates that the predication, or one of its constituents, is directed towards the noun in the dative, which therefore constitutes the destination of the process denoted by the predicate. The directional component of the dative explains the syncretic encoding of recipient, beneficiary, reason and purpose in many languages of the world. These semantic roles share the implication of an intentional action, that is, a recipient intentionally picked out by an agent can be conceptualized as the reason or the purpose to act (Rudzka-Ostyn 1996: 384); likewise the beneficiary of an action can be conceptualized as a reason or purpose of that action, as shown by the switch from purpose to beneficiary based on animacy observed in Indo-European languages including Latin (Luraghi 2005a). The dative of purpose is productive in early Latin, and attested in Plautus and Cato: (1)

hic non poterat de suo senex opsonari filiai nuptiis? (Plaut. Aul. 294–95) Couldn’t this old fellow provide from his own resources for the wedding of his daughter?

However, many of the occurrences that grammars list under the label “dativus finalis” (see Ernout & Thomas 1964: 76–78) can be found in stative or resultative constructions with esse “to be” (e.g. auxilio esse (alicui)), in which a (mostly abstract) noun in the dative, often accompanied by an animate noun in the dative expressing the beneficiary (i.e., the so-called double dative, see Haudry 1968), is interpreted as expressing a final value: (2)

omnibus iste ceteris Siculis odio est To all the rest of the Sicilians he is an object of hatred.

(Cic. Verr. 4.15)

In (2), the predication is entirely entrusted to the noun in the dative, which has a different formal status compared to nuptiis in (1). The relationship expressed 8. Calboli 2009: 100–104 likewise associates the directional use of the dative with the final one. He observes that both functions can be traced back to the basic meaning of the dative or explained as a calque from Greek, and concludes that “Graecism can be acknowledged in the expansion of the dative of purpose and movement, which occurs in poetry and prose, only as a hyperurbanism … but the linguistic basis lies in the meaning of such datives, which are not only Greek, but also Latin, and can be found in many other Indo-European languages”.

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

by the dative coincides with the nucleus of predication; in the absence of a verb expressing action, the final relation can only be identified if esse + dative is reinterpreted as the result of an intentional aimed action. It is plausible that the speakers store the pattern of such constructions, analogically expanding their applicability to contexts in which the noun in the dative is not an abstract verbal noun, as in (3): (3)

tum illuc nimium magnae mellinae mihi (Plaut. Truc. 704) On top of that, it’s so superlatively sweet (to hear that … )

Even in authors like Cato, who extensively employs it, the construction competes with others (especially ad + accusative), which supplants it over time. Purely literary reuse of the construction is attested during the imperial age (e.g., collectam exilio pubem “a band gathered for exile”, see Ernout & Thomas 1964: 78). Beside fixed expressions (e.g. frugi “fit, useful, proper” or the juridical formula solvendo esse “to be solvent”), Latin preserves the pattern of the final dative + esse over time, also in the double dative form, up to the Christian period (Serbat 1996: 484). Purpose can be expressed by ad “to, towards” and in “in, towards” + accusative, which are also the most frequent choices for expressing the direction when used in combination with a motion verb.9 Prepositional phrases with ad and in share the same orientational component of “towards a place”, where the place may be an endpoint to be reached, and this component pictures the inherent link between the source domain space and the target domain purpose. However, while in involves spatial coincidence and, hence, contact between tr and lm, thus conveying the idea of entering a space conceptualized as a container, ad designates mere proximity to/direction towards a lm which is not further specified.10 This difference is represented in Figures 2a and b.11

tr

lm

Figure 2a. Schematic representations of direction relations: ad

9.

In also occurs with the ablative to express location (Kühner & Stegmann 1912: 559–69).

10. In and ad + accusative frequently overlap, as ad also occurs in contexts where one would expect in, already in early Latin (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 224; Luraghi 2010: 27). 11. See also Pottier 1962: 277; 28; Baños Baños 2009: 315; and Luraghi 2010: 24, as well as analogous descriptions provided for English to and in by Tyler & Evans 2003.

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tr

lm

Figure 2b. Schematic representations of direction relations: in

As for ad, depending on the stativity or dynamicity of the predicate, the spatial value is specified as location in the proximity of the lm,12 as in (4), or direction towards or to the boundary of the lm, as in (5), which also illustrates the different spatial values of ad and in: (4)

pontem, qui erat ad Genavam iubet rescindi And orders the bridge at Geneva to be broken down.

(Caes. BG. 1.7)

(5)

prius … quam ad exercitum et in prouinciam iret (Liv. AUC. 21.63.12, cited by Baños Baños 2009: 315) Before he went towards the army and into the province.

