“Transparent” Words. The Multidimensional “Myth of Origin” of Naturalness in Ancient Indo-European Languages

As is well known, linguists and philosophers have always been fascinated by the discussion on what is “iconic” and “arbitrary” in language. The idea of a motivation, of a transparency, of a one-to-one correspondence within a linguistic sign, in fact, could lead to “illuminate” the “linguistic creation”, bearing in mind that the structure of language is conditioned by the psychological, biological, and physical reality. “Word” and “light”, as it has already been pointed out by different scholars, seem to be “archetypes” of the Creation itself and constitute a homotypic semantic field. As far as the correspondence between the two faces of the linguistic sign is concerned, the Creation is in fact imagined as a “magical verbal process”. It is well known that one-to-one correspondence is realized only in a limited part of the language system, given the polysemy and the “unpredictability” of language itself, as well as the dependence on the context. This paper aims at analyzing some examples of “transparent” linguistic expressions created through “natural” mechanisms and cognitive strategies, drawing inspiration from ancient Indo-European languages. Cases of “basic” linguistic semantic metaphors with which humans have always been dealing will be examined, according to the idea – within the framework of a more general “myth of origin” – that the “creative process” and the functioning of language is somehow a “natural” process, and with the aim of showing the concreteness of the relationship between experience and its linguistic expression.