Article published In: Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 7:2 (1999) ► pp.361–373
Prelinguistic metaphors?
Published online: 17 February 2000
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.7.2.07bej
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.7.2.07bej
The gap between the prelinguistic and the linguistic levels cannot be bridged as easily as Lakoff's cognitive linguistics suggests. Lakoff's event structure metaphor is reviewed here. Compared with physical movement, the bringing together of separated elements which occurs in predication would not be metaphorical only because it departs from concrete physical experience, but, more significantly, because it relies on elements artificially separated by means of language. However, if we do not overlook this fundamental leap, the event structure metaphor is a good tool to understand how predication takes place, and its application is even wider than Lakoff suggests.
