The Lexicon Translaticium Latinum is a digital resource designed expressly for the study of Latin metaphors. The Lexicon is based on the ontology of the Latin WordNet, since conceptual metaphors are coded as a unidirectional relationship between two synsets (understood as discrete concepts). For instance, the LOVE IS A MASTER metaphor (see ex. 1), is represented in the Lexicon as a mapping between the synset that means ‘love’, corresponding to the target concept of this metaphor (n#05607724 | a strong positive emotion of regard and affection), and the one that means ‘master’, corresponding to the source concept (#07451003 | a person who has general authority over others).
(1) quando iubet amor / me oboedientem esse seruo liberum (PLAVT. Poen. 447–448) ‘when love commands, I who am a free man must obey my servant’
Metaphors have been identified with a corpus-based approach, by analysing all occurrences of relevant lemmas (in this example, amor) in a corpus of literary texts. At the moment, most metaphors annotated pertain to the semantic domain of basic emotions (e.g., love, hate, fear, anger, envy). Within the Lexicon, each metaphor is also annotated according to its status and type (e.g., LOVE IS A MASTER is a conventional and ontological metaphor). Moreover, relationships between metaphors are also coded (e.g., LOVE IS A MASTER derives from LOVE IS A LIVING ENTITY).
More info on the annotation procedure and a description of the Lexicon is provided in Fedriani, De Felice and Short (2020): The Digital Lexicon Translaticium Latinum: Theoretical and Methodological Issues.
A demo version of the Lexicon will be soon available on this page. At the moment, it is possible to search for source domains (e.g. OPPONENT), emotion terms (e.g. ANGER) or image schemas (e.g. LOCATION) through this easy search functionality.