Title: Vico, metaphor, and the origin of language /
Authors: Danesi, Marcel, 1946-
Publisher: Indiana University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Vico, Giambattista, Contributions in the origin of language.; Vico, Giambattista,; Language and languages Origin; Metaphor
Abstract: The 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: I. Glottogenetic Theories and Research: A Brief Sketch -- II. The Primitive Mind: A Vichian Reconstruction -- III. Language and the Imagination: The Vichian Glottogenetic Scenario -- IV. The Dawn of Language: The Iconicity and Visual Mimesis Hypotheses -- V. From Language to Speech: The Audio-Oral Osmosis Hypothesis -- VI. From Percepts to Concepts: The Metaphoricity Hypothesis -- VII. The Sociobiological-Computationist Viewpoint: A Vichian Critique.