As it lacks any implication regarding the contact with the lm (and its shape), ad shows a more vague semantics compared to in and, therefore, it is more likely used in contexts where the local meaning fades towards more abstract values. The spatial proximity becomes conceptual proximity, and ad marks the existence of a generic oriented connection between tr and lm that can be specified as recipient, beneficiary, reason or purpose, depending on the context. Thus, the metaphorical mapping also paves the way for a substantial increase of the semantic structure of the preposition. Probably due to its quite generic value, ad + acc. (especially with the gerund or the gerundive, that is, constructions in the between of phrasal and clausal encoding) is one of the most common means for expressing purpose throughout the history of Latin.13 The extension to purpose is metaphorically derived “transferring direction of motion to direction of causation” (Croft 1991: 194). In this mapping, the lm is reinterpreted as the purpose of tr’s action. As in the case of the dative, ad encodes purpose through the ‘purposes are destinations’ metaphor. Conversely, if

12. In this function ad overlaps with apud (“by, near”), whose etymology is not clear; de Vaan 2008: 48 lists various hypotheses, among them *ad-pod(V), with the preverb ad and the word for “foot”. 13. Since ad occurs with specific verbal forms, it should be considered as “halfway between a preposition and a complementizer” (Luraghi 2010: 73). It still expresses purpose in the Romance languages, developing as a final clausal marker (e.g. Italian a in mi aiuta a digerire (“It helps me to digest”)).

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

purposes can be conceptualised as places to be reached, the endpoint of a motion event can be interpreted as the Purpose of that motion, as in (6): (6)

‘hic’ inquit ‘auctoratus ad custodiam mariti tui fidenter accessit’ (Apul. Met. 2.23.16) “He”, he said, “faithfully approached here to/for the guard of your husband”.

The case in (6) can be considered as the link allowing the metaphorical extension to contexts in which no moving tr is involved and the lm is not a physical place to be reached. The directional configuration of in + acc. also allows the extension to the expression of purpose, although purpose expressions with in actually occur much less frequently. Sporadic examples are found since Plautus (e.g, Most 122, parant sedulo in firmitatem (“they work industriously for their consolidation”)), but the construction is better attested from the time of Livy (Ernout & Thomas 1964: 34). In what follows we deal more specifically with ad referring to in only contrastively. In our corpus, the final ad-phrase is distributed unequally. Final constructions with the gerund or the gerundive are attested in all authors; other patterns discussed below are treated differently in the various authors. Early Latin texts show a limited use of the prepositional phrase. In Plautus, it often involves vague lms whose final interpretation is generally motivated by context (e.g., As. 288; Bacch. 98, 143, 673; Men. 453). In other cases, the adphrase depends on verbs of motion directed towards semantically eventive lms, as in (7): (7)

ad eri fraudationem callidum ingenium gerunt That use their wily wits to gull the master.

(Plaut. As. 257)

In cases like this, the prepositional phrase retains spatial meaning, at the same time suggesting a final inference induced by the semantics of the lm (which is not a physical place). An unequivocally final interpretation is found only with the gerund or the gerundive (thus, also favored by the semantics of such verbal forms), and in (8), where an action verb in the passive is associated with an ad-phrase containing an abstract noun: (8)

omnis ad perniciem instructa domus opime atque opipare (Plaut. Bacch. 373) Their whole abode is tricked out as a gilded, gorgeous lure to ruin.

The final ad-prepositional phrase is frequently found in Cato. Due to the didactic nature of the De agricultura, the ad-phrase is extensively used (especially in section titles) and typically refers to remedies for various kinds of diseases, as in (9), where tormina is both the disease to be cured with © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

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pomegranates and the reason for taking them. The same usage appears in one of the latest texts of our corpus, the Mulomedicina Chironis: (9) (10)

ad tormina … triginta mala punica acerba sumito For flu … take 30 acidic pomegranates.

(Cat. Agr. 126.1.1)

facit … ad hoc vitium betae et malvae decoctio

(Mulomedicina Chironis V.458.15–19) For this desease make a decoction of beet and mallow.

As we will see in Section 4, formal and conceptual syncretism of reason and purpose is frequent and overlaps with the concept of purpose. It can be summed up in Aristotle’s notion of causa finalis (or “prospective” reason, see 2). In the remainder of our corpus, the distribution of the final ad-phrase is fairly homogeneous, except for Phaedrus and the Peregrinatio, in which it is limited to the gerund and the gerundive. Elsewhere the ad-phrase occurs with either an argumental function, with verbs meaning “to be useful, necessary, suitable”, as in (11): (11)

ergo corpoream ad naturam pauca videmus / esse opus omnino (Lucr. RN. 2.20) Therefore, we see that few things are entirely necessary for bodily nature;

or with an adverbial function with non-active predicates: as in the case of the dative, a final interpretation is possible if the construction is reinterpreted as the result of an intentional purposive action, as in (12): (12)

nos ad hoc fortes sumus, ut levia portemus? (Sen. EM. 78.17.4) Is it for this purpose that we are strong, that we may have light burdens to bear?

or, finally, with an adverbial function with active predicates; this is the most typical instantiation of purpose, as an agentive subject performs an action aimed at achieving a goal encoded by the ad-phrase. The lm is typically an abstract noun, as in (13): (13)

Blaesus paucos … ad terrorem ceterorum adfici verberibus, claudi carcere iubet (Tac. Ann. 1.21.3) To cow the rest, Blaesus ordered a few … to be lashed and thrown into the cells.

