Metaphor in action. Action verbs and abstract meaning

Embodiment plays an essential role in both concrete and abstract semantic representation. As a consequence, action verbs are extensively involved in the conceptualization and linguistic encoding of figurative meanings. In the light of several theoretical frameworks, this chapter aims to investigate the mechanisms that enable verbs to acquire new abstract meanings. The analysis we present focuses specifically on the metaphorical variation of a cohesive group of five Italian action verbs codifying a movement along the vertical axis (alzare, abbassare, salire, scendere, sollevare). The results confirm the Invariance Principle worked out by Lakoff: the metaphorical mapping of an action verb is strictly constrained by the image schemas involved in its core and concrete meaning.