<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Dear Masha,<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Many thanks for your question.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Oceanic languages have at least one etymon for “soul”, Proto-Oceanic *<b>qata</b>(r) “image, reflection, shadow; soul, spirit”.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">The etymon is reflected directly in North Vanuatu languages, as an inalienable (obligatorily possessed) noun *<i>ʔata</i> “soul, spirit”:</div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif">Proto-North Vanuatu *<b>ʔata</b> (‑ña) ‘(his/her) soul, spirit’
<br>→ Hiw <i><b>ata</b>‑nə</i>; Lo-Toga <i><b>te</b>‑nə</i>; Lehali <i>n‑<b>eta</b>‑n</i>; Vurës <i><b>ata</b>‑n</i>; Mota <i><b>ata</b>‑na</i>. </font></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">(In Proto-N Vanuatu, that root happens to be homophonous with *ʔata “person, human being”, but this is probably an unrelated homophone — see discussion in publication mentioned below.)</div></blockquote><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">That etymon *ʔata “soul, spirit” contrasts with *taRabe “body”.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">*ʔata refers to the invisible part of a person that can be detached from the body, e.g. when dreaming. It is the part that survives death, and travels to the Underworld.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">The same word “soul, spirit” will also be used when describing the powers of a shaman: that is, special individuals who have the power to send their soul to remote places (to the Underworld, to Europe...) in order to achieve some magic, e.g. to resurrect someone who recently died.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">During my fieldwork, I collected numerous stories of soul-wandering, resurrection, shamanism, which are culturally important in this part of Melanesia. For example, you can read the beautiful [and real] story “<a href="https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/show?corpus=Hiw&lang=en&mode=pro&oai_primary=cocoon-c4a4432a-9fc2-3d91-b38a-4cbc6d85dd47&oai_secondary=cocoon-8a038bca-74d2-3c99-8e74-dbf07eaa1a4d&optionTextTranscriptions=&optionTextTranslations=en&optionSentenceTranscriptions=other&optionSentenceTranslations=en&optionWordTranscriptions=&optionWordTranslations=&optionMorphemeTranscriptions=&optionMorphemeTranslations=&optionNotes=&continuousPlay=false" target="_blank">The mat from the Other world</a>”, recorded in the Hiw language. (It features many instances of the Hiw noun <i>ata </i>mentioned above.) </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"> </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">I've also interviewed today's shamans and healers on their practices of soul-wandering.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">_________</div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">The “mind” would be lexified using etyma different from “soul”: </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><ul><li><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">e.g. *lolo “[s.o.'s] inside, inner self → mind, memory, emotions” (<POc *<a href="https://acd.clld.org/cognatesets/30230#s-7089" style="">ralom</a>); </font></li><li><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">*bʷatu “head, intelligence”,</font></li><li><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">*[do]domi “think → thought → mind, intelligence; ideas”</font></li></ul></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">The </font><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">“seat of emotions” would involve phrases with</span><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"> reflexes of *βara “liver”; *tobʷa “belly”... (In neighbouring languages it would involve the neck.)</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">In Vanuatu, I have never seen “mind” colexified with “soul”: these are unrelated notions. The <i>soul</i> is about being alive; the mind is about experiencing feelings, or being smart.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">________</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">I published an article on the lexical domain of "soul", "spirit", "mind" in North Vanuatu, discussing their etymologies and patterns of semantic change:<br></div><div class="gmail_default"><ul><li><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">François, Alexandre. 2013. <a href="http://alex.francois.online.fr/AFpub_articles_e.htm#29" target="_blank">Shadows of bygone lives: The histories of spiritual words in northern Vanuatu</a>. <br>In Robert Mailhammer (ed.). <i>Lexical and structural etymology: Beyond word histories</i>. Studies in Language Change, 11. Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton. 185-244.</font></li></ul></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">The paper includes a discussion of an important etymon in Vanuatu: namely, *<i>ʔata-mate</i>, liter. “dead person” (if derived from *ʔata 'person') or “dead soul” (if derived from *ʔata- 'soul'). That word is used in Oceanic mythologies to refer to the soul once it's detached from the body, after death → hence such meanings as “ghost”, “spirits of ancestors”, “deity”, “demon”, “ogre”… Hence the <a href="https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_2013_Shadows-of-bygone-lives-The-histories-of-spiritual-words-in-northern-Vanuatu.pdf#page=32">semantic map</a>:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align:center;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><img src="cid:ii_ltda2sa81" alt="image.png" width="463" height="392" style="margin-right:0px"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">________</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Finally, in another context, the concept of “soul” was quite prominent in the paper where I proposed the concept of colexification:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><ul style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><li><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif">François, Alexandre. 