The extension from direction to purpose undergone by ad + acc. is illustrated by Figure 3, where the bold arrow linking the two frames signals the metaphorical mapping from the spatial domain (direction) to the abstract domain of causation (purpose): © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin space

causation direction

purpose

Figure 3. The metaphorical construction of ad’s purpose value

4. Purpose expressions based on location: per + accusative We have claimed that purpose expressions based on direction can be directly connected to the schematic configuration of the linguistic means involved and, hence, they can be explained in metaphorical terms. On the other hand, the conceptual link between the source domain space and the target domain purpose is less transparent in the case of prepositions expressing location. In fact, Latin may express purpose via a small group of prepositions which variously configure the locational spatial segment, namely per “through”, prō “in front of ”, and propter “close to”. The spatial configurations of these prepositions describe the position which a tr may assume relative to a lm, but they do not (or do not necessarily) entail the presence of a destination to be achieved. The lack of a goal forming the conceptual basis of the purpose undermines the possibility of a purely metaphorical interpretation and requires a description of the various internal relations and the metonymical shifts intervening within the semantic networks of these prepositions over time. According to traditional reconstructions, per can be traced back to an ancient locative form *per, peri (see, e.g, Pokorny 1959). It belongs to a wider group of Latin prepositions and preverbs which includes prō and prae and is linked to prī, prior and prīmus. The general sense of these forms (which have numerous correlates in other Indo-European languages) is en avant while the meaning à travers expressed by Latin per represents a secondary development, which is also attested in Slavic and Baltic languages (Ernout & Meillet 1959 [2001]: 497). Consistent with these analyses, we characterize the spatial semantics of per as in Figure 4, which rearranges the schema proposed by Tyler and Evans (2003: 219) for the English preposition through: tr lm Figure 4. Schematic representation of the per-relation

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The figure depicts a spatially extended location, that is, a multiplicity of contiguous points occupied by a tr through a lm. As for English through, Tyler & Evans (2003) argue that the lm always represents a bounded space within which the tr is located; the preposition structures the position of the tr as a (linear) path which “requires a particular spatial goal, which is achieved by being connected to a spatial source by virtue of a series of contiguous points” (Tyler & Evans 2003: 218). Latin per, however, does not perfectly overlap with English through, as the path/goal configuration represents only a specific instantiation of a more generic and abstract schema, which is elaborated with greater specificity depending on the other contextual information. The geometry of tr/lm relation depends in part on the features of the lm; for instance, a road is more likely conceived of as a continuous and unidirectional path, but a multiplicity of roads represents a discontinuous lm which suggests a scattered configuration (per vias ignave incedis “You, sluggard, are walking through the streets”, Plaut. Cas. 240). The same goes for extended lms such as “sea”, “city”, or “circus” (per urbem ire (“to go all around/ throughout the city”), Plaut. Poen. 522). Both the linear path and the multidirectional configuration are firmly associated with the semantic network of Latin per (Kühner  & Stegmann 1912 [1971]: 554; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 239) or, borrowing the terminology of Tyler and Evans (2003), they are stored as distinct senses within the polysemous network of the preposition. As for the presence of a goal in the path configuration, Taylor (1993: 158) points out that “[A] path may be perfective or imperfective. A perfective path terminates upon the tr’s arrival at the definite end-point… An imperfective path, in contrast, is of indeterminate extent. Drive through the tunnel, swim over the river, walk across the street, etc. could denote any arbitrary portion of the path”. This observation reinforces our argument that the presence of a goal cannot be considered an inherent attribute of the per-path relation, which per se only describes the extent occupied by the tr and its orientation “forwards” (the series of directional arrows in Figure 4). The possible goal is only an inferential attribute triggered by the semantics of the motion verb. Directional verbs are inherently goal-oriented and as such attribute a telic trajectory (i.e. “perfective”) to the tr.14 On the other hand, non-directional motion verbs (as to drive used by Taylor to exemplify the “imperfective” path) are not goal-oriented and impose an atelic trajectory. In both cases, the trajectory should be conceived of as an attribute of the processual relation denoted by the verb (i.e., “the ‘shape’ of a motion event”, see Tyler & Evans 2003: 217), rather than pertaining to the atemporal relation. Thus,

14. The same goes for verbs denoting some sort of “crossing” (e.g. Petr. Sat. 54.4.1, ne per parietem automatum aliquod exiret (“If any new devilry were to jump out from the wall”)).

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin

differently from ad and in which do configure a goal in their directional meaning, the goal represents a contextual inference in the case of the per-path relation. Crucially, when the per-path is involved in a directional motion event, the encoding of the goal is entrusted to different items than per, such as directional prepositional phrases (e.g., Plaut. Most. 931, per porticum ad congerrones conferam (“I’ll take myself through the backdoor to my companions”)). Only the path configuration provides a metaphorical basis for the non-spatial meanings of per. The metaphors in question map the spatial semantics of per onto the domains of time and causation. The space-to-time mapping (per ver (“during spring time”)) is due to the conceptual similarity between the topology of the unidirectional path and the time line (Radden 2003). Similarly, the causal chain is conceptually structured in terms of the source-path-goal schema (see 2). In both cases, the relevant spatial segment of the source domain is the extent of the path. As for causation, the most important value encoded by per, already in early Latin, is means, that is, a semantic role described by Luraghi (2010: 54) as close to instrument, but denoting a more abstract, less manipulated, and less controlled entity (as in Plaut. Ps. 485, viginti minas per sycophantiam atque per doctos dolos paritas ut auferas a me (“you are about to try to get twenty minae off me by stealth and artful tricks”)).15 The inclusion of means in the semantic network of per is based on the metaphor ‘a means is a path’ to a destination (Lakoff 1993). The destination corresponds to the event brought about “through” the means and, hence, as in the case of the spatial paths, it is assigned by the verb. The verb, in turn, typically denotes an intentional and agentive event (Croft 1991: 178–179). In other words, a means cooperates with an agent in bringing about a certain state of affairs and thus precedes the object in the causal chain, constituting an antecedent role in Croft’s (1991: 185) terms or a causal concomitant role, as in Luraghi (2001). Since early Latin, abstract nouns introduced by per may occasionally receive a purpose reading, as in (14) and (15), where the per-phrases can be interpreted as the objectives at which the actions aim: (14)

tu … quae per ridiculum rustico suades stuprum (Plaut. Truc. 263) You tempt an honest countryman to naughty tricks for your amusement.

