Michel Bréal: Semantics (1900)

Bréal; from Wikimedia Commons.

Apparently, this book by Michel Bréal is considered by some to be a foundational document in semantics. However, it's not mentioned in Saeed's textbook, and I wouldn't have heard of it if it weren't for a footnote in a paper by Harald Weinrich — so think it's fair to say it's fallen pretty much into obscurity by now.

I looked at because I was interested in seeing what Bréal had to say about metaphor. It turns out that his observations are that the phenomenon is (1) widespread (2) mostly dead (3) often synaesthetic.

The Psychological Basis of Metaphor

As for the widespread nature of metaphor:

Our business is not to claim admiration for these images, which indeed have ceased to be images, but to show that language is full of them. (p. 123)

His take on the emergence of metaphors seem to be that they are invented for communitative purposes, not that that it reflects deep psychological structure. Most of his attention is devoted to the connection between cultural variables (e.g., Roman land ownership institutions) and the choice of metaphors.

However, he says that they demonstrate "the universal intelligence, which does not vary much from one nation to another" (p. 123). In his discussion of grammatical analogy, he also claims that opposites like night/day and dead/alive tend to take on similar forms, and that "Language here reveals to us a fact of psychology;" providing a hand-wavy sketch of the psychology of this phenomenon (p. 68).

The Death of a Metaphor

There is not doubt that Bréal thinks that metaphors wither and die over time:

But the metaphor remains such at its outset only; soon the mind becomes accustomed to the image; its very success causes it to pale; it fades into a representation of the idea scarcely more coloured than the proper word. (p. 122)

But for the child who learns to speak them the complication [of faded historical meanings] does not exist: the last meaning, the meaning farthest removed from it original, is often the first learnt. (p. 133)

More indirectly, this is also evidenced by his interest in the difficulty of etymological problems. He notes, for instance, that it is not immediately obvious which of the meanings of the Latin gemma are the older, "pearl" or "bud." In fact, Cicero seems to have gotten the historical order wrong (p. 125).

Synaesthetic Metaphors

Bréal also notes the importance of cross-sensory transfers of meaning:

A special kind of Metaphor, extremely frequent in all languages, comes from the communication between our organs of sense, which permit us to transport the sensations of sight into the domain of hearing, or the ideas of touch into the domain of taste. We speak of a "a warm reception," "a broad style," "a bitter reproach," "a black grief," with the certainty of being understood by everybody. … A deep sound, a high note were originally images. (pp. 129-30)

Again, however, he warns the reader not to pull etymologies out of a hat:

Sometimes it is difficult to tell exactly from what organ of the body these expressions came: for example, it was long considered doubtful whether the adjective clarus came from sigh or from hearing. Without the words acies, acus, acutus, acer, we should not know that acid (the French aigre) did not always belond to the sense of taste. (p. 130)

 So much for introspective psychology, then.

Asch: "The Metaphor: A Psychological Inquiry" (1958)

The social psychologist Solomon Asch was interested in how we perceive, understand, and describe other people, and this let him (among other things) to conduct this small, cross-linguistic study on the polysemy of some common sensory adjectives.

He wanted to investigate whether the cross-modal ambiguity of English words like sharp was a language-specific coincidence, so he selected a set of promising terms and asked some informants what other meanings the corresponding word in their language could have.

Cutting the Cake

Asch presents his materials as follows:

Included among the terms were the following: warm, cold, hot; right, left; dull, bright, pale, shining; straight, twisted, crooked; sweet, bitter; colorful, colorless, white, black (and some other color terms); rought, smooth, slippery; dry, wet; clear, cloudy; deep, shallow, high, low; broad, rounded, sharp; hard, soft. (p. 88)

The languages he compared were ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, "Chinese" (not further specified), Thai, Malayalam, Hausa, Burmese (p. 88).

The conclusion he came to was that "… all the languages examined here contain terms that simultaneously describe both physical and psychological qualities" (p. 89). However, he also warned about overextrapolating these findings:

From the linguistic evidence alone, even if it were more complete, we could not, of course conclude about the responsible operations. For this purpose we need a psychological analysis. (p. 91)

Solomon Asch with his wife Florence (from the Asch Center website).

