Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies : The 'Head' [1 ed.] 9789004392410, 9789004392403

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Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies

Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture Series Editors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) R.M.W. Dixon (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) N.J. Enfield (University of Sydney)

volume 20

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bslc

Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies The ‘Head’

Edited by

Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kraska, Iwona, editor. Title: Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies : the 'head' / edited by Iwona Kraska-Szlenk. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2019] | Series: Brill's studies in language, cognition and culture ; Volume 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018056190 (print) | LCCN 2018059583 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004392410 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004392403 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Language and culture. | Human body and language. | Language and languages–Variation. | Language and languages–Physiological aspects. Classification: LCC P35 (ebook) | LCC P35 .E446 2019 (print) | DDC 401/.43–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056190

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. ISSN 1879-5412 ISBN 978-90-04-39240-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-39241-0 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction: Embodied Lexicon and the ‘Head’ Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

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Part 1 Comparative Studies 1

‘Head(s)’ in Portuguese: the Metaphor in European and Brazilian Portuguese 13 Aleksandra Wilkos and Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho

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On the Lexeme ‘Head’ in Zamucoan Luca Ciucci

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What the Grammaticalization of ‘Head’ Reveals about the Semantic Structure of a Language? 51 Zygmunt Frajzyngier

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‘Head’ in Some Non-Bantu Languages of the Oriental Province of DR Congo 76 Helma Pasch

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‘Head’ as a Link of Embodiment in Chinese Yongxian Luo

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From Head to Toe: How Languages Extend the Head to Name Body Parts 124 Kelsie Pattillo

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Metonymic Extensions of the Body Part ‘Head’ in Mental and Social Domains 136 Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

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contents

Part 2 Case Studies 8

The Conceptualization of HEAD among the Hausa Based on Verbal and Nonverbal Representations 157 Izabela Will

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Semantics of Amharic ras ‘Head’ Abinet Sime

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‘Head’ Idioms in Turkish: Contrasts and Correlations 205 Filiz Mutlu, Aysel Kapan, Ali Yagiz Sen, Hilal Yıldırım-Gündoğdu and Aslı Göksel

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‘He Cracked His Head Feverishly’: Conceptualizations of HEAD and THINKING in Hungarian 219 Judit Baranyiné Kóczy

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Semantic Extensions of tatini ‘Her Head’ and tati ‘His Head’ in Deni (Arawá) 245 Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho

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Wulaya ‘Head’ in Yanyuwa 263 Alice Gaby and John Bradley Index of Languages 273 Index of Names 275

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Acknowledgements My thanks extend to the Authors for their contributions, to the Brill’s Reviewer for insightful comments on an earlier version of this volume, and to the series Editors. I am particularly obliged to Alexandra Aikhenvald for her encouragement on this project and support at various stages of it. I acknowledge the Polish National Science Centre grant no. 2015/19/B/HS2/01573 for this research.

Notes on Contributors Abinet Sime is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Mekelle University, Ethiopia. He is the author of Grammaticalization of the Morepheme ge: A Study in Ethiosemetic (2015), yäqwanqwa mäsärätawəyan [Fundamentals of Language] (2016) and Grammaticalization in Ethiosemetic with Comparisons to Oromo (2016). His main research interests are Grammaticalization, Historical Semantics, Etymology, Poetics and Astrolinguistics. Judit Baranyiné Kóczy holds a Ph.D. from the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, and is currently a senior lecturer at the Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary. Her research focuses on language, conceptualisation and culture within the framework of Cultural Linguistics, cognitive semantics and conceptual metaphor theory. She has recently published her first monograph Nature, metaphor, culture: Cultural conceptualizations in Hungarian folksongs (Springer, 2018). Other fields of her present linguistic investigation include the conceptualization of body-parts, cultural metaphors and corpus linguistics. John Bradley (Associate Professor) is the Deputy Director of the Monash Indigenous Centre at Monash University. He began his adult working life at Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1980. Since that time he has spent the last 38 documenting the Yanyuwa language. He has acted as senior Anthropologist on two historical land claims over Yanyuwa country, worked on issues associated with language and cultural management with Yanyuwa elders and the li-Anthawirriyarra Sea Ranger Unit. His primary research is directed towards issues associated with Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies and ways that “epistemological bridges” might be created with Western ways of knowing. He is working with colleagues at Monash University in using animation as a way to facilitate cross-generational learning and language preservation in Indigenous communities. He is the author of the important Forget About Flinders, Yanyuwa Atlas in 2000 and the prize winning Singing Saltwater Country in 2010 and in 2014 he was the recipient of the Future Justice Prize. He has completed a two volume Yanyuwa encyclopedic dictionary (2016–2017).

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Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho obtained his PhD in linguistics (2017) with a thesis describing aspects of the morphosyntax of Deni language, an Arawá language spoken in Brazilian Amazon. Since 2011 he is involved in the description, documentation and analysis of Deni grammar. Currently, he is a permanent (EBTT) professor at Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo (IFSP) – Salto campus. His more recent academic interests include comparative studies in Arawá languages, morphology and syntax interface and language and culture interface. Luca Ciucci is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Language and Culture Research Centre (James Cook University) in Cairns, Australia. In 2007 he began his research on the Zamucoan languages (Ayoreo, Chamacoco and †Old Zamuco). His monography Inflectional morphology in the Zamucoan languages (CEADUC, 2016) is the most detailed morphological description of a small language cluster from South America. In May 2017 he began the documentation of Chiquitano (aka Bésɨro). His research activities include the grammatical description of Ayoreo and Chamacoco, the reconstruction of Proto-Zamucoan, language contact between Zamucoan, Chiquitano and the surrounding languages, and the analysis of the historical data available for †Old Zamuco and Chiquitano. Zygmunt Frajzyngier is Professor of linguistics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His main interests and areas in which he publishes include: foundations of syntax and semantics in cross-linguistic perspective; typological explanations in grammar; grammaticalization; Chadic and Afroasiatic linguistics, descriptive grammars and dictionaries of Chadic languages; and most recently language contact, and Sino-Russian idiolects. Alice Gaby is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests lie in three intersecting domains: semantic and structural typology; the relationship between language, culture and cognition; and the documentation and analysis of endangered languages, especially those of the Australian continent. Underlying this research program is the belief that linguistic analysis can be enriched by viewing grammatical structures as part of a larger communicative system, encompassing multiple languages, registers and modalities.

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Aslı Göksel (PhD University of London) is Professor of Linguistics at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She specialises in the interface of morphology, syntax and prosody in Turkish and Turkish Sign language. She is the co-author of two books on Turkish (Routledge 2005, 2011) and has written articles and book chapters on morphological complexity, question intonation, language contact, the interaction of simultaneous and sequential information, compounds, intonation, focus and word order. The most recent projects that she participated in are ‘Unraveling the Grammars of European Sign Languages: Pathways to Full Citizenship of Deaf Signers and to the Protection of their Linguistic Heritage’ (COST IS-1006) and ‘Language Contact in Turkey, Documentation and Analysis’ (Boğaziçi University Research Fund 11500). Aysel Kapan is a graduate student of Linguistics at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She is currently working on her M.A. thesis, which focuses on derivations of adjectives and nouns in Turkish. Previously, she has participated in Derivational Networks Project. Iwona Kraska-Szlenk is Head of the Department of African Languages and Cultures at the University of Warsaw. She also runs the Faculty’s Languages Lab. She teaches courses on general linguistics and Swahili language and literature. Her research interests focus on embodiment and language-culture connection, lexical semantics, phonology-morphology interface, and usage-based methodologies. Yongxian Luo is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne. A specialist in Tai Kadai languages and many other non-Han languages in south and southwest China, he is the author and editor of 6 books and several dozen journal articles and book chapters. Filiz Mutlu is a graduate student of Linguistics at the University of Ljubljana. Her research programme is to develop a unified theory of Language, Spatial Grammar (SP). SP adopts the position that Language is an algorithm to build a threedimensional cognitive space, guided by the principle of asymmetry. She developed a theory of phonological representations at Boğaziçi University for her MA thesis (2015–2017), where all primitives (features, elements, etc. depending on the school of phonology) are replaced by structure. From 2015 to 2017, she was

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a research and teaching assistant at Boğaziçi University. She has been working on the documentation and analysis of Sauzini, an Iranian language, with Prof. Eser Taylan and Sauzini speaker Maral Bulut since 2016. Helma Pasch is based in Cologne, but teaches also regularly at Turin and Kinshasa. She is a specialist of Ubangian languages, in particular Zande and the noun-class languages of the Mba-group. She has done extensive research on sociolinguistics and historical linguistics with focus on African Sango and other African based contact languages. Recent topics of research are colonial linguistics, the role of women in early African linguistics and the role of the internet for African linguistics. Kelsie Pattillo is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, where she teaches linguistics courses in general linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language documentation. She also supervises graduate teaching assistants and occasionally teaches English as a Second Language. Her primary research interests include linguistic typology, lexical semantics, language contact, language documentation, and historical linguistics. Ali Yagiz Sen is a graduate student at Bogazici University in Turkey. He is currently working on his M.A. thesis which explores formulaicity/idiomaticity in Turkish at both morphological and phrasal levels. He has a particular interest in theories of grammar/lexicon and the intersectionality between the two. Currently, Ali Yagiz is also a computational linguist at Samsung Research America where with a team of linguists and AI engineers working on improving Natural Language Processing/Understanding technologies for voice assistants. Aleksandra Wilkos graduated in Portuguese linguistics (University of Warsaw) in 2013 and became a PhD candidate in Portuguese linguistics (specialization in cognitive linguistics). She is a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. Her academic interests include: cognitive grammar, grammatical aspect, and translation studies. The topic of her PhD dissertation is the pajubá sociolect in Brasil which she is investigating from a cognitive linguistics perspective.

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Izabela Will is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African Languages and Cultures at the University of Warsaw where she teaches Hausa, linguistics, culture of Nigeria and African art. Her academic work focuses on Hausa language, culture of Northern Nigeria, and gestures produced by speakers of Hausa. Hilal Yıldırım-Gündoğdu is currently doing her PhD at Middle East Technical University. She holds an MA degree from the Linguistics Department at Boğaziçi University. Her MA thesis was on the morpho-syntactic properties of diye “de(Say)+Optative”, a subordinator in Turkish. Yıldırım-Gündoğdu worked as a Linguist at a Natural Language Processing project for Google for three years and she has been working as an English instructor at Turkish Naval Academy for one year. The main fields of her academic interest are morphology-syntax interface and second language acquisition.

introduction

Embodied Lexicon and the ‘Head’ Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

The relationship between language and the human body has been extensively investigated in cognitive sciences and linguistics for about four decades now. Starting with the original notions of linguistic embodiment and experientialism put forward by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson which focused on body-grounded conceptualization (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999, Johnson 1987, Lakoff 1987), the embodied character of language has been supported by research in semantics and cultural studies, but also by empirical evidence coming from psycholinguistics, neurology and other sciences (cf. Barsalou 1999, 2008, Bergen et al. 2010, Csordas 1994, Gibbs 2006, McPherron and Ramanathan 2011, Siakaluk et al. 2011, Ziemke et al., among others). As Lakoff and Johnson put it: “the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and models of reason” (1999: 4). Lakoff and Johnson’s embodiment theory is proven to comply with a modern view of grounded (situated) cognition which assumes that knowledge has a perceptual basis and multimodal brain representation. Barsalou explains it with the following example: “As an experience occurs (e.g., easing into a chair), the brain captures states across the modalities and integrates them with a multimodal representation stored in memory (e.g., how a chair looks and feels, the action of sitting, introspections of comfort and relaxation). Later, when knowledge is needed to represent a category (e.g., chair), multimodal representations captured during experiences with its instances are reactivated to simulate how the brain represented perception, action, and introspection associated with it” (2008: 618–619). Language processing likewise uses the feedback of the motor, sensory and proprioceptive systems which exert a positive influence on neural simulation and activation. This influence is particularly strong in the case of embodied concepts and expressions, that is, such which explicitly refer to the human body, due to the co-activation of bodily experience during their processing. For example, embodied English insult words, such as bonehead, numbskull or pinhead, are felt as more offensive than insults of the non-embodied form, e.g. idiot (Siakaluk et al. 2011). As this example demonstrates, the mere fact of stronger embodiment of embodied expressions makes them an interest-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_002

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ing topic of research, because their properties are potentially different than those of other expressions. The embodied lexicon contains words coding bodily functions, motion, actions (e.g. sweat, walk, eat), but most obviously it comprises terms for the human ‘body’ and its parts. These are in a sense the most “embodied” words of all, and we can “experience” them through neural simulation all the time and without much effort. Body part terms are found in the vocabularies of all described languages, and words denoting major body parts (‘head’, ‘eyes’, ‘mouth’, etc.) seem to occur in every language in the world (e. g. Brown 1976, Andersen 1978, Wierzbicka 2007). Furthermore, such words are characterized by a high frequency of use and easily extend onto other domains in numerous figurative senses. Thus, polysemy of body part terms constitutes another fascinating topic for research, whether looked upon from the perspective of lexical semantics, diachronic change, or its role as a vehicle in the conceptualization of various concrete and abstract notions. In addition, body part terms constitute excellent linguistic material for theoretical research on cognitive processes, such as metaphor and metonymy, not only because they provide a prolific source domain in conceptualization, but because this source domain is more or less the same across different languages. People’s bodies are universally alike and linguistic partition of the human body into named parts, although prone to some variation (e.g. Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2008, Enfield et al. 2006), is similar, at least in the case of visible and clearly delineated parts.1 In other words, lexemes, such as ‘head’, ‘eyes’, ‘mouth’, etc., have the same corporeal meanings across different languages and this gives linguists the unique opportunity to investigate how from these basic meanings other senses are extended. Systematically collected and analyzed data from multiple, diversified languages helps to determine, how much semantic extension follows similar paths or language-specific rules? To what extent is semantic change triggered by universal embodiment and shared culture, and how much do independent cultures imprint their own patterns on the tissues of different languages? 1 Differences among languages as to body parts’ “boundaries” are typically due to the fact that some languages do allow and others do not for metonymic uses of one body part for a proximate body part or for part/whole synecdoche. Common metonymies include: hand/arm (e.g. Polish ręka, Swahili mkono), foot/leg (e.g. Polish noga, Swahili mguu), face/mouth (e.g. Punjabi mũũ), eye/face (e.g. Huastec wal), trunk/body (e.g. English body), and others. The problem of equivalence of body part terms in different languages, as relevant to cross-linguistic comparative studies, is tackled in Kraska-Szlenk (2014b, chapter 3), including some discussion of the term ‘head’ in its various corporeal meanings (see also Kraska-Szlenk, this volume, and Pattillo, this volume).

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Given the above mentioned reasons for studying embodiment and body part terms in particular, it comes as no surprise that the topic has already been and continues to be a subject of extensive research in linguistics and cultureoriented studies. There exists a considerable corpus of literature showing that transfers of body part terms share a number of cross-linguistic tendencies. Similar paths of extensions have been observed in particular in the domain of grammaticalization (Svorou 1994, Heine 1997, 2014, Heine and Kuteva 2002), but also in others, such as, for example, emotions, reasoning, social interactions and values, or kinship (Sweetser 1990, Kövecses 2000, 2005, Enfield and Wierzbicka 2002, Kraska-Szlenk 2005, 2014 a, b, c, Siahaan 2008, 2011). Consequently, figurative senses of body part terms often coincide in numerous unrelated languages of the world. In addition, the bodily lexicon constitutes a good source for extension of truly culture-specific, highly unpredictable senses and idiomatic expressions. These can be observed in embodiment case studies, such as the following: Sharifian et al. (2008), Yu (2009), Maalej and Yu (2011), Aikhenvald and Storch (2013), Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (2014), KraskaSzlenk (2014b). The present publication is unique in bringing together studies devoted to one body part. In this way, diversified data coming from a number of languages of the world can be analyzed in various aspects and in detail. Undoubtedly, the head is an essential body part and it is salient in various respects. Therefore, lexemes meaning ‘head’ have drawn scholars’ attention before and there has been previous research devoted to them. Several studies on European languages can be mentioned, e.g. English (Mol 2004, Niemeier 2008, Bacz 2009, Szczygłowska 2014), German (Siahaan 2011), Norwegian (Mol 2004), or Polish (Bacz 2009). A few analyses of non-European languages have appeared, too, e.g. Chinese (Yu 2013), Indonesian (Siahaan 2011), Swahili (Kraska-Szlenk 2014b), Turkish (Aksan 2011), Tunisian Arabic (Maalej 2014), and a brief cross-linguistic survey (Hilpert 2007). The present book brings to attention numerous world’s languages, out of which several receive thorough analyses in the form of detailed case studies, while much more numerous are discussed as to chosen aspects in comparative accounts. The large majority of languages covered in this volume do not represent Standard Average European, and are distributed on different continents, belong to various linguistic families and groups, and are associated with diversified cultures. The book is organized into two Parts, comprising chapters which investigate the lexeme ‘head’ from a comparative perspective in Part 1, and chapters devoted to specific language case studies in Part 2. Part 1 consists of seven chapters in which different languages are put side by side in search of similarities resulting from common origin, geographi-

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cal proximity or universal tendencies, while also exposing differences due to language structure, as well as cultural situatedness or geographical environment. In the opening chapter, Wilkos and Carvalho compare usage patterns in two variants of one language: Portuguese spoken in its motherland and in Brazil, respectively. Their findings demonstrate that many expressions which reflect particular conceptualizations occur only in one of these varieties, demonstrating how important is cultural background and language contact with other linguistic groups. In chapter 2, Ciucci introduces the reader to indigenous languages of South America exemplified by the Zamucoan family. Comparing the data of Old Zamuco, Ayoreo and Chamacoco, the author focuses on the diachronic development of the noun ‘head’, its morphological features and syntax, and its uses in compounds and idiomatic expressions. Two subsequent chapters make a switch to the African continent. Frajzyngier in chapter 3 focuses on languages genetically related within the Chadic group in West Africa. Analyzing differences with respect to grammaticalization processes of the noun ‘head’ in four languages (Pero, Mina, Wandala, and Lele), the author demonstrates that they are triggered by language-internal factors rather than cultural grounding. Pasch in chapter 4 brings to attention several non-Bantu languages spoken in the Oriental Province of Democratic Republic of Congo and in Central African Republic, which include Ubangian languages and Lendu. The author investigates grammaticalization processes, collocation patterns and a number of figurative uses of the ‘head’ lexeme, while looking for their conceptualization sources. Chapter 5 by Luo is in principle devoted to Chinese, but it contains comparative data coming from various periods of the language’s history, as well as some reference to other Asian languages, such as Lue and Lakkja. The main points of analysis include grammaticalization, metonymic and metaphorical extensions of the lexeme ‘head’, but also those of ‘brain’ and ‘neck’. This first part of the book ends with two cross-linguistic studies which focus on major mechanisms of semantic extension, such as metaphor and metonymy, respectively. Pattillo in chapter 6 demonstrates possible patterns of metaphorical extensions of the ‘head’ lexeme to name other body parts. Using comparative evidence of eleven languages representing nine language families and four geographic areas, the author finds similarities in cognitive mapping from ‘head’ to intrafield target domains and formulates a hypothesis on typological tendencies and their causes. In chapter 7, Kraska-Szlenk analyzes metonymic chains which start within the corporeal domain and gradually extend onto mental and social domains. It is argued that some of such extensions tend to occur cross-linguistically, because of their salient cognitive basis,

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as well as substantial amount of shared culture among people speaking different languages. Part 2 of the book opens up with two studies on African languages, distantly related within the Afro-Asiatic family. In Hausa, scrutinized by Will in chapter 8, the lexeme kai ‘head’ provides a source domain for a number of concepts. Particularly remarkable are expressions depicting movements of the head associated with conventionalized gestures and cultural practices; Hausa ‘head’ also demonstrates a high degree of grammaticalization toward locative prepositions and reflexive pronouns. Amharic, analyzed by Abinet in chapter 9, likewise demonstrates a number of metonymic and metaphorical transfers of ras ‘head’ on various target domains, including objects, people, abstract concepts, and grammaticalization toward reflexive pronouns and other grammatical markers. A case study of Turkish idioms containing the body part ‘head’ is the topic of the subsequent chapter 10 by Mutlu, Kapan, Şen, Yıldırım, and Göksel. As the authors show, Turkish has as many as five different terms for ‘head’, out of which baş and kafa provide a prolific source of conventionalized expressions. Among them, many occur in similar form with both lexemes, but have different meanings, which points to an interesting “dichotomy” and differences in conceptualizations of apparently synonymous words. The following chapter 11 by Baranyiné Kóczy is devoted to the Hungarian fej ‘head’ and its role in conceptualization of THINKING. Starting with the basic schema of ‘head’ as a CONTAINER, the author demonstrates that ‘thoughts’ located in that ‘container’ may be conceptualized in a number of ways, e.g. as HUMANS, ANIMALS, PLANTS, MOVING OBJECTS or THREADS, which underlies specific linguistic expressions describing mental processes. In addition, other metaphors and metonymies are conventionally used in Hungarian, for example, thinking hard is rendered by metaphor of CRACKING ONE’S HEAD. The book ends with two chapters containing the unique data of endangered languages spoken by small communities in South America and Australia, respectively. Carvalho in chapter 12 analyzes structural properties and uses of the lexeme ‘head’ in Deni—an Arawá language spoken in the Brazilian State of Amazonas. In this language, ‘head’ is an inalienably possessed noun which occurs with an obligatory possessive marker, and such forms, namely, tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’, provide source for semantic extension on other domains, for example, objects, spatial relations, kinship, and others. In chapter 13, Gaby and Bradley focus on metaphorical and metonymic extensions of the ‘head’ in Yanyuwa—an almost extinct Pama-Nyungan language in the Northern Territory of Australia. The uses of the lexeme wulaya ‘head’ are examined in reference to the human and animal bodies, objects and abstract

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domains, including proper names for people and places. The authors emphasize culturally motivated extensions associated with the geographical environment, material culture and people’s beliefs. Although each chapter in this book is devoted to the same topic of the body part term ‘head’, each is unique, not only because different languages provide original linguistic data and conceptualizations, but also because the authors analyze a variety of other issues pertaining either to specific structural features of the discussed languages or to their socio-cultural context. While a reader’s attention is drawn by intriguing differences among languages, it is also fascinating to observe how similar concepts are linguistically expressed in world’s languages, often demonstrating remarkable resemblance. In many languages, the ‘head’ metaphorically stands for the beginning. One is willing to say “from head to toe” in hope for a complete portrait of the human body, described part by part, as in the poems of ancient India and other Eastern cultures, where beautiful women and goddesses had each of their body part praised in a separate stanza.

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Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014a. Semantic extensions of body part terms: Common patterns and their interpretation. Language Sciences 44: 15–39. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014b. Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. München: LINCOM Europa. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014c. “Swahili embodied metaphors in the domain of family and community relations”. In: I. Kraska-Szlenk i B. Wójtowicz (eds.), Current Research in African Studies: Papers in Honour of Mwalimu Dr. Eugeniusz Rzewuski. Warszawa: Elipsa. 163–174. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Maalej, Zouheir. 2014. “Body parts we live by in language and culture: The raS ‘head’ and yidd ‘hand’ in Tunisian Arabic”. In: Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 224–259. Maalej, Zouheir and Ning Yu (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. McPherron, Paul and Vaidehi Ramanathan 2011. Language, body, and health. (Language and Social Processes, 2.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Mol, Susan. 2004. “‘Head’ and ‘Heart’: Metaphors and metonymies in a cross-linguistic perspective”, in: Karin Aijmer and Hilde Hasselgård (eds.), Translation and Corpora. Gothemborg: ActaUniversitatisGothoburgensis, 87–11. Niemeier, Susanne. 2008. “To be in control: Kind-hearted and cool-headed. The headheart dichotomy in English”. In: F. Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu and S. Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 349–372. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu and Susanne Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Siahaan, Poppy. 2008. “Did he break your heart or your liver? A contrastive study on metaphorical concepts from the source domain organ in English and in Indonesian”. In Sharifian et al. (eds.). 45–74. Siahaan, Poppy. 2011. “HEAD and EYE in German and Indonesian figurative uses”. In Maalej and Yu (eds.). 93–113. Siakaluk, Paul D., Penny M. Pexman, Holly-Anne R. Dalrymple, Jodie Stearns and William J. Owen. 2011. “Some insults are more difficult to ignore: The embodied insult Stroop effect”. Language and Cognitive Processes 26/8: 1266–1294. Svorou, Soteria 1994. The grammar of space. Typological Studies in Language 25. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins.

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Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge. Szczygłowska, Tatiana. 2014. “Selected body part terms as a means for conveying abstract concepts in The Economist: The case of head, eye, mouth and nose”. In: M. Brenzinger and I. Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 335–356. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2007. “Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology. Language Sciences”. 14–65. Yu, Ning. 2009. From Body to Meaning in Culture: Papers on Cognitive Semantic Studies of Chinese. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Yu, Ning. 2013. “The body in anatomy: Looking at “head” for the mind-body link in Chinese”. In: Rosario Caballero and Javier Diaz-Vera (eds.), Sensuous Cognition— Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, 22). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 53–73. Ziemke, Tom, Jordan Zlatev and Roslyn M. Frank (eds.) 2007. Body, language and mind. Vol. 1 Embodiment. Cognitive Linguistics Research 35.1. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

part 1 Comparative Studies

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chapter 1

‘Head(s)’ in Portuguese: the Metaphor in European and Brazilian Portuguese Aleksandra Wilkos and Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho

1

Introduction

The relationship between our body and our language has become an object of cognitive linguistic studies for a while now. We use our bodies to get to know the words and without the body no primary concept would emerge. We experience the world through our body perception, a feat that would be impossible without a multitude of senses we possess. All of five traditionally recognized senses (vision, hearing, gustation, olfaction and somatosensation) can be perceived with one part of our body: our head. Losing this body part equals death, so it is undoubtedly crucial for us. The perceptual experiences perceived by us gave life to simple and, later on, complex conceptualizations (Bergen, 2015: 10). Our conceptualization is therefore inevitably linked with our bodies and is created and (re)transformed mainly thanks to our most complex organ: the brain. Since we cannot access our mental processes directly, we can only analyze the manifestations of many cognitive processes, such as language use. We’d like to state that Ronald Langacker (as well as other cognitive linguistics) understand the term conceptualization quite broadly: “it encompasses novel conceptions as well as fixed concepts; sensory, kinesthetic, and emotive experience; recognition of the immediate context (social, physical, and linguistic); and so on” (Langacker, 1990:2). A study of the concept of head isn’t a random one—the metaphorization of our crucial body part across languages and cultures may reveal to what extent our (self-)perception is universal. In order to accomplish this task, the following paper will focus on the concept of metaphor and polysemy in cognitive linguistic perspective. The fundamental theory applied by us is the embodiment theory. Based on this theory, we focus on the contemporary metaphor theory presented by George Lakoff (1993), as well as on the compositional polysemy addressed by Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2006).1

1 We are grateful to Brigitta Flick for her technical support on this paper.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_003

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Theoretical Assumptions

In the present section we provide the theoretical bases that support the analysis undertaken in this paper. Our focus on the theory is on the metaphor and polysemy processes, fundamental issues for dealing with semantic extensions in the languages of the world. We adopt the framework provided by the cognitive linguistics in order to undertake the analysis in this paper. 2.1 Metaphors in Cognitive Linguistics For centuries we used to understand metaphor in a classical, Aristotelian perspective. It was seen as a poetic and consequently a non-common language usage (Nerlich & Clarke, 2007:595). The concept of metaphor has been redefined in the last decades. One of the most citied book on the topic is Metaphors we live by, published in 1980, whose authors—George Lakoff and Mark Johnson—demonstrated that a metaphor isn’t just a mere rhetorical or artistic term, but also an omnipresent cognitive process that shapes and manifests our way of thinking. This subject has inspired a vast number of scientists and new questions about the cognitive nature of metaphorical thinking keep on emerging. In 1993, George Lakoff published The contemporary metaphor theory that corrects some previous assumptions about the nature of the metaphor and discusses its structure. We learn that our thinking is mainly metaphorical and it enables us to perform abstract reasoning (Lakoff, 1993:24). Metaphors allow us to understand more complex and relatively unstructured subject matter in terms of a more concrete or relatively higher structured subject matter. As we may see, metaphors aren’t a priori linguistic in nature, but fundamentally conceptual (ibidem, 3). They had been seen as linguistic because their manifestations are often linguistic ones. For instance, associating our heart with love and other affections doesn’t manifest itself only through language use, but is also frequently visualized in graphic communication and arts. Metaphors are in fact mappings across various conceptual domains and are partial, asymmetric and non-arbitrary (ibidem, 232). It means that the mapping is the process of constructing the meaning and not decoding it. In other words, Englishspeaking people see love as a journey not because it’s objectively analogous, but because this comparison has become culturally entrenched. Not every analogy is mapped through cultural entrenchment, some of the metaphors are intimately connected to our body experience and reflect our embodiment.

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2.1.1 The Embodied Mind The relationship between human body and our thinking process has not been obvious. For instance, Descartes strongly believed in dualism and saw body and mind bifurcated (Gibbs, 2008:11). An interesting take on this perspective was countered by a philosopher, Thomas Nagel, who wrote a paper What it is like to be a bat? in 1974. This bizarre question serves to put an emphasis of how our thinking—and, consequently, our construct of reality—is deeply rooted in our sensory experience. Rarely we notice how human scale is implied by many adjectives, that are tailored to a human scale of experience. Words such as heavy (for a human being), easy (for a human being), red (perceived by a human being) sound very natural without any specification in every studied human language. It is plausible to think that consequently the universality of human body experience should therefore reveal itself in many forms through universal conceptualizations. Some metaphors are more universal due to their intimate correlation with universal human experiences. It would be extremely rare to encounter a human being with no perceptual experiences so we can safely assume that those experiences are highly relatable and very common to be used as a point of reference in a process of conceptualization. This subject grabbed attention of many linguists such as George Lakoff, who dedicated many studies on the cognitive embodiment (Wilson, 2002:10). Cognitive linguistics isn’t the only field that deep connection between body experience and understanding abstract ideas. There are many psychological studies that analyze that relationship, in particular in our understanding of emotions. For instance, AFFECTION IS WARMTH metaphor is vastly universal and psychological studies conducted by Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh (2009) showed that experiencing physical warmth corresponds to more affectionate interpersonal interactions. The concept of warm touch is used in psychological studies shows that a human experience of soothing touch (warm, due to body temperature) eases stress level and is correlated with first human experiences, such as being held by a mother during breastfeeding (HoltLunstad, J., Birmingham, W.A. and Light, K.C., 2002).2 It also gives raise to conceptualizations that are body-related, such as HEART means love. Not every bodily symptom will be conceptualized identically. One of the biggest studies conducted on emotions was Components of Emotional meaning written by 2 We should stress here that we are using the term “vastly” because no matter how common certain experiences are, they are never 100% universal. Also, some people experience body interaction atypically, for example due to atypical neurological characteristics or lack of conventional socialization.

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Johnny Fontaine Ugent, Klaus Scherer and Cristina Soriano in 2013. That study saw bodily reactions as one of five major emotion components. 2.1.2 Domains and Mental Topology Charles Fillmore and Collin Baker define frames as: “many organized packages of knowledge, beliefs, and patterns of practice that shape and allow humans to make sense of their experiences” (2009:314). It means that our concepts exist contextualized and are stored in a certain order. They also give some explanation why we need them: “to interpret their experiences, independently of whether such experiences are delivered through language” (ibidem). Conceptual domain was explained by Günter Radden and René Dirven in a very simple and elegant way. It is the general field to which a category or frame3 belongs in a given situation. For example, a knife belongs to the domain of ‘eating’ when used for cutting bread on the breakfast table, but to the domain of ‘fighting’ when used as a weapon. Whereas frames are specific knowledge structures surrounding categories, conceptual domains are very general areas of conceptualization. (…) Conceptual domains crosscut with frames and thus allow us to link frames to one another. For example, the ‘car’ frame may be linked to the ‘house’ frame by means of the shared domain ‘combustion’: both the engine of a car and the heating system of a house use fossil energy. Radden & Dirven, 2007:11

As we may see, one idea may belong to many domains. Domains may also connect different frames. If we take a closer look at the metaphor through this lens, we will see that a conceptual metaphor occurs when we understand one domain (such as AFFECTION) in terms of another one (WARMTH). It means that the task of the following paper will be exploring which domains are activated when we think about the concept of head.

3 The term ‘frame’ should discussed in more detail, the concept of polysemy and its implications to the study should be more thoroughly accounted for. In the discussion of lexical extensions, the Authors observe the multiple meaning extension processes, e.g., losing one’s head in Portuguese in its multiple meanings. The concept might be related to the complexity of mental processes of metaphor stacking, which can be mentioned.

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2.2 Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics Polysemy is a phenomenon in which a linguistic form relates to two or more meanings. Polysemy is inherent to all languages and corresponds to a principle of linguistic economy in which a conceptual value already known by speakers is extended onto (an)other domain(s). If polysemy would not be found in the languages, the lexicon of them would be dauntingly bigger. Cognitive linguistics deals with multiple meanings of a linguistic form as systematically related. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2006) points out that the “semantic extensions of a lexical item are not in an arbitrary but in a systematic and natural way by means of several cognitive mechanisms”. Regarding the terms for body parts, the systematic and natural ways in which meanings are extended onto other domains of the human experience are based on the knowledge of experience with the human body. In the context of our paper, this means that polysemy may be often motivated by cognitive embodiment and metaphors emerge due to polysemic extension of meaning, from more familiar towards more innovative. Human beings have stored in the mind conceptual knowledge of their body. This conceptual knowledge is the source for extending meanings of body part terms onto other domains of the human experience. For instance, human beings have the concept of ‘leg’ as an elongated form that supports the body. This concept is then employed when referring to other domains, such as in Portuguese perna da cama ‘bed leg’. The leg of the bed has typically an elongated form and it supports the bed. The conceptual knowledge of ‘an elongated form that supports the body’ is transferred onto the domain of furniture. Instead of creating a new lexical item to express the meaning—thus enlarging the lexicon—Portuguese extends the meaning of the body part term perna ‘leg’ onto another domain. This clearly represents a principle of linguistic economy, as mentioned above. Cognitive linguistics indicates what there might be universal in languages is that the human beings are bipeds and erect instead of being quadrupeds and spherical. The body provides help for conceptualizing other meanings rather than the target ones. For instance, ‘head’ is frequently associated with the top of objects, such as ‘hammer head’ in English, cabeça do prego ‘nail head’ in Portuguese, and bari tati ‘axe head’ in Deni, an Arawá language spoken in Southern Amazon, Brazil. Besides the spatially-based feature, there are also other characteristics of the human head that are involved in semantic extensions. Rounded things are commonly associated with ‘head’ or ‘eye’ in many languages of the world (KraskaSzlenk, 2014). A culturally-based approach is interesting for understanding the semantic extensions in languages. For Brazilian-Portuguese native speakers,

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the head is the container of thinking and cleverness. A construction such as ele é cabeça literally means ‘he is head’ but figuratively means ‘he is smart’, since the knowledge is stored in the head. Thus extending meanings of body part terms involves cognitive processes that are mostly systematic and natural across languages and cultures because the cognition is bodily based.

3

Semantic Extensions of cabeça ‘Head’ in Portuguese

This section includes the analysis of the data on the body part term cabeça ‘head’ in both Brazilian and European dialects of Portuguese. 3.1 Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese is the term used to refer to the dialect spoken by more than 200 million people who live mostly in Brazil. This dialect comprises the largest number of speakers of Portuguese when compared to the other countries that have Portuguese as an official language. Brazilian Portuguese has been influenced by many languages, such as Arabic, English, Greek, and African languages, but the major influence comes from the native languages of Brazil, especially Tupi, of which the toponymy encompasses a great number of lexical items. 3.1.1 Semantic Extensions of cabeça ‘Head’ in Brazilian Portuguese The lexical item cabeça ‘head’ in Brazilian Portuguese, in its source domain, refers to the upper part of the human body. However, cabeça is involved in a wide range of constructions expressing different meanings, such as complete utterances não estou com cabeça para falar sobre isso ‘I have no head to talk about it’, idiomatic expressions estar com a cabeça na lua ‘having the head in the clouds (lit. moon)’, and composition cabeça-oca ‘empty head’. Our aim here is to investigate the usage of cabeça ‘head’ in other domains rather than the source (body part) one, as well as to understand the underlying processes that license these usages. In the Cognitive Linguistics Theory adopted in the analysis in this paper, the act of naming is associated with categorization, which, in turn, is based on human sensory-motor experiences and culture. The human body is composed by three parts: head, trunk and limbs. The head is upper part of the human body and has organs of vision, smelling, hearing, and tasting, which fundamentally contribute to the way that human beings experience the world. Besides these, the head accommodates the brain, the organ responsible for all psychomotor and cognitive functions of human beings.

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As a body part that contains the brain, cabeça ‘head’ can be used in Brazilian Portuguese to refer to the brain itself by contiguity, in an inter-domain relation. Then, a metonymic process is undertaken in constructions such as dor de cabeça ‘headache’ and cirurgia de cabeça ‘head surgery’, in which the lexical item cabeça ‘head’ is used referring to both temple and brain. Cabeça ‘head’ is used in such constructions instead of temple and brain because of its salience, importance and frequency in everyday communication. Kraska-Szlenk (2014) mentions that occurrences like these ones contribute to a higher use of the lexical item cabeça ‘head’, and also affect the frequency of use of the words ‘temple’ and ‘brain’. The brain is considered the center of the human intellect, memory, concentration, emotional control, intelligence. In line with the above mentioned examples regarding the brain as accommodated in the head and, hence, by contiguity (metonymy), the lexical item cabeça ‘head’ can refer to different meanings, positive and negative ones, as specified by Ferreira (2010, p. 95) and illustrated in (1) to (5). (1) memory: sei de cabeça ‘I know it by heart’ (lit. by head), apagar da cabeça ‘forget (lit. delete from the head)’ (2) intelligence: cabeção and cabeçudo ‘good head’4 (3) emotional control: ter cabeça para ‘keep one’s head together (lit. have head to)’, sem cabeça ‘headless’ (4) concentration: cabeça na lua ‘having the head in the clouds (lit. moon)’, cabeça nas nuvens ‘head in the clouds’ (5) behavior: cabeça-dura ‘hard-headed’ All the meanings included in examples (1) to (5) refer to rationality (or lack of it). Brazilian Portuguese includes constructions such as por a cabeça para funcionar ‘put the head to function’ and usar a cabeça ‘use the head’ in which cabeça ‘head’ is conceived as a machine. These constructions involve the processes of metonymy and metaphor, since the lexical item cabeça ‘head’ is refer-

4 These two occurrences can also be used negatively, meaning ‘dumb person’ when used ironically.

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ring to the brain, and there is, in this case, transference from the biological domain (human body) to technological domain (machine), as argued by Ferreira (2010). The underlying metaphor here is the conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (2003): THE MIND IS A MACHINE. Human beings are erect and the upper part of the human body is the head. This characteristic is the base for the semantic extensions expressing UP, such as cabeça de um prego ‘nail head’, cabeça de página ‘head of a page’, cabeça do pênis ‘head of the penis’. In these examples, the objects are conceptualized as the top of the upright human body and referred to as ‘head’. Associated with the idea of UP are a number of meanings such as leadership, superiority, and supremacy that are expressed by cabeça ‘head’, as illustrated in ele é o cabeça do escritório ‘he is the head of the office’. Ferreira (2010) argues that in this construction there are both metonymic extension, since it maintains the meaning of “up position”, and metaphoric extension, extending from the physical domain to the social one. An interesting morphological process that cabeça ‘head’ undergoes is related to the reception of prefix and suffix forming the verb encabeçar ‘to head’ (we have already given examples in (2) in which there is morphological change on the lexical item cabeça ‘head’). One of its possible meanings is very similar to the meaning in English in the construction ele está encabeçando a lista ‘he is heading the list’. In Brazilian Portuguese, the just mentioned example may mean both ‘he is in the first position of the list’ (related to place, first position) and ‘he is commanding the list’ (related to leadership). In both meanings of encabeçar ‘to head’ (‘being in the first position’ and ‘commanding’), the conceptual meaning of cabeça ‘head’ (upper part of the human body) is the source domain. Some body part term transfers are attested in various languages across the world and refer to the format of objects and things and the format of the body parts which they are associated with. Kraska-Szlenk (2014, p. 16) mentions that these transfers “often include the mapping of lexemes such as ‘head’ or ‘eye’ on various round objects, or lexemes such as ‘arm’ and ‘leg’ on elongated objects, etc.”. In this sense, cabeça ‘head’, our focus of investigation here, is mapped and transferred onto the domain of vegetable based on its (round) format: alho ‘garlic’, cebola ‘onion’, repolho ‘cabbage’ and alface ‘lettuce’ are all referred to as cabeça ‘head’ in Brazilian Portuguese (and in English). Notice, that in these examples a metaphoric transfer from the human body (source domain) to vegetables (target domain) has taken place which reveals that the process operates at the conceptualization level. A cross-linguistically well-attested metaphor is related to the subjectively felt body heat while being angry: ANGER IS HEAT. In Brazilian Portuguese, the

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body part that is expressing the idea of being angry is the head, for example estar com a cabeça quente ‘having a hot head’. Kövecses and Radden (1998, p. 61), claim that “the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEAT arises from a generalization of body heat to heat. In this case, the metonymic vehicle (body heat) becomes the source domain of metaphor through the process of generalization”. Based on this, it makes sense to think that many conceptual metaphors derive from conceptual metonymies. A similar process occurs with the idea of being relaxed, as in the construction estar com a cabeça fria ‘having a cold head’. Associated with the usage of the word ‘head’ in this construction is the subjective feeling of being cold while being relaxed. In this case, the conceptual metaphor is RELAXED IS COLD. An alternative way of looking at this example is to interpret the coldness of the body as an absence of heat. Such interpretation postulate that the body is not cold, but not hot either. Then, the parameter is the subjectively bodily (head in Brazilian Portuguese) heat felt; if my head is not hot, then I am relaxed. 3.2 European Portuguese Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language with two main dialects, the division of two metaphorical groups is linguistically motivated. The pluricentric nature of Portuguese, meaning that there are more than one standard codified versions, implies that there will be no one to one correspondence between language and culture (Batoréo, 2014). Those cultural and historical differences inevitably shape the language in both studied variants and are manifested in different conceptualization. We will take a look which conceptualizations overlap in two variants and which are exclusive for European Portuguese. According to Augusto Soares Silva, English and other foreign languages had more lexical impact on the Brazilian than on the European variety (2015, p. 130). European Portuguese is more lexically reluctant towards loanwords and integrates them with more difficulty. Curiously, Augusto Soares Silva observes no differences in French influences between two variants. 3.2.1 Semantic Extension of cabeça ‘Head’ in European Portuguese The lexical item cabeça ‘head’ in European Portuguese, in its source domain, refers to the upper part of the human body, as mentioned in Brazilian Portuguese. In the European dialect, cabeça ‘head’ is involved in a wide range of constructions expressing different meanings, such as in word formation cabeça-de-série ‘The first one in a series’, in idiomatic expressions ter minhoca na cabeça ‘having an earthworm in the head’, and in proverbs até lá não me doa a cabeça (lit. until that [moment] I don’t have a headache) ‘I do not think about

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that far-fetched future’. The constructions expressing these different meanings in European Portuguese are our focus in the coming pages. We start our analysis on European Portuguese dealing with the word formation in which the word cabeça ‘head’ in involved. There are many examples of the metaphors that explore HEAD as UP, HEAD as ROUNDSHAPE and HEAD as IMPORTANCE. Usually importance applies to an important person. A cabeça de lista (the first person on the list), cabeça de motim (agitator), cabeça de série (top player) and cabeça de cartaz (the main star of an event) blend those two correspondences, because the first (the upper) person is usually the most important one. The expression cabeça de casal is a curious one, since it may be understood mistakenly as a head of the household, which stereotypically would indicate the husband. The truth is that the expression designates the person responsible for administrating the heirloom, which is almost always one of the inheritors. A cabeça de turco means a scapegoat. A beast with seven heads (bicho de sete cabeças) means almost the same thing as a riddle, a difficult problem that also was created using head word formation (rompe-cabeças or quebra-cabeças). A very productive process in which cabeça ‘head’ is involved in European Portuguese is in idiomatic expressions. Ivana Baričić (2014) groups ‘head’ in nine categories: (i) body part; (ii) parts of vegetables; (iii) superior, prominent and round part of an object; (iv) header of a document; (v) person; (vi) animal; (vii) leader, capital, reason, intelligence; (viii) a person who is responsible for something; (ix) the first candidate on a list. In spite of finding this distinction helpful, we may improve it by grouping it according to the underlying metaphor. We will describe the metaphors by dividing then into various categories. Not every expression would fit a category, this will be discussed separately. The first metonymic group dealt with here is PART FOR WHOLE, which includes examples of HEAD EQUALS PERSON such as contar cabeças ‘to count heads’ and HEAD EQUALS ANIMAL as in the expression cabeça de gado ‘a head of cattle’. Those metonymical expressions are based on a simple inference that every person alive possess a head. The same applies to cattle. The aforementioned expressions show the conceptual embodiment we have discussed earlier. Another metonymic group that includes a great number of occurrences in the European dialect of Portuguese, as well as in many other languages in the world, is HEAD STANDS FOR CONTAINER. In this metonymic group we are able to insert other related metonyms such as HEAD CONTAINS THOUGHTS as illustrated by the idiomatic expression ter minhocas na cabeça ‘lit. having earthworms in head’, that means thinking negative thoughts. The metaphors

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that see thoughts as elements contained in a head are very common and there are variations for some of the most frequently used. Those elements can enter the head, leave it or move inside a head. Some of them are explained in more complex conceptual blending, such as sand that is associated with leisure time spent on the beach or earthworms, associated with bad weather and therefore a bad mood. Earthworms can also be associated with rotting objects in earth, which is an unpleasant association as well. The expressions with negations are also interesting, since they represent incomprehensible ideas or thoughts as incompatible with a container—too big or in a shape that makes putting them inside impossible. We decided to note that some of the expressions that describe the act of convincing someone could also be understood as the expressions of control, but are mainly focused on emphasizing HEAD AS CONTAINER and THOUGHTS AS ELEMENTS OF CONTAINER conceptualization. The presence of thoughts is also linked to the following conceptualization and forms a metonymic chain (Brdar, 2015). The metonymy HEAD CONTAINS INTELLIGENCE AND FOCUS can be seen through examples such as cabeça-oca ‘empty head’, cabeça-de-abóbora ‘scatterbrained, stupid’, cabeça de vento ‘windy head’ from European Portuguese. As we may see, the Portuguese language provides us with a handful of expressions that see a head as connected to intelligence and focus. Small containers are seen as bad ones, incapable of containing a lot. A head that is impossibly far away from Earth (in the clouds, on the moon) cannot focus on mundane things. We observe that a lot of expressions have two meanings: being scatterbrained and being stupid. This binding motivates grouping two ideas—intelligence and focus—together and suggests a presence of a metonymic chain in conceptualization. The expression with spider web is a sophisticated metaphor called a cognitive blending. The presence of spider web suggests that a head as a container is empty and consequently is bad at serving its purpose. This leads us to the following category of conceptualization. HEAD CONTAINS CONTROL is a common conceptualization through the languages of the world. In European Portuguese, this concept is expressed through constructions such as cabeça dura (hard head) ‘being stubborn’, cabeça fria (cold head) ‘being calm’, fazer a cabeça de alguém (making someone’s head) ‘influencing someone’. We observe here that the expressions related to the decision-making process are interconnected with commitment. We can also see that a lack of control is associated with heat or head’s loss. Once again we see a metonymical chain, since the anger is conceptually seen as a head. The act of falling down presents exhaustion and is biologically motivated, just like the heat-anger association. It is worth noting that body involvement equals commitment in some expressions. It is another important manifestation of

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associating body state with a state of mind. This observation could lead us to see body expressions as inherently metonymical in its nature every time they do not express a literal meaning. Cabeça ‘head’ is also involved in the conceptualization through the metonymic process that results in the metonymy HEAD CONTAINS SELF-CONFIDENCE. Examples of this are andar de cabeça levantada (to go with the head up) ‘acting proudly’ and andar de cabeça baixa (to go with the head down) ‘acting humbly, without confidence’. Analogically to HEAD IS UP metaphor, high head position corresponds to positive self-image and self-importance. It can be seen as overly positive self-confidence and express vanity. As we have already observed, losing one’s head in Portuguese may have multiple meanings: (1) losing life, (2) losing one’s temper and (3) feeling enthusiastic about something. The second one can be anger-related or be a consequence of infatuation. Since the head is biologically crucial, metaphors that indicate its loss or damage would possess negative connotations. In Portuguese someone may suffer negative consequences, for instance financial loss (apanhar/levar na cabeça, lit. to catch/bring on the head), may do something pointless (bater com a cabeça na parede, lit. hitting the head against the wall). A headache (a dor de cabeça) is an expression that is frequently used to describe a problem or a nuisance. There is also a couple of tauromachy-related expressions of throwing oneself head first towards a bull. We suggest that HEAD DAMAGE AS NEGATIVE THING makes part of metonymic chain of conceptualization and is partially connected with HEAD CONTAINS CONTROL metaphor. That conceptualization is also motivated by cognitive embodiment. A part of folkloric prayer to Saint Anthony is a very interesting case of a head expression found only in European Portuguese: Contra males e demónios/ rezar sempre a Santo António / aplaca as fúrias do mar tira os presos da prisão / e o perdido faz achar/ apareça, apareça o diabo sem cabeça (Bento, 2017)

Against bad things and demons/ [one must] pray always to Saint Anthony / he makes furies of the sea mild and sets prisoners free / and makes the lost found / Appear, appear a headless devil

This expression can be used when we are looking for something and we pray for finding it. Another religious expression is fazer perder a cabeça (paciência) a um santo (to make a saint lose their head [patience]) that also forms an interesting cognitive blend. In order to comprehend this blend we must ackowledge two complex concepts first: the concept of a saint seen as an extremely patient

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person who isn’t prone to anger, and second: the expression perder a cabeça (to lose one’s head) that can mean to lose patience, control, etc. In summary, this expression recruits cultural knowledge that had been linguistically codified. It is worth pointing out that he expression perder a cabeça (to lose one’s head) could be understood in many ways according to the context. I may lose my head when I’m in love, when I’m angry or when I’m going crazy. This polysemy is related to a vast conceptualization conveyed by the concept of HEAD. Consequently, this expression may allude to many metonymies such as HEAD IS CONTROL, HEAD IS REASON, etc. Another hyperbolic expression is comer algo na cabeça de um tinhoso (to eat something on a leper’s head) which means that someone is capable of eating anything. The expressions with a leper have various versions and permit the speaker’s creativity, for instance we may hear that a certain concept literally isn’t comprehensible even by a leper’s head (não cabe na cabeça de um tinhoso) (Simões, 2013). The word tinhoso is a fascinating cognitive blend of its own, since according to Infopedia Porto Editora dictionary, a leper can also be a folk word for a devil. Once again we may see an expression with a devil’s head. A lot of the aforementioned expressions can be shortened and used as proverbs in Portuguese (p. 87) and Sónia Reis states that the boundary between the proverb and a fixed expression isn’t well defined (ibidem).

4

Conclusions

The analysis of the data has shown a lot of common conceptualizations not only between Brazilian and European Portuguese, but also in other languages. This fact supports Lakoff’s cognitive embodiment theory and shows that the most universal expressions are motivated by our embodiment. We may also see the metonymical chains and metaphors overlapping. This fact suggests that a polysemy as a cognitive process takes part in cognitive embodiment. The first, more familiar meanings are a point of reference for more complex, innovative ones. Some conceptualizations give raise to another conceptualizations and we may also see cognitive blends that recruit various conceptualizations and cultural background. Some expressions have multiple meanings, that shows that one concept can take part in different conceptualizations, in this case, HEAD is control, reason, sanity, power, etc. In spite of cultural and historical differences between language variant, the pluricentric character of Portuguese doesn’t heavily affect the conceptualization.

26

wilkos and carvalho

References Baričić, I. (2014). O lexema cabeça na fraseologia portuguesa. (MA), University of Zagrzeb, Zagrzeb. Batoréo, H. (2014). Que gramática(s) temos para estudar português língua pluricêntrica?, Revista Diadorim / Revista de Estudos Linguísticos e Literários do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Vernáculas da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Volume 16, Rio de Janeiro. https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/diadorim/article/viewFile/ 4023/3001 [access: 20/02/2017] Bergen, B. (2015). Embodiment. In Dabrowska, E., & Divjak, D. (Ed.) Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, pp. 10–30. Brdar, M. (2015). Metonymic chains and synonymity. In Fulminensia, 27, 83–101. Ferreira, R.G. (2010). A hipótese de corporificação da língua: o caso de cabeça. (MA), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro. Fillmore, C.J. and Baker, C. (2009) A frames approach to semantic analysis In: The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford University Press. 313–339. http:// lingo.stanford.edu/sag/papers/Fillmore‑Baker‑2011.pdf [access: 22/07/2018] Gibbs, R.W. Jr. (2008) The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought, Cambridge University Press. Holt-Lunstad, J., Birmingham, W.A. and Light, K.C. (2002) Influence of a “Warm Touch” Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ 1802/c19b1e7fb2e3a61966e37101c9ed0b329c32.pdf [access: 22/07/2018] Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I. (2006). Cross-linguistic polysemy in tactile verbs. In J. Luchjenbroers (Ed.), Cognitive linguistics investigations: across languages, fields and philosophical boundaries. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 235–253. Kövecses, Z., & Radden, G. (1998). Metonymy: developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics, 9 (1), 37–77. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2014). Semantic extensions of body part terms: common patterns and their interpretation. Language Sciences, 44, 15–39. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary metaphor theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://comphacker.org/comp/engl338/files/2014/02/A9R913D.pdf [access: 20/02/2017] Langacker, R. (1990). Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Duke University Press https://warwick.ac.uk/ fac/cross_fac/iatl/activities/modules/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/ 32/nagel_bat.pdf [access: 01/12/2018]

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Nerlich, B. & Clarke, D. (2007) Cognitive linguistics and the history of linguistics. In Geeraerts, D., & Cuyckens H. (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 589–607. Radden, G., & Dirven, R. (2007). Cognitive English Grammar. Philadephia: John Benjamins Publishing. Reis, S. (2015). A correspondência entre provérbios e expressões fixas no Português Europeu (MA), Algarve: Universidade do Algarve. Silva Soares A., (2015). Measuring and comparing the use and success of loanwords in Portugal and Brazil: A corpus-based and concept-based sociolectometrical approach. In: Zenner, E., & Kristiansen, G. (ed.) New Perspectives on Lexical Borrowing. Onomasiological, Methodological and Phraseological Innovations, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 101–141. Ugent, J.F., Scherer, K. and Soriano, C. (2013) Components of Emotional meaning: a sourcebook. Oxford University Press. Williams, L., & Bargh J. (2009). Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth. In: Science. New York: NY, 606–607. Wilson, M. (2002) Six views of embodied cognition, In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 625–636,

Varia Bento, L.M. (2007) Reponso. In http://socialissimo.blogs.sapo.pt/456516.html [access: 20/02/2017] Simões, J. (2013) Do que não cabe na cabeça de um tinhoso e também não cabe na de um espanhol. In http://ab‑logando.blogspot.com/2013/03/do‑que‑nao‑cabe‑na‑cabeca ‑de‑um‑tinhoso.html [access: 20/02/2017]

chapter 2

On the Lexeme ‘Head’ in Zamucoan Luca Ciucci

1

Introduction*

The present chapter examines the lexeme ‘head’ in the three main languages of the Zamucoan family: †Old Zamuco, Ayoreo and Chamacoco. After a short introduction to the Zamucoan family (§2), I describe the inflectional morphology of ‘head’ (§3): its suffixation (§3.1) and possessive prefixation (§ 3.2). § 3.3 analyzes old attestations of the word, that show the same grammatical features presented in §3.1 and §3.2. Then, I discuss the uses of ‘head’ in compounds and expressions related to body parts (§4.1), to the intellect (§ 4.2), and names for animals stemming from ‘head’ (§4.3). ‘Head’ can also indicate the ‘beginning’ or the most important part of something. Section § 5 offers some conclusions.

2

The Zamucoan Family

The Zamucoan family consists of two endangered languages spoken in the Chaco lowlands of South America: (i) Ayoreo, with about 4500 speakers in southern Bolivia and northern Paraguay; (ii) Chamacoco, with about 2000 speakers in the Paraguayan department of Alto Paraguay. Other Zamucoan languages were spoken in the past, but there is little or no documentation on them, with the only remarkable exception of †Old Zamuco, the main language of the Jesuit mission of San Ignacio de Samucos. It was described in the 18th century by the Jesuit Father Ignace Chomé, author of a grammar (Chomé 1958 [ante 1745]) and a dictionary. The latter is of particular interest, because it is the main source on Old Zamuco, and before its recent rediscovery (Ciucci 2018, forthcoming) had never been analyzed by linguists.1 The reader interested in Zamucoan can consult Ciucci’s (2016[2013]) systematic description of the inflectional morphology in each of the three main Zamucoan languages: Ayoreo * I would like to thank Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Alice Cavinato, R.M.W. Dixon, Brigitta Flick, Jolene Overall and Alex Walker. 1 I am preparing a critical edition of this document (Ciucci, forthcoming), which contains most of the Old Zamuco data employed here.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_004

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(AYO), Chamacoco (CHA) and Old Zamuco (OZA). Furthermore, there is Ciucci and Bertinetto’s (2015) reconstruction of verb inflection in Proto-Zamucoan, and Bertinetto’s (2014[2009]) grammatical sketch of Ayoreo. Other relevant studies on Zamucoan are Bertinetto (2011), Bertinetto and Ciucci (2012), and Ciucci (2013, 2014a, 2014b). Ciucci (2013, 2016) also include a detailed discussion of other linguistic contributions about Zamucoan. The data for Ayoreo come from Higham et al. (2000), Barrios et al. (1995), from Pier Marco Bertinetto’s fieldwork and from my fieldwork. For Chamacoco, unless told otherwise, I will use data from my fieldwork and from Ulrich and Ulrich (2000). Chamacoco has two dialects: Ebitoso (or Ɨbɨtoso) and Tomarãho. In this chapter I refer to the former, spoken by the vast majority of speakers. All other sources, in particular historical sources, are overtly mentioned in the chapter.2,3

3

Morphology

While analyzing the morphology of the lexeme ‘head’ in Zamucoan, one has to consider: (i) nominal suffixation (§3.1) and (ii) the possessive prefixes occurring with nouns (§3.2). They will be dealt with separately, since there is no interaction between prefixes and suffixes. 3.1 Nominal Suffixation All Zamucoan languages are fusional. Nominals, i.e. nouns and adjectives, have a shared suffix expressing gender (masculine or feminine), number (singular or plural) and ‘form’. What is called ‘form’ in previous studies on Zamucoan (Bertinetto 2014, Ciucci 2016) is actually a very rare typological feature of this

2 Data on Ayoreo and currently spoken Chamacoco are provided in phonemic transcription. For historical data, I report the transcription of the respective authors. Where interpretation is difficult, I add a phonetic transcription based on indications provided by the authors themselves. Sometimes, for reasons of clarity, I add a phonological interpretation to Old Zamuco data. This is possible, because there is enough data to analyze Old Zamuco phonology, but it is mostly unnecessary since Old Zamuco orthography is Spanish-based and straightforward. The only exceptions are the digraphs ⟨dd⟩ and ⟨nn⟩, which correspond to /d/ and /n/. The reasons for this are not clear: this use is not always coherent and might have to do with the perceived length of the preceding vowel. 3 In this chapter the following abbreviations are used: 1, 2, 3 = first, second, third person; AYO = Ayoreo; BF = base form; CHA = Chamacoco; EPENT = epenthesis; EXIST = existential; F = feminine; FF = full form; GF = generic form; IDEO = ideophone; IF = indeterminate form; IRLS = irrealis; M = masculine; OZA = Old Zamuco; PL = plural; PREP = preposition; RETR = retrospective; SG = singular.

30 table 2.1

ciucci The three-term system of nominal ‘form’ (Ciucci and Bertinetto, in preparation)

Old Zamuco Singular Masculine BF

Masculine FF

Masculine IF

Feminine BF

-∅

Plural -(y)o, -ño

Ayoreo Singular -∅

Plural

Chamacoco Singular

-( j)o, -ɲo

-∅, -k, -( j)ak -(ɨ)t, -(i)ʨ

-(i)tie

-oddoe, -onnoe

-i

-ode, -one

-nic, -ric, -tic

-nigo, -rigo, -tigo

-nik, -rik, -tik

-niŋo, -rigo, -riŋo, -tigo

-tɨk, -ɨ̃rk

-∅

-(y)i, -ñi -∅

-i

-∅, -aˀ, -eˀ, -oˀ, -ɨˀ

Plural -( j/w)o, -( j)e, -tso, -tɕo, -lo, -no

-tijo, -ɨ̃r

-( j/w)e Feminine FF

-(i)tae

Feminine IF

-nac, -rac, -tak

-(i)yie, -(i)ñie

-rigui

-∅, -(i)a

-(i)die, -(i)nie

-(ɨ)ta, -(i)ʨa

-nak, -rak, -tak

-niŋi, -rigi, -riŋi, -tigi

-tã(k), -rã(k)

-ɨ̃r

family, where one can distinguish a ‘base form’ (BF), a ‘full form’ (FF) and an ‘indeterminate form’ (IF). The nominal system of Zamucoan is reported in Table 2.1. The singular base form is, at least diachronically, the original root of the nominal and is often the starting point of any morphological operation.4 The base form, singular or plural, is used when the nominal carries out predication, 4 I will show that in this very respect, the Ayoreo and Old Zamuco word for ‘head’ is an exception. In the case of derived nominals, the singular base form coincides with the stem, with the root being another singular base form, as in utié, derived from uti: OZA uti (3.M.SG.BF), uti-tie (3.M.SG.FF) ‘firstborn child’ → utié (3.F.SG.BF), utie-tae (3.F.SG.FF) ‘firstborn child’.

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such as n̥ akɨrbɨtak ‘young man’ in (1). By contrast, whenever the nominal has argument function, it appears in full form (2a) or in indeterminate form (2b). The only difference between them is that the indeterminate form has a nonspecific referent, such as cucha-tic ‘thing’ in (2b). (1) CHA owa [n̥ akɨrbɨt-ak]INTRANSITIVE.PREDICATE 2SG young_man-M.SG.BF ‘You are a young man.’ (2) a. OZA

b. OZA

desi-oddoe dac boy-M.PL.FF [3]come ‘The boys come.’ (specific referent) (Chomé 1958: 128) A-gu cucha-tic 1SG-eat thing-M.SG.IF ‘I eat something.’ (non-specific referent) (Chomé 1958: 132)

The inflection of the lexeme ‘head’ for base form and full form is reported below.5 All of the forms in (3) refer to the 3-person possessor; the segmentation for the possessive inflection will be indicated in § 3.2: (3) a. OZA gatodde (3.F.SG.BF), gatoi-tae (3.F.SG.FF), gatodde-i (3.F.PL.BF), gatoi-yie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘head’ b. AYO gatode (3.F.SG.BF), gatoj / gatode (3.F.SG.FF), gatoi-die / gatode-die (3.F.PL.FF), gatode-j (3.F.PL.BF) ‘head’ c. CHA huˀ (3.F.SG.BF), hu-ta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’, hu / hu-we (3.F.PL) ‘head’ The inflection of ‘head’ perfectly exemplifies the genetic relationship among the three languages: Old Zamuco and Ayoreo are very close to each other and share the vast majority of their lexicon, as in this case. By contrast, Chamacoco, often the most innovative language of the family, only shares about 30 % of its lexicon with Old Zamuco and Ayoreo, and indeed the Chamacoco word used for ‘head’ has no cognate in these languages, despite the fact that it belongs to the basic lexicon. At the same time Chamacoco can preserve archaic features found in Old Zamuco, but lost in Ayoreo, such as the original singular FF suf5 From now on, I only use the abbreviation BF for base form and FF for full form. I do not report the indeterminate form, because it occurs less frequently than the others and only a small number of indeterminate forms is documented for Old Zamuco, so that comparison is difficult. For more information concerning the use of the form, see Ciucci (2016) and Bertinetto, Ciucci and Farina (forthcoming).

