Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of LanguageThe origin of language is one of the deep mysteries of human existence. Drawing upon the work of the eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, Marcel Danesi fashions a persuasive, original account of the evolution and development of language. Seeking to reconstruct the primitive mind that generated language and the evolutionary events that must have preceded the advent of speech, he takes Vico's insight that mind, culture, and language evolved from the uniquely human faculty known as fantasia ("the imagination") and sketches a "primal scene" of compelling interest. Danesi identifies metaphor, the feature of mind that transforms iconic, perceptual thinking into conceptual thinking, as the crucial event in the Vichian scenario. The description of this scenario forms the core of Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language. Danesi then evaluates the Vichian reconstruction of the origin of language in light of contemporary research in the cognitive, social, and biological sciences and with competing theories. |
Contents
A Vichian Reconstruction | 30 |
The Vichian | 60 |
After the Primal Scene | 66 |
Copyright | |
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abstract animal audio-oral osmosis behavior Berlin and Kay brain chapter Chomsky cognitive cognitive science color communication computationism concept-formation concepts Conceptual metaphors culture deep level domains emerged evolution experience fact fantasia genetic gesture Giambattista Vico glottochronology glottogenetic guage hemisphere hominid Homo erectus Homo habilis Homo sapiens Homo sapiens sapiens human mind iconic iconic signs iconic thinking ideas imagery content imagination imitative ingegno interaction internal iconicity kind language origin level of mind linguistic literal logical meaning mental metaphorical capacity metaphoricity hypothesis metonymy modern monogenesis myths narrative Nostratic notion onomatopoeia ontogenesis organ origin of language perception perspective phylogenetic produced programming psychology rational reconstruction referents representation scientific semantic sociobiology sound symbolism sounds specific speech structure suggest surface level Swadesh symbols syntactic syntax Tagliacozzo theory things thought tion transformed University verbal metaphor Vichian scenario Vico's visual mimesis vocal words