Frente/trás (front/back): space and its verbalization: the Portuguese case

Abstract

We will try to prove that in European Portuguese, the spatial configuration in relation to the axis front/back can be described according to several models, each one based upon a mental scheme, in a certain way, always linked to the central original or prototypical model. Stating that front/back is based upon a group of features, such as direction of gaze, direction of movement, direction of nutrition, etc., without suggesting their necessary appearance as a whole, (as pointed out by Vandeloise 1986:108) amounts to not saying much. We are left with the impression that an undetermined number of features exists, forming an essentially undefined group and that those features are uniformely allocated in the various spatial configurations of frontality. Our proposal for analysis contends that those features cannot be all considered in a group, but that some of them make up part of a group, whereas others integrate different models. Each one of these models is based upon only one or on very few features, the several submodels can focus opposed perspectives of spatial configurations, in this way permitting, for the same situation, verbalizations that can either contain the positive sense (frente) or the negative sense (trás) in the same axis of frontality.