32

ciucci

fixes in -tV(V ) (cf. Table 2.1): indeed Chamacoco hu-ta (3c) has the F.SG.FF suffix -ta, clearly corresponding to Old Zamuco -tae in gatoi-tae (3a). Since Ayoreo has lost the original F.SG.FF suffix, in most feminine nouns the singular BF has replaced the singular FF, and this is why gatode is used in both cases (3b), as I am going to explain in detail. While the Chamacoco inflection of ‘head’ is regular, in Ayoreo ‘head’ is of particular interest, because it shows root allomorphy between gatode and gatoj / gatoi-.6 The fact that both roots can alternate in the singular FF and in the plural FF makes ‘head’ (3b) a unique case. In Ciucci (2016) it was not possible to provide any explanation for this, owing to lack of data for Old Zamuco. However, in the meantime the rediscovery of Chomé’s dictionary has made available the Old Zamuco inflection reported in (3a), which shows an older state of affairs. In Old Zamuco there is the same root allomorphy between gatodde /gatode/ and gatoi, but gatodde is specific for the BF, gatoi for the FF. This is a subregularity which did not emerge in Chomé’s grammar.7 However, in his Old Zamuco dictionary there is a marginal group of feminine nouns which have a root in -dde (/de/) for the BF, which differs from the root in -i employed for the FF. An example of this is ‘knee’ (4a), where the root of the BF is catadde and the root of the FF is catai. Old Zamuco also offers enough data in order to reconstruct how the two roots differentiated (to be addressed in another study: Ciucci and Bertinetto, in preparation). The important fact here is that such a root allomorphy is not restricted to Old Zamuco, as it has left traces in Ayoreo feminine nouns. In Ayoreo the singular BF has replaced the singular FF, as one can see comparing (4b) with (4a), but in the Ayoreo plural FF katai-die (4b) one can see the preservation of the same root as in the Old Zamuco FF s catai-tae and catai-yie (4a). This explains the irregular plural of ‘knee’ in Ayoreo. (4) a. OZA catadde (3.F.SG.BF), catai-tae (3.F.SG.FF), catadde-i (3.F.PL.BF), catai-yie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘knee’ b. AYO katade (GF.F.SG.BF), katade (GF.F.SG.FF), katade-j (GF.F.PL.BF), katai-die (GF.F.PL.FF) ‘knee’ Such a root allomorphy has mostly been lost in Ayoreo, but it is still to be observed in the plural FF of nouns such as the two mentioned above, which 6 Initial /g/ is actually a 3-person prefix, but for reasons of simplicity, I do not show the morpheme boundary here (see ex. 7). In Ayoreo after a vowel there is often ambiguity between /i/ and /j/, with /i/ generally turning into /j/ word-finally. 7 This is possibly due to the fact that there are two missing pages in the relevant part of the manuscript of Chomé’s Old Zamuco grammar (Chomé 1958).

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share the following features: (i) they are feminine; (ii) they have singular BF and FF ending in -de or in its nasalized counterpart -ne; (iii) they are all body parts (including ‘ear’, ‘finger’, ‘shoulder’, ‘socket/joint’ and ‘wrist’). This is remarkable, because in Old Zamuco the nouns with features (i) and (ii) were not restricted to body parts, while in Ayoreo this root has only been preserved in some body parts. So far, this is the only known case where semantics has interfered with the suffixation of a noun. As a consequence, Ayoreo body-part terms are characterized by a (synchronically) irregular plural FF. However, in some of them the irregular plural FF alternates with a ‘regular’ plural FF. The example below compares the inflection of ‘finger’ in Old Zamuco (5a) and Ayoreo (5b). In Ayoreo the conservative and irregular plural m̥ ai-nie (cf. Old Zamuco mai-ñie) alternates with the innovative m̥ ane-nie.8 The same applies to ‘head’ (6), ‘ear’, ‘finger’ and ‘shoulder’ (see Ciucci 2016: 466). (5) a. OZA manne (3.F.SG.BF), mai-tae (3.F.SG.FF), manne-i (3.F.PL.FF), mai-ñie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘finger’ b. AYO m̥ ane (3.F.SG.BF), m̥ ane (3.F.SG.FF), m̥ ane-j (3.F.PL.BF), m̥ ane-nie / m̥ ai-nie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘finger’ Ayoreo ‘head’, whose inflection is repeated below (6b) for ease of reference, is the most interesting noun of these body parts, because it is the only one in which the singular BF did not completely replace the singular FF. Comparing Old Zamuco with Ayoreo in (6), one can see that the latter has lost the original F.SG.FF suffix *-tae (Table 2.1); as a consequence, Old Zamuco gatoi-tae (3.F.SG.FF) corresponds to Ayoreo gatoj (3.F.SG.FF), which alternates with gatode, originally the singular BF now also used as FF. Not only is such an alternation unique in Ayoreo, but this is also the only example which shows the sequence of changes undergone by feminine nominals: (i) the original F.SG.FF suffix *-tae was first lost and (ii) then the replacement of the F.SG.FF by the F.SG.BF took place. The preservation of the F.SG.FF gatoj in Ayoreo shows an intermediate stage of diachronic change, not to be observed in any other Ayoreo nominal. (6) a. OZA gatodde (3.F.SG.BF), gatoi-tae (3.F.SG.FF), gatodde-i (3.F.PL.BF), gatoi-yie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘head’

8 Note that in (5) final -nne (-/ne/), -ne, -ñie and -nie are due to nasal harmony thus corresponding to -dde (-/de/), -de, -yie and -die (4).

34

ciucci

b. AYO gatode (3.F.SG.BF), gatoj / gatode (3.F.SG.FF), gatoi-die / gatode-die (3.F.PL.FF), gatode-j (3.F.PL.BF) ‘head’ 3.2 Nominal Prefixation In all Zamucoan languages body parts belong to the nouns inflected for possessor, which is expressed by a prefix. The possessive inflection of ‘head’ is shown below, and will be compared with historical data collected by other authors in § 3.3. This lexeme does not present any particular exceptions in any Zamucoan language. For reasons of simplicity, in (7) I only indicate prefixes with a clear segmental expression and only report the 1SG-, the 2SG- and the 3-person (in either BF or FF). For a complete description of possessive inflection in Zamucoan, see Ciucci (2016) and Ciucci and Bertinetto (2017).9 (7) a. OZA y-atoitae (1SG.F.SG.FF), atoitae (2SG.F.SG.FF), g-atoitae (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ b. AYO j-atode (1SG.F.SG.BF/FF), b-atode (2SG.F.SG.BF/FF), g-atode (3.F.SG. BF/FF) ‘head’; also: j-atoj (1SG.F.SG.FF), b-atoj (2SG.F.SG.FF), g-atoj (3.F. SG.FF) ‘head’ c. CHA p-uhuta / p-uːta (1SG.F.SG.FF), e-heta / eː-ta (2SG.F.SG.FF), huta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ In Zamucoan possessive nouns, the shape of the 3-person determines the inflectional class. In all languages at stake here ‘head’ belongs to marginal noun classes. The 3-prefix g- of Old Zamuco and Ayoreo is only found in a few nouns, while in Chamacoco ‘head’ belongs to a small group of ‘radical’ nouns, i.e. nouns where the 3-person consists of a root beginning with a consonant. Zamucoan nouns can optionally have a generic form (GF) which does not refer to any possessor. In Ayoreo the generic form of g-atode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) is p-atode (GF.F.SG.BF/FF), where p- is the most frequent prefix for the generic form. The Ayoreo generic form of ‘head’ can also show another prefix, dVk-, where V depends on vowel harmony, so that the following forms are attested: dak-atode / dok-atode (GF.F.SG.BF/FF), dak-atoj / dok-atoj (F.SG.FF). In Old Zamuco there is also another entry for ‘head’ with a different prefix: c-atode /k-atode/ (F.SG.BF), c-atoitae (F.SG.FF), c-atodei (F.PL.BF), c-atoiyie (F.PL.FF) ‘head, skull’. From Chomé’s data it is not clear whether this is a variant of the 3-person gatode or a generic form. Chamacoco has lost almost all generic

9 See also Ciucci (2010a, b) for the possessive inflection of Ayoreo and Chamacoco, respectively.

on the lexeme ‘head’ in zamucoan

35

forms, so that, in order not to express possession, the language makes use of periphrases whereby the noun is preceded by the 3P-person pronoun õr or by os, the reduced form of oso (M.PL) ‘people’ (8). (8) CHA huta (3.F.SG.FF), õr huta ‘their head / head (in general)’, os huta ‘head (in general)’ 3.3 Historical Data One can compare the data discussed above with those collected by the French traveller d’Orbigny, who visited Bolivia in 1831 and collected a word list of four extinct Old Zamuco ‘dialects’, published by Lussagnet (1961, 1962): (9) Guarañoca dialect: yatoita (1SG.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ Samucu and Poturero dialect: yatodo (1SG.F.SG.BF) ‘head’ Morotoco dialect: yatood (1SG.F.SG.BF) ‘head’10 These words are simply translated as ‘head’, but what d’ Orbigny has transcribed here is the form for the 1SG-possessor (cf. Kelm 1964). The same happens with most body parts documented by d’Orbigny, which show the 1SG-prefix y- (/j/-). The main difference between Old Zamuco (cf. § 3.1) and the above Zamucoan dialects lies in the final vowel, which is a possible result of language evolution, considering that these data have been collected about 90 years after Chomé’s work. The Guarañoca FF yatoita (1SG.F.SG.FF) has the same root as the Old Zamuco FF yatoitae (1SG.F.SG.FF). By contrast, in the other dialects the BF s yatodo (1SG.F.SG.BF) and yatood (1SG.F.SG.BF) have the same root as the Old Zamuco BF yatodde /jatode/ (1SG.F.SG.BF). In other words, the different BF and FF roots for ‘head’ in these dialects seem to provide further evidence that the root allomorphy of Old Zamuco also characterized its sister languages (not necessarily limited to those documented by d’Orbigny), to which Ayoreo is also related. The first attestation of ‘head’ in Chamacoco is in Boggiani (1894: 106): os-a-chu’. Leaving aside /a/, which is a vocalic insertion, os is the reduced form of oso ‘people’ and chu’ should be phonetically interpreted as [χu] or [çu],11 which seems to correspond to modern Chamacoco huˀ (3.F.SG.BF). In other 10

11

The data in this section were collected by different authors, but the glosses are mine as in the rest of the chapter. The relationship of these dialects with Old Zamuco and Ayoreo is not completely clear. I plan to deal with this issue in a future paper. The symbol ⟨ˈ⟩ indicates that the accent falls on chu, but in Boggiani it is not clear whether ⟨ch⟩ corresponds to [χ] or [ç]. The underlining in the original sources is preserved throughout.

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words, Boggiani has transcribed not just ‘head’, but the whole construction used to avoid reference to possession, corresponding to current Chamacoco os huˀ, as in §3.2, ex. (8), but with ‘head’ in F.SG.BF, literally meaning ‘it is a head (in general)’. Baldus (1932: 401) provides data from his fieldwork on Chamacoco plus some data collected by the Czech anthropologist Alberto Vojtěch Frič. Baldus reports the first three persons of ‘head’ in the Tomarãho dialect: poho (1SG.F.SG.BF), pëho [pɜhɔ] (1SG.F.SG.BF), pohë [pɔhɜ] (1SG.F.SG.BF), ahãta (2SG.F.SG.FF),12 ho [hɔ] (3.F.SG.BF). In poho, pëho and pohë one can clearly identify the prefix p-, which is a Chamacoco innovation for the 1SG-person (Ciucci and Bertinetto 2017). The 2SG- and 3-person are very similar to the forms Baldus transcribes for the Ebitoso dialect: aheté [aheˈtɛ] (2SG.F.SG.FF) and hoté [hoˈtɛ] (3.F.SG.FF). In both 2SG-persons ahãta and aheté one can identify the prefix vowel /a/, which is /e/ in modern Chamacoco (eheta; cf. 7c). Since /e/ as 2SG-prefix diachronically derives from /a/, the data collected by Baldus and Frič in the first half of the 20th century witness an older feature of the language. But apart from slight changes in vowel quality, the 3-person in both sources is the same as in current Chamacoco. In addition, Frič collected the form os ho ‘head’ for the Tomarãho dialect and hote (3.F.SG.FF) for a dialect which he calls Išira, now merged into modern Ebitoso: ho (3.F.SG.BF) is clearly the same BF seen above, and os ho avoids reference to any possessor, corresponding to ex. (8) and to Boggiani’s os-a-chu’. Finally, one also has to add the data provided by Sušnik, who worked on the Ebitoso dialect in the Fifties and collected data on a generation of speakers who have now passed away. Unfortunately, her description of the language is obscure and the data are often hard to interpret. Although she does not provide any gloss, in (10) one can recognize a 1SG-person with prefix p- and a 3-person coinciding with the root: (10) CHA púxute [ˈpuçute] (1SG.F.SG.FF) (Sušnik 1957: 81); púxutë [ˈpuçutɨ̞] (1SG.F.SG.FF) (Sušnik 1970: 22, 106, 113, 115); xûtë [çuːtɨ̞] (3.F.SG.FF) (Sušnik 1970: 106, 22); xúTe [ˈçutːe] (3.F.SG.FF) (Sušnik 1970: 106, 176) To sum up, even though the transcription by the different authors show some degree of variation in the vowels and the fricative consonant, the Chamacoco word for ‘head’ is documented since the first published studies on the

12

The form actually reported by Baldus for the second person is ahãta ho, but this is clearly a mistake.

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language. No lexical innovation took place in the recent past. No one of the mentioned authors seems to be aware of the difference between BF and FF in Chamacoco, first described in Ciucci (2016), but in the collected data one can clearly identify BF s and FF s,13 confirming that this basic contrast was there. The F.SG.FF suffix of ‘head’ is -ta in the variety I have documented, while in the historical data presented in this section there is some fluctuation between [ta], [te], [tɜ] and [tɨ̞]. If final [ɨ̞] and possibly [ɜ] could depend on the phonetic reduction of the final vowel (a process to be observed in currently spoken Chamacoco), the presence of final [a] or [e] could depend on vowel harmony, which is still found in Zamucoan, although it does not affect the suffix -ta.

4

On the Uses of the Lexeme ‘Head’

The following sections analyze the uses of ‘head’ in each Zamucoan language. This lexeme can appear in compounds, idiomatic expressions, or can be the base for derivation. It is not always possible to distinguish between compounding and derivation, because, particularly in the case of Old Zamuco, the second element of the compound is not always identifiable, or the derivational suffix has lost its productivity and is no longer transparent. The two kinds of compounds observed in the following sections are noun-noun and noun-adjective. Noun-noun compounds, be they endocentric or exocentric, historically derive from a genitive construction, where the first element is the modifier and the second element the head of the compound. In Old Zamuco and Ayoreo, compounds are clearly distinguished from genitive constructions, because the first element of a compound is in BF, while the modifier of a genitive construction is in FF, but in Chamacoco these two constructions can overlap. In the following examples, I report ‘head’ in 3-person, whenever possible, since the 3-person is the citation form for nouns in all sources available. Idiomatic expressions, however, are mostly provided with ‘head’ in 1SG-person. This depends on the available data: for example, in Chomé’s dictionary of Old Zamuco many relevant examples are found in verb entries, whose lemmatized form is the 1SG-person, following the Latin model. The lexeme ‘head’ is used in compounds to refer to parts of the head §4.1; it can refer to the intellect § 4.2 or be connected with

13

Baldus (1932: 393), for instance, considers the endings ta, te and te to be demonstrative pronouns. A similar mistake is found in Kelm (1964: 816, note 282) for the Zamucoan dialects documented by d’Orbigny.

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some names for fauna §4.3. A metaphoric projection of ‘head’ can also refer to the ‘starting point’ or to the ‘most important part’ of something § 4.4. Other uses are discussed in §4.5. 4.1 Parts and Extensions of the ‘Head’ The lexeme ‘head’ is the first element of compounds used to refer to parts of the head, such as the ‘skull’ (11) and the ‘top of the head’ (12), reactions to wounds / illnesses on its surface, or secretions (13). The same applies to objects or parts of objects used to cover the head (14), which are seen as an extension of it. These compounds are endocentric, unlike most compounds in the rest of this chapter. The second element of the compound is not always transparent, as in Ayoreo gatahidi (12a) and gatohe (14b).14 As mentioned above, in Old Zamuco and Ayoreo the first element of the compound always occurs in singular BF, and for this reason in (12–15), as well as in the rest of this chapter, I systematically report its singular BF. However, in Old Zamuco and Ayoreo compounds such as yat’ugoroyie (13b), gatarĩ (13c), gatohe (14b) and gatué (14c), the first element is a reduced form of the singular BF. Although in most cases the singular BF coincides with the root of the nominal, ‘head’ is an exception. These and the following examples show that neither of them is the original root, which, leaving apart the 3-prefix g-, was probably -at(o)-. This also applies to the Old Zamuco and Ayoreo nouns that show the same phenomenon of root allomorphy (§3.1).15 (11) a. AYO gatodan̥ okej (3.M.SG.FF) ‘skull’ < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + an̥ okej (3.M.SG.FF) ‘bone’ b. AYO gatodaoj (3.M.SG.FF) ‘skull; sepal, bark’ < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + aoj (3.M.SG.FF) ‘skin’16 c. CHA huta debijo ‘skull’ < huta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ + debijo (M.PL) ‘bone’ (12) a. AYO gatahidi (3.M.SG.FF) ‘top of head’ < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + ?17 14 15 16

17

Another possibility is that they are derivations, but no such derivational suffixes have so far been documented. For a diachronic explanation of this root allomorphy, see Ciucci and Bertinetto (in preparation). The literal meaning of the compound is ‘the skin of the head’. The meaning of ‘skull’ could be explained by the “natural tendency for a person-part term to shift to refer to a spacially contiguous person part within the same whole” (Wilkins 1996: 273). The compound then underwent methaphorical extension so that it also means ‘sepal, bark’. Here and in the following examples, the question mark indicates that it is not possible

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b. CHA hutubɨta (F.SG.FF) ‘top of head, hair whorl in the top of the head’ ‘top, summit’ (F.SG.BF) < huta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ + ɨbɨta (3.M.SG.FF) ‘place where one sits’, ‘corner’, ‘bottom’ (hutubɨta is literally ‘the corner of the head’) (13) a. OZA yatodde ñorât (1SG.M.SG.BF) ‘crust on head’ < yatodde (1SG.F.SG. BF) ‘head’+ ñorât (M.SG.BF) ‘cover’ b. OZA yat’ugoroyie (1SG.F.PL.FF) ‘lump on the head’ < yatodde (1SG.F.SG. BF) ‘head’ + ugoroyie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘knot’ c. OZA gatarĩ (GF.M.SG.BF) ‘dandruff’18 < gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ + ãri (M.SG.FF) ‘flour’ (14) a. OZA gatodde bie (3.F.SG.BF) ‘hat, cap’ < gatodde (3.F.SG.BF) ‘head’ + ibie (3.F.SG.BF) ‘dress, clothes’ b. AYO gatohe (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘cap, hat’ < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + ? c. OZA gatué (3.F.SG.BF) ‘convexity at the sides of a helmet’ < gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ + güe /we/ (F.SG.BF) ‘horn’, ‘corner’ In his Old Zamuco dictionary, Chomé notes that the plural of ‘head’ may mean ‘hair’. This is the meaning of ‘head’ in Old Zamuco ahu yatoiyie ‘crop my hair!’ (15a), but there are also expressions in which the singular of ‘head’ logically refers to ‘hair’ (cf. Chamacoco, ex. 20). (15) a. OZA

18

ahu y-atoi-yie [2SG.IRLS]crop 1SG-head-F.PL.FF ‘Crop my hair!’, lit. ‘Crop my heads.’ (cf. 20c)

b. OZA

y-atoi-tae ch-o miti_miti 1SG-head-F.SG.FF 3-look_like IDEO ‘My hair stands on end.’

c. OZA

y-atoi-tae cirunaugue ique 1SG-head-F.SG.FF tumbledown[F.SG.BF] RETR ‘I am bald’, lit. ‘My head has crumbled.’

to identify the second element of a compound or derivation, owing to lack of data or to diachronic change. Chomé treats gatarĩ as a generic form, but this is hardly convincing.

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d. OZA

a-güariguez y-atoi-tae 1SG-EPENT:cleanse 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘I comb my hair’, lit. ‘I sweep, cleanse my head.’

The following Old Zamuco compounds also refer to ‘hair’ and have ‘head’ as the first element, while the second element is a noun or an adjective. (16) a. OZA gatodde quiyiguitauc (M.SG.BF) ‘with curly hair’ < gatodde (3.F.SG. BF) ‘head’ + quiyiguitauc (M.SG.BF) ‘restless, one who does not stop’ b. OZA gatodde pizap (M.SG.BF) ‘blond, reddish’ < gatodde (3.F.SG.BF) ‘head’ + pizap (M.SG.BF) ‘red’ c. OZA gaturac (M.SG.BF) ‘one who has hair already grown’ < gatodde (3.F.SG.BF) ‘head’ + ? d. OZA gatuat (F.SG.FF) ‘uneven ends of badly cut hair’ < gatodde (3.M.SG. BF) ‘head’ + güat /wat/ or üat (F.SG.FF) ‘plant’ Ayoreo too has compounds referring to ‘hair’ with ‘head’ as first element (17). However, while in Old Zamuco there is no specific term to refer to ‘human hair’, Ayoreo employs gaterero or its variant gatororo (18). Interestingly, the same compound existed in Old Zamuco (19) with a slightly different meaning. The difference between Ayoreo gaterero and Old Zamuco gateroi lies in the meaning of the second element, which is diachronically the same and possibly underwent semantic change in Ayoreo.19 (17) a. AYO gatodiʨaj (M.SG.FF) ‘bald’ > gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + iʨaj (M.SG.FF) ‘new, clean’ b. AYO gatuj (M.SG.FF) ‘short hair’ > gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + ? (18) AYO gaterero / gatororo (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘hair’ < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + AYO ero (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘plant stem’ (19) OZA gateroi (F.PL.BF) ‘different length of cut hair’ < gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ + ero (F.SG.BF), eroi (F.PL.BF) ‘different length of the branches of a tree’ 19

D’Orbigny provides the word for ‘hair’ in the Zamucoan dialects mentioned in § 3.3 (Lussagnet 1961: 222): Guarañoca yaturita (1S.FF), Samucu/Poturero yatoydiuda (1S), Morotoco yigi (1S). Here, apart from the grammatical information just provided in the glosses, owing to the paucity of data, one can only recognize ‘head’ as first element in yaturita and yatoydiuda.

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Ayoreo also has another term to refer to human hair, akãraj (3.M.SG.FF), which also means ‘leaf’. This corresponds to Chamacoco akɨ̃rt (3.M.SG.FF) ‘hair’. By contrast, the Old Zamuco cognate acarãtie (3.M.SG.FF) refers to ‘leaf’, ‘small feather’, ‘wool’ and ‘animal hair’, but not to ‘human hair’. Despite the presence of a specific term for human ‘hair’ in Chamacoco, ‘head’ can sometimes mean ‘hair’ (Sušnik 1970: 106), as in the following expressions (20). (20) a. CHA t-ār p-úxu-të [taːr ˈpuçutɨ̞] 1SG-arrange 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘I comb my hair’, lit. ‘I arrange my head.’ (Sušnik 1970: 115) b. CHA

t-arʐ p-uhu-ta 1SG-arrange 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘I comb my hair’, lit. ‘I arrange my head.’ (own fieldwork, cf. 20a)

c. CHA

tuk-uhu p-uhu-ta 1SG-crop 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘I crop my hair’, lit. ‘I crop my head.’ (cf. 15a)

d. CHA

ts-ehek hu-ta 3-divide [3]head-F.SG.FF ‘S/he looks for the lice in (someone else’s) head’, lit. ‘S/he divides (someone else’s) head.’

e. CHA hu-ta noɕɨ [3]head-F.SG.FF spill ‘S/he is losing her/his hair’, lit. ‘Her/his head is spilling.’ 4.2 Head and States of Mind ‘Head’ is also connected with the notion of ‘intellect’, ‘mind’. The two Old Zamuco adjective compounds in (21a–b) refer to someone who is ‘stubborn’ or ‘silly’. A negative connotation is also conveyed by the Chamacoco idiomatic expressions in (22a–b), while (22c) simply refers to a loss of memory. In the case of (22a), debiʨ can mean both ‘hard’ and ‘bone’, so that huta debiʨ ‘to be pigheaded, stubborn’ (lit. ‘her/his head is hard’) is very similar to huta debijo ‘skull’ (11c): the difference is that ‘hard’ is an invariable adjective while the second element of ‘skull’ is the plural of ‘bone’. ‘Head’ and ‘hard’ are also associated in the Old Zamuco compound in (21a). (21) a. OZA gatoduahat (M.SG.BF) ‘stubborn’ ‘coarse’ (referring to a person) < gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ + güahat /wahat/ (M.SG.BF) ‘hard’

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b. OZA gaturozo (F/M.SG.BF) ‘silly, stupid’ < gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ + urozo (BF) ‘which hurts’, cf. Ayoreo urõso (F/M.SG.BF) ‘which hurts’20 (22) a. CHA hu-t(a) debiʨ [3]head-F.SG.FF hard ‘S/he is pig-headed, stubborn’, lit. ‘Her/his head is hard.’ b. CHA hu-t(a) xãr [3]head-F.SG.FF hungry ‘S/he is mad’, lit. ‘Her/his head is hungry.’ c. CHA p-uhu-t(a) wopɨˀ 1SG-head-F.SG.FF insane[F.SG.BF] ‘I do not remember’, lit. ‘My head is insane.’ In (23) there are Old Zamuco or Ayoreo idiomatic expressions in which the head is the centre of a state of mind: an emotional state (23a), or a reasoning involving wrong (23b) or negative (23c) thoughts. In Chamacoco ‘head’ is also used in idiomatic expressions referring to intellectual abilities in a positive sense, as in (24), where the ‘head’ is the “seat” of learning and understanding processes. (23) a. OZA

20

y-atoi-tae ch-o_cere 1SG-head-F.SG.FF 3-get_dark ‘I am bewildered, scatterbrained’, lit. ‘my head gets dark.’

b. OZA

a-cuaz udde ihi atoi-tae 2SG.IRLS-throw_out it PREP [2SG]head-F.SG.FF ‘Get it out of your head!’

c. AYO

j-iŋira j-atoj aha_keden̥ ane 1SG-throw 1SG-head[F.SG.FF] everywhere ‘I am preoccupied by terrible circumstances’, lit. ‘I throw my head everywhere.’

Urozo is found in Old Zamuco, but, since the very pages of the dictionary in which it was lemmatized have been lost, we have no complete information on the inflection.

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(24) a. CHA xû-tï=š [çuːtɨʃ] [3]head-F.SG.FF=EXIST ‘S/he is learned’, lit. ‘S/he has head.’ (Sušnik 1970: 39) b. CHA jok p-uhu-ta=ɕ [nowadays rare] 1SG 1SG-head-F.SG.FF=EXIST ‘I understand, I am learned’, lit. ‘I have head.’ c. CHA č-íš p-úxu-të [ˈʧiʃ ˈpuçutɨ̞] 3-catch 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘My understanding’, lit. ‘It catches my head.’ (Sušnik 1970: 40) d. CHA ɨɕɨr-o aw̥ os-o ʨ-iɕ p-uhu-ta Chamacoco-M.PL [3]word-M.PL 3-catch 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘The Chamacoco language remains in my mind’, i.e. ‘I do not forget Chamacoco’, lit. ‘The Chamacoco language catches my head.’ e. CHA hu-t(a) uːɕɨ [nowadays rare] [3]head-F.SG.FF [3]run ‘S/he thinks’, lit. ‘Her/his head is running.’ 4.3 Animals The term ‘head’ is also used to form some names for fauna. In (25) I analyze noun compounds for birds in Ayoreo. The data come from Fischermann (1988) who has collected a long list of animals and plants known to the Ayoreo, along with their scientific name. In the case of the birds in (25), the head or the crown generally forms a sharp contrast with the rest of the body, and as such, is the most salient body part in order to recognize a given bird. Whenever possible, after each example I have added a short explanation for the origin of the name. The noun compounds in (25b) and (25g) are formed by a compound bird name plus the adjective keden̥ aj ‘different’; this is a frequently used device exploited by the Ayoreo to increase their own zoological and botanical lexicon. (25) a. AYO ʨeke gatoj (F.SG.FF) ‘red-crested cardinal’ (Paroaria coronata) < ʨeke (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘woman’ + gatoj (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ (lit. ‘head of woman’). It is a songbird characterized by a red head and crest. b. AYO ʨeke gatoj keden̥ aj (M.SG.FF) ‘yellow-billed cardinal’ (Paroaria capitata) < ʨeke gatoj (F.SG.FF) ‘red-crested cardinal’ + keden̥ aj (M.SG.FF) ‘different’. It is very similar to ʨeke gatoj and also characterized by a red head.

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c. AYO gatode karataj (M.SG.FF) ‘golden-green woodpecker’ (Piculus chrysochloros) < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + karataj (M.SG.FF) ‘red, brown’. The males of this bird have red feathers on their head. d. AYO gatode karate (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘cattle tyrant’ (Machetornis rixosa) < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + karate (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘red, brown’. It is a yellow bird with brown head. e. AYO gatode pororoj (F.SG.FF) ‘blond-crested woodpecker’ (Celeus flavescens) < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + pororoj (M.SG.FF) ‘white’. It has a blond, crested head which contrasts with the black color of the rest of its body. f. AYO gatode un̥ ej (M.SG.FF) ‘white-fronted woodpecker’ (Melanerpes cactorum) < gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ + ? g. AYO gatode un̥ e keden̥ aj (M.SG.FF) ‘diademed tanager’ (Stephanophorus diadematus) < gatode un̥ ej (M.SG.BF) ‘white-fronted woodpecker’ + keden̥ aj (M.SG.FF) ‘different’ Apart from birds, there are other animals (26–27) in which one can clearly recognize ‘head’ as the first element of the word. Interestingly, this is observed in both Old Zamuco and Ayoreo with ‘armadillo’ and ‘cockroach’. However, it is hard to say something more specific, because the word formation is not clear in the case of (26a,b) and (27) and it is difficult to decide between derivation and compounding. Ayoreo gatodehaj is possibly derived from ‘head’ (like its Old Zamuco cognate gatodeac) and refers to both the armadillo and the cockroach. From this term for ‘armadillo’, gatodehabi (26c) and gatodehan̥ aj (26d) are derived. In the former (26c), one can recognise the diminutive suffix -abi (DIM.M.SG.FF), and indeed gatodehabi is smaller than the two species designated by gatodehaj (26b) according to Fischermann (1988). By contrast, gatodehan̥ aj (26d) is larger than the other species and is derived by means of the suffix -n̥ aj, which often has an augmentative value. (26) a. OZA gatodeac (M.SG.BF) ‘type of armadillo’ (possibly Dasypus novemcinctus) b. AYO gatodehaj (M.SG.FF), gatodehak (M.SG.BF) ‘armadillo’ (Dasypus novemcinctus / Euphractus sexcintus) c. AYO gatodehabi (M.SG.FF) ‘big hairy armadillo’ (Chaetophractus villosus) d. AYO gatodehan̥ aj (M.SG.FF) ‘giant armadillo’ (Priodontes maximus) (27) a. OZA gatodeadap (M.SG.BF) ‘cockroach’ b. AYO gatodehaj (M.SG.FF), gatodehak (M.SG.BF) ‘cockroach’ (phonologically identical to ‘armadillo’)

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Finally, in the Chamacoco word, hutukɨta (F.SG.FF) ‘horsefly’, the first element could mistakenly be interpreted as hut(a) ‘head’. However, the fact that Chamacoco ‘horsefly’ has cognates in the other Zamucoan languages with a different word for ‘head’ (28) permits to discard such a hypothesis. (28) OZA huticatie (M.SG.FF) ‘horsefly’; AYO hutikaj (M.SG.FF) ‘horsefly’; CHA hutukɨta (F.SG.FF) ‘horsefly’ 4.4 The ‘Head’ as ‘Beginning’, ‘Starting Point’ and ‘Most Important Part’ In some cases ‘head’ seems to designate a starting point. Consider the following Ayoreo compounds in which ‘head’ is the second element (29–30). The first elements, n̥ akar (M.SG.BF) ‘young man’ (29) and gapu (F.SG.BF) ‘young woman’ (30), refer to individuals who are sexually mature but still unmarried, generally between 15 and 27 years (Pia 2016: 90–91).21 In order to refer to someone who is at the beginning of this period (about 15 years old), the exocentric compounds in (29–30) are used (Pia, ibidem): they literally mean ‘the head, the beginning of the young woman/man’. Note that n̥ akar gatode, whose referent is masculine, is morphologically feminine, since ‘head’ is feminine. Similar considerations apply to the Chamacoco NP s in (31). Since Chamacoco compounds can have the same structure as possessive NP s, with the first element in FF, as in (31), only semantics permits to consider deːjʨ huta (31a) and ɨxiʨ huta (31b) compounds: from a structural point of view, ‘dawn’ is expressed by a possessive construction literally meaning ‘the head of the day’, and the ‘beginning of the path’ by a possessive construction meaning ‘the head of the path’. (29) AYO gapu gatode (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘young woman at the beginning of sexual maturity’ < gapu (F.SG.BF) ‘young woman’ + gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ (30) AYO n̥ akar gatode (F.SG.BF/FF) ‘young man at the beginning of sexual maturity’ < n̥ akar (M.SG.BF) ‘young man’ + gatode (3.F.SG.BF/FF) ‘head’ (31) a. CHA deːjʨ huta ‘dawn’ < deːjʨ (M.SG.FF) ‘day’ + huta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’, lit. ‘the head of the day’ b. CHA ɨxiʨ huta ‘beginning of the path’ < ɨxiʨ (3.M.SG.FF) ‘path’ + huta (3.F.SG.FF), lit. ‘the head of the path’

21

The Ayoreo traditionally did not count the years of their life, so that the years are necessarily an approximation.

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One can see an analogous use of ‘head’ in the Chamacoco compound ‘trunk’ (32), which literally means ‘the head of the tree’; here ‘head’ should be seen as the starting point, the base of the visible part of the tree, from which the branches unfold.22 A similar example is the Old Zamuco compound in (33), in which ‘head’ refers to the part of the knife which is not worn-out, basically the handle and, in addition, what remains of the spine and the blade. Here also, ‘head’ refers to the base, the initial part of the knife, which, as such, is less subject to consumption than the rest of the knife. (32) CHA pohɨrˀ huta (F.SG.FF) ‘trunk’ < pohɨrˀ (F.SG.BF) ‘tree’ + huta (3.F.SG.FF) ‘head’ (33) OZA pichautat gatode (GF.F.SG.FF) ‘worn knife, of which only a short piece remains’ < pichautat (GF.M.SG.BF) ‘knife’ + gatodde (3.F.SG.BF) ‘head’ (lit. ‘the head of the knife’) Some of the uses of ‘head’ mentioned here are also associated with the importance of what is designated. Indeed, according to Bórmida (2005, II: 53) in Ayoreo the term ‘head’ is used for many objects in order to refer to their most important part, while ‘foot’ indicates the opposite part. For instance, a traditional purification ceremony for Ayoreo warriors was held after a battle on a clearing called paragapidi (GF.M.SG.FF), whose spatial ends are called ‘head’ and ‘foot, toes’.23 This use of ‘head’ is also linked to nouns for fauna in § 4.3, where animals are defined by their heads. 4.5 Other Uses of ‘Head’ In Old Zamuco, one also has to note other special uses of ‘head’. (34a) is a possessive construction to indicate ‘vertigo’. The fact that head is in FF rather than in BF indicates that this should not be considered a compound. (34b) is a periphrasis in which iz iz is an ideophone only documented in this context. (34c) is an idiomatic expression, while (34d) is a compound originated from the metaphorical interpretation of ‘chimney soot’ as ‘the head of the house’. Finally, although I do not have enough information about the actual use of gestures in the Old Zamuco culture, one can point out that the expression in (34e), literally

22 23

Owing to the presence of the singular BF on the first element, this is not to be considered a possessive construction. For the latter end, Bórmida reports the term gidedie (3.F.PL.FF) ‘toe’. On this ceremony, see Bórmida (2005, II: 49–53) and Otaegui (2014: 59–60).

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‘to move the head’, means ‘to call someone, to agree’. By contrast, ‘to say no’ is literally rendered with ‘to move the eyes’. (34) a. OZA

g-atoi-tae terarâriga 3-head-F.SG.FF [3]swaying/wobbling[M.SG.BF] ‘Vertigo.’ (cf. 23a)

b. OZA

y-atoi-tae ch-o iz_iz 1SG-head-F.SG.FF 3-look_like IDEO ‘I have a dizzy spell.’

c. OZA

a-iguina g-atoi-tae a num-onoe 1SG-hit 3-head-F.SG.FF PREP land-M.PL.FF ‘I smash (it) against the wall.’

d. OZA

guigueddagatode (F.SG.BF) ‘chimney soot’ < guiguedda (GF.M. SG.BF) ‘house’ + gatodde (3.M.SG.BF) ‘head’ (lit. ‘the head of the house.’)

e. OZA

a-recare y-atoi-tae 1SG-move 1SG-head-F.SG.FF ‘I agree, say yes’, ‘I call someone with the head.’ (lit. ‘I move my head.’)

f. OZA

a-recare y-edo-yie 1SG-move 1SG-eye-F.PL.FF ‘I say no’, lit. ‘I move my eyes.’ (Chomé’s translation: ‘To say no with the head.’)

One also has to mention the fact that the traditional life of Zamucoan people involved competition and frequent wars with the surrounding groups in order to secure the scarce resources. In the case of Chamacoco, Sušnik (1969: 23) mentions the fact that in the past warriors used to bring to their village the heads of the enemies killed, in order to gain prestige and social status in the tribe. She also adds that such a habit was possibly the result of cultural contact. This is confirmed by Fischermann (1988), who points out that collecting the heads of the enemy is typical of some Chaco tribes and is also narrated in some Ayoreo stories, although according to him this does not properly belong to the Ayoreo culture.

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Conclusions

In this chapter I have analyzed the morphology and the uses of ‘head’ in the Zamucoan family, where one has to distinguish two branches: Old Zamuco/ Ayoreo, on the one hand, and Chamacoco, on the other. The word for ‘head’ is unrelated in the two branches, but there are similarities in the inflectional morphology of the word, in particular between Old Zamuco and Chamacoco. This is in line with the morphological description of Ciucci (2016). Moreover, the examination of the historical sources (§3.3) has for the first time identified a number of morphological features described in Ciucci (2016). The analysis has also highlighted figurative uses of the lexeme ‘head’ as common to both branches, namely: the meaning of ‘head’ as ‘hair’, and its association with ‘intellect’ (§4.2) and with ‘beginning’ or ‘most important part of something’ (§4.4). In the context of the peculiar nominal suffixation of Zamucoan, Ayoreo ‘head’ is a unique morphological exception for which it was not possible to find an explanation in Ciucci (2016). The recent rediscovery of Chomé’s dictionary permits a better understanding of the historical evolution of the word: ‘head’ showed a subregular root allomorphy in Old Zamuco, which turned into a sheer morphological exception in Ayoreo. The analysis of the compounds of head offers further information on the development of its morphology. In Old Zamuco and Ayoreo, the first element of a compound is in singular BF, and this is shown in several examples throughout this chapter. There are, however, a few Old Zamuco and Ayoreo compounds of ‘head’ in which a ‘reduced’ BF is used as first element. This was possibly the original root of the word before the split into a BF root and a FF root, an innovation common to both languages. In noun-noun compounds ‘head’ is generally the first element, with the exception of those presented in §4.4, in which ‘head’ indicates the beginning or the most important part of an entity, along with Old Zamuco guigueddagatode ‘chimney soot’ (34d) and Ayoreo ʨeke gatoj ‘red-crested cardinal’ (25a). The latter belongs to the group of bird names, which are otherwise noun-adjective compounds. Unfortunately, data for bird names in Old Zamuco are scarce, so that comparison is not possible. Recent research (Ciucci 2014b) has identified several traces of contact between Zamucoan and other languages of the Chaco, so that it would be interesting to see whether some similarities with the surrounding languages could emerge in the use of the lexeme ‘head’.

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References Baldus, Herbert. 1932. “Beiträge zur Sprachenkunde der Samuko-Gruppe”. Anthropos 27. 361–416. Barrios, Armindo, Domingo Bulfe and José Zanardini. 1995. Ecos de la selva. Ayoreode uruode. Asunción: Centro de Estudios Antropológicos de la Universidad Católica. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 2011. “How the Zamuco languages dealt with verb affixes”. Word Structure 4,2. 215–230. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 2014 [2009]. “Ayoreo”. In: Mily Crevels and Pieter Muysken (eds.), Lenguas de Bolivia, Tomo 3: Oriente. La Paz: Plural Editores. 369–413. English version [“Ayoreo (Zamuco). A grammatical sketch”, 2009] in Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 8 n.s. Bertinetto, Pier Marco and Luca Ciucci. 2012. “Parataxis, Hypotaxis and Para-Hypotaxis in the Zamucoan Languages”. Linguistic Discovery 10,1. 89–111. Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci and Margherita Farina. (Forthcoming). “Morphologically expressed non-verbal predication”. Boggiani, Guido. 1894. I Ciamacoco. Conferenza tenuta in Roma alla Società Geografica Italiana il giorno 2 giugno 1894 ed in Firenze alla Società Antropologica il 24 dello stesso mese. Roma: Società Romana per l’Antropologia. Bórmida, Marcelo. 2005 [1973–1979]. “Ergon y mito. Una hermenéutica de la cultura material de los Ayoreo del Chaco Boreal (2 vols)”. Archivos del Departamento de Antropología Cultural 3,1–2. Buenos Aires: CIAFIC Ediciones. Chomé, Ignace. 1958 [before 1745]. “Arte de la lengua zamuca” (editor: Suzanne Lussagnet). Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 47. 121–178. Ciucci, Luca. 2010a. “La flessione possessiva dell’ayoreo”. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 9,2 n.s. Ciucci, Luca. 2010b. “La flessione possessiva del chamacoco”. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 9,2 n.s. Ciucci, Luca. 2013. “Chamacoco lexicographical supplement”. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 12 n.s. Ciucci, Luca. 2014a. “Introducción lingüística al Diccionario antropológico ayoreo”. In: Gabriella Erica Pia, Ensayo introductivo al Diccionario antropológico ayoreo. Pisa: Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore. 7–14. Ciucci, Luca. 2014b. “Tracce di contatto tra la famiglia zamuco (ayoreo, chamacoco) e altre lingue del Chaco: prime prospezioni”. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 13 n.s. Ciucci, Luca. 2016 [2013]. Inflectional morphology in the Zamucoan languages. Asunción: CEADUC. Biblioteca Paraguaya de Antropología, Vol. 103. Ciucci, Luca. 2018. “Lexicography in the Eighteenth-century Gran Chaco: the Old Zamuco Dictionary by Ignace Chomé”. In: Jaka Čibej, Vojko Gorjanc, Iztok Kosem and

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Simon Krek (eds.), Proceedings of the XVIII EURALEX International Congress: Lexicography in Global Contexts. Ljubljana: Ljubljana University Press. 439–451. Ciucci, Luca (ed.). (Forthcoming). Ignace Chomé: Vocabulario de la lengua zamuca— Edición crítica y comentario lingüístico. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Verfuert Verlag. Ciucci, Luca and Pier Marco Bertinetto. 2015. “A diachronic view of the Zamucoan verb inflection”. Folia Linguistica Historica 36,1. 19–87. Ciucci, Luca and Pier Marco Bertinetto. 2017. “Possessive inflection in Proto-Zamucoan: A reconstruction”. Diachronica 34,3. 283–330. Ciucci, Luca and Pier Marco Bertinetto. (In preparation). “For the reconstruction of Proto-Zamucoan nominal suffixation”. Fischermann, Bernd. 1988. Zur Weltsicht der Ayoréode Ostboliviens. PhD thesis. Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität. Higham, Alice, Maxine Morarie and Greta Paul. 2000. Ayoré-English dictionary. Sanford, FL.: New Tribes Mission. 3 vols. Kelm, Heinz. 1964. “Das Zamuco: eine lebende Sprache”. Anthropos 59. 457–516 and 770–842. Lussagnet, Suzanne. 1961. “Vocabulaires Samuku, Morotoko, Poturero et Guarañoka précédés d’une étude historique et géographique sur les anciens Samuku du Chaco bolivien et leur voisins”. Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 50. 185–243. Lussagnet, Suzanne. 1962. “Vocabulaires Samuku, Morotoko, Poturero et Guarañoka (suite et fin)”. Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 51. 35–64. Otaegui, Alfonso. 2014. Les chants de nostalgie et de tristesse ayoreo du Chaco Boreal paraguayen (une ethnographie des liens coupés). PhD thesis. Paris: École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Pia, Gabriella Erica. 2016. Diccionario antropológico ayoreo. Parte tercera: Adecuado— Adulto casado. Pisa: Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore. Sušnik, Branislava. 1957. “Estructura de la lengua chamacoco-ebitoso (con fraseario del dialecto Ebitoso)”. Boletín de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay y del Museo Andrés Barbero, Etnolingüística I. Sušnik, Branislava. 1969. Chamacoco I. Cambio cultural. Asunción: Museo Etnográfico “Andrés Barbero”. Sušnik, Branislava. 1970. Chamacocos. Diccionario etnografico. Asunción: Museo Etnográfico “Andrés Barbero”. Ulrich, Matthew and Rosemary Ulrich. 2000. Diccionario Ɨshɨro (Chamacoco)—Español / Español—Ɨshɨro (Chamacoco). Asunción: Misión Nuevas Tribus Paraguay. Wilkins, David P. 1996. “Natural Tendencies of Semantic Change and the Search for Cognates”. In: Mark Durie and Malcom Ross (eds.), The Comparative Method Reviewed. Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press. 264–304.

chapter 3

What the Grammaticalization of ‘Head’ Reveals about the Semantic Structure of a Language? Zygmunt Frajzyngier

1

The Question*

The modern studies of grammaticalization over the last 60 years, continuing the Humboldtian tradition, have provided excellent lists of sources and associated processes for a variety of grammatical morphemes (Kuryłowicz 1965, Samuels 1975, Lehmann 1982/2002, Heine and Kuteva 2002). Names of body parts as a source of grammatical morphemes figured quite prominently in this discussion (Heine 2014). A fundamental and hitherto under-explored question in grammaticalization is why the same lexical item has been grammaticalized for the function F1 in some languages but for a different function (F2) in other languages, and in still other languages has not been grammaticalized at all. An even more fundamental question is why grammatical systems in some languages code functions that are not encoded in grammatical systems of other languages, regardless of the formal means by which they are encoded. The usually invoked motivations for grammaticalization are communicative need and creativity (Heine and Kuteva 2002, Heine 2014). Communicative need, while a plausible explanation, begs the question of why speakers of different languages differ in their communicative needs. Creativity may be considered to be a motivation rather than the mere ability to solve a problem, but as such it is too broad to answer the questions about differences across languages. In the last 50 years or so there have been numerous attempts to explain the deployment of body-part terms in languages in terms of cognitive motivations, * I express here my thanks to the speakers of Pero, Mina, Wandala, and Lele who have not only provided the data but also have allowed me to have the insight into their languages. The limitation of this study to only four languages is based on constraints on the length of the paper and on the conviction that a somewhat extensive argumentation for each language is preferable to a set of assertions based on a few isolated examples from many languages. Although the work draws on data from languages whose grammars I have already described, the present analyses supersede those in the published grammars. I am most grateful to Erin Shay for making many substantial and editorial suggestions. I am also grateful to anonuymous reader for the good questions about the argumentation in this study. Any errors of fact or interpretation are my sole responsibility.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_005

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including metaphors. These are good explanations for why body-terms rather than some other terms, e.g. terms for food products, came to be grammaticalized for various functions. But that does not explain why body-part terms have been grammaticalized for some functions in some languages, for different functions in other languages, and not grammaticalized at all in still other languages. There are some attempts to explain grammaticalizations by different conceptualizations in different cultures. The value of this explanation is not clear. Because the culture itself is examined through the lens of the language, one cannot use language data to claim that the presence of a language feature results from the presence of some cultural feature. Moreover, one can demonstrate the inadequacy of this explanation by showing that genetically related languages spoken by people living in the same geographical area, involved in the same everyday activities (e.g. agriculture), planting the same crops, sharing the same religion and the same social and family organization, and even sharing the same oral traditions, have encoded different functions in their grammatical systems. As an anonymous reader has observed, the notion of ‘the same culture’ needs to be made precise. It is generally assumed that no two people share exactly the same perception, views, knowledge and beliefs. When it comes to language communities the differences are multiplied by the number of people speaking the language. We know that within the language community there exist significant differences not only in the lexicon used by different speakers but also in the grammatical constructions, i.e. in the functions coded by the grammatical system. Nevertheless, when we have genetically related languages that are spoken within the same geographical area without any geographical barriers, whose speakers are involved in the same activities, such as agriculture, and whose speakers share the same religious beliefs (Islam among Mina, Wandala, and Lele; Christianity and traditional religion among Pero), family structure, and oral literature as well as the same history, we do not expect that the grammatical differences among these languages are triggered by any of these cultural factors. In fact, the existence of grammatical differences among such communities constitutes the strongest argument against the possibility of social factors affecting all of the grammatical system. Culture, while possibly explaining some functions encoded in the language, is not a determining factor for the encoding of all functions in the grammatical system in the language, nor is it a factor that can predict which formal means is used for the coding of a given function. In the present study I demonstrate that some motivations for the coding of functions in a grammatical system are language-internal and therefore do not depend on cognitive processes other than the most general processes of

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observation and analysis, and also do not depend on cultural characteristics. The general hypothesis is that the functions coded in language L1 at any given time provide the motivations for the emergence of other functions within the same functional domains (Frajzyngier with Shay 2016). More specifically, if a language codes, or is perceived to code, a certain function (F1), it is likely that the language will grammaticalize another function within the same functional domain. At the level of language use, one can interpret this process as follows: If a certain form is perceived to code some function (whether it actually codes it or not), the speakers are likely to introduce another function within the same functional domain. Thus, if some unmarked form or construction is perceived to code the present tense, it is likely that speakers will produce an altered form to code another tense, e.g. past or future (Frajzyngier 2010). The presence of a grammatical marker indicates that there is a functional domain within which the marker carries a function. This finding has a heuristic value in that if we reverse the analytic process and study functions that have been grammaticalized, we can discover the default function or other functions within the given domain. The present study examines the noun corresponding to ‘head’ in a few Chadic languages spoken in the same geographical area and whose speakers share similar cultures, and demonstrates that these languages have grammaticalized different functions using the same lexical source. These grammaticalizations were not motivated by culture in any sense of the word, nor were they motivated by cognitive processes available to some but not other speakers. The different grammaticalizations in different languages were determined by the ‘initial state’ of the grammatical structures, i.e. the grammatical structure in each language prior to the grammaticalization of the new function (Frajzyngier 2010).

2

Claims with Respect to the Grammaticalization of ‘Head’

Among the well-known products of grammaticalization of the noun ‘head’ are the spatial relations corresponding to ‘front’ and ‘up’ (Heine and Kuteva 2002). None of these relations is inherently coded by nouns that may serve as complements of locative expressions. Thus there are no Chadic languages that have lexicalized the concept ‘on the table’ as a single lexical item that is distinct from single lexical items representing ‘on the bed’, ‘under the table’, etc. Therefore, if there is a need to code a spatial relation such as ‘front’, ‘up’, ‘on’, etc., speakers seek lexical items that share the relevant features. The lexical sources that are cognitively closest are body-part terms such as ‘head’, ‘front’,

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‘breast’, whose spatial position with respect to the human body shares cognitive features with other spatial relations. Another function frequently coded by body-part terms is what Heine and Kuteva (like many others) call ‘reflexive’. Frajzyngier 1999 proposes replacing the broadly used term ‘reflexive’ with terms conveying the specific functions encoded by the forms in question, e.g. coreferentiality of arguments, point of view of the subject, and potentially other functions that in IndoEuropean languages happen to be coded by the marker called ‘reflexive’. For the coreferentiality function speakers may look to body-part terms such as ‘head’, ‘bone’, ‘body’, ‘skin’, or the out-of-body term ‘soul’ to code coreferentiality of arguments. Coreferentiality effect is achieved through the metonymic process whereby body-part terms come to represent the entire entity, based on the perception that these terms are normally inseparable from the body. The fact that coreferentiality is so often coded by overt markers indicates that coreferentiality is not an inherent property of either nouns and verbs. The third function that Heine and Kuteva postulate as a product of the grammaticalization of ‘head’ is ‘intensive-reflexive’ and ‘reflexive’, presumably without the accompanying intensifying function. The intensifying function belongs to a different domain than the relationship between the predicate and noun phrases. In some languages there is a formal syncretism between coreferentiality and intensification, as in English ‘he hurt himself’, and ‘he himself did it’. However, this syncretism obtains in English only if one ignores the linear order as a coding means. Some Chadic languages deploy contrastive focus markers to code the intensifying function, and the term for ‘head’ is not part of the coding means for intensification. Hence, whether a given noun has been grammaticalized or not for a given function is driven by language-internal factors rather than by some inherent properties of the noun. More intriguing is the function that Heine and Kuteva refer to as ‘middle’, a term used by very many scholars. The fundamental question here is what function is represented by this term (see a well-deserved criticism of the use of the term in Dixon and Aikhenvald 2000: 11). Some examples referred to in a variety of languages as illustrating ‘middle’ indicate that the function involves the coding of the point of view of the [affected] subject (Frajzyngier 1999a). Such a subject may, but does not have to, have control over the event. As the subject’s control is not the required or defining characteristic of the category, it cannot be said that subject control is the function of the form. It just so happens that in some languages, e.g. in English, the point of view of the affected subject and coreferentiality are marked by the same form. The importance of this function for the theme of the present study is that the function is coded only in some languages of the East Chadic branch. Thus, if we can explain why it is coded

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in those languages and not in other languages, we can obtain the explanation of why a given function has been grammaticalized in some languages but not in others. As demonstrated further in the present study, the motivation for this grammaticalization is entirely language internal and is not motivated by properties of the noun ‘head’ or by culture in any sense of the word. The rest of the study, while illustrating the grammaticalization of wellknown spatial functions, focuses on cases where the deployment of the terms ‘head’ and ‘body’ reveals the default semantic values of various components of the grammatical system. The study demonstrates that whether or not a given lexical item has been grammaticalized for a given function is determined by language-internal structure. Properties of a lexical item may make it a handy tool for coding a given function, but they are not the motivation for grammaticalization.

3

Pero

Pero (West Chadic, Frajzyngier 1989) is spoken in North Eastern Nigeria. The noun kó ‘head’ has been grammaticalized to encode two functions in Pero. 3.1 ‘Head’ as a Marker of Spatial Configuration The evidence that the form kó is an ordinary noun meaning ‘head’ is provided, among others, by its use as a complement of the preposition tà: (1) bítù-n tà kó-nò cíkà hit-AAM PREP head-GEN jackal ‘she hit at the head of jackal’ As in many other languages of the world, the noun ‘head’ has been grammaticalized as a spatial specifier indicating a spatial relationships. It is not, however, a locative preposition in Pero, as that function is carried by a different marker. The evidence for the spatial specifier function of the noun ‘head’ is provided by the fact that it occurs after the locative preposition and that it does not have the genitive relationship marker nò when it is followed by another noun: (2) páttò-n cwáŋ tí-kò kpándù pour-AAM salt PREP-ON food ‘pour the salt on food!’

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3.2 ‘Head’ as a Marker of Co-reference The noun kò ‘head’ has also been grammaticalized as a marker of co-reference between two arguments representing the agent and the patient roles. In this function, the noun kó ‘head’ is used in the object position and has to be followed by a possessive pronoun coding the person, number, and gender of the subject. The subject itself does not have to be overtly marked, as is the case with addressees in the imperative mood: (3) lóopò kó-ci beat head-2F ‘beat yourself (f)!’ lóopò kó-ma beat head-2PL ‘beat yourselves (PL)!’ mù lóopò kó-cù OPT beat head-3PL ‘let them beat themselves!’ à-mírù kó-cù-m NEG-defend head-3PL-NEG ‘they did not defend themselves!’ (4) kán mà lópò kó-mù CONJ 2PL hit head-1PL.INCL ‘let us hit ourselves!’ Co-reference of arguments is not encoded by any morphological marker on the verb in Pero and is not a property of any single noun in Pero. Hence, the coding of coreference by an overt marker is motivated by the language-internal lack of another means of coding this function. 3.3 No Point of View of the Subject Function The important fact about the function of the form of the form kó in Pero is that it does not code the point of view of the affected subject. This fact is explained by the grammatical structure of Pero. Pero verbs are either only transitive, only intransitive, or can be used with one or two arguments. An inherently transitive-only verb does not have to be followed by an object:

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(5) mà yémmújò-kò n-lí n-wà kéer-tù kúrjì TEMP carve:PL-COMPL SEQ-put SEQ-go search-VENT red stone n-wát-tù lúr-ì kàn mór SEQ-go-VENT mix-SEQ ASSC oil ‘When they carved [them] they will put [them] down and will go to look for a red stone, they will mix [it] with oil [having previously ground the stone].’ A verb that is inherently intransitive can occur with two arguments, but the verb must have the additional argument marker n glossed as AAM: (6) mà káw-kò-n cáɗì wè káarí káarí-mò ɓáanò TEMP gather-COMPL-AAM material for testing testing-DEM look cíg-ì nínya body-DEF man ‘When he has gathered these materials for the testing of the body …’. Compare the intransitive usage of the same verb: (7) mìngbùddínà cóm-púrò tà púɗì ɗók ɗók adults shade-tree PREP place one one n-dán-káw-tù n-ɗéep-ínà n-dàn-cákì nínyà-ì SEQ-HABIT-gather-VENT SEQ-discuss SEQ-HABIT-choose man-def àn-jíkkò owner-rich ‘Elders from different places would gather, discuss, and choose a rich man.’ Here is an example of a verb that can occur with one or two arguments without any morphological or syntactic changes: (8) à-tà-yú cíinà nín-cínù-m NEG-FUT-make food SUBJ-3PL-NEG ‘they will not cook food’ cf. (9) yí-kò nín-cíinà-ì make-compl SUBJ-food ‘the food is made’

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3.4 Conclusions about Pero The noun kó ‘head’ has been grammaticalized in Pero as a marker of the spatial relation ‘on’ and as the marker of coreferentiality of arguments. The form kó has also been grammaticalized as coding the point of view of the subject (‘middle’), because the affectedness of the subject is the unmarked inherent value of a large number of verbs.

4

‘Head’ in Mina

The lexeme for head in Mina (Central Chadic, Frajzyngier, Johnston with Edwards 2005) is tàlàŋ, as evidenced by the following examples: (10) tàlàŋ də̀m-ák rà head hurt-1SG D.HAB ‘I have a headache’ (11) à fə̀ɗ-á-ŋ tàlàŋ tə́ záváŋ-yíì r bàhá 3SG shave-go-3SG head GEN guinea fowl-PL D.HAB again ‘She was shaving the heads of the guinea fowl again.’ (for the benefit of the guinea fowl) 4.1 ‘Head’ as a Marker of Spatial Relations The noun talaŋ codes the spatial relationship corresponding to ‘on’: (12) ɓək a ɓəka talaŋ yəm pour 3SG pour head water ‘He threw it on the surface of the water.’ (written sources, hence no tone marking) (13) mbí pár à zá bánày á tàlàŋ mbə̀ -nàn 3SG another 3SG COMP suffering PRED head child-1SG ‘The other said the suffering is on my child.’ (my child is suffering) (14) góŋgà à n kə́ vúrtàhà á tàlàŋ tə̀ tàŋ gàm kə́ reality (F.) 3SG PREP INF leave (F.) PRED head 3PL because PREP mì dúníyà à nzə́ kə̀ mbíŋ what world 3SG be like DEM ‘The reality will come from their side. Why? Because that’s how life is.’

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4.2 ‘Head’ as a Marker of Topic of Conversation: The noun ‘head’ marks the topic of a verb of saying, corresponding to the English preposition ‘about’. This function is most likely a semantic extension of the coding of the spatial relation ‘on’: (15) nòk kə́ lù zə̀ tàlàŋ dòk 1PL INF talk EE head horse ‘We talked about a horse.’ The topical phrase with tàlàŋ may also be preceded by the locative predicator á, which may well indicate that the topic of converstion may be considered to be a locative complement: (16) nòk kə́ lù á tàlàŋ kásə̀mà 1PL INF talk PRED head Kasuma ‘We talked about Kasuma.’ The form tàlàŋ is an obligatory component of the topical phrase; its omission results in an ungrammatical expression: (17) *nòk kə́ lù á kásə̀mà 1PL INF talk PRED Kasuma for ‘We talked about Kasuma’ If a part of the body is the topic of conversation, the noun tàlàŋ ‘head’ is not used. In such a case the topic of the verb of saying is marked by the locative preposition nə̀. The topic phrase is not a part of the locative predication, as the locative predicator á cannot be used (Frajzyngier, Johnston with Edwards 2005): (18) nók kə́ lù *á /nə̀ ngàz tə́ dòk 1PL INF talk PRED/PREP leg GEN horse ‘We’re going to talk about the leg of the horse.’ The locative predicator á may be combined with the preposition nə̀ to code topic of conversation: (19) nók kə́ lù á nə̀ ngàz tə́ dòk 1PL INF talk PRED PREP leg GEN horse ‘We’re going to talk about the leg of the horse.’

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4.3 ‘Head’ as a Marker of Coreferentiality The noun tàlàŋ in Mina is the marker of coreferentiality of arguments: (20) wə̀ží túwə̀ɗ zà íi zá bákà syì há n kə́ də́ tàlàŋ children finish EE 3PL COMP today COM 2SG PREP INF cook head tùkóŋ 2SG ‘When there were no more children [to cook], they said, “Today you will cook yourself.”’ skə̀m dòk nə̀ tàlàŋ tə̀ kón buy horse PREP head 2SG ‘Buy yourself a horse.’ The possessive pronoun is often omitted, as in the following example: (21) sə̀ nkə̀ də̀ɗ tàlàŋ àbə̀ mí 1SG FUT pull head ASSC WHAT ‘How am I going to get out of it?’ lit. ‘with what am I going to pull [my] head’ cf. (22) à də̀ɗ wùndə́ŋ 3SG pull peanuts ‘He pulls out peanuts.’ The noun tàlàŋ ‘head’ has been grammaticalized to code an internal state of the subject that does not result from the physical activity of the predicate of the clause: (23) à ɬék tàlàŋ 3SG remember head ‘He remembers.’ (24) séy tàkár-yíì kə̀ wáy tàlàŋ tsáy zà kə́ dàr so turtle-PL INF forget head finish EE INF dance ‘So the turtles are completely preoccupied with the dance.’

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(25) kə̀ ɬék tàlàn zá 3SG remember head EE ‘he recalled’ This last example reminds one of the French and Polish use of reflexive pronouns in equivalents of the expression ‘remember, recall’: French: (26) je me souviens 1SG 1SG:DAT remember ‘I remember’ Polish: (27) przypominam sobie recall:1SG REFL.DAT ‘I recall, remember’ With the verb wáy ‘forget’, the addition of tàlàn produces an unexpected meaning: (28) kə̀ wáy tàlàn zá INF forget head EE ‘He wasted [his] time.’ Cf. (29) kə̀ wáy zà INF forget EE ‘He forgot.’ The noun tàlàŋ must be used with the verb mbú ‘unite’ when it has plural subjects in its scope: (30) wà ángə̀ í kə̀ káh tsáy zə̀ syì í ndí mbú tàlàŋ tə̀tə̀ DEM if 3PL INF bury finish EE COM 3PL HAB unite head 3PL kə́ hàŋ tús dàp INF cry INTENS just ‘After they have buried [someone], they get together to weep profoundly.’

