All’origine della deissi indoeuropea. Un approccio linguistico cognitivo

Abstract

This paper focuses on the existence of temporal deixis in Indo-European, questioning the traditional view according to which metaphors of time in ancient Indo-European languages originated from projecting the human body coordinates onto space. In particular, it aims at interpreting data from historical-comparative linguistics by using the cognitive linguistic framework, without disregarding the most recent results from typological studies, spatial language acquisition, and neurolinguistic research on spatiotemporal deixis. Contrary to what previously assumed, the comparative analysis between the Rigveda and the Homeric poems shows that earlier spatial metaphors of time are still deictically neutral and anchored to the absolute Frame of Reference (FoR), which is proper to ‘objective’ temporal sequences. The tense-related Ego-perspective FoR that conventionally separates the past, the present, and the future in the more complex three-term system of temporal adverbs or spatial expressions is a later development, which is ascribed to the ‘post-archaic’ or classical stage of ancient Indo-European languages.