(15)

tun’ is es, qui per voluptatem tuam in me aerumnam obsevisti gravem? (Plaut. Ep. 557) Are you the man whose self-indulgence brought so heavy trouble on me?

15. There is a general consensus that the presence of concrete and manipulated instruments represents a secondary development not attested in early and classical Latin: see Pinkster 1990.

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The purpose reading represents a radical shift with respect to the main senses of the per-phrase, as purpose is in fact a subsequent role and, as such, it cannot be directly linked either to path or means. It could be hypothesized that per comes to express purpose through a metonymical extension which includes a goal within the semantic configuration of the preposition. However, the metonymical shift to the endpoint/goal of the path appears not to be attested among the spatial usages of perlative per (i.e., in the same way that through expresses the endpoint of the path in English, as in The passport office is through the doorway, quoted by Lakoff 1987: 440), thus, the metaphor would not respect the topology of the spatial schema of per. Beyond any theoretical obstacles, purpose expressions by means of per are anything but stable throughout the history of Latin. After Plautus, they become quite rare and almost absent in the classical period. Our corpus shows sporadic instances in the prose of the Augustan and post-classical age, as in (16) and (17): (16)

hunc contemptum de industria augentes … per ludibrium spectaculo esse (Liv. AUC. 35.11.8.3) Purposely making themselves more contemptible, they would make themselves a spectacle to be jeered.

(17)

consulti per ludibrium pontifices The pontiffs have been consulted as a joke.

(Tac. Ann. 1.10.21)

The purpose reading remains rare also in late texts, as in (18):16 (18)

ne per luxum aut inanium rerum conparationem ab contubernalibus posset absumi (Veg. Mil. 2.20.1) So that it couldn’t be used by companions for lavish spending or to purchase useless things.

The scarcity of the examples suggests considering purpose as a contextually inferred value, rather than a stable meaning within the semantic structure of per. We can single out two recurring features: (1) the intentionality of the action (which is an ontological feature of purpose), and (2) the presence of abstract lms denoting situations ensued from the action. More specifically, the nouns governed by per indicate the desired effects of an intentional action. In other words, we are dealing with “prospective” reasons.

16. This may appear surprising as per will develop a stable purpose meaning in many Romance languages, e.g. It. andare per vino (“to go for wine”) (Rohlfs 1969: 211). However, it is taken for granted in the relevant literature that this value derives from formal confusion with other prepositions more strictly linked to purpose, namely prō (see also Luraghi 2001).

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 101

The existence of a causal value within the semantic structure of per is early attested and should be considered as a metonymical extension of means (Luraghi 2010: 70). This is not surprising, as a means is normally conceived of as “helping” the realization of a given situation, and in fact as the cause which actually determines it (e.g., killed through accident, Dirven 1993: 82). The overlapping of means and cause remains stable throughout the history of Latin, and involves both intentional and non-intentional situations (cf., e.g., Ov. Met. 3.251, finita per plurima vulnera vita (“dead for many wounds”), where the “wounds” must have been inferred by someone, and Caes. BG. 2.16.5.1, mulieres quique per aetatem ad pugnam inutiles viderentur (“women and all those who seemed worthless to the fight for the age”)). Brucale & Mocciaro (2011) propose that the reason interpretation historically precedes the non-intentional causal one, as most occurrences in early Latin can be found in intentional contexts. This is not unexpected as the agentivity of the event is a strong implication of means and, at the same time, it constitutes an ontological requirement for reason. Thus, the notional link licensing the metonymy is more likely constituted by the intentionality of the caused event. In this perspective, we can better characterize the metaphorical-metonymical process leading to reason as ‘a means is a path through which intentionality is transferred’.17 Intentionality also explains the early overlap between the causal sense and the purpose reading. The possibility for cause expressions to constitute a source for purpose expressions is widely recognized in the relevant literature, and is hardly limited to the preposition we are dealing with (Luraghi 2005b). We will come back to this point in 6. From a theoretical point of view, the spread reason → purpose shows the fluidity among the roles included within the causal chain, where an antecedent role (cause/reason) comes to express a subsequent role (purpose) and both roles are based on location (Luraghi 2010). However, the shift remains highly contextually dependent throughout the history of Latin, and does not produce a new autonomous meaning conventionalized within the semantic structure of per. We represent this situation as in Figure 5, where the bold arrow signals the metaphorical passage from the spatial domain to the abstract domain of causation; the thin arrows within causation represent the metonymical shifts intervening in

17. Luraghi 2014 proposes that the causal value of locative and perlative prepositions may be given a metaphorical interpretation. She claims that the encoding of reason “must be accounted for by a complex metaphor, based on an instantiation of the container metaphor (the mind is a container) and other more specific metaphors that explain the understanding of reason in terms of particular spatial configurations”. As for per, while fully agreeing with the idea of a metaphorical (i.e. cross-domain) location/path-to-means mapping, we prefer to consider the means → reason spread as a metonymical (i.e. inter-domain) shift based on intentionality.