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(31) nók mbə́ɮí-yì nók mbù tàlàŋ ɗá kə́ ɮə̀gám mə̀ pár 1PL:INCL blacksmith-PL 1PL unite head exist INF speak word other skù NEG ‘We blacksmiths, we have to get together, there is nothing else to say.’ Here is an example where the form tàlàŋ is used as the subject with the verb mbù ‘unite, gather’ and as the object with the verb tsúk ‘isolate’: (32) tàlàŋ mə̀ mbùw-yí zə̀ syì kó í ndə̀ váy í ndə̀ head REL unite-STAT EE COM QUANT 3PL go where 3PL go tsúk tàlàŋ tə̀ tə̀ dáp skə̀ vù isolate head 3PL just NEG Q ‘If they unite themselves, no matter where they go, they isolate themselves.’ 4.4 Conclusions about Mina Mina has grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of spatial relations and as a marker of coreferentiality of the subject and other arguments. In addition, the noun ‘head’ has been grammaticalized as a marker of internal state.

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‘Head’ in Wandala

Wandala (Central Chadic, Frajzyngier 2012), like Pero and Mina, has not grammaticalized the noun corresponding to ‘head’ as a marker coding the pointof-view of the affected subject. As demonstrated in the present section, this fact supports the hypothesis that the grammaticalization of some functions can be motivated by language-internal factors. In Wandala, verbs describing events where a participant changes the form or posture represent the event from the point of view of that participant. This participant is the subject of the clause. Subject’s control is not an inherent property of those verbs. Hence, there is no motivation to deploy a marker coding point-of-view of the subject (‘middle’). The noun corresponding to ‘head’ has been grammaticalized in Wandala to code functions not coded in other languages by this noun. But first, the evidence that the form írè means ‘head’: (33) dàšì mà wàr kǝ́nì à dǝ̀ -m-d ám ìr-á-rà then HYP who C.FOC 3SG go:IN-go PRED-IN head-GEN-3SG ‘then anybody should put in his head’

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(34) bàdǝ́mmà à j-m ìr-á-kwè ŋàr-ŋàrà únà all:EF 3SG beat -IN head-GEN-2PL voici DEM ‘All of that troubles your head’ 5.1 Derivational Marker for Abstract Nouns Wandala derives abstract nouns through the construction Noun + írè ‘head’. The notion ‘bad luck’ is derived through the structure dòŋírè ‘black head’. The subject is the entity that has bad luck, the predicate is the verb màgà ‘make’, and ‘bad luck’ is the object: (35) a. á kyà lvà-á zzòŋ kǝ́nì mà màgà dòŋírè PRED by business-GEN donkey C.FOC 1INCL make black head ‘Because of the business of the donkey, we had bad luck.’ Feeling bitter is coded by a negative clause, with the person who feels bitter as the subject, the predicate as ‘feel good’, and the noun ‘head’ as the object: b. ádàbà ŋán kìnì á cìnà mtáŋ k ìrè because 3SG also 3SG feel good NEG:∅ head ‘Because he also, he will feel bitterness’ The notion corresponding to idiocy is derived through the structure ùksòŋw ìrè ‘idiot head’: (36) àmá á fà-r ùksòŋw ìrè gə̀ ddàdà á fà-r ùksòŋw ìrè but 3SG put-ON idiot head TO father 3SG put-ON idiot head gə̀ màmà TO father ‘He makes an idiot of the father, makes an idiot of the mother.’ (Literally: ‘he puts idiocy on the father, he puts idiocy on the mother’ [úksòŋw ‘idiot, somebody who cannot talk’]) (37) ə́gdzàr-á-mì tá pú ná wá má nà názù ní á child:PL-GEN-1INCL 3PL pour DEM COM HYP DEM what INTNS 3SG mmàg ná wá únə̀ ní tá wáy-ná ítèr nà tá do DEM COM DEM INTNS 3PL want-3SG 3PL DEM 3PL fà-trà-r úksòŋw ìrè put-3PL-ON idiot head ‘The thing that makes our girls loaf around is that the men that the girls like cheat on them.’

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The term corresponding to ‘fraternity’ is derived through the structure ‘sibling head’. In Wandala the notion ‘sibling’ is realized as the phrase ‘child mom’: (38) ádàbà dùní nà-wá à kàtáa bà ǝ́ gdzà-màm-ìré because world DEM-COM 3SG want FOC child-mother-head ‘Because the world wants fraternity.’ 5.2 Anaphoric or Entity Function of ‘Head’ In Wandala, the noun ‘head’ has come to have an anaphoric function. It can be used with or without possessive pronouns. In the following example, the noun ìrè ‘head’ refers to the object mentioned earlier in discourse: (39) jè-wà-myè-n-tá-vǝ̀ -jè mà surround-PL.IMPER-1INCL-3SG -T-POV-surround 1INCL ìcè-n-s-ár ìrè màkì à žàgàd-úwà má ksǝ̀ -ksà prevent-3SG-S-on head if 3SG run-VENT 1INCL catch-catch àntàrà gdzàr-á-rà ASSC:PL children-GEN-3SG ‘Let’s surround it. We will bar his road. If he runs, we will catch him together with his children.’ (40) má yà-yì wá ɓákà mtǝ̀ k ìr-á-rà IF give birth-give birth COM NEG.EX good NEG head-GEN-3SG ‘If she gives birth that is not good’ (irárà ‘its head’ means ‘it’) The construction ‘head’-GEN +noun/pronoun is deployed as anaphor. It is not clear, however, why this construction rather than a pronoun or a noun phrase is deployed: (41) má-á bàní bàɗə̀m ìr-á-myà mà án HYP-PRED concern all head-GEN-1INCL 1INCL ASSC dìy-á-myà knowledge-GEN-1INCL ‘Because we have all of this knowledge …’ (42) á-m tàtà úmlè bà ɓák ìr-á žíl ŋánnà kínì PRED-IN place other FOC NEG.EX head-GEN man DEF C.FOC ə́gdzàr-à tá bà pwà á-m mbà child-PL 3PL FOC pour PRED-IN home ‘Where there are no men, girls just loaf around the house.’

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The noun ìré may have a pragmatic function, because it occurs in the first mention of the noun but does not occur with the subsequent mention: (43) tá pw ám mbá ŋánnà gə̀ ɓák ìr-á žìl mtú 3PL pour PRED-IN home DEF TO NEG head-GEN man or ‘They [the girls] loaf around home because of the absence of man …’ áŋkwè žíl mtú wàyà-r kà bà ítàrèe exist man or love-3PL NEG FOC 3PL ‘or else, there is a man, but they [the girls] don’t like [him].’ The noun ìrè may have a function of deriving nouns from verbs. Consider the verb kwàrà ‘order, command’, as illustrated in the following example: (44) ùrà kwàré kín ɓákà person order:1SG C.FOC NEG.EX ‘No one gives me orders.’ lit. ‘the person who gives me orders does not exist’ The noun ‘order’ is ìr-á kwárà ‘head-GEN order’: (45) yá zá ɗáfà án ə̀ngy-á-rwà án yə̀cìvàcíyà 1SG eat food ASSC morning-GEN-1SG ASSC evening ‘I eat my food in the morning and in the evening’ án ɓák ìr-á kwárà ASSC NEG.EX head-GEN order ‘without any orders.’ The function of coding an entity, as opposed to a notion, would be similar to the function of classifiers in Mandarin (Aoshuan 2002). 5.3 Lexicalization of ‘Head’ The combination of some verbs with the noun ìrè ‘head’ has produced a number of idiomatic expressions, i.e. expressions where the meaning of the construction does not necessarily represents the meaning of its parts. One of these expressions is the verb verb jà ‘hit’ with the noun ìrè ‘head’ serving as a complement has been lexicalized to mean ‘come across, meet’. The noun ‘head’ is syntactically an object, as it is preceded by the verb ending in a consonant (Frajzyngier 2016). But the clause can have another noun following it:

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(46) ŋà sǝ̀ jà-ìrè-n kr-á vàlà 1EXCL come hit-head-[pause] dog-GEN rage ‘We found a rabid dog.’ (47) tà jàdàbà dǝ̀ jà-r-j írè nàvírè dàlyè 3PL walk PURP meet-3PL-meet head rabbit again ‘They walked and they met a rabbit again’ Here are two other expressions: (48) yò ám tàt úmlè bà gdzàr-á-mì zál-àhà nà kínì wá well IN place other FOC child-GEN-1PL male-PL DEM C.FOC COM tá wʃà-tə̀r-t-á ìrè má tsà-rə̀ -tsé gə̀ gdzàr-á gyálà-hà 3PL bother-3PL-T-GO head HYP rise-3PL-rise TO child-GEN female-PL ‘Well, sometimes, it is they [the boys] who bother the girls …’ (49) bàdǝ́mmà à j-m ìr-á-kwè ŋàr-ŋàrà únà à kwakyà all:EF 3SG beat -IN head-GEN-2PL voici DEM 3SG multiply zàwàr-àhà mùks nà promiscuity-PL woman DEM ‘All of that troubles your head. Here it multiplies the promiscuity of that woman’ 5.4 Conclusions about Wandala Wandala has not grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of the point of view of the affected subject (a.k.a. ‘middle’), because subject affectedness is the inherent property of a large number of verbs in Wandala (Frajzyngier 2012), verbs that in other languages are considered prototypically transitive. Hence, whether the grammaticalization of the noun ‘head’ happens or does not happen in this functional domain is determined by language-internal conditions. Wandala has not grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as the marker of coreferentiality. In Frajzyngier 2012 and in the collected data there are no instances of coreferentiality of the subject and object. The coreferentiality of the thirdperson subject and indirect object is marked by the use of pronouns with the goal marker á. Wandala has lexicalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker to derive abstract nouns and in a few idiomatic expressions where it is a complement of the verb.

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‘Head’ in Lele

6.1 Coding the Point of View of the Subject Lele (East Chadic, Frajzyngier 2001), unlike most West and Central Chadic languages, has the function of coding the point of view of the affected subject. This function has two semantic components: One coding the change of the place of the subject and the other coding the internal changes of the subject. This function is coded by the noun cà ‘head’ followed by an inalienable possessive pronoun. One piece of evidence for this function of cà + Pronoun is provided by clauses where the same verb has as its object an ordinary noun in one clause and has the form cà + Pronoun as its object in another clause. Consider the verb haba ‘find’. With the form cà + Pronoun cross-referencing the subject, it is the subject that is affected: (50) haba bé-ŋ cà-m find:IMP DAT-1SG head-2M ‘be successful!’, lit. ‘find me your head’ Cf.: (51) haba bé-ŋ wédré find:IMP DAT-1SG car ‘find me a car’ The evidence that the form cà is not an intransitivizing device is provided by the fact that it can be used with intransitive verbs whose subject is in motion: (52) Dà kur go kumno è dàná ná kìn-je cà-ì è-je PREP day REF God go UP ASSC return-VENT head-3M go-VENT hab kara tòn-gè na find people ask-3PL HYP ‘When God was going up, he returned, found people, and asked them:’ (Garrigues-Cresswell avec la participation de Christophe Weibegué. 1981. further abbreviated as G-C & W 1981: 7–8) Further evidence that the marker cà codes point of view of the affected subject rather than intransitivity is provided by its occurrence with inherently intransitive verbs. Note, that the coding of the point-of-view of the subject with intransitive verbs is not an instance of tautology. Intransitive verbs do not nec-

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essarily code point of view of the subject. In Lele, this hypothesis is supported by the fact that the intransitive verb can occur without the marker cà: (53) nè kínè-dí cà-y (dà) dèbréŋ IMPF return:FUT-3M head-3M PREP Debreng ‘he will return to Debreng’ Cf.: (54) nè kínè-dí (dà) dèbréŋ IMPF return:FUT-3M PREP Debreng ‘he will return to Debreng’ (55) kìn cà-y go out again head-3M ‘he went’ (56) kìn-dí cà-y Bongor return-3M head-3M Bongor ‘he returned to Bongor’ Cf.: (57) kìn-dí Bongor return-3M Bongor ‘he returned to Bongor’ In some cases, the noun cà could be interpreted as a grammatical marker or as a noun meaning ‘head’: (58) yàá bú-dú na ŋ-án kwánì ba ŋ-jìb cà-nìŋ ná tell DAT-3F HYP 1SG-leave outside COM 1SG-bump head-1SG ASSC kòyè ba ŋ dìgr-ìy thief COM 1SG kill-3M ‘He told her: leaving the house I bumped into a thief and killed him.’ (59) yú cà-rè dà kama te-y ni ba me ágè put:IMP head-2M PREP water bottom-3M LOC COM 2F take:FUT ísí-ŋ bone-DEF ‘Plunge to the bottom of the water and you will get the bone.’

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The evidence that the noun cà represents a grammatical marker rather than the noun ‘head’ is provided by clauses where the interpretation of cà as a noun meaning ‘head’ is ruled out. With the verb kàywí ‘divide, split’ the interpretation of cà as a noun meaning ‘head’ is ruled out: (60) kàywí-dí cà-y divide-3M head-3M ‘he disappeared’ Cf.: (61) kàywí-dí hída divide-3M wood ‘he divided wood’ With the verb jèé ‘throw’ the form cà indicates that the subject, rather than the object, is in movement: (62) jèé-dí cà-y kìn ó-dí throw-3M head-3M return depart-3M ‘he turned around and went back’ Cf.: (63) jèé-dí gìjá throw-3M throwing knife ‘he launched a throwing knife’ Compare Russian: (64) он бросился вперед/назад/вниз/вверх on brosil-sya vperëd/nazad/vniz/vv’erx 3sg throw:PAST:3M-REFL forward/backward/downward/uward ‘He threw himself forward/backward/downward/upward’ An interesting question is posed by the fact that the form cà + Pronoun cannot be used with the verbs è ‘depart’, ɓá ‘fall’, se ‘get up’, or jèn ‘sit down’, all of which are verbs coding motion of the subject:

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(65) ɓá-dí *cà-y fall-3M head-3M ‘he fell down’ (66) è-dí *cà-y go-3M head-3M ‘he departed’ Compare the grammaticality of clauses with the same verb but without the point of view of the subject marker cà: (67) se-dí dà na get up-3M PREP UP ‘he got-up’ (cà-y may not be inserted after dí or anywhere else) (68) jèn-dí kúsìnyó∫ sit-3M ground ‘he sat down’ A potential explanation for this fact may be that the form cà, when coding the point of view of the affected subject, cannot be used with these verbs because they inherently code the resultative state of the subject. 6.2 Coding the Point of View of the Internal Affectedness of the Subject The noun kusu ‘body’ followed by a possessive pronoun coding the number, gender, and person of the subject is also used to code the point of view of the affected subject. But unlike the form cà, the form kusu codes the internal state of the subject, including a change in the form of the subject. The evidence that the form kusu means ‘body’ is provided by clauses where the form kusu ‘body’ has the function of the object of the clause: (69) na-du è go mónge kusu-ro kúsìnyo pinyà na-du hab kìrè ɗé HYP-3F go REF bend body-3F ground even HYP-3F find way NEG lay also ‘When she wants to bend forward, she does not find a way to do so’ (G-C & W 1981: 10–11) The subject may be controlling or not:

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(70) dàw-gé kusi-gè jèn wàl-gé ɗangá ná kur wèlè-ì gather-3PL body-3PL stay cut-3PL calabash ASSC day lie down:VN-3M wèlè-ì. lie down:VN-3M ‘They [women] gather and spend all day lying down and carving calabashes’ (G-C & W 1981: 40–41) (71) ba gi-ɗe kusu-m wèl kúní COM 2M-leave body-2M lie down home ‘And you lie down at home’ (G-C & W 1981: 16–17) The verb wál ‘swear’ + kusu + Pronoun means ‘swear’. Presumably, the use of the noun ‘body’ indicates the internal state of the subject: (72) ŋ je wále kus-iŋ 1SG IMPF swear:FUT body-1SG ‘I will swear’ (73) ɗá wala kusu-m bàb ɗé leave:IMP swear:IMP body-2M all NEG ‘do not swear for nothing’ Similar motivation of reflecting the internal state may be holding for the use of the verb ile ‘weep’ plus kusu + Pronoun means ‘weep’: (74) dàdù se è cánmínè ile kusu-ro 3F INCEPT go bush? weep body-3F ‘She went into bush and wept’ (G-C & W 1981: 2–3) Although in many examples the form kusu is used in the object syntactic function, there are examples when it is used as subject: (75) Gìna tòrò go sol-gé na bàá gùlà na kusi-gè ná lápínyà if hen REF bother-3PL HYP fall left HYP body-3PL ASSC well pet. all ‘If the hen falls on her left side, everybody will be well.’ (G-C & W 1981: 38– 39) The term for ‘body’ also codes coreferentiality of the subject and object:

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(76) cànìgé tèy kus-iy ná ìyá Canige hit body-3M ASSC wound ‘he hit himself’ (77) tèy-dí kus-iy hit-3M body-3M ‘he hit himself’ The form kusu is not used, however, if a specific part of the body is an object of the clause: (78) bòy-dí gàn-dì break-3M leg-3M ‘he broke his leg’ bòy-dú gàn-dò break-3F leg-3F ‘she broke her leg’ With verbs that do not involve change of the position of the subject or change of the form of the subject, neither the form cà nor the form kusu is used: (79) gol tùnè-y kama ni see image-3M water LOC ‘he saw his image in the water’ 6.3 Conclusions about Lele The existence of two markers coding affectedness of the subject in Lele is the evidence that the verbs in Lele do not inherently indicate this function. The facts about Lele in this respect are different from the facts about a number of other Chadic languages, such as Wandala (Frajzyngier 2012), where a large number of verbs, in particular verbs denoting change of posture and change of shape, inherently code affectedness of the subject. Thus, the presence of subject affectedness markers in Lele is motivated by the fact that verbs do not inherently code this function. We thus have language-internal motivation for grammaticalization of a marker that does code this function. As in many other languages, the noun ‘head’ in Wandala is used to code coreferentiality of subject and object.

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73

Overall Conclusions

Several Chadic languages, like many other languages, have grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of the spatial relation ‘on’, as already noted by many researchers (e.g. Heine 2014). This fact is explained by a metaphorical extension from the spatial relation of the head with respect to the rest of the body. Some languages have grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of coreferentiality between the subject and other arguments. A similar explanation holds for this grammaticalization, except that in these languages the noun ‘head’ has come to represent the totality of the person, a metonymic extension. What is interesting in our data is that only one language has grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of the point of view of the affected subject. Here the motivation for this grammaticalization is language-internal. It has not occurred in languages whose verbs inherently code the point of view of the affected subject. Hence, neither general cognitive states nor cultural characteristics are the motivation for grammaticalization of this function; the motivation instead lies in the functions already coded or not coded in the specific language.

Abbreviations 1 2 3 AAM ASSC C.FOC COM COMPL DEF DEM EE EX EXCL F F. FOC FUT

first person second person third person additional argument marker associative contrasitive focus comment completive definite demonstrative end-of-event marker existential exclusive feminine Fula focus future

GEN GO HAB HYP IMPER IN INCL INF INTNS LOC M NEG ON OPT PL PRED PREP

genitive relationship goal habitual hypothetical imperative spatial relation ‘in’ inclusive infinitive intensive locative nasculine negation spatial marker ‘on’ optative plural predicate preposition

74 PROHIB PURP Q QUANT REL S

frajzyngier prohibitive purpose question marker quantifier relative source

SEQ SG STAT T TO

sequential singular stative target directional preposition ‘to’

References Aoshuan, Tan’. 2002. Problemy skrytoy grammatiki. Moscow: Jazyki Slavianskoj Kul’tury. Brenzinger, Matthias and Iwona Kraska (eds). 2014. The Body in Language. Leiden: Brill. Dixon, R.M.W., and Alexandra Aikhenvald. 2000. Changing valency. Case studies in transitivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1989. A Grammar of Pero. Berlin: Reimer. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1999a. Domains of point of view and coreferentiality: systems interaction approach to the study of reflexives. Reflexives: Forms and Functions. Frajzyngier and Curl (eds). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 125–152. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1999b. Coding of the reciprocal function: two solutions. Reciprocals: Forms and Functions. Frajzyngier and Curl (eds). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2001. A Grammar of Lele. Stanford Monographs in African Linguistics. Stanford: CSLI. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2010. Grammaticalization within and outside of the domain. In Grammaticalization and grammar. Herbert Cuyckens, K. Davidse, and J.C. Verstraete (eds). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 43–62. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2012. A grammar of Wandala. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2016. Inflectional markers of sentential parsing. Lingua 2433. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt, and Eric Johnston, with Adrian Edwards. 2005. A Grammar of Mina. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Frajzyngier, Zygmunt, with Erin Shay. 2016. The role of functions in syntax: a unified approach to language theory, description, and typology. Benjamins: Amsterdam. Garrigues-Cresswell, Martine, avec la participation de Christophe Weibegué. 1981. Livre de lecture lélé. Sarh: Centre d’études linguistiques. Heine, Bernd. 2014. The body in language: observations from grammaticalization. In Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (eds). 2014. Heine, Bernd, and Tanya Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization. 1st Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1965. The evolution of grammatical categories. Diogenes 51:55–71.

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Reprint: Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1975. Esquisses linguistiques II. München: W. Fink (International Library of General Linguistics, 37), 38–55. Lehmann, Christian. 2002. Thoughts on grammaticalization. Second, revised edition. Erfurt: Arbeitspapiere des Seminars für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Erfurt. Samuels, M.L. 1975. Linguistic Evolution: With special reference to English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

chapter 4

‘Head’ in Some Non-Bantu Languages of the Oriental Province of DR Congo Helma Pasch

1

Introduction*

The head belongs to the most important parts of the human and animal body and it is the only extremity which is absolutely vital for physical survival. Terms denoting the body-part ‘head’ belong to the very basic vocabulary, which are learned by children at a young age without explanation of what the referent looks like or what it is used for, because this is what they know from experience. Like other body-parts the head of the human body serves as a major conceptual source of the acquisition of new categories in different domains which are built by the use of imaginative mechanisms such as metonymies, metaphors and imageries (Lakoff 1987: xii), and the same is true with regard to the head of the animal body. Being a relational noun, ‘head’ is normally used with reference to its owner. In Zande,1 this possessive relationship is expressed explicitly in possessive constructions2 as can be seen in examples (1) and (2). (1) Ture ki zogo ri-ko ku ime yo, Kperende ki pi ti T. SEQ lower head-3m DIR water there K. SEQ lie at ndu-ko. foot-3m ‘Ture put his head down to the water and Cicada held him by the legs.’ (Evans-Pritchard 1965)

* I am obliged to Berne Heine, Angelika Jakobi and Bastian Person who read an earlier version of this article and gave valuable comments. All weaknesses are mine. 1 For some typological details on Zande cf. the introduction of Pasch (2012). 2 In other languages the possession of a body-part is not necessarily indicated in a possessive construction, but rather by reflexive constructions or by pronouns indicating affectedness as shown in the following examples from German “er hat sich den Kopf gewaschen”, “wasch mir den Pelz” and French “l’homme se lave les pieds” (as a variant of “l’ homme lave ses pieds”).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_006

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(2) Ango sungu dimo yo ri-ru ki du ku zegi yo dog sitp house there head-its SEQ be DIR outside there ‘The dog is lying in its house with its head outside.’ At least as often as in their basic meaning, ‘head’, denotations for the respective body part are used in different types of figurative expressions. The aim of this paper is to present various types of figurative uses of terms for ‘head’ in a number of non-Bantu languages of central Africa with focus on Ubangian languages, in particular Zande and Ngbandi, the two languages where the figurative usages of body part terms are best documented. Data on Zande which are not taken from publications were partly elicited in Arua (Uganda) and Bangassou (CAR), others originate from Gore (1926) and some Zande-tales published by Evans-Pritchard (1965). All Zande examples were discussed with Germain Landi, native speaker and linguist, who also checked the Sango examples. Data on Mbane3 and Lendu were elicited in Kisangani (DR Congo) in 2016 and 2017. Data from other languages were taken from dictionaries and grammatical descriptions. With regard to Ubangian languages these are Lekens (1955, 1958) for Ngbandi, Roulon-Doko (1996, 2008) for Gbaya-’Bodoe, Samarin (1966) for Gbaya-Gbea, Bouquiaux et al. (1978) and the old Testament for Sango, Tisserant (1931) for Banda and Kilian-Hatz (1995) for Baka. The data on Ngiti, a Central Sudanic language closely related to Lendu, are from Kutsch-Lojenga (1994). The paper is organized in 4 Sections. Section 2 discusses figurative uses of terms for ‘head’ in metonymies and lexical metaphors. In Section 3 different grammaticalization channels of ‘head’ are investigated, Conclusions are drawn in Section 4.

2

Figurative Uses of Terms for ‘Head’

Metonymy and metaphor are the most important figurative usages of lexical items, but the two interact in given expressions and it is not always easy to

3 Mbane is the largest of the Mba-languages, a sub-group of the Ubangian languages (Pasch 1986) which belong to the Niger-Congo phylum. The present data from this language were elicited in 02.04.2016 and 03.04.2017 with Jean-Bernard Bokula and Gustave Baruti. Jean Baptiste Grodya. Musafiri, a student of linguistics in Kisangani, volunteered to provide data from his mother tongue Lendu. I want to express my deeply felt gratitude to the German Academic Exchange Service for sponsoring two visits as a visiting professor at the University of Kisangani, which gave me the chance to also do linguistic fieldwork.

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determine which category is given. Metonymies may be part of metaphorical expressions, as will be observed with many examples in this text.4 2.1 Metonymic Uses of Terms for ‘Head’ Metonyms of ‘head’ may be totum pro parte or pars pro toto. Totum pro parte readings of ‘head’ are found in complex verb constructions, where terms for ‘head’ are objects of specific verbs. These complex constructions are not variants of single verb constructions although they are listed in the lexicon under the entries for ‘head’ and/or for the respective verbs. They are rather the normal denotations and usually the only equivalents of single verb expressions in French or English. Such collocations of given verbs with the term for ‘head’ is a word-formation device in all Ubangi languages, but it must be noted that the compound verb constructions use different verbs to express the same meaning in the various languages (examples 3a, b, c). This means that the expressions are idiomatic and the wrong choice of a verb may lead to miscomprehension as does the wrong choice of a body-part term, even if the resulting construction appears logical (5b). Note that in these constructions the owner of the ‘head’ is normally not indicated, and with regard to the complex verb ‘dream’ in Gbaya (7b), Roulon-Doko (p.c.) explicitly states that it is the only construction where zù ‘head’ is used without a possessor. Widespread is the metonymic totum pro parte use of terms for ‘head’ with reference to ‘(head) hair’. The lexeme for ‘hair’ may specify that for ‘head’ in such metonymic reading, as indicated in the examples from Ngbandi, Zande and Banda (3a, b, 4, 5a). Ngbandi (3) a. li lo nyákã nyakã head 3s unorderly ‘his/her hair is unkempt’ b. (kwa) li lo ngbakoro hair head 3s red ‘(s)he has red/blond hair’

4 For a comprehensive discussion of the functions of metaphor and metonymy and their interaction in metaphtonymy, cf. Goosens (1990).

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Zande (4) a. tu ri weave head ‘to plait (some)one’s hair’ Banda (Tisserand 1931) (5) a. ke wa kumu INF cut head ‘to cut (some)one’s hair’ cf. b. ke wa ege INF cut neck ‘to decapitate s.o.’ Pars pro toto types of metonymical usages of terms for ‘head’, with the notion ‘person, entire body’ is documented for Ngbandi. The cognitive source of the first example (6a) is the head as a vital part of the body, and that of the second example is its head as the upper part which determines the body hight (6b). Ngbandi (6) a. lo kpwi li lo ngbɔ̃ 3s die head 3s intact ‘(s)he died at young age [his/her head was intact]’ b. li á-ya lo yɛ head PL-child 3s same ‘his/her children have the same size, are equally tall’ A second frequent metonymic notion of ‘head’ is given in expressions for ‘to dream’. Here, the term for ‘head’ is the object of a specific transitive verb, i.e. ‘see’ in Sango (7a) and ‘sprawl’ in Gbaya-’Bodoe (7b), which indicates that the head is perceived as a flat body. In Zande the verb for ‘sprawl, lay down’ is combined in a similar way with mosuma, ‘dream’, a word which looks like a borrowing from a Bantu language, but whose exact origin could not be specified (7c).5 5 In Nzakara mosuma is used in the same way as in Zande. In Sango the first syllable being lost, the form is suma (Landi, p.c. May 2017). According to Nico Nassenstein (p.c. June 2018) the term is neither known in Lingala nor in the variants of Swahili spoken in DR Congo.

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Sango (7) a. mbi ba li 1s see head ‘I dreamt’ Gbaya-’Bodoe b. Ɂɔ zù sprawl head6 ‘to dream’ Zande c. mi ni-ra-ri7 mosumo areme 1s PAST-RED-sleep dream today ‘I dreamt last night’ One might assume that Sango ba li describes looking into of the head as a type of container, an assumption made by some native speakers, but there is no clear linguistic evidence for this assumption. No construction could be found in which ‘head’ serves virtually as a container. This not only with regard to Sango but also with regard to Zande. 2.2 Metaphoric Uses of ‘Head’ Apparently more often than with reference to a human or animal ‘head’ the respective body part terms are used metaphorically with reference to items which are not body-parts. In some cases metonymic uses of ‘head’, such as for the ‘intellectual capacity of the brain’ or ‘the person’, are used metaphorically. These metonyms in metaphors or metaphtonyms are based on various criteria: the capacity to think, process knowledge and to communicate information, and its importance for the physical, psychic and mental well-being. The non-

6 a. zú béí head person ‘head of a person’ b. zù sàʠì head animal ‘head of an animal’ 7 I assume that rara (i) is a—possibly lexicalized—reduplicated form of the verb ra ‘sleep, dwell’, which may express intensity or repetition (‘dwell in a dream besides dwelling in the real world’). The fact that there is another pluractional form, raka (i) (Gore & Gore 1952: 121) is not really a counterargument, since many verbs have two different pluractional extensions (Pasch 2017).

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metonymic metaphors are also based on two criteria: the position of the head on the human or the animal body, and the function of the human head as a carrier tool. Not all of these criteria play an equally important role in the metaphorical uses of the terms for ‘head’8 and the importance differs between the various languages. Some were found only in one or two languages while others are fairly wide spread. While metonymic uses of ‘head’ are restricted to the human head, metaphoric expressions are given both with regard to the human and to the animal body and both are important means of word formation. 2.2.1 The Human Head The head of the human body in its canonical, position, i.e. with the person either standing, walking or sitting, constitutes the upper part. It is true that the head is also the upper body-part of primates when these are sitting or moving around,9 and with regard to most quadruped animals and birds when standing or walking, the head—albeit the front part of the body—is at the same time the highest body-part. Many creatures whose head is not the upper part of the body (e.g. snails, snakes, crocodiles) may erect their heads, while others cannot do so (e.g. fish, shellfish, bugs, insects). But even though the animal head is normally in a high position it is not used in the languages investigated as a model for upper parts of items, but only for front parts. As indicated above, the metaphor ‘head’ = upper part of an item is very common in the languages investigated to denote the upper parts of items of other semantic domains. These may be separable parts, like the roof of a house (10a, b), they may have head-like shapes like the heads of trees, (9a, b; 10, a, b), or they constitute the upper part of an amorphous body, like the head of a mountain (10b). Lendu (8) a. tsú-djo10 tree-head ‘tree-top’

8

9

10

Other criteria, which play a role in some European languages, do not apply. Among these are ‘shape’, e.g. German Kohlkopf (cabbage-head) ‘head of cabbage’, Kopfsalat ‘headlettuce’, but also in English, e.g. butterhead lettuce or crisphead lettuce. For specific purposes humans and primates may for a short period of time lift their arms so that the hands are in a higher position than the head, but normally they hang from the shoulders, unless used to carry out specific purposes. This and other examples from Lendu were provided by Jean Baptiste Grodya Musafiri,

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Banda b. kumu oyo-n head tree-DEF ‘tree-top’ Zande (9) a. li-ngba / bambu head-tree / house ‘tree-top / roof’ Sango b. li ti keke / hoto / da head POSS tree / hill / house ‘tree top / summit / roof’ In Zande and Ngbandi,11 this metaphor is also used to denote the flat upper, quasi two-dimensional surface of items which may be roundish and wide, or narrow and elongated, or without any specific form. It may be wet such as the surface of a body of water (11), or dry, such as the ground on which people live, stand and walk (12). In all these examples ‘surface’ has the notion of the visible part of a body. Zande (10) tio ki ni-ya na ri ime na sa-ru, fish SEQ X-winnow PREP head water with tail-AN.s.2 ‘and a fish struck the (surface of the) water with its tail’ (Evans-Pritchard 1965) Ngbandi (11) a-hɛ̃ lo li kɔdɔrɔ sĩní ndó-le gbia `da SM-give 3s head village many HAB-be chief there ‘he got [they gave him] many villages, and ruled there’ It is important to note that the metaphor ‘head’ = ‘upper part of an item’ is not only based on the topological position of the human head but also on its

11

native speaker of Lendu and student of linguistics at the University of Kisangani in March and April 2017. The same may be true with regard to other Ubangian languages, but we do not have evidence.

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function as a carrier of loads. The top position makes the human head an ideal tool for carrying loads (Kraska-Szlenk 2014: 112). In a similar way as people use their physical heads as tools for carrying material goods, the ‘head’ may be used virtually as a carrier of non-material loads, i.e. problems, if in a language the metaphor “carry problems” = “carry loads” is known as is the case in Lendu. In this language the head is virtually the body-part where problems are located and with which they may be carried away (13, 14). Since the exact topological position of the problems is not specified, one may ask whether the head is perceived as a container, in which the problems are stored, or as a body, on top of which they are stored. Taking into account that material goods are transported on the upper surface of the head it must be assumed that problems are carried virtually in a similar manner on top of the head and not inside it. Lendu (12) kɛ-kɯ ko-jó mbudha 3s-COP 1p-head load ‘we are responsible for him [he is the load/problem on our head]’ (13) kɛ-jó-na lo-kɯ-ɓó 3s-head-PREP problem-COP-much ‘he has many problems’ It must be noted that the head is not the only conceptual source of UP found in the languages investigated. Other sources are the body-parts ‘eye’12 and ‘back’ (Heine & Kuteva 2002: 50). The former is well documented in Ngbandi (Lekens 1955, 1958), Sango (Bouquiaux et al. 1978), and in Zande. At least with regard to Zande, some speakers are not happy with the term for ‘head’ in the notion ‘surface’, but prefer to use the term bangiri ‘eye’ (15a). The semantic parallel between ‘head’, li, and ‘eye’, le,13 in Sango becomes obvious in the equivalents ‘forme extérieure, partie exposée’ for both14 given by Bouquiaux et al. (1978). A semantic difference between the terms for ‘head’ and ‘eye’ with reference to surfaces could not be determined.

12 13 14

Svorou (1994) does not list ‘eye’ as a conceptual source of UP nor do Heine & Kuteva (2002). Other languages where such parallel can be observed are not known. The parallel between ‘face’ and ‘eye’ is more frequent (Heine 1997: 42). These equivalents reflect only one notion of the respective items.

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Zande (14) a. bangiri íme eye water ‘surface of (the) water’ Sango b. le ngú eye water ‘surface of (the) water’ Ngbandi c. lɛ́ sésè eye earth ‘surface of the ground’ With regard to terms for ‘eye’ referring to the surface of water (15a, b) the wet, shining eyeball is only seemingly the conceptual source. This notion is quite probably rather based on the exposedness of the open and protruding eye, which explains why the construction applies also with regard to non-shining surfaces like the dry ground over which people walk (15c). A striking conceptual source for UP is the human back, which is documented for Baka (16), a dialect of Ngbaka-Maɓo.15 In the languages of the world the back of the human body is a frequent source for BACK, while the back of a four-legged animal may be the source for ‘upper part of an inanimate item’ (Svorou 1994:16 73), as we know from several languages of cattle and camel keeping groups in eastern Africa (Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer 1991: 125 ff.). In the rain-forest and the wet savanna, there are, however, no animals which carry loads on their back and which could serve as the zoomorphic model for ‘back’ = UP, the groups speaking Ubangian languages keeping only small livestock in modest numbers. The more it astounds to find the ‘human back’ as conceptual source for UP, in the Pygmy language Baka (Kilian-Hatz 1995: 117).

15 16

Ngbaka-Maɓo is an Ubangian language spoken in the south-west of CAR. Baka is a dialect of this language, which is spoken in Cameroon. Svorou discusses more specifically the development of grams than of lexical metaphors: “the term ‘back’ which gives rise to TOP-REGION grams, does not refer to the human back, but rather to the back of a four-legged animal”.

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Baka (15) lɛkɛ̀ mɛsa, Ɂɔ̀ tɔ à pɛpɛ prepare table put PREP (human) back ‘lay the table, put [the things] on top of it’ The alleged zoomorphic re-interpretation of an anthropomorphic model proposed by Kilian-Hatz is not really convincing. We may rather assume that again an activity based model applies, now based on the load-carrier functions of the human back, which is a common tool for carrying babies, bundles of long firewoods and occasionally other goods.17 2.2.2 The Animal Head According to the zoomorphic model terms for ‘head’ are used to describe the front part of inanimate objects, but there are different criteria which make the animal head a cognitive source of metaphorical extensions. The first is that the head constitutes the one end of the body which with regard to the vitality is the more important one. This importance may be retained in lexical metaphors of ‘head’ referring to a single or the more important end as Mol (2004: 14) observes with regard to English. In Zande the term for ‘head’ may likewise be used for the functionally important end of an item, such as the cutting part of a lance or knife (17a), the biting ones among the teeth (17b), the end(s) of an item with no opposite end(s) (17c; 18). It may, however, also for the two opposite ends of a bar, a pole or a rod-shaped item (19).18 In all these examples, ‘head’ has also the connotation of a potential forward movement. The ‘head’ of a knife and a lance is the part which moves towards the item to be cut, the teeth bite, and fingers and toes are the forward parts with most movements of feet and hands. The tenons of the stretchers of a chair’s leg, finally, are the parts to be inserted into the respective holes in the chair’s legs in order to stabilize the construction. Ngbandi (16) a. li zama / to head knife / lance ‘point of knife / spearhead’

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18

As I could observe in Kisangani, bundles of firewoods which are too long to be carried on the head are carried on the bent back. When in the forest and wet savanna the branches of bushes and young trees make transport on the head cumbersome, people tend to carry also other loads on their backs and not on their heads as they do in open areas. Note that in German and in English, one rather speaks of the two ends, of which only one may be the ‘Kopf ende’, usually the one with some relevance for the head of people.

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b. li tɛ̃ head tooth ‘front teeth’ c. li ti / gɛrɛ head hand / foot ‘fingers / toes’ Zande (17) ti gu ri-he at DEF head-thing ‘at its [the thing’s] end’ Zande (Zanga & Pasch 2012) (18) mo ki tura li a-ngua kparaka ndue ku rogo yo 2s.1 SEQ insert head PL-wood stretcher leg DIR in there ‘and you insert the tenons of the leg stretchers there [into the chair’s legs]’ Motion, which was a connotation in the preceding examples, may also be the only criterion, to explain the metaphorical transfer from an animal head to the front part of an inanimate item. In example (20) this metaphor refers to the source of a stream or river, more specifically rather the starting point of a forward motion. It is not the head of the moving item which moves ahead like a fish leaving the starting point behind. The motion of the water at a source is only the initial motion of any new quantity of water that comes out of the earth into the open air to continue its way somewhere. Were the source perceived as the ‘head’ has a body, this body would be water in the ground on its way to the opening of the earth, invisible until its appearance at the source. Normally the sum of bodypart metaphors describing different parts of complex items do not virtually construct bodies according to biological models, but the single metaphors are used in a selective way to denote single components of living beings in a convenient way, with reference to the function or the appearance. In Zande and Sango, for example, the bank of a river is called ‘mouth of the river’, while the virtual ‘head’ or the virtual ‘eye’ constitute the surface, and there are neither arms nor legs. Zande (19) du ti li Mbamu at at head Mbomu ‘at the source of Mbomu river’

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In Gbaya the metaphor ‘head’ = ‘front part of an inanimate item’, is the source of further grammaticalization giving the term a temporal reading, referring to an early moment of a period of time. Gbaya-Gbea (20) zú-ture head-morning ‘early morning, early in the morning’ 2.2.3 ‘Head’ as Carrier of Mental Capacities and Emotions The third criterion of the metonymic uses of ‘head’ is that it is a carrier of character traits, emotional dispositions or mental capacities. According to Lakoff (1987: 283) “categories (in general) are understood in terms of container schemas”, and according to Mol (2004: 10) “the HEAD FOR CONTAINER examples [of English] all involve the folk model of the head as the site of reason or thought.” Quite impressionistically the hollow shape of the skull makes this schema indeed look likely. But in the examples (21–23) there is no linguistic evidence that ‘head’ is perceived as a container since the head may rather be conceived as a body which its owner may keep or not in good condition (21a) or which may go away leaving its owner behind (22). The metonymic reading in example (21b) makes the interpretation of ‘head’ as a container conceivable but not necessarily convincing, given that softness is normally rather the quality of a body than of a container. The ‘heads being (well) cared for’ is a metaphor of relaxedness, the ‘soft head’ for intelligence and the ‘departing from the head’ for forgetting. Sango (21) a. mbi bata li ti mbi 1s keep head POSS 1s ‘I keep cool’ Sango b. li ti lo a-woko mingi head POSS 3s SM-soften much ‘he is very smart/intelligent’ Ngbandi (22) li lo `ɔ head 3s depart ‘his head has gone’

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2.2.4 ‘Head’ as Most Important Part of the Body Being the most vital extremity of the body it is not astonishing that in many languages, though not in all, the human ‘head’ is the conceptual source of ‘important item’ or the ‘TOP of an organization’ (Mol 2004: 14). Such metaphorical use of the term for ‘head’ is documented only in Ngbandi and Sango, but not in the other Ubangian languages and to the best of my knowledge not in Lendu. In the example from Ngbandi, (23a), li kɔdɔrɔ, ‘head of the village’, is a possessive construction describing a part-whole relationship where li, refers metaphorically to ‘the most important part’ of the village which is the chief. The expression li kɔdɔrɔ ‘most important part of the village’ is transferred in further metaphorical extension to a person, the chief. The double possessive construction in which bɛ, ‘heart’, expresses that the top is not a tiny part, but a solid one. The metaphor of ‘head’ as ‘important item’ is also know in Sango19 (23b). It is not a retention from its lexifier Ngbandi, where ‘head’ refers to the person of the chief. There is also no double metaphorization, but rather a prepositional construction describing the ‘most important part of the village’ as a place where the chief is located. Ngbandi (23) a. lo bɛ́ li kɔdɔrɔ 3s heart head village ‘he is the head of the village’ Sango b. lo yeke na li ti gouvernement 3s COP PREP head POSS government ‘he is at the head of the government’ Note that with regard to Zande and Mbane the language consultants firmly rejected the existence of a metaphor ‘head’ = ‘CHIEF of a political unit’ in their respective language.

19

As for the emergence of Sango cf. Pasch (1997).

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Grammaticalization of Terms for ‘Head’

Nouns denoting ‘head’ are well known as etymological sources of grammatical words. When they are used to express spatial situations or orientations they lose their morphosyntactic status and develop into grammatical units (Heine 1997: 58). In the languages investigated they have become adpositions, i.g. prepositions in the Ubangi languages and postpositions in Lendu and Ngiti. These prepositions are homophonous with the respective body part terms and in given cases it is difficult to determine whether a term is used as a noun or as an adposition. Heine & Kuteva (2002: 167–171) give ‘head’ as conceptual source of a number of grammatical functions. These are UP, FRONT, REFLEXIVE, INTENSIVEREFLEXIVE and MIDDLE voice. Out of that choice only the functions UP and FRONT have been derived from terms for ‘head’ in the languages investigated. In addition there are, however, also the functions COUNTING unit and TYPE. It is intuitively clear that due to its position on top of the body the human head makes it an ideal cognitive model for UP-ness. Its position serves in many languages as a cognitive model not only for the description of part-wholerelationships of inanimate items but also of topological positions of Figures in relation to Grounds (Talmy 1978, 1983). This has been observed in many languages, alone 40 out of 46 African languages where the term for ‘head’ has grammaticalized into a special gram (Heine & Kuteva 2002: 167). In a smaller number of languages, in Africa they are 6 out of the 46, metaphors of ‘head’ are based on the zoomorphic model according to which “head = FRONT”. The spaces determined by the anthropomorphic and the zoomorphic models respectively are clearly distinct (Svorou 1994:73f.), the first being vertical the second horizontal. At least with regard to the languages investigated I claim that it is an either-or-choice, even in languages where both models function as sources of other spatial metaphors: languages do not make use of both models for the metaphor UP, Heine (1997: 46), however, unites them in a quarter circle on the basis of the assumption that UP and FRONT are associated with the same source concepts because the walking or running human body is not perceived as really vertical, but rather leaning forward, and because the head has “a dual locative potential”. This explanation is not convincing since it would apply only if one does not distinguish between the anthropomorphic and the zoomorphic models. According to Svorou (1994: 75) and Heine (1997: 40 f.) “conceptualization is anthropocentric”, and Heine adds that the human body being the most important cognitive source for the development of concepts of spatial relations. In

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graph 4.1 Regions of the grams UP and FRONT and the space covering these regions

2014 he qualifies the human body more cautiously as only one of the most salient models “for understanding, describing, and denoting concepts that are more difficult to understand, describe and denote” (Heine 2014: 17). The high number of lexical metaphors from Zande and Ngbandi might cast doubts on the hypothesis that the human body is a more important conceptual source than the animal body, at least with regard to the ‘head’, but they are not high enough falsify it. It is rather possible that they are equally important, each indicating a specific direction or space. With regard to grammaticalized uses of ‘head’ the anthropomorphic model predominates, however, quite clearly. It must be taken into consideration that the top position of the human head, i.e. its UPness, is a matter of daily subjective physical experience of the own body. On animals, however, humans can observe the FRONT position of the head as a Figure and its relation to different, Ground items in stasis and forward movements from different positions which is more objective. Of course, people may creep into holes or imitate animals in a playful way they can also have the subjective experience of having the head in front position, but this need not be a motive to perceive the human body in a different way. 3.1 ‘Head’ = UP In Africa, grammaticalization of terms for ‘head’ to denote UP-ness is widely spread, in particular among the non-Bantu languages (other than the cattle and camel-keeping groups in north-east Africa), while Bantu languages use terms for celestial bodies, usually ‘sky’ for UP (Heine 1997: 41). In Ubangian and Central Sudanic languages which are spoken on the Bantu border both models are used. Examples (25a, b, 26, 27) show adposition ‘on’ derived from the term for ‘head’ in Zande, Lendu, and Ngiti. In isolation the constructions of noun + preposition look like juxtaposed part-whole possessive constructions. But within a clause the grammatical function of the preposition becomes obvious (26a, b, c). It is noteworthy that in Lendu the postposition djò, maybe used in combination with the body-part term (25c), a collocation which speakers tend to avoid in Zande.

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Zande (24) a. rí re on 1s ‘on me’ cf. ri-re head-1s ‘my head’ b. rí meza on table ‘on the table’ cf. c. auru meza on (< sun) table ‘on the table’ Lendu (25) a. ma-di kítì djo 1sPERF-sit chair head ‘I sat down on the chair’ b. bíkì kə lívɛ̀rɛ̀ djo pen COP book head ‘the pen is on the book’ c. bíkì kɛ djo-djò pen COP head-head ‘the pen is on the head’ Ngiti (26) pbìrì dɔ́ mountain head ‘on the mountain’

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In the Ubangian languages prepositions derived from terms for ‘head’ have different notions of UP which reflect those of the respective lexical metaphors. In Ngbandi, Sango and Zande these postpositions may also be used to describe the position or the motion of a Figure on the surface of an extended flat Ground. Zande (Evans-Pritchard 1965) (27) ni-ye wa ka toro a-ndu ri sende X-come like SUB spirit III-go head ground ‘she came like a fairy queen (i.e. like a spirit) walking on the ground’ (28) … gu ko i ni-ta-ko ri mbara yo. DEF 3m 3p X-beat-3m head elephant there ‘… one who has been beaten on a [dead] elephant’ A somewhat tricky case is Mbane, where the term for ‘trunc, torso, stem’ is considered—at least by some speakers—the conceptual source of UP. In postpositional constructions this noun is usually followed by the preposition hà. According to some speakers this postposition is semantically unspecific which explains the interpretation of ngbage as the term which specifies the position of the Figure on top of the Ground.20 It may, however, be assumed that the postposition is a grammaticalized form of the term for ‘sun’, hã, notwithstanding that even speakers who gave the meaning ‘on’ for the postposition hà would not easily recognize the etymological relation between the postposition and the term for ‘sun’. Mbane (29) a. gò-lé ngbage (h)à hill torso on ‘on the summit of the hill’ b. ko kpá kíá (ngbage) hà vehicle drive snake trunc on ‘the car drove over the snake’

20

Gustave Baruti and Jean-Bernard Bokula helped me to develop the present hypothesis in April 2017.

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3.2 ‘Head’ = FRONT While lexical metaphors on the basis of the zoomorphic model of ‘head’ are about as frequent as those on the basis of the anthropomorphic model, only few examples could be found of grammaticalized metaphors. To begin with, there is apparently no locative adpositions based on the zoomorphic model which describes a topological position. What we do find, however, is the use of ‘head’ in prepositional phrases in combination of motion verbs, prepositional phrases which do not indicate Path. The Old Testament in Sango provides an example where li is used to describe the motion of a person ahead of other persons (31). This construction is quite obviously a retention from Ngbandi (32), the lexifier language of Sango. The Ngbandi example is a reflexive construction in which the subject virtually follows his/her own head or the intrinsic orientation of the head. Sango (30) lo yeke tambula na li ti e 3s COP walk PREP head POSS 1p ‘he was walking ahead of us’ (Old Testament) Ngbandi (31) gwe o na li mɔ go leave PREP head 2s ‘go straight ahead (leave from your head)’ Further grammaticalization to develop a temporal preposition has apparently not taken place. 3.3 ‘Head’ = Counting Unit and Category Marker Another grammaticalized function of ‘head’ is that of a unit for counting (34a; 35a, b) or (roughly) quantifying (34b) items. It is widely spread in the Ubangian languages. Since shape and outer appearance are no criteria, neither the anthropomorph nor the zoomorph model are likely to be the cognitive source. Sango (32) a. li ti ala a-yeke oku head POSS 3s SM-COP five ‘they are five (persons)’

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b. li ti e mingi head POSS 1p many ‘we are many’ Banda (33) a. kumu enji de bisi head 3p COP two ‘they are two’ Gbaya-Gbea b. zú-wa ɔ́ -taa head-3p PL-be.three ‘they are three of them’ In a similar way ‘head’ is used to denote units of items, in particular grains or fruit, which are principally countable but usually not counted. Such units, which grow naturally (36), are easier to store, to transport and to market than masses of the single items. Sango (34) li ti nzo/fondo head POSS mais/manioc/banana ‘maize.cob / bunch of bananas’ Such collectivized items may have the shape of a head (37a), while others have no shape at all, ‘head’ referring to the mere quantity of its parts (37b). Banda (35) a. kumu gbyema head oil.palm ‘bunch of palm fruits’ b. kumu rogo-n rwa head food-DEF hard ‘there is abundance of food, prosperity’ The use of the term for ‘head’ to mark types of items is probably a further grammaticalization of the quantifier function of ‘head’. It was found only in Ngbandi.

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Ngbandi (36) a. li nɔ́ tɛ́ á-hu head class POSS PL-bird ‘the class of birds’ b. wa li nɔ́ tɛ́ é lǎ owner head class POSS 1p PRES ‘s/he is one of us’

4

Conclusion

Among the figurative uses of terms of ‘head’ in the Ubangian languages and in Lendu the metonymic uses are primarily used to build complex verbs. The terms for ‘head’ have also undergone metaphorization, both on the basis of the anthropomorphic model and the zoomorphic model. According to the first model, ‘head’ is used to denote upper parts of items, mental capacities and the most important item. Metaphors on the basis of the zoomorphic model refer to end parts of inanimate items, and in one language, Gbaya-Gbeya further grammaticalization has led to a temporal reading. Metaphors of ‘head’ based on the anthropomorphic model have undergone different grammaticalization processes. At least in Zande, Lendu and Ngiti the term head has developed into a preposition, ‘on’. With regard to the zoomorph model no preposition is knows which results from the grammaticalization of the term for ‘head’ which would describe topological positions, but in Sango and Ngbandi, ‘head’ has developed into a preposition relating to the region ahead of a person moving forward. To begin with adpositions meaning ‘on’ are found in several languages. In Sanga, Banda and Gbaya it has got the function of making items countable, and in Ngbandi ‘head’ is used to refer to types or classes of items. Noteworthy is the observation that the load carrier function of the ‘head’ like that of the ‘back’, which apply a kind of support, could be identified for the first time as a criterion of conceptual sources for UP.21 A second important observation is that on the basis of the verbs in collocation with terms for ‘head’ in complex expressions, ‘head’ can quite clearly be defined as a body, but there are no convincing linguistic indications which which make the container-schema likely. 21

The criterion ‘support’ is discussed by Svorou (1994: 157), but all her examples are related to the BOTTOM-REGION.

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Abbreviations AN COP DEF HAB INF PAST PERF PL POSS PREP PRES RED SEQ SM

animate (-human) gender copula definite marker habitual marker infinitive marker past marker perfective marker plural marker of alienable possession preposition presentative reduplication sequential marker subject marker

SUB verbp 1s, 2s 1p, 2p, 3p 3m / 3f

subordinator perfective verb stem 1st, 2nd singular pronoun 1st, 2nd, 3rd plural pronoun 3rd singular masculine/feminine 1s.1 / 1p.1 1st singular/plural pronoun of Series 1 1s.2 / 1p.2 1st singular/plural pronoun of Series 2 .s/.p singular/plural II22 progressive or habitual III past, indefinite present X immediate past

References Bouquiaux, Luc et al. 1978. Dictionnaire sango-français—Bàkàrí sāngɔ̄. Lexique françaiś ́ bàkàrí fàránzì-sāngɔ̄ . Paris: SELAF. sango—kɛ́tɛ́ Boyd, Raymond 1995. ‘Le Zande.’ In: Boyd, R. (ed.) Le système verbal dans les langues oubanguiennes, pp. 165–197. Munich/Newcastle: Lincom Europa. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1965. ‘Some Zande texts—Part 4 (Ture and Cicada, Ture’s war with Gburenze and his sister, Ture and the orphan, How Ture brought out his intestines)’. Kush 13: 213–242. Goosens, Louis 1990. ‘Metaphtonymy: the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action.’ Cognitive Linguistics 1, 3: 323–340. Gore, E.C. 1926. A Zande Grammar. London: Sheldon Press. Gore, E.C. and Mrs. E.C. Gore 1952. Zande and English Dictionary. London: Sheldon Press. Heine, Bernd 1997. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heine, Bernd 2015. ‘The Body in Language: Observations from Grammaticalization.’ In: 22

The Roman numbers marking glossing TMA prefixes have been adopted from Boyd (1995), the descriptions from Gore (1926: 47–50). The TMA-system is, however, not yet fully understood and needs further investigation.

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Brenzinger, Matthias and Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds.) The Body in Language. Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden: Brill. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi and Friederike Hünnemeyer 1991. Grammaticalization. A conceptual Framework. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kilian-Hatz, Christa 1995. Das Baka. Afrikanistische Monographien 6. Köln: Institut für Afrikanistik der Universität zu Köln. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona 2014. Semantics of Body Part Terms. General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. Studies in Semantics 6. München: LINCOM Europa. Kutsch-Lojenga, Constance 1994. Ngiti. Cologne: Verlag Rüdiger Köppe. Lakoff, George 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University Press Lekens, Benjamin 1955. Ngbandi Idioticon. Vol. I Nederlands-Frans en Ngbandi. Tervuren: Musée Royal du Congo Belge. Lekens, Benjamin 1958. Ngbandi Idioticon. Vol. II Ngbandi en Frans-Nederlands. Tervuren: Musée Royal du Congo Belge. Mol, Susan 2004. ‘Head and Heart: metaphors and metonymies in a cross-linguistic perspective’. In: Karin Aijmer and Hilde Hasselgård (eds.) Translation and Corpora: Selected Papers from the Göteborg-Oslo Symposium 18–19 October 2003, pp. 87–111. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Pasch, Helma 1986. Die Mba-Sprachen. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Pasch, Helma 1997 ‘The choice of a common medium of communication in language contact situations.’ In: Language Contact: Conditions, Conflicts and Constraints ed. by Martin Pütz, pp. 45–54. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Pasch, Helma 2017. ‘Verbal Plural in Zande’. STUF—Language Typology and Universals. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 70, 1: 215–231. Roulon-Doko, Paulette 1996. Conception de l’espace et du temps chez les Gbaya de Centrafrique. Paris: L’Harmattan. Roulon-Doko, Paulette 2008. Dictionnaire Gbaya-Français (République Centrafricaine), suivi d’un dictionnaire des noms propres et d’un index français-gbaya, Paris: Karthala. Svorou, Soteria 1994. The Grammar of Space. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Samarin, William J. 1966. The Gbeya Language. Grammar, Texts, and Vocabularies: University of California Publications in Linguistics 44. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Talmy, Leonard 1978. ‘Figure and ground in complex sentences.’ In: Joseph Greenberg. Universals of Human Language, 4 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 625– 649. Talmy 1983. ‘How language structures space.’ In: Herbert L. Pick and Linda P. Acredolo

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(eds.) Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research and Application. New York: Plenum. pp. 225–282. Tisserant, Charles 1931. Dictionnaire Banda-Français. Paris: Institut d’ Ethnologie. Tucker, Archibald N. 1940. ‘Lendu.’ In: The Eastern Sudanic Languages, vol. I, pp. 380– 418. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zanga, Gervais and Helma Pasch 2012. Wa ka ani mbakadi rukutu akiti (How we construct small chairs). Instruction sheet in Zande language, http://kups.ub.uni‑koeln .de/5089/ (11.07.2017).

chapter 5

‘Head’ as a Link of Embodiment in Chinese Yongxian Luo

1

Introduction*

It has been argued that there is a relationship between the conceptualization of the human body and language structure, and that human language utilises body part terms for expressions of emotions, character traits, reason, thought and so on (Greenough and Kittredge 1920, Enfield & Wierzbicka 2002, Sharifian et al. 2008, Raymond 2010, Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk 2014). The possible connections between mind and body and between language and body will allow us to have a better understanding of the nature of embodiment in relation to human cognition (Gibbs 2006). Works on this line of thinking have been inspired by Lakoff and Johnson’s 1980 classic study and Lakoff’s theory of conceptual metaphor (Lakoff 1987). Other lines of arguments look at how body parts play an important role in the development of theories describing grammaticalization processes and how semantic extensions manifest themselves in certain conceptual domains through grammaticalization (Heine and Kuteva, 2002, pp. 62–63 and 165–171, Heine & Song 2011). It has been suggested that the cultural history of an ethnic group or speech community is preserved in its “memory bank” (Sharifian 2011:5), and speakers of a language tend to share certain patterns of cognition which may reveal universal tendencies and at the same time remain distinct as unique features. In a pioneering study, Matisoff (1986) conducted a survey of Southeast Asian languages in the semantic domain of “psycho-collocation”, which he defines as “a polymorphemic expression referring as a whole to a mental process, quality, or state, one of whose constituents is a psycho-noun, i.e. a noun with explicit psychological reference (translatable by English words like HEART, MIND, SPIRIT, SOUL, TEMPER, NATURE, DISPOSITION, MOOD). The rest of the psycho-collocation contains morphemes (usually action verbs or adjectives) * The author is grateful to Anthony Diller for his constructive comments on earlier drafts of the paper, and to Alexandra Aikhenvald for her insightful feedback. The author also wishes to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their critiques which significantly help sharpen the paper. Needless to say, none of these scholars are responsible for any deficiencies that remain.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_007

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that complete the meaning.” (Matisoff 1986:9). These linguistic forms typically manifest themselves as lexical compounds, which can be divided into several semantic subtypes such as intellectual aspects of mental activity corresponding to operations of the MIND and the WILL, qualities of character/traits of personality and various emotions, feelings, moods, with a high degree of morphological complexity. A key feature of these “psycho-collocations” is their metaphoric and informative nature which often serves as aphorisms or maxims in regulating social behaviours. Along these lines of arguments, Juntanamalaga (1992) presented an illuminating account of hǔa (head)-compounds in Thai, with several dozen examples carrying meaning extensions associated with the head, such as human emotion, characterisation, certain mentality, origin/beginning of space and time, leading item/leadership, as well as items with bulging or protruding features. Over the past decades or two, there has been a significant amount of research on Chinese body-part incorporation (see Chappell 1986, Ye 2002, in particular Yu 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2013). These studies have advanced our understanding of the link between body part and emotions/cognition in Chinese, and which have contributed to cross-linguistic research in embodiment in languages. To contribute to the academic debate, this paper discusses the Chinese body-part terms for ‘head’ and its associated parts ‘brain’ and “neck” from a conceptual and cognitive perspective. More specifically, this study looks at the metonymic and metaphorical extensions of this set of lexical items and see how they reflect the embodiment nature of cognition as reflected in the Chinese cultural contexts.

2

“Head” in Chinese Lexicon

The head carries most of the sensory systems that allow us to function effectively in our three-dimensional habitat (Berthoz, Graft & Vidal 1992). As Tobias (1992: 5) has put it, “The pose of the human head on the erect spinal column is distinctive among mammals … Human uprightness and the anatomic basis are among the most striking characteristics that distinguish living man from the great apes of Africa and Asia.” From a physiological point, heads serve our body in roles such as ingestion, sensation, defence, and mating. We think with our head, which externally contains the eyes with which we see, and the nose with which we breathe, and the ears with which we hear, not to mention the face which is our identity. In English we talk about capital crime/punishment, which is related to the meaning of head. Internally, the head contains the brain with which we think and process cognitive information. The head is located on

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the “top” part of our body, a position of prominence. Like English, in Chinese there are terms like “capital city”, “top leader”, “heads of the states”, which refer to the semantic extensions of “top” status, or “primary” importance or significance. 2.1 “Heads”: Historical Sources and Primary Meaning There are two terms for ‘head’ in Chinese, shǒu 首 and tóu 头. Both forms occurred very early in ancient Chinese pictorial writing, in several forms depicting a human head with or without hair; see Table 5.1. The character 头, traditionally written as 頭, was found in the ritual bronze inscriptions of the Zhou dynasty (800 BCE). 頭 shares the same semantic radical 頁 (items 7–9 in Table 5.1) with 首. In the oracle bone and the ritual bronze inscriptions, 首 and 頁 are variants of a pictographic image of a kneeling person, with the head in prominent position. The ideograph depicts a human head with hair. In the writing system of later periods, the hair was omitted, yielding 頁. Xu Shen, a lexicographer and author of the much quoted Shuowen, the first systematic dictionary of Chinese, defined 頁 as “head”. Until this day, 頁 serves as the semantic radical for forms associated with the head. Some lexical examples below are illustrative of the concept of “head”. (1) a. 首饰 shǒu-shì (head-decorate) “ornament, jewelry” b. 头发 tóu-fa (head-hair) “hair” c. 顿首 dùn-shǒu (kowtow-head) “to kowtow, bow one’s head to show respect” d. 低头 dī-tóu (low-head) “to lower one’s head” The primary meaning of ‘head’ is clear in (1a–d), where both shǒu 首 and tóu 头 can refer “heads” as physical entity on the upper part of the human body. By analogy, physical objects that are considered as heaving “heads” are viewed as such: (2) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h.

