The Event Structure Metaphor: the Case of Arabic

This book is a further step towards a crosslinguistic generalization concerning the metaphor cluster called the Event Structure Metaphor (ESM). ESM may be a candidate for a metaphorical universal because of its universal experiential motivation. In ESM, various abstract concepts of events are systematically conceptualized in terms of the concrete concepts of space, motion, and force. Just like in English and other languages, ESM is found to be generally and similarly manifested in Arabic, which is a language from a different linguistic family. This book, therefore, strengthens earlier claims about the potential universality of ESM which is a consequence of the shared sensorimotor, image-schematic experience that is common to all human-beings, and which is bound to surface linguistically in the same way at the higher, generic levels.