In line with recent trends toward a greater degree of interdisciplinarity, scholars interested in lexical change and cognitive phenomena have begun to draw from each other’s work. Historical linguists, on the one hand, have begun to take into greater account the findings of cognitive linguistics, most notably those of conceptual metaphor theory. Cognitive linguists, on the other hand, have begun to focus more heavily on diachrony. Natalya I. Stolova’s monograph Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Change: motion verbs from Latin to Romance represents a significant contribution to these developments. While the book’s subtitle suggests that the study focuses on lexical change from Latin to Romance, the author in fact draws from a wealth of data from other language families, which allows her to arrive at conclusions that reach beyond the scope of a single language family. By my count, seventy-three non-Romance varieties are included in the analysis; instances in which they are mentioned are helpfully indexed after the references section.

The book comprises ten well-organized, clearly written chapters, with copious illustrative examples and bibliographic references throughout. The objectives of the study, detailed in Chapter 1, are: (1) to assess the lexical continuity and loss of verbs of motion across Latin and Romance; (2) to identify the cognitive mechanisms involved in the continuity and change; (3) to demonstrate ways in which historical Romance linguistics and cognitive linguistics can mutually benefit each other; and (4) to advance the elaboration of methods for cognitive diachronic lexicology and lexical semantics. The remaining chapters meet these objectives with meticulous detail and laudable clarity.

Chapter 2 outlines the notion of cognitive onomasiology in relation to Talmy’s (Reference Talmy1975, Reference Talmy, Pick and Acredolo1983, Reference Talmy and Shopen1985, Reference Talmy2000, Reference Talmy and Shopen2007, Reference Talmy, Guo, Liven, Budwig, Ervin-Tripp, Nakamura and Özçalýşkan2009, Reference Talmy2012) typology of motion encoding. Talmy (Reference Talmy2000) describes three broad categories: the ‘Motion + Co-event’ (or ‘Satellite-framed’) type, found in Chinese and all branches of Indo-European except the Romance family (e.g., English slide down includes information about motion and manner); the ‘Motion + Figure’ type, found in some Amerindian varieties (e.g., the Atsugewi verb root -lup- indicates movement of a small spherical object); and the ‘Motion + Path’ (or ‘Verb-framed’) type, found in the Semitic, Polynesian, and Romance varieties (e.g., Spanish subir ‘go up’ indicates motion and path). As the author points out, numerous studies have applied this typology to modern Romance varieties from a synchronic perspective, but only a few have done so from a diachronic perspective. Moreover, with the exception of Baldi (Reference Baldi, Cuzzolin and Napoli2006), analyses have been limited to specific languages. This book, then, along with some of the author’s previous work (Stolova Reference Stolova2003, Reference Stolova and Wright2008, Reference Stolova, Iliescu, Siller-Rung-galdier and Danler2010), represents the first systematic application of Talmy’s typology to diachronic Pan-Romance data.

Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive overview of the diachronic onomasiological range of the various semantic fields related to motion, revealing a complex system of lexical continuity and change. These fields are divided into three broad categories (generic motion, direction-specific motion, and manner-specific motion), the latter two of which are further subdivided. Here, the author highlights that while Talmy’s typology holds in the majority of the cases (i.e., Latin directional verbs are generally satellite-framed and Romance directional verbs are generally verb-framed), there are a number of exceptions (e.g., Latin venire ‘to come’, Italian discendere ‘to go down’).

Chapter 4 further applies the typology of motion encoding to the data presented in Chapter 3. The author emphasizes that the patterns of continuity and loss of motion verbs from Latin to Romance reflect the apparent cognitive centrality of direction and path within the frame of human motion; this point is sustained by a review of several experimental studies to that effect (pp. 57–61). The verbs that were lost were those that did not foreground information about path by incorporating it into the verbal stem (e.g., advenire ‘to come’, inire ‘to go in’), while those verbs whose prefixes were reanalyzed as part of the stem survived (e.g., intrare ‘to go in’, subire ‘to move upward’).

Chapter 5 introduces cognitive semasiology in relation to conceptual metaphor, and addresses the primary methodological problems related to the lack of onomasiological continuity from Latin to Romance. For example, given the loss of eighteen of the twenty-six Latin motion verbs analyzed in Chapter 3, there is little basis for diachronic comparison of metaphorical meanings, since many of the Latin verbs have no counterpart in Romance. Here, the author argues for grouping the figurative meanings of Latin and Romance verbs according to the principles of conceptual metaphor theory. Thus, the basis for comparison is conceptual, rather than lexical, but it still allows for consideration of all of the attested lexical items, whether or not they have been lost.

