giving are beneficial, the recipient is very often‘upgraded’through the
act of giving.^40
In this manner, one can give and receive non-material benefits, like
respect or recognition, so that the act resembles other acts of gift
transfer and exchange. In Newman’s terms, such linguistic expres-
sions do not need any anthropological grounding or framework in the
first place. In many languages,‘give’can be used in the benefactive
sense, a meaning that corresponds to the English phrase‘I did this for
you’. The sense of emergence (‘give warmth’,‘yield profit’) connects
‘give’with benefits in many languages.^41 Obviously, one can speculate
whether this cognitive structure is based on some very old cultural
practices, but for our purposes the assumption of universal basic
cognitive structures of beneficial giving simplifies the issues.
The simple linguistic observation that giving is very often associ-
ated with benefactive effects and human interests illuminates the role
of‘language of giving’as an intermediate conception between mere
social interaction and fully-fledged anthropological gift exchange. As
giving inevitably invokes the three verbal arguments (giver, thing,
recipient) and as it can easily be employed about events in which
some immaterial benefit is bestowed upon a recipient, it performs
the same explanatory work as anthropological gift exchange. At the
same time, the ritualist, ceremonial, and material dimensions of
anthropology need not be postulated.
A more complex dimension of the language of giving concerns the
reflexive forms of giving and receiving. Generally speaking, reflexive
constructions assume that the object of the verb is also its subject. Let
us call this featureidentification, assuming that identification need
not mean complete identity in all respects. While in my act of giving
something to myself the subject is identified with the object, my
identity as giver may still differ from my identity as recipient. In
addition to this, reflexive constructions normally assume anante-
cedent, that is, the primary locus oridentificansto which the other
part of the identification relates as a connected issue oridentificatum.
In my giving something to myself the antecedent is my identity as
giver, whereas my role as recipient is the connected issue.^42
(^40) Newman 1996, 51–2, 95–7. (^41) Newman 1996, 149–54, 217–22.
(^42) For the linguistic background, cf. Radford 1995, 25–7, 115–17 and Seuren 2009,
101 – 10. My‘antecedent’resembles Seuren’s‘topical subject’discussed here. See also
Saarinen 2016.
Recognition in Religion 225