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this domain; and the bidirectional arrow linking reason and purpose represents the strong conceptual link between these two semantic roles. The dotted line surrounding purpose indicates its low stability and the contextual dependency. space

causation path

means

reason

purpose

Figure 5. The metaphorical-metonymical construction of the purpose value of per

5. Purpose expressions based on location: prō + ablative Prō belongs to a group of prepositions whose sense is basically locational and, as in the case of per, the presence of a goal is only inferential and depending on the presence of a motion verb. The basic configuration of prō describes the place occupied by the tr before/in front of the lm. This location on the frontal axis of the lm implies that the tr partially or totally obscures with its volume the lm to the eye of an observer. According to Baños Baños (2009: 321), prō + abl. configures a scene in which the object (tr) is located before the referent (lm) and has the same orientation. Being situated behind the tr (on its back), the lm could be seen as “protected” by the tr. However, this description fails to represent those cases in which the tr is not oriented in the same direction as the lm, which, instead, seems to face the tr (e.g., Suet. Claud. 26.2.10, supplicio adfecit confirmauitque pro contione apud praetorianos (“He had her put to death and affirmed before an assembly in the praetorian camp that …”)). Consequently, to rectify the explanation in Baños Baños (2009), the salient feature of the schematic configuration of prō must be the lm’s orientation, while the orientation of the tr appears to be irrelevant. Accordingly, the schematic content of prō can be represented as in Figure 6, where the bold arrow depicts the orientation of the lm towards the tr, and the dotted arrows illustrate the irrelevance of tr’s orientation. tr

lm

Figure 6. Schematic representation of the frontness-relation

The relevance of the spatial use of the prō construction throughout the history of Latin is not constant. In the oldest texts it is never attested. It is instead found © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 103

in the classical and imperial era, especially in Caesar, Suetonius and Livy, almost always in combination with verbs expressing staticity (e.g., Caes. BG. 1.51.1.3, constitit pro castris (“He stood before/in front of the camp”); Suet. Aug. 33.1.3, pro tribunali collocate (“placed before/in front of the tribunal”)). Sporadically the prō phrase is associated with verbs indicating dynamic displacement, as in stationem agere pro vallo iussit (“He ordered the cavalry to stand guarding in front of the rampart”) (Liv. AUC. 35.29.12.2), where the construction inferentially expresses direction, and the lm is interpreted as the goal in front of which the action takes place (Torrego 1989; de la Villa 1995). In early Latin, prō is mainly used to express: (1) proportional relationships between tr and lm (e.g., Cat. Agr. 127.2.4, dato ieiuno, et puero pro aetate triobolum et uini heminam (“Administer to him before he eats, and, for a child, according to age, a triobolus and a hemina”)); (2) exchange (Plaut. Am. 432, eho, ecquis pro vectura olivi rem solvit? “Has any one paid for the carriage of that olive oil?”); and (to a lesser extent); (3) the beneficiary of the action, understood both as the participant for whose benefit the action is performed (the plain beneficiary, as in Cat. Agr. 83.1, votum pro bubus, ut ualeant, sic facito (“Perform the vow for the health of the cattle as follows”)), and as the one who benefits from the fact that the agent acts in his or her place (the so-called deputative beneficiary, as in Plaut. Most. 1131, ego ibo pro te, si tibi non libet (“I’ll go for you, if you don’t like”)). Since purpose is an implied natural part of benefaction (Schmidtke-Bode 2010: 134), it is conceivable that the prō phrase extends its semantic network to the expression of purpose from the benefactive value. Luraghi (2014: 117) argues, however, that the extension to beneficiary and purpose is mediated through the value of “exchange”, which in turn can be explained because “location in front of the lm could be metaphorically understood as replacement of the lm by the tr”. The transition from “in front of ” to “in the place of ”, therefore, would take place through a “covering relation”: the tr, being placed “in front of ” the lm, will cover its surface, replacing it in the eyes of the observer. According to Luraghi (2014), this kind of replacement is based on the metaphor ‘existence is visibility’, which equates “existence” with “being in the visual field of the observer”. The idea of exchange is also present in the semantics of the deputative beneficiary, extension towards the benefactive value triggered by this semantic feature. In Luraghi’s framework, extension to the final value also takes place starting from the “exchange” value, but motivated by another metaphor according to which the object of an exchange is seen as the purpose of the exchange itself. Our data allow to combine Luraghi’s (2014) analysis with an alternative explanation, which assumes a mapping between the spatial domain and that of benefactivity or finality that is not necessarily mediated by the notion of exchange. The role of the covering relation identified by Luraghi remains, but the salient aspect is © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

