control and body

[Jess Tauber]

Hi, folks. I wanted to run something by the lurkers to find out if anything
is known about the following:  In Mongolian there are large numbers of
expressive, phonosemantically transparent forms dealing with body posture and
also with material consistency, as if they dealt with the same underlying
domain. Korean has many forms like this as well, as well as some dealing with
facial shapes and expressions. The interesting thing about these is that they
deal with parts of the body near to the trunk or central axis, and with
relatively low articulatory complexities. Note also that low control seems to
be implied.

Yahgan, on the other hand, has an extensive list of forms dealing with the
distribution of arms and legs about the body (an almost semaphoric metaphor),
absent from the above language types- this articulatory scheme which may be
high in control sense. And Yahgan has posture forms grammaticalized. A
connection? Yahgan also is bipartite, and has a big list of
bodypart/instrument prefixes. So I'm wondering whether the equivalence of
body part with instrument itself has something to do with the way Yahgan
deals with proximal versus distal body parts in expressive formulations here.

It would be interesting to know what Korean and Mongolian do with body parts
(are they primarily more like locations?).  Is there any way that these
languages mirror Yahgan in that terms dealing with limbs or manipulation
grammaticalize?

Those expressives in the above two languages which deal with material
consistency/texture seem to do so with focus on the mass, or larger whole
such materials are part of, while in Yahgan equivalent forms are about
individuated masses primarily if masses are implied at all. Another
connection? Limbs as subdivided extensions of the body versus the mass of the
body itself sans limbs?

Any thoughts out there?

Thanks,
Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com

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