According to Greimas, the semiotic square is far more than a heuristic for semantic and literary analysis. It represents the generative “deep structure” of human culture and cognition which “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects”. The veracity of this bold hypothesis has received little attention in the literature. In response, this paper traces the history and development of the square of opposition from Aristotle to Greimas and beyond, to propose that the relations modeled in these diagrams are rooted in gestalt memories of kinesthesia and proprioception from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast—including verticality, bilaterality, transversality, markedness and analogy. The paper draws on findings in the phenomenology of movement, recent developments in the analysis of logical opposition, recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics and prescient insights from Greimas himself. The argument is further tested via multimodal content analyses of a popular music video—highlighting relationships the semiotic square shares with mundane cultural ideologies and showing how these relationships might be traced to memory structures of bodily movement. The paper highlights the neglected relevance of embodied chiasmus and illustrates the enduring relevance of Greimasean thought.

(hardback). Reviewed by Jesse P. Gates SIL International Overview of Dialectology as Dialectic Dialectology as Dialectic (D as D henceforth) by Jamin Pelkey (JP henceforth) is a revision of JP's 2008 Ph.D. dissertation entitled The Phula languages in synchronic and diachronic perspective. D as D is published within the prolific Trends in Linguistics series by De Gruyter Mouton as the 229th of 280 volumes to date. The editors of the series regard "linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language," as is stated on the back cover of this book. D as D lives up to this viewpoint-that research in linguistic variation enlightens linguistic science-and thus is well suited for this series. An underlying theme of D as D is an insistence that dialectology is best carried out in the context of both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. As JP writes, "[s]ynchronic language definitions are shown to provide the categories necessary for diachronic subgrouping, and diachronic subgroupings are shown to provide validation for synchronic language definition. The two sets of knowledge are interdependent; neither can be adequately defined in a vacuum" (ix). Since the research of D as D involves the Phula languages (Tibeto-Burman > Burmic > Ngwi or Yi or Loloish) of Yunnan Province, China and Northern Vietnam, D as D is an especially important read for Ngwi specialists. However, the content of D as D is also consequential for Sino-Tibetanists, historical linguists, dialectologists, and more broadly, philosophers of science and language and Peircean semioticians. D as D involves the testing, disproving, and refining of the "Phula hypothesis" stated in the introductory chapter: "All synchronic languages traditionally affiliated with the Phula ethnonym also belong to a single exclusive diachronic clade linguistically" (2). The conclusion of JP's research results in a major revision of the "Phula hypothesis" as is stated in the "Phula theorem" at the end of the book: "24 synchronic languages are affiliated with the traditional Phula ethnonym, and 22 of these languages belong to two exclusive diachronic clades linguistically" (398). It should be noted that 18 of these languages were previously unclassified. JP subgroups 22

Chiasmus has long been discussed as a rhetorical figure for the symmetrical reversal of linguistic structures in oral and written texts. Recent treatments have begun to challenge this parochial status in ways that are reminiscent of the embodied metaphor revolution in cognitive semantics. This paper further develops the argument that chiastic schemas are a rich source of embodied cognition in need of broader recognition and deeper understanding. A cognitive poetic analysis of Dylan Thomas' iconic work “Vision and Prayer” facilitates this discussion. The dialectic weave of inverse structures and corporeal schemas that emerge from the poem illustrate the aesthetic ubiquity of cognitive chiasmus. Its lived, intertwining nature is proposed as an antidote to the “missing body” problem, as a more complex approach to cognitive symmetry and as a primary source of conceptual blending.

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Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English ‘table leg,’ ‘mountain face’) have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity, and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated “algorithmically.” I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects “stripped of their bodily associations” (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the “algorithm” in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories — an experiential ground that generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration.