Deconstructing Grimm's laws reveals the unrecognized foot and leg symbolism in Indo-European lexicons
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10737796 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen R Berlant (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 2008 |
| Issue | 171 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Semiotica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/semi.2008.078 |
| OpenAlex | W2020527519 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 1 |
This article begins by briefly examining the history of the comparative method underpinning historical linguistics. It then goes on to show how and why the laws grounding this method were formulated in egregiously unscientific ways, and why adhering to those laws has prevented scholars in many disciplines from recognizing the botanically related foot, leg, and other metaphors that existed in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ancestor of Indo-European (IE) languages. Finally, the paper shows how the PIE lexicon can be reconstructed far more logically and parsimoniously by ignoring these alleged laws and using figurative associations to cognate the many words this lexicon yielded
Foot (prosody) · Lexicon · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Metaphor · Political science · Underpinning · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Law · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|