Cognitive Operations

After having presented his results, Asch also speculates about the "conceptual basis" for this dual function of sensory words:

Dual terms may be the consequence of stable associative connections established between dissimilar physical and psychological  conditions that regularly share some stimulus properties. (p. 92)

The concepts in question have little in common with abstract logical operations. They are not generalizations of what is common to an array of different instances. Rather they are concrete cognitive operations in terms of which we naïvely comprehend events and similarities between them. (p. 93)

We see natural events as conductors of the same fundamental forces that we find in the human sphere. Therefore we speak spontaneously of seeing a point, of shedding light on or illuminating a problem, of penetrating to the heart of a matter. (p. 93)

The Schema of Interaction

Thus:

What now is the sense of hard when it refers to a person? It describes an interaction that is formally similar. We see a man refusing the appeal of another. This interaction we experience as a force proceeding from one person, having as its aim the production of a change in the other, which, however, fails to move him, or which produces resistance. The hardness of a table and of a person concerns events radically different in content and complexity, but the schema of interaction is experienced as dynamically similar, having to do with the application of force and of resulting actions in line with or contrary to it. (p. 93)

Williams: "Synaesthetic Adjectives" (1976)

Based on an inspection of English and Japanese adjectives, this paper claims that the etymological development of meaning by metaphorical extension always follows a particular pattern, shown in the figure below.

Figure 1 from Williams' paper (p. 463).

For instance, sound can be conceptualized as touch (soft music), but the opposite is not the case (loud touch). Williams emphasizes, though, that the law is quantitative, not logical:

Even in English, the generalization is not exceptionless. But its regularity varies between 83% and 99%, depending on how we compute what counts as an observation of it. (p. 463)

These numbers refer to the number of dictionary entries inspected (not, for instance, token frequencies in running text).

Towards the end of the paper, he wonders whether "these sequences [of consecutive word meanings] might be reflected in any physical basis of sensation" (p. 472) like its evolutionary history, or the developmental history of the individual. In the conclusion, he writes:

Obviously it is presumptuous, to say the least, to seek a biological foundation for a phenomenon that may not universally exist, in an aspect of human cognition about which very little is known. But the parallels that do exist … indicate … a point of interaction between mind an brain. (p. 473)

However, it is important to keep in mind that he explicitly presents his hypothesis as one about "rule-governed semantic change" (p. 473), not about cognition.

Hull: Touching the Rock (1990)

John M. Hull is a former (now retired) professor of religious studies who struggled with poor heath and receding eyesight for decades, finally going completely blind at age 48. In this sort-of-autobiography, based on a series of tape-recorded diary entries, he recounts the slow and painful process of adjusting to his new condition.

He writes about the everyday challenges and frustrations of his new life: How to lecture without notes, how he struggles to find his way around the snow-covered streets of Birmingham, how he copes with the difficulties of meeting new people at conferences and in bars. He is honest about his moments of panic and depression, but you also sense how he gradually, over the span of about five years, learns to live with his blindness.

I just finished reading the book now, and I'm completely in love with it. It's frankness and its small nuggets of wisdom and lived experience give an extraordinary sense of the difficulty of living with blindness, but also of the new and different world that comes with it. I really recommend reading it; but since we're all busy people, I'll also give a few long quotes below.

'See You'

I originally picked up the book because of its testimony of the strange linguistic situation blindness causes: Not being able to see yet having to use the visual metaphors of sighted language.

Hull explains:

'Well, I'll see you around.'

'Nice to see you again.'

'I see what you mean.'

