This volume presents new research by the Topoi group "The Conception of Spaces in Language" on the expression of spatial relations in ancient languages. The six articles in this volume discuss static and dynamic aspects of the spatial grammars of Ancient to Medieval Greek, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hieroglyphic Ancient Egyptian, as well as field data on eight modern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, English, German, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish). Among the grams discussed are spatial particles, motion verbs, case and, most prominently, spatial prepositions. All ancient language data are fully explained in linguistic word-by-word glosses and are therefore accessible to scholars who are not themselves experts on the respective languages. Taken together, these contributions extend the scope of research on spatial grammar back to the third millennium BCE.

The study questions the semantic difference postulated by research between the various constructional types of psychverb. The difference which is assumed in causal structure is refuted using logico-philosophical and linguistic arguments together with findings from psychological and neurological research into emotion. It is shown that in their causal semantics psychverbs differ characteristically from action verbs. Psychverbs display a bi-directional causal relation, which occasions a variety of intralingual and supralingual constructions. Based on cognitive-semantic considerations of the supralingually widespread polysemy of psychverbs and a functionalist syntactic model, the study demonstrates by what other mechanisms, if not by differences in the role and causal structure, the syntactic realisation of psychverb arguments is determined. The basis is an empirical study of psychverb constructions in five genetically and typologically different European languages: German, Estonian, Turkish, Laz and Basque.