心头 xīn-tóu (heart-head) “heart” 矛头 máo-tou (spear-head) “spear head, target”, 木头 mù-tou (timber-head) “timber” 石头 shí-tou (stone-head) “stone” 手指头 shǒuzhǐ tou (hand-point-head) “fingers” 斧头 fǔ-tou (axe-head) “axe” 锄头 chú-tou (hoe-head) “hoe” 榔头 láng-tou (hammer-head) “hammer”

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table 5.1

1

2

Various forms of pictographs for human head in Old Chinese and their approximate time depth 3

4

Oracle bone inscriptions, 2nd millennium BCE

5

6

Bronze inscriptions, 800 BCE

7

8

Chu silk script, ca. 300 BCE

9

10

Seal script, 221 BCE

Source: http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zixing/yanbian/10681py/

With the exception of (2a) 心头 xīn-tóu “heart”, tóu 头 has lost its lexical tone in all the above examples, a trait of grammaticalized morpheme, a point we shall come to in §2.4. 2.2 Meaning Extensions Like English, where we find expressions like “head quarter”, “head up”, “keep your head”, “heads of departments”, “headlines”, “head for”, “make headway”. In Chinese, “head” also has a number of meaning extensions. Examples: (3) a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

头脑 tóu-nǎo (head-brain) “mind” 首要 shǒu-yào (head-important) “of paramount importance, primary” 头条 tóu-tiáo (head-piece) “top story, headline” 首府 shǒu-fǔ (head-city) “capital city (of a province)” 山头 shān-tóu (mountain-head) “mountain top” 首付 shǒu-fù (head-payment) ‘initial payment’ 年头 nián-tóu (year-head) ‘beginning of the year’

Examples of meaning extensions are conveyed in (3a–f). (3a) is a dual-headed compound referring to ‘the mind’, as in 头脑清醒 tóunǎo qīng-xǐng (mindawaken) ‘have a cool mind’, which may also designate one’s ability to do something significant, as in 有数学头脑 yǒu shùxué tóunǎo (have mathematicsmind, good at mathematics). The combination of “head” with “brain” to express the meaning of “mind, thinking” is particularly appropriate to human experience as we think with our head. Things of great importance are often associated with “head”, as in (3b–d). Thus, 首要任务 shǒu-yào rènwù (head-important task) means “tasks of primary importance, top priority.” One may refer to “top priority” as 头等大事 (head-grade-big-business), where 头等 may also designate “top grade (in quality)”. Similarly, “top stories, headline news” are

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described as 头版头条新闻 tóubǎn tóu-tiáo xinwén (head-press-head-piece news), and “No. 1 enemy” as 头号敌人 tóu-hào dírén (head-number enemy). A seat of honour is called 首席 (head-seat), which has now become a metaphorical expression to refer to “most important or main”, e.g. 首席代表 shǒu-xí dàibiǎo (head-seat-representative) “chief representative”, 首席科学家 shǒu-xí kēxuéjiā (head-seat scientist) “chief scientist”, 首席小提琴 shǒu-xí xiǎo-tíqín (head-seat small-musical instrument) “chief violinist”. This is one of the most salient uses of “head” in Chinese. The meaning extension of “head” as “important, foremost” can be observed in the early writings of the late Western Han (221BCE–8 AD) period. In the book Lie-nu-zhuan 列女傳, believed to have been written by the Western Han Confucius scholar Liu Xiang (77–6 BCE) we find the following sentence: (3)′ 七去之道，妒正為首。 qī qù zhi dào, dù zhèng wéi shǒu seven-divorce-PART-way, envy-first.wife-be-head “Of the seven reasons for divorce, the foremost is to envy the first wife.” In (3e), the meaning of “top” in spatial position is obvious, which signifies prominence. To this we may add 源头 yuán-tóu (source-head), which designates the “origin” or “source” of a stream, or a river. And the title of a person stating their social rank, qualifications, position in an organization, sex is referred to as 头衔 tóu-xián (head-rank) “title, (social) position, (military) rank”, where the two elements work together to give the meaning of the term. As illustrated in (3f) and (3g), the head as the top of the body is also mapped into the domain of time or related dimension, such as sequence, where “heads” refer to the “first” or “beginning” of a period of time. Quite often, the head is employed to refer to “the first flight” 首航 shǒu-háng (head-flight), “first show (debut)” 首演 shǒu-yǎn (head-show); the first time 首次 shǒu-cì (headtime). It is significant to observe that this meaning extension occurred as early as in the Warring States, found in the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching (道 德經.38.2 LAO 38.2.0.0.0.0), written in the middle Warring States (c. 475 to 221 BC). (3)″ 夫禮者忠信之薄而亂之首。 Fū lǐ zhě, zhōng-xìn zhī báo ér luàn zhī shǒu person-rites-PART, loyalty-faith-PART-thin-then-disorder-PART-head “When it comes to rites (decorum), an attenuation of loyalty and good faith is the beginning of disorder.”

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Note that although in Chinese one can say “beginning of the year/month”, as in (1g), one can’t say “week-head” or “day-head” to mean “the beginning” of a week or day. For a period of time to have a “head”, it must be sufficiently long, as in 月头 yué-tóu (month-head) “beginning of a month”. But “head” can be used in expressions such as 头一天 tóu yī-tiān (head-one-day) “the first day”, 头几年 tóu jǐ nián (head-several-year) “the first couple of years”, where time is depicted as exhibiting a vertical and horizontal dimension in Chinese, with “head” referring to “first” in sequence or order. The “beginning” of something is commonly referred to as 开头 kāi-tóu (open-head), as in 文章的开头 wénzhāng de kāi-tóu (article-NOM-beginning) “the beginning of an article”, and its opposite is 结尾 jié-wěi (finish-tail) “end”. A well-written, logically and structurally sound article is one that is 首尾呼应 shǒu-wěi hū-yìng (head-tail call-answer) “coherent, well connected”. 2.3 “Head” as Leader One of the most characteristic meaning extensions of “heads” is to refer to leaders of a social group, or a nation state, as shown in the following examples: (4) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i.

首脑 shǒu-nǎo (head-brain) “head (of a state)” 首相 shǒu-xiàng (head-minister) “prime minister” 首领 shǒu-lǐng (head-neck) “head, leader” 头目 tóu-mù (head-eye) “head” [derog.] 头子 tóu-zi (head-SUFF) “head, leader” [derog.] 元首 yuán-shǒu (first-head) “head of a nation” 领头 lǐng-tóu (neck-head) “head, leader” 首都 shǒu-dū (head-capital city) “capital (of a nation sate)” 首府 shǒu-fǔ (head-house) “capital city (of a province)”

The compounds in (4a–g) are examples demonstrating that in Chinese, leaders are viewed as “heads”, in negative or positive sense, of a social organization which is composed of various functions and relations among its members, all of which together form an “organic body”. The person who leads this organization is its “head”. A person who takes the lead in a journey is the 带头人 dài-tóu-rén (lead-head-person), for example, leader of an academic discipline is referred to as 学科带头人 xuékē dài-tóu-rén (study-subject lead-head-person). Likewise, the cities where the central or local governments are seated are the “head” cities of the territorial areas under their administration (3h–i). Thus, a conceptualisation can be established here as SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IS AN ORGANIC BODY, and LEADER IS HEAD/LEADERSHIP IS HEAD.

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It is significant to note that the 首 shǒu-compounds are more often used in the positive sense, whereas compounds with 头 quite often carry negative nuances. Thus, people often refer to the head of a gang as 土匪头目 tǔfěi tóu-mù (bandit head-eye) “bandit head”, and head of a gangster as 黑帮头子 hēi-bāng tóu-zi (black-gang-head-SUFFIX). A very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence is called 金融寡头 jīnróng guǎ-tóu (finance/banking fewhead), with 寡头 guǎ-tóu (few-head) now extending to mean “oligarch” or ruler in oligarchy, as 寡头政治 guǎ-tóu zhèngzhì (few-head politics) “oligarchy”. On a positive note, business giants such as Apple or Alibaba are referred to as 商业 巨头 shāngyè jù-tóu (commerce huge-head); this latter expression carries some slight negative nuance of “monopoly”. 2.4 Grammaticalization of 头 tóu “Head” A very productive use of 头 tóu “head” is its ability to form locative nouns, which is probably derived from expressions like 床头 chuáng-tóu (bed-head) “bed head” and 村头 cūn-tóu (village-head) “edge of a village/entrance of a village”. Beds are for people to sleep in and “bed head” thus refers to the side where a person lays their head when sleeping. The meaning of “edge” or “end” can be observed in expressions like 田头 tián-tóu (rice.field-head) “edge of a rice field” and 地头 dì-tóu (field head) “edge of a rice field”. The meaning of “edge” or “end” can be further grammaticalized to refer to location. The following compounds illustrate. (5) a. 前头/后头 qián-tou /hòu-tou (front-head/rear-head) “front/back” b. 里头/外头 lǐ-tou /wài-tou (inside-head/outside-head) “inside/outside” c. 上头/下头 shàng-tou /xià-tou (above-head/below-head) “above/below” d. 东头/西头 dōng-tou /xī-tou (east-head/west-head) “east/west, east side/west side” Semantic bleaching or loss in meaning content can be observed in (5a–d). Here the meaning of “head” is lost. In these compounds, “head” refers to location/direction, translatable into English as “side”. (5d) can also be understood as “east end/west end”. By analogy, there are 南/北头 nán/běi-tou (south/north head) “south/north side, south/north end”, conveying the meaning of “the part of a place or thing that is furthest away from the centre”. That “head” is often linked with location is also the case with many languages in the surrounding regions, a point we shall pick up shortly towards the end of this section. Note that in all these examples, 头 tou has lost its lexical tone to become a locative suffix, and is pronounced with a neutral tone, prosodically taking a half mora as it is unstressed.

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A very common expression in Chinese is 两头 liǎng-tóu (two-head) “both sides, both ends” when people are talking about an object with both ends, and there is a saying 甘蔗没有两头甜 gānzhè méi yǒu liǎng tóu tián (sugarcane not-have two-head sweet) “A sugarcane is never sweet at both ends”— a vivid expression meaning “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Other similar expressions are 尽头 jìn-tóu (end-head) “end”, 天地头 tiān-dì-tóu (skyearth-head) “top and bottom margins of a page (as in printing)”; 到头 dào-tóu (reach-head) “at/to the end”. Interestingly, “head” may be viewed as a boundary or a limit, and thus, if you cross the boundary, then you are 过头 guò-tóu (passhead) “go beyond the limit, over(do)”. For example, an actor who has overacted in a play is 表演过头 biǎo-yǎn guò-tóu (perform-pass-head), and a speaker who has made an overstatement is said to 说过头话 shuō guò-tóu huà (say-passhead-utterance). Here we have a conceptualisation of DIRECTION/LOCATION IS HEAD. This gramma-ticalization process occurred in the Tang times (618–907 AD), as found in the 臨濟錄 Lingjilu 29.1: (6) 明頭來明頭打, 暗頭來暗頭打。 míng-tóu lái míng-tóu dǎ, àn-tóu-lái àn-tóu dǎ bright-head-come-bright-head-hit, dark-head-come-dark-head-hit “Come on the bright side and I hit you on the bright side. Come on the dark side and I’ll hit you on the dark side.” In English, we also have expressions such as “we are heading for the south” where “head” is used as a verb meaning to go in/towards a particular direction. There is an archaic expression in Chinese, 狐死首邱 hú sǐ shǒu qiū (fox-diehead-hill), which comes from the legend that when a fox is dying it turns its head towards its native hill. This has become the source of several idioms, e.g. 首丘之情 shǒu qiū zhī qín (head-hill PART-feeling), which metaphorically refers to nostalgia, the feeling of a person longing for home when getting old. “Head” in this expression is used as a verb, meaning “placing the head in the direction of …”. Another usage of 头 tóu “head” is its function as a nominaliser turning verbs or adjectives into abstract nouns. Consider the following examples: (7) a. b. c. d. e.

盼头 pàn-tou (expect-head) “expectation, hope” 念头 niàn-tou (think.of-head) “thought, idea, motif, intention” 来头 lái-tou (come-head) “background, backing, connections” 吃头 chī-tou (eat-head) “(worth) eating, taste” 看头 kàn-tou (watch-head) “seeing, (worth a) look”

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f. 甜头 tián-tou (sweet-head) “sweetish taste, pleasant flavour; benefit” g. 苦头 kǔ-tou (bitter-head) “trouble, hardship” (7a–e) are examples of verb nominalization with “head” as suffix. No sense of direction or location is conveyed here. What is expressed is an abstract sense related to the verb in question. However, they are all conceptualized as having “heads”, i.e. they are considered as having an “end”. It is conceivable that one would have a goal when one is expecting something, the same is true when one is having an idea. A more complex meaning can be observed in (7c) which implies that someone is coming from a strong or solid background (SOURCE), with the backing or connections that will allow him to succeed. A dish is said to have no taste or not to be worth eating 没有吃头 méi yǒu chī-tou (not-have eat-head); and a movie or a book is worth seeing or reading 很有看头 hěn yǒu kàn-tou (very have look-head). (7f) and (7g) are analogous or derived from real life experience when one is chewing sugarcane (see discussions for example (4) above) or biting a cucumber of which one end tastes bitter. Like examples in (5), 头 tou has lost its lexical tone. This type of diachronic process can be found in Welsh where “head”pen also means “end”, “tip”, as in ymhen ( yn + pen) “at the end of” (Heine and Kuteva 2002: 170). Here we have an instance of a general process whereby relational nouns give rise to relational grammatical markers. In many languages in the surrounding regions, we come across similar meaning extensions with “head”. Not only does “head” function as verb nominaliser, it also occurs with concrete nouns to form abstract nouns with abstract meanings deriving from the lexical meaning. E.g.: (8) a. 风头 fēng-tóu (wind-head) “way the wind blows; trend of things, development” b. 势头 shì-tóu (power-head) “situation, impetus, momentum, tendency” c. 劲头 jìn-tóu (strength-head) “strength, energy, vigour, vitality” d. 派头 pài-tóu (style-head) “bearing, manner” (8a–d) show how abstract nouns are formed from concrete nouns with “head”. In (8a), wind is conceived of having a “head” because of its dynamic nature (MOVING ENTITY). This is the literal sense of the compound, comparable to English “headwind”, referring to a wind blowing from directly in front, opposing forward motion. As the translation shows, the primary meaning of the compound 风头 fēng-tóu “wind-head” is based on real life experience, i.e. the way the wind blows. This becomes further abstract to mean “the way things develop, trend of things”, and even “public attention”. A person who

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likes to seek the limelight is said to 喜欢出风头 xǐhuān chū fēng-tou (enjoyappear-wind-head). In the latter usage, the lexical tone of element tóu has neutralised. (8b) refers to a scenario resulting from power: a driving force that keeps an object moving or keeps an event developing, or the way things develop or an event unfolds from a force, be it internal or external. A company that is heading in the right direction of development can be said as 发展势头良好 fāzhǎn shì-tóu liáng-hǎo (develop-power-head-fine-good). In (8c), with the use of “head”, the concrete meaning of strength, which typically refers to physical state, becomes more abstract to mean “the power and ability to be physically and mentally active; the power and ability to continue to live; strength of thought,” which includes both physical and mental strength. (8d) depicts a state in which a person is behaving in a certain manner. Thus, someone who acts like a gentleman is described as 绅士派头 shēnshì pài-tóu (gentlemen stylehead) “having gentleman manner”. If a person is depicted as 有派头 yǒu pài-tóu (have style-head), they are putting on an impressive/elegant air. Those who have a penchant for impressive manner or who are eager to impress are 讲 派头 jiǎng pài-tóu (talk style-head), that is, they are trying to behave in such a manner so as to make people feel that they are dignified, exquisite, fashionable, refined and sophisticated. Finally, 头 can function as a classifier for counting cattle and games, e.g. 一头牛/羊/猪 yī tóu niú/yáng/zhū (one-headcow/sheep/pig) “a cow/sheep/pig”. Such grammaticalization processes are found in several nearby languages. For example, in Lue, a Tai language spoken in Sipsongpanna in the YunnanThai border area, we find the following expressions (Meng 2007: 323–324): Lue (Sipsongpanna, Tai) (9) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i.

ho1 tsai1 (head-heart) “heart” ho1 xau5 (head-knee) “knee” ho1 na3 (head-face) “front” ho1 mɛ6 mɯ2 (head-mother-hand) “thumb” ho1 sa:n1 (head-base) “base” ho1 nam4 (head-water) “source of a river” ho1 pi1 (head-year) “beginning of the year” ho1 kun2 (head-person) “population” ho1 hən2 (head-family) “household”

Similarly, in Lakkja, a Kam-Sui language spoken in northeast Guangxi, the meaning of “head” to extended to something that is conceptualized as such

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(10a, b, c), or a leader (10e), end/edge (of a street) (10f), a starting point (10g, h), the end of an object (10i). It can also be used as locative prefix (10j, k) (Liu 1999), very much like Chinese. Lakkja (Kam-Sui) (10) a. lai2 kjɛu1 (plough-head) “plough head” b. kjɛu1 tsu6 (head chopsticks) “the end of chopsticks with which to pick up food” c. kjai5 kjɛu1 (penis-head) “glans penis” d. oːp8 puːi1 kjɛu1 (ignite-fire-head) “match-head” e. lak8 kjɛu1 (PREF-head) “leader” f. kjɛu1 kaːi1 (head-street) “end of a street” g. haːi1 kjɛu1 (open-head) “initiate, to start” h. faŋ1 kjɛu1 (start-head) “beginning, start” i. an2ja2 hou3 kjɛu1 tiːm1 (CLF-shoulder-pole sharp) “sharp-pointed end of shoulder pole (for carrying thatch grass)” j. kjɛu3kjɛ̃5 (head-front) “front”, k. kjɛu3 khjǝn3 (head-back) “back” The above discussion illustrates the transition of “head” from lexical to derivational status. These are examples of noun compounds with head on the right, in composite forms which designate a more specific type of the concept denoted by head (e.g. spearhead). The noun head also occurs in a significant number of ‘exocentric’ compounds with a range of interconnected meanings. The different exocentric patterns where head participates raise questions about the grammatical status of this morpheme, which has become a suffixal element, showing the fuzzy boundaries between derivation and compounding. Booij (forthcoming, pp. 11–13) provides a similar example of this type of diachronic development in relation to the Modern German prefix Haupt- (derived from ‘head’), with the meaning ‘main’, e.g. Haupt-person (‘main character’), Haupt-rolle (‘main role’), Haupt-sache (‘main issue’) or Haupt-schalter (‘main switch’).

3

Head and Brain

As the organ in the head that controls the activities of the body, the brain is closely associated with the head. As illustrated in (3a) above, 首脑 shǒu-nǎo (head-brain) designates the head of a state. It is worth noting that the com-

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pound, 头脑 tóu-nǎo (head-brain), discussed above in (2a), signifies “mind”. While 首脑 shǒu-nǎo “head of state” has only one meaning, 头脑 tóu-nǎo “mind” is more abstract, carrying more senses such as the ability or an instance of great perception, of present or future developments. Thus, someone who is good at perceiving future development is said to have 战略头脑 zhàn-lüè tóu-nǎo (strategy head-brain) “strategic vision”, and one who is a capable businessman is described as 有经济头脑 yǒu jīngjì tóu-nǎo (have economics head-brain) “business-minded”. More discussions follow. 3.1 Brain and Mind In English, we talk about a person who is “brainless” when we refer to the person as being stupid, foolish, witless, and unintelligent. In Chinese a person like this is described as 没有头脑 méi yǒu tóu-nǎo (not have head-brain) “having no brain”, very similar to English. One who is simple-minded is depicted as 头脑简 单 tóu-nǎo jiǎn-dān (head-brain simple). A clear- and sobered-minded person is one who is 头脑清醒 tóu-nǎo qīngxǐng (head-brain clear-awaken), and who is likely to be 头脑灵活 tóu-nǎo línghuó (head-brain flexible) “quick at logical thinking”. If a person 头脑发热 tóu-nǎo fa-re (head-brain get-hot), he is overoptimistic and fosters impractical grandiose ideas. If one is carried away by success, one is 被胜利冲昏头脑 bèi shènglì chōng hūn tóu-nǎo (by-success rushdizzy head-brain) “swell-headed with success”. In all these examples, “head and brain” designates “mind, intelligence, wit”. 头脑 tóu-nǎo is the source of a number of expressions and idioms. A very common Chinese expression, 没头没脑 méi tóu méi nǎo ([have] no head and no brains), describes someone who says or does things abruptly, without giving it a thought; or depicts a scenario when a person engages in an act that is unwarranted or uncalled for regardless of the consequences. In addition, “head and brain” may serve to depict the manner in which a person is doing something. In this usage, “head” and “brain” occur in the frame: A tóu A nǎo (A-head-A-brain) This is quite a productive pattern that forms a four-syllable elaborate expression where the reduplicated element—a noun, verb or adjective—depicts the quality described by the lexical item in question. The following examples illustrate. (11) a. 虎头虎脑 hǔ-tóu-hǔ-nǎo (tiger-head-tiger-brain) “(of children) chubby, naïve and healthy” b. 木头木脑 mù-tóu-mù-nǎo (wood) “block-headed, slow-witted”

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c. 鬼头鬼脑 guǐ-tóu-guǐ-nǎo (devil) “thievishly, furtively, on the sly, sneaky-looking, in a hole-and-corner manner” d. 贼头贼脑 zéi-tóu-zéi-nǎo (thief) “thievish, furtive, stealthy, stealthily” e. 缩头缩脑 suō-tóu-suō-nǎo (shrink) “be timid and faint-minded, flinch, indecisive” f. 昏头昏脑 hūn-tóu-hūn-nǎo (dizzy) “muddle-headed, with one’s mind numb, confused and dizzy” g. 滑头滑脑 huá-tóu-huá-nǎo (slippery) “crafty, slick, sly, cunning” h. 呆头呆脑 dāi-tóu-dāi-nǎo (dull) “dull and stupid, blockhead, stupidlooking” i. 憨头憨脑 hān-tóu-hān-nǎo (naïve, simple) “naïve, simple, with a stupid head and a dull brain, foolish-looking” j. 倔头倔脑 juè-tóu-juè-nǎo (blunt) “blunt, blunt of manner and gruff of speech” With the exception of (11a), which typically depicts the chubby and innocent appearance of a child, all examples in (11) express subjective and negative feelings by the speaker towards the person being talked about. (11a) may also be used to describe a man who looks muscular, sturdy, and unrefined. The expression in this context carries mild negative connotations. The negative sense will be stronger when describing a woman. “Head and brain” are here mapped to a person’s appearance and manner, for the head is the most noticeable part of the body for appearance, and one’s appearance often reveals traits of human behaviour. 3.2 Brain and Sinew: Organs to Think In English, there are expressions like “rack one’s brain”, “brains and brawn” and “brainpower” and so on, which describe the function of the brain: the ability to think; intelligence. In English, a “brainy” person is one who is intelligent. Similar constructions can be found in Chinese. In Chinese, the most common expression for this is 脑筋 nǎo-jīn (brain-sinew). When one is exercising this mental function, one is said to 用脑筋 yòng nǎo-jīn (use brainsinew) or 动脑筋 dòng nǎo-jīn (move brain-sinew), both roughly means to think. Something that energy- or intelligence-consuming is described as 费脑 筋 fèi nǎo-jīn (cost brain-sinew). A thorny or vexing issue is referred to as 伤 脑筋 shāng nǎo-jīn (hurt brain-sinew), translatable into English as “(causing) a headache”. Thinking is a mental activity which requires efforts that involve hard work. In Chinese, “to think hard” is 绞尽脑汁 jiǎo jǐn nǎo-zhī (wring-finish-brain-liquid) “to rack one’s brains” or 费尽脑力 fèi jìn nǎo lì (spend-finish-brain-power) “to

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tax one’s brain”. Here the ability to think is mapped to the brain as a commodity or energy source that can be consumed and exhausted, very much like the engine of a vehicle that needs fuel to power it. Hard efforts naturally require more consumption of energy. Here the brain is conceptualised as liquid or sources of energy that can be utilised. 3.3 Brain as Thought, Mind, Thinking, Ideology The intimate relationship between the brain and the head has given rise to the meaning extension of the brain associated with “thought, thinking, mind, and ideology”. This concept is represented by the compound 脑筋 nǎo-jīn (brainsinew), which designates “brains; mind; thought; thinking; consciousness; ideology, and way of thinking”, in addition to what has been discussed in § 3.2. For example, a person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change is described as 封建旧脑筋 fēng-jiàn jiù nǎo-jīn (feudal old brain-sinew) “old fogey” or 老脑筋 lǎo nǎo-jīn (old brain-sinew), an expression depicting a very old-fashioned or conservative person. Similarly, a dogmatic, inflexible person is said to be 死脑筋 sǐ nǎo-jīn, literally, “dead brain-sinew”. A person who has a sharp mind or who is quick at thinking is described as 脑筋灵活 nǎo-jīn línghuó (brain-sinew flexible), although this usage does not necessarily imply that the person is forward-thinking other than having a sharp-mind, quick at comprehension or logical thinking. In this sense, it is similar in meaning to 头脑灵 活 tóu-nǎo líng-huó (head-brain flexible) “smart, quick at logical thinking” as discussed in §2.2. If someone is trendy, or going with the tide, he is depicted as 紧跟时代的新脑筋 jǐn gēn shí-dài de xīn nǎo-jīn (closely follow epoch PART new brain-sinew) “a trendy mind”. This latter expression is felicitous in describing a person who is keeping pace with times. The above examples show that “brain” as the central organ of human nerve system controls all human activities, mental and ideational. In the lexical compounds under discussion, “brain” is prototypically associated with the meanings of “mind, manner of thinking and behaving, thought, and ideology”. The meaning has become more abstract.

4

Heads and Neck

4.1 Sources and Primary Meaning of “Neck” The Oxford English Dictionary of the English Language defines “neck” as “the part of a person’s or animal’s body connecting the head to the rest of the body”. The term also has the sense of “the part of a garment that is around or close to the neck.” In classical terms, necks would only be expected to occur in animals

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that have heads distinct from their trunks. Other important roles of trunks are attachment, postural maintenance, and transport. There are many situations in which the neck achieves a role of its own (Gans 1992:17). Significantly, the term for “neck” in Chinese, 领 (領) lǐng, also has these two senses as its primary meanings, very much like English. The character 領 occurred quite early in history, in pictograph image as in the Mawangdui silk texts dating back to the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476BCE). It was later written as in the seal scripts of the Han dynasties around the beginning of the Christian era. The character shares the same semantic radical 頁 with “head”. The primary meanings of the term can be seen from the following examples: (12) a. b. c. d. e. f.

领巾 lǐng-jīn (neck scarf) “scarf, neckerchief” 领带 lǐng-dài (neck-band) “(neck) tie” 领结 lǐng-jié (neck-tie) “(bow) tie” 衣领 yī-lǐng (garment-collar) “collar” 领口 lǐng-kǒu (collar-mouth) “collar-band, neckband” 领扣 lǐng-kòu (collar-button) “collar button, collar stud”

The meanings of “neck” and “collar” are well illustrated in (12). For “collar”, Chinese also borrows expressions from English such as 白领/蓝领工 bái-lǐng/lánlǐng gōng (white-collar/blue-collar work(er) “white-collar/blue-collar job/ work(er)).” Apart from 领 (領) lǐng, Chinese has two other forms for “neck”: 颈 (頸) jǐng and 项 (項) xiàng, both sharing the radical頁. These two terms are used more restrictively, with 颈 jǐng in expressions like 颈椎 jǐngzhuī (neck-vertebra) “cervical vertebrae”, 瓶颈 píng-jǐng (bottle-neck) “bottle neck”, and 项xiàng in expressions such as 项链 xiàng-liàn (neck-chain) “necklace”, 项圈 xiàng-quān (neck-ring) “neckband”. 项 has wider usage. The meaning of 项xiàng can be further extended to “item”, as in the compound 项目 xiàng-mù (neck-eye) “item, project”. 项xiàng can be grammaticalized as a classifier for itemized abstract nouns, as 一项任务 yī xiàng rènwù (one-neck:CLF-task) “a task”, 八项规定 bā xiàng guīdìng (eight-neck:CLF regulations) “(the) eight rules and regulations (the recent CCP Party rules against corruption and extravagance).” Discussions of meaning extensions of 领 lǐng “neck” will be taken up shortly. 4.2 “Neck”: Meaning Extensions 4.2.1 “Neck” > Leader As the part of body connecting the head to the rest of the body, “neck” often combines with “head” to form compounds with related meanings. One of the

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most common meaning extensions for “neck” can be illustrated through the following lexical compounds: (13) a. b. c. d. e. f.

头领 tóulǐng (head-neck) “head, chief” 首领 shǒulǐng (head-neck) “head, chieftain” 将领 jiànglǐng (general-neck) “general (military)” 领导 lǐngdǎo (neck-lead/guide) “leader, leadership; to lead, guide” 领袖 lǐngxiù (neck-sleeve) “(top) leader, head of a state” 领班 lǐngbān (neck-class) “foreman”

The meaning of “head, chief” in (13a, b) has derogative connotations, similar to the compounds 头目tóu-mù (head-eye) “head, leader” and 头子 tóuzi (headSUFF) “head, leader” discussed in (3d, e) in § 2.3 above. (13c) exclusively refers to high ranking military commanders to the rank of generals and above. Unlike (13a, b), (13d, e) do not have negative nuances. (13c) exclusively refers to high ranking military commanders only. (13d) can be used as a noun or as a verb, with a more general meaning, while (13e) can only be used as a noun, with very specific meaning designating “top/paramount leader”. Note, too, that (13d) can be viewed as a V-V compound, with the second verb 导 dǎo “to guide” written in traditional character as 導. This latter form also has the semantic element of 首 ‘head’ as its meaning component. (13f) refers to a foreman, a group leader, particularly in a factory. In all these examples, the meaning of “NECK” is mapped into “leader, chief, head”. 4.2.2 “Neck” > To Lead and to Guide Example (13d) above, 领导 lǐngdǎo (neck-lead/guide) “leader, leadership; to lead, to guide”, is worth noting. In this compound, “neck” combines with the morpheme 导 dǎo to form the meaning “leader, leadership”. Note, too, that this compound can also function as a verb. This latter meaning seems to echo with 导 dǎo, a verb meaning “to lead, to guide, to channel (as directing water)”. In fact (13d) is a typical coordinating compound comprising two synonyms, with 领 lǐng also functioning as a verb. The two compounding elements work together to enhance the meaning “to lead”. This meaning of “to lead” as inherent in NECK can be further illustrated in the following examples: (14) a. 领头 lǐng-tóu (neck/lead-head) “take the lead” b. 领队 lǐng-duì (neck/lead-team) “to lead a group; leader of a group, sports team” c. 领路 lǐng-lù (neck/lead-path) “show the way” d. 领道 lǐng-dào (neck/lead-way) “lead the way”

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领航 lǐng-háng (neck/lead-boat) “navigate” 带领 dài-lǐng (take-neck/lead) “to take to a place, guide” 统领 tǒng-lǐng (lead-neck/lead) “to command” 率领 shuài-lǐng (command-neck/lead) “to lead, command” 引领 yǐn-lǐng (draw/pull-neck/lead) “to guide, lead”

The meaning of “to lead, to guide” is particularly salient in (14), with (14a–e) as V-O compounds and (14f–i) coordinate V-V compounds. A similar expression to (13a) is 领军 lǐng-jūn (lead-army) “take the lead, command”, a term for an army official at the rank of a commander in the Eastern Han times (206 BCE– 220 AD). The expression is now used metaphorically as 领军人物 lǐng-jūn-rénwù (lead-army-figure), literally “a commanding figure” which designates “leader of a (scientific) field”. It is particularly worth observing that example (14d) “lead the way” has the character 道 dào as its second component in the compound. The character 道 comprises the graphic 首 “head” as its semantic part and the radical 辶 (辵) which designates walking in Chinese writing. The two components work together to form the meaning ‘way’. 道 dào has a wide range of meanings. In addition to “way, road, path, course”, 道 dào also means “orientation, reason, morality, virtue, doctrine, principle”, and serves as the name for Tao, or Taoism. 道 dào is related to the character 導 dǎo ‘guide’, discussed in (13d) above. The conceptualized meaning of “to lead” in “neck” can be understood from the function of the cervical spine which controls the movement of nodding the head through flexion and extension at the atlanto-occipital joint between the atlas and the occipital bone, and shaking or rotating the head left and right through the joint between the atlas and the atlanto-axial joint. The English expression “giving the nod” means to give approval or permission, which implies authority as leader. 4.2.3 “Neck” > “Possess, Administer, Control” A related meaning with the conceptualization of THE NECK IS LEADER is that a leader is naturally vested with ability or power to administer and own. This is reflected in the following meaning extensions of “neck” in Chinese in which the neck is mapped into THE POWER TO OWN, ADMINISTER/CONTROL. Examples: (15) a. b. c. d.

领属 lǐng-shǔ (neck-belong) “possess, possessive” 领有 lǐng-yǒu (neck-have) “possess, own” 领主 lǐng-zhǔ (neck-owner) “possessor, owner” 领土 lǐng-tǔ (neck-earth) “territory”

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e. f. g. h. i.

领地 lǐng-dì (neck-land) “territory, colony” 领空 lǐng-kōng (neck-sky) “territorial space” 领海 lǐng-hǎi (neck-sea) “territorial waters” 领域 lǐng-yù (neck-area) “territory, domain; field, area” 占领 zhàn-lǐng (occupy-neck) “occupy, take control”

(15a) is a formal term to refer to possession and ownership, a term that is used frequently in legal documents. This compound is particularly appropriate for describing the relationship between the pocessor (领 lǐng) and the possessee (属 shǔ), between who possesses, and what is being possessed. (15b) is also talking about possession and ownership, with focus on possession, or the state of ownership. In (15c), the sense of “owner” is particularly salient, while in (15d–g), the meaning of “administer” and “control” over a territorial space is dominant. Thus, a sovereign state has the rights to protect her 领土 lǐngtǔ “territory”, 领海 lǐng-hǎi “territorial waters” and 领空 lǐng-kōng “territorial space”. (15h) has a non-figurative meaning, “territory, domain”, as in 公共领域 gōnggòng lǐngyù (public-domain); it may also have a more figurative, abstract meaning “field, area”, as in 学术领域 xuéshù lǐngyù (academic field); 商业/军事 领域 shāngyè/jūnshì lǐngyù (commercial/military field). (15i) is a coordinate VV compound, a term that is used more often in military contexts to talk about taking control in a battlefield, which may be used figuratively in daily conversation, as in economic speaking 占领市场 zhàn-lǐng shìchǎng “to take control of the market, to have a market share”. 4.2.4 “Neck” > “Take, Claim, Accept” That THE NECK IS ASSOCIATED WITH POSSESSION AND OWNERSHIP can be seen from a related meaning, “to take, claim, accept”. Consider the following examples: (16) a. 领取 lǐngqǔ (neck/take-fetch) “draw (money), receive, pickup” b. 冒领 mào-lǐng (false-neck/claim/) “falsely claim; claim what belongs to others” c. 招领 zhāo-lǐng (gesture-neck/claim) “announce the finding of a lost property” d. 认领 rèn-lǐng (recognize-neck/claim) “to claim (ownership)” e. 领货 lǐng-huò (neck/take-goods) “pick up goods” f. 领奖 lǐng-jiǎng (neck/take-prize) “receive prize” g. 领赏 lǐng-shǎng (neck/take-reward) “to claim rewards” h. 领款 lǐng-kuǎn (neck/draw money) “to draw money”

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The meaning of “take”, “claim (ownership)”, and “to draw” is salient for (16a– h), all of which are verb phrases, analysable as V-V (16a, b, c, d) and V-O compounds (16e–h). (15a) is the most general term to depict acts of drawing money, picking up a parcel or an object from post office, receiving pension from the government, to name only a few. (16b–d) are about claiming ownership. (16e–h) are specific about receiving or picking up a specific object. (16f, g) in particular, are about receiving prizes or rewards. Unlike (16a), whose meaning can only be made clearer from the object it takes, (16h) unambiguously specifies the object the possessor wants to draw/receive. The meaning of “accepting/receiving a reward” is quite strong in (16f, g). This meaning is even stronger in the following examples: (17) a. 领受 lǐng-shòu (neck/accept receive) “accept (kindness/favour)” b. 领教 lǐng-jiào (neck/accept teach) “ask advice, consult” b. 领情 lǐng-qíng (neck/accept-affection) “feel grateful to; appreciate kindness” c. 领命 lǐng-mìng (neck/accept-order) “take/obey orders” d. 拜领 bài-lǐng (bow-neck/accept) “accept with respect” In all the examples in (17), the senses of “accepting a favour”, “seeking/taking advice”, “appreciating kindness”, and “showing respect” are particularly salient. 4.2.5 “Neck” > Essentials Just as “head” is often associated with “top”, “importance”, so “neck” is conceptualized as something essential. This meaning is particularly salient in the following compounds designating such abstract ideas as “main points”, “principle”, “guidelines”. (18) a. 要领 yào-lǐng (important-neck) “main points, basic requirements, essentials” b. 纲领 gāng-lǐng (headrope-neck) “principle, guidance, programme” A person who is capable of grasping the main points of an idea is said to 抓 住/掌握要领 zhuā zhù/zhǎngwò yào-lǐng (catch-hold/grasp important-neck/ point). By contrast, one who is unable to do so is depicted as 不得要领 bù dé yào-lǐng (not-obtain-important-neck/point). The metaphorical expression in (18b) is derived from the meaning of the term 纲 gāng, “head-rope of fishing net”, whose function in spreading and drawing the fishnet gives rise to this figurative meaning. Thus, in election campaigns, politicians talk about 制定政

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治/治国纲领 zhìdìng zhèngzhì / zhì-guó gāng-lǐng (formulate-political/govern-

nation guidelines) “to formulate rules and regulations to run the country”. An important document that has significant implications for policy-making is referred to as a 纲领性文件 gāng-lǐng-xìng wén-jiàn (principle-featuredocument), indicating that the document serves as guiding principles for a program. 4.2.6 Neck > “To Understand, Comprehend” In Chinese, the neck is also viewed as an organ that can think, reason, and comprehend, very much like the head and the brain. This is because of its intimate connection with the head and the brain. The following examples illustrate: (19) a. 领悟 lǐng-wù (neck-understand) “comprehend, realise, understand” b. 领会 lǐng-huì (neck-know) “understand, comprehend, grasp” c. 心领神会 xīn-lǐng-shén-huì (heart-neck [understand]-spirit-know) “to thoroughly understand, have a deep understanding (of sth.)” d. 领解 lǐng jiě (neck-untie) “comprehend, understand, grasp” e. 领略 lǐng-lüè (neck-brief) “have a taste of, experience, appreciate” All the examples in (19) are verbs. (19a) depicts a scenario where a person has come to understand an idea, an argument or a certain meaning after a period of learning or reflection, e.g. 领悟道理 lǐng-wù dàoli (comprehend reason) “understand the reason/meaning”. Efforts are implied as part of the meaning here. (19b) focuses on the state of comprehension or understanding, as in 领会意 思/意图 lǐng-huì yìsi/yìtú (understand-meaning/intention) “understand (the) meaning/intention”, without necessarily implying efforts. This is particularly the case with (19c), which describes the resulting state of thorough understanding/full comprehension. This expression is felicitous for describing someone who have a good understanding of the intension or instruction of a superior, or a sound understanding of a doctrine. (19d), 领解 lǐng jiě, is appropriate for describing a person who, through study, has come to understand or grasp an important idea, or document, as in 领解教义 lǐng jiě jiàoyì (comprehendreligion-meaning) “comprehend a religious doctrine”. (19e) depicts a situation where a person experiences or enjoys a scenery, or appreciates beauty or noble personality, e.g. 领略江南春色 lǐnglüè jiāng-nán chūn-sè (experience river-south spring-colour) “have a taste of spring in the south.” 领略明星的魅力 lǐnglüè míngxīng de mèilì (appreciate star-NOM-charm) “appreciate the charm of (movie) stars”. The meaning extensions of “neck” in Chinese exhibit some unique characteristics not found in nearby languages. It is significant to note that in Zhuang,

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a Northern Tai language, the body part “throat/neck” ho4 serves as seat of emotion, occurring as in a number of psycho-collocations. Various emotion terms can be expressed through ho4 -compounds: (20) a. ho4 hɯn³ (throat/neck-ascend) → ‘to feel wronged, feel unhappy’ b. ho4 lɔŋ³ (throat/neck-descend) → ‘to be convinced, feel vented (after an argument)’ c. ho4 ham4 (throat/neck-bitter) → ‘to hate’ d. ho4 un5 (throat/neck-soft) → ‘to be kind-hearted’ e. ho4 doŋ6 (throat/neck-hard) → ‘to be cold-hearted’ f. ho4han4 (throat/neck-itchy [as if having eaten raw taro]) → ‘to envy, be jealous’ g. ho4ɲa:p2 (throat/neck-itchy) → ‘to be angry’ h. ho3 da:t5 (throat/neck-hot) → ‘to be furious, anger’ The importance of the concept of neck/throat in Zhuang culture is comparable to Chinese. In the Zhuang language, life (or blood line) is described as sa:i1 ho4 (thread-neck/throat); a baby child is under the protection of his or her parents as la3 ho4 (beneath-neck/throat). But none of these show similarities to Chinese. This suggests certain human experiences are culture-specific.

5

Concluding Remarks

More than a century ago, Greenough and Kittredge (1901: 261–262) in Words and Their Ways in English observed how the meaning of “head” became extended from the basic body-part meaning to metaphorical extensions through “radiation”. They posited the meaning extensions in the following directions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

top of something leadership source side with ‘head’ feature hydraulic sense main point a ‘promontory’ mental power single individual armed force (now obsolete)

(the head of a pin) (the head of the army) (well/fountain head) (the head of a coin) (head of water) (the heads of a discourse) (Flamborough Head) (a level head) (fifty head of cattle)

120 table 5.2

luo Semantic distinctions in certain “head-compounds”

Semantic contents

Form

Connotations

main, important, essential, initial leader, head leader intelligence, mind, wit appearance, manner

compounds with 首shǒu: compounds with 头tóu compounds with “head & neck” compounds with “head & brain” elaborate expressions with “descriptor + head & brain”

positive/neutral negative positive/neutral positive/neutral overwhelmingly negative

As illustrated in the foregoing discussions, Chinese exhibits striking similarities to English in the “head-compounds” with respect to their extended meanings. An interesting feature about Chinese head-compounds is that some of them show semantic distinctions among different forms in certain extended meanings involving different lexical choices. Some of them combine with related body-parts “neck” and “brain”. The following table captures the semantic distinctions in these compounds. The analysis also illustrates the cognitive basis for the grammaticalization “head” from a content word to a locative marker, as well as a nominaliser. The meaning extensions of these body part terms can be represented in the following chart. All in all, discussions in the preceding paragraphs present an analysis of Chinese body-part terms for “head” and its relating parts, “brain” and “neck”, in the domain of embodiment. The semantic properties and morphological features of these lexical items are examined in light of their metonymic and metaphorical extensions. It has been demonstrated that the Chinese body-part terms for “head” and their associates exhibit both universal and language specific tendencies derived from human experiences characteristic of this particular part of the body, while also displaying certain characteristics of their own not found in languages of surrounding regions. The historical development of these body-part terms and how they manifest themselves in a cognitive and semantic template are issues framed by sensorimotor processes in the contour of the body. The diachronic development of these body part terms reflects the cognitive bases of their conceptual mapping and patterns of cognitive transfer, with parallel development found in some nearby languages, pointing to areal features. The morphological patterns of “head”-compounds and the status of “head” as a lexical item and grammatical morpheme in some cases have blurred the boundaries of derivation and

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‘head’ as a link of embodiment in chinese Head leader, source, main, … grammaticalization: – locative suffix – noun suffix – noun classifier

“leader”

“to lead”

chart 5.1

top (position, quality) Neck

“possess/control”

Brain “mind”

“take/claim” “essential”

“thought”

“manner”

“understand”

Meaning extensions of “head”, “brain” and “neck” in Chinese

compounding, posing challenges for the distinction between endocentric and exocentric compounds.

References Bergen, Benjamin, Ting-Ting Chan Lau, Shweta Narayan, Diana Stojanovic and Kathryn Wheeler. 2010. ‘Body parts representations in verbal semantics’, Memory and Cognition 38/7: 969–981. Berthoz, A., Werner Graf, Pierre Paul Vidal (eds.). 1992. The Head-Neck Sensory Motor System. Oxford University Press. Brenzinger, Matthias and Iwona Kraska-Szlenk. (eds.). 2014. The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden: Brill. Booij, G. (forthcoming). Construction morphology. In A. Spencer & A. Zwicky (eds.), Handbook of Morphology. 2nd edition. London: Blackwell. Retrieved at http://www .hum2.leidenuniv.nl/booijge/publicaties.htm. Accessed 15 March, 2018. Chappell, Hiliary. 1986. ‘The Passive of Bodily Effect in Chinese’, Studies in Language 10.2: 271–296 Enfield, N.J. and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.). 2002. The body in description of emotion: Crosslinguistic studies. Special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 10, 1/2 (2002). Gans, Carl. 1992. ‘Why Develop a Neck?’, Chapter 2 in Berthoz et al. (eds.), 17–35. Gibbs, R.W. 2006. Metaphor Interpretation as Embodied Simulation. Mind & Language, 21: 434–458. doi:10.1111/j.1468–0017.2006.00285. Gibbs, R.W. Jr. (ed.). 2010. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (Chapter 14, Metaphor from body and culture, by Yu, Ning). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Greenough, J.B. and G.L. Kittredge. 1920. Words and Their Ways in English Speech. New

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York/London: Macmillan. (Reprint of 1901, available on-line at https://ia801406.us .archive.org/30/items/wordsandtheirwa06kittgoog/wordsandtheirwa06kittgoog .pdf) Heine, B. and Kuteva T. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press. Heine, Bernd and Kyung-An Song. 2010. ‘On the genesis of personal pronouns: some conceptual sources’, Language and Cognition 2, 1: 117–148. Juntanamalaga, Preecha. 1992. ‘On the semantics of Thai compounds in hǔa ‘head’ ’, in: Compton, Carol J.; Hartmann, John F., eds. Papers on Tai languages, linguistics, and literatures: in honor of William J. Gedney on his 77th birthday. De Kalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1992, pp. 167–178, Song, Kyung-An and Bernd Heine. 2016. ‘On the role of indirect personal reference in the development of personal pronouns,’ The Linguistic Association of Korea 24, 1: 1– 19. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014. Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. München: LINCOM Europa. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York, NY: Basic Books. Liú Bǎoyuán 刘保元. 1999. 汉瑶词典拉珈语 Hàn-yáo cídiǎn lājiā yǔ [A Chinese-Lajia Dictionary]. Chengdu: Sichuan Minzu Chubanshe. Maalej, Zouheir. 2014. ‘Body parts we live by in language and culture: the raaS ‘head’ and yidd ‘hand’ in Tunisian Arabic’. In Brenzinger and Kraska-Snlenk (eds.), pp. 224–259. Maalej, Zouheir A. and Ning Yu. (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from various languages and cultures. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Méi Jiājū (chief ed.). 1999. 梅家驹(主编) 现代汉语搭配词典 Xiàndài hànyǔ dāpèi cídiǎn [Modern Chinese Collocation Dictionary]. Shanghai: 汉语大词典出版社 Hànyǔ dà cídiǎn chūbǎn shè [The Grand Chinese Dictionary Press]. Mèng, Zūnxián 孟尊贤. 2007. 傣汉词典 Dǎi-hàn cídiǎn [A Dai-Chinese Dictionary]. Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe. Sharifian, Farzad. 2003. ‘On cultural conceptualizations,’ Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3, 187–207. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Mouton De Gruyter. TLS—Thesaurus Linguae Sericae, An Historical and Comparative Encyclopaedia of Chinese Conceptual Schemes, General Editor: Christoph Harbsmeier 何莫邪; Associate Editor: Jiang Shaoyu 蔣紹愚. http://tls.uni‑hd.de/home_en.lasso Tobias, Philip. 1992. ‘The upright head in hominid evolution’, in Berthoz, A. Werner Graf, Pierre Paul Vidal (eds.), 5–16.

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Ye, Zhengdao. 2002. ‘Different modes of describing emotions in Chinese: Bodily changes, sensations, and bodily images’, Pragmatics & Cognition 10. 1–2: 307–339. Yu, Ning. 2002a. ‘Body and emotion: body parts in Chinese expression of emotion’, Pragmatics & Cognition, 10 (1–2). 341–367. Yu, Ning. 2003. ‘Metaphor, Body, and Culture: The Chinese Understanding of Gallbladder and Courage’, Metaphor and Symbol, 18.1, 13–31. Yu, Ning. 2007. ‘Heart and cognition in ancient Chinese philosophy’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 7. 27–47. Yu, Ning. 2008. ‘The Chinese heart as the central faculty of cognition’, in: Sharifian, et al. (eds.) pp. 131–168. Yu, Ning. 2009. From Body to Meaning in Culture: Papers on Cognitive Semantic Studies of Chinese. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Yu, Ning. 2013. ‘The body in anatomy: Looking at “head” for the mind-body link in Chinese’, in Rosario Caballero, Javier E. Díaz Vera (eds.) Sensuous Cognition: Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception, edited by Walter de Gruyter.

Internet Resources 漢語多功能字庫 Multi-function Chinese Character Database

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi‑mf/search.php?word=%E9%A6%96

chapter 6

From Head to Toe: How Languages Extend the Head to Name Body Parts Kelsie Pattillo

1

Introduction

Despite the growing number of typological studies devoted to body parts, few studies have thoroughly examined the mapping of body parts onto other body parts. One reason for this is that within a single given language, most body part terms are not comprised of compounds containing a term for another body part. For example, in English the fleshy part of the palm of the hand may be referred to as the ‘heal of the hand’; however, most body parts in English do not follow this naming pattern. The same is true when we look at languages spoken around the world. In my collection of human limb terms from both Indo-European etymologies and more than 150 non-Indo-European languages (Pattillo 2014), only 292 out of more than 2,600 body part terms are formed by body part extensions. Of these languages, only 11 demonstrate an extension of the head to name another body part. Thus it seems that languages extend body parts outside of the body part domain with greater frequency and likely greater variability in the types of extensions because there are more domains that can be used as targets than there are available body parts. In addition to differences in frequency of extension, body parts differ in their frequency of reference. This presents a challenge for cross-linguistic studies because without a large corpus for each language included in a study, it is difficult to measure frequency of reference. This also makes it easy to overlook terms such as English ‘heel of the hand’ which clearly shows a body part to body part extension, but is generally not a part of the body listed in a word list or descriptive grammar because it is arguably less salient than other body part terms, such as ‘head’, ‘arm’ or ‘foot’. Because some body part terms tend to be extended to domains outside the body with more frequency than other body part terms, it might also be assumed that the same is true within the domain BODY PART. In other words, I propose that it is likely that body part terms that are frequently mapped on to domains outside of the body are also commonly mapped onto other parts of the body.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_008

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Although fully testing this proposal is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is relevant to the discussion about the cross-linguistic saliency of ‘head’. Instead of testing all body parts that are commonly extended onto other domains, I focus on how languages map ‘head’ onto other body parts and propose an explanation of why these patterns are found across languages. The data used in this chapter come from 11 languages representing 9 language families and four geographic areas: South America, North America, Eurasia, and Australia-New Guinea. These 11 languages come from a large database. Many of the language data in this paper come from my own elicitations with native speakers who are also linguists. Although the phenomenon they exemplify is relatively rare cross-linguistically, the 11 languages show common tendencies. In addition to showing the distribution and types of head extensions cross-linguistically, I also explain how the data support earlier claims to saliency as well as cross-linguistic tendencies of body part extensions.

2

Theoretical Background

In its most basic description, the embodiment hypothesis seeks to explain cognition as experienced through the body. Within cross-linguistic research, studies testing the embodiment hypothesis often seek to explain why and to what extent there is a common occurrence of body parts as a source to name entities outside of the human body across languages (Kraska-Szlenk 2014a, 2014b, Maalej & Yu 2011, Sharifan et al. 2008). Often, studies such as these point to some body parts being more salient than others, and thus more likely candidates for semantic extensions. Usually embodiment studies focus on intrafield metaphorical mapping of human body parts, as it is argued that speakers of a given language use the human body to conceptualize entities outside of the body. Although the literature shows that there are a plethora of semantic extensions of this type across languages, speakers of a language do not experience every part of the human body equally. Thus it is sometimes argued that some body parts are more salient than others. For example, my use and awareness of ‘elbow’ generally refers to the outer part of the arm joint in the middle of my arm. The inside of this joint, or the part that disappears when I fold my arm in half, is not usually what I think of or point to when I hear the word ‘elbow’, even though it belongs to the same joint. The outer, pointy part of the joint is the salient part of ELBOW whereas the other parts of the joint are not. If some body parts are cross-linguistically more salient than others, it would not be surprising if they are common sources for metaphorical mapping both outside and within the body.

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Generally, studies examining body part to body part extensions concentrate on metonymic relations, especially PART TO WHOLE (Brown & Witkowski 1983, Witkowski & Brown 1985, Brown 2005a, Brown 2005b), or partonymic relations (Andersen 1978, Majid et al. 2006). Wilkins (1996: 274) examines four types of semantic change in naming body parts across languages: intrafield metonymic changes (e.g. ‘skin’ > ‘body’), interfield metonymic changes (e.g. ‘smell’ > ‘nose’), interfield metaphoric changes (e.g. ‘a spear’ > ‘penis’), and intrafield metaphoric changes (e.g. ‘anus’ > ‘mouth’). Wilkins further suggests the cross-linguistic tendency given in (1) below, which exemplifies an intrafield metaphoric change and is relevant to examining head extensions in the present study. Where the waist provides a midline, it is a natural tendency for terms referring to parts of the upper body to shift to refer to parts of the lower body and vice versa (e.g. ‘elbow’ ⟨-⟩‘knee’; ‘uvula’ → ‘clitoris’; ‘anus’ → ‘mouth’) (273). Although ‘head’ does not have as obvious of a semantic relationship with other body parts such as that between ‘elbow’ and ‘knee’, the high frequency of ‘head’ as a source for semantic extensions across languages suggests languages may also use Wilkins’ cross-linguistic tendency in (1) to name other body parts. Besides Wilkins’ (1996) suggested cross-linguistic tendency in (1) above, Andersen also (1978) lists two possible sources for recurrent patterns for naming body parts across languages; structural similarity and spatial contiguity. Whereas Brown & Witkowski (1983), Witkowski & Brown (1985) and Brown (2005a, 2005b) focus on spatial contiguity for naming body parts, Wilkins’ tendency exemplifies Andersen’s relations of structural similarity. Andersen (p. 354) exemplifies structural similarity as shape and being located at parallel positions. She also suggests characteristics of “more salient” body parts: size, visual perception, salience of particular shapes (especially ‘round’ and ‘long & thin’), and spatial dimensions (p. 375). The head is salient according to Andersen’s definition, because it is larger and more visually perceptible than other body parts (such as the inner joint of the elbow), it is round, and it has a distinct, vertical dimension and an upward direction. Thus ‘head’ is a good candidate to undergo extension in naming other non-adjacent body parts across languages. Further, as ‘head’ is conceptualized onto multiple targets across languages, such as vegetables, leaders of a group, or spatial relations, languages may map it onto different body parts.

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3

127

Data

The data used in this study show that languages extend the term for head to name a variety of body parts. The most common target for head extensions among body part terms is the digits, but other targets include the knee, foot, and wrist. Examples of these targets and an analysis of each appear in this section. 3.1 Head Extensions in Digit Terms The digits are the most frequent body part target for head extensions in the data. Unless otherwise specified, I use the term digit to include both the fingers and the toes. Because most languages name the fingers and toes following the same pattern (Andersen 1978, Pattillo 2014), I have chosen to group the upper and lower digits together in this analysis. I also include examples and an analysis of naming of the thumb via head extensions in this section. Three languages in the data extend the term for head to the digits: Chalcotongo Mixtec (Oto-Manguean), Capaya (Barbacoan), and Waurá (Arawakan). All three of these languages show parallel structures for the fingers and toes and are given in (2) below. (2) Chalcotongo Mixtec (Oto-Manguean) šinì ndáʔa [head hand/arm] ‘finger’ (Brugman 1983) šinì xáʔa [head foot] ‘toe’ (Brugman 1983) Cayapa (Barbacoan) tʸa’mišu [hand- head] ‘finger’ (Wiebe & Wiebe 2013) ne- ’mišu [foot- head] ‘toe’ (Wiebe & Wiebe 2013)

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Waurá (Arawakan) -kapɨ-tɨwɨ [hand-head] ‘finger’ (Richards 2013) ki-c̷iwi [foot-head] ‘toe’ (Richards 2013) The same parallel construction can also be found in the names of individual digits. The data in (3) below show how the thumb and large toe are named with the same pattern in Thai. This example highlights the tendency that languages name individual toes the same as individual fingers, and that this extension occurs from the finger to the toe. (3) Thai (Tai-Kadai) hǔa- mâeae- mʉʉ [head- mother- hand] ‘thumb’ (Lerdpaisalwong 2013) níwhǔa- mâeae- tháaw [finger- head- mother- foot] ‘big toe’ (Lerdpaisalwong 2013) In Pattillo (2014), I propose that it is a cross-linguistic tendency to extend individual finger names to the toes but not the other way around. It can be argued that the fingers are more salient than the toes and this corresponds to shared patterns between naming the fingers and toes across languages. Following Andersen’s (1978) characteristics of saliency, the fingers are more salient than the toes in terms of shape and visibility. The fingers are longer than the toes and are less likely to be covered by clothing than the toes, which are frequently covered by shoes. The fingers also have more paradigmatic variability than the toes. They can be manipulated in more ways than the toes, and can thus be used for more tasks than the toes can. First, the fingers can grasp more objects than the toes. They can also be used individually or together, such as in playing instruments or typing. Likewise the fingers can easily be bent at the joints in a variety of ways, as is very important when analyzing signed languages. For these reasons, the fingers are used more frequently than the toes, adding to their saliency within a speaker’s mind. Thus, it is likely that languages with constructions similar to the exam-

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ples in (2) also first extend the head to name the fingers, and then extend the same pattern to name the toes. Although languages seem to extend terms for the fingers to name the toes with high frequency, this is not necessarily so for individual toe terms. As a native speaker of American English, I have no hesitation to refer to my third, fourth, or fifth toes as the middle, ring, or pinky toe, as I do for my fingers. This extension becomes less acceptable as I refer to my other toes. In English the second finger can be called either the index finger or the pointer finger. Both terms refer to the position of the hand made in pointing. One could also refer to the second toe as the index or pointer toe; however, this feels strange as the toe cannot point. I also can only refer to my first toe as my big toe, not as my thumb toe. This is also true in Uyghur (Altaic), which extends the head to name the thumb, but not the first toe. This is exemplified in (4). (4) Uyghur (Altaic) baʃ- barmaq [head- finger] ‘thumb’ (Yakup 2012) put- barmaq [foot- finger] ‘toe’ (Yakup 2012) * baʃ- put- barmaq [head- foot- finger] ‘big toe’ (Yakup 2012) The tendency to extend finger terms to some of the toes and not others can also be explained by saliency. The first toe is the largest and is more visible than the other toes. Thumbs have a different spatial dimension from the other fingers or toes because they are separated from the other fingers. This highlights that although speakers tend to extend concepts along the same potential semantic pathways cross-linguistically, extensions are not semantic laws that cause speakers to use them. Given the saliency of fingers described above, one might question why languages extend the head to name the fingers at all. As can be seen in Pattillo (2014), only three of more than 150 languages name the fingers by this process. Nevertheless, languages vary in how they name the fingers and they commonly use metaphor or metonymy in finger terms. Metaphor is seen in the Thai example from (3) in which a morpheme meaning ‘mother’ is used with a morpheme

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meaning ‘head’ to name the thumb and big toe. Brown (2001) notes that there are a handful of languages that name the digits by extending terms for people. Other examples of people terms extending to digit naming in my 2014 database include morphemes meaning ‘father’, ‘grandmother’, ‘child’, ‘daughter’, ‘chief’, or ‘abbot’. Next, Brown (2005a) shows that many languages name the fingers by hand/finger polysemy, suggesting either PART FOR WHOLE or PART FOR REGION metonymy. PLACE FOR ACTION metonymy is also demonstrated in many Indo-European terms for finger. English toe and digit are cognate with Greek daktulos and Latin digitus ‘finger, toe.’ These terms derive from Proto Indo-European forms meaning ‘to point’ (Walde 1973). The meaning ‘to point’ is retained in Sanskrit, Avestic, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, thus it is clear that the meaning ‘digit’ derives from a root meaning ‘to point.’ The term digit and its cognates meaning ‘finger’ and ‘toe’ in Latin and Greek developed from a verb meaning ‘to point.’ The finger is the body part used in pointing, thus it became known as ‘the pointer’ and this extended to refer to both the finger and the toe. These examples of metaphor and metonymy suggest that the digits are less salient than other body parts that are not frequently named by metaphor or metonymy. Following Andersen’s (1978) characteristics of saliency, the head and digits are similar in spatial dimension. The head and the digits have similar positions as they are located at the outer most edges of the body. The thumb is also similar to the head in spatial dimension, as it protrudes in isolation from the hand. Although these shared characteristics do not cause language speakers to extend the head to the digits, they do show a reason why such mapping might be made. 3.2 Head Extensions in Knee Terms Four languages from the sample extend the head to name the knee: Haida (Na Dene), Yélî Dnye (Yele-West New Britain), Vietnamese (Austro-Asiatic), and Hu (Austro-Asiatic). In addition to extending the head, Haida and Yélî Dnye also name the knee with another body part showing its location in the lower limb. In contrast, Vietnamese and Hu extend ‘head’ to knee without naming another body part. This is exemplified in (5) below. (5) Haida (Na Dene) ḳˀulúu ḳʰač [leg head] ‘knee’ (Campbell 2013)

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Yélî Dnye (Yele-West New Britain) yi mbodo [lower-leg head] ‘knee’ (Levinson 2006) Vietnamese (Austroasiatic) đầu gối [head cushion] ‘knee’ (Trinh 2017) Hu (Austroasiatic) khíŋ khòŋ [head ?] ‘knee’ (Svantesson 1991) Although there is not a full morphemic gloss available in Svantesson (1991), he writes that Hu khíŋ may be cognate to the words meaning ‘head’ in other related languages, such as Lamet, U, and Mok. He does not state whether it is common to name the knee with the word meaning ‘head’ in those languages (p. 73). Vietnamese, which belongs to a different branch of the Austroasiatic family, extends head to knee with the word gối meaning ‘cushion’ or ‘pillow.’ As a verb, gối means ‘to cushion’ or ‘to lie/lay down with some part resting on a support structure’. These examples indicate languages name the knee with head extensions by mapping different salient features of the head. For example, the head and knee are both round. The morphemic gloss of Vietnamese ‘knee’ highlights different positions of the knee, depending on the posture of the body. When kneeling, the knees become the lowest part of the body, becoming the body part at the opposite position of the head. When seated on the floor with the ankles crossed, the knees also become the outermost body part, also similar to the head in position. When seated in a chair, the knees have both an outer and upward position, similar to the head. With these examples, we see that the head and knee share features of shape (round) and position (outermost and upward depending on the body’s posture). 3.3 Head Extensions in Foot Terms Hungarian (Uralic) is the only language in the sample that extends the head to name the foot, as demonstrated in (6) below. Interestingly, its morphological gloss is the same as in the Haida (NaDene) term for ‘knee’ in (5) above. Both languages have a body part called the head of the leg, but these terms refer to different parts of the lower limb. In Hungarian, the head of the leg refers to ‘foot’.