When I use expressions like these, some of my sighted friends are surprised. They laugh, perhaps teasing me, and say, 'You don't really mean that, do you John?' I explain that, when I say I am pleased to see you, what I mean is that I am pleased to meet you, pleased to be with you, glad to be in your presence. I explain that this is surely what anybody, blind or sighted, would mean by that expression. (p. 21)

Not just words like see that are affected by these changes. So does the role of people's eyes, faces, and expressions, and the language surrounding them:

Another strange feature of not knowing what people look like is the effect this has upon reported speech. When I am describing an encounter with someone, I may want to say, 'He looked blankly at me'. I feel a little sensitive about this, because I cannot help thinking that the sighted person to whom I am talking would know that I could not possibly know how my friend looked at me. To say, 'He responded in a blank manner' is absurd and pedantic. … To say, 'He paused before replying and seemed to be at a loss' would be perfectly accurate, but to use the brief, concrete idiom of the sighted exchange is so natural and vivid. What am I to do? (p. 16–17)

This is interesting in itself, but it also makes me wonder to what extent such descriptions ever really report visual observations. Do I, as a sighted person, describe my social or my visual experience when I say a cold stare, give me the eye, and sparkling eyes?

Face to Face

Hull continues:

Another result of all this is that the face no longer has the central place for me which it has in normal human relationships. The face is merely the place from which the voice comes. I look towards the face with conscious effort, for there is no real reason why I should do so. … I no longer have any natural sense of needing to be face to face. (p. 17)

The marine biologist Geerart Vermij (who had his eyes removed at age three) makes a similar point in his discussion of "sentimentalists" who lament the loss of sight as a tragedy for social competence:

What these sentimentalists forget is that the face is only part of the whole person. The voice—its quality, its intonation, the use of language—is unique and every bit as informative as the face. I can detect surprise, disgust, pleasure, boredom, dishonesty, thoughtfulness, and a hundred other states of mind from the voice. (p. 17)

On Pretty Women

Hull mostly remains quite vague and abstract about sex, but he does make some very interesting remarks about his continued desire to associate with pretty women:

Sometimes I ask one of my sighted friends to give me a quick impression of what somebody else looks like. I am often interested in a sort of thumb-nail sketch of a new acquaintance. This is particularly true if my new acquaintance is a woman. What colour is her hair? What is she wearing? Is she pretty? Sometimes I long to know. I remain, after all, a man, reared in a certain sighted culture, conditioned to certain male expectations. Perhaps I should change, and be less influenced in my judgment of women by my male conditioning, but it is painful to have this change forced upon me by mere blindness.

It makes a difference to the way I feel about a new female acquaintance if a colleague, having caught sight of her, remarks on her beauty or plainness. There is a double irrationality in this. In the first place, by feelings should not be so dependent upon a woman's appearance. I know that, and I apologize. But I still feel it. The second thing is that it is surely a deplorable lack of independence on my part to be so affected by a criterion which can be of no significance to me.

What can it matter to me what sighted men think of women, when I, a blind man, must judge women by quite different means. Yet I do care what sighted men think, and I do not seem able to throw off this prejudice. (p. 17)

Again, this says as much about sighted relationships as it does about blind. Do men pursue pretty women for pleasure or prestige? To have sex or to assert their power over other men?

The thought does not come up again, perhaps because its importance to Hull gradually wanes. However, he does later note (with, perhaps, an undertone of despair) that the loss of vision has cut him off from one of the most intense sources of sexual excitement:

So it is possible, I think, for a heterosexual blind man to be bored by women and yet to be conscious of sexual hunger. The trace of a perfume and the nuance of of a voice are so insubstantial when compared with the full-bodied impact upon a sighted man of the appearance of an attractive woman. It must take a long time for a man who loses sight in adult life to transfer the cues of sexual arousal from the visual to other senses. There must be many men in that position who wonder whether they will ever again be capable of genuine sexual excitement. (p. 38)

This is interesting because it negates the popular conception that the sense of smell somehow bypasses our "rational minds" and penetrates directly into our subconsciousness. (Billy Jean may have looked "like a beauty queen from a movie scene," but the intensity only goes up as Michael Jackson can "smell the sweet perfume.") Whatever the physiological facts are, Hull does not seem to find the effect very impressive.