Chapter 6 details the semantic continuity and loss of the metaphorical extensions related to the motion verbs under consideration. In contrast to the onomasiological instability addressed in Chapters 2 to 4, here we find – perhaps unsurprisingly, given the fundamental nature of motion and path in human cognition – a notable degree of continuity. The author identifies twenty-five motion-based mappings shared by Latin and Romance (change is motion, purposes are destinations, etc.), and notes that “Latin motion-based figurative meanings that do not have a Romance motion-based counterpart are limited to specialized technical terms” (p. 146). Chapter 7 follows up with analysis of a number of innovatory developments not attested in Latin, some of which are Pan-Romance (e.g., validity is motion), some of which are language-specific (e.g., Ibero-Romance equivalents of ‘to run’ with the meaning ‘to embarrass’), and some of which were borrowed by one language from another (e.g., French monter ‘to assemble’ > Italian montare ‘to go up > to assemble’).

Chapter 8 discusses the ways in which the Romance-specific analysis presented up to that point contributes to the typology of motion encoding in general. After presenting a review of several critiques and refinements of Talmy’s typology in the context of a number of different languages and language families, the author adds a refinement of her own. She identifies thirty-one distinct patterns of development of Romance motion verbs, based on the data from Chapter 3, revealing a greater amount of complexity than might be evident from a face-value understanding of Talmy’s typology. She further identifies three different general tendencies, or ‘threads’ of development: (1) an inclination to move away from the satellite-framed system toward the verb-framed one; (2) continual reliance on satellites by combining prepositions and nouns to produce what eventually became simple verb-framed forms; and (3) preservation of the satellite-framed system by retaining the compounds with distinguishable parts and by creating new compounds verbs (p. 185).

Chapter 9 discusses the ways in which the results inform conceptual metaphor theory. Here, the author puts emphasis on attempts to discover “which metaphors are likely to cut across language families and which ones are not, since in the process of advancing their theory Lakoff and Johnson have focused primarily on English, while at the same time recognizing that there is no reason to expect English to be representative of other linguistic varieties” (p. 191; cf. Lakoff & Johnson Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, Reference Lakoff and Johnson2003). The gist of the author’s argument is that the study of the development of metaphorical mappings within one language family – such as Romance – can be just as informative regarding their potential universality as the study of metaphorical mappings across unrelated languages. She illustrates this point with several examples, some of which show diachronic continuity of metaphorical mappings, in spite of formal/lexical changes. For instance, in relation to the linear scales are paths metaphor, Latin employed the verb pervenire ‘to come’ to express reaching a certain amount or quantity, yet that verb was replaced by various other verbs in Romance (Spanish llegar, French arriver, etc.). Nevertheless, the metaphorical mapping remains unscathed. Conversely, the Latin form currere ‘to run’ has survived in modern Romance (Spanish correr, French courir, etc.), but the modern metaphorical mappings associated with the verb (e.g., running is annoying: French Tu nous cours avec tes histoires ‘You annoy us with your stories’ [literally ‘You run us with your stories’]) did not appear in any Latin data. According to the author, this suggests that mappings like linear scales are paths are likely more ‘pervasive’ or universal than mappings like running is annoying. She ends the chapter by stating that

This is the only point at which I would take issue with the author’s argumentation: it is not clear whether she is suggesting that pervasiveness within a single language family implies universality, or whether she means that discovering pervasiveness within a single family provides a good starting point for a broader, ‘inter-genetic’ comparison.

Chapter 10 provides a clear and concise summary of the findings presented in the preceding chapters, draws some general conclusions, and hints at areas for future research. Among the numerous contributions that this book offers, of particular importance is the way in which the author reveals the transition from Latin to Romance to be much more complex than a simple replacement of a satellite-framed system to a verb-framed system. This adds a diachronic element to revisions of Talmy’s typology that are already underway (Croft, Barðdal, Hollmann, Sotirova & Taoka, Reference Croft, Barðdal, Hollmann, Sotirova, Taoka and Boas2010, among others). She also points towards future research involving other languages whose developments seem to have involved similar complexities (English, Chinese, Greek, etc.).

Readers interested in the development of the Romance languages, as well as lexical change and cognitive linguistics in general, will find this book to be a stimulating resource. While a background in the technical intricacies of these fields would certainly be helpful, the clarity of the prose and abundance of bibliographic information provided by the author make it recommendable for advanced students and seasoned scholars alike.