512 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR. & DAVID P. WILKINS
his keys. When it is a perceptual event, remember gets the corresponding
perceptual sense, as in Fred vividly remembers the signing of the contract,
Fred vividly remembers John signing the contract. All of these different
interpretations of remember are a function of the nature of the something
that is in the mind from before; the verb itself is neither polysemous or
homophonous. These differences thus follow from the content of the y var
iable in the semantic decomposition. The various values for y are not a
hetereogeneous group; they are, rather, all things that can be stored in the
mind. The in.the.mind component of the semantic structure is readily jus
tified by the use of the corresponding phrase in English to refer to each of
the various mental states: I had it in mind to go to the store (intention); All
the facts are right here in my mind (knowledge) ; and Picture in your mind
blue unicorns breakdancing (perception). Moreover, such a phrase has bet
ter correlates (i.e. better translatability) in other languages (including
MpA) than other complex phrases such as mental state or instantiation in
consciousness.
Having briefly established the validity of the decomposition of
remember on synchronic grounds, we may take a look at its diachronic ori
gin. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language notes that
the Middle English form remembren "to remember" is due to a borrowing
of the Old French form rememrer " to remember". The Old French form
comes through Late Latin rememoran "to remember again", which is com
posed of the prefix re- "again" and memorari "to remind". The Late Latin
form has at its base the Latin form memor "mindful", which shows up in
such English words as memory, memorable, commemorate and memoran
dum. Thus, the proposed semantic decomposition appears to demonstrate a
continuation of basic semantic components such as again and mind which
have their basis, and overt manifestation, in the original morphological
composition of the word.
As a comparative note, it is worth pointing out basic notions such as
think, in, mind, and again, which we argue are part of the decomposition of
remember in English, may have an overt manifestation in the morphological
composition of the forms which convey a concept roughly equivalent to
remember in other languages. For instance, German has two verbs which
translate remember, erinneren and gedenken. The form erinnern is com
posed of er- "do to completion" and innern "to internalize" and may be
given a more literal translation of "to internalize to completion",which
reflects active processing in the mind during the act of remembering, and