uses. More importantly, Newman argues that‘give’belongs to the so-
called basic verbs that are fairly similar in most languages and belong
to thefirst verbs in the child’s development of language. He quotes a
study in which‘give’is one of only two action words included in the
firstfifty words understood by young children, concluding that‘give’
belongs to the so-called core vocabularies of languages.^32
Newman offers a great many examples from different languages to
show that‘give’has a fairly similar overall semantics in most languages.
Using suchfindings, he develops a classification in which both literal
andfigurative uses of‘give’are organized into quite stable classes.^33 For
Newman, this means that there is an overall cognitive linguistics of
‘give’that is not limited to any particular language. Although different
languages emphasize somewhat different particular constructions,
there is nevertheless a quite coherent overall cognitive set of meanings
that can be understood through classifying a great many examples.^34
While philosophers and psychologists might object to this meth-
odology in various ways, I think that the linguistic evidence provided
by Newman and other studies on ditransitivity is impressive and
should be taken very seriously in intellectual history. If the results
of cognitive linguistics are sound, the ancient and medieval Latin verb
‘give’can be argued to manifest similar core or basic meanings to the
early modern and post-Enlightenment English and German instances
of‘give’. Instead of seeking transcultural anthropological invariances
of gift exchange, intellectual historians could argue that the similar-
ities observed in giving and receiving manifest the universal cognitive
and semantic structure of ditransitive‘give’. This means in practice
that we do not need the entire ritual and ceremonial package of
anthropological gift exchange, but can explain historical texts in terms
of linguistic invariances. At the same time, these invariances provide
more explanatory power than the mere expression‘social interaction’.
Let us outline some of these invariances to see how this strategy
might work. Basically, the act of giving can be described as an inten-
tional transfer of the thing from the agent to the recipient.^35 The agent
needs to give intentionally; the recipient needs to initiate some kind of
(^32) Newman 1996, 5–8. Similarly Goldberg 1995, 35–6.
(^33) Newman 1996, 33–253.
(^34) For this methodology, see Newman 1996, ix–xvi. For the relationship of language
and cognition in detail, cf. Seuren 2009.
(^35) For this definition, cf. Newman 1996, 1–4 and Saarinen 2010.
Recognition in Religion 223