Climate, clothing and body-part nomenclature

Abstract

Several recent studies describe polysemous relationships that occur widely in languages. For example, approximately two-thirds of the languages of the world use a single term to designate both "wood" and "tree" (Witkowski, Brown, and Chase 1981), and almost one-half merge "eye" and "face" under a single term (Brown and Witkowski 1983). This paper documents occurrences of widespread polysemy involving terms for parts of human limbs.1 For instance, many geographically and genetically unrelated languages use a single term to denote "hand" and "arm" (hand/arm polysemy) and many equate "foot" and "leg" (foot/leg polysemy). Polysemy plays an important role in lexical change. The development of polysemy is a common means whereby languages encode new referents or alter the encoding of existing ones (Brown and Witkowski 1983). Typically this involves expanding a word for one referent to another when both referents bear a common "meaning relation" to one another (cf. Casagrande and Hale 1967; Lyons 1963, 1977). For example, hand is related to arm, and foot to leg, through physical connection or spatial contiguity. These limb parts are also components of the upper and lower limb respectively. In addition to these meaning relations, others such as class inclusion and likeness/resemblance often mediate polysemy development (Brown 1979a; Brown and Witkowski 1983). Development of polysemy typically involves extending a term for a high salience referent to one of low salience (Brown and Witkowski 1983). Referents may be high in salience for humans due to intrinsic properties that make them perceptually very distinct (Berlin, Boster, and O'Neill 1981; Hunn 1977) or because they are culturally very important (Witkowski and Brown 1983) or because of both of these factors. Labels associated with high salience referents tend strongly to be "unmarked" in languages; i.e., they are more frequent in use, simpler in form, and acquired earlier by children learning language than "marked" labels associated with low salience referents (Greenberg 1966, 1975). Evidence presented here indicates that hand and foot are regularly of high salience for humans compared to arm and leg respectively. Similarly, terms for the former are typically unmarked in languages compared to terms for the latter. Hence, polysemy development has commonly involved expansion of "hand" terms to arm and "foot" terms to leg rather than the reverse direction. The existence?and consequent cultural importance?of extensive wearing apparel in a society negatively influences the occurrence of limb polysemy. The presence of elaborate tailored clothing covering the limbs greatly increases the distinctiveness of limb parts and renders more likely their labeling by separate terms. In addition, ancillary apparel such as gloves, mittens, socks, shoes, and