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(6) Hungarian (Uralic) lábfej [leg-head] ‘foot’ (Moravcsik 2013) Like the digits, the foot is located at the outer most part, or end, of the body, showing a similarity in spatial dimension with the head. 3.4 Head Extensions in Wrist Terms Goajiro, also known as Wayuu (Arawakan) is the only language in the sample that extends the head to name the wrist. This is shown in (7) below. (7) Goajiro/ Wayuu (Arawakan) ta- hapɨ- kii [my- hand- head] ‘wrist’ (Olza et al. 2013) The wrist is similar to the head in shape, in that one of the salient parts of the wrist joint is a round protruding bone. As in the examples head to knee extensions, the extension of head to wrist supports Andersen’s (1978) proposal that shape is a characteristic of saliency.

4

Discussion

The data provided in section 3 show a variety of body part targets for head extensions across languages and language families. Within the data, four different regions of the body are used as targets for head extensions: the digits, the knee, the foot, and the wrist. In each of these extensions, the salient features of the head, as demonstrated with Andersen’s (1978) characteristics of saliency, extend onto similar salient features of the target body parts. These salient characteristics include shape and spatial dimension. Both the knee and the wrist are similar to the head in that their salient parts are round, whereas the digits and foot are similar to the head in spatial dimension. Like the head, the digits and feet are located at the outermost regions of the human body. The same can be argued for the knee depending on posture, such as in a seated position on the floor with knees bent and lower legs folded inward. In these cases of head extensions, Andersen’s characteristics of saliency serve as good explanations for the cognitive paths languages take in mapping body parts onto other nonadjacent body parts.

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The data from section 3 also contribute to the applicability of Wilkins’ (1996) cross-linguistic tendency given in (1) above and summarized here as the waist as a dividing line for extensions from the upper body to the lower body and vice versa. The data reveal misleading information in Wilkins’ proposed crosslinguistic tendency. First, the languages sampled for this study show that language speakers extend the term for head to other body parts regardless of its relationship to the waist. Whereas Wilkins’ cross-linguistic tendency suggests that the waist plays a salient role in how languages extend intrafield metaphoric changes, the data show that the head extends to nonadjacent body parts located in both the upper body (namely the fingers, thumbs, and wrists) and the lower body (the knees, feet, and toes). In the case of languages extending head to toes, the mapping appears to occur by a separate metaphorical process in which the term for finger is mapped onto the term for toe. Because languages extend the head onto other body parts located in the upper body, the waist cannot be a dividing line. Wilkins’ wording of this tendency suggests a universal concept of WAIST to which language speakers are sensitive when referring to and naming parts of the body; however, he provides no reason why this should be so. Instead, the waist is an arbitrary dividing line used to explain why languages commonly extend body parts from one half of the body to the other. Rather than claiming that languages have a dividing line, an alternative explanation is that language speakers extend more salient body parts to refer to less salient body parts. Further, salient body parts are located in both the upper and lower body, and languages tend to map them onto other body parts that share salient features, such as similar shapes and spatial dimensions. Besides being a simpler explanation, the alternative explanation I suggest above eliminates the need to designate any body part as a dividing line.

5

Conclusion

This paper set out to explain the distribution and types of head extensions onto non-adjacent body parts across languages. The data show that although languages vary in their targets for head extensions, they seem to use similar cognitive mapping to extend the head to these targets. Each extension that occurs in the data exemplifies head extensions via shared salient characteristics of shape and spatial dimension, as proposed by Andersen (1978). Specifically, roundness and location at the outer ends of the body are characteristics the target body parts share with the head among the languages used in this sample. Andersen’s salient characteristics account for the variety of targets in head extensions found, including the digits, the knees, the feet, and the wrists.

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The data also indicate problems with Wilkins’ (1996) proposed cross-linguistic tendency concerning body part extensions from the upper body to the lower body and vice versa. Because the head is located in the upper body and extends to other body parts in the upper body, such as a fingers and wrists, the waist is not a universal dividing line. Instead, the data support Andersen’s proposed salient characteristics for intrafield metaphoric changes, leading to a simpler proposed cross-linguistic tendency: cross-linguistically, language speakers extend more salient body parts to refer to less salient body parts. More generally, the head extensions discussed in this paper contribute to a wider discussion of why languages extend certain body parts onto other domains with a high frequency cross-linguistically. While the head itself seems to be universally salient, other body parts are not. This suggests that body parts which are frequently extended to non-body part domains cross-linguistically also tend to be extended within the body part domain to name less salient body parts; however, this claim should be examined in much more detail than in the present study.

References Andersen, Elaine S. 1978. “Lexical universals of body part terminology”. In: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Human Language: Word Structure, vol. 3. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 335–368. Brown, Cecil H. 2005a. “Finger and Hand”. In: Martin Haspelmath (ed.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. http://wals.info/feature/description/130. Brown, Cecil H. 2005b. “Hand and Arm”. In: Martin Haspelmath (ed.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. http://wals.info/feature/description/129. Brown, Cecil H. 2001. “Lexical typology from an anthropological point of view”. In: Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreichter & Wolfgang Raible (eds.). Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, Volume 2: 1178–1190. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Brown, Cecil H. & Stanley Witkowski. 1983. “Polysemy, lexical change, and cultural importance”. Man. 18: 72–89. Brugman, Claudia. 1983. “The use of body-part terms as locatives in Chalcatongo Mixtec”. Studies in Mesoamerican Linguistics 4. California: The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. Campbell, John. 2013. “Northern Haida dictionary”. In: Mary Ritchie Key & Bernard Comrie (eds.). Intercontinental Dictionary Series. http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/ids/ Accessed 2013.

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Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014a. “Semantic extensions of body part terms: common patterns and their interpretation”. Language Sciences. 44: 15–39. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014b. Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. LINCOM Studies in Semantics 6. München: LINCOM Europa. Lerdpaisalwong, Siriporn. 2013. Personal contact. Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. “Parts of the body in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island”. Language Sciences 28. 221–240. Maalej, Zouheir and Ning Yu (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Majid, Asifa, Nicholas J. Enfield, & Miriam van Staden (eds.). 2006. Language Sciences. 28: 2–3. 137–360. Moravcsik, Edith. 2013. Personal contact. Olza Zubiri, Jesús and José Alvarez (commentary) and Miguel Angel Jusayú. 2013. “Goajiro dictionary”. In: Mary Ritchie Key & Comrie, Bernard (eds.). Intercontinental Dictionary Series. http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/ids/ Accessed 2013. Pattillo, Kelsie. 2014. Cross-linguistic Metonymies in Human Limb Nomenclature (Doctoral dissertation). University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Richards, Joan. 2013. “Waurá dictionary”. In: Mary Ritchie Key & Bernard Comrie (eds.). Intercontinental Dictionary Series. http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/ids/ Accessed 2013. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu and Susanne Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Svantesson, Jan-Olof. 1991. “Hu- a language with unorthodox tonogenesis”. In: Jeremy Davidson (ed.). Austroasiatic languages: Essays in honour of H. L. Shorto. 67–79. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Trinh, Tue H. 2017. Personal contact. Walde, Alois. 1973. Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen. Julius Pokorny & Konstantin Reichardt (eds.). Volumes 1–3. Berlin: W. de Gruyter & co. Wilkins, David P. 1996. “Semantic Change and the Search for Cognates”. The Comparative Method Reviewed: Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change. Mark Durie & Malcom Ross (eds.). 264–304. New York: Oxford University Press. Witkowski, S. & C.H. Brown. 1985. “Climate, clothing and body-part nomenclature”. Ethnology. 24: 197–214. Yakup, Mahire. 2013. Personal contact.

chapter 7

Metonymic Extensions of the Body Part ‘Head’ in Mental and Social Domains Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

1

Introduction*

All languages examined by linguists have terms which designate major external and internal body parts and it is usually assumed that such vocabulary is present in all human languages (e.g. Brown 1976, Andersen 1978, Wierzbicka 2007). These terms tend to belong to a basic lexicon of simple morphological make-up and have high frequency of use. Typically, major body part terms are also characterized by rich polysemy and may refer to multiple concepts falling far away from the strict domain of the human body. In recent years there have been a considerable number of works devoted to the study of body part terms and their extensions in various domains. Edited collections and comparative works include: Hilpert 2007, Sharifian et al. 2008, Maalej and Yu 2011, Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk 2014, Kraska-Szlenk 2014a,b. In addition, numerous studies have dealt with the issue of embodiment in grammaticalization (e.g. Heine 1997, 2014, Heine and Kuteva 2002, Svorou 1994). There have also been specific studies on the body part ‘head’ in different languages, such as, Basque (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2012), Chinese (Yu 2013), English (Mol 2004, Niemeier 2008, Bacz 2009, Szczygłowska 2014), German (Siahaan 2011), Indonesian (Siahaan 2011), Norwegian (Mol 2004), Polish (Bacz 2009), Swahili (Kraska-Szlenk 2014b), Turkish (Aksan 2011), Tunisian Arabic (Maalej 2014), including many other languages discussed in this volume. The research demonstrates that lexemes denoting ‘head’ in all examined languages are highly polysemous and besides the corporeal domain, they designate a number of different concepts. While some of them represent specific cultural models,1 others tend to occur in similarly constructed senses across * I am grateful to a reviewer for insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I also thank participants of the “Head” session at 46th Poznań Linguistic Meeting, where parts of it were presented. The research for this work was supported by the Polish National Science Centre grant no. 2015/19/B/HS2/01573. 1 This concept became popular in cognitive linguistic research since the publication of Hol-

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many languages. This can be illustrated by the results of Hilpert’s (2007) survey of dictionary entries for ‘head’ in a sample of 76 languages, in which the following meanings have been observed: ‘top part’ (19 languages), ‘hair’ (11 languages), ‘intellect’ (10 languages), ‘beginning’ (10 languages), ‘chief’ (10 languages), ‘summit’ (8 languages). It should be noted, however, that dictionaries do not exhaust the list of possible constructed meanings which can be collected only through detailed research based on linguistic data in real usage contexts in a given cultural environment. Most modern research on body part terms is based on the assumption that embodiment and experientialism underlie conceptualization (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999, Johnson 1987, Lakoff 1987) and, as Heine puts it “the human body provides one of the most salient models for understanding, describing, and denoting concepts that are more difficult to understand, describe, and denote” (2014: 17). Cross-linguistic comparison of similarities and differences in polysemy of body part terms in various languages constitutes an important research program since it sheds light on the interplay of universal embodiment in conceptualization together with general cognitive mechanisms involved in meaning extension vis-à-vis cultural models exhibited by specific languages as opposed to others. This chapter will analyze the lexeme ‘head’ using comparative evidence of the author’s own research as well as published sources.2 Given that the range of possible semantic extensions is very broad, those triggered by metaphor will be only briefly discussed in section 2, while the focus will be on the cognitive mechanism of metonymy (section 3). Subsequently, complex patterning of metonymies and metonymic-metaphoric chains involved in mapping from the body part ‘head’ onto various target domains will be discussed, paying particular attention to a broad spectrum of mental and social spheres (sections 4–5). These domains attract figurative language in general, and highly expressive embodied conceptualizations in particular. Rare exam-

land and Quinn (1987); in works on embodiment, see, among others, Sharifian et al. (2008), Maalej and Yu (2011). 2 My own research includes a Swahili case study (published as Kraska-Szlenk 2014b) and data collected from several European languages and Modern Standard Arabic—this data will be given without reference. Examples from other languages given without reference will be cited after the following sources: Amharic and other Ethiosemitic: Abinet (2014), this volume, Coeur d’Alene: Palmer (1999: 146), Ewe: Ameka (1995), Hausa: Will, this volume, Hungarian: Baranyiné Kóczy, this volume, Indonesian (Siahaan 2011), Manambu: Aikhenvald (2015), Oromo: Abinet p.c., Thaayorre: Gaby (2006), Turkish: Aksan (2011), Zande: Pasch (2014), this volume, Zapotec: Lillehaugen (2003). Heine and Kuteva (2002) has been used for Egyptian, Moré, Shona, and Svorou (1986, 1994) for Abkhaz, Finnish, Tigre (see these works for references of the sources therein).

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ples of unusual extensions will be touched upon in section 7. The findings will contribute to investigations on embodiment, but also to research on metonymy as a cognitive mechanism.

2

Metaphor in Meaning Extension

In cognitive linguistic research, metaphor provides a mental access to a target domain by form of a partial mapping from a source domain (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Unlike in the case of metonymy, the two domains are assumed to be disjoined and noncontiguous. A typical case of conceptualization based on metaphoric mapping is involved when a material object is called ‘head’ due to its visual resemblance to that particular body part in some of its features. The upper parts of plants’ stems are referred to as heads because of their round shape and an upward position of that part of the plant which is analogical to the standing posture of a person. As many as three different features are shared in the across-domain mapping in this case: the shape, the position, and being a part of a larger whole. Sometimes the mapping involves only a few of these features, as in the case of English the head of the screw (nail, toothbrush, etc.), where the position is irrelevant, or in the expression head of the stairs which entails the upper location, but not the round shape. On the other hand, the expression a head of cabbage (lettuce, etc.) is based primarily on the shape feature although the “upper location” is likewise relevant in the conceptualization of this part of the vegetable in its growing stage (cf. Bacz 2009). Other languages tend to have similar extensions, cf. the French examples in (1) and Swahili in (2). (1) French tête ‘head’ tête d’ail ‘head of garlic’ tête de douche ‘shower head’ tête d’allumette ‘match head’ tête d’ampoule ‘light bulb’ tête de robinet ‘faucet head’ tête de pont ‘bridgehead’ (2) Swahili kichwa ‘head’ kichwa cha kabichi ‘head of cabbage’ kichwa cha mlingoti /mlima ‘head of a pole/mountain’ kichwa cha mche ‘head of a seedling’ kichwa cha mnarigisi ‘bud of a narcissi (flower)’

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kichwa cha habari ‘news headline’ kichwa cha kitabu ‘book title’ kichwa cha mshale/gogo ‘arrowhead/loghead’ Spatial concepts triggered by grammaticalization provide another typical domain of metaphoric mapping. In many languages ‘head’ grammaticalizes into concepts such as ‘top’, ‘above’, ‘up’, as in the following examples: Abkhaz axǝ, Coeur d’Alene -qǝn, Egyptian tp, Ewe ta, Finnish pää, Hausa kâi, Manambu ab, Moré zugu, Oromo mataa, Shona musoro, Thaayorre paant, Tigre ra’as, Welsh pen, Zande ri. The target domain may also render a spatial notion of ‘in front’, ‘ahead’, as in: Dhaasanac mé, English ahead, French à la tête, Maasai dukuya. It is worth noting that even though spatial concepts demonstrate the apparent result of the operation of a metaphor—being highly grammaticalized and certainly disjoined from the target domain of the body part ‘head’—their development from the source domain may involve metonymic steps as well (e.g. Heine 1997, Heine et al. 1991). This is due to the fact that at the initial stage a metaphoric transfer takes place onto an upper/front part of an object, but at a later stage the transfer extends by means of conceptual metonymy onto the space adjacent to the objects, rendering more grammaticalized and abstract meanings.

3

The ‘Head’ Metonymy in the Corporeal Domain

Metonymy constitutes another basic cognitive process which allows for conceptual access to a target domain from a source domain. Unlike in the case of metaphor which facilitates the conceptualization of a less familiar thing in terms of a more familiar one, metonymic mapping is described as essentially referential and operating within one conceptual domain, or, alternatively, between two domains related by contiguity or proximity (Barcelona 2000, Kövecses and Radden 1998, Radden and Kövecses 1999). Commonly occurring metonymies substitute a more salient source domain for a less salient target and include examples, such as, CONTAINER FOR CONTAINED, EFFECT FOR CAUSE, CONTROLLER FOR CONTROLLED, as well as synecdoche in the form PART FOR WHOLE (PARS PRO TOTO), although its reverse, WHOLE FOR PART (TOTUM PRO PARTE), is also widely attested. Although initially cognitive linguistic research focused more on metaphor rather than metonymy, in recent years the latter process has been gaining more and more attention which has led to numerous new analyses which are not as much in contradiction to one another as in complementation, cf. Little-

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more (2015), Ruiz de Mendoza (2014), Zhang (2016). While most authors agree that the mechanism of metonymy provides a conceptual shortcut to a target domain, social and environmental conditionings of metonymy are investigated as an important prerequisite for this kind of “mental contact” to take place. Metonymy is also investigated from the perspective of its illocutionary force and pragmatic strengthening (Heine et al. 1991, Traugott and Dasher 2002, Newman and Rice 2004, Ruiz de Mendoza 2014, among others). Many scholars share a view that metonymy often underlies metaphor or co-occurs with it (Kövecses and Radden 1998, Heine et al. 1991, Taylor 1995, Barcelona 2000, Radden 2000, Goossens 2002, Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006, Ruiz de Mendoza 2014). Sometimes the two processes are difficult to distinguish to the extent that they can be considered a continuum rather than two independent conceptual mechanisms. Kövecses and Radden claim that “it may not be unreasonable to suggest that many conceptual metaphors derive from conceptual metonymies” (1998: 61). Ruiz de Mendoza argues that “pragmatic implication, category structure and cultural models can give rise to metaphors grounded in metonymy simply because these are ways of correlating experience” (2014: 152). Frequent metaphor—metonymy co-occurrence has led Goossens (2002) to postulate a specific concept of metaphtonymy. For the purpose of this paper which focuses on the polysemy of one lexical item, metonymy is best understood as a tool which extends the meaning of a word through contextual modifications and pragmatic inference. Contextinduced metonymic modifications of meaning take place every time when a constructed sense of ‘head’—the body part—differs slightly from one use to another. This can be illustrated by the example of a range of “bodily” senses of the lexeme ‘head’. In order to decide which direction a metonymy operates, a researcher should first decide which of the corporeal meanings is to be treated as the primary meaning, serving as base for other extended senses. Taking into account the large semantic network of possible senses of the lexeme head in English, as well as its equivalents in other languages, it can be assumed that a most natural analysis follows, if the basic sense of ‘head’ is the most general one, as for example, the one constructed in the following sentence: the head is an upper part of the body, usually covered with hair on the top and connected to the torso with the neck. If this sort of general understanding of ‘head’ is taken as the basic meaning, all other senses can be insightfully analyzed by means of semantic extension. This general sense is also mentioned as the first one in dictionary entries and definitions and seems to be psychologically the most salient. Within the physical domain of the body, more specific senses of ‘head’ are targeted by means of the WHOLE FOR PART metonymy. Although in English and

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in other languages various parts of the head may have their own names (e.g. temple, crown), it is common to designate them by the word ‘head’, e.g. I have a headache (*templeache), or, I am wearing a hat on my head (*on my crown/ crown of my head). Such metonymic extensions may involve various parts of the head, including those which are not coded by alternative specific terms. For example, when we say: the ball hit me on the head, in principle any part of the head (forehead, back, etc.) can be meant. A range of possible meaning subtleties and facets can be easily visualized, if we think of various kinds of garments said to be worn on the head, but actually worn on specific parts of the head’s surface, as in the case of: a hat, a kerchief, a hijab, a headband, a diadem, etc. When pragmatic inference is strong, as in the above example, the shortcut of using metonymy becomes conventionalized and more frequent in usage than possible non-metonymic expressions. This in turn increases the frequency and salience of the lexeme head and in effect enhances its polysemic representation and meaning extension onto other domains, as illustrated by further examples in this and subsequent sections of this chapter. As already mentioned earlier in this section, when pragmatic inference is strong, cultural environment may enhance the use of metonymy. In SubSaharan Africa it is customary to carry loads (such as jars of water, firewood, etc.) on the top of one’s head. In Swahili, the relevant locative expression kichwani used to describe the load’s position does not specifically refer to the ‘top’ of the head; moreover, it consists of the noun kichwa ‘head’ and a vague locative suffix -ni, which, depending on the context, renders the meaning of ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘at’, etc. The same phrase, in the same constructed meaning of ‘the top part of the head’ can be used in the expression jua kichwani ‘the sun on the head’ in the temporal meaning of ‘noon, at noon’. As this example points out, the metaphoric extension mapped onto a temporal domain is possible through metonymic grounding and strong pragmatic inference due to a cultural setting (the practice of carrying loads) and the geographic environment (the sun’s position at noon). A metonymic chain commonly found cross-linguistically is: HEAD FOR SCALP FOR HAIR. It is illustrated in (3) by conventionalized expressions— similar ones are found in many other languages (cf. also papers in this volume: Abinet for Amharic, Ciucci for Zamucoan, Pasch for Ubangian, Will for Hausa). If ‘hair’ is treated as a part of the ‘head’ (which we probably tend to think in the case of short hair), this metonymy appears as a WHOLE FOR PART synecdoche. If we conceptualize ‘hair’ as a body part different from ‘head’ (which we might do, especially when the hair is long), the metonymy will be triggered by the contiguity between these two domains. Given that ‘washing’ of this body part affects the scalp and hair simultaneously, it could be assumed that the French,

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Polish and Swahili expressions in (3a–c) profile the scalp and reflect the HEAD FOR SCALP metonymy rather than HEAD FOR HAIR, while the English expression profiles the ‘hair’. The case of ‘combing’ in (3d–e) and ‘cutting’ in (3f) point to the HEAD FOR HAIR metonymy in a more straightforward manner. (3)

HEAD FOR HAIR metonymy a. French: se laver la tête ‘wash hair’ lit. ‘head’ b. Polish: umyć głowę ‘wash hair’ lit. ‘head’ c. Swahili: osha kichwa ‘wash hair’ lit. ‘head’ d. Dene Sųłine (Rice 2014): tthists’i ‘I comb my hair’ lit. ‘head’ e. Ladakhi (Tashi 2010: 65) go braktʃas ‘to cut one’s hair’ lit. ‘head’ go ʃadtʃas ‘to comb one’s hair’ lit. ‘head’

The metonymy HEAD FOR HAIR, together with another metonymy HEAD FOR PERSON, underlies conventionalized expressions designating particular groups of people, cf. English redhead, or Sumerian saŋ gig ‘Sumerian person/people’ (lit. ‘black head’). Similar conventional strategies are observed, when instead of the hair color, the color of the head covering is referred to in the source domain, hence the metonymy has a slightly different variant: HEAD FOR HEAD COVER. An example is provided by an obsolete Polish compound białogłowa ‘woman’ (lit. ‘white head’ or ‘white headed’) which derives from the white head covering worn by married women; the expression was subsequently extended to mean ‘woman’ in general. While the above-mentioned metonymies focus on the head’s surface, the HEAD FOR BRAIN metonymy is based on the conceptualization of the head as a container and represents a specific case of the common metonymy CONTAINER FOR CONTAINED. Many cultures of the world associate the figurative container of the ‘head’—being the locus of the brain or the mind—with thinking and reasoning. This will be discussed in the following section together with other metonymic extensions based on this conceptualization.

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‘Head’ as the Locus of Thinking and Reasoning

Many languages represent a dualistic conceptual model which separates emotions—figuratively located in the heart or another inner body part—from intellectual capacities—typically associated with the head (cf. contributions in Sharifian et al. 2008). The conceptualization of ‘head’ as a locus of the intellect and mental processes has been described, among others, for English head, German Kopf, Hungarian fej, Indonesian kepala, Norwegian hode, Polish głowa, Swahili kichwa, or Tunisian Arabic ras.3 Jäkel (1997) proposes the metaphor MENTAL ACTIVITY IS MANIPULATION which organizes the conceptualization of thinking and reasoning. In English and in other languages mentioned above, the operation of this metaphor is based on the HEAD AS A CONTAINER schema, as well as on an ontological metaphor THOUGHTS ARE THINGS which entails that they can be gathered in a figurative storage and manipulated. In English, this conceptualization model is reflected by expressions such as: a head full of ideas, an empty head, it came to my head, I have a thought in my head, etc. Similar examples of mental activity taking place in the head can be found in Swahili, as illustrated in (4), as well as in the other languages mentioned earlier. (4) Examples of mental activity in Swahili: wazo limeniingia kichwani ‘a thought has entered my head’ mawazo yanazunguka kichwani ‘the thoughts are going around inside the head’ mawazo ya kidhania yalitawala vichwa vyao ‘creative thoughts ruled their heads’ kichwa kilizidi kumzunguka kwa mawazo ‘[his] head was still spinning with thoughts’ The scheme of the container and metaphor of the head filled with thoughts and associated with rationality initiates a chain of metonymic extensions whose ultimate outcome is an abstract concept of intelligence: HEAD FOR BRAIN FOR MIND FOR INTELLIGENCE. Different languages provide examples of similar expressions illustrating this extension of the lexeme ‘head’, as in the following examples (all meaning ‘be intelligent, brilliant, smart’): French avoir de la tête (lit. have the head), Polish człowiek z głową ‘smart person’ (lit. ‘person 3 It should be acknowledged that other languages do not have to associate the ‘head’ with cognition to the extent that the above languages do. For example, in languages in Australia, memory and mental abilities are “kept” in the ear (Evans and Wilkins 2000, Gaby 2008). There are also

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with a head’), or mieć głowę na karku (lit. ‘have a head on the nape’), Swahili ana kichwa (lit. ‘s/he has the head’). The same sense of ‘head’ is reflected in the English expression over (somebody’s) head ‘beyond (somebody’s) comprehension’. Slightly different meanings are constructed, when ‘head’ implies not intelligence, but the knowledge or ability to make decisions, as in the English idiomatic expression on your own head be it, or even responsibility, as in the Polish example wszystko na mojej głowie lit. ‘all on my head’, that is ‘I am responsible for everything’, cf. also (6b) below. We also find expressions in which losing one’s ‘head’ implies losing self-control; an equivalent of this English phrase in Polish, stracić głowę lit. ‘lose head’, is used in the sense of ‘being lost (not knowing what to do)’, or, with the preposition dla ‘for’, denotes passion (feeling) for someone or something. The subsequent step in the metonymic chain involves adding of another metonymy of the general schema POSSESSED FOR POSSESSOR, by which ‘head’ is constructed as a thinking person: HEAD FOR BRAIN FOR MIND FOR INTELLIGENCE FOR THINKING PERSON. This understanding of ‘head’ is seen in common proverbs, such as the English phrase: two heads are better than one, or in the Medieval Latin maxim quot capita, tot sensus ‘As many heads, so many opinions’, also popular in translation in many modern European languages. The constructed meaning of a ‘thinking person’ can also be interpreted as a ‘smart, intelligent person’. Such uses seem to be relatively rare, but an example from Swahili can be given: yeye ni kichwa ‘s/he is smart, brilliant’ (lit. s/he is head). More often the HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy, in its reference to intellectual abilities, is reflected in expressions using a modifier which qualifies these abilities as good or bad pointing to character traits, as in the examples in (5). (5)

Character traits a. French: la tête pensante ‘strategist, mastermind’ (lit. thinking head) tête de veau ‘stupid/stuborn person’ (lit. head of a calf) b. Polish: głowa do interesów ‘good businessman/businesswoman’ (lit. ‘head for business’) ośla głowa ‘stupid/stuborn person’ (lit. head of a donkey), twarda głowa ‘stuborn person’ (lit. hard head)

“abdominocentral” and “cardiocentral” conceptualizations of the mind, cf. contributions in Sharifian et al. (2008).

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c. Swahili: kichwa kikubwa ‘arrogant person’ (lit. big head) kichwa kigumu ‘stubborn person’ (lit. hard head) kichwamaji ‘madman, lunatic’ (lit. watery head, head of water) d. Oromo: mataa jabaa ‘strong or stubborn person’ (lit. strong head) e. Indonesian: keras kepala ‘stubborn person’ (lit. hard head) While the above examples illustrate the HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy which clearly derives by means of the metonymic chain from the ‘head’ as a braincontainer, the same metonymy can be argued to have a different source, with slightly different shades of constructed meanings, as discussed in the following section.

5

HEAD FOR PERSON Metonymy

For various reasons the human head can be considered the most important and most salient part of the body. While people can live with some of their body parts badly damaged or even lacking, they are unable to live without their heads. That is why in various languages synonymous expressions which denote decapitation or death occur either with the noun ‘head’ or ‘life’, e.g. English risk (somebody’s) head/life. The head is conceptualized as the uppermost body part, because we can frequently see it in this position, that is, when people are standing, walking (running), or sitting. It is also the part where the brain and most of our senses are located. We focus our attention on the head (and other body parts located there), when we socialize with other people: making eye contact, talking with our mouths, listening with our ears, making our own facial expressions and observing the faces and expressions of other people. All of these are reasons why the HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy constitutes one of the most common metonymies used in various contexts with various shades of meanings. We can observe it in conventionalized phrases, such as, e. g. medieval Latin per capita ‘per head’, French tête à tête ‘in private’ (lit. ‘head to head’), Oromo mataa mataat ‘privately, individually’ (lit. ‘head by head’), colloquial Arabic ʕala raasʕi ‘you are welcome, it’s my pleasure’ (lit. ‘on my head’). The HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy underlies the grammaticalization towards reflexive use. A slightly grammaticalized example of Hausa in (6a) illustrates a likely first stage in grammaticalization, when the chosen body part term

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‘head’ preserves its semantic content, being the metaphoric locus of worrying, and is relevant for the action expressed by the verb. A similar example in (6b) from Polish illustrates a case of variation between the use of the lexeme ‘head’ and a reflexive pronoun. Both variants have the same meaning, except that the former sounds more expressive than the latter. Further examples in (6) illustrate complete grammaticalization of the lexemes meaning ‘head’ into reflexive markers. In both, Caucasian languages in (6c) and Ethiosemitic languages in (6d), reflexive markers historically derive from nouns meaning ‘head’, but they are no longer restricted in their usage to semantically “relevant” contexts, as in the previous examples. (6)

Reflexive uses a. Hausa (Pawlak, 2014: 145): Ya jawo wa kansa ja’iba ‘he brought misfortune on himself’ (lit. ‘on his head’) b. Polish: wziął tyle spraw na swoją głowę/na siebie ‘he took so many things (matters/issues) on his head/himself’ c. Caucasian (Schladt 2000): Abaza c-, Abkhaz -xǝ̀, Georgian tavi d. Ethiosemitic (Abinet 2014): Amharic ras-, Tigre ra’as, Argobba dəmah

The HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy provides the basis for further extension of ‘head’ into a constructed meaning of an ‘important person’, ‘leader’ or ‘ruler’, hence, HEAD FOR IMPORTANT PERSON (LEADER/ RULER) which can be seen as a specific instantiation of a more general case (GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC metonymy). Beside the aforementioned metonymy underlying this extension, there are additional cognitive processes which support the conceptualization of an ‘important person’ as the ‘head’. One relates to a widespread metaphor MORE IMPORTANT IS UP, first discussed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Crosslinguistic evidence clearly demonstrates that the mental image of the human body is based on an up-right position characteristic of standing, walking or sitting.4 This position, when the head is located up and the feet are down, can be 4 The position of lying down appears as a source domain for conceptualization only in rare examples as e. g. the Polish metonymic expression w głowach/w nogach łóżka ‘at the head/foot of the bed’. Other examples in which the ‘head’ refers to the front part, e. g. English headlights, French tête de train ‘front part of the train’ (lit. ‘the head of the train’), or Swahili kichwa cha gari ‘tractor unit’ (lit. ‘the head of the car’) are often based on the zoomorphic model. If the

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best observed in cases of grammaticalization of body part terms into spatial markers, but also in other lexical expressions, cf. the English expression stand (something) on its head, or Polish do góry nogami ‘upside down’ (lit. ‘feet/legs up’), which both allude to an abnormal state of affair, when the feet/legs are up. Another reason for conceptualizing ‘head’ as a figurative ‘ruler’ lies in the intellectual capacities of the ‘head’, as discussed in the previous section, which includes, among other things, decision making. Typically, this constructed meaning occurs with a modifier specifying the area governed by the person’s leadership. English provides many examples of this kind, cf. head of the department/ of state/ of the family/ of the church, etc. Other languages tend to have similar uses of the lexeme ‘head’, as it happens with Turkish baş, Indonesian kepala, Swahili kichwa, Oromo mataa, German Kopf, or Polish głowa. However, specific languages restrict the domains of these uses. For example, in Polish and in Swahili, equivalents of the English phrases head of the state/ of the family/ of the church do occur, but not equivalents of head of the department. Still more restricted usage characterizes the Spanish cabeza ‘head’ which occurs in such expressions in variation with jefe ‘chief, boss’, with different degrees of productivity of particular phrases. For example, ‘head of state’ is typically rendered as jefe (masc.)/ jefa (fem.) de estado and only occasionally as cabeza de estado, while the opposite seems to be the case for ‘head of the church’ with cabeza de iglesia more frequently used than jefe de iglesia. This semantic extension of ‘head’ is often seen in conventionalized compounds, such as English headmaster or headquarters, or Turkish başaktris ‘leading actress’ or başoda ‘primary room’ (i.e. room used for guests of honor, cf. Aksan 2011: 247). Likewise, the noun ‘head’ can be a base of morphological derivation in order to construct modifiers in the meaning ‘important’, main, etc., as is the case of the German prenominal formative Haupt occurring in compounds, e.g. Hauptbahnhof ‘central station’, or the Polish adjective główny ‘main’, which can be used in postposition in fixed phrasal expressions, e.g. dworzec główny ‘central station’, or freely occurs as a modifier before a noun, e.g. główna myśl (artykułu) ‘main idea (of the article)’. There are also languages which do not have equivalent expressions based on the lexeme ‘head’ in spite of the presence of its prerequisites, that is, the conceptualization of this body part as locus of thinking and reasoning and the existence of the HEAD FOR PERSON metonymy. French provides an illustration concept ‘front’ is argued to derive from an anthropological model, the walking position provides a likely source, with the head of a person moved forward with respect to the rest of the body.

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of such a case: the body part tête ‘head’ is not used in the above contexts at all,5 but only the word chef ‘chief, boss’, cf. chef d’équipe ‘leader of the team (department)’, chef de l’église ‘head of the church’, chef de rayon ‘department manager’, etc. In conclusion of this section, it might be worthwhile to bring up an example which demonstrates how a well-entrenched metonymy, such as HEAD FOR IMPORTANT PERSON (LEADER/ RULER), can be integrated into a more complex conceptualization process. The following popular saying occurs in similar forms in many European and neighboring languages, such as English: a fish rots from the head down, Italian: il pesce marcisce sempre dalla testa ‘a fish always rots from the head’, Polish: ryba psuje się od głowy ‘a fish rots from the head’, Turkish balık baştan kokar ‘the fish starts to smell from the head’, etc. In these aphorisms, the body of the fish constitutes an apparent source domain, while the target domain comprises the collective body of humans, ruled by a leader—the figurative ‘head’, who, when corrupted, gives a bad example to his/her followers, which eventually leads to a widespread wrongdoing. However, we do not usually conceptualize fish in the vertical position, but rather horizontally, and we do not particularly focus on the fish’s head as a brainy ‘ruler’ of the body. In addition, in this particular case, the animal is already dead and designated for consumption, while ruling requires being alive and active. For all these reasons, the relationship between the two domains is more complex and is more adequately analyzed as domainblending rather than mapping from the source domain to a target domain. The Conceptual Blending Theory (Fauconnier 1997, Fauconnier and Turner 1996) makes it possible to relate the source conceptual spaces of the human body and the body of the fish through the so-called generic space and integrate them into a new conceptual space which captures the chosen aspects of these domains (e.g. the head is part of both fish and humans; the human head is alive, but it is rotten like that of the dead fish). The figurative meaning comes from a blending of the two domains together with the HEAD FOR IMPORTANT PERSON metonymy which underlies the interpretation of the ‘human head’ as a ruler.

5 An exceptional example was found on the Linguee translation page (https://www.linguee .com/): English head of the Department of Defence and its French equivalent la tête du département de la Défense—a likely calque from English.

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Infrequent Extensions

While the previously discussed extensions are typical of languages spoken all over the world, this section will focus on individual extensions observed in one language only. Whether similar developments are found elsewhere is a question for further research. Both examples come from Amazonian languages, Pirahã and Deni, respectively. The concept of ‘language’ typically draws on two source domains: ‘tongue’ or ‘mouth’, which are both speech organs associated with articulation (Radden 2004). In Pirahã, the conceptualization of ‘language’ is apparently based on thinking and understanding what people say. As Everett (2005: 634) observes, the lexeme ’apaı denoting the body part ‘head’ can be used in the sense of language, as in ’apaitı´iso ‘Pirahã language’ (lit. ‘straight head’) and ’apaga´ iso ‘other languages’ (lit. ‘crooked head’). It can be hypothesized that the metonymy HEAD FOR LANGUAGE revealed in these examples correlates with the conceptualization of the ‘head’ as the locus of reasoning, as discussed in section 4, but more Pirahã data are needed to corroborate this argument. In Deni (Carvalho, this volume), the body part term tati ‘head’/‘his head’ can be extended as a kinship address form to a son-in-law. As Carvalho points out, in Kulina—another Arawá language closely related to Deni—the same term is used to address a younger brother. It remains to be investigated whether other languages use the metonymy BODY PART FOR A KIN. Such hypothetical extensions are not unlikely given that kinship relations constitute social embodiment and are therefore a feasible target of metonymic extensions from the body source domain. A distant similarity can perhaps be found in the Great Andanamese gender system in which body part terms provide a source domain for seven classes (Abbi 2011). Although the system is highly grammaticalized, it could be hypothesized that gender classes historically evolved by mapping the source domain of the human body on kinship and on other domains. If so, the Great Andanamese case can be treated as a rough parallel to the Deni example. In Great Andanamese the body part term co ‘head’ belongs to the grammatical class numbered 2 (in Abbi’s analysis), characterized by the use of the proclitic ɛr-. In the same class, we can find the noun boi ‘spouse’.

7

Conclusion

This chapter has focused on semantic extensions of the lexeme ‘head’ in mental and social domains which are predominantly triggered by metonymy, or by

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metaphor and metonymy combined together. I have demonstrated that many of these extensions are very common cross-linguistically, to the extent that they can be called “soft” cognitive universals (cf. Kraska-Szlenk 2014b, chapter 10). This situation comes as no surprise given the universal embodiment of language, as well as the fact that peoples’ cultures, although distinct in many ways, are also very similar with respect to basic institutions, social concepts, moral values and ways of life. Therefore, similarities in conceptualizations are expected. As Lakoff and Johnson put it: “[r]eason is not “universal” in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied” (1999: 4). However, similarities among different languages may also occur as a result of calquing and “borrowed” conceptualizations, as exemplified in this chapter by the Latin aphorism in section 4, or the “fish” saying in section 5, which, although of unknown origin, most likely spread within a geographical area due to language contact. It should be emphasized, however, that embodied conceptualizations make very good candidates for such borrowing, because they have a salient cognitive basis and can be therefore easily processed and transferred. It is probably not coincidental that extensions driven by metonymy tend to be more common cross-linguistically than those triggered by metaphor. By being limited to one conceptualization domain, metonymy is more restricted than metaphor. It is also fairly predictable as to the directionality of a mental “shortcut” which highlights most salient and important parts of domains. But the discussion has also shown examples of commonly occurring metaphors (section 2), or even a more complex cognitive process of blending (the “fish” example in section 5). While universal embodiment and shared culture are responsible for many similarities among languages, there is always room for culture-specific conceptualizations and unique linguistic expressions derived from them as a result (as the examples in section 6). In addition, even similar conceptualizations do not always go hand-in hand with identical linguistic usage practices (as exemplified by ‘head’—‘the leader’ in section 5). Ultimately, each language reflects an exclusive cultural model which is formed on the basis of accumulated cultural practices and values, long linguistic development and inherited structures, as well as the contact with other communities and their languages. Furthermore, this cultural model is in a constant flux, prone to the vivid dynamics of social life and the practices of language users.

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in linguistic description and explanation: Towards settling some controversies”. In: Jeannette Littlemore and John R. Taylor (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics. London/New York: Bloomsbury. 143–166. Schladt, Mathias. 2000. “The typology and grammaticalization of reflexives”. In: Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Traci S. Curl (eds.), Reflexives: Forms and Functions. Typological Studies in Language 40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 103–124. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu and Susanne Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Siahaan, Poppy. 2011. “HEAD and EYE in German and Indonesian figurative uses”. In Maalej and Yu (eds.). 93–113. Svorou, Soteria 1994. The grammar of space. Typological Studies in Language 25. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Szczygłowska, Tatiana. 2014. “Selected body part terms as a means for conveying abstract concepts in The Economist: The case of head, eye, mouth and nose”. In: M. Brenzinger and I. Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 335–356. Tashi, Konchok. 2010. Polysemy in Ladakhi. Unpublished University of Mysore Ph.D. dissertation. Taylor, John R. 1995. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1st edition 1989). Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2007. “Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology”. Language Sciences. 14–65. Will, Izabela. This volume. “The conceptualization of HEAD among the Hausa based on verbal and nonverbal representation”. Yu, Ning. 2013. “The body in anatomy: Looking at “head” for the mind-body link in Chinese”. In: Rosario Caballero and Javier Diaz-Vera (eds.), Sensuous Cognition— Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, 22). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 53–73. Zhang, Weiwei. 2016. Variation in Metonymy: Cross-linguistic, Historical and Lectal Perspectives. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ziemke, Tom, Jordan Zlatev and Roslyn M. Frank (eds.) 2007. Body, language and mind. Vol. 1 Embodiment. Cognitive Linguistics Research 35.1. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

part 2 Case Studies

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chapter 8

The Conceptualization of HEAD among the Hausa Based on Verbal and Nonverbal Representations Izabela Will

1

Introduction

HEAD is cross-linguistically associated with a set of meanings linked to the notions of ‘top’, ‘wisdom/intellect’, ‘important person/importance’, ‘beginning’ (Kraska-Szlenk 2014: 78, Hilpert 2007: 85). The phenomenon responsible for this similarity is metonymy, which is “a natural state of affairs in using body part terms in their different micro-senses” (Kraska-Szlenk 2014: 20). The embodiment hypothesis, stating that human beings understand complex aspects of their everyday experience through their bodies (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), is helpful in explaining why the users of different languages tend to form similar metaphors which give rise to similar meanings associated with a particular body part. However, it is not clear why, in cases in which more than one lexeme for HEAD exists in a language, there is usually a fixed mapping between a given lexeme and a meaning, e.g. Haupt in German denotes ‘leader, main, important’ and Kopf is ‘locus of thought’ (Siahaan 2011: 95–101). It is also not clear why a given language usually picks up some of the meanings associated cross-linguistically with a given body part, while the other meanings are either not present or marginal. For example, HEAD is rarely used as ‘locus of thought’ in Indonesian, while it is extremely often used to convey the meaning ‘leader’ (Siahaan 2011: 104). In ancient Hebrew, the HEART rather than the HEAD is associated with the locus of thought, decision, intention and will (Good 1990: 16). In Norwegian, HEAD is never used to connote the metaphor TOP OF AN ORGANIZATION, which is common in English, such as in ‘head of the household’ (Mol 2004: 99). Cognitive analysis of HEAD in various languages has also shown that it is either its function (i.e. thinking/reasoning abilities) or its position (i.e. a body part located above all others) which is the most salient in producing new meanings (Siahaan 2011: 112). The paper discusses the conceptualization of HEAD in Hausa. A crucial part is dedicated to examining the extension of the meaning of the word kai. The various sub-senses of the term are divided into two main categories: HEAD as location and HEAD as person (section 3 and 4). In the following part (sec-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_010 .

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tion 5), the focus shifts from the ‘static head’ to the dynamic one and a discussion of the extensions of phrases describing the movement of the head is conducted. The last part of the paper (section 6) turns to visual modality to explore whether gestures referring to the head (pointing to the head with a finger or lifting the hands towards the head) add something to the notion of HEAD.

2

The Scope of the Study and Properties of the Word kai ‘Head’

Hausa is a Chadic language of the Afroasiatic phylum spoken in Western Africa. The majority of Hausa speakers live in northern Nigeria and southern Niger. The lack of reliable censuses for Nigeria or Niger makes estimating the number of speakers quite difficult. All the statistics distinguish between first-language speakers (L1) and second-language speakers (L2). According to Jaggar (2001: 1), Hausa has around 30 million L1 speakers, more than any other sub-Saharan African language. The estimated number of all speakers, encompassing both L1 and L2, amounts to 60 million (Simons & Fennig 2017). A recent press release signed by a Hausa scholar from Nigeria, Dr Balarabe Danladi, states that in Nigeria alone “native Hausa speakers exceed 70 million and non-native speakers who use Hausa as a second language are likely to be between 40 and 50 million on a conservative estimate.”1 Hausa has a few regionally-based dialects. It is possible to differentiate between eastern dialects, including varieties spoken in Kano, Zaria, Bauchi, and Daura, and western dialects used in Sokoto and Gobir in northwestern Nigeria and southern Niger (Jaggar 2001: 2). The examples quoted in the paper represent mainly the variant spoken in Kano state, which is considered to be the standard language and is most frequently used in the media (both printed and electronic). Since Hausa is one of the most studied languages of sub-Saharan Africa, a substantial number of grammars and dictionaries are devoted to it. The descriptions available in two grammars (Jaggar 2001, Newman 2000) and entries of the word kai and kan (see example 1 and 2) ‘head’ in four dictionaries (Newman 2007, Bargery 1934, Dikko & Macciɗo 1991, Ƙamusun Hausa na Jami’ar Bayero 2006) were the starting point for the analysis and a source of many of the examples in section 2 and 3. A more detailed analysis of the lexeme was based on my own corpus of the Hausa language (Will 2005), gathered 1 The press release was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria and published by many Nigerian newspapers, e. g. Vanguard (http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/12/hausa‑speakers ‑nigeria‑now‑120m‑communique/, access date: June 9, 2017).

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mainly from classical Hausa novels and newspaper texts (interviews and news). The corpus analysis enabled checking the relevance of the lexical entries accessible in dictionaries (see, for example, the discussion in section 6), but also understanding the missing links between one meaning and another (see example 35, among others). Apart from the examples extracted from my corpus, many expressions found in the Internet using the Web-as-Corpus approach (Schryver 2002)2 are quoted. An additional source of language data is a transcription of utterances based mainly on Hausa sermons accessible online (see section 6). The Hausa word for head is kai /kâi/ (pl. kawuna /kaawunàa/). The word is often used in the genitive construction, in which the final diphthong is reduced to /a/ and the masculine form of a genitive particle is added resulting in the form kan as in examples 1 and 2. (1) ka-n Audu head-GEN Audu ‘Audu’s head’ (2) ka-n-sa head-GEN-3SG.M.POSS ‘his head’ In most dictionaries, as well as in studies devoted to the word kai (Gwarzo 2015, Almajir 2013), the following meanings are given: HEAD, TOP, POINT, INTELLIGENCE, UNIT/BUNDLE, SELF. In some dictionaries (e.g. Newman 2007) and grammars (e.g. Jaggar 2001: 675), the genitive form of the word kai, i.e. kan, is a separate lexeme tagged as a preposition or more precisely—a genitive preposition meaning ‘on, on top of, about, regarding, because of, on account of’. In this study, there is no differentiation made between the noun and the preposition; both are treated as instances of the same lexeme kai. There are several reasons for such a choice. First, there is no morphological difference between the nominal and prepositional form. Thus, the expression quoted in example (1) kan Audu may be interpreted as ‘Audu’s head’ but also as ‘on Audu’ or ‘about Audu’. The argument that kan is a weakly grammaticalized preposition is shown in example (3), in which the preposition co-occurs with the simple pronoun a ‘in, at, on’, which otherwise would be redundant. Another argument against the

2 The search was limited to Google books and thus most examples quoted in the paper were taken from Hausa novels printed between 2000 and 2016.

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division into the nominal kai and the prepositional kan is the fact that the form of the pronoun changes from kan, as in (3b), to kai, as in (3a), if it is not followed by a noun (Hausa allows preposition stranding). (3) a. wannan kuɗi da mu-ke magana a kai DEF.M money REL 1.PL-IPFV.REL talk PREP head ‘this money we are talking about’ b. mu-n yi magana a ka-n kuɗi 1.PL-PFV do talk PREP head-GEN money ‘we talked about money’

3

Metonymical Shifts in Meaning: kai as Hair and Person

Regular metonymical processes occur in natural languages. A part of something becomes the name for the whole (PART-FOR-WHOLE metonymy) or vice versa the name of an object or body part begins to refer to a narrower or more salient part of it (WHOLE-FOR-PART metonymy). Thus, the term for HEAD can refer to a part of the head: the fragment covered with hair (Kraska-Szlenk 2014: 16). Such a process takes place in Hausa and is exemplified in (4). (4) ta sa a-ka aske ma-ta kai ƙwal 3SG.F.PFV cause 4-PFV.REL shave DAT-3.F.SG head being.hairless ‘she had her hair shaved completely’ “Because of its upper location and distinctive features, such as hair color and style and facial features, the head stands out as a prominent part of the physical appearance of a person which triggers a cross-linguistically common metonymy: HEAD FOR PERSON” (Kraska-Szlenk 2014: 119). This metonymy is present not only in Hausa culture, but more broadly in West Africa and its occurrences can be found not only in the language but also in the fine arts. For example, in many West African kingdoms (Benin, Ife, Ashanti) the sculptural representation of kings was reduced to their heads. To this day, traditional emirs of Hausa states pay a lot of attention to covering their heads with turbans. A turban, sometimes covered with a special hat, creates the impression that the emir’s head is enormous and the veil (which is part of the turban) covers the mouth to make it as invisible for commoners as possible. Similarly, the head of the bride travelling to her husband’s house is also covered and the ceremony of unveiling the buɗar kai (lit. opening/uncovering the head) takes place in the

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husband’s house. After getting married, this same girl should behave decently, remaining aloof and preserving her self-respect—an attitude which is referred to as kamun kai (lit. grasping the head). In Hausa society, as well as in many subSaharan African societies, the head is the most important body part, a source of vitality and soul. Thus, it is not surprising that kai in Hausa is regularly used to mean ‘a person’ (Almajir 2013: 97): (5) ba ni da sa’a a ka-n-ka NEG 1SG.IPFV COM luck PREP head-GEN-2SG.M.POSS ‘I wasn’t lucky with you’ (6) ba mai iya samu-n nasara a NEG.COP having can getting-GEN victory PREP ka-n-ka head-GEN-2SG.M.POSS ‘there is no-one who can win the victory over you’ According to the regular process of chained metonymy involving several conceptual shifts (Hilpert 2007:77), the HEAD becomes a PERSON and a PERSON becomes SELF, as in (7). In Hausa, kai also functions as a regular reflexive pronoun which can co-occur in all persons: kaina ‘myself’, kanka ‘yourself’, kansa ‘himself’, etc. (example 8). Such a path of extending meaning from the notion of HEAD to a reflexive marker is common across languages (Schladt 2000: 108, 110). (7) ƙasa-r mai mulki-n ka-n-ta country-GEN possessing rule-GEN head-GEN-3SG.F.POSS ‘independent country’ (lit. country possessing self-rule) (8) ya kashe ka-n-sa 3SG.M.PFV kill head-GEN-3SG.M.POSS ‘he killed himself’ A closer look at the function of the reflexive pronoun in Hausa shows that it is not restricted to an action performed by someone, as in (8). It is also used for the emphasis of an independent pronoun especially when following it (Jaggar 2001: 385), as in (9).

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(9) su-na ɗauka-r shi ka-n-sa Fir’auan a 3PL-IPFV taking-GEN him head-GEN-3SG.M.POSS pharaoh PREP matsayi-n Ubangiji position-GEN God ‘they treated him, the pharaoh, as their God’ When a reflexive pronoun is preceded by the instrumental-comitative preposition da, it expresses “exclusive-exhaustive force” (Jaggar 2001: 387), i.e. it indicates that someone performed the action alone without any help, the equivalent of the English ‘by himself/herself’ or ‘with his/her own hands’, as in (10). (10) shi ne ya gina abi-n-sa da he FOC 3SG.M.PFV.REL build thing-GEN-3M.SG.POSS COM ka-n-sa head-GEN-3SG.M.POSS ‘he built the thing by himself’ When preceded by a genitive noun, the reflexive pronoun functions as a coreferential possessor and acquires the meaning ‘one’s own’. In (11), the phrase kanki ‘your (f) head’ functions rather as a possessive pronoun. (11) i-na fata za ki riƙe amana-r ka-n-ki 1SG-IPFV hope FUT 2SG.F keep trust-GEN head-GEN-2SG.F.POSS ‘I hope you will keep your trust’ Thus, the meanings of the lexeme kai derived by metonymic extension can be listed as follows: PERSON, OWN, SELF, ALONE. The process of grammaticalization from the body-part term to the reflexive pronoun has not been completed in Hausa (see discussion in section 3). On the morphological level, there is no difference between the prepositional phrase meaning ‘on his head’ or ‘about him’ and the reflexive pronoun ‘himself’, all of which have the same form kansa /kânsà/. As a result, the final meaning of the phrase depends on the context and in some instances it may be ambiguous whether kai has already begun to function as a fully grammaticalized reflexive pronoun or continues to be used a metonymical extension of HEAD. In (12), the word kai is either a part of the idiomatic expression kutsa kai or a reflexive pronoun preceded by the verb kutsa ‘to squeeze through a tight opening’, which acquires a new meaning in such a construction, i.e. ‘to barge into a place’. In (12 a), kai behaves like a regular reflexive pronoun whose number, person and gender agrees with the subject pronoun and thus the morphological form would

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suggest the translation ‘she barged into a room (lit. she squeezed herself into a room)’. In (12 b), however, kai no longer appears to be a reflexive pronoun (no agreement is present in its structure) and can be associated with the notion ‘self’. It can also be analyzed as a part of the idiom kutsa kai ‘to barge into a place’, which has a locative meaning; note that in (12b) no locative preposition occurs between the verb and the locative complement. (12) a. ta kutsa ka-n-ta cikin ɗaki 3SG.F.PFV barge head-GEN-3SG.F.POSS inside room ‘she barged into a room’ b. sojoji-n Turkiyya su-n kutsa kai Syria soldiers-GEN Turkey 3PL-PFV barge head Syria ‘Turkish soldiers invaded Syria’ 3.1 Kai as HUMAN CHARACTER TRAITS As indicated in section 3, HEAD stands for person (PART-FOR-WHOLE metonymy). Once it acquires the meaning of ‘a person’, it is associated with this person’s characteristic features, i.e. the quality of the head stands for person’s quality (Siahaan 2011: 103). Again, we can see a chain of semantic shifts. First, we can observe the extension of the meaning of HEAD to the whole person and then the narrowing of the meaning to this person’s character traits. All these expressions in Hausa in which kai stands for ‘character traits’ share a common syntactic construction: they consist of so-called abstract nouns of sensory quality3 with a suffixed genitive particle and the word kai. The expression evokes human character traits or more general human characteristics. (13) faɗi-n kai / girma-n kai width-GEN head / bigness-GEN head ‘conceit, arrogance’ (14) sauƙi-n kai lightness-GEN head ‘open-mindedness’

3 Nouns signifying “qualities or attributes of people, animals, or things that are perceptible by one or more of the senses” (Parsons 1955: 376).

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(15) tauri-n kai hardness-GEN head ‘stubbornness’ (16) ɗa-n zafi-n kai son-GEN hotness-GEN head ‘a hot-tempered person’ In (13), the metaphor IMPORTANT IS BIG is responsible for the development of the meaning ‘arrogance’. In (15), kai is considered to be a thick or hard object (as opposed to a flexible one) whose shape is resistant to manipulation or as Siahaan (2011: 99) describes it with regard to an analogous expression in German “as a thick object which is impervious to penetration (as by knowledge)”. The expression in (16) seems to be an innovation in Hausa. It is not recorded in any Hausa dictionary. Instead, the expressions zafin zuciya lit. ‘heat of heart’ or zafin rai lit. ‘heat of life’ are encountered as dictionary entries meaning ‘being quicktempered’ or ‘being easily angered’ (Newman 2007, Dikko & Macciɗo 1991). This alternation between kai, zuciya and rai with regard to the concept of PERSON is common in Hausa (Pawlak 2014). All the extensions of meanings of the word kai which have developed as the effect of a metonymical chain are summarized in Figure 8.1.

4

Meanings Developed from kai Understood as LOCATION

Many semantic extensions of the lexeme kai refer to its position in space. Head is a human being’s topmost body part and an animal’s frontmost body part, as a result of which it is frequently associated with two notions: FRONT and TOP (Heine 1997: 41). The lexeme kai is conceptualized as the top of something or the upper part of something. The conceptualization is based on the metaphor OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Since the head is the topmost part of a person, it is also the topmost part of an object, as in (17). (17) su-na shiri-n wani sabo-n ka-n ɗaki 3PL-IPFV preparing-GEN INDF.M new-GEN head-GEN hut ‘they are preparing the hut’s new roof’ The same metaphor OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS gave rise to another meaning of kai; a locative preposition (on, at). The factor responsible for the develop-

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figure 8.1 Metonymical extension of kai ‘head’

ment of this preposition is of an anthropological nature.4 In Hausaland, or in sub-Saharan Africa in general, loads are often carried on the head rather than by any other part of the body. Thus, the head is associated as the body part on which something is often placed/carried. By analogy, if something is situated on an object (like a table, shelf or stool), it is situated ‘on the head of the table’, as in (18). (18) baba ya yi maza ya hau ka-n tebur father 3SG.M.PFV do quick 3SG.M.PFV climb head-GEN table ‘Father sat on the table quickly’ The preposition kan ‘on, at’ is also used as a general preposition, not necessarily possessing a locative meaning: (19) Allah shi ke da iko ka-n komai God he IPFV COM power head-GEN everything ‘it’s God who has power over everything’

4 The importance of taking anthropological facts into account when considering the shifts in meaning of certain body-part terms is pointed out by Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2012). Discussing the semantic extension of the word buru ‘head’ in Basque, she gives the example of the word etxeburu (lit. house.head) which could potentially be interpreted as the top of the house, hence the word buru ‘head’ is often associated with the meaning ‘top’ in this language. However, etxeburu means ‘the most important part of the house façade where the coat of arms is located’. This results from the fact that in traditional Basque houses this part is located in the center of the façade. As buru also happens to be associated with the center, the metaphor IMPORTANT IS CENTER has triggered the development of such an expression (IbarretxeAntuñano 2012: 259n).

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(20) Buhari ya yi magana ka-n abu-n da B. 3SG.M.PFV do talk head-GEN thing-GEN REL ‘ya-n arewa su-ka yi children-GEN north 3PL-PFV.REL do ‘Buhari talked about the things done by the Northerners’ Apart from being ‘the top of something’ kai also means ‘the front part of something’, as in (21) and (22). A semantic shift from ‘head’ to ‘front’ is common in African languages and can be explained by the hypothesis that the “human body in its upright position is not perceived as being absolutely vertical but rather as leaning forward—that is, the way it is situated when one is running or walking, rather than when one is standing” (Heine 1997: 46). Another possible explanation is the use of the zoomorphic model; a model that has an animal as its basis (Heine 1995: 121). The second explanation seems to be more plausible due to the fact that the vehicle’s shape resembles that of a four-legged animal in the sense that its length exceeds its height. (21) ka-n mota / jirgi head-GEN car / vehicle ‘front of the car/vehicle’ (22) ka-n keke / babur head-GEN bike / motorbike ‘handlebar’ Chained metonymy is responsible for another shift in meaning: from ‘the front of something’ to ‘the beginning of something’, as in (23). (23) ka-n labari / littafi head-GEN story / book ‘the beginning of the story/book’ The beginning of the story is also understood as the title, the headline, the introduction, the summary or any other statement indicating the gist of the story as in (24). If the story has a written form, its title or headline is situated not only at the beginning but also at the top. Thus the meaning of kai given in (24), ‘the title’, corresponds to the meaning indicated in (17), ‘the top of something’.

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(24) ko da ya ji wannan ka-n labari, sai even when 3SG.M.PFV.REL hear DEF.M head-GEN story then ya fashe da dariya 3SG.M.PFV.REL break INTS laughing ‘When he heard the title of the story, he burst out laughing’ The notion of kai as ‘the front part of something’ is also present in the expression sha kai5 ‘get ahead’ (lit. drink head), as in (25) and in a common Hausa saying quoted in (26), which describes a useless person as someone who is missing his or her head and buttocks, i.e. the beginning and the end. (25) Har yanzu ba a rubuta wani littafi-n labari da until now NEG 4.PFV write INDF.M book-GEN story REL ya sha ka-n labari-n Magana Jari Ce ba 3SG.M.PFV.REL drink head-GEN story-GEN Magana Jari Ce NEG ‘So far no one has written a novel that is better than (lit. that got ahead) Magana Jari Ce’ (26) ba kai ba gindi NEG.COP head NEG.COP buttocks ‘he’s useless’ It seems that another meaning of kai referred to as ‘the tip of something’ has also developed from the notion ‘front part’. (27) ka-n allura head-GEN needle ‘the tip of a needle’ (28) kan takobi head-GEN sword ‘the edge of a sword’ In both examples, (27) and (28), we can see that kai is associated with something sharp, i.e. the functional part of a tool, not necessarily a part that is the highest point of an object (as in the case of a needle, but not in the case of a knife or sword). It also does not refer to the whole blade as the blade of a knife,

5 The expression sha kai is much more commonly used to mean ‘persuade’.

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sword, axe or any other tool is referred to as ruwa (lit. water). Looking at the function of these tools, one can notice that the part called kai often touches the object first, i.e. it is the edge of the knife that touches the piece to be cut, it is the edge of the sword that first touches the opponent one fights and it is the tip of the needle that touches the textile. Such reasoning is further supported by the examples in which such expressions as those quoted in (27) and (28) are preceded by the word tsini ‘the point/sharp point of something’, as in (29), in which tsini would be redundant if the ‘pointiness’ were represented by kai. (29) tsini-n ka-n wuƙa pointed.end-GEN head-GEN knife ‘the sharp tip of a knife’ In (29), the word tsini underlines the pointiness or sharpness of the object, while kai refers rather to the edge or, alternatively, the tip of a knife6 (both being its functional parts which touch the object first when cutting). Other examples (30, 31) of phrases in which kai is used together with tsini clearly show that when referring to a part of an object, kai does not necessarily mean ‘tip of something’ but rather it refers to the protruding part of the object, the part which is functional but also situated in front rather than on top. (30) ya sa baki-n-sa waje-n tsini-n 3SG.M.PFV put mouth-GEN-3SG.M.POSS place-GEN pointed.end-GEN ka-n ƙaho head-GEN horn ‘he placed his mouth on the pointed end of the horn’ (31) tsini-n ka-n nono pointed.end-GEN head-GEN breast ‘pointy nipple’ The utterance in (30) refers to the action done by a traditional Hausa barber called wanzami. He does not only do the shaving and cutting but also the bloodletting. Thus, the sentence describes a wanzami putting the pointed end of the 6 Note that in English there is also a distinction between ‘the point of a knife’ (the part of the knife where the edge and spine come together) and ‘the tip of a knife’ (the forward part of the knife that includes the knife point). The former would corresponds to Hausa tsini while the latter to kai.