104 Luisa Brucale & Egle Mocciaro

not the replacement of the lm by the tr: the tr, standing in front of the lm, covers it, putting itself in a position of defense or protection of the lm and, thus, acting to its advantage. In our corpus, benefactive and final values are often triggered by verbs denoting intentional actions, also related to the semantic field of the sacred (e.g., Tac. Ann. 3.47.8, vota pro reditu eius (“vows for his return”)) or belonging to the lexicon of war (Tac. Ann. 2.44.10, pro libertate bellantem (“warring for freedom”)). In other cases, however, in association with verbs meaning “paying”, “spending”, “giving”, the prepositional phrase activates the exchange-meaning and, depending on the features of the lm, can designate deputative beneficiary or purpose. Even in this case, the switch from beneficiary to purpose is based on animacy, depending on whether the lm is processed by an animate noun indicating the participant to whose advantage the action is directed (e.g., Plaut. Ep. 414, te pro filio facturum dixit rem esse divinam (“He said that you would have made a sacrifice for your son”)) or by a non-animate noun denoting the hoped effect resulting from an intentional action (the “prospective” reason). While the benefactive value is attested in early Latin, in this period purpose does not yet seem to constitute a stable meaning in prō’s semantic network. In Cato, it is found in only one case with the gerundive, where a final value is inferred from the context of exchange: (19)

pro ea olea legunda et faciunda nemo dabit (Cat. Agr. 144.5.1) No one will pay for the gathering or milling of the olives.

In Plautus, we find an example where the prepositional phrase represents the prospective reason, therefore the purpose for which the agent performs an action. This example is particularly interesting because the expression of purpose seems to be accomplished by holding the original spatial nuance of prō. Nevertheless, given the abundance of Plautine situations having to do with trade and transactions, the semantic feature “exchange” may also be activated in this context: e.g., (20)

tun’ verberes, qui pro cibo habeas te verberari? (Plaut. Am. 628) Could you whip me, you, who would let yourself be whipped (in front of/) for food?

In texts of the classical and imperial period, final prō is widely attested, except in Lucretius. It is not possible to identify differences attributable to chronological factors; rather, possible differences may have to do with the stylistic habits of individual authors. In many contexts, the prō phrase expresses purpose according to the “exchange” metaphor, as in (21): (21)

si vitam pro tua dignitate profundam If I were even to shed my blood for your position …

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(Cic. Fam. 1.4.3.3)

The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 105

However, the construction is also attested in contexts in which this metaphor cannot be activated, as in (22), where the prepositional phrase depends on a predicate triggering the final reading (see 3): (22)

vadoque per equites invento pro rei necessitate opportuno (Caes. BG. 7.56.2) Found by means of the cavalry a ford to suit the need of the case …

Another frequent context for purpose expressions includes verbs belonging to the semantic field of war or sacrifice; in this case, purpose may be read as the object one is fighting, dying, or vowing for, or in exchange of which the action takes place, as in (23)–(24): (23)

nos pro patria, pro libertate, pro vita certamus We are battling for our country, for freedom, for life.

(Sall. Cat. 58.11.2–3)

(24)

supplicatio inde … pro ualetudine populi per triduum fuit (Liv. AUC. 38.44.7.1) Then a three-day period of prayer was proclaimed for the health of the people.

In later texts, purpose expressed by means of prō + abl. is marginal; it occurs once in the Itinerarium Egeriae: (25)

nos … attendimus locum illum, ubi primitus domus sancti Abrahae fuit, pro memoria illius (Iter. Eg. 20.8) We head towards the place where once was the home of St. Abraham, for the memory of him …

The metaphorical-metonymical path from frontness to purpose can be represented as in Figure 7: SPACE

CAUSATION FRONTNESS

BENEFICIARY

PURPOSE

Figure 7. The metaphorical-metonymical construction of the purpose value of prō

6. Purpose expressions based on location: propter + accusative The basic spatial value of propter (< prope) is “close to, nearby, by the side of ” (cf. Cat. Agr. 9.1.1, propter amnes (“near a stream”)). This relation can be represented © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

106 Luisa Brucale & Egle Mocciaro

as in Figure 8, where an object, the tr, is close to another object, the lm, without implying either directionality or contact:

tr

lm

Figure 8. Schematic representation of propter’s closeness relation

Reference grammars indicate that the spatial value is well attested until the age of Cicero, but that this sense falls into disuse by the imperial period. Already in Cicero the commonest sense is “on account of, because of ”, that is, a causal value from which the purpose sense also derives (Ernout & Meillet 1959 [2001]: 539).18 Thus, also in this case, we are dealing with a metaphorical extension from location to cause, which “is based on the idea that a cause and its effect are contiguous: the entity by which a state of affairs takes place is then conceived as somewhat involved in bringing about the state of affairs” (Luraghi 2005b).19 The conceptual link between closeness and causality is well-known in cognitive linguistics: it rests on our naïve tendency to perceive a logical relationship between spatially close objects. The metaphor ‘causes and effects are linked objects’ is based on this folk concept of causality (Lakoff et al. 1991).20 It should be stressed, however, that this notional shift implies the metonymical selection of a specific instantiation of the configuration of closeness in Figure 7. While the relative position of the two objects is irrelevant in the basic spatial schema, for an object to be interpreted as the causal origin of another object this schema must include a sequence such that the metaphorically understood cause (the lm) spatially precedes its effect (the tr). In other words, the causal metaphor imposes a temporal sequence, represented in terms of space. As Luraghi (2005a: 154) has observed, already in early Latin propter + accusative “can denote cause with all types of referent, including animate nouns”. When occurring with abstract lms, propter may express either external cause or 18. The causal preposition ob may express purpose: Cabrillana 2011: 27 cites the use with the gerundive, as in Sall. Iug. 89,2, existumans Iugurtham ob suos tutandos in manus uenturum (“thinking that Iugurtha would openly come in order to protect his subjects”). However, beginning with the classical period, the purpose use seems to be limited to expressions such as ob eam rem/causam (Luraghi 2010). 19. The contiguity-to-causal shift is traditionally recognized: see Butler 1823: 113, “As that which is contiguous to any thing may produce an effect on it, hence propter signifies the cause or the reason of a thing or action”. 20. See also Rudzka-Ostyn 2003: 202 on English by.