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

A few months after Hull finally lost his sight completely, he started to noticing that he was picking up a new sensitivity to the space around him, a kind of intuitive sonar:

I gradually realized that I was developing some strange kind of perception. … As the months so past, sensitivity seems to be increasing. I find that I am now quite often aware of approaching lampposts … (p. 19)

He elaborates:

Not only have I become sensitive to thinner objects, but the range seems to have increased. When walking home, I used only to be able to detect parked cars by making contact with my cane. These days I almost never make contact with a parked car unexpectedly. Nearly always, I realize there is an obstacle in my path before my stick strikes against it. This is in spite of the fact that I am now using the very long cane. I think the range for detecting parked cars must be approximately six to eight feet. Another feature of this experience is that it seems to be giving me a sort of generalized sense of the environment. There is one part of my route where I must step aside to avoid an upward flight of steps. I am expecting these, of course, since I come this way every day. Nevertheless, I am now aware of their approach, and not merely of the lower, closer steps, but of the whole massive object, looming up and somehow away from me. The phenomenon seems to be partly dependent on attention, since at home I can easily walk into the edge of doors, having had no warning of their proximity. Possibly in a house where sound is muffled by carpets and curtains, echoes would be less easily perceived?

The experience itself is quite extraordinary, and I cannot compare it with anything else I have ever known. It is like a sense of physical pressure. One wants to put up a hand to protect oneself, so intense is the awareness. One shrinks from whatever it is. (p. 20)

Space and Time

These and other changes to his perception naturally changes the way he relates to his environment. In particular, he reports that the difference between front and back becomes less important:

Here is another feature of the acoustic world: it stays the same whichever way I turn my head. This is not true of the perceptible world. It changes as I turn my head. New things come into view. The view that way is different from the view looking this way. It is not like that with sound. New noises do not come to my attention as I turn my head around. I may allow my head to hand limply down upon my chest; I may lean right back and face the sky. It makes little difference. (p. 63)

This also sounds a lot like a remark a blind informant made to the (sighted) anthropologist Gili Hammer during one of her interviews: "Hearing operates in 360 degrees; however, you can't see what's behind you."

Hull also notes that his relationship to time changes, although in a different way and for quite different reasons:

When I had sight, I would have worked with a feverish haste, correcting forty footnotes in a single morning. Now, I am happy if, with the help of a sighted reader, by the end of the morning I have corrected ten. I do not think to myself, 'Oh damn. I've only done ten'. I think, 'Good. That's ten done. Only another three mornings like this and the job will be finished.' I am so glad that I am able to do it at all. (p. 60)

He seems to find some hope or comfort in the indefatigable spirit others bring to the fight:

I think of my friend Chris with his multiple sclerosis. … It takes him 45 minutes to tie his shoelaces in the morning. It doesn't matter. He does not get impatient. He just does it. That is how long it takes to tie shoelaces. (p. 60)

As he notes towards the end of the book, his solution cannot exactly be Stoicism, not exactly acceptance of the situation, but perhaps some sense of reaching the other side of the ocean of despair.

Cardano: The Book on Games of Chance (1961/1663)

Cardano; from Wikimedia.

My library has refused to buy the new translation of Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi (1713), possibly because the price tag is on the order of $3000. Consequently, I don't have an English translation of the complete book, arguably the most influential one in the history of probability (perhaps with the exception of Kolmogorov's little pamphlet).

Meanwhile, they hold two copies of Cardano's weird, chatty, and uneven book on gambling. I checked out both of them, only two find out that one (the 1961 version) was a reprint of the other, the translation by Øystein Ore appended to his own 1953 commentary on the book (which, incidentally, also included an interpretation of Cardano's erroneous calculus of probabilities).

I'll deal with Ore's book later. Now a few comments on quotes on Cardano.

Contents

Cardano's book can roughly be divided up into sections as follows. If it looks jumbled up, it's because it is.