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horn to his mouth in order to remove dead blood cells from the body of a person who has had an accident (Shettima 1993: 85). The ‘head of the horn’ is the part touched first by the barber’s mouth. In (31), the nipple is the frontmost part of the breast sucked by the baby. 4.1 Kai as a Unit of Measurement: a Bundle or a Portion of Something The word for ‘head’ in various languages is often used as a classifier of objects and typically co-occurs with numerals, as in the Polish dwie główki kapusty ‘two heads of cabbage’, the English three head of cattle or the Tunisian Arabic raaS bSall ‘onion head’, raaS bruklu ‘cauliflower head’ (Maalej 2014: 228). But in all these examples the motivation for using the ‘head’ as the classifier of an object is clear: the metaphoric mapping is typically based on the similarity in shape between a certain object and a source body part; simply put, round vegetables resemble the human head. It may also have metonymical ground when referring to animals (PART FOR WHOLE). In Hausa, the motivation for using kai as a classifier is less clear because it refers to uncountable things, such as wood or sticks. (32) Kowa ya yi ma-ka ka-n kara a yi everyone 3.SG.M.PFV do DAT-2SG.M head-GEN cornstalks 4.SUBJ do ma-sa na itace DAT-3SG.M GEN wood ‘If someone gives you a bundle of cornstalks, give him [a bundle] of firewood’ Note that such a bundle of objects is typically tied with a rope and prepared for carrying on the head. Therefore, I believe this unit of measurement can be defined as ‘appropriate for carrying on one’s head’. Another explanation is suggested by Ahmadu Shehu (personal communication), who notices that one normally takes just one bundle and carries it somewhere. If you have a number of bundles, they would be equivalent to the number of times the ‘head’ brought them. As explained by Gwarzo (2015: 510), kai understood as a classifier does not necessarily refer to stick-like objects but can also be applied to other loads carried on the head, as in (33). (33) ruwa kai uku water head three ‘three head-loads of water’

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This meaning was extended to any ‘portion of something appropriate for a person’, as in (34): (34) ya yi barci kai ɗaya, sai ya ji a-na cewa: 3SG.M.PFV do sleep head one then 3SG.M.PFV hear 4-IPFV saying Barawo! Barawo!! thief thief ‘he had one period of sleep when he heard someone saying: A thief! A thief!’ The same meaning of kai connected with ‘an amount appropriate for a person’ is present in the idiom neman kai da wani, lit. ‘seeking a head for someone’. An old Hausa dictionary (Bargery 1934) gives the following translation of that idiom: ‘getting rid of cheaply, e.g. being willing to take any price or offer for an article’. In contemporary language, it means ‘wanting to get rid of something or someone’, as in (35). (35) duk ’ya-n ƙungiya su-na nema-n kai da shi all children-GEN society 3PL-IPFV looking.for-GEN head for him ‘all the members of the organization want to get rid of him’ The meaning of the idiom becomes clear when we have in mind that kai means ‘a portion’ or ‘a measure of something’. Thus, ‘looking for a head’ is actually ‘looking for any portion/measure of something in exchange for something/someone else’. One more expression showing that kai is used as a unit of measurement is ‘yan kai ‘a little bit extra, a little more’ (lit. ‘children of the head’ or ‘small heads’). It usually follows a number, as in (36). (36) A tsawo-n shekaru goma da ’yan kai da na-ke at length-GEN years ten COM DIM head since 1SG-IPFV.REL aiki a Leadership … work LOC L. ‘It has been more than ten years since I began working for “Leadership” …’

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figure 8.2 Metaphorical extension of kai ‘head’

5

Movement and Position of the Head—Culturally-Driven Expressions with kai

In the literature concerning embodiment, much attention is devoted to those metaphors which seem to be universal, such as SADNESS IS DOWN, HAPPINESS IS UP (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). The position of a person’s head while being affected by a particular emotion to a large extent determines the conceptualization of such metaphors and explains cross-linguistic similarities. A person who is happy lifts his or her head up (King 1989: 136). On the other hand, sadness is associated with a drooping bodily posture which affects both the shoulders and the head (Barcelona 2003: 43). These general observations are correct from the physical point of view but do not take into account social constraints regarding the position of the head which also determine the cultural model of moving or positioning a given body part. In Hausa culture, bending the head downwards is a sign of good upbringing and bashfulness, while keeping the head raised may be considered rude behavior. As a result, certain idioms do not comply with the common association between the straight/upright position of the head and happiness. In fact, quite the opposite, the expression ɗaga kai ‘to raise the head’—used to indicate the physical raising of the head—has gained an additional meaning ‘to put on airs’. A raised head is either associated with wealthy or powerful people (noblemen, politicians, businessmen), while it is considered to be a sign of pride in reference to so-called talakawa ‘common people’, as in (37) and (38).

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(37) Wani kuma ya-na nuna sarauta a INDF.M thus 3SG.M-IPFV show rulership LOC gida-n-sa ne ya-na ɗaga kai kamar sarki-n house-GEN-3SG.M.POSS FOC 3SG.M-IPFV lift head as.if king-GEN duniya world ‘Some want to show their power in the house and put on airs as if they were kings of the world’ (38) Kada ka riƙa ɗaga kai, da ji-ji da kai, NEG.SBJV 2SG.M keep.on lift head and listen-listen INST head ka-na gani-n kowa a ƙarƙashi-n-ka 2SG.M-IPFV see-GEN everyone LOC under-GEN-2SG.M.POSS ya-ke 3SG.M-IPFV.REL ‘Do not keep on putting on airs and showing arrogance as if everyone were below you’ The well-known metaphor IMPORTANT IS HIGH (Kövecses 2006: 143) is responsible for the extension of ɗaga kai to ‘arrogance’ or ‘pride’ in (37) and (38). Keeping the head high is associated with showing importance. However, one should rather keep the head lowered in order to keep in line with the norms of society, especially one of the most important values which is kunya7— bashfulness, modesty, reserve, sense of propriety. Admittedly, the expression sunkuyad da kai ‘to lower the head’ has not become an idiom, but whenever it is used in a language it does not indicate sadness but describes a feeling of decency, shame, good upbringing, as in (39), in which the girl lowered her head because she felt shy when someone was looking at her. (39) Da mu-ka haɗa ido ta yi maza ta when 1.PL-PFV.REL join eye 3SG.F.PFV do quickly 3SG.F.PFV sunkuyad da ka-n-ta lower OBL head-GEN-3SG.F.POSS ‘When our eyes met, she immediately lowered her head [because of feeling ashamed]’

7 For more on the cultural value called kunya, see Will 2009: 261–263.

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Such behavior—lowering the head and avoiding looking into someone’s eyes—is very common in Hausa society. Not only women tend to lower their heads when talking to a man, but also men lower their heads while talking to a person who has a higher social rank.8 Turning the head aside (kawar da kai ‘shifting the head’ or ɗauke kai ‘taking the head’) is a common reaction among Hausa people either because they feel shy and confused by a particular situation or an utterance directed at them or they are irritated by something (Will 2014: 168). The gesture of turning the head aside may be performed in a situation when someone talks to a person who holds a higher position in the social hierarchy or when one wants to hide one’s feelings. Avoiding eye contact with the in-laws or one’s superiors is connected with the concept of kunya. Thus, the belief, so common in Western culture, that one should look at the person one is speaking to is quite uncommon among Hausas. Turning the head aside occurs not only when someone hears an irritating or unpleasant message, but also when the message is pleasing as in (40). (40) ya tsaya cak ya-na kallo-n-ta, sai 3M.SG.PFV stop ID 3M.SG-IPFV watching-GEN-3SG.F.POSS until kawai ta kawar da kai only 3F.SG.PFV shift OBL head ‘he stopped, looked at her and she turned her head aside’ The phrase kawar da kai ‘turn the head’ is used in contemporary Hausa as an idiom meaning ‘ignore, turn a blind eye to something’. Just as the gesture, the phrase may be interpreted in two ways: to turn the head in fury or in a fearsome way. In (41), the interpretation is ‘to turn a blind eye to something’ in order to avoid the problem; thus, the act is considered negative by the speaker, while in (42) the positive consequence of the act is emphasized (Will 2014: 168). (41) ya yi fatali da zargi-n da a-ke cewa 3SG.M.PFV do scattering OBL accusation-GEN REL 4-IMPF.REL saying Amurka ta kawar da kai daga Afghanistan America 3F.SG.PFV shift OBL head from A. ‘he hurled abuse blaming America for turning a blind eye to Afghanistan’

8 While two or more people are talking with each other in Hausa community, it is almost always possible to state who among them has the higher status by observing the position of their heads, e.g. students lower their heads when talking to teachers, women lower their heads when talking to men or elders.

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(42) don haka ɗauka-n mataki-n kawar da kai daga because.of thus taking-GEN steps-GEN shift OBL head from kuskure-n da mace ta aikata ba ƙarami-n mistakes-GEN REL woman 3F.SG.PFV.REL make NEG small-GEN muhimmanci haka-n ke da shi a gare ta ba importance thus-GEN IPFV.REL COM 3M.SG PREP DAT 3SG.F NEG ‘that is why taking some steps to neglect the woman’s faults is of great importance to her’ The importance of some movements made with the head is associated with the fact that the head is metonymically mapped onto the whole person (section 3), so that the movement of the head can reflect the person’s feelings or state. In the examples listed in this section, two metonymical links are crucial: one is PART FOR WHOLE (HEAD FOR PERSON) and EFFECT FOR CAUSE (GESTURE/MOVEMENT FOR FEELING/STATE). Some of the movements of the head are strictly connected with Hausa culture and lie in opposition to the physical reactions of the body which have given rise to universal conceptualizations explained by the embodiment hypothesis.

6

HEAD Referring to THOUGHT/MIND?

All the meanings of the head discussed so far are associated either with the location of the head, its metonymical extension to a person or its movement. In the latter case, the movement is regarded as an instance of the feelings or the state of the whole person. It is difficult to find expressions in Hausa in which the meaning of kai would be based on the head’s functional features associated with thinking and its conceptualization as a locus of intellect, container of the brain and mind. The only example which is given in most Hausa dictionaries to prove that kai means intelligence is cited in (43). (43) ba shi da kai NEG 3SG.M.IMPF PREP head ‘he is not intelligent’ (lit. he is not with the head) The problem with this example is that it does not seems to be present in real language use.9 There are, however, a few expressions from which one can draw

9 In fact, the only place where I could find the expression ba shi da kai were Hausa dictio-

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the conclusion that head is somehow associated with the process of thinking or with the container of knowledge (Almajir 2013: 96). These are expressions in which the head is described as dark or light—the first associated with ignorance and lack of knowledge, the second with enlightenment and knowledge. (44) duhu-n kai darkness-GEN head ‘ignorance’ (45) mu-na ci-n amfani-n mujalla sosai, ta-na 1PL-IPFV eating-GEN usefulness-GEN journal really 3SG.F-IPFV wayar ma-na da kai a ka-n abi-n da ba enlighten DAT-1PL OBL head PREP head-GEN thing-GEN REL NE G mu sani ba 1PL.PFV know NEG ‘we are taking advantage of this journal, it explains things to us we do not know’ Two metaphors are responsible for the development of such expressions, as in (44) and (45), in which darkness is associated with ‘ignorance’ and light with ‘enlightenment’. One of them is KNOWLEDGE IS LIGHT and the other, entailed within this basic metaphor is KNOWING IS SEEING (Hermanson 2006: 64, Sweetser 1990). There are also examples of figurative speech based on novel expressions which show that the head is regarded as a container of thoughts. (46) kada zalumi ya halaka ma-na kai NEG.SBJV pondering 3SG.M perish DAT-1PL head ‘may the pondering not destroy our heads’ However, the main evidence that the head is associated with thinking comes from the descriptions of people’s behavior and co-speech gestures. Several examples taken from Hausa novels show that a thinking person either lifts his/her head or touches it:

naries. Web searches gave zero hits, while the corresponding expression ba shi da hankali (lit. he has no mind) gave 76 thousands hits (Google search, 25 November 2016).

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(47) ta ɗaga kai tamkar tunani 3SG.F.PFV lift head as.if thinking ‘she lifted the head as if [she were] thinking’ (48) ya zauna a kujera ya dafe kai cikin 3SG.M.PFV sit LOC chair 3SG.M.PFV put.hand.on head inside tunani thinking ‘he sat on the chair and put his hand on his head thinking’ (49) ta kama kai ta hau tunani 3.SG.PFV catch head 3.SG.PFV climb thinking ‘she grasped her head and started thinking’ Thus, the thinking process involves lifting the head or touching it with one’s palms. Such examples as in (47–49) show that the concept of HEAD is associated with the process of reasoning and thinking. One more piece of evidence proving this association comes from visual modality, i.e. from gestures, both independent and co-speech gestures used while a person talks about thinking or reasoning. The examples discussed below in this section were taken from natural discourse: sermons performed by Hausa sheiks. In my corpus containing a few hours of recordings, there are numerous examples showing that when a speaker talks about thinking or reasoning he either points to his head with the palm or with an index finger or he moves his hands at the level of his head. For example, one speaker explains to his audience that if they do not know what earthly life looks like, they should ask God who created them and he will tell them. He concludes with the following statement: (50) in ka-na da hankali, sai ka gane if 2SG.M-IPFV COM good.sense then 2SG.M.PFV understand ‘If you have good sense, you will understand’ When uttering the word hankali, the speaker indicates the head, or more precisely his temple, with his index finger. Another speaker, after asking his audience why they watch football, politicians, films, dramas, answers his own question as in example (51). (51) saboda kai ba ka da hankali because you NEG 2SG.M.IPFV COM good.sense ‘because you have no good sense’

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In his utterance the gesture slightly precedes the word hankali. The speaker brings the tips of his fingers close to his temple when pronouncing the word kai. Another example of gestural linkage between the head and the mind is performed by a speaker who is trying to persuade the audience that the solutions chosen by Hausa people are different than the solutions chosen by Westerners. However, he states that some Nigerian politicians, like Buhari or Rimi, think the way Westerners do. He utters the words quoted in (52): (52) ka ga Buhari, ka ga Rimi, tunani-n-su 2PL.PFV see B. 2PL.PFV see R. thinking-GEN-3PL.POSS tunani na ’yan boko thinking GEN children-GEN latin.script ‘you know Buhari and Rimi, their reasoning [is reminiscent of] that of Westerners’ When uttering the word tunaninsu ‘their thinking’, the speaker lifts both his arms and his palms (held at the level of his head) and makes a few circular movements around his temple. This time the speaker does not indicate his head directly but shows what is going on inside it by rotating his palms close to his temple. Examples (50)–(52) show that speakers tend to raise their palms towards the head or show the head with an index finger when they talk about tunani ‘thinking’ or hankali ‘reason’. The association between hankali and kai is also, but to a far lesser extent, present in language data. For instance, the example discussed in (43)—ba shi da kai ‘he is not intelligent’—is sometimes replaced by the much more common ba shi da hankali (lit. he does not have common sense), while the common expression tashin hankali (lit. rising of sense) ‘turmoil, anxiety, disturbance’ was found to be replaced by tashin kai (lit. rising of the head) as shown in (53). (53) Da wani ya yi ma-ta ɗan tashi-n kai, when INDF.M 3M.SG.PFV.REL do DAT-3SG.F DIM rising-GEN head sai ta sa a kore shi then 3F.PFV.REL cause 4.SUBJ chase.away him ‘When someone made her feel unrest a bit, she chased him away’ Similarly, another expression containing the word kai can be used interchangeably with the word hankali.

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(54) a. Ko hankali-n-ki ɗaya kuwa Sadiqa? PART mind-GEN-2F.SG.POSS one PART S. ‘have you lost your senses, Sadiqa?’ b. Ke Maryam ka-n-ki ɗaya kuwa? you M. head-GEN-2F.SG.POSS one PART ‘have you lost your senses, Maryam?’ Examples (53–54) also show that there is no strict association between a particular body part and a certain abstract concept. Similarly, the HEAD in Hausa can be associated with the notion of SELF, but the same notion may be expressed by other body parts, such as zuciya ‘heart’ and jiki ‘body’ (Pawlak 2014).

7

Conclusion

The analysis of the word kai has shown that in contemporary Hausa HEAD is associated with several notions, including LOCATION, UPPER PART, FRONT, UNIT OF MEASUREMENT, PERSON, HUMAN CHARACTER TRAIT, SELF, REASON, INTELLIGENCE. These notions reflect the cross-linguistic similarities of the semantic extension of body-part terms. However, in order to understand the idioms associated with the HEAD, as well as novel expressions referring to it and gestures pointing to the head, cultural and language-specific factors should be taken into account. In Hausa, two basic notions, LOCATION and SELF, play a crucial role. They have given rise to two grammatical elements: the locative preposition and the reflexive pronoun. These two notions occur most frequently in the language. The frequency test10 for the word kai shows that out of 92 occurrences 39 were connected with the meaning ‘self’, while in 14 cases kai played the function of a locative preposition. The tendency to use the word kai as a grammatical element is even more evident when we look at the use of the same word with a genitive particle attached to it, i.e. kan; out of 253 occurrences 239 were locative prepositions. However, the lexicalization process of the word kai ‘head’ has not yet been completed and in some instances it is not possible to state whether the lexeme is already the preposition ‘on, at’, a part of an idiom, or it stands for a metonymical extension for person.

10

The test was done on a corpus containing 217118 tokens (for a description of the corpus, see Will 2005). The literal uses of the word kai were not counted.

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In an attempt to answer the question addressed in the introduction to the paper, i.e. why some meanings are more salient in a given language than others, I believe that in the case of Hausa, two factors are responsible for the spread of two notions of the lexeme kai: ‘person/self’ and ‘location’. The first of these is the fact that the head has always been the most important part of a human body in sub-Saharan Africa, not only in the Hausa-speaking community. As a result, the metonymy HEAD FOR PERSON is well attested in Hausa. It is necessary to state that both the position of the head and its size are associated with human behavior. If the HEAD is big/wide or lifted (too high), it is associated with arrogance and pride. If it is lowered or turned aside, it is associated with shame, self-control and a good upbringing. The second factor responsible for the metonymy HEAD FOR LOCATION is the fact that the head rather than the arms or the back is strongly associated with carrying loads. It is easy to imagine a natural extension of such a meaning to nonconcrete objects, such as ‘power’ or ‘duties’, which are also “carried” on the head. These two salient notions of HEAD seem to be strictly interrelated; the abstract things are no longer carried ‘on the head’ but are experienced by a person. A particularly good example of the close interrelation of the two notions: ‘location’ and ‘person’ is the occurrence of the meaning ‘a bit of something, some more’. The meaning developed from the fact that loads are carried on the head, but it is also influenced by the metonymy HEAD FOR PERSON as the starting point in the development of the meaning was ‘a measure which is convenient for a single human being to place and carry on the head’. The analysis of HEAD in Hausa shows that in order to have a broader understanding of the concept one has to take into consideration more than one modality—speech, i.e. the analysis of the use of the word kai ‘head’. The visual modality, i.e. the gestures and visual connotation of a particular body part, should also be included. Such a way of analyzing the concept enables, among other things, explaining the restrictions on an extension of meaning. For example, in Hausa, the concept of HEAD is connected with several notions: PERSON, SELF, UPPER PART, FRONT, MEASURE, TOP, REASONING and THINKING. The last two notions seem to be linked to gestural modality, while the others are associated with the term kai. However, this complementary distribution is not very strict. In many idiomatic expressions, the word kai alternates with a set of other words, zuciya ‘heart’, hankali ‘reason, sense’ or rai ‘life’, in apparently the same meaning. This alternation is also present across two modalities: gesture and speech. When talking about themselves, Hausa speakers use the word kai, but when showing themselves with their hand, they touch their chest indicating the heart. On the other hand, it is the word for ‘heart’, zuciya, that is used metaphorically as a container for thoughts and reasoning. However, when

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talking about thinking or reasoning Hausa speakers show their head, not their heart. This flexibility with regard to the figurative ‘content’ of certain body parts is not particular to Hausa only and seems to be well attested in languages which have a dualistic model of irrational emotions (kept in the heart) and rational thinking (kept in the head). For example, in Swahili the ‘things’ associated with the head, like thoughts, doubts and questions occasionally collocate with the heart (Kraska 2014: 49n). In Hausa, conceptualizations of the head’s position are more important than its function of being the “container” for the brain. As a result, the word kai is hardly ever associated with mind or intelligence, although it is present in gestural modality. Another notion which is “suspiciously” missing as far as the word kai is concerned involves hierarchy or leadership. However, this is not surprising if we look at Hausa linguistic expressions coding these notions. For example, the word for ‘leader’ in Hausa, shugaba, is a compound made of two words, shiga ‘enter’ and gaba ‘in front’ (Newman 2000: 112). This shows that hierarchy in Hausa seems to be horizontal and not vertical; hence, the most important person is the one who is in front rather than the one on top. The existence of several expressions11 triggered by the metaphors IMPORTANT IS FRONT SIDE, and LESS IMPORTANT IS BACK SIDE (Ingebrethsen 2016), which are present in many languages explains further why the meaning ‘leadership’ or ‘hierarchy’ is not associated with the word kai.

References Almajir, Tijjani Shehu. 2013. “The Polysemy of Body Part Terms in Hausa within the Frame of Image Schemas”, Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures, vol. 47, 93–111. Barcelona, Antionio. 2003. “On the plausibility of claiming a metonymic motivation for conceptual metaphor”, in: Antonio Barcelona (ed.), Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 31– 58. Bargery, G.P. 1934. A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary. London: Humphrey Milford. Dikko, Inuwa and Macciɗo, Usman. 1991. Ƙamus Na Adon Maganar Hausa. Zaria: Northern Nigerian Publishing Company.

11

For example: ci gaba ‘progress’ (lit. eat front), bayan gida ‘toilet’ (lit. the back of the house), baya ba zane ‘foolishness’, (lit. no patterns on the back).

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Good, Edwin Marshall. 1990. In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job, with a Translation. Stanford University Press. Gwarzo, Yusuf Ahmad. 2015. “A study of Metaphorical Conceptualization of Body Part Term Kai ‘Head’ in the Hausa Language”, Algaita. Journal of Current Research in Hausa Studies, Special Edition, vol. 1 no. 1., 501–516. Heine, Bernd. 1997. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press. Heine, Bernd. 1995. “Conceptual grammaticalization and prediction”, in: John R. Taylor, Robert E. MacLaury (eds.), Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 119–135. Hermanson, Eric A. 2006. Metaphor in Zulu. Problems in the Translation of Biblical Metaphor in the Book of Amos. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS. Hilpert, Martin. 2007. “Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar: a cross linguistic perspective on body part-terms”, in: Günter Radden, Klaus-Michael Köpcke, Thomas Berg and Peter Siemund (eds), Aspects of Meaning Construction, John Benjamins, 77–98. Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide. 2012. “The importance of unveiling conceptual metaphors in a minority language: The case of Basque”, in: Anna Idström and Elisabeth Piirainen (eds) Endangered Metaphors. John Benjamins, 253–274. Ingebrethsen, Berit. 2016. Metaphors We Draw By: Metaphoric drawing explored as a visual language. Unpublished extracts from Ph.D. thesis accessible at https://teora .hit.no/bitstream/handle/2282/2742/Berit%20Ingebrethsen%20Metaphors% 20We%20Draw%20By.pdf?sequence=1 (date of access 20.03.2017). Jaggar, Philip J. 2001. Hausa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ƙamusun Hausa na Jami’ar Bayero 2006. Ƙamusun Hausa na Jami’ar Bayero. Kano: Cibiyar Nazarin Harsunan Nijeriya, Jami’ar Bayero. King, Brian. 1989. The Conceptual Structure of Emotional Experience in Chinese. Ph.D. Thesis, The Ohio State University. Kövecses, Zoltán. 2006. Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014. Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. München: Lincom Europa. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maalej, Zouheir. 2014. “Body-Parts We Live By in Language and Culture: The raaS ‘Head’ and yidd ‘Hand’ in Tunisian Arabic”, in: Matthias Brenzinger and Iwona KraskaSzlenk (eds), The Body in Language. Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 224–259. Mol, Susan. 2004. “ ‘Head’ and ‘Heart’: Metaphors and metonymies in a cross-linguistic perspective”, in: Karin Aijmer and Hilde Hasselgård (eds.), Translation and Corpora. Gothemborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 87–111.

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Newman, Paul. 2000. The Hausa Language. An Encyclopedic Reference Grammar. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Newman, Paul. 2007. A Hausa-English Dictionary. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Parsons, F.W. 1955. “Abstract nouns of sensory quality and their derivatives in Hausa”, in J. Lukas (ed.) Afrikanistische Studien (Festschrift Westermann), Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 337–404. Pawlak, Nina. 2014. Notions of SELF in Hausa, in: Matthias Brenzinger and Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds), The Body in Language. Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 140–159. Schladt, Mathias. 2000. “The typology and grammaticalization of reflexives”, in: Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Traci S. Curl (eds), Reflexives: Forms and Functions (Typological Studies in Language 40). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 103–124. Schryver, Gilles Maurice de. 2002. Web for/as Corpus: A Perspective for the African Languages. Nordic Journal of African Studies 11(2): 266–282. Siahaan, Poppy 2011. “HEAD and EYE in German and Indonesian Figurative uses”, in: Ning Yu and Zouheir A. Maalej (eds), Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 93–114. Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www .ethnologue.com Shettima, Mohammed. 1993. Cultural Speculations, Beliefs, and Practices of Three (3) Selected Tribes in Borno State. Maiduguri: University of Maiduguri. Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge. Will, Izabela. 2005. Syntactic Classes of Nouns in Hausa. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warsaw. Will, Izabela. 2009. “Cultural aspects of nonverbal code in Hausa”, in: N. Pawlak (ed.), Codes and Rituals of Emotions in Asian and African Cultures. Warszawa: Dom Wydawniczy Elipsa, 252–265. Will, Izabela. 2014. “Hausa metaphors: Gestural Idioms Containing Body-Part Terms”, in: Matthias Brenzinger and Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds), The Body in Language. Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 163–176.

chapter 9

Semantics of Amharic ras ‘Head’ Abinet Sime

1

Introduction A bottle is placed on a lemon, and a forked pole on the bottle. A granary is placed on the forked pole, and a board on the granary. There is a pistol on the board, and a stick of reed on the pistol. Snowballs are on the reed, and a kettle on the snowballs. Stars are on the kettle, and a python on the stars. A field is on the top of the python, and a gourd on the field, and a piece of silk on the gourd. Whoever could guess this may stay with me for a kiss. The lemon is your heel and the bottle your leg-calf, the forked pole is your thigh, and the granary your belly. The board is your chest, and the star your eye. The reed is your neck, and the snow your teeth. The kettle is your nose and the pistol your breast. The python is your eyebrow, and the field your forehead. The gourd is your head, and the silk your hair. I’ve solved the riddle. Can I stay for a kiss now?

The epigraph is an English version of an Amharic riddle with a romantic touch. In the riddle, 14 body parts of a (young) lady are metaphorically conceptualized and named after 14 inanimate objects. The metaphoric associations appear to have their motivation on the similarities of appearance, color, shape, size, and function between the body parts and the respective inanimate objects. In the riddle, terms for inanimate objects have served as source concepts for the target concepts of body parts. In other cases the source-target direction could also be reversed. The direction of transfer could also be intra-field where, for instance, both the source and the target concepts happen to be body part terms. Metaphoric (and metonymic) expressions are not limited to riddles and poetic compositions. They are part of the “ordinary” language. We could even say any human language is “metaphoric” by its very nature. (For a detailed discussion, see, among others, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987, Kövecses 2002, Heine 1997, Kraska-Szlenk 2014, Croft 1986, and Croft and Cruse 2004.) In the Amharic riddle above, for instance, the body part head is named after the term for a ‘gourd’ (qəl). The transfer is not unique to the riddle. The term qəl

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_011

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is already part of the lexicon and grammar of Amharic. The phrase yä-ras qil (of-head gourd) is commonly used to refer to the skull of the head. The noun qəl has also grammaticalized into an intensive reflexive marker as in əssu qəl-u ‘he himself’. The Amharic term for head, ras, has undergone a number of semantic extensions. These are grouped and discussed under six umbrellas of conceptual metaphors and metonymies. These are further organized under two major headings: Inter-field (GOURD FOR HEAD, HEAD FOR PILLOW, HEAD FOR “HEAD”) and Intra-field (HEAD FOR HAIR, HEAD FOR BRAIN, and HEAD FOR PERSON). This part is handled in section 3. The framework of the analysis is briefly described in the second section. Major points raised in the preceding sections are summarized in section 4. The source of the Amharic data is introspective. However, the following sources were also consulted: Kane 1991 (Amharic-English Dictionary), Leslau 1995 (Reference Grammar of Amharic), Amsalu Aklilu and Dagnachew Worku 1979 ([Dictionary of] Amharic Idioms), Tesema Habtemikael 1951 (AmharicAmharic Dictionary), Desta Teklewold 1962 (Amharic-Amharic Dictionary), Mekuria Worku 1982 ([Dictionary of] Amharic Proverbs), and Academy of Ethiopian Languages 1996 (Science and Technology Dictionary: English-Amharic).

2

Framework

Semantic extension generally involves a conceptual transfer from a source concept to a target concept. When a body part noun serves as a source domain, the target concept could be either a grammatical or a non-grammatical item or even both. The process of change for the first case is termed as grammaticalization. For the second case we may simply apply the term non-grammaticalization. In grammaticalization, a body part noun may serve as a source domain for the following major target concepts: spatial orientation (adpositions, adverbs, and case markers), reference identify (reflexive markers), and numerals (Heine 2014: 17, 29). In the non-grammaticalization process, a body part noun may also serve as a source domain for the following target concepts: dynamic situations (verbs, idiomatic collocations), social relations (nouns, idiomatic collocations) and emotions (prefabs, idiomatic collections) (Heine 2014:29). In both the grammaticalization and non-grammaticalization processes, metaphor and metonymy are considered as the two major mechanisms of conceptual transfer. When body part terms are especially considered as source or target domains, the type of transfer could be either within the same or within

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different semantic fields. The former is termed as Intra-field (e.g. ‘cheeks’ > ‘buttocks’) and the latter as Inter-field (e.g. ‘earring’ > ‘ear’) (cf. Wilkins 1996: 274).

3

Semantics of Amharic ras

The inventory of the semantic extensions for Amharic ras was observed to belong to two conceptual metaphors (GOURD FOR HEAD, and HEAD FOR “HEAD”) and four conceptual metonymies (HEAD FOR PILLOW, HEAD FOR HAIR, HEAD FOR BRAIN, and HEAD FOR PERSON). These six conceptual metaphor-metonymies are further organized and discussed under two major types of conceptual transfer: Inter-field (GOURD FOR HEAD, HEAD FOR PILLOW and HEAD FOR “HEAD”) and Intra-field (HEAD FOR HAIR, HEAD FOR BRAIN, and HEAD FOR PERSON). 3.1 Inter-field Transfers 3.1.1 Gourd for Head In Amharic the common term for the body part HEAD is ras. The body part SKULL is known by the phrase yä-ras qil (of-head gourd) ‘gourd of head’. The interfield-metaphoric transfer is based on the similarity of the round shapes of both the skull and the gourd. Moreover, qil alone may also be employed to refer to the HEAD and further to the whole PERSON or the SELF. Here, we can observe two possible paths of conceptual transfer, as is schematically shown in (1). (1) a. GOURD > SKULL > HEAD > PERSON b. GOURD > HEAD > PERSON In the first possibility (1a), the shortened term for SKULL ( yä-ras qil > qil) may have come to refer to the HEAD by intra-field metonymic association of partfor-whole. In the second possibility (1b), qil may have come to refer to HEAD by the inter-field type of metaphoric similarity of Head and Gourd. According to Wilkins (1996: 277–278) such changes could be either unidirectional (‘gourd’ → ‘head’) or bidirectional (‘skull’↔ ‘head’). Following either the path of (1a) or (1b), the original term for ‘gourd’ is serving as an intensive reflexive pronoun as in (2), as a pronoun of isolation as in (3), as a focus marker ‘even’ as in (4), as a concessive marker as in (5) and as an adversative marker as in (6).

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(2) a. əssu qəl-u yəmäṭall he head-his he will come ‘he himself will come’ b. əne qəl-e əmäṭallähw I head-my I will come ‘I myself will come’ (3) a. əyyä-qəl mäṭṭu each-head they came ‘they came separately’ b. əyyä-qəl sərut each-head (you PL) do it ‘do it separately’ (4) yaw qəlu yalläw yəwwässädəbbätall that same even what he owns it will be taken away from him ‘even what he has will be taken away’ (Matthew 25:29) (5) bayəssakkallätəm qəlu mokkəro näbbär though it did not succeed for him even he having tried he was ‘even though he did not succeed, he had tried’ (6) əne qəlu [Absalom-ən bəgädəl] … I but [Absalom-ACC if I killed] ‘but if I had killed Absalom’ (2Samuel 18:13) In the examples given in (2) and (4), the chain of grammaticalization observed is: HEAD > INTENSIVE REFLEXIVE PRONOUN > EVEN. The first path is attested in many languages of the world. For the second path of grammaticalization, Heine and Kuteva (2002: 181–182) have documented parallel instances from Indo-European languages. 3.1.2 Pillow for Head Amharic has the word tə-ras for ‘pillow, headrest.’ As an object for the head to rest on, a pillow could be contiguously associated with head. The term for ‘head’ is employed to refer to a pillow by an inter-field type of metonymic association. The compound word təras-ge (pillow-side) is used to refer to the ‘head of bed’ as in (7).

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(7) mäṣhaf-u-n tərasge-w ga asqämmäṭaw book-DEF-ACC head of bed-DEF near he placed it ‘he placed the book near the head of the bed’ The term terasge is synonymous with ras-ge (head-side), but the latter is more frequent and in common use than the former (see also section 3.1.3). From the noun teras, we also have the verb mäntäras ‘to have an object as a pillow under one’s head’, as in (8). (cf. Genesis 28:18 and Mark 4:38). (8) a. dəngay täntärəso täňňa stone he having a headrest he slept ‘he slept on a stone-pillow’ b. təras täntärəso täňňa pillow he having a headrest he slept ‘he slept on a pillow’ c. kənd-u-n täntärasä arm-his-ACC he had a headrest ‘he died’ The example in (8c) is an idiomatic expression, which literally means ‘he had his arms as a pillow’. The semantic extensions of the Amharic ras are summarized in (9). (9) a. b. c. d.

ras ‘head’ > tə-ras ‘pillow’ teras ‘pillow’ > təras-ge ‘head of bed, head-side’ təras ‘pillow’ > män-tä-ras ‘to have a pillow under one’s head’ mäntäras > kəndən mäntäras ‘to die’

3.1.3 Head for “Head” 3.1.3.1 Head of Objects Amharic ras is used to refer to the head-like part of inanimate objects such as mountain, house, page, bed, spindle, land, waters, and streams. In the examples given in (10), the mechanism of transfer is metaphoric. The placement and shape of the human head is mapped onto the part of the spindle and the corn.

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(10) a. yä-ənzərt ras of-spindle head ‘head of spindle’ b. yä-bäqqollo ras of-corn head ‘ear of corn’ (11) a. rə’əs-ä mədər head-ä land ‘headland’ b. rə’əs-ä wəha head-ä water ‘headwaters’ The two compound words in (11) are neologisms (cf. Academy of Ethiopian Languages 1996: 110). Both are loan translations from the English ‘headland’ and ‘headwaters.’ In forming the compounds, the Geʿez form rə’əs is used instead of the common Amharic form ras. In (11a), in both the English compound and its Amharic equivalent, ‘headland’ refers to a ‘narrow piece of land that sticks out into the sea’. Here, the metaphoric transfer has its basis mainly on the similarity of shape and placement of the head of a human being (or that of an animal) and the ‘head’ of land. Both are narrower than the larger piece of body they are part of. The former sticks out into the air and the latter into a sea. In (11b), both the English and Amharic compound words refer to the beginnings, the source, or upper streams. In Geʿez the word for ‘head’ extends to the concept of ‘beginning’ as in (12). (12) āna rə’əs wa-māḫəlaqt I head and-end ‘I am the beginning and the end’ (Revelation 22:13) With the suffix -ge ‘place, side’, Amharic ras becomes ras-ge. This word is especially used to refer to the head of a bed, a page, a house, or a mountain. In (13), rasge is used as a postposition with the meaning ‘at the head of, above’ (cf. Leslau 1995: 652)

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(13) a. kä-betaččən rasge koräbta allä at-our house head hill there is ‘there is a hill above our house’ b. kä-gäṣṣ-u rasge lay səm-u-n ṣafä at-page-DEF head on name-his-ACC he wrote ‘he wrote his name on the top of the page’ 3.1.3.2 Head of Writings There appears to be a similarity between the structural organization of a composition and the human body. A normal traditional composition will have at least the following major components: title, introduction, body, and conclusion. Among these components, the title appears to have a striking similarity with the human head. First, compared with the rest of the text (or the main body), it is by far shorter and brief. Second, both a title of a text and a head of a human being are positioned on the top. At least traditionally, we leave a space of about two lines between the title and the first sentence of a paragraph. Even this vacant space may also be likened with the neck of a human being. The third similarity concerns representation and identification. A whole book is represented and identified by its title. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, is represented, identified, and known by one word: Hamlet, the title of the play. This role of a title is similar with that of a head of a person. We usually identify a person by the head they have above their neck, as in a passport size photo. For a title of a book (or any other piece of writing), Amharic uses the term rə’əs or arə’əst ‘head’. In the examples given in (14) and (15), these two forms of ras are used with the meaning of ‘head, title, topic, main, or major’. (14) a. yä-ṭənat rə’əs of-research title ‘title or topic of research’ b. rə’əs-ä nägär head-ä matter ‘subject matter’ c. rə’əs-ä anqäṣ head-ä article ‘leading article, editorial’

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d. yä-mäṣhaf rə’əs of-book head ‘title of a book’ e. yä-wəyəyyət rə’əs of-discussion head ‘topic of discussion’ (15) a. arə’əst-ä nägär head-ä matter ‘main subject’ b. arə’əst-ä zena head-ä news ‘headline’ 3.1.3.3

Head of People

[The Head is the] capital of the kingdom that constitutes the physical organism, the king in the capital, the crown of the king. The head is the seat of the chief sensory organs, the center of intelligence, the source of thought, the habitation of the spirit. It holds the brain, bregma, ventricles and occult ros. Walker 1977: 175–176

As in many other organisms, there is a division and specialty of labor among the parts of the body of humans. Thus, the legs, the hands, and the stomach have their own job to do. As the seat of the organs of seeing, hearing, smelling, taste, reason, and consciousness, leadership appears to be the specialty of the HEAD. The human head is also positioned at the top. Even this very position makes it a good candidate for a leader. Compared to the rest of the body, the head is also unique in one more aspect: There is a distinct structural difference between the head and the body. The body is built like a vertebrate (soft tissue covering a bony structure); the head is built like a crustacean such as a crab (bony structure covering a soft tissue). Walker 1977: 57

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As I have noted in the previous section, an individual person (like a title of a book) is commonly represented and identified by his head. Hence, the head is conceptualized as the representative and leader of the rest of the human body. As in the human body, there is also a division and specialty of labor among the members of a human society. The leader represents and leads the rest of the society. Position and function may therefore be taken as two of the possible similarities between the head and the leader. It will then be possible to metaphorically conceptualize the leader in terms of the human head. As in many other languages, there are instances where Amharic employs the word ras (rə’əs) to refer to a representative, a leader or someone in charge. Consider the examples in (16) and (17). (16) a. rə’əs-ä bəher head-of country ‘head of state’ b. rə’əs-ä mäməhər head-ä teacher ‘headteacher’ (17) a. əndä-ras-e like-head-my (lit. ‘like my head, like myself’) ‘representative, selected member of parliament, or regent’ b. ras head [of army] ‘Ethiopian title below nəgus ‘king’ and above däğğazmach in rank’ The two compound words in (16) are loan translations from the English ‘head of state’ (16a) and ‘head teacher’ (16b). The latter is now more frequent and in common use than the former. In (16a), the compound word is in the construct state as in Geʿez; it is therefore left-headed. In (16b), the compound word is in “pseudo-construct state” as is common in a number of Amharic compound words; it is right-headed. However, ras mäməhər could have sounded as more Amharic than rə’əs-ä mäməhər. The compound word in (17a), in its first and second meaning, is still in use. Even to this day, selected members of parliament are addressed as in (18).

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(18) yä-həzb əndärase-wočč of-people representative-PL ‘representatives of the people’ Up until the second half of the twentieth century, Ras was a popular title in Ethiopia. Its literal meaning is ‘head’. This word has also entered the English vocabulary: Rastafarian, (informal) Rasta, Adjective; Rastafarianism, noun. The Macmillan dictionary defines Rastafarian as: “a member of a Jamaican religion whose followers worship the former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as God.” Haileselassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was born Tafari Mekonen (täfäri mäkonnən) in 1892. At 13 he was appointed Däğğazmach. At 24 he was promoted to the rank of Ras and was addressed as Ras Tafari. With the rank of Ras, he was also declared alga wäraš ‘crown prince’ and balä mulu səlṭan əndärase ‘regent’. At 36, he was promoted to the rank of nəgus ‘king’. At 38, he was crowned as qädamawi hayläsəllase, nəgusä nägast zä-ityop’p’ya (Haileselassie I, king of kings of Ethiopia). Dethroned at 82, he died at 83. Haileselassie I of Ethiopia held the title Ras from 1916–1928. He was addressed as Ras Tafari for 12 years. The compound word rastafari must have come to the attention of Jamaicans during one of these 12 years. To cut the long story short, the Amharic term for ‘head’ has now become a part of a word for a social movement, philosophy or a “religion” as some prefer to call it. The semantic extension and use of the Amharic ras is summarized in (19). (19) a. b. c. d. e.

ras ‘head of humans’ rə’əs, ras ‘top of an inanimate object’ rə’əs ‘title of a book’ rə’əs, ras ‘head of a state, school master, leader’ Ras part of a popular -ism

3.2 Intra-field 3.2.1 Head for Hair The Amharic common term for the body part ‘hair’ is ṣägwər (dialectally also ṭägwər). However, there are also cases in which ras is used to refer to the hair on one’s head as in (20) below. (20) a. ras sari head worker ‘hair-dresser’

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b. ras-u-n abäṭṭära head-his-ACC he combed ‘he combed his hair’ c. ras-u-n kämäkkämä head-his-ACC he trimmed ‘he trimmed his hair all around’ d. ras-u-n täläč’č’ä head-his-ACC he was shaved ‘he had his head shaved’ The mechanism of conceptual transfer from ras ‘head’ to ras ‘hair’ is a wholefor-part type of metonymy. 3.2.2

Head for Brain Man’s brain is larger than the combined brains of ten prehistoric reptiles, some of which were 100 feet long and had brains the size of a walnut. According to evolutionists, during the Pleistocene age one million years ago, man’s brain suddenly started growing at a phenomenal rate. The roofbrain, that is the neocortex, became almost like a ‘tumorous overgrowth’, leading to man’s great stride forward. Walker 1977: 60

Amharic has angol and nala to specifically refer to the brain (the body part inside the head). But the common term for brain is ras as in the examples in (21). (21) a. əssu ras yalläw säw näw he head one who owns person he is ‘he is a person with a brain, he is a sensible person’ b. əssu ras yälleläw säw näw he head one who does not own person he is ‘he is a person without brains, he is shameless’ The intra-field type of transfer from ras ‘head’ to ras ‘brain’ is based on the CONTAINER FOR CONTAINED type of conceptual metonymy.

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3.2.3 Head for Person The conceptual metonymy of HEAD FOR PERSON is an intra-field type of partfor-whole transfer. As in many other languages, Amharic has reflexive markers that derive from the term for ‘head’ (ras) (for parallel instances see Heine and Song 2011, Heine 2014). Reflexive markers of Amharic that derive from the term ras include the following: Intensive Reflexives, Reflexives, Reciprocals, and Independent Personal Pronouns. These are mainly formed from ras (or rə’əs) and possessive suffixes: rə’əs-u (head-his) > ərsu > əssu ‘he’; ras-u (head-his) ‘his head’ > ‘himself’ (cf. Dillmann 1907, Leslau 1987, Rubin 2005, and Abinet 2016). The paradigm of the Amharic intensive reflexives is shown in (22). See also the examples in (23). (22) 1S 1PL 2SM 2SF 2PL 2HON 3SM 3SF 3PL 3HON

ənne əňňa antä ančči ənnantä ərswo ərsu ərswa ənnärsu ərsaččäw

ras-e ras-aččən ras-əh ras-əš ras-aččəhw ras-wo ras-u ras-swa ras-aččäw ras-aččäw

(23) a. ənne ras-e mäṭallähw I head-my I will come. ‘I myself will come’ b. əssu ras-u särraw he head-his he did it ‘he himself did it’ The reflexive markers are formed in the following way: ras + possessive suffix + (ə)n (a direct object marker), as in (24). (24) a. ras-u-n gäddälä head-his-ACC he killed ‘he killed himself’

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b. ras-aččäw-ən gaddälu head-their-ACC they killed ‘they killed themselves’ As is illustrated in (25), the form of Amharic reciprocals is ərs bä-ras- (self by-self) + possessives. Note also the expression yä-ərs bä-rs t’orənnät (of-self by-self war) ‘civil war’. (25) a. ərs bä-ras-aččən täwaggan head by-head-our we fought ‘we fought against each other’ b. ərs bä-ras-aččəhw täwaggaččəhw head by-head-your PL you (PL) fought ‘you fought against each other’ c. ərs bä-ras-aččähäw täwaggu head by-head-their they fought ‘they fought against each other’ It is also notable that all the third person independent pronouns and the honorific form of the second and the third person are formed from ras. These are shown in (26). (26) a. b. c. d. e.

ərsu ‘he’ ərswa ‘she’ ənnärsu ‘they’ ərsaččäw ‘he, she’ (HON) ərswo ‘you’ (HON)

The ras (ərs > əss) form has not yet been part of the first and second independent pronouns of Amharic. However, Tesema Habtemikael (1951) and Desta Teklewold (1962), in their monolingual (Amharic-Amharic) dictionaries, noted the forms shown in (27). The forms mentioned, however, must have been hypothetical than actual constructions (see also Girma Awgichew 2014). (27) a. b. c. d. e.

əsse ‘I’ əssaččən ‘we’ əssəh ‘you (MS)’ əssəš ‘you (FS)’ əssaččəhw ‘you (PL)’

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The grammaticalization pathways undergone by Amharic ras are summarized in (28) (cf. Heine and Kuteva 2002: 168, 183, 254). (28) a. HEAD > INTENSIVE REFLEXIVE b. INTENSIVE REFLEXIVE > REFLEXIVE c. REFLEXIVE > (1) RECIPROCALS (2) INDEPENDENT PERSONAL PRONOUN 3.3 Amharic Idioms with ras As it could probably be the case with other languages of the world, the overwhelming majority of Amharic idioms are formed with body part terms (cf. Amsalu Aklilu and Dagnachew Worku 1979: 6). The same trend appears to be the case for English idioms as well. In a study of an American collection of idioms, it was found that “out of 12,000 idioms, well over two thousand have to do with the human body” (Kövecses 2002: 16). 3.3.1 Inside the Head A number of the Amharic idioms that involve the term for ‘head’ (ras) are mainly used to describe and evaluate the social, prudential, moral and intellectual status of an individual. The idioms given in (29) describe and evaluate an individual in terms of his or her intellectual capacity. (29) bright vs. dull a. qəl ras (gourd head) ‘brainless, dull’ b. bado ras (empty head) ‘empty headed, dull’ c. wäna ras (abandoned head) ‘empty headed, dull’ d. ras-ä bis (head-ä less) ‘brainless, inconsiderate’ e. dəngay ras (stone head) ‘block head, stubborn, hard headed’ f. ras-ä dəfən (head-ä solid) ‘block head, dull’ g. ras-ä kəft (head-ä open) ‘intelligent, bright’ In (29a, b, and c), the absence of wisdom is conceptualized in terms of the absence of “brains”. This in turn is conceptualized and expressed in terms of a “full” and an “empty” head. Thus, the round head as a container could be either empty or non-empty. In (29d) the absence of a brain is expressed in terms of the absence of the ‘head’ itself. In (29e) the ‘head’ is likened with a stone. As a container, the head is supposed to be ‘hollow’ and not ‘solid’ as a stone. In (29f and 29g) the hollow ‘head’ is conceptualized as a container with or without an opening. In this conceptualization, understanding (knowledge and wisdom) would get into the head of

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a person through an opening. The Amharic equivalent of ‘I have understood’ is gabtoňňall. This could be literally translated as ‘it has entered me’. The ‘closed’ vs. ‘open’ head metaphor is illustrated in the following Amharic expressions. (30) a. gədgəddaw näqqa the wall cracked ‘the wall had cracked’ b. kä-ənqəlfu näqqa from his sleep he awoke ‘he is awake’ c. nəqat-ä həllina awakening-of mind ‘consciousness’ The physical opening or ‘crack’ of an inanimate object is expressed in (30a). In (30b), the opening of an eye (or the mind) is understood in terms of an opening in an inanimate object. The one in (30c) is more abstract than the ones in (30a) and (30b). It is likely that the head (as a term for the brain or the mind) is conceptualized as a hollow but a closed object in need of a crack or an opening. The relative size, weight, and texture of the HEAD are associated with maturity and independence as in (31). (31) maturity vs. immaturity a. ras-u ṭänna head-his became firm ‘he reached the age of reason, he matured’ b. ras sayṭäna guttänna head before it is strong hairdo ‘doing something beyond one’s ability’ (lit. ‘to have a hairdo on a weak head’) c. ras-u-n čalä head-his-ACC was able to support ‘he became independent or self-supporting’

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In the child infant the center of the head is very soft. This becomes harder or more firm with time. The idioms in (31a) and (31b) should have their bases on such physiological observation. Situated in the skull is the bregma or fontanel, the meeting point of three major bones at the top of the head. In the foetus and young infants the bregma is open, since the bones are not quite joined, and the area is soft to the touch. The sutures usually unite before the end of the second year. The bregma is regarded as the point of entry and exit of the soul. Walker 1997: 176

In (31c) independence is expressed in terms of the capacity or strength of the body to carry or to support the head above it. This could also be explained in terms of physiological facts and observations. Compared to the rest of the body, the head of an infant child is bigger than the head of an adult. It is only when the rest of the body becomes stronger and larger that a child could support its head properly. This is associated with being matured and independent as in (31c). 3.3.2 Below the Head In the evolutionary process, parts of the limbic system, along with the brain stem, are thought to have first appeared some 500 million years ago, and represent the first swelling of the spinal cord to form the head. (Walker 1977: 58) In terms of prudence, an individual’s personality is described with the term ras ‘self’ as in (32). (32) careful vs. careless a. ras-u-n ṭalä head-his-ACC he abandoned ‘he became careless’ b. ras-u-n bäddälä head-his-ACC he harmed ‘he denied himself the comforts of good life’ c. ras-u-n ṭäbbäqqä head-his-ACC he looked after ‘he looked after himself very well’

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d. ras-u-n awäṭṭa head-his-ACC he took out ‘he escaped, he got out of danger’ In the Amharic idioms in (32), if we assume that ras is understood as the ‘head’ and not as the ‘whole person’ or the ‘self’, it should be the rest of the body which is in charge of the head. With this assumption, the BODY might have been conceptualized as the PROTECTOR and the HEAD as the PROTECTED. In terms of temper, the Amharic idioms with ras ‘head, self’ could describe an individual as calm or short-tempered as in (33). (33) calm vs. short-tempered a. ras-u-n gäzza head-his-ACC he governed ‘he is having self control’ b. ras-u-n gätta head-his-ACC he restrained ‘he managed to have self control’ c. ras-u-n sattä head-his-ACC he missed ‘he lost self control, he fainted’ d. ras-u-n aššänäfä head-his-ACC he conquered ‘he became calm, independent’ As was the case with the idioms of prudence in (32), the ones in (33) could also be explained in terms of the Head-Body relationships. However, this may turn out to be contradictory. The HEAD is traditionally and commonly equated with the mind, soul, spirit, conscience, consciousness, reason, and intelligence. In other words the HEAD is the SOUL and the BODY is the FLESH. With this premise, the HEAD is considered as rational and superior and the BODY is considered as irrational and inferior. But who rules? Obviously it is the HEAD. And, who controls? The BODY controls. It is the last pairing that appears to be contradictory. The rational (and the superior) rules but the irrational and the inferior controls. But there lies the struggle and contradiction between the soul and the flesh, between reason and instinct, between head and body. This relationship could be depicted as in (34).

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(34) BODY VS. HEAD BODY a. RIDER b. WIZARD c. MASTER d. DRIVER e. COLONIZER

HEAD HORSE GENIE SLAVE WHEEL COLONY

3.3.3 Above the Head Among all the body parts, the head appears to be the most important one. Functionally, it is the seat of the organs of seeing, hearing, and smelling and taste. As the host of the brain, the head is also considered as the home of the mind, the spirit, or the soul. Position wise, it is located at the top or above the rest of the body (in the normal upright position). Thus, we find no other body part above the head. With the head coming as first, it will also be possible for the head to be associated with the numeral ONE. In numerology, the numeral ONE stands for the following (Shine 1994:10): being, ego, leadership, personal resources, and personal identity. In Astrology too, Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, is associated with the HEAD. The association of number ONE with head could be seen from the Amharic idiomatic expressions in (35). (35) a. and ras-u-n mäṭṭa one head-his-ACC he came ‘he came alone, all by himself’ b. arat ras-u-n mäṭṭa four head-his-ACC he came ‘he came with three others’ c. yəhe bä-ras-u təlləq dəl näw this by-head-his big victory it is ‘this alone (or by itself) is a great success’ d. ras-bä-ras wällädčč head-by-head she gave birth to ‘she gave birth to children one after another’

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In the Amharic idiomatic expressions in (36), the HEAD (ras) is considered as the number one and the most important body part. As the number one, nothing comes before it and nothing is more important than it. As the uppermost part of the body, there is nothing above it. As in (36a), there is only wind or air above the head. So, one’s first concern is only with oneself; the need of others comes second. (36) a. kä-ras bälay nəfas [näw] from-head above air [it is] ‘the self comes first’ b. wərd kä-ras-e off from-head-my ‘I will not be responsible’ c. lä-ras siqorsu ayasansu for-self when they take they won’t make less ‘one will be more generous to himself than to others’ d. rase-n bä-rase af-e-n bä-məlas-e myself-ACC by-myself mouth-my-ACC by-tounge-my kalanqolapälaṭäskut man yanqolapälaṭəsələňňal if I do not praise it who will praise it for me e. fit yäsäṭṭut ləǧ ras lay yəwäṭall face who is given chid head top he will ascend ‘if one is lenient with a child, the child will be exceedingly demanding’ f. ras səmoš head kissing ‘strong plea’ g. kä-ras-e lay wəräd from-head-my top get off (You, SM) IMP ‘get off my head, leave me alone’ h. ahun-əm kä-ne-ras alwärrädäččəm now-even from-my-head she did not get off ‘she still holds a grudge against me’

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i. yəhe nägär kantä ras aywärdəm this thing from your head it won’t get off ‘you cannot escape responsibility’ Even with feeding and praising oneself, one will be more generous with oneself than with the others. Taking responsibility or taking care of others is considered as having someone or something on or above the head as in (36b). Metaphorically, if B manages to climb and sit on the head of A, B is being excessively demanding, as in (36c). This would also mean that the needs and demands of B are coming first and becoming more important than the needs and demands of A. In yet another perspective, B could ask a favor from A. Symbolically, B kisses the head of A as in (36f). In a way, A is saying something like the following: put my case above yours, let mine come first. The idioms in (36g, 36h and 36i) are similar with the one in (36b). To be responsible and accountable is to have something or someone on or above one’s head.

4

Conclusions

The semantics of Amharic ‘head’ is treated from two angles: (a) ras as a target domain; (b) ras and qəl as source domains. In the metaphoric inter-field transfer (GOURD > SKULL > HEAD), qəl ‘gourd’ was the source and ‘head’ was the target domain. Thus, Amharic has come to have two words for ‘head’: ras and qəl. These two words have undergone a number of semantic extension processes. The processes involved are either grammaticalization or nongrammaticalization. As a source domain qəl is limited to the former process; but ras has undergone both processes. From a word for ‘head’ (GOURD > SKULL > HEAD > PERSON > SELF) qəl has grammaticalized into the following target concepts: pronouns of insistence (such as ‘I myself did it’), pronouns of separation (such as ‘they came separately’, or ‘they did it individually’), logical markers (the adversative ‘but’ and the concessive ‘even though’), and a focus marker (‘even’). Through the non-grammaticalization process (LEXEME > LEXEME1, LEXEME2), Amharic ras has metonymically extended to refer to the human HAIR, BRAIN, and PILLOW. Metaphorically ras is also employed in the following expressions: head of mountain, bed, state, or army; headline, headteacher, headland or headwater. It was noted that Amharic idioms with ras are used to describe and evaluate the social, prudential, moral, emotional, and intellectual status of an individ-

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ual. Thus, for instance, a dull person is perceived as having an empty or closed head; a bright person has an open and full head. Compared with the BODY (which is emotional and unconscious), the HEAD is considered RATIONAL and CONSCIOUS. However, as was observed in the idioms, it is the human BODY that supports and controls the HEAD. In contrast to the BODY of an adult person, a BODY of a child is considered weak and cannot properly support and control its HEAD. Even though it is a rational thinker and careful leader, the HEAD is perceived as the servant of the BODY who may revolt and desert its master. One may then lose his or her HEAD temporarily or even permanently. Through grammaticalization processes (LEXEME > GRAM1, GRAM2), Amharic ras has evolved into a number of grammatical words: intensive reflexive (‘I myself’), reflexive (‘he killed himself’), reciprocal (‘they killed each other’), independent pronouns (third person: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’), intensive genitive [e.g. yä-əne yä-əras-e näw (of-I of-self-my it is) ‘it is my own’], and demonstratives (əssu ‘that’ and ənnä-ərsu ‘those’). It should also be noted that, in the semantics of Amharic ras (and qəl), both types of transfer are involved: inter-field (GOURD > SKULL, HEAD > PILLOW) and intra-field (SKULL > HEAD, HEAD > HAIR, BRAIN, PERSON). This is coupled with the two major mechanisms of semantic extension: metaphoric (GOURD > SKULL) and metonymic (SKULL > HEAD, HEAD > HAIR, BRAIN, PERSON, PILLOW). The target concepts identified for the Amharic ras and qil are summarized in (37). (37) a. qəl ‘gourd’ > ‘skull’ > ‘head’ > intensive reflexive marker, adversative marker, concessive marker, focus marker b. ras ‘head’ > (1) ‘pillow’, ‘brain’, ‘hair’ (2) Intensive reflexive marker, intensive genitive marker, reflexive marker, reciprocal marker, independent pronouns, and demonstratives

References Abinet Sime. 2014. Grammaticalization of Body-Part Terms in Ethiosemitic. In: Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (eds.), 33–51. Abinet Sime. 2016. Grammaticalization in Ethiosemitic with comparisons to Oromo. LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 91. München: LINCOM Europa.

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Academy of Ethiopian Languages. 1996. Science and Technology Dictionary (EnglishAmharic). Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers. Amslau Aklilu and Dagnachew Worku. 1979 (E.C.). yamarəňňa fäliṭočč. (Amharic Idioms). Addis Ababa: Kuraz Publishing. Brenzinger, M. and I. Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 2014. The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden: Brill. Croft, W. 1986. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, W. and D.A. Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Desta Teklewold. 1962 (E.C.). Addis yamarəňňa mäzgäbä qalat. Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers. Dillmann, A. 1907. Ethiopic Grammar. London/ Amsterdam: Philo Press. Girma Awgichew. 2014. A Diachronic Grammar of Amharic. New Jersey: Wibtaye Publishers. Heine, B. 1997a. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heine, B. 2014. The Body in Language: Observations from Grammaticalization. In: Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (eds), pp. 13–32. Heine, B. and K. Song. 2011. On the grammaticalization of personal pronouns. J. Linguistics 47: 587–630. Heine, B. and T. Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kane, T.L. 1990. Amharic-English Dictionary. Two vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kraska-Szlenk, I. 2014 Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili. LINCOM Studies in Semantics 6. München: LINCOM Europa. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Leslau, W. 1995. Reference Grammar of Amharic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Mekuria Worku. 1982. Məssaleyawi annägagär ([Amharic] Proverbs). Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers. Rubin, A.D. 2005. Studies in Semitic Grammaticalization. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Shine, N. 1994. Numerology. New York: Fireside Tesema Habtemikael. 1951 (E.C.) Käsate bərhan täsämma yä-amarəňňa mäzgäbä qalat. Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers. Walker, B. 1997. Body Magic. London: Granada. Wilkins, D.P. 1996. Natural Tendencies of Semantic Change and the Search for Cognates. In: Durie and Ross (eds.), 264–304.

chapter 10

‘Head’ Idioms in Turkish: Contrasts and Correlations Filiz Mutlu, Aysel Kapan, Ali Yagiz Sen, Hilal Yıldırım-Gündoğdu, Aslı Göksel

1

Introduction: Terms for ‘Head’ in Turkish*

Previous studies on Turkish body-part metaphors are on their cultural relevance or etymology, rather than their structure. Aksan (2011), focusing on ‘head’, analyses metaphors that either have compound structure or are sentential. In this chapter, we instead, investigate phrasal idioms that contain body parts, in particular, ‘head’. Our data consists of 350 idioms from a corpus (Sezer, 2016) that are formed with the five different lexical items that refer to ‘head’ in Turkish: baş, kafa, kelle, ser, and tepe, exemplified in (1) The presence of five terms that refer to ‘head’ is a result of language contact with Arabic and Persian, which goes back several centuries (Lewis 2002). (1) baş (Turkic) tepe (Turkic) kafa (Arabic) kelle (Persian) ser (Persian) Of these, ser occurs in a few proverbial expressions, and tepe ‘top’, ‘summit’ is itself used metaphorically for ‘head’. There is a clear denotation of kelle as ‘cooked sheep, lamb, or goat’s head’, however, this term too occurs in very few idioms. We therefore exclude these three items from our investigation and focus here on baş and kafa. Dictionary definitions show a broad distinction in the lexical meanings of these items (Büyük Türkçe Sözlük 2016):

* Aslı Göksel’s contribution was supported by Boğaziçi University Research Fund #11500.

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(2) a. baş: The upper or front part of the (human or animal) body that hosts organs such as the brain, eye, ear, mouth, etc. Also leader, main, top, tip, position. (See Tufar 2010: 23 and references therein for the dictionary meanings of baş; Tufar notes that the first meaning of baş in Tarama Sözlüğü, the dictionary based on written texts, is ‘leader’.) b. kafa: Human head. Also part of a mechanism, mind, memory, mentality. While the definitions of ser, tepe, and kelle are fairly distinct, the distinction in the dictionary definitions of the terms baş and kafa is broad (Büyük Türkçe Sözlük 2016). In this context, we would like to point out further nuances of meaning and asymmetries between the two. Firstly, note that, while the dictionary defines kafa as ‘human head’ in particular (as noted in (2) above), at kafası ‘horse head’ is also attested. As for baş, we will also see that it means self in many idioms, in addition to the meanings listed. As the dictionary definitions indicate, exploiting the position of the head and its relation to verticality is expressed by baş (Aksan 2011; Yılmaz 2011; Yüceol, Özezen and Ördem 2014), hence metaphors for the topmost, best, highest, powerful, etc. are formed with baş. From a historical point of view, Tufar (2010: 23, citing Clauson 1972) notes that the metaphoric usage of baş in Turkic languages goes back to the 8th century. We observe that the distinction in these meanings only partly carries over to the idioms that these terms occur in. For example, baş is an inalienable physical head (and brain), metaphorically extended to denote organic/social structures, self, life, position, and rank. We exemplify a few of the idioms containing baş below. (3) a. baş-ı çek-mek1 head-ACC pull-INF ‘to take the lead’ b. baş-ı sıkış-mak head-POSS squeeze-INF ‘to be in trouble’ c. baş-ın-ı ver-mek head-POSS-ACC give-INF ‘to die (for a cause)’

1 Abbreviations: ABL: ablative; ACC: accusative; ASS: associative; CM: compound marker; CAUS:

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We also observe that kafa has some other connotations associated with it, in particular, it has both an abstract and a concrete sense which carries over to idioms. In its concrete sense, kafa refers to the skull and always has some absurd/negative connotation, as in (4). (4) a. kafa kafa-ya çarp-ış-mak head head-DAT crash-RECIP-INF ‘to collide head on’ b. kafa-yı kazı-t-mak head-ACC scrape-CAUS-INF ‘to shave the head’ [lit. ‘to scrape the head’] In its abstract sense, kafa refers to idioms that relate to the mind (being drunk/ high, confused, angry, insane, or of a particular mindset or character). This corresponds to the theme concerning the mind as a place/container/machine (Lakoff and Johnson 2003) and therefore it is linked with idioms of memory, visualization, conception, and persistence/obsession (5). (5) a. kafa-dan at-mak head-ABL throw-INF ‘to make (sth.) up’ b. kafa(-sı) çalış-mak head-POSS work-INF ‘to be intelligent’ c. kafa-ya tak-mak head-DAT fix.on-INF ‘to be obsessed’ A preliminary summary of the connotations of baş and kafa is given in Table 10.1. In the next section, we discuss idioms formed with baş and kafa in terms of how they create a semantico-syntactic dichotomy. We constrain our database to phrasal idioms, which are the most productively used idiom type in Turkish.

causative; DAT: dative; GEN: genitive; IMPF: imperfective; INF: infintive; LOC: locative; POSS: possessive; RECIP: reciprocal; SG: singular.

