On the Prototypical Core of Ancient Greek grástis, Latin grāmen and Old English græs

Abstract The present work explores the relevance of prototype semantics in determining genetic relations in Indo-European linguistics. It argues that schematisation as a constitutive process of category formation can be used as a criterion of economy and analytical coherence, when it comes to corroborating assumed phonological correspondences. Thus, it takes the terms grástis, grāmen and græs in Ancient Greek, Latin and Old English, respectively, all roughly meaning “fodder, grass”, and examines the possibility of all three stemming from a common non-propositional prototypical core. The analysis proceeds in the following way: it first tries to reconstruct a schematic prototype for the series of all meanings related genetically to each of the terms, whereas in turn it compares this prototype for each series with that of the rest. It concludes that the image schema of vigorous internal growth is the prototypical core from which all senses emanate in a conceptual network with radial structure.