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 107

reason, depending on the contextual presence of an agent. Examples of reason are given in (26)–(27): (26)

cui inimici propter dignitatem pepercerant (Cic. Fam. 4.12.2.14) His personal enemies had spared him in consideration of his character.

(27)

non fore dicto audientes milites neque propter timorem signa laturos (Caes. BG. 1.39.4) The soldiers would not obey, and by reason of cowardice would not move forward.

Throughout the classical period, propter is strongly linked to what can be called a “retrospective” reason, namely situations or mental conditions (e.g., fear, existing prior to the action, as in (27), or, very frequently, prior to the choice of not acting, as for a causa impedientis). There are no counter-examples in classical prose, besides a handful of contextual interpretations. This is the case in (28), which refers to the need for constructing a temple depending on the specific function for which it is intended, and, hence, propter may assume a prospective value: (28)

haec autem genera propter usum sacrificiorum convertuntur (Vitr. Arch. 4.8.6.6) The styles of building vary to suit the needs of sacrifice.

Though rare, these cases highlight the role played by the lm in orienting the interpretation towards a retrospective or perspective reason; in other words, a need or a function are inherently future-oriented and, hence, prospective concepts. Expression of purpose by means of propter is intermittent in the post-classical period (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 247). Our corpus, however, shows an interesting and not infrequent use of final propter in Seneca’s Moral Epistles, alongside the canonical sense of cause or reason: (29)

sed si propter hoc tergiversaris, ut circumaspicias quantum feras tecum (Sen. EM. 22.12.1) But if you keep turning round and looking about, in order to see how much you may carry away with you …

(30)

quinque ergo causae sunt … id ex quo, id a quo, id in quo, id ad quod, id (Sen. EM. 65.8) propter quod; novissime id quod ex his est Accordingly, there are five causes … the material, the agent, the make-up, the model, and the end in view. Last comes the result of all these.

In (29), propter specifies a very general lm (hoc) which is a cataphoric reference to a whole event, described in a clause introduced by the final conjunction ut. In (30), in describing the five “causes”, Seneca employs different prepositions in a sort of “iconic” sequence which reproduces the phases of God’s creation; the position © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

108 Luisa Brucale & Egle Mocciaro

of propter in the final segment of this sequence suggests it be interpreted as a subsequent role, i.e., as a purpose corresponding to the prospective reason for acting. Seneca’s consistency in expressing purpose with propter – especially in contexts like (30) where the reader is invited to reflect metalinguistically on the value of the words employed – suggests that its purposive reading is more than occasional at this stage of the language, but rather represents a real context-dependent inferential possibility. Nevertheless, this contextual inference does not produce an autonomous node, so to speak, within the preposition’s semantic network, and it does not occur in other authors of the same period. The complete merging of reason and purpose in fact occurs in Vulgar Latin (Löfstedt 1911), as in: (31)

auxilium salubre corpori praestare propter diuturnam vitam et integritatem membrorum (Mulomedicina Chironis 1.2.17) Providing a healthy help to the body for a long life and the entirety of the limbs.

(32)

candelae autem ecclesiasticae super ducentae parate sunt propter lumen omni populo (Iter. Eg. 36.2) And over two hundred church candles are made ready to give light to all the people.

We can represent the metonymical extension reason → purpose as in Figure 9. SPACE

CAUSATION LOCATION

CAUSE/ REASON

PURPOSE

Figure 9. The metaphorical-metonymical construction of the purpose value of propter

7. Purpose expressions based on cause: causā/gratiā and the genitive The conceptual link between reason and purpose is fully transparent when the expression of purpose is entrusted to the postpositions causā and, more rarely, gratiā, both with the genitive. These constructions convey causal meaning throughout the history of Latin (e.g., Plaut. Aul. 750, nos fecisse amoris causa) and, as with the other causal prepositions, this value can easily shift towards a purpose meaning, as in (33): (33)

cenaene causa aut tuae mercedis gratia nos nostras aedis postulas comburere? (Plaut. Aul. 360) Do you want us to burn our house down, all for your dinner or your pay?