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table 10.1 Dictionary entries of baş and kafa

baş

kafa

the upper or front part of the (human human head (also animal head) or animal) body leader, main, top, tip, position part of a mechanism, mind, memory, mentality

2

The ‘Head’ vs. ‘Head’ Dichotomy: baş and kafa

As mentioned above, there are pairs of idioms that are otherwise identical in structure, except that one has baş and the other one has kafa. In these pairs, it is only the choice of the term used as ‘head’ which yields a difference in meaning. Below we exemplify this point by using predicates and adverbials formed with baş and kafa: (6) a. baş-ı çek-mek head-ACC pull-INF ‘to take the lead’ b. kafa-yı çek-mek head-ACC pull-INF ‘to get drunk’ (7) a. baş baş-a oturmak head head-DAT to.sit ‘to sit as two people in a friendly manner without anyone else’ b. kafa kafa-ya vermek head head-DAT to.give ‘to come together to solve a problem’ In (6), the terms for ‘head’ are complements of the verb çekmek ‘to pull’ and are inflected with the accusative case. In (7), they are reduplicated and inflected with the dative case. It is clear that the differences in the meaning of these idioms stem from the choice of the ‘head’ term that is used. Such differences in meaning have a pattern. Meaning-related asymmetries include connotation, specificity of meaning, extension of meaning, and the

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metaphor/metonymy distinction. The structure-related asymmetry pertains to alienable vs. inalienable possession. Below we expand on these. 2.1 Semantic Differences In this section, we would like to present a general picture that gives some idea about the semantic differences between idioms with baş and kafa. It has been noted that idioms containing ‘head’ are the third most frequent among body part idioms after göz ‘eye’ and yürek ‘heart’ (Baş 2015). 41 % of these idioms refer to distress and a total of 70% refer to negative feelings. 83% of idioms with kafa denote negative feelings (anger 46 %, distress 23%, regret 15%). This may not be untypical of idioms in Turkish, given that of all types and not only of body parts, 63 to 75% of them were found to denote negative feelings (Yenen Avcı 2015 and works cited therein). In her study, Baş (2015) shows an interesting contrast between baş and kafa. While baş expresses nearly 20 emotion types, kafa expresses only five. She refers to these idioms as expressing metonymy and takes baş and kafa both to mean a container for thoughts and also for emotions. However, we observe that baş is a container for emotions only. We will expand on this below where we take the differences between the two terms in turn. 2.1.1 Specificity of Meaning: Internal vs. External There is a fine-grained distinction between the two terms for ‘head’ in that although both refer to the whole of the head, baş refers to the inside of the head, viz. the brain, while kafa refers to the outer structure of the head, viz. the skull. (8) illustrates the contrast in a non-idiomatic context. (8) a. baş: brain; internal pain Baş-ım ağrı-yor. head-POSS ache-IMPF ‘I have a head-ache’. b. kafa: skull; external pain Kafa-m ağrı-yor. head-POSS ache-IMPF ‘My head hurts.’ 2.1.2 Connotations of kafa when it Refers to the Whole of the Head Kafa has a negative or absurd connotation when it refers to the whole of the head, while baş is neutral with respect to this factor.

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(9) a. kafa: negative connotation kafa kafa-ya çarp-ış-mak head head-DAT crash-RECIP-INF ‘to collide head on’ b. kafa: absurd connotation kafa-yı kazı-t-mak head-ACC scrape-CAUS-INF ‘to shave the head’ [lit. ‘to scrape the head’] (9a) is transparently a negative event and (9b) refers to the head as something that can be scraped like an object, yielding an absurd expression which is not possible with baş. 2.1.3 The Range of Metaphoric Uses of baş and kafa In idioms, baş can refer to the head of a group of people (10a). Furthermore, baş can mean self (10b) and life (10c). (10) a. baş: leader baş-ı çek-mek head-ACC pull-INF ‘to take the lead’ b. baş: self baş-ı sıkış-mak head-POSS squeeze-INF ‘to be in trouble’ c. baş: life baş-ın-ı ver-mek head-POSS-ACC give-INF ‘to die (for a cause)’ Kafa cannot refer to any of these, e.g. it cannot refer to the head of a social group, but it can refer to the physical tip or main part of tools or of mechanical structures (11a). While kafa cannot mean self, it yields a large number of idioms where it means mind and can be used in a way to capture the wellknown metaphors ‘the mind is a container’ (11b) (cf. Aksan 2011: 247), or ‘the mind is a machine’ (11c).

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(11) a. kafa: tool head musluk kafa-sı faucet head-CM ‘faucet head’ b. kafa: mind/container kafa-dan at-mak head-ABL throw-INF ‘to make (sth.) up’ c. kafa: machine kafa-sı çalış-mak head-POSS work-INF ‘to be intelligent’ Crucially, baş cannot refer to mind. Where the tip or the top of an entity is concerned, only baş can be used for organic structures such as a body part or a plant: (12) a. baş: body part pankreas baş-ı pancreas head-CM ‘head of the pancreas’ b. baş: plant üç baş soğan three head onion ‘three onions’ [lit. ‘three bulbs of onion’] Thus, there is a demarcation between social groups and organic material (10a, 12) on the one hand and tools/machines (11a) on the other, regarding the metaphoric term that refers to their most prominent part. The asymmetries discussed so far are correlated: The term which can specifically refer to the inside/core of the head, the brain, can also refer to ‘self’, ‘life’ and the head of living things (baş). In contrast, the term which can specifically refer to the outer part of the head, the skull, lends itself to metaphors where mind is a container or machine, and it can also refer to the head of tools (kafa). Interestingly, the latter set of associations also has negative/absurd connotations unlike the former one, which is neutral or positive. This contrast is illustrated with a pair of idioms in (13), which are identical in structure (X ‘head’-ed).

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(13) a. baş: positive connotation ağır baş-lı heavy head-ASS ‘serious’ b. kafa: negative connotation geri kafa-lı backward head-ASS ‘narrow-minded’ It is also of significance that, again within the same template, X ‘head’-ed, if the name of an animal is used, baş yields a literal reading (14a) whereas kafa yields a (derogatory) reading where the whole idiom refers to a mental state or capacity (14b). (14) a. baş: literal meaning ördek baş-lı duck head-ASS ‘having the head of a duck’ (e.g. a statue) b. kafa: metaphoric meaning as ‘mind’ ördek kafa-lı duck head-ASS ‘having the brains of a duck’ (i.e. silly) Similar to (14b), (15b) kafası boş ‘empty-headed’ yields a mind metaphor with a negative meaning. The same frame (head-POSS x) yields başı boş ‘leaderless’, literally ‘aimless’, ‘stray’ which is somewhat neutral in its connotations. (15) a. baş: position baş-ı boş head-POSS empty ‘leaderless’ [lit: ‘aimless’] b. kafa: mind kafa-sı boş head-POSS empty ‘empty-headed’

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table 10.2 Revised differences between baş and kafa

baş

kafa

the upper or front part of the (human human head (also animal head) or animal) body leader, main, top, tip, position part of a mechanism, mind, memory, mentality internal (brain) external (skull) neutral negative/absurd connotation self mind metonymy metaphor inalienable possession alienable possession

We would like to point out that not all mind metaphors with kafa have a negative meaning, but all literal uses of kafa have either negative or absurd connotations as discussed in relation to (9) and (13b) above. The basic differences between baş and kafa are summarized in Table 10.2 above and further distinctions between them will be explored in the following section. 2.2 Syntactic Differences So far we have looked at the semantic asymmetries between phrasal idioms containing the two most productive ‘head’ terms in Turkish. There are also structural asymmetries regarding the expression of possession in such idioms. Turkish has two ways of expressing possession: with or without a possessive marker on the possessum marking inalienable and alienable possession, respectively: (16) a. Inalienable possession ben-im kafa-m I-GEN head-POSS.1SG ‘my head’ b. Alienable possession ben-im kafa I-GEN head ‘my head’

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The latter construction type signals alienable possession, an observation due to Öztürk and Taylan (2015) who note that body parts can be alienable in Turkish. Kafa is always potentially alienable. That is, as expressed in (16) (ben-im) kafa-m ((I-GEN) head-POSS.1SG) and ben-im kafa (I-GEN head) are both acceptable as ‘my head’. In contrast, the lack of the possessive marker on baş as a possessum in a possessive construction, viz. the counterpart of (16b) containing baş, i.e. *ben-im baş (I-GEN head) is unacceptable. Thus, baş is not alienable. It patterns with inseparable part-whole relations such as masa-nın kenar-ı (tableGEN edge-POSS) ‘edge of the table’, where a possessive marker is obligatory on the possessum. Interestingly, baş is also the only head term used for metonymy. A corollary of this is that any attempt to use baş in an alienable possession context creates a meaning change and yields a different metaphor (17a–b). This is not the case with kafa (18a–b). Furthermore, when baş yields metonymy, it is impossible for it to lack the possessive marker, indicating alienable possession. (17) a. baş: position baş-tan al-mak head-ABL take-INF ‘to restart’ b. baş: metonymy (birşey-i) (birisi-nin) baş-ın-dan al-mak (sth.-ACC) (s.o.-GEN) head-3.POSS-ABL take-INF ‘to relieve (somebody of something)’ (18) a. kafa: mind kafa-da tut-mak head-LOC hold-INF ‘to retain information’ b. kafa: mind kafa-sın-da tut-mak head-3.POSS-LOC hold-INF ‘to retain information’ (17a) illustrates the position sense of baş, which denotes the action of going to an initial position and proceeding from there. (17b), which is only different from (17a) in that baş as the possessum bears possessive marking, has the meaning of ‘self’. The meaning contrast solely hinges on the contrast between alienable

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vs. inalienable possession marking. In contrast, (18a) and (18b) have the same meaning. This is not surprising because kafa is alienable by nature and always has the potential to exist in the N-GEN N configuration, which lacks a possessive marker. Nor is this contrast independent of the asymmetry regarding metonymy: if a term can yield metonymy, it is inalienable and if it is alienable, it cannot yield metonymy. We take this correlation to be significant. ‘Self’ is not alienable and the term which can mean ‘self’ is inalienable even in its various connotations. Interestingly, it is not only the morphology of (in)alienable possession which reflects the asymmetries in meaning; the syntax of possession is different as well. Öztürk and Taylan (2015) argue that inalienable possession is internal to a Possessive Phrase where there is a Specifier-Head relation between the possessor and the possessum, whereas alienable possession creates a configuration where the possessor is an adjunct to a Determiner Phrase. Thus, the structure of inalienable possession casts a tighter knit structure than alienable possession. Baş can only create constructions in which a possessor is a specifier (20a). Kafa can either create such constructions or those in which the possessor is an adjunct (20b). (19) The syntax of possession a. çocuğ-un kafa-sı /baş-ı child-GEN head-POSS.3SG /head-POSS.3SG ‘the head of child’s’ b. çocuğ-un kafa /*baş child-GEN head /*head ‘the head of the child’ (20) a. Inalienable possession PossP/AgrP Çocuğ-un

Poss’/Agr’ NP

Poss/Agr -(s)/(n)

N’ N kafa baş

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b. Alienable possession DP Çocuğ-un

DP NP | kafa *baş

3

D

Conclusion

The two head terms baş and kafa, though they can both refer to the whole of the head, have a fine-grained distinction in that the former specifically refers to the inner part of the head and the latter to the outer part. A number of asymmetries follow from this dichotomy in a systematic way. There is a correlation between what is external (skull), distant, abstract, alienable, lifeless, mechanical, and concerning the mind vs. what is internal (brain), close, more concrete, inalienable, living, and concerning the ‘self’. Languages vary in their metaphorical usage of body part idioms. For example, the function of the head is significant in German, whereas in Indonesian, the position of the head lends itself to metaphoric usage (Siahaan 2011). A recurring pattern emerges with ‘head’ and ‘heart’ in unrelated languages: The former yields the metaphor of mind, the latter yields the metaphor of emotion. To our knowledge, Turkish is the only language investigated to date that has this dichotomy between two different ‘head’ terms. Both baş and kafa can express emotion but baş cannot express thought. Though the emotion metaphors for both have been studied before, the observation that baş cannot express thought is novel. The asymmetries between the two terms, as discussed in section 2, are all correlated. There is a spiraling structure of metaphor-building from inner to outer parts of the head, from core to peripheral concepts, from concrete to abstract concepts. These are reflected in syntax as closer vs. further syntactic dependence. The inner part of the head, baş, can stand for life and self while the outer part, kafa, stands for mind and thought. Even when the two terms yield exactly the same metaphor, that of the most prominent position, they differ in what they can be the head of: baş is the head of living things or groups of living things and kafa is the head of things without life. Moreover, the literal use of

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table 10.3 Correlations of asymmetries between the two ‘head’ terms

Inner (brain) (baş) Outer (skull) (kafa) Container of thought Alienable possession Inalienable possession Metonymy Head-Spec configuration Adjunct-DP configuration

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

these terms pertaining to the whole of the head have different associations as well: kafa is loaded with negative and/or absurd connotations, baş is neutral. The head-heart dichotomy, or body-soul duality, yields all these asymmetries in a systematic way. Moreover the dichotomy has a syntactic reflection, in that only kafa yields an adjunct. A counter-example to the inner/metonymy and outer/metaphor correlation seems to exist in Japanese, with an interesting caveat. Nagai and Hiraga (2016) analyse the Japanese terms hara ‘stomach’ and koshi ‘lower back’ and find that hara is correlated with metaphor, koshi with metonymy. However, the relation is reversed when these terms are extended to non-human entities. This is not the case in Turkish and the correlations hold regardless of whether the entity is human or not.

References Aksan, M. 2011. “The apocalypse happens when the feet take the position of the head”. In Maalej, Z. and N. Yu (eds.), Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 241–255. Baş, M. 2015. Conceptualization of emotion through body part idioms in Turkish: A cognitive linguistic study. Doctoral dissertation, Hacettepe University, Ankara. Büyük Türkçe Sözlük, Retrieved March 29, 2016, from http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php ?option=com_bts&view=bts Clauson, G. 1972. An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Foolen, A. 2008. “The heart as a source of semiosis: The case of Dutch”. In Sharifian, F., R. Dirven, N. Yu and S. Niemeier (eds.), Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs Across Cultures and Languages. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 373–394.

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Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, Retrieved March 29, 2016, from http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php ?option=com_gts Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewis, G. 2002. The Turkish Language Reform, a Catastrophic Success. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Öztürk, B. and E.E. Taylan, 2015. “Possessive constructions in Turkish”. Lingua 182. 88– 108. Nagai, T. and M. Hiraga, 2011. “Inner and outer body parts: The case of har ‘belly’ and koshi ‘lower back’ in Japanese”. In Maalej, Z. and N. Yu (eds.), Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 149–170. Özezen, M.Y. and E. Ördem, 2014. “Yüz kuramları çerçevesinde dil-beden ilişkisi ve Türkiye Türkçesi” [Relation of human body—human language and Turkish]. International Journal of Language Academy 2(1). 151–177. Sezer, T. 2016. TS Corpus. Retrieved March 29, 2016, from http://tscorpus.com/ Sharifian, F., R. Dirven, N. Yu, and S. Niemeier (eds.), 2008. Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Vol. 7. Walter de Gruyter. Siahaan, P. 2011. “Head and eye in German and Indonesian figurative uses” In Maalej, Z. and N. Yu (eds.), Embodiment via body parts; Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 93–113. Tarama Sözlüğü, Retrieved March 29, 2016, from http://www.tdk.org.tr/index.php ?option=com_tarama&view=tarama Tufar, N. 2010. Türk Dilinde Meronimi; Organ Adları [Meronymy in Turkish; Terms for Organs]. Doctoral dissertation, Ankara Üniversitesi. Wolk, D.P. 2008. “Expressions concerning the ‘heart’ (libba) in Northeastern NeoAramaic in relation to a Classical Syriac model of the temperaments”. In Maalej, Z. and N. Yu (eds.), Embodiment via body parts; Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 267–319. Yenen Avcı, Y. 2015. “Türkiye Türkçesi deyimlerinde duyguların analizi” [The analysis of emotions in the idioms of Turkey Turkish]. Turkish Studies 10(7). 997–1020. Yılmaz, K. 2011. “Organ adlarının nesnelere aktarılmasında dil-zihin ilişkisi”. [The language-mind relation in transferring body part names to entities]. International Periodical for the Languages, Literature, and History of Turkish or Turkic 6(2), 1083–1092.

chapter 11

‘He Cracked His Head Feverishly’: Conceptualizations of HEAD and THINKING in Hungarian Judit Baranyiné Kóczy

1

Preliminaries*

Body parts are one of the very first experiences humans have about their environment, and later on they play an important function in gaining impressions about the bulk of phenomena of the world. Hence, it is no wonder that body part terms and, in the broad sense, embodied language, has become central issues of cognitive linguistics (Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk 2014, Yu 2009, Maalej and Yu 2011, Sharifian et. al. 2008) and Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian 2011, 2013, 2017). While body part terms give rise to a great amount of figurative language, a key interest is how they serve as grounds of metaphorical expressions in the various languages and cultures. The present paper focuses on how THINKING is conceptualised in Hungarian in relation to HEAD, i.e., precisely as represented in the expressions that contain fej ‘head’. The expressions under investigation are all taken from the Hungarian National Corpus (Oravecz et. al. 2014, Váradi 2002), and the research employs a corpus linguistic approach. The theoretical framework of the paper is Cultural Linguistics, where the central notion is cultural conceptualizations, which refer to culture-specific conceptualizations as they are manifested in linguistic representations. Cultural Linguistics employs a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the impact of culture on human life. The main issue of Cultural Linguistics is the relationship between cultural conceptualizations and language, which are relevant to all aspects of human life: life, death, emotions, body, humor, religion, gender, kinship, ageing, marriage or politics (Sharifian 2017: 26). Within

* This paper was supported by EFOP-3.6.1-16-2016-00017 ‘Internationalization, initiatives to establish a new source of researchers and graduates, and development of knowledge and technological transfer as instruments of intelligent specializations at Széchenyi University’.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_013

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the language-culture-conceptualization nexus the key notion of the discipline is conceptualization, which is a meaning-related phenomena, featuring both cultural and individual characteristics (Sharifian 2003, 2011). The term ‘cultural conceptualizations’ refers to a broad category that involves various types of products of human cognition, including schemas (e.g., Talmy 1983), categories (Rosch 1978), metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2002, 2015), metonymies (Benczes et al. 2011) and conceptual blends (Fauconnier 1997). The main idea of Cultural Linguistics is that these processes are both cognitive ones and they also operate at the cultural-collective level of cognition. In this context, “culture” means a specific worldview (beliefs, ideas and values) that characterises a group of people who live together in a particular social, historical and physical environment, and interpret their experiences in a more or less homogenous way. One important aspect of cultural cognition is that it is heterogeneously distributed (Hutchins 1994), implying that conceptualizations are not equally present in the minds of the members within a group, therefore cultural orientation can be imagined as a continuum. Cognition is also characterised by dynamicity and self-organising: it results from the interactions of the members of the group across time and space, hence it is an emergent system (Sharifian, 2011, 2017). The metaphorical language that represents thinking in relation to head relies on the conceptualizations that Hungarians share about both the HEAD (as the source domain) and the INTELLECT (the target domain). Analysing the metaphors of THINKING as mapped onto the functions or characteristics of head means unfolding the underlying conceptualizations that is present in the minds of Hungarians. These conceptualizations are regarded as cultural conceptualizations because they are specific to the collective cognition of Hungarian people.

2

HEAD AS THE SEAT OF THINKING METAPHOR1

The word fej ‘head’ derives from the most ancient layer of the Hungarian language: according to The Dictionary of Hungarian, it dates back to the FinnoUgric or perhaps even Uralic languages. Its first account of written from appeared in 1002. The word existed in two variations: fej and fő. Fő ‘head’ gradually became an adjective, undergoing a change in the meaning to ‘main’, where the conceptual link is ‘the most characteristic and most prominent part of the

1 I follow the convention of Cultural Linguistics to describe metaphors as ‘A as B’.

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body’. Yet in some expressions it still preserves its original meaning ‘head’, e.g., főbe lő ‘shoots in the head’ (blows out somebody’s brain), főhajtás ‘inclination of the head’, főkötő ‘head tier’ (bonnet). The word fej has been studied in Hungarian regarding its conceptual-cognitive structure from two perspectives: Janusz Bańczerowski (2007) gave a comprehensive account of the linguistic image of the word, while Tolcsvai Nagy (2013) focused on the polysemic network of the word. Both descriptions emphasise that head is often used metonymically to refer to intellect and thinking and its primary role is the seat of thinking. Figure 11.1 summarises the polysemic network of fej.

figure 11.1

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

The polysemic network of the Hungarian fej ‘head’ Tolcsvai Nagy 2013: 245

head body part (human) head body part (human, from a scientific perspective) head body part (animal) fake-head body part skull forepart of hand and foot forepart of a shoes or stockings spatial distance

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

mind memory mind working incorrectly mind working uncertainly emotion-driven mind emotion and will-based behaviour 15. person 16. personality

222 17. leader 18. description of the body part ‘head’ 19. one side of a coin 20. fruit of a plant

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21. part of a device 22. sign-reading part of an electronical device 23. upper part of a type-area 24. banner

It is clearly seen that the mind or mind-related activities appear in various meanings of the word. For example, in (1) and (2) ‘using the head’ refers to rational thinking, while ‘acting according to one’s head’ means following one’s own ideas, going one’s own way. (1) Használ-j-a a fej-é-t, szerkesztő úr!—ne Use-IMP-2SG.OBJ the head-POSS.3SG-ACC, editor sir!—not hív-j-a fel figyelm-em-et ostobaság-ok-ra. call-IMP-3SG PRT attention-POSS.1SG-ACC nonsense-PL-onto. ‘Use your mind, Sir (editor)!—Don’t call my attention to nonsense!’ (2) A multi-k meg-hallgat-ják a vélemény-ed-et, The multi2-PL PRT-listen-3PL.OBJ the opinion-POSS.2SG-ACC, el-ismer-nek szem-től szem-be, aztán csinál-ják PRT-acknowledge-3PL eye-from eye-into, then do-3PL.OBJ az egész-et ugyanúgy tovább a maguk fej-e the whole-ACC same.way onward the their.own head-POSS.3SG szerint. according. ‘The multinational companies listen to you, appreciate you face to face, then they go on doing everything according to their own will.’ Similarly, going after one’s own head means acting by their own ideas and disregarding others’ opinions, as in (3). (3) ő mindig a saját fej-e után men-t he always the own head-POSS.3SG after go-PAST.3SG ‘he always followed his own way’ (4) fej-jel megy-ünk a fal-nak head-with go-1PL the wall-to ‘we run our heads against a [brick] wall’ (act without thinking) 2 multinational.company.

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In (5) giving one’s head to certain scientific field means going in for some knowledge. (5) filozófiá-ra ad-t-a a fej-é-t philosophy-onto give-PST-3SG.OBJ the head-POSS.3SG-ACC ‘he gave his head to philosophy’ (went in for philosophy) There is a clear distinction between the head as the ‘seat of rational thinking’ as opposed to the heart as the ‘seat of emotions’ (6). (6) Magyarország voltaképp szocialista állam lett. Az Hungary actually socialist state become.PST.3SG. That lett, a nép-∅ fej-é-ben, s úgy become.PST.3SG, the nation-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in, and so tűnik, a szív-é-ben is. seem-3SG the heart-POSS.3SG-in too. ‘In fact, Hungary became a socialist state. It really did in the heads, and, as it seems, in the hearts of people, too.’

3

Conceptualizations of HEAD and THINKING

This section gives an overview of the metaphorical conceptualizations of THINKING and THOUGHT in expressions related to fej ‘head’. First, the general conceptualization ‘HEAD IS A CONTAINER’ is evidenced, then different conceptualizations of THOUGHT are enumerated, finally, the conceptualizations of THINKING are represented by numerous examples from the corpus. 3.1 THE HEAD IS A CONTAINER METAPHOR In various cases, the head is conceptualised as a CONTAINER, wherein thoughts, memories and data are placed. This is evidenced by the examples in (7), (8) and (9). (7) nem lát-hat-ott a fej-em-be not see-POSS-PST-3SG the head-POSS.1SG-into ‘he couldn’t look into my head’ (read my thoughts) (8) fej-ben meg-őrz-ött vers-ek head-in PRT-preserve-PTCP.PST poem-PL ‘poems that are preserved in the head’ (remembered)

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(9) A fiatal-ember fej-ből mond-t-a a szám-ot, én The young-man head-from say-PST-3SG.OBJ the number-ACC, I meg tárcsáz-t-am. and dial-PST-1SG. ‘The young man told me the phone number from his head, and I dialled it.’ (by heart) According to (10) and (11), information is preserved in one’s head, and telling something by heart in English is conceptualised in Hungarian as telling it from the head. Furthermore, mental processes also take place in the head: (10) fej-ben számol-t head-in count-PST.3SG ‘he did a sum in his head’ (11) az érdekes szituáció-k-at azonnal fej-ben the interesting situation-PL-ACC immediately head-in meg-ír-om PRT-write-1SG.OBJ ‘I immediately write the interesting situations in the head’ Writing, calculating etc. in the head refer to those activities in the brain, which have no external proof or record of their outcome. Another branch of conceptualizations can be formulated as THOUGHTS ARE SATURATION IN THE HEAD. Here emptiness refers to having no thoughts at all, while the head being full means having a lot of ideas on mind. These conceptualizations are evidenced in examples (12) to (14). (12) a fej-e idézet-ek-kel van tele the head-POSS.3SG quotation-PL-with be. 3SG full ‘his head is full of quotations’ (13) Kezdet-ben gazdag bécs-i nebuló-k— közt-ük számos Beginning-in rich Vienna-ADJ student-PL— among-3PL numerous magyar arisztokrata gyerek-∅— fej-é-t töm-t-e Hungarian aristocrat child-GEN— head-POSS.3SG-ACC fill-PST-3SG matematiká-val, majd rövidesen jo-bb üzlet kínálkoz-ott. Maths-with, then soon good-COMP business offer-PST.3SG. ‘At the beginning, he stuffed rich students’s heads in Vienna—and, among them, various Hungarian aristocrat children—with mathematics, then soon a better business presented itself.’ (taught)

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Accordingly, whatever fits in the head, can be understood or believed. Correspondingly, if something fails to fit in one’s head, it means something is beyond somebody. (14) sehogy sem fér-t meg a fej-é-ben in.no.way at.all fit-PST.3SG PRT the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘it couldn’t fit in his head’ (he couldn’t understand it) All the examples of (15) to (18) refer to the head as stuffed or filled with solid objects. However, knowledge is also conceptualised as liquid in various expressions. (15) gondolat-ok-∅ vegyület-e kavarog a thought-PL-GEN combination-POSS.3SG swirl.3SG the fej-é-ben head-POSS.3SG-in ‘a mixture of thoughts is eddying in his head’ (16) tölcsér-rel kell a fej-é-be tölte-ni funnel-by need.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-into fill-INF ‘it has to be funneled into his head’ (17) Hát tőlem vár-ja, én önt-sem fej-é-be Why I.from expect-3SG I pour-SUBJ.1SG head-POSS.3SG-into tudomány-á-t? knowledge-POSS.3SG-ACC? ‘Why, does he expect me to pour knowledge into his head?’ (18) zsarnok vezér-e injekcióz-za a szolga-∅ tyrant leader-POSS.3SG inject-3SG.OBJ the servant-GEN fej-é-be, mi-t gondol-jon head-POSS.3SG-into, what-ACC think-IMP.3SG ‘it is his tyrant leader, who injects into the servant’s head, what he should think’ 3.2 Metaphors of THOUGHT 3.2.1 THOUGHTS AS INANIMATE OBJECTS IN THE HEAD Metaphor In a number of cases, thoughts appear as inanimate objects in the head. In the previous examples, we have seen that thoughts can be conceptualised as both solid and liquid entities. (19)–(21) are a further examples to highlight the conceptual component that thoughts are entities placed and carried in the head.

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(19) a terjedelmes aktá-t nem lehet a fej-ben tarta-ni the large file-ACC not possible the head-in keep-INF ‘the large file cannot be kept in the head’ (can’t be remembered) (20) Odáig már eljut-ott, hogy rengeteg mondás, idézet That.far already get-PST-3SG, that numerous idiom, quotation meg-marad-t a fej-é-ben, de nem tud-t-a PRT-remain-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in but not can-PST-3SG.OBJ el-helyez-ni ők-et, össze-kavar-t-a, mi-t PRT-place-INF they-ACC, PRT-confuse-PST-3SG.OBJ, what-ACC mond-ott Jézus, mi-t Pál apostol, mi-t az say-PST-3SG Jesus, what-ACC Paul apostle, what-ACC the evangélistá-k. evangelist-PL. ‘He had already reached the stage of keeping numerous idioms and quotations in his head, but he couldn’t place them: instead, he mixed up what was told by Jesus and what was told by Apostle Paul or the Evangelists.’ (21) ami-t egyszer Klára a fej-é-be vett, what-ACC once Klára the head-POSS.3SG-into take.PST.3SG, egykönnyen nem lehetett belőle ki-ver-ni easily not be.POSS.PST it.from out-hit-INF ‘whatever Klára took in her head, it couldn’t be easily knocked out of it’ (decided) In these cases the characteristics of the inanimate objects are not described precisely, neither their positions nor their motions or other features. For example, the stickiness of thoughts are highlighted in (22). (22) Az adat-ok pedig úgy meg-ragad-t-ak a fej-é-ben, The datum-PL in.turn so PRT-stick-PST-3PL the head-POSS.3SG-in mint egy idegenvezető-nek. like a tour.guide-DAT. ‘And the data sticked in his head like in a tour guide’s head.’ (he remembered them) The objects-as-thoughts are sifted according to their size in (23), thus representing how ideas are filtered and as a result, accepted or rejected (believed or disbelieved) by the listener.

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(23) Gondol-hat-t-a, nem a saját agy-am Think-POSS-PST-3SG.OBJ, not the own mind-POSS.1SG termel-te eszmék-et mond-om; nyilván ezért produce-PTCP.PST.3SG idea-PL-ACC say-PRS.1SG, surely for.this szitál-gat-t-aszűrö-get-t-e oly hosszasan sift-FREQ-PST-3SG.OBJ strain-FREQ-PST-3SG.OBJ so long fej-é-ben ők-et. head-POSS.3SG-in they-ACC. ‘He thought I didn’t tell my own ideas, that’s why he sifted and strained them in his head so long.’ Similarly, the size of thoughts is highlighted in (24). (24) Egy kötet-nyi töredék jelz-i, mennyi terv-et One volume-ful fragment mark-3SG, how.many plan-ACC halmoz-ott fel fej-é-ben ez a harminc-két-éves-en pile-PST.3SG up head-POSS.3SG-in this the thirty-two-year-on el-pusztul-t költő. PRT-perish-PST.3SG poet. ‘The volume of extracts marks how many plans he piled up in his head this poet who died at the age of thirty-two.’ Sometimes, thoughts are represented as heavy entities, as exemplified in (25) and (26). (25) fej-ben hurcol-t adat-ok head-in drag-PST.3SG datum-PL ‘the data dragged along in the head’ (26) milyen súlyosak lehet-nek le-hajt-ott fej-é-ben how heavy-PL be.POSS-3PL down-turn-PTCP.PST head-POSS.3SG-in a gondolat-ok. the thought-PL. ‘how heavy the thoughts can be in his lowered head.’ Heaviness may allude to difficult thoughts or serious matters that one is thinking about.

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3.2.1.1 THOUGHTS AS OBJECTS IN A DRUG STORE Metaphor In example (27) the head is conceptualised as a DRUG STORE, where thoughts, ideas and memories are put to their right place in an orderly manner. It is manifested in various other examples, e.g., (27), (28) and (29). In (27), putting thoughts in their places means fully comprehending something. Relevant to this idea, in (28), the act of making order or setting things right is emphasised. Finally, in (29), the metaphor HEAD AS DRUG STORE is elaborated, namely, in conceptualising the head as a drug store, where the shelves, the drawers, and the enamel plaquettes all represent order. (27) Sikerül-t a polgár-ok fej-é-ben minden-t a Manage-PST.3SG the citizen-PL head-POSS.3SG-in everything-ACC the hely-é-re ten-ni. place-POSS.3SG-onto put-INF. ‘They managed to put everything in their places in the citizens’ heads.’ (28) Alapvetően sok minden-ben segít, az ember Basically many everything-in help.PRS.3SG, the man könny-ebb-en tud rend-et rak-ni a easy-COMP-ADV can.PRS.3SG order-ACC put-INF the fej-é-ben. head-POSS.3SG-in. ‘Basically it helps in many aspects, and one can set things right in his head more easily.’ (understand) (29) Valóban úgy áll-t-ak fej-é-ben a tananyagok meg Indeed so stand-PST-3SG head-POSS.3SG-in the curriculum-PL and a maga kever-te kis-ebb gondolat-ok, mint a the himself3 blend-PTCP.PST.3SG small-COMP thought-PL, like the patiká-k-∅ fal-i-állvány-ai-nak rengeteg fehér drug.store-PL-GEN wall-ADJ-stand-POSS.3SG.PL-GEN lots.of white zománc-táblás fiók-ocská-já-ban a gyógyszer-ek. enamel-plaquette-ADJ drawer-DIM-POSS.3SG-in the drug-PL. ‘Indeed, the subject-matters and other minor thoughts mixed by himself stood there in his head like drugs in the vast number of little white enamelplaquetted drawers of the wall shelves of the drug store.’

3 Note that in Hungarian genders are not marked.

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3.2.1.2 THOUGHTS AS THREADS Metaphor In another conceptualization, THOUGHTS AS THREADS, thoughts appear as the complicated entities, where the knotted threads represent confused thoughts, while understanding is the equivalent of unbinding the knotted threads. (30) össze-kuszálód-ik fej-é-ben az a kevéske történelem is, PRT-jumble-3SG head-POSS.3SG-in that the smack history too, ami-t addig tud-ott that-ACC that.far know-PST.3SG ‘even the little knowledge on history that he had learned, became entangled in his head’ (became confused) In (31) thoughts are conceptualised in two different ways: either as knotted threads or as bubbles that burst out in a moment, representing that thoughts vanish easily. (31) Bár néhányszor már az-on kap-t-a magá-t, hogy Although sometimes already that-on find-PST-3SG himself-ACC, that élet-e értelm-é-n gondolkoz-ik. Ilyenkor aztán life-POSS.3SG meaning-POSS.3SG-on think-PRS.3SG. These.times then vagy semmi-vé pukkan-t-ak fej-é-ben a gondolat-ok, either nothing-into pop-PST-3PL head-POSS.3SG-in the thought-PL, vagy mint gomb-varrás-kor a hosszú cérna, úgy or like button-sewing-at the long thread, so össze-csomózód-t-ak, hogy sehogy sem tud-t-a kibogoz-ni. PRT-knot-PST-3PL, that in.no.way at.all can-PST-3SG unbind-INF. ‘However, he had found himself a couple of times pondering over the meaning of his life. In these cases, the thoughts have either burst out in his head to nothing, or like long threads while sewing on a button, became so knotted that he couldn’t unbind them in any way.’ Unbinding thoughts are represented by evoking the concept of unkempt hair in (32): (32) ez-ek a kérdés-ek nincsen-ek sok-ak-∅ fej-é-ben this-PL the question-PL be.not-PL many-PL-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in ki-fésül-ve PRT-comb-ADV ‘these questions are not combed out in many people’s heads’ (are not clarified/answered)

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Example (33) is unique in referring to rational thinking as following a straight road. Yet this example is enumerated here as it has spatial relevance, similarly to that of threads. The bend refers to incorrect or illogical thinking. (33) képtelenség volt ki-egyenesít-eni fej-é-ben impossibility be.PST.3SG PRT-straighten-INF head-POSS.3SG-in ez-t a kanyar-t this-ACC the bend-ACC ‘it was impossible to straighten that bend in his head’ 3.2.1.3 THOUGHTS AS MOVING OBJECTS Metaphor Sometimes the motion of the entities emphasise how thoughts work in human. In these conceptualizations, the regularity of the motion of objects refers to logical thought, while irregular motion represents confusion. This appears in example (34): an entity that turns in the head refers to its consideration, or that it comes to one’s mind. (34) Meg sem fordul-t a fej-é-ben, hogy Olga az PRT neither turn-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in that Olga the orr-á-nál fog-va vezet-i. nose-POSS.3SG-by hold-ADV lead-3SG.OBJ. ‘It didn’t even turn in his head that Olga leads him by the nose.’ (cross his mind) Turning is a constant and regulated motion in (35), which might also invoke the conceptualization of THINKING AS A WORKING MACHINE (see in 3.3.3), though there is no specific allusion to any machines. However, the perpetual motion means that someone’s brain is working endlessly, and the particular idea is on his mind. (35) valami-t for-gat a fej-é-ben something-ACC turn-FREQ.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘he keeps turning something in his head’ (he has something on mind) Similarly, the motion is regulated in (36). (36) ez kering-ett a fej-é-ben egész este this circle-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in whole evening ‘this circled in his head all night’

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Irregular movements of entities, on the other hand, refer to confusion and nonsense. See examples (37) to (39). (37) mikor csak úgy pattog minden ott bent a fej-ben, de when just so pop.3SG everything there inside the head-in, but semmi értelm-e nincs nothing meaning-POSS.3SG be.not.3SG ‘when everything is popping there inside the head but it has no sense at all’ Whirling and swirling thoughts refer to having no clear idea of what one should do. (38) Berényi fej-é-ben kavarog-t-ak a gondolatok. Most Berényi head-POSS.3SG-in whirl-PST-3PL the thought-PL. Now mi-tév-ő legyen? what-do-PTCP.PRS be.SUBJ.3SG? ‘In Berényi’s head the thoughts were whirling. What should he do now?’ (39) De a program-terv-forgács-ok nem áll-t-ak össze But the programme-plan-piece-PL not compose-PST-3PL PRT változatos program-folyam-má, hanem egy […] vizionárius-∅ varied programme-flow-into, but a […] visionary-GEN fej-é-ben gomolyog-nak. head-POSS.3SG-in swirl-3PL. ‘But the pieces of the draft programme didn’t gather into a variegated flow of programme, but they were swirling in the head of a visionary […].’ 3.2.1.4 THOUGHTS AS NOISE/MUSIC METAPHOR Finally, in conceptualising thoughts as inanimate entities, a group of expressions refer to them as noise or music. Observe examples (40) to (42). (40) Na en-nél lökött-ebb szöveg nem hisz-em, hogy dübörög Well this-ADESS silly-COMP text not believe-1SG that rumble.3SG ma más-∅ fej-é-ben. today other-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in. ‘Well, I don’t think there is any sillier text than this rumbling today in anybody else’s head.’

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(41) fej-é-ben csak szólam-ok ismétlőd-nek head-POSS.3SG-in only part-PL repeat-3PL ‘in his head, only the parts repeat themselves’ (42) idejében kell szólam-ok-at a fej-é-be plántál-ni in.time must part-PL-ACC the head-POSS.3SG-into plant-INF ‘the parts need to be planted in his head in time’ (to be taught) As was evidenced in 3.2.1, thoughts are conceptualised as inanimate objects in various ways: as objects in a drug store, threads, moving entities or noise/music. In each conceptualization the head serves the function of a container, in which thoughts are placed or they are characterised by regulated or unregulated motion. Entities-as-thoughts may have various features, such as they may be brought to limelight according to their size, weight or stickiness. It is notable, that in A), B) and C) the spatial attributes of thoughts are in focus. 3.2.2 THOUGHTS AS ANIMATE ENTITIES Metaphor In another branch of conceptualizations thoughts appear as animate entities. Life is emphasised in the examples (43) to (46): (43) életképes gondolat viable thought ‘viable thought’ (44) Az a betű-rengeteg, amit össze-olvas-ott, ma még holt That the letter-plenty, what-ACC PRT-read-PST.3SG, today still dead anyag a fej-é-ben. matter the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘The countless letters he has read are today still dead matter in his head’ (45) a gondolat-ok fej-é-ben kel-nek élet-re the thought-PL head-POSS.3SG-in wake-3PL life-to ‘the thoughts come to life in his head’ (46) a Kádár rendszer-rel kapcsolat-ban mennyi tévhit the Kádár regime-with connection-in how.many misconception él az ember-ek-∅ fej-é-ben. live.3SG the person-PL-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in ‘in connection with the Kádár-regime, so many misconceptions live in the people’s heads’

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Interestingly, in (47), pulsing invokes the conception of the blood circulation image, with the blood or the heart rhythmic pulsing. (47) egyetlen gondolat lüktet a fej-é-ben single thought pulse.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘only one thought is pulsing in his head’ The conceptualizations of THOUGHT AS ANIMATE ENTITIES can be further divided to subgroups of plants, animals and human. While in many cases there are unambiguous references to one of the group of conceptualizations, in some cases they may as well allude to animals as well as human. 3.2.2.1 THOUGHTS AS HUMAN Metaphor Several examples relate to the conceptualization that thoughts are born in the head. The term megfogant in (48) refers exclusively to how new life is conceived in most typically humans, and in rare cases in animals. (48) nem is Rákosi-∅ fej-é-ben fogan-t meg not even Rákosi-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in conceive-PST.3SG PRT ‘it was not even conceived in Rákosi’s head’ (49) fej-é-ben meg-szület-ett a megoldás head-POSS.3SG-in PRT-be.born-PST.3SG the solution ‘the solution was born in his head’ The conceptualization of thoughts-as-human is manifested in various actions that are most characteristic of people. Observe examples (50) to (55). Two basic characteristics are most often referred to: the awakening and movement of thoughts (walking, dancing, running, jumping) of thoughts. (50) ez a filozófiai mondandó, […] ar-ra jó, hogy this the philosophical message […] that-for good, that gondolat-ok-at ébresz-sz-en sok ember-∅ fej-é-ben. thought-PL-ACC wake-SUBJ-3SG many man-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in. ‘This philosophical message […] is good for awakening thoughts in many people’s heads.’

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(51) Mi-re gondol? Mi jár a What-on think-3SG/2SG? What go.PRS.3SG the fej-é-ben? head-POSS.3SG/2SG-in? ‘What is he thinking about? What is going in his head?’ (on his mind) (52) hasonló gondolat-ok jár-hat-t-ak a fej-é-ben similar thought-PL go-POSS-PST-3PL the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘there may have been similar thoughts going in his head’ (on his mind) (53) az ily beszéd sehogy sem men-t a fej-é-be the such talk in.no.way at.all go-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘Such talk didn’t go into his head’ (couldn’t understand) (54) Összeegyeztet-ve a fej-é-ben fullado-zó Compare-ADV the head-POSS.3SG-in drown-PTCP.PRS összefüggés-ek-kel meg-próbál-t-a ki-talál-ni, hogy vajon coherence-PL-with PRT-try-PST-3SG out-find-INF that whether mennyi idő tel-het-ett el. how.much time pass-POSS-PST-3SG PRT. ‘Making consistent with the coherences drowning in his head, he tried to find out how much time may have passed.’ (55) S ahogy az angyali hang táncol-t és fut-kos-ott And as the angelic voice dance-PST.3SG and run-FREQ-PST.3SG a fül-é-ben, éppen úgy táncol-t-ak és the ear-POSS.3SG-in just so dance-PST-3PL and fut-kos-t-ak a fej-é-ben a gondolat-ok is. run-FREQ-PST-3PL the head-POSS.3SG-in the thought-PL too. ‘And the way the angelic voice was dancing and running about in his ears, the same way the thoughts were dancing and running about in his head.’ 3.2.2.2 THOUGHTS AS ANIMALS Metaphor Thoughts are often imagined as animals, which may even be specified. (56) az-t a bogar-at vett-e a fej-é-be that-ACC the bug-ACC take.PST-3SG.OBJ the head-POSS.3SG-into ‘he took the bug in his head [that]’ (insisted on sg)

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(57) Nyüzsög-t-ek, mozog-t-ak fej-é-ben a gondolat-ok, mint Crawl-PST-3PL move-PST-3PL head-POSS.3SG-in the thought-PL, like a férg-ek. the worm-PL ‘The thoughts were crawling and moving like worms in his head.’ (58) az ember külső hatás-ra kezd-i el meg-fogalmaz-ni the man external influence-by begin-3SG.OBJ PRT PRT-word-INF az-ok-at a dolgokat, ami-k-et egyébként csak úgy that-PL-ACC the thing-PL-ACC, which-ACC otherwise just so terel-get-ett a fej-é-ben shepherd-FREQ-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘one begins to formulate the things by the effect of outside influence, which otherwise he has just shepherded in his head’ (59) a kétkedés-∅ sárga pillangó-ja röpköd a the doubt-GEN yellow butterfly-POSS.3SG fly.3SG the fej-é-ben head-POSS.3SG-in ‘the butterfly of doubt is flying about in his head’ However, it is more conventional that only the act invokes the conception of an animal. For example, elfészkelődik ‘nestle’ alludes to birds. (60) Elég, hogy egyetlen ember-∅ fej-é-ben Enough that single man-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in el-fészkelőd-j-ék a gyanú. PRT-nestle-SUBJ-3SG the suspicion. ‘It’s enough that the suspicion nestles in just one person’s head.’ On the other hand, in examples (61) and (62), motoszkál ‘grope about’ and mocorog ‘move’ may refer to any kinds of small animals, either mammals or insects. (61) Egy aprócska mondat motoszkál-t a fej-é-ben, A tiny sentence grope-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in, ami-t reggel óta szeret-ett volna ki-ad-ni what-ACC morning since love-PST.3SG be-COND out-give-INF

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magá-ból. himself-from. ‘A tiny sentence was groping about in his head, which he wanted to give away since morning’. (had at the back of his head) (62) az új-abb vers ott mocorg-ott a fej-é-ben the new-COMP poem there move-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘the new poem was moving in his head.’ In example (63), tenyészik ‘breed’ refers to small insects or worms. (63) Nem is az a baj, hogy a nép-ben él-nek ilyen Not even that the problem, that the folk-in live-3PL such gondolat-ok, hanem az, amikor író-k-∅, tudós-ok-∅, thought-PL, but that, when writer-PL-GEN, scholar-PL-GEN, újságíró-k-∅ fej-é-ben tenyész-nek. journalist-PL-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in breed-3PL ‘The problem is not when such thoughts live in people, but when they breed in the heads of writers, scholars and journalists.’ However, as mentioned above, in some cases the action may refer to an animal as well a human being. (64) fej-é-be vissza-szök-t-ek már a gondolat-ok head-POSS.3SG-into back-flee-PST-3PL already the thought-PL ‘the thoughts have already fled back into his head’ (65) Szeplős fej-é-ben pompás-nál pompás-abb ötlet-ek Freckled head-POSS.3SG-in brilliant-ADESS brilliant-COMP idea-PL kerget-t-ék egymást. pursue-PST-3PL each.other-ACC. ‘In his freckled head more and more brilliant ideas were pursuing each other.’ As it can be noted, thoughts may be manifested in various forms of animals, but mostly in small ones. Furthermore, their birth and death and motions are highlighted in the linguistic examples.

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3.2.2.3 THOUGHTS AS PLANTS Metaphor Among the conceptualizations of thoughts as animate entities, the final group is plants. Here are some examples. It is worth noting that the idea they express each refer to how a thought comes to life in someone and how one plants a thought in someone’s head. (66) egyik-másik írás-om-∅ magv-a fej-é-ben either-other writing-POSS.1SG-GEN seed-POSS.3SG head-POSS.3SG-in marad-t. stay-PST.3SG. ‘The seed of some of my writings stayed in his head.’ (67) [az ötlet] töprengés-ek között kezd-ett a fej-é-ben [the idea] meditation-PL among start-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ki-csíráz-ni PRT-germinate-INF ‘[the idea] started to germinate in his head while meditating’ (68) gondolat-a-i-t meg-próbál-t-a át-ültet-ni a thought-POSS.3SG-PL-ACC PRT-try-PST-3SG.OBJ trans-plant-INF the nebuló-k-∅ fej-é-be student-PL-GEN head-POSS.3SG-into ‘he tried to transplant his thoughts in the students’ heads’ 3.3 Metaphors of THINKING The metaphors of thought in relation to the head can be also captured in the act of thinking. This section gives an overview on metaphors typically relating to physical activities and mechanical devices as source domains. They include four basic conceptualizations: THINKING AS CRACKING ONE’S HEAD, THINKING AS LIGHT, THINKING AS A WORKING MACHINE, and THINKING AS MARKING A WOODEN BOARD. 3.3.1 THINKING AS CRACKING ONE’S HEAD METAPHOR A conventional metaphor of THINKING in Hungarian is cracking one’s head. Cracking may refer metonymically to the physical effort that affects the head while thinking, perhaps hitting the head (and almost breaking it) which metaphorically corresponds to the mental effort during thinking, as in (69) and (70).

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(69) Tör-t-e a fej-é-t, meg-próbál-t logikusan Crack-PST-3SG.OBJ the head-POSS.3SG-ACC, PRT-try-PST.3SG logically gondolkoz-ni. think-INF. ‘He cracked his head as he tried to think logically.’ (racked his brain) (70) új programok-on tör-t-e a fej-é-t new programme-PL-on crack-PST-3SG.OBJ the head-POSS.3SG-ACC ‘he cracked his head on new programs’ (racked his brain) The act of thinking very hard may be related to the concept ‘feverish’ which is connected with having a higher temperature and nervously acting fast as in a fever while torturing one’s head. (71) Lázasan tör-t-e a fej-é-t, hogy mi-vel Fevereshly crack-PST-3SG the head-POSS.3SG-ACC, that what-with vidít-hat-ná fel a barát-já-t. cheer-POSS-COND.3SG.OBJ up the friend-POSS.3SG-ACC. ‘He cracked his head feverishly on how he could cheer up his friend.’ (puzzled about) In some usages, a fejet törni ‘racking one’s brain’ is applied to negative acts: (72) Egon mindig valami rossz-ban tör-i a Egon always something bad-in c rack-3SG.OBJ the fejét, még akkor is, amikor éppen aktuális head-POSS.3SG-ACC, even then too, when just current börtön-büntetés-é-t tölt-i a legutóbbi jail-punishment-POSS.3SG-ACC spend-3SG.OBJ the last sikertelen akció-ja után. unsuccessful action-POSS.3SG after. ‘Egon always cracks his head in mischief, even if he serves his current sentence as a consequence of his last unsuccessful action.’ (be full in mischief) It must be noted that this metaphorization pattern (i.e., cracking one’s head) is not unique to Hungarian. It can also be identified e.g., in Polish as łamać sobie głowę nad czymś in the sense of thinking hard over a difficult issue.

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3.3.2 THINKING AS LIGHT Metaphor In this metaphor light refers to understanding and logical thinking, while darkness means being dull or not being able to understand something. (73) Nincs idő ki-vár-ni, amíg mindenki fej-é-ben Be.not.3SG time PRT-wait-INF, until everybody head-POSS.3SG-in világosság támad, cseleked-ni kell. light rise.3SG, act-INF must. ‘There is no time to wait until there is light in everybody’s heads, we need to act.’ (74) Sötét fej-é-ben, ha meg-pillant-ott-a ő-t, vakító Dark head-POSS.3SG-in, if PRT-see-PST-3SG.OBJ he-ACC, dazzling világosság gyúl-t— sajnos, nem a light blaze-PST.3SG— unfortunately not the történelem-tudomány-∅ jav-á-ra. history-science-GEN benefit-POSS.3SG-for. ‘When he saw her, dazzling light was lit in his dark head—unfortunately not for the benefit of historical studies.’ Darkness appears in (75) in the form of fog, which is the consequence of drinking alcohol. (75) Az alkohol is ki-babrál-t vele, a fej-é-ben The alcohol also PRT-trick-PST-3SG with.he, the head-POSS.3SG-in sűrűsödő köd rá-teleped-ett, s nem enged-t-e thickening fog onto-settle-PST.3SG, and not let-PST-3SG.OBJ magá-hoz közel a misztikus tanítás-∅ út-já-t. himself-to close the mystical teaching-GEN road-POSS.3SG-ACC. ‘The alcohol played it low on him: the thickening fog in his head settled on him and he didn’t come close to the method of mystical teaching.’ 3.3.3 THINKING AS A WORKING MACHINE Metaphor The third conceptualization of thinking is a MACHINE IN WORKING ORDER, particularly referring to a kind of machine that employs spurring wheels and, in some instances, gives repeated sounds like a mill or clock in (76) or a locomotive in (77) and (78). Note that the word zakatol ‘clatter’ primarily refers to trains or locomotives in Hungarian. In (79), the type of sound gives no specification of what kind of machine it refers to.

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(76) A mérnök-∅ fej-é-ben el-indul-t-ak a The engineer-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in PRT-start-PST-3PL the fogas-kerek-ek és az-on kezd-ett gondolkod-ni, hogy cog-wheel-PL and that-on begin-PST.3SG think-INF, that vajon milyen szoftver-ek-et installál? whether what software-PL-ACC install.3SG? ‘In the engineer’s head the cog-wheels started to work and he began to think what softwares he would install.’ (77) Unokatestvér-em, kis-fiú, külföldön él. Bár Cousin-POSS.1SG, small-boy, abroad live.3SG. Although ap-ja-any-ja magyar, de father-POSS.3SG-mother-POSS.3SG Hungarian, but anya-nyelv-é-nek már mégis az angol-t mother-tongue-POSS.3SG-DAT already still the English- ACC lehet tekint-eni. Sokszor szinte lát-ni, csak úgy zakatol-nak may.be.3SG view-INF. Often almost see-INF, just so clatter-3PL a kerek-ek a fej-é-ben, ahogy magyar-ra the wheel-PL the head-POSS.3SG-in, as Hungarian-onto fordít-ja mondandó-já-t. translate-3SG story-POSS.3SG-ACC. ‘My cousin, a small boy, lives abroad. Although his father and mother are Hungarian, his mother tongue seems to be English. Sometimes you can almost see the wheels clattering in his head as he translates his words to Hungarian.’ (78) De neki állandóan a kék-kel szedett szöveg But for.he constantly the blue-by type-PTCP.PST text zakatol-t a fej-é-ben. clatter-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in ‘But the text highlighted by blue kept clattering in his head all the time.’ (79) ahogy kattog-nak az ember-∅ fej-é-ben a as rattle-3PL the man-GEN head-POSS.3SG-in the gondolat-ok … A rengeteg “miért?” thought-PL … The numerous “why?” ‘as the thoughts are rattling repeatedly in one’s head … A lot of “why?” ’

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3.3.4 THINKING AS MARKING A WOODEN BOARD Metaphor As the final group of conceptualizations of thinking, the mind is imagined as a board, possibly wooden board, where thoughts and ideas are carved in, or a nail is hammered into, thus leaving a mark on the board. (80) alaposan a fej-é-be vés-t-ék thoroughly the head-POSS.3SG-into carve-PST-3PL.OBJ ‘they carved thoroughly into his head’ (put thoroughly into his mind) (81) szög-et üt-ött a fej-é-ben, miként lehetséges nail-ACC hit-PST.3SG the head-POSS.3SG-in, how possible az […] that […] ‘it drived a nail in his head, how it is possible […]’ (it put a suspicion in his mind) (82) Ha az ember-ek-∅ fej.é.be bele-kalapál-ják, If the man-PL-GEN head-POSS.3SG-into into-hammer-PRS.3PL.OBJ hogy minden jó-ért a párt-ot illet-i az that all good-for the party-ACC suit-PRS.3SG.OBJ the elismerés, akkor a párt-ot tesz-ik felelős-sé recognition, then the party-ACC make-PRS.3PL.OBJ responsible-to minden rossz-ért is, ami-ről pedig nem a párt all bad-for too, what-about but not the party te-het. mean-POSS.3SG. ‘If they hammer into the people’s heads that the party deserves credit for everything good, then they hold them responsible for the bad, too, which is not their fault.’

4

Conclusions

The paper focused on unfolding the conceptualizations of thinking in relation to the head. It has been evidenced that THE HEAD IS THE SEAT OF INTELLECT/THINKING is a significant conceptualization in Hungarian. Within corpus analysis, two main themes were outlined: metaphorical expressions of THOUGHT and those of the activity of THINKING. It has been highlighted that there are numerous different types of conceptualizations in Hungarian to refer to them, each pointing out some distinctive aspects of thought and thinking.

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Generally, in imagining thought as either inanimate or animate objects, THE HEAD-AS-CONTAINER metaphor has an overwhelming influence. It has been shown that thoughts, ideas, data and memories are imagined as entities that exist (or live) in the head. In the case of thought appearing as inanimate entities in the head, the THOUGHTS AS ENTITIES IN A DRUG STORE metaphor is based on the conception that entities should be put to their right place in a drug store (for example, the shelves of a pharmacy), which is mapped on how thoughts are linked to each other and are understood in one’s system of ideas, and how novel ideas are adapted to that already existing system. The next metaphor, THOUGHTS AS THREADS, represents how a branch of ideas are arranged and understood by somebody. Finally, THOUGHTS AS MOVING ENTITIES refers to two types of thoughts: ones put on stage as regularly moving objects are applied to rational and logical thinking; on the other hand, when their movement is characterised by chaotic motion, it alludes to lack of understanding and irrational thinking. The fourth group, THOUGHTS AS NOISE/MUSIC is a relatively small one consisting of few examples. In the case of THOUGHTS AS ANIMATE ENTITIES, THOUGHTS may be conceptualised as HUMANS, ANIMALS and PLANTS. According to the corpus, thoughts are most often mentioned as they arise and as they are on someone’s mind. The different types of animals and their characteristic movements (flying about or groping about) offer the possibility to metaphorically represent different forms of thinking: thinking hard, or having an idea at the back of someone’s mind, and even thinking unwillingly. Nevertheless, the HEAD IS A CONTAINER metaphor dominates the conceptualizations of thought-as-animate entities group as well. It is observable that thoughts very often (if not in most cases) appear as independent entities from the human body, which may come from outside of the human body, and which may exist or move about in the head whether the person wants it or not. The main conceptualizations of THOUGHT relative to the head are shown in Figure 11.2. The second part of the paper highlighted the metaphors of THINKING as they are manifested in the corpus. Two conceptualizations, THINKING AS CRACKING ONE’S HEAD and THINKING AS LIGHT clearly have metonymical origins, which later became metaphors. Each conceptualizations reflect on different aspects of the intellect: THINKING AS CRACKING ONE’S HEAD means thinking hard, THINKING AS A WORKING MACHINE alludes to the act of thinking, THINKING AS MARKING A WOODEN BOARD is used when one thought is deeply planted in one’s mind, finally, THINKING AS LIGHT refers to understanding or the ability to think rationally. While the corpus-based analysis of this study cannot be viewed as complete, it offers an overall image of the cultural conceptualizations of THOUGHT and

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figure 11.2

243

The conceptualizations of THOUGHT in expressions of fej ‘head’ in Hungarian

THINKING in the head-related expressions in Hungarian. The analyses give evidence that THE HEAD IS THE SEAT OF THINKING is, in accordance with the Western tradition, extensively present in the Hungarian language, too, hence it is deeply entrenched in the minds of Hungarians and dominates their culture through various conceptualizations.

References A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára [The Dictionary of Hungarian]. 1984. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Bańczerowski, Janusz. 2007. A fej nyelvi képe a magyar nyelvben [The linguistic image of head in Hungarian]. Magyar Nyelvőr 131(4). 385–402. Benczes, Réka, Barcelona, Antonio and Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco José. (eds.) 2011. Defining metonymy in cognitive linguistics: Towards a consensus view. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Brenzinger, Matthias and Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. (eds.) 2014. The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment (Series Editors: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R.M.W. Dixon and N.J. Enfield, Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, vol. 8). Leiden: Brill. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchins, Edwin. 1994. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kövecses, Zoltán. 2002. Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kövecses, Zoltán. 2015. Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maalej, Zouheir and Ning Yu (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Oravecz, Csaba, Váradi, Tamás and Sass, Bálint. 2014. The Hungarian Gigaword Corpus. In: Proceedings of LREC 2014. http://mnsz.nytud.hu Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of categorization. In: Eleanor Rosch and B.B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. 27–48. Sharifian, Farzad. 2003. On cultural conceptualisations. Journal of Cognition and Culture 3(3). 187–207. Sharifian, Farzad. 2008. Distributed, emergent cultural cognition, conceptualisation, and language. In: Roselyn M. Frank et al. (eds.), Body, Language, and Mind (Vol. 2): Sociocultural Situatedness. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 109–136. Sharifian, Farzad. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Sharifian, Farzad. 2013. Conceptualizations of ruh ‘spirit/soul’ and jesm ‘body’ in Persian: A Sufi perspective. In: Rosario Caballero and Javier E. Diaz Vera (eds), Sensuous Cognition: Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 251–264. Sharifian, Farzad. 2017. Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu and Susanne Niemeier. (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space. In: Herbert L. Pick, Jr. and Linda Acredolo (eds.), Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application. New York: Plenum Press. 225–282. Tolcsvai Nagy, Gábor. 2013. Bevezetés a kognitív nyelvészetbe. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. Váradi, Tamás. 2002. The Hungarian National Corpus. In: Proceedings of the 3rd LREC Conference, Las Palmas, Spain. 385–389. http://mnsz.nytud.hu Yu, Ning. 2009. From Body to Meaning in Culture. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.

chapter 12

Semantic Extensions of tatini ‘Her Head’ and tati ‘His Head’ in Deni (Arawá) Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho

1

Introduction

It is common across the languages that the terms for body parts encompass a prolific source domain in the conceptualization of several concrete and abstract notions. The relation between language and human body has been extensively investigated in cognitive sciences under the cover-term embodiment. Semantic extensions from body part terms into other domains of human experience often occur by metaphoric and metonymic processes. The body part terms have played a very important role in the understanding of how languages may conceptualize different semantic domains rather than those target (source) ones through semantic extensions. Body part terms are conspicuously found in noun incorporation, several types of noun compounding, and in special possessive constructions. In many languages of the world, body part terms are frequently used for expressing spatial relations, emotions, numbers, and so on. In this paper,1 the focus of investigation is on the semantic extensions of the lexical items tatini and tati, which—in their source domain in Deni— mean ‘her head’ and ‘his head’ respectively. Deni is an Arawá language spoken by about 1,600 people who live in ten villages, seven on the Cuniuá river and three on the Xeruã river. Other Arawá languages are Kulina (which is closely related to Deni), Madi (consisting of three dialects: Jarawara, Jamamadi and Banawá), Paumarí and Sorowahá. The Arawá language, which gave its name to the family, has been extinct since 1877 and is known from an 1869word list.2 Arawá languages are spoken on the Juruá-Purus interfluve in the

1 I am grateful to Brigitta Flick for her technical support on this paper. 2 For a classification of Arawá languages, see (Dixon, 1999, 2004, 2006); a summary is provided by Aikhenvald (2012, p. 56) and Carvalho (2013b, p. 91). Additional sources include Everett (1995), Dienst (2008) and Carvalho (2013a). A comprehensive list of older sources is in Dixon (2006).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_014

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Brazilian State of Amazonas, except for Kulina, which is spoken in the Acre State in Brazil and in Peru.3

2

Theoretical Assumptions

The framework undertaken in this paper assumes an integrated approach based on Cognitive Linguistics, while also taking into account three perspectives: cognition and conceptualization, usage criteria, and culture. KraskaSzlenk (2014, p. 18) claims that “cognition and conceptualization shape universal and language-specific paths of extending new meanings, but they can be entrenched only through language usage in a specific cultural environment of a speech community”. These three perspectives are, hence, interrelated and complementary. Semantic extensions involve cognitive processes in the conceptualization. Metaphoric transfers from the human body domain to other domains of the human experience is a common phenomenon across languages. Examples coming from many culturally different, unrelated languages show how often terms for body parts are semantically extended onto other domains of the people’s experience with/in the world. Basso (1967) provides almost twenty body part terms transferred onto the domain of a vehicle in Apache, an Athabaskan language spoken in North-America. For Apache language and culture, a car/ truck is conceptualized as a human body. Then, the major parts of the car are referred to as terms referring to the major parts of the human body. The metaphoric mapping behind this cultural and linguistic characteristic of Apache is A CAR IS A (HUMAN) BODY. In many languages, the body part term perna ‘leg’ is metaphorically transferred onto the domain of furniture. For instance, perna da mesa ‘leg of the table’ and perna da cadeira ‘leg of the chair’. Likewise, the body part term braço ‘arm’ is also semantically extended onto the domain of furniture: braço do sofá ‘arm of the couch’ and braço da poltrona ‘arm of the armchair’. In Deni, the language under investigation in this paper, the noun compound nukhu bihi is used to refer to ‘door or window’.4 Separately, nukhu and bihi are both inalienably

3 This paper is based on data obtained in five fieldtrips to Deni-speaking villages (mainly at Cidadezinha village, the second branch on the Cuniuá river) in the period between 2011 to 2016. The corpus contains approximately 30 hours of video-recordings and sound-recordings of stories of various genres, descriptions of traditional activities, and elicited data. Furthermore, it also comprises an extensive database of field notes. 4 The explanation for that is based on the way that the window is typically constructed on most

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possessed nouns that mean respectively ‘his eye’ and ‘his arm’. This noun compound has as source two body part terms which has undergone a metaphoric transference to make reference to an entity which belongs to another domain of the human experience. In the aforementioned examples—and there are many not mentioned here but included in other publications (see especially Kraska-Szlenk (2014))—the human body serves as a source domain for metaphoric transfers onto other domains of the human experience. It is well-attested across languages that such metaphoric transfers from terms for human body parts follow a very consistent mapping relating to parts of the body of objects, for instance. The just mentioned examples from Brazilian Portuguese and Deni illustrate this statement. The form of the body part and sometimes the function is associated with the form and function of the part of an object to which the metaphoric transfer is being employed. It is common that round objects/things are referred to as ‘head’ or ‘eye’, as well as elongated ones are referred to as ‘leg’ and ‘arm’. As mentioned by Kraska-Szlenk (2014, p. 16), this “clearly indicates that the process operates at the conceptualization level”. Notice that the examples given so far are from salient and common/familiar body part terms, such as leg, arm, head. The salient and frequently used terms tend to develop more polysemous meanings than non-salient and less-frequent used terms. That is only a tendency, since in some languages inner body part terms—not salient ones, therefore—are used for expressing feelings and cultural practices, such as atini ‘her liver’ and ati ‘his liver’ in Deni and Paumarí, as we shall see in §4. It is not the aim here to provide an in-depth discussion of cognitive linguistics, but only highlight some tenets of the theory in order to help the reader to comprehend the analysis undertaken in this paper. In this section I have provided some characteristics of the theory adopted here for the analysis. Now I turn to an overview of the members of the noun class in Deni, given that the lexical items under investigation in this paper tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’ are categorized as nouns in their source domain. It is important to mention that this is not the only syntactic function performed by them, as we will see in more details in § 4.1.

houses in riparian communities, which are the ones that Deni people mostly know. The window is open at the angle like a door on its hinge. Then, as the door and the window are equal regarding the way that they are open (the difference is only the size—door is bigger than window), they are referred to as the same word in Deni language.

