Multifaceted body parts in Murui
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Katarzyna I. Wojtylak
Abstract
Based on the firsthand data from Murui, a Witotoan language spoken in the Northwest Amazon, the study demonstrates how the body part terms ‘back’, ‘face’, ‘mouth, and ‘body’ grammaticalized into the domains covering spatial orientation, time, comparison, counting, and the reflexive. Murui body part nouns did not grammaticalize in isolation; to become grammatical markers, they were obligatorily followed by case marking. This allowed those nouns to preserve the original semantics of the case suffixes, and then to extend their semantics into other domains. For instance, the noun ‘back, spine’, followed by the locative, became a postposition meaning ‘above, on top’, and later also ‘over’, a marker used in comparative constructions and counting. In the contexts in which this process took place, ‘back’ lost its semantic content and many of its original morphosyntactic characteristics.
Abstract
Based on the firsthand data from Murui, a Witotoan language spoken in the Northwest Amazon, the study demonstrates how the body part terms ‘back’, ‘face’, ‘mouth, and ‘body’ grammaticalized into the domains covering spatial orientation, time, comparison, counting, and the reflexive. Murui body part nouns did not grammaticalize in isolation; to become grammatical markers, they were obligatorily followed by case marking. This allowed those nouns to preserve the original semantics of the case suffixes, and then to extend their semantics into other domains. For instance, the noun ‘back, spine’, followed by the locative, became a postposition meaning ‘above, on top’, and later also ‘over’, a marker used in comparative constructions and counting. In the contexts in which this process took place, ‘back’ lost its semantic content and many of its original morphosyntactic characteristics.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
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Part 1. General and Contrastive Studies
- Linguistic embodiment in linguistic experience 11
- Polysemic chains, body parts and embodiment 31
- Body-part terms as a linguistic topic and the relevance of body-parts as tools 53
- Towards a semantic lexicon of body part terms 77
- Body part terms in musical discourse 99
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Part 2. Grammaticalization Studies
- ‘Body’ and the relationship between verb and participants 117
- On the grammatical uses of the ‘head’ in Wolof 133
- Multifaceted body parts in Murui 169
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Part 3. Lexical Case Studies
- The metonymic folk model of language in Turkish 195
- Keeping an eye on body parts 215
- The conceptualization of ido ‘eye’ in Hausa 247
- Conceptualisations of entrails in English and Polish 269
- Cultural conceptualisations of nawsk ‘belly/stomach’ in Kurdish 291
- Index 309
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1. General and Contrastive Studies
- Linguistic embodiment in linguistic experience 11
- Polysemic chains, body parts and embodiment 31
- Body-part terms as a linguistic topic and the relevance of body-parts as tools 53
- Towards a semantic lexicon of body part terms 77
- Body part terms in musical discourse 99
-
Part 2. Grammaticalization Studies
- ‘Body’ and the relationship between verb and participants 117
- On the grammatical uses of the ‘head’ in Wolof 133
- Multifaceted body parts in Murui 169
-
Part 3. Lexical Case Studies
- The metonymic folk model of language in Turkish 195
- Keeping an eye on body parts 215
- The conceptualization of ido ‘eye’ in Hausa 247
- Conceptualisations of entrails in English and Polish 269
- Cultural conceptualisations of nawsk ‘belly/stomach’ in Kurdish 291
- Index 309