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The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 109

The postpositions are the ablative forms of the nouns causa (“cause”) and gratia (“favor, gratitude”) (see Ernout & Meillet 1959 [2001]: 108). As they represent original nominal forms and, hence, cannot be associated with a spatial value, causā and gratiā have a different ontological status than the other cases discussed so far.21 However, causā and gratiā are worth considering for two reasons. First, throughout the history of Latin, they show a strong link with the expression of purpose; secondly, a more accurate analysis of their basic lexical semantics shows that the grammaticalization process leading them to the expression of relational meanings is conceptually grounded and, hence, they can be harmoniously included in a general treatment of purpose expressions in Latin. The noun causa contains the notion of origin as an implied component of the notion of cause: as causes precede and determine effected events, they can be conceived of as their origins.22 origin constitutes a strong implication also in the case of gratia, as a “favor” may be conceived of as a cause enabling the realization of events. The component origin must have functioned as the feature prompting the grammaticalization of the ablatives causā and gratiā when occurring with the genitive of another noun.23 This process may be described as: [a cause is the origin of N] → [from the cause of N → because of N], and [a favor is the origin of N] → [from the favor of N → thanks to N → because of N]. In other words, we are not dealing with concrete (spatial) meanings from which grammatical meanings develop, but with abstract concepts from which more abstracts concepts, that is, relational meanings, derive. Our corpus indicates that the distribution of the two causal postpositions is quite unbalanced. Generally, causā occurs more frequently than gratiā, but their relative import varies considerably depending on the authors. As for early texts, in Cato only a few occurrences of causā can be found, whereas Plautus employs both postpositions. These texts also show an early link with the reason value, as well as a high frequency of purpose expressions both with abstract nouns and with

21. Pottier 1962: 275 explicitly excludes them from his “local” – although not “embodied” – description of Latin prepositions. 22. This is what actually happens (although in the opposite direction) with ex “out of ” > “because of ”; cf. also English from, whose causal value is discussed by Radden 1985. 23. The ablative case originally conveys the meaning of source or origin (Ernout & Thomas 1953: 79–85), and is frequently associated with a causal value (e.g., Cic. De sen. 28, orator metuo ne languescat senectute (“I fear that the speaker becomes weaker because of old age”): see Luraghi 2010: 61). This circumstance is crucial, as the grammaticalization processes should be conceived of as context-induced reinterpretations, where different elements (in this case, meaning and casual form) cooperate in triggering new grammatical values, rather than as phenomena affecting one lexical item only (Heine et al. 1991).

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110 Luisa Brucale & Egle Mocciaro

the gerund/gerundive form of a verb (e.g., Plaut. Capt. 889, liberorum quaerundorum causa (“for obtaining children”)). Classical Latin offers an analogous scenario. Caesar widely employs causā, especially in purpose contexts, as in (34), where the construction is included in a final sentence introduced by ut: (34)

hortatur ut communis libertatis causa arma capiant (Caes. BG. 7.4.4.2) Urging them to take up arms for the sake of the general liberty.

The genitive + causā construction is well attested in Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and Vitruvius. An example of causā is given in (35), where both a purpose (divitiarum, i.e. the supposed prospective reason for the war) and a reason (iniuriae, i.e. the possible retrospective reason for the war) depend on the same postposition, thus confirming the “fluidity of the border between Purpose and Cause” (Luraghi 2010: 71): (35)

ne quis divitiarum magis quam iniuriae causa bellum inceptum diceret (Sall. Cat. 51.5.6) That some might say that the wealth of the Rhodians, rather than resentment for the wrong they had done, had led to the declaration of war.

On the other hand, the use of genitive + gratiā is sporadic throughout the classical and Augustan periods (e.g., Caes. BG. 7.43.2.2, purgandi gratia (“for excusing themselves”)). Purpose expressions by means of genitive + causā are also well attested during the post-classical age – although with a different frequency in the various authors – whereas occurrences of gratiā remain rare. Conversely, in late Latin we find numerous occurrences of genitive + gratiā in the Peregrinatio, but almost only in the phrase gratiā orationis (e.g., 17.2, qui non se tendat illuc gratia orationis (“who does not go there to pray”)). The consistent presence of original nominal expressions within the domain of purpose confirms the hypothesis of the complexity and, at the same time, the pervasiveness of this notion, which can hardly be captured by a unique linguistic form.

8. Conclusions The linguistic expression of purpose in Latin lacks dedicated means and is entrusted instead to a morphological case (the dative) and to a set of adpositional phrases with different schematic characteristics. The spatial notions at work appear to be direction and location. However, direction and location do not function in the same way in supplying the semantics of purpose. In the case of direction, the expression of purpose rests on a strong metaphorical basis and is therefore directly linked to the schematic configuration of the markers involved (through the metaphor ‘purposes are destinations’). © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved

The embodied sources of purpose expressions in Latin 111

As for location (except in the case of prō which seems to express purpose based on its own spatial value), the locational configuration fails to explain the notional link between space and purpose, as the lack of a goal forming the conceptual basis of purpose does not permit a purely metaphorical interpretation. On the basis of previous analyses (Croft 1991; Luraghi 2001, 2010), we have highlighted the role of the notion of reason in the metonymical shifts leading to the expressions of purpose by means of originally locational markers. In many cases the reason → purpose shift remains highly contextual, and does not result in new independent meanings stabilized within the semantic structure of the prepositions. While a complete merging of reason and purpose only occurs in Vulgar Latin, we have shown that this is in fact latent throughout the history of Latin and expressed by multiform, although irregular, varieties of expression. The notional link between reason and purpose is transparent with the causal postpositions causā and gratiā. Due to their original status as nominal forms, they cannot be linked to any spatial value. Rather, their spread to the value of purpose rests on a metonymy based on the semantic component of origin. A cognitive semantic account has thus allowed us to trace a coherent and conceptually grounded description of the complex phenomenon of purpose expressions. The diachronic developments of the various means of encoding need, however, to be further investigated, especially with regard to the transition from Latin to Romance.

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