Sistemi di orientamento nel latino di Plauto

Abstract

This paper investigates the spatial Frames of Reference (FoRs) in Old Latin within the framework of cognitive linguistics. Differently from modern romance languages, which are heavily based on the so-called relative FoR, ancient Indo-European languages such as Vedic and Homeric Greek did not make use of such an egocentric orientation system at their earliest stage, since the relation between FIGURE and GROUND was not specified by imposing an external deictic observer’s viewpoint. the aim of this study is to add the perspective of Old Latin, by focusing on the contexts of use of spatial terms of FRONT, BEHIND, LEFT, RIGHT in the comedies of Plautus. The results of this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis according to which the ternary relative FoR was not the primary orientation system in Indo-European (Bartolotta 2018). In fact, the data show that Old Latin made primarily use of the binary intrinsic FoR, as the spatial GROUNDs taken as reference points were entities endowed with inherent front-back sides (cf. talmy 1983).