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Nouns Class: an Overview

Before starting the analysis of tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’, it is important to include an overview of the noun class in Deni, since the words under investigation here have a nominal source. The noun class in Deni is morphologically simple compared to the verb class—Deni is a synthetic language in which a large number of morphemes may be attached to the verb structure (Carvalho, 2017). Only a small number of morphemes may be attached to members of the noun class. Syntactically, nouns function as the head of an NP, and they might be omitted in the conversation when they are recoverable from the context. Semantically, nouns refer to entities of several types. Members of the noun class do include morphological differences that are the criteria here for splitting nouns into subclasses. The three subclasses of nouns in Deni are: (i) inalienably possessed nouns, (ii) free nouns, and (iii) kanouns. The characteristics of these subclasses are respectively outlined in § 3.1, § 3.2, and §3.3. Every noun in Deni is either masculine or feminine, similarly to other Arawá languages (see Aikhenvald, 2009; Dixon, 1999; Tiss, 2004). Dixon (1999, p. 298) argues that all possessed nouns in Proto-Arawá had overt gender marking which was -ni for feminine and -ne for masculine; the Arawá languages kept the feminine -ni and have lost the masculine -ne. In Deni, gender is covert; namely there is no gender marking on nouns themselves, except for inalienably possessed nouns at third person, in which the feminine gender is marked by -ni and the masculine gender is marked by -∅, as included in Scheme 12.1. Gender is realized through agreement within noun phrases and clauses, involving members of different classes, such as verbs, interrogatives, quantifiers. The gender choice is not fully transparent and may be partly considered culturally motivated. An interesting case is the word matsi ‘vagina’, which is the only body part that is not inalienably possessed; this free noun, although a women’s body part, has the masculine gender in Deni (not overtly marked, but inherent to the noun and covert). 3.1 Inalienably Possessed Nouns Inalienable possession concerns those nouns which include an obligatory possession marking. Such nouns encompass almost all body part terms, parts of plants and objects, and kinship terms. Regarding the form of possession marker, kinship terms include some variability when compared to body part terms, since possessive pronouns seem to be grammaticalized on some kin terms. Then, the only change is the form of possession marker on some kinship terms (see Scheme 12.1). A further discussion on the structure of kinship

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Structure of inalienably possessed nouns5

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Slot 5

Possessor 1SG u(v)2 ti(v)3 ∅1PL i(v)-

Noun root

Gender -ni F -∅ M

Case =kha GEN -dza MULT

Miscellaneous suffixes -pe FOC.F -pa FOC.M -ki POSSIB.F -ku POSSIB.M

terms is in Carvalho (2017). Scheme 12.1 includes the structure of inalienably possessed nouns in Deni. On the inalienably-possessed nouns structure of scheme 12.1, slots 1 and 2 are the only ones which are obligatorily filled; slot 3 is only obligatorily filled in the third person of inalienably possessed nouns for marking the possessor’s gender. Slots 4 and 5 on the inalienably-possessed nouns structure are optional, that is, case and other suffixes may be attached to inalienably possessed nouns but they are by no means obligatory. Examples from (1a–b) to (5a–b) display the paradigm of possession marking on inalienably possessed nouns in Deni. (1) a. u-tati 1SG.POSS-head ‘My head.’ b. uv-inu 1SG.POSS-tooth ‘My tooth.’

5 Deni phonological system includes sixteen consonants and four vowels (cf. Carvalho, 2013a) for which I employ a version of the practical orthography in this paper as follows: p = /p/; b = /b/; t = /t/; d = /d/; k = /k/; ph = /pʰ/; th = /tʰ/; kh = /kʰ/; v = /v/; h = /h/; m = /m/; n = /n/; r = /ɾ/; ts = /ʦ/; tsh = /ʦʰ/; dz = /ʣ/; a = /a/; e = /ɛ/; i = /i/; u = /u/. The following abbreviations are used: 1, 2, 3 = first, second, third person; ADJ = adjectivizer; COMIT = comitative; COND = conditional; DIR = directional; F = feminine; FOC = focus; FUT = future tense; GEN = genitive; IMP = imperative; INT = interrogative; M = masculine; MULT = multifunctional; NCA = noun class agreement; NFUT = non-future tense; NP = noun phrase; NVP = non-verbal predicate; POSSIB = possibility; PRF = perfect; PL = plural; POL = polite; POSS = possession; SG = singular; VCM = verbal class marking.

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(2) a. ti-tati 2POSS-head ‘Your head.’ b. tiv-inu 2POSS-tooth ‘Your tooth.’ (3) a. i-tati 1PL.POSS-head ‘Our head.’ b. iv-inu 1PL.POSS-tooth ‘Our tooth.’ (4) a. ∅-tati-∅ 3POSS-head-M ‘His head.’ b. ∅-inu-∅ 3POSS-tooth-M ‘His tooth.’ (5) a. ∅-tati-ni 3POSS-head-F ‘Her head.’ b. ∅-inu-ni 3POSS-tooth-F ‘Her tooth.’ Inalienably possessed nouns beginning with a vowel undergo a morphophonological process which consists of the insertion of a consonant [v] between both the first and second person, since the Deni language does not allow two vowels in the beginning of the word (compare (1a, 2a, 3a) and (1b, 2b, 3b)). Further details of this morphophonological process is in Carvalho (2013a, pp. 86–89). Body part terms are by and large inalienably possessed in Deni. The only exceptions attested in the database are matsi ‘vagina’ and ama ‘blood’, which are free (alienable) nouns. A further surprising characteristic of matsi ‘vagina’

semantic extensions of tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’ scheme 12.2

Structure of free nouns

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Noun root

Case =kha GEN -dza MULT

Focus markers -pe FOC.F -pa FOC.M

Miscellaneous suffixes -dzape COND.F -dzapa COND.M -ki POSSIB.F -ku POSSIB.M

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is that it has the masculine inherent gender, as mentioned. Therefore it triggers the masculine gender agreement on its modifiers. In Kulina (cf. Dienst, 2014, p. 60) and in Jarawara (cf. Dixon, 2004, p. 351) the terms for vagina are also free nouns. It is likely a feature from Proto-Arawá. 3.2 Free Nouns Undoubtedly, free (alienable) nouns account for the major part of members of the noun class in Deni. They encompass names of people, objects, things, members of the fauna and flora, and so on. As concerns the structure, these nouns do not take any obligatory morpheme. Scheme 12.2 shows the structure of free (alienable) nouns in Deni. Morphemes that have been attested attached to free nouns are included in scheme 12.2. Excepting slot 1, all slots on scheme 12.2 are optionally filled on the structure of a free noun. It is noteworthy that only two of the slots have been attested as co-occurring on the structure of a free noun: the obligatory slot 1 and one of the others (either slot 2 or slot 3 or slot 4). Most free nouns may occur in possessive constructions as either possessor or possessed. The order of a possessive NP is possessor/possessed, in which the possessor is overtly marked by genitive =kha. There is also a possessive NP in which only one free noun occurs; in that case, it is preceded by a possessive pronoun. There are, however, a tiny fraction of free nouns that have not been attested as possessed in possessive constructions. These include some elements of nature, such as pupunaha ‘wind’, patsu ‘rain’, mahi ‘sun’, abadziku ‘moon’, neme ‘sky’, amuva ‘star’, and others. 3.3 ka- Nouns Besides the typical division between inalienably possessed nouns and free nouns, Deni also includes a subclass of nouns that is named here ka-subclass. This subclass of nouns has been attested in two Arawá languages: Kulina

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(Dienst, 2014) and Paumarí (Chapman & Derbyshire, 1991), which suggests that this subclass was likely present in Proto-Arawá. Although the ka-agreement system works grammatically in a similar way in Deni, Kulina and Paumarí, the membership of a noun in this subclass seems to be mostly divergent. In Kulina, Dienst (2014, p. 88) mentions that the ka-class may be losing ground in the language, since ka-agreement is used with frequently-talked-about things and it is not used anymore with rarely-talked-about things. Aikhenvald (2010) provides an in-depth study of ka-nouns in Paumarí arguing for a semantic base for which flat entities are assigned to the ka-class. However, she mentions that the ka-class is being lost since in young speakers’ speech the ka-agreement is less frequently used than in old speakers’ speech. In Deni, the ka-agreement works in the same way as in Kulina and in Paumarí. The ka-noun triggers noun class agreement on its modifier within the NP and on the verb that functions as predicate of the clause that the ka-noun occurs in, as illustrated in (6a–c). (6) a. udza ka-putaha-ri u-ka-navatu-ari house NCA-big-M 1SG-NCA-build-NFUT.M ‘I built the big house.’ b. kanuva mita-ti-ka-tuvi canoe buy-2-NCA-FUT ‘You will buy a canoe.’ c. uva kahiru mita-u-ka-na-de ka-pama-ru 1SG fishhook buy-1SG-NCA-VCM-PRF NCA-two-F ‘I have bought two fishhooks.’ The nouns udza ‘house’, kanuva ‘canoe’ and kahiru ‘fishhook’ in (6a–c) are kanouns. In (6a), udza ‘house’ triggers noun class agreement on both the modifier putahari ‘big’ and on the verb -navatu ‘to build’. kanuva ‘canoe’ in (6b) triggers noun class agreement on the predicate only, since there is no modifier occurring with it within the NP. Finally, kahiru ‘fishhook’ in (6c) triggers the ka-agreement on both the verb and on the numeral. This clause was extracted from a story and its word order is different from the typical word order in Deni. Numerals typically occur within the NP immediately following the noun. However, in (6c) this does not occur. The numeral in this clause immediately follows the verb, but it clearly attributes a quantity of the noun in NP-head function which is the ka-noun kahiru ‘fishhook’ and, therefore, triggers the kaagreement. It is noteworthy to mention that the intonation of the numeral

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in this clause is different, precisely because of its uncommon position in the clause (occurring after the verb and outside the NP, but with scope on the noun in NP-function). Members of the ka-subclass are quite diverse in Deni. There are some objects such as kakiba ‘arrow’, pigada ‘shotgun’, keneku ‘mug’ and others that are assigned to the ka-subclass. The word abadziku ‘moon’ is also a ka-noun. Furthermore, udzepe non-ka-noun means ‘my finger’ whilst udzepe ka-noun means ‘my hand’. Further studies are required in order to provide more consistent analysis on the ka-subclass in Deni. However, I am inclined to say that—similarly to what Aikhenvald (2010) has pointed out in Paumarí—there seems to be a semantic base for ka-nouns that tends to include flat, elongated things. The classification of what is flat, elongated is, certainly, culturally defined. Given that some general features of the noun class in Deni have been provided in this section, I turn now to the discussion of semantic extensions of body part terms, and later I focus on the semantic extensions of the words for ‘head’ in Deni.

4

Semantic Extensions of Body Part Terms in Deni: an Overview

As mentioned in 3.1, body part terms in Deni are mostly inalienably possessed nouns. Few exceptions to this are attested in the database, such as matsi ‘vagina’ and ama ‘blood’. It is not rare in Deni that terms for body parts are used to refer to other domains rather than the source ones. They are the model for conceptualization in different semantic domains, such as spatial relation and emotions, as illustrated in (7a) and (7b), respectively. Besides that, body part terms are involved in the creation of new nouns by noun compounding, as shown in (7c). (7) a. patsu ∅-nukhu-ni-dza pua ∅-tsuna-ri river 3POSS-eye-F-MULT 3M 3M-fall-M ‘He fell down in the middle of the river.’ (lit. he fell down in the river’s eye) b. uv-ati hami-aru 1SG.POSS-liver angry-NFUT.F ‘I am angry.’ (lit. my liver is angry) c. ∅-dzupuri-∅ ∅-eteru-∅ 3POSS-penis-M 3POSS-bark-M ‘(Masculine) Condom.’ (lit. the bark of his penis)

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To express the idea of ‘in the middle’, Deni extends the semantic value of the body part term nukhuni ‘her eye’ or nukhu ‘his eye’, depending on the term for which the reference is made. (If the term is feminine, nukhuni ‘her eye’ is used; if the term is masculine, then nukhu ‘his eye’ is employed.) In (7a) this term is patsu ‘river’, which has a feminine inherent gender that triggers the feminine agreement on the body part term that in this case, is used in the domain of spatial relation. The fact that Deni is using the body part ‘eye’ as a parameter for expressing the idea of the spatial relation ‘in the middle of’ corroborates the claim that the head—focus of my investigation here—has a great importance in the Deni culture. The head is seen as the center of the human body and this conceptual meaning is extended onto other domains of the Deni experience in/with the world. Then, the eye—which is located in the center of the head— is involved in the conceptualization of spatial relation to indicating ‘in the middle of’. The liver is certainly the repository of feelings and emotions in Deni. Thus, the state of ‘being happy’, ‘being jealous’, ‘being very sick (about to die)’ and others are expressed by atini/ati ‘her/his liver’. This is also a feature of Paumarí language. Chapman and Derbyshire (1991, p. 330) claim that “the noun root (and body part) va’i ‘liver’ can be compounded to certain verb roots with meanings that relate to perception and feelings”. For Kulina, Dienst (2014, p. 192) mentions that the word for ‘price’ is “a complex inalienably possessed noun which means ‘liver hardness’”. It is likely that ‘liver’ has functioned as the repository for feelings in proto-Arawá and still functions as such in Deni and Paumarí, although it has developed a different meaning in Kulina. Finally, the noun compounding involving inalienably possessed nouns in Deni is very common. Besides the example included in (7c), the word for ‘umbrella’ in Deni is the noun compounding muri ephe which literally means ‘the bat’s wing’. ‘Slipper’ is amuri eteru ‘the bark of the foot’, and ‘ammunition’ is pigada nukhunikha which literally means ‘(that thing that is put in the) shotgun’s eye’. Here the barrel of the shotgun is referred to as nukhuni ‘her eye’. More examples of noun compounding and a phonological analysis of the stress on them is in Carvalho (2013a, pp. 71–73). 4.1 Semantic Extensions of itati ‘Our Head’ The focus of investigation in this paper is on the lexical item itati ‘our head’ and its variant forms. As we will see in this section, the forms of third person tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’ are my focus of investigation here since such forms are extended into other domains from the original source, the body part. The forms of first person singular and plural utati ‘my head’ and itati ‘our head’,

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and second person titati ‘your head’ have not been attested to in other domains other than body part. Conversely, the forms of third person feminine tatini and masculine tati have been attested to in other domains of the Deni experience, which justifies their inclusion on the title of the paper. They are my focus of investigation here. Morphologically, itati ‘our head’ is an inalienably possessed noun which obligatorily takes the possessor marking. Examples in (8a–e) show the paradigm and its variant forms referring to the source (body part) domain. (8) a. u-tati 1SG.POSS-head ‘My head’ b. ti-tati 2POSS-head ‘Your head’ c. ∅-tati-ni 3POSS-head-F ‘Her head’ d. ∅-tati-∅ 3POSS-head-M ‘His head’ e. i-tati 1PL.POSS-head ‘Our head’ In its source domain, the lexical item itati ‘our head’ and its variant forms function syntactically as an NP-head, as illustrated in (9a–b). Since the syntactic function is our focus here, it is given in the first line of the examples. (9) a. u-tati NP kuma-de NVP 1SG.POSS-head hurt-ADJ ‘My head is hurting.’ b. ti-tati NP putaha-ri NVP 2POSS-head big-M ‘Your head is big.’

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Examples in (9a) and (9b) are verbless clauses in which the predicate position is filled by an adjective—that is, a non-verbal predicate. Semantically, the basic reference of itati ‘our head’ and its variant forms in Deni is to the upper part of the human body, as illustrated in (8a–e) and in (9a–b). However, the forms of third person possessed feminine and masculine respectively tatini and tati are frequently used in other domains rather than the source (body part) of the Deni experience in/with the world. As mentioned in §2, the metaphoric transfer from terms for body parts to parts of objects includes consistent mapping across the languages of the world. Human beings are erect and the head is the top part of the human body. Therefore, it is logical that ‘head’ is used to refer to the upper part of objects, as illustrated in (10a–b). (10) a. bari ∅-tati-ni axe.F 3POSS-head-F ‘Head of the axe.’ b. rapi ∅-tati-ni pen.F 3POSS-head-F ‘Tip of the pen.’ (lit. pen head) c. kanuva ∅-tati-ni-dza ti-vitharidza-ba canoe.F 3POSS-head-F-LOC 2-sit-IMP.POL ‘Sit in the prow of the canoe.’ (lit. sit in the head of the canoe) Examples in (10a–c) show metaphoric transfer achieved through conceptualizing objects as human bodies—an axe in (10a), a pen in (10b) and a canoe in (10c). The knowledge that the upper part of the human body is the head is transferred and employed to the physical structure of the axe, pen and canoe, since in all the examples the upper part of the objects is referred to/conceptualized as ‘head’. The encyclopedic knowledge that the upper part of the human body is the head is the trigger for the conceptualization of the upper part of objects as its ‘heads’. The metaphor underlying this conceptualization is AN OBJECT IS A HUMAN. Notice that in all mentioned cases, ‘head’ takes the feminine form since bari ‘axe’, rapi ‘pen’ and kanuva ‘canoe’ have the feminine inherent gender in Deni. There is, hence, gender agreement in these constructions. In (10c), the prow of the canoe is referred to as tatini ‘her head’ and it is noteworthy here to mention that the rear of the canoe is also referred to by a body part term: dzutuni ‘her buttock’. This corroborates the common concep-

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tualization of objects as the human body in Deni language and culture through metaphoric mapping. The river, referred to as patsu, is the point of reference to indicating directions in Deni language and culture. The villages where they live are the point of reference for expressing directions such as ‘going up’ or ‘going down’ the river even when people are not on the river. There is a sort of imaginary line traced intercepting the villages which results in two possible directions: (i) up the village (and river); (ii) down the village (and the river). For instance, if someone is going to hunt walking in the forest (and not by canoe on the river), the direction of the place where he/she is going to is referred to as based on its position in relation to the village. If such place is located down the village (and down the river), the direction of it is referred to as batuhene ‘down the river’; if such place is located up the village (then up the river), then the direction is referred to as tatinihene ‘up the river’. As in many other Amazonian languages and cultures, the river’s flow is used to express direction when undertaking daily activities. The dialogue in (11) is a very common type of conversation in Deni, in which people typically say what they are planning to do in the coming day(s). (11) speaker 1 tshivadza aba huka-u-tuvi tomorrow fish pull-1SG-FUT ‘I will fish tomorrow.’ speaker 2 akha-ru mani-hi who-F COMIT-INT.F ‘Who (female) with?’ speaker 1 ukha-dau Mani 1SG.POSS-son COMIT ‘My son (will fish) with me.’ speaker 2 akuvene-hi which.direction-INT.F ‘In which direction?’

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speaker 1 ∅-tati-ni-hene 3POSS-head-F-DIR ‘Up the river.’ The last fragment of speaker 1 in the dialogue in (11) is of interest for our discussion here. It shows that the river is the point of reference to indicating direction. The word patsu ‘river’ (also ‘water’, ‘rain’) has the feminine inherent gender that triggers the gender agreement in the last fragment of speaker 1. Notice that, although patsu ‘river’ is not overt in the speech, it is the referent term here, and tatinihene ‘up the river’ literally means ‘in the direction of the river’s head’. In contrast, the idea of ‘down the river’ is referred to as batuhene in which no body part term is involved. Before I obtained the data regarding the construction referring to ‘down the river’, the hypothesis was that such construction would likely involve a body part term since (i) as mentioned in the discussion of (10c), the rear of the canoe is referred to by the body part dzutuni ‘her buttock’, and (ii) the concept of ‘up the river’ is expressed by a body part term. However, the hypothesis of a symmetrical system for the language was not confirmed. There is no body part term involved in expressing the concept of ‘down the river’. In order to highlight even more the importance of the river in making reference to directions, the verb -kha ‘to go’ always takes either the morpheme -ta ‘up the river’ or -∅ ‘down the river’, as illustrated in (12a–b). (12) a. aviao-dza ta-kha-∅-mita-ri plane-MULT 3DIR-go-down.the.river-ITER-NFUT.M ‘He went again (to the town, which is down the river) by plane.’ b. aviao-dza a-kha-ta-mita-ru plane-MULT 1DIR-go-up.the.river-ITER-NFUT.F ‘I came back again (to the village, which is up the river) by plane.’ The typical way of going to the town from the Deni villages is by boat. However, when there is an emergency, a plane comes to the villages to take people to the hospital. When they are going by plane (and not by river) to the town, the verb -kha ‘to go’ takes the -∅ indicating the location they are going to is down the river, as illustrated in (12a). In contrast, when they are in the town and coming back to the village, which, in turn, is going up the river, the verb -kha ‘to go’ takes the -ta that indicates direction up the river. Notice that even if the river is not the path, it is the point of reference to indicating direction.

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The forms tatini and tati are also used as noun modifier. Such lexical items include an adjectival usage that means ‘unripe’, as illustrated in (13a–b). (13) a. maga Tati mango.M unripe ‘Mango is unripe.’ b. maraka tatini açaí.F unripe ‘Açaí is unripe.’ Constructions in (13a–b) are verbless clauses in which the adjectives tati and tatini attribute the property of being unripe to the nouns maga ‘mango’ and maraka ‘açaí’, respectively. In these examples, they occur in the predicate position producing a non-verbal predicate. (It is common in the Deni grammar that adjectives occur in the predicate position in a verbless clause forming a non-verbal predicate.) The other grammatical matter in examples (13a–b) is the gender agreement that the adjectival usage of the lexical items tatini and tati undergo. The nouns maga ‘mango’ and maraka ‘açaí’ have respectively masculine and feminine inherent gender which trigger the gender agreement on their modifiers. The cultural matter behind the semantic extension of tati and tatini as adjectives in examples in (13a–b) is related to the conception that the fruit’s life starts by the head and then it forms the “body”. When the “body” is completely formed, the fruit is ripe. When the fruit’s body is not completely formed, it is unripe—that is, only the head is formed. Then, examples in (13a–b) could be interpreted respectively as ‘the mango’s head’ and ‘the açaí’s head’ meaning that only the head of both mango and açaí is formed, not the body, and hence they are unripe. Here we have one more example of an asymmetric system as the word for expressing the idea of ‘ripe’ is the adjective hadade which is by no means a body part term. An interesting domain in which tati ‘his head’ is used is in the kinship system in Deni. This is not commonly found in languages across the world. As mentioned in §3.1, kinship terms are inalienably possessed nouns in Deni. (Although kinship terms include variations concerning the form of inalienable possession, they are inalienable. A broader study of kinship terms in Deni is in Carvalho (2017).) The only use of a body part term as a kinship term attested in the database is tati as a vocative form used from father-in-law and mother-inlaw to son-in-law. In this case, tati does not take any morphological marking as it does in its source (body part) domain—that is, it is not an inalienably possessed noun since it does not take the possession marking.

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In Kulina—an Arawá language closely related to Deni—, tati is also used as vocative form in the kinship system. However, in that language tati refers to the ‘younger brother’ and ‘oldest younger brother of a female’ (cf. Dienst, 2014, p. 54). The only other example I could find in the literature of body part terms being used as kinship terms is in Great Andamanese, an Indian language spoken in Andaman Islands, which includes seven body class markers of which five are used to represent the kin terms (cf. Abbi, 2011, pp. 754–757). In the Deni culture, tati as a vocative form is used for all sons-in-law, and not only for the first daughter’s husband as it was hypothesized. Before the last (fifth) fieldwork the only occurrence of tati as a vocative for son-in-law was from a father-in-law referring directly to his first daughter’s husband. The root tati is the basis for creating the adjective ‘first’ through the attachment of the adjectiviser suffix -de forming tatide. Based on this, the hypothesis is that tati could be a vocative form used by father-in-law and mother-in-law for the first daughter’s husband. However, my last fieldwork (with the special focus on the ‘head’) did not confirm this. I found many occurrences of tati being used for all sons-in-law, and not only for the first daughter’s husband. Furthermore, one idiomatic expression involving the lexical item tati was identified in the database of the Deni language: (14) uva Hidzama ∅-tati-∅ 1SG white.lipped.peccary 3POSS-head-M ‘I am stupid.’ (lit. I am a white-lipped peccary (Tayasu pecari) head) This idiomatic expression shows a cultural feature of Deni. It is most likely that this animal is seen as unintelligent by Deni people probably because it confronts the hunter rather than runs away like other animals. Thus, it is more often killed. The idiomatic expression in example (14) points to the belief that the head is the body part that functions as the seat of intelligence in the Deni culture. The white-lipped peccary is stupid because its head lacks intelligence. If someone’s head does not have intelligence, then his/her head is like the white-lipped peccary’s head.

5

Conclusions

Body part terms in Deni are mostly constructed with inalienably possessed nouns with only a few exceptions identified in the database. The paradigm of inalienable possession is offered in (8a–e), that supports the claim that only the

semantic extensions of tatini ‘her head’ and tati ‘his head’

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forms of third person tatini and tati are used in semantic extensions into other domains of the Deni experience rather than the source (body part) domain. The forms of first person singular and plural, and the form of second person are only attested in their source (body part) domain in the database. These semantic extensions refer to the following domains: (i) position, referring to the upper part (the top) of objects; (ii) direction, making reference to the direction of the head of the river ‘up the river’; (iii) kin system, as a vocative form used by father-in-law and mother-in-law to refer to sons-in-law; (iv) adjectival usage, attributing the property of being unripe; (v) idiomatic expression, in the concept of being stupid, using the head as the seat of intelligence (having the head of a hidzama ‘white lipped peccary’ means being stupid).

References Abbi, A. (2011). Body divisions in Great Andamanese: possessive classification, the semantics of inherency and grammaticalization. Studies in Languages, 35(4), 739– 792. Aikhenvald, A.Y. (2009). Syntactic ergativity in Paumarí. In S.G. Obeng (Ed.), Topics in Descriptive and African Linguistics: essays in honour of distinguished Professor Paul Newman (pp. 111–127). Munich: Lincom Studies in African Linguistics. Aikhenvald, A.Y. (2010). Gender, noun class and language obsolescence: the case of Paumarí. In E.B. Carlin & S. v. d. Kerke (Eds.), Linguistics and archeology in the Americas (pp. 236–252). Leiden: Brill. Aikhenvald, A.Y. (2012). The languages of the Amazon. Oxford Oxford University Press. Basso, K.H. (1967). Semantic aspects of linguistic acculturation. Am. Anthropol, 69, 471– 477. Carvalho, M.C.M. d. (2013a). A fonologia da língua Deni (Arawá). São Paulo: Cultura Acadêmica. Carvalho, M.C.M. d. (2013b). Considerações sobre a fonologia da língua Deni (Arawá). In L.O. Labastía (Ed.), Cuestiones de fonética, fonología y oralidad (pp. 89–104). Mendoza: Faculdad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidade Nacional de Cuyo. Carvalho, M.C.M. d. (2017). Estudo morfossintático da língua Deni (Arawá). (PhD Dissertation), Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”. Chapman, S., & Derbyshire, D.C. (1991). Paumarí. In D.C. Derbyshire & G.K. Pullum (Eds.), Handbook of Amazonian languages (Vol. 3, pp. 161–352). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dienst, S. (2008). The internal classification of the Arawan languages. Laiames, 8, 61–67. Dienst, S. (2014). A grammar of Kulina. Berlin: Mounton de Gruyter.

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Dixon, R.M.W. (1999). Arawá. In R.M.W. Dixon & A.Y. Aikhenvald (Eds.), The Amazonian Languages (pp. 294–306). New York: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R.M.W. (2004). The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dixon, R.M.W. (2006). Annotated bibliography of the Arawá language family to 1950. International Journal of American Linguistics, 72, 522–534. Everett, D. (1995). Sistemas prosódicos da família Arawá. In L. Wetzels (Ed.), Estudos fonológicos das línguas indígenas brasileiras (pp. 297–340). Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2014). Semantic extensions of body part terms: common patterns and their interpretation. Language Sciences, 44, 15–39. Tiss, F. (2004). Gramática da língua Madiha (Kulina). Eurinepé: Oikos.

chapter 13

Wulaya ‘Head’ in Yanyuwa Alice Gaby and John Bradley

1

Introduction

This paper considers the range of metaphorical and metonymic extensions of the Yanyuwa word wulaya ‘head’. Following an introduction to the language (§1.1) and its speakers (§1.2), section 2 begins by exploring the core meaning of wulaya (the body part of humans and animals) and the grammatical inflections it requires. Section 3 considers the various extended uses of wulaya ‘head’ motivated by metonymy. Section 3.1 considers its use in descriptions of mental processes and sensations as well as character traits, while 3.2 discusses the lexeme wularrinja ‘headrest’. Section 4 then considers the metaphorical basis for other extended uses. In §4.1 we see wulaya used with reference to round objects, while §4.2 discusses its use with reference to the ‘top end’ of objects. Section 5 considers the etymological origin of some names for people and places, in which wulaya serves as a linkage between the places and people of today and Ancestral Dreaming figures. This chapter draws upon the published materials of Jean Kirton (1992), John Bradley and Yanyuwa families (Bradley & Yanyuwa families 2016), as well as John Bradley’s unpublished field notes. 1.1 Linguistic Family Yanyuwa or Anyuwa is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia. In literature, it is possible to find other names referring to this language, such as Yanyula or Anyula, given respectively by Garrwa and Marra neighbours in the east and north-west (Kirton & Charlie 1996:1–2). Among Australian Aboriginal languages, Yanyuwa showed a controversial situation in terms of earlier classifications. At the beginning, it was grouped with the other “northern”, “prefixing”, “Non-Pama-Nyungan” languages as a member of a single family called Yanyulan (O’Grady, Voegelin & Voegelin 1966:27). Subsequently, Blake (1988:5) cast doubt on such a classification. By drawing on Capell (1942:391), he gave evidence of the genetic closeness among Yanyuwa, Warluwara, Bularnu and Wagaya, classified as Pama-Nyungan languages of the Warluwaric group. The problem of classification arose since Yanyuwa displays grammatical properties of both Pama-Nyungan and Non-Pama-Nyungan lan-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004392410_015

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guages. However, for our purposes it is enough to assert that Yanyuwa is a Pama-Nyungan language belonging to the so-called “Ngarna subgroup” along with Warluwara, Bularnu and Wagaya (Dixon 2002:663). The language Yanyuwa spans multiple language varieties defined by contexts of use. These include a variety used in ceremonies and ritual contexts, a ‘respectable’ variety which must be used in communication between various types of relative (e.g. a man and his brother-in-law), a ‘Saltwater Language’ used when on the islands near Borroloola, and a complex and conservative ‘Old Time Language’. Further to these, there were traditionally distinct everyday varieties of Yanyuwa used by male and female speakers respectively. Although they are mutually intelligible, a woman does not speak male dialect in communicating with a man and vice versa (Bradley 1988; Kirton 1988a). Of relevance to this chapter, the male and female varieties employ different noun class systems (or, grammatical gender), with implications for the forms of the possessive prefixes discussed in §2 (cf. John Bradley & Gaby Forthcoming). 1.2 Endangered Status and Speakers Yanyuwa is currently a critically endangered language. The various factors leading to the obsolescence of this language, especially from 1963 to 1986, have been analysed by Kirton (1988b). In 2018 there are three elderly women who can speak Yanyuwa and its dialects fluently, including the Respectable and Island Languages. There are no fluent speakers of the male dialect alive today. There are a small number of men and women in their forties and fifties who can speak some Yanyuwa, but are more inclined to use English, Aboriginal English and Kriol. Some people in their late thirties have retained a partial, passive knowledge of Yanyuwa.

2

‘Head’ as a Part of the Body

In its most basic function, wulaya ‘head’ refers to part of a human or animal body. As with its English translational equivalent (as well as those of most other languages), animals of all kinds have a wulaya ‘head’, including mammals (dogs, kangaroos, dolphins), fish (barramundi, mullet, salmon), birds (brolgas, crows, hawks), reptiles (goannas, skinks, snakes), and insects (ants, beetles, flies). Flower and fruit buds are also marked as wulaya. In each case, the grammatically appropriate masculine or feminine noun class marker must be prefixed, as illustrated by the following examples (note that example 2 includes both male and female speech variants):

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(1) rra-karnkarnka nanda-wulaya FEM-white.bellied.sea.eagle POS.FEM-head ‘the head of the (feminine) white bellied sea eagle’ (2) (m) ∅-nangurrbuwala na-wulaya (f) ∅-nangurrbuwala ni-wulaya MASC-hill.kangaroo POS.MASC-head ‘the head of the hill kangaroo’ Throughout this chapter we refer to wulaya ‘head’ (and its reduced form, wula) as the citation form of the word in question. In most grammatical contexts, however, it obligatorily co-occurs with a possessive prefix that marks the gender of the possessor. These forms (for the nominative case only) are listed in Table 13.1. The prefixes also inflect for case, as indicated where relevant in the example sentences below. As this table shows, the possessive prefixes of the male and female dialects differ not only in form, but in the noun classes they distinguish. Female speakers differentiate the male noun class (e.g. niwa- ‘his’) from the non-human masculine class (e.g. ni- ‘its’), while there is syncretism of these two noun classes for male speakers (e.g. na- ‘his/its’). The male and female dialects do not differ in their expression of the other noun classes. Example sentences throughout this chapter will be marked for the sex of the speaker only where relevant. This will be indicated by ‘(m)’ for a male speaker and ‘(f)’ for a female speaker immediately to the right of the example number. There are just two contexts in which the un-prefixed form wulaya is used with literal reference to a person or animal’s head. Firstly, this form can be used to refer to a head that has been separated from its body (i.e. a decapitated head). Secondly, the ablative-inflected form wularla, often reduplicated as wularlawularla, is used to describe the typical manner of carrying items on top of one’s head, as in the following examples: (3) kanu-lhuwarri mili yurrulu barra yirdijanja juwak wularla. 1pl-departed again more now carry.on.hips swag on.head ‘we departed again carrying our swags on our hips and heads.’ (adapted from Bradley & Yanyuwa families 2016:268) (4) li-wankala kala-kanthaninya munjarr wularlawularla pl-old.times 3pl-would.carry fire.wood on.head ‘the old people would carry fire wood on top of their heads.’

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table 13.1 Inflected forms of -wulaya ‘head’

Female variety

Male variety

1sg

ngarna-wulaya

my head

1du

ngali-wulaya

our heads

1pl

ngambala-wulaya

our heads

2sg

nda-wulaya

your head

2du

ngatharra-wulaya

your head

2pl

nirru-wulaya

your heads

M(ale)

niwa-wulaya

his head na-wulaya

MASC(uline)

3sg

ni-wulaya

its head

F(emale)

nanda-wulaya

her head

FEM(inine)

nanda-wulaya

its head

FOOD

ma-wulaya

its head

ARB(oreal)

na-wulaya

its head

ABST(ract)

n/a1

3du

nawula-wulaya

their (two) heads

3pl

nalu-wulaya

their (many) heads

1 There are no nouns in the abstract class denoting entities which can be said to have a wulaya ‘head’.

wulaya ‘head’ in yanyuwa

3

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Metonymic Extensions

3.1 Mind and Character Wulaya ‘head’ is metonymically extended to describe feelings and processes experienced within the head. For example, the verb wularirrinjarra ‘having a headache’ incorporates the reduced form wula- (seen also below), within an etymologically reflexive verb form that now functions as a noun. This is also found with a number of other forms describing sensations and experiences (compare, for example, with majarrmajarrirrinjarra ‘feeling tired’, ngaringarirrinjarra ‘hurting’, ngangakarrirrinjarra ‘being phlegmy (in cough or nasal discharge)’, buluwarrirrinjarra ‘feeling well’ (Bradley, Kirton & Yanyuwa families 1992:192, 142, 259, 143)). Memory is likewise metonymically described in terms of the head, as seen in the following description of the speaker’s memories of a woman who lived long ago: (5) rru-bardibardiyu wula-rla-ngku nanda-wabarrangu FEM.DAT-old.woman head-ABL-DAT POS.FEM-long.time.ago ‘the memory of the old lady, she is really from the old days’ Here the memory is described as emerging ‘from the head’ (as evidenced by the inner ablative case-marking of wula(ya) ‘head’), and directed ‘towards’ the old woman (as evidenced by the outer dative case-marking of the old woman and—through agreement—wularla ‘from the head’). Consultants describe wularlangku as a really “old time” word to talk about memory. Strength of character is also metonymically linked to the head in expressions like wayarrwayarrwulaya ‘tough headed’—used to describe someone who is bold, fearless and/or a good leader—and its antonym manthalmanthalwulaya ‘soft head’—used to describe someone with no moral fibre or leadership qualities. As might be expected, these involve compounding of wulaya ‘head’ with the adjectives wayarrwayarr ‘tough, hard’ and manthalmanthal ‘soft’, respectively. Also murduwulaya ‘mad/silly head’ is used to describe someone who acts in ways that are not considered acceptable. 3.2 Items of Material Culture There is one further example of metonymic extension; the word for a pillow or headrest, illustrated in example (6): (6) nya-rduma-ya wularrinja nya-ngatha! MASC-get-IMP headrest MASC-1sgDAT ‘get the pillow for me!’

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The form wularrinja is lexicalized with the meaning ‘headrest, pillow’, traditionally denoting an item made of stone or hard wood with a layer of paperbark padding for comfort. The -rri that immediately follows the reduced form wula ‘head’ suggests a verbal etymology, though the word presently functions as a noun. The name for this item clearly derives from its spatial proximity to the head when in use.

4

Metaphorical Extensions

Wulaya is used to refer to parts of the body (other than the head) as well as parts of inanimate objects. Two distinct metaphorical motivations are in evidence here; section §4.1 describes extended uses of wulaya based on similarity of shape, while §4.2 describes extended uses of wulaya on the basis of structural analogy. 4.1 Resemblance in Shape Similarity in shape appears to motivate the extension of wulaya to denote berries and fruit. With this usage, the form obligatorily agrees with the arboreal noun class of the trees and shrubs that bear such fruit; na-wulaya (3sgARBhead) ‘berry, fruit’. Note that this arboreal noun class agreement explicitly marks the fruit as part of the whole (arboreal noun class) plant; other words referring to fruit (for instance ma-ngakuya ‘cycad fruit’), belong to the nonmeat food noun class. In addition to most berries and fruit being headlike in their round or oval form, shape may not be the only feature underlying this metaphorical extension. Fruit and heads also share the fact of being a small but particularly valuable part of the larger object they attach to. There is also some physical resemblance between the stalks by which most fruit attach to the larger plant form and the human neck. A second shape-based extension of wulaya is seen in its reference to the head of the penis. With this use, wulaya takes the ma- noun class agreement prefix used for non-meat foods. It is unclear exactly what motivates this noun class agreement, though the parallel use of non-meat food noun class in marakuku ‘penis’ suggests that it may relate to the polite avoidance of explicitly naming the possessor of the penis. Indeed, there may be some direct metaphorical linkage between the ‘head of penis’ sense of (ma-)wulaya and the ‘fruit’ sense of (na-)wulaya. This is indicated by the use of the expression ma-murdi ‘the sacred food’ as an oblique way of referring to a penis, as used by, e.g., a grandmother talking to her son about his son (her grandson)’s penis.

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The word form ma-wulaya may also be used to refer to the head of a boil or an abscess. This is presumably motivated by the round and bulbous shape of these protuberances. The association between the boil and the foods invoked by the non-meat noun class prefix ma- is further reinforced by the use of the word ma-wunhunhu ‘cooked, ripe’ to refer to a boil that is ready to burst (or in the process of bursting). 4.2 Structural Analogy Structural analogy underlies the extension of wulaya to refer to the topmost part of inanimate objects. Noun class agreement is variable here, and is determined by the grammatical noun class of the noun referring to the whole object. Thus the rra-mankaburruna ‘number seven boomerang’2 has a nandawulaya (FEM-head) ‘top end’ with feminine agreement, by contrast with the na-wulawula (ARB-head.RDP) ‘crown of a tree’, which takes the expected arborial agreement. Note that this latter form is not only reduplicated, but also involves truncation to the reduced root form wula, indicating lexicalization at some time depth. Objects such as trees have an intrinsic ‘top end’. The wulaya ‘top end’ of other objects must be defined by their canonical position. For instance, the forms niwulaya (for a female speaker) or na-wulaya (for a male speaker) are used to describe ‘top end’ of a wakirli ‘boomerang’, which in this case is the end that sticks up above the hand when it is about to be thrown. The na/ni-wulaya ‘top end’ of a na/ni-wabija ‘digging stick’ is the opposite end to the one that strikes the earth in digging for goannas. The structural analogy between the human body and these inanimate objects extends to other parts too. For example, the wakirli ‘boomerang’ has a na-wuna ‘bottom end’ (from -wuna ‘buttocks, anus’), a na-wuku ‘back’, and a na-wurdu ‘inner side’ (literally, ‘stomach’). The wulaya ‘top end’ of such objects is in many cases meronymically related to other parts and facets, labelled with other terms for parts of the head. For example, the rra-mankaburruna ‘number seven boomerang’ also has a nanda-bika ‘her beak’ which refers to the sharp upright protrusion that comes off the nanda-wulaya ‘top end’. A larla ‘hollow log coffin’ (used as a receptacle for the bones of the deceased) has a na/ni-mulu ‘mouth’, through which the bones are deposited, as well as a na/ni-wulaya ‘top end’ defined by its vertical orientation. The point of the ma-wurraji ‘stone headed spear’ is similarly referred to as the spear’s ma-mulu ‘mouth’, with the prefix determined by the noun class ascribed to the 2 A type of boomerang often called a hook boomerang, the boomerang has a sharp point that stand upright from the end of the more boomerang shaped body, thus resembling the shape of a ‘7’.

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spear. Similarly, jangani na/ni-mulu ‘point of the steel shovel nosed spear’ and ngarrkidikidi na-/ni-mulu ‘point of the hooked spear’. The ascription of a wulaya ‘top end’ to inanimate objects is not limited to salient items of material culture, such as boomerangs, digging sticks, hollow log coffins, spears and woomeras. Wulaya ‘top end’—and its antonym wuna ‘bottom end’—can also be productively applied to new objects. Fence posts, for instance, have their na/ni-wuna ‘bottom end’ planted in the ground and their na/ni-wulaya ‘top end’ in the air.

5

Proper Names

The nominal root wula(ya) is evident in a number of names for places and geological features. Many of these involve metaphoric linkage, for instance Wirdinyjawulaya is located at the highest point on the North Island. Etymologically, this place name can be broken down as in (7): (7) (f) wirdi nya-ja wulaya leader MASC-this head ‘This hill is the boss/leader’ This example combines mythological association with a group of Dugong Hunter Ancestral beings with the metaphorical construal of a hill or high point as a head. Note that the form of the masculine noun class prefix nya- marks this usage as female speech. Though this hill now belongs to the Dugong Hunter Dreaming, the spirits at this location were mythologically called out to by the white bellied sea eagle, which belongs to the feminine class. As such, the place name reflects the form of address that would have been used by this white bellied sea eagle. Other place names invoke the heads of mythological beings in creation stories without metaphorical or metonymic content. Take for example, the location named in the Marra language Nyamarangurru on the central west coast of South West Island in the Pellew Group. Nyamarangurru is the Dreaming place of the Groper,3 there is a large round monolith there that represents the head of the Groper creation being which ultimately left the island, determined to travel 3 ‘Dreaming places’ are sites of mythical and ritual importance, often associated with the movements and activities of animal-human ancestors which resulted in the creation of features of the local landscape.

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into Marra country and begin speaking Marra. Reflecting both the mythological story of the Groper and the placement of the monolith that represents its head, this location can alternatively be referred to by the Yanyuwa expression nanda-wulaya ‘her head’. The Marra name similarly references the Groper, literally translating as ‘from (her) head’. Personal names are also commonly linked to places and Dreaming stories. The name Jabarlwulaya, for example, belongs to the Rrumburriya clan’s hill kangaroo Dreaming. There is no literal translation for jabarl-, as is common with the archaic forms retained in ‘bush names’ and song language. However, the significance of the second component, wulaya, is the association of this name with the head of the kangaroo looking over the country as he stands up.

6

Conclusion

Further to its literal reference to the human (and animal) head, the Yanyuwa word wulaya exhibits several systematic patterns of semantic extension. It may metonymically extend to objects that are canonically proximal to the head (such as wularrinja ‘headrest’), or the various feelings and character traits experienced within or associated with the head. Metaphorically, wulaya ‘head’ extends to refer to those parts of objects that are structurally analogous to the head. That is to say, the topmost part of an object in its canonical orientation. Wulaya ‘head’ may also be used metaphorically to refer to objects that resemble the human head both in shape and in attaching to a larger whole object via a neck-like stalk. This applies to both fruit/berries and the head of the penis. Lastly, wulaya ‘head’ is etymologically related to a number of proper names for people and places. In such cases, wulaya serves to link the places and people of today with the Ancestral Dreaming figures that created them. At the macrolevel, the network of senses expressed by the polysemous Yanyuwa term wulaya reflects cross-linguistically recurring patterns (for instance, those described in sections 3.1 and 4.2; cf. Sharifian et al. 2008; Brenzinger & Kraska-Szlenk 2014). Considered more closely, however, there are more culture- (and region-) specific details in the mapping of wulaya ‘head’ to its target (as discussed in, e.g., section 5), as well as the nature of the targets themselves (cf. sections 3.2 and 4.2).

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References Blake, Barry J. 1988. Redefining Pama-Nyungan. Aboriginal Linguistics 1. 1–90. Bradley, John. 1988. Yanyuwa: “Men speak one way, women speak another.” 126–134. University of New England, Department of Linguistics. Bradley, John & Alice Gaby. Forthcoming. Gender-based language differences. Bradley, John, Jean Kirton & Yanyuwa families. 1992. Yanyuwa Wuka, language from Yanyuwa Country. A Yanyuwa Dictionary and Cultural Resource. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Bradley, John & Yanyuwa families. 2016. Wuka nya-nganunga li-Yanyuwa li-Anthawirriyarra: Language for us Saltwater People. A Yanyuwa Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. 2 vols. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Brenzinger, Matthias & Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 2014. The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. Leiden: Brill. Capell, A. 1942. Languages of Arnhem Land, North Australia. Oceania 12(4). 364–392. doi:10.1002/j.1834–4461.1942.tb00365.x. Dixon, Robert Malcom Ward. 2002. Australian Languages: their nature and development (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirton, Jean. 1988a. Men’s and women’s dialects. In Nicholas Evans & Steve Johnson (eds.), Aboriginal Linguistics, vol. 1, 111–125. Armidale, NSW: University of New England. https://openresearch‑repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/10570 (9 March, 2017). Kirton, Jean. 1988b. Yanyuwa, a dying language. Work Papers of SIL—AAIB Series B. 1–18. Kirton, Jean F. & Bella Charlie. 1996. Further Aspects of the Grammar of Yanyuwa, Northern Australia (Pacific Linguistics C-131). Canberra: Australian National University. O’Grady, Geoffrey N., C.F. Voegelin & F.M. Voegelin. 1966. Languages of the World: IndoPacific Fascicle Six. Anthropological Linguistics 8(2). 1–197. Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu & Susanne Niemeier. 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL] v. 7). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. (13 December, 2016).

Index of Languages Abaza 146 Abkhaz 137n2, 139, 146 Aboriginal English 264 African language(s) 5, 18, 89, 166 Amazonian language(s) 149, 257 American English 129 Amharic 5, 137n2, 141, 146, 183–189, 191–197, 199–203 Anyula see Yanyuwa Apache 246 Arabic Modern Standard Arabic 137n2 Tunisian Arabic 3, 136, 143, 169 Arawá language(s) 245, 245n2, 248, 251 Argobba 146 Athabaskan language(s) 245 Australian Aboriginal language(s) 263 Austroasiatic language(s) 131 Ayoreo 4, 28, 29, 29n2, 29n3, 30, 30n4, 31, 32, 32n6, 33, 34, 34n9, 35, 35n10, 37, 38, 40–45, 45n21, 46–48 Baka 77, 84, 84n15, 85 Banawá 245 Banda 77–79, 82, 94, 95 Bantu language(s) 90 Basque 136, 165n4 Bularnu 263, 264 Capaya (Barbacoan) 127 Caucasian language(s) 146 Central Sudanic language(s) 90 Chadic language(s) 53, 54, 67, 72, 73 Chalcotongo Mixtec 127 Chamacoco 4, 28, 29, 29n2, 29n3, 30–32, 34, 34n9, 35–37, 39, 41–43, 45–48 Chinese 3, 4, 99–104, 106, 109–111, 113, 115, 118–121, 136 Coeur d’Alene 137n2, 139

English 1, 2n1, 3, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 54, 59, 78, 81n8, 85, 85n18, 87, 99–102, 105–107, 110–113, 115, 120, 124, 129, 130, 136, 138– 140, 142–145, 146n4, 147, 148, 148n5, 157, 162, 168n6, 169, 183, 188, 191, 192, 196, 224, 240, 264 Ethiosemitic languages 146 Ewe 137n2, 139 Finnish 137n2, 139 Finno-Ugric language(s) 220 French 21, 35, 61, 76n2, 78, 138, 139, 141–145, 146n4, 147, 148n5 Gbaya 77–80, 87, 94 Geʿez 188, 191 Georgian 146 German 3, 76n2, 81n8, 85n18, 109, 136, 143, 147, 157, 164, 216 Goajiro (Wayuu) 132 Great Andamanese 149, 260 Greek 18, 130 Haida 130, 131 Hausa 5, 137n2, 139, 141, 145, 146, 157–159, 159n2, 160–164, 167, 168, 168n6, 169–171, 173, 173n8, 174, 174n9, 175–180 Hu 130, 131 Hungarian 5, 131, 132, 137n2, 143, 219–221, 224, 228n3, 237–241, 243 Ɨbɨtoso see Ebitoso Indo-European language(s) 54, 186 Indonesian 3, 136, 137n2, 143, 145, 147, 157, 216 Italian 148 Jamamadi 245 Jarawara 245, 251

Deni 5, 17, 149, 245, 246, 246n3, 247, 247n4, 248, 249, 249n5, 250–261 Dhaasanac 139

Kam-Sui language(s) 108–109 Kriol 264 Kulina 149, 245, 246, 251, 252, 254, 260

Ebitoso (Ɨbɨtoso) 29, 36 Egyptian 137n2, 139

Lakkja 4, 108, 109 Lamet 131

274

index of languages

Latin 37, 130, 144, 145, 150 Lele 4, 51n1, 52, 67, 68, 72 Lendu 4, 77, 77n3, 81, 81n10, 82n10, 83, 88– 91, 95 Lue 4, 108

Sorowahá 245 Spanish 29n2, 147 Sumerian 142 Swahili 2n1, 3, 79n5, 136, 137n2, 138, 141–145, 146n4, 147, 180

Maasai 139 Madi 245 Manambu 137n2, 139 Marra 263, 270, 271 Mba language(s) 77n3 Mbane 77, 77n3, 88, 92 Mina 4, 51n1, 52, 58, 60, 62 Mok 131 Moré 137n2, 139

Tai language(s) Northern Tai language 119 Thaayorre 137n2, 139 Thai 100, 108, 128, 129 Tigre 137n2, 139, 146 Tomarãho 29, 36 Tupi 18 Turkish 3, 5, 136, 137n2, 147, 148, 205, 207, 209, 213, 214, 216, 217

Ngbaka-Maɓo 84, 84n15 Ngbandi 77–79, 82–85, 87, 88, 90, 92–95 Ngiti 77, 89–91, 95 Non-Pama-Nyungan language(s) 264 Norwegian 3, 136, 143, 157

Ubangian language(s) 4, 77, 77n3, 82n11, 84, 88, 92, 93, 95 Uralic language(s) 131–132, 220 Uyghur 129 Vietnamese 130, 131

Old Zamuco 4, 28, 28n1, 29, 29n2, 29n3, 30, 30n4, 31, 31n5, 32, 32n7, 33–35, 35n10, 37–42, 42n20, 44, 46, 48 Oromo 137n2, 139, 145, 147 Pama-Nyungan language(s) 263 Paumarí 245, 247, 252–254 Pero 4, 51n1, 52, 55, 56, 58, 62 Persian 205 Pirahã 149 Polish 2n1, 3, 61, 136, 142–144, 146, 146n4, 147, 148, 169, 238 Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese 13, 18–21, 247 European Portuguese 21–25 Sango 77, 79, 79n5, 80, 82–84, 86–88, 88n19, 92–95 Shona 137n2, 139

Wagaya 263, 264 Wandala 4, 51n1, 52, 62–64, 66, 72 Wardirri see Yanyuwa Warluwara 263, 264 Waurá 127, 128 Wayuu see Gaojiro Welsh 107, 139 Yanyula see Yanyuwa Yanyuwa (Anyula, Anyuwa, Wardirri, Yanyula) 5, 263, 264, 271 Yélî Dnye 130, 131 Zamucoan language(s) 28, 29, 34, 45 Zande 76, 76n1, 77–79, 79n5, 80, 82–86, 88, 90–92, 95, 137n2, 139 Zhuang 118, 119

Index of Names Abbi, A. 149, 260 Abinet S. 5, 137n2, 141, 146, 183, 194 Aikhenvald, A.Y. 3, 28n1, 54, 99n1, 137n2, 245n2, 248, 252, 253 Aksan, M. 3, 136, 137n2, 147, 205, 206, 210 Almajir, T.S. 159, 161, 175 Ameka, F.K. 137n2 Andersen, E.S. 2, 126–128, 130, 132–134, 136 Aoshuan, T. 65 Avcı, Y.Y. 209 Bacz, B. 3, 136, 138 Baker, C. 16 Baldus, H. 36, 36n12, 37n13 Bańczerowski, J. 221 Baranyiné Kóczy, J. 5, 137n2, 219 Barcelona, A. 139, 140, 171 Bargery, G.P. 158, 170 Bargh, J. 15 Baričić, I. 22 Barrios, A. 29 Barsalou, L.W. 1 Baş, M. 209 Basso, K.H. 246 Batoréo, H. 21 Bento, L.M. 24 Bergen, B. 1, 13 Bertinetto, P.M. 28n1, 29, 30, 31n5, 32, 34, 36, 38n15 Birmingham, W. 15 Blake, B.J. 263 Boggiani, G. 35, 35n11, 36 Booij, G. 109 Bórmida, M. 46, 46n23 Bouquiaux, L. 77, 83 Boyd, R. 96n22 Bradley, J. 5, 263–265, 267 Brdar, M. 23 Brown, C.H. 2, 126, 130, 136 Brugman, C. 127 Campbell, J. 130 Capell, A. 263 Carvalho, M.C.M.d. 4, 5, 13, 149, 245, 245n2, 248, 249, 249n5, 250, 254, 259

Chapman, S. 252, 254 Chappell, H. 100 Charlie, B. 263 Chomé, I. 28, 31, 32, 32n7, 34, 35, 37, 39, 39n18, 47, 48 Ciucci, L. 4, 28, 28n1, 29, 30, 31n5, 32–34, 34n9, 36, 37, 38n15, 48, 141 Clarke, D. 14 Claudi, U. 84 Clauson, G. 206 Croft, W. 183 Cruse, D.A. 183 Dagnachew, W. 184, 196 Dasher, R.B. 140 Derbyshire, D.C. 252, 254 Desta, T. 184, 195 Dienst, S. 245n2, 251, 252, 254, 260 Dikko, I. 158, 164 Dillmann, A. 194 Dirven, R. 16 Dixon, R.M.W. 28n1, 54, 245n2, 248, 251, 264 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 76, 77, 82, 92 Evans, N. 143n3 Everett, D.L. 149, 245n2 Farina, M. 31n5 Fauconnier, G. 148, 220 Ferreira, R.G. 19, 20 Fillmore, C.J. 16 Fischermann, B. 43, 44, 47 Frajzyngier, Z. 4, 51, 53–55, 58, 59, 62, 65–67, 72 Gaby, A. 5, 137n2, 143n3, 263, 264 Gans, C. 113 Garrigues-Cresswell, M. 67 Gibbs, R.W. 1, 15, 99 Girma, A. 195 Good, E.M. 157 Goossens, L. 140 Gore, E.C. 77, 80n7, 96n22 Gore, E.C. (Mrs.) 80n7 Gwarzo, Y.A. 159, 169

276

index of names

Heine, B. 3, 51, 53, 54, 73, 76n1, 83, 83n12, 83n13, 84, 89, 90, 99, 107, 136, 137, 137n2, 139, 140, 164, 166, 183, 184, 186, 194, 196 Hermanson, E.A. 175 Higham, A. 29 Hilpert, M. 3, 136, 137, 157, 161 Holt-Lunstad, J. 15 Hünnemeyer, F. 84 Hutchins, E. 220 Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I. Ingebrethsen, B. 180

13, 17, 136, 165n4

Jaggar, P.J. 158, 159, 161, 162 Jäkel, O. 143 Johnson, M. 1, 14, 20, 99, 137, 138, 146, 150, 157, 171, 183, 207, 220 Kane, T.L. 184 Kelm, H. 35, 37n13 Kilian-Hatz, Ch. 77, 84, 85 King, B. 171 Kirton, J. 263, 264, 267 Kövecses, Z. 3, 21, 139, 140, 172, 183, 196, 220 Kraska-Szlenk, I. 1, 2n1, 3, 4, 17, 19, 20, 83, 99, 125, 136, 137n2, 150, 157, 160, 183, 219, 246, 247, 271 Kuryłowicz, J. 51 Kuteva, T. 3, 51, 53, 54, 83, 83n12, 89, 99, 107, 136, 137n2, 186, 196 Kutsch-Lojenga, C. 77 Lakoff, G. 1, 13–15, 20, 25, 76, 87, 99, 137, 138, 146, 150, 157, 171, 183, 207, 220 Langacker, R. 13 Lehmann, Ch. 51 Lekens, B. 77, 83 Lerdpaisalwong, S. 128 Leslau, W. 184, 188, 194 Levinson, S.C. 131 Lewis, G. 205 Light, K.C. 15 Littlemore, J. 140 Lussagnet, S. 35, 40n19 Maalej, Z. 3, 125, 136, 137n1, 169, 219 Macciɗo, U. 158, 164 McPherron, P. 1

Mekuria, W. 184 Mol, S. 3, 85, 87, 88, 136, 157 Moravcsik, E. 132 Nerlich, B. Newman, J. Newman, P. Niemeier, S.

14 140 158, 159, 164, 180 3, 136

O’Grady, G.N. 263 Olza Zubiri, J. 132 Oravecz, C. 219 Ördem, E 206 Otaegui, A. 46n23 Özezen, M.Y. 206 Öztürk, B. 214, 215 Palmer, G.B. 137n2 Parsons, F.W. 163n3 Pasch, H. 4, 76, 76n1, 77n3, 80n7, 86, 88n19, 137n2, 141 Pattillo, K. 2n1, 4, 124, 127–129 Paul, G. 226 Pawlak, N. 146, 164, 178 Pia, G.E. 45 Radden, G. 16, 21, 139, 140, 149 Ramanathan, V. 1 Reis, S. 25 Rice, S. 140, 142 Richards, J. 128 Rosch, E. 220 Roulon-Doko, P. 77, 78 Rubin, A.D. 194 Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F.J. 140 Samarin, W. 77 Samuels, M.L. 51 Scherer, K. 16 Schladt, M. 146, 161 Schryver, G.M. 159 Sezer, T. 205 Sharifian, F. 3, 99, 136, 137n1, 143, 144n3, 219, 220, 271 Shettima, M. 169 Shine, N. 200 Siahaan, P. 3, 136, 137n2, 157, 163, 164, 216 Silva Soares, A. 21 Simões, J. 25

277

index of names Song, Kyung-An. 99, 194 Soriano, C. 16 Sušnik, B. 36, 41, 43, 47 Svantesson, Jan-Olof. 131 Svorou, S. 3, 83n12, 84, 84n16, 89, 95n21, 136, 137n2 Sweetser, E.E. 3, 175 Szczygłowska, T. 3, 136 Talmy, L. 89, 220 Taylan, E.E. 214, 215 Taylor, J.R. 140 Tesema, H. 184, 195 Tiss, F. 248 Tisserant, Ch. 77 Tobias, Ph. 100 Tolcsvai Nagy, G. 221 Traugott, E. 140 Trinh, T.H. 131 Tufar, N. 206 Turner, M. 148 Ugent, J.F. 16 Ulrich, M. 29 Ulrich, R. 29

Váradi, T. 219 Voegelin, C.F. 263 Voegelin, F.M. 263 Walde, A. 130 Walker, B. 28n1, 190, 193, 198 Weibegué, Ch. 67 Wierzbicka, A. 2, 3, 99, 136 Wilkins, D.P. 38n16, 126, 133, 134, 143n3, 185 Will, I. 5, 137n2, 141, 157, 158, 172n7, 173, 178n10 Williams, L. 15 Wilson, M. 15 Witkowski, S. 126 Yakup, M. 129 Yanyuwa families 263, 265, 267 Ye, Z. 100 Yılmaz, K. 206 Yu, N. 3, 100, 125, 136, 137n1, 219 Zanga, G. 86 Zhang, W. 140