Can Nomenclature for the Body be Explained by Embodiment Theories?

Abstract

According to widespread opinion, the meaning of body part terms is determined by salient discontinuities in the visual image; such that hands, feet, arms, and legs, are natural parts. If so, one would expect these parts to have distinct names which correspond in meaning across languages. To test this proposal, we compared three unrelated languages-Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian-and found both naming systems and boundaries of even basic body part terms display variation across languages. Bottom-up cues alone cannot explain natural language semantic systems; there simply is not a one-to-one mapping of the body semantic system to the body structural description. Although body parts are flexibly construed across languages, body parts semantics are, nevertheless, constrained by non-linguistic representations in the body structural description, suggesting these are necessary, although not sufficient, in accounting for aspects of the body lexicon.

Current Perspectives on Cognitive Diversity

“…Although findings are more controversial for color categorization than for biological categorization ( Regier et al, 2005 ; Roberson et al, 2005 ), they seem to confirm that, once language comes into play, color perception is indeed tinged ( Regier and Kay, 2009 ). Similar findings are reported also for other domains ( Malt and Majid, 2013 ; Majid and Van Staden, 2015 ) and even for sense modalities like olfaction, which have long been neglected by Western science as underdeveloped and coarse-grained (partly due to the coarse-grained taxonomy on smells in Western languages such as English). Recent studies on olfaction among hunter-gatherer groups in Southeast Asia, in contrast, furnished evidence for the capability of human languages to encode smell qualities in a much more fine-grained, coherently structured manner ( Majid and Burenhult, 2014 ; Wnuk and Majid, 2014 ).…”

Semantic systems in closely related languages

“…In a series of studies, Majid and colleagues investigated the cross-linguistic variability of referential meaning for body part terms, analogous to investigations of colour (e.g., Majid et al, 2006;Majid and van Staden, 2015;Majid, 2010). They found languages differ in what parts get singled out for naming, and in the precise extensions those parts have.…”

Comparison Types in the Semantic Extension of Diidxazá Body Part Terms

“…Validating this hypothesis would require further analysis within the context of embodiment theories and crosslinguistic studies of the body as a semantic domain (cf. Majid & van Staden, ). To summarize, though, and to return to the initial point about overgeneration, what can be said is that restricting overgeneration is unlikely to be governed only by the types of comparisons and processes that allow for the semantic extension of BPTs to name object parts.…”

“…The analysis of the BPT ñee is ideal in illustrating the role of analogy in the process of semantic extension. Before the analysis can be presented, and in order to avoid the lack of precision that comes from loosely translating BPTs from one language to another (see Majid & van Staden, ), it is necessary to establish what the extension of ñee might be in Diidxazá. In the BPT elicitation task, speakers 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8 colored the crural regions of the human body as the extension of the BPT ñee .…”