• Chapters 1–10: Preliminaries, survey of games, moralistic preaching, etc.
• Chapters 9–11: Combinatorics of dice games.
• Chapters 16–19: On card games (mostly non-mathematical discussions of cheating, moral issues, and the like).
• Chapters 20–21: On luck.
• Chapters 22–25: More game taxonomies and definitions.
• Chapter 26: On theoretical and practical knowledge.
• Chapter 27: More on luck
• Chapter 28: Recommendations on playing styles in backgammon.
• Chapter 29: On why you shouldn't play against hotheads.
• Chapters 30–31: Games in ancient Greece.
• Chapter 32: Computing expectations for a die.

From the perspective of the history of mathematics proper, the most directly relevant parts are those on combinatorics and those on luck.

"If Fortune Be Equal"

One of the more remarkable features of Cardano's book is the prominent place it gives to "luck." As Lorraine Daston has noted, this concept seemed to fill out any gap his calculus didn't account for, including the gap between frequencies and probabilities, or between expectations and actual outcomes.

Mean playing dice; illustration from a 1531 print of Cicero's On Duties.

The first time the word occurs is during Cardano's dicussion of fair bets. Apparently, the most common dice game at the time was a bet on whether a specific throw (e.g., double six) would show up or not show up within n throws of a number of dice.

Cardano was therefore interested in computing the number n for which this bet would be fair — or in his words, for which "there is equality." He explains in Chapter 11:

This gives eighteen casts for equality for a throw (1,1); for in that number of casts this throw can appear and not appear with equal probability; and similarly for the throws (2,2) and (3,3).

But the throw (1,2) can turn up in two ways, so that for it there is equality in nine casts; and if it turns out up more frequently or more rarely, that is a matter of luck. (p. 11; my emphasis)

Later, in Chapter 14:

If, therefore, someone should say, "I want an ace, a deuce, or a trey," you know that there are 27 favorable throws, and since the [size of the] circuit [= sample space] is 36, the rest of the throws in which these points will not turn up will be 9; the odds will therefore 3 to 1.

• Therefore in 4 throws, if fortune be equal, an ace, deuce, or trey will turn up 3 times and only one throw will be without any of them;
• if therefore, the player who wants an ace, deuce, or trey were to wager three ducats and the other player one, then the former would win three times and would gain three ducats; and the other once and would win three ducats;
• therefore in the circuit [= observation] of 4 throws they would always be equal. (p. 16; my epmhasis; my itemization)

His language use here suggests that, on some level, he believes that the expected values must somehow be realized — they are what the game should pay off if it weren't for all these kinks and imperfections in the universe.

"The Length of Time … shows Forth All Forms"

Apparently, he is completely serious about this. In a later chapter on skill (ch. 27), he lists two "methods" by which fortunes can change, the second being the more occult one:

But of the other method there is also some secret principle. To these matters belong amulets, witchcraft, and the like, and just as in each case (as they say) the sword fits its own sheath and the foot its own show, so the hour, the day, the year, and the place must fit; so also in this question, what will make one man happy will make another wretched. (p. 44)

Austrian 16th century woodcut of two soldiers playing dice.

Cardano does seem to think, however, that time tends to cancel out luck. In the chapter on sequential successes, he computes the probability of observing an unbroken string of 20 repetitions of a probability 1/2 event, wrongly getting the answer to be 1/8000. He comments:

Yet it can scarcely be believed that in 7,999 throws a player can cast an even number twenty times in a row. But we have demonstrated this; because, although in 8,000 performed only once, this reasoning can deceive us, still in an infinite number of throws, it is almost necessary for it to happen; for the magnitude of the circuit is the length of time which shows forth all forms. (pp. 19–20).

Here, "luck" almost seems to be synonymous with "noise."

Squares and Cubes

Since I'm talking about this error anyway, and since this is essentially the sole remaining mathematical component of the book, let me just quickly summarize what Cardano seems to be doing in the rest of Chapters 14 and 15.