2008. <a href="http://alex.francois.online.fr/AFpub_articles_e.htm#18" target="_blank">Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages</a>. In Martine Vanhove (ed.). <i>From Polysemy to Semantic change: Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations</i>. Studies in Language Companion Series, 106. Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins. 163-215.</font></li></ul></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Indeed, I chose to illustrate my method of creating semantic maps by observing the polysemies around BREATHE. The semantic link I had in mind was the typologically recurrent link I had noticed between BREATH(E) and SOUL.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">For example, Hebrew רוּחַ [ruax] means “wind, air; spirit, soul; mind; ghost”;</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">and I drew this map for its Arabic cognate <i>rūh̻</i> (رُوح):<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align:center;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><img src="cid:ii_ltdgrg7w1" alt="image.png" width="472" height="298"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">I have observed the semantic connection between Breath(ing) and Soul in at least 12 language families around the world; though not in the Oceanic family.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">best</div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="2">Alex</font></span><hr style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:13.33px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" width="70" size="1" noshade align="left"><p style="font-family:verdana,geneva,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(69,129,142)">Alex François</span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></span></font></p><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><a style="text-decoration:none" href="http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">LaTTiCe</a> — <a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CNRS–</a></span></font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ENS</a></span></font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none">–</span></font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="https://www.psl.eu/en" rel="noopener" target="_blank">PSL</a></span></font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none">–</span></font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Sorbonne nouvelle</a><br></span><a style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alex-francois" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Australian National University</a></font><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><br></span></font></span></font></span><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"> </span><span style="text-decoration:none"></span></font></span><span style="text-decoration:none"><a style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://alex.francois.online.fr/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Personal homepage</a><br></span></font></span></div><div><font size="1">___________________</font><font size="1">___________________</font><font size="1">___</font><br><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"></span></font></span></div></div></div></div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Guillaume Jacques via Lingtyp</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2024 at 18:36<br>Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Body and soul / body and mind<br>To: Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm <<a href="mailto:tamm@ling.su.se" target="_blank">tamm@ling.su.se</a>><br>Cc: <a href="mailto:LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org</a> <<a href="mailto:LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br></div><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Dear Masha,<div><br></div><div>In Sino-Tibetan languages, there is surprisingly a cognate set for "soul", exemplified by Japhug <i>tɯ-rla</i>, Tibetan <i>bla</i>, Jinghpo <i>nùmlā</i> etc (see other cognates in <a href="https://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/etymon/2264" target="_blank">STEDT Etymon #2264 (berkeley.edu)</a>). Words translatable by "mind" or "body" vary a lot, but in Tibetan cultural areas they tend to be borrowed from Tibetan (Japhug <i>tɯ-sɯm</i> "mind", <i>tɯ-phoŋbu </i>from Tibetan <i>sems</i> "mind", <i>phuŋ.po</i> "heap, body"), and in Tibetan they have acquired meanings calqued from Sanskrit <i>manas</i>- and <i>skandha</i>-, respectively.</div><div><br></div><div>Guillaume</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Le lun. 4 mars 2024 à 16:27, Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> a écrit :<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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Dear colleagues,
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<div>I’ve got a question from a colleague working in health psychology about the dichotomies such as “body vs. soul”, “body vs. mind” etc, as opposed to “person”, “human being etc.: how spread are these across the cultures and languages of the world?
I know that a number of languages lack a dedicated word for ‘body’, but not so much about the distinction between the physical and non-physical aspects of human beings.</div>
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<div>I would be grateful for any information / references / pointers. </div>
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<div>All the best,</div>
<div>Maria / Masha</div>
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<div>Prof. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm<br>
Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm University<br>
106 91 Stockholm, Sweden<br>
tel.: +46-8-16 26 20<br>
<a href="mailto:tamm@ling.su.se" target="_blank">tamm@ling.su.se</a><br>
<a href="http://www.ling.su.se/tamm" target="_blank">http://www.ling.su.se/tamm</a><br>
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