At the end of Chapter 14, he claims that if the odds in favor of a single success is p : 1 – p, then odds in favor of k successes in a row are p^k : (1 – p)^k. This is not correct, since (1 – p)^k is not in general equal to 1 – p^k. He recognizes this in the opening of Chapter 15, noting that if it were really true, any run of consecutive probability 1/2 events would also have probability 1/2:

But this reasoning seems to be false, even in the case of equality, as, for example, the chance of getting one of any three chosen faces in one cast of one die is equal to the chance of getting one of the other three, but according to this reasoning there would be an even chance of getting a chosen face each time in two casts, and thus in three, and four, which is most absurd. For if a player with two dice can with equal chances throw an even and an odd number, it does not follow that he can with equal fortune throw an even number in each of three successive casts. (p. 19)

 Cardano 1 

 Cardano 2  

Correct 

1 : 1

1 : 1

1 : 1

1 : 1

3 : 1

3 : 1

1 : 1

8 : 1

7 : 1

1 : 1

15 : 1

15 : 1

1 : 1

24 : 1

31 : 1

1 : 1

35 : 1

63 : 1

1 : 1

48 : 1

123 : 1

So now Cardano owes us a different argument. He therefore goes on to claim that the correct answer for p = 1/2 in fact is k² – 1 : 1. This coincides with the correct answer for a couple of small values, but then diverges exponentially from it. This leads him to make the "infinity" remark quoted above.

Parenthetically, I'm not sure why he would cube rather than square the number 20 in that example. Perhaps Ore has something intelligent to say about this.

Late 15th century book illustration showing a dice game.

How To Gamble If You Must

In Chapter 20, Cardano tells a little autobiographical anecdote as an illustration of his points about fortune, luck, etc. This story is not strictly relevant to my topic here, but it is simply to bizarre not to quote. Hence, Ladies and Gentlemen, Cardano without filter:

Yet I have decided to submit to the judgment of my readers what happened to me in the year 1526 in the company of Thomas Lezius, the patrician of Venice, leaving it to each reader to form his own opinion. I had just duly resigned from the office of rector of the scholars in the University of Padua on the third of August, and now I was journeying with Hieronymus Rivola, a scholar from Bergamo, on a certain night of the same month toward Venice. We were playing a game (called Bassette) and I won all the money he had. Then he asked me to play with him on credit, if I am not mistaken up to two or three aurei, and I won again. Then, finally, he wanted to carry it on endlessly, but I refused. He promised to pay what he owed me within three ways; he did not come.

Then he chanced to meet me and said that he would come to pay the money on Saturday (which was the day of the Nativity of the Virgin) and promised to take me to a beautiful prostitute. At that time I was just completing my twenty-fifth year, but I was impotent. Nevertheless, I accepted the condition; there was not a word about the game. He came on the day agreed; and in that year the festival of the Blessed Virgin was on Saturday. He took me to the home of Thomas Lezius; there was no Thais there, but a bearded man with a young servant. No money was paid but we played with marked cards. I lost to him all the money which he owed me, and he reckoned it as part of his debts just as though he had given it to me. I list about twenty-five aurei or even a few more which I had, and played on, giving my clothes and my rings as security.

I returned home in sadness (as was natural), especially since there was no hope of getting money from home because uprisings and plots were raging at Milan. And so (and now I tell the truth, there being no reason why I should lie), I contrived for myself a certain art; I do not now remember what it was, since thirty-eight years have passed, but I think it took its rise in geomancy, by which I kept in mind on up to twenty-four plays all the numbers whereby I should win and all those whereby I should lose; by chance the former were far more numerous than the latter, even in the proportion (if I am not mistaken) of seven to one; and I do not recall now in what order these were against me.

But when I saw that I could not safely hold more numbers in my memory, I admonished my young servant, whose name was Jacob, that when he saw I had won back my clothes and my money he was to call me. I threatened that if he did not do it I would beat him severely. He promised and we went. As the game went on I won and lost in all the plays just as I had foreseen and after the third play I realized that there was no trickery or deceit about it. They laid down money freely and I accepted the wagers, but he was delighted be the example of the previous day and also on account of the marked cards (as I have said).

Thus his thoughts were inflamed by his youthful ardor; but the result was otherwise, for, on those plays in which I saw (as it were, without any real foreknowledge) that I would win, I did not rehect any amount of money and made large bets of my own, and in the other cases, where I knew he would win, I refused if he was the first to wager, and wagered very meagerly myself: thus the result was that within twenty plays I regained my clothes, my rings, and money and also what he had added besides. As for the clothes, the rings, and a collar for the boy, I sent them home piecemeal. Out of the total number there remained four deals; I played and won, and also came out victor in a few deals which were not contained in the number.

He was already perturbed and full of admiration, since he saw that in all the plays in which we played for high stakes I came out the victor, and in those in which he won I myself wagered little and when he wished to wager a great deal I refused. So (he said) I believe some demon is advising you, or that you know by some enchantment what is going to happen. What happened after that I remember that I have narrated elsewhere. (pp. 32–34)

He also gives a bit of extra detail in Chapter 17, the chapter on fraud in card games:

There are also some who smear the cards with soap so that they may slide easily and slip past one another. This was the trick practiced upon me by the well-known Thomas Lezius of Venice, patrician, when in my youth I was addicted to gambling. (p. 27)

Extraordinary, isn't it?

Cacciari: "Crossing the Sense in Metaphorical Language" (2008)

Cristina Cacciari's contribution to the Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought contains two relatively independent parts: First, a discussion of various attempts to describe and explain the phenomenon of cross-modal metaphor in language; and second, a fascinating summary of some of the things we know about (clinical) synaesthesia as of now.

She also provides some useful pointers to pre-1980 literature on metaphor and thought:

• Joseph M. Williams: "Synaesthetic adjectives: A possible law of semantic change." Language, 1976.
• George A. Miller and Philip Johnson-Laird: Language and perception. Harvard UP, 1976.
• Brenda E. F. Beck: "The metaphor as mediator between semantic and analogical modes of thought." Current Anthropology, 1978.
• Sandra Derrig: "Metaphor in the color lexicon." Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon, the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1978.
• Lawrence E. Marks: The Unity of Senses: Interrelations Among the Modalities. Academic Press, 1978.
• Geoffrey Nunberg: "The non-uniqueness of semantic solutions: Polysemy." Linguistics and Philosophy, 1979.
• Stephen de Ullmann: "Romanticism and Synaesthesia: A Comparative Study of Sense Transfer in Keats and Byron." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1945.

Something that might also be worth looking into is the anthology Cognition and Figurative Language (1980).

Zeder: "The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East" (2011)

Traditionally, archaeologists have taken the hallmark of domestication to be genetic changes: A plant or animal counted as domesticated when it differs from the wild land species it was cultivated from.

In this interesting review paper, Melinda A. Zeder of the Smithsonian Museum mentions a number of reasons that the genetic criterion might mislead us into adopting dating domestication unduly late:

• Ancient threshing methods might have involved beating cereal straws into a basket to get the grains out, a practice that would disproportionately select grains from weak-stemmed straws. This would counteract the effect of crop selection, where the plants are usually selected to have stronger stems. (p. S226)
• When harvests failed, as must have done once in a while, the crop may have been restocked from the wild land species, wiping out the genetic record of domestication. (p. S226)
• Occasionally, the morphological changes we are looking for are in fact quite modern phenomena. Zeder mentions that the large size of modern broad beans, a trait that did not appear before well into the middle ages. (p. S225)

In addition to these rather technical reasons, a more important issue is that a too rigid criterion can lead us to ignore or misunderstand practices somewhere on the continuum between opportunistic gathering and habitual farming. Such hybrid relationships between land and people, Zadeh writes,

… not only makes it impossible to identify any threshold moments when wild became domestic or hunting and gathering became agriculture but also shows that drawing such distinctions actually impedes rather than improves our understanding of this process. Instead of continuing to try to pigeonhole these concepts into tidy definitional categories, a more productive approach would be to embrace the ambiguity of this middle ground and continue to develop tools that allow us to watch unfolding developments within this neither-nor territory. (p. S231)

I second that.