6.1127, Sum: 'eye'

Sat Aug 19 13:50:28 UTC 1995

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-1127. Sat Aug 19 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  138

Subject: 6.1127, Sum: 'eye'

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---------------------------------Directory-----------------------------------
1)
Date:  Sat, 19 Aug 1995 09:12:59 EDT
From:  amr at CS.Wayne.EDU (Alexis Manaster Ramer)
Subject:  Summary: Adpositional uses of 'eye'

---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date:  Sat, 19 Aug 1995 09:12:59 EDT
From:  amr at CS.Wayne.EDU (Alexis Manaster Ramer)
Subject:  Summary: Adpositional uses of 'eye'

In response to my query:

>In languages where body part terms become adpositions, does
>anybody know of examples where 'eye' gives rise to some kind of
>locative, such as 'on' or 'in front of'?

I received several very useful replies, for which many thanks.  It
transpires that numerous languages indeed do do this.  Specifics
follow:

Alice Faber (faber at lenny.haskins.yale.edu):

     Biblical Hebrew has _b@'ene_ (@=schwa, '=ayin), 'in front of',
     literally "in  the eyes of". I'm not sure how transparent it
     would have been...

Jose Alvarez "Pipo"  (jalvar at conicit.ve OR jalvar at luz.ve):

     In Guajiro, an Arawakan language spoken by some 300000 people
     in Venezuela and Colombia, -'u  is an inalienable noun meaning
     'eye' is also used as as a locative or temporal adposition in:
     jo'u siki, lit. 'eye of the fire', tr. 'in the fire', jo'u
     wanee ka'i, lit. 'eye of one day',  tr. 'on one day' (I omit
     the numerous other examples generously provided by Dr. ALvarez
     from this summary).

Chris Culy (culy at Csli.Stanford.EDU)

     Bambara (Mande) and Donno So (Dogon) are at least close to
     what you are looking for. They both use "eye" together with a
     general postposition for "in front of". Some examples (not in
     real orthography, but I can provide those as well).

     Bambara:  Adama nye fe (Adama eye with) 'in front of Adama'

     Donno So: Anta giru ne (Anta eye at/to) 'in front of Anta'

Gabor Gyori (GYORIG at btk.jpte.hu)

     In Hungarian we have "szemben" 'opposite', e.g. "a hazzal
     szemben" 'opposite the house', where szem = eye + -ben = in
     (haz = house + -val [assimilated to -zal] = with)

Annette Herskovits (hersko at bambam.wellesley.edu), referring, to
     papers by Penelope Brown and Steve Levinson on Tzeltal
     mentions the use of _sit_ ('eye') as a locative but does not
     recall the specific meaning.

Willem J. de Reuse (WDEREUSE at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU):

     In Navajo, there is a Postpositional stem -naal (high tone on
     V, barred l) meaning 'in the presence of', etymologically
     related to -naa'  (High tone on V) 'eye'.  See the Young and
     Morgan dictionary (1992).  Also cognates in related languages
     such as Apache. Can also be translated as: 'in front of'

Clifford L. Lutton, Jr. (lexes at MindSpring.COM) suggests that the
following English usages might be relevant:

OUT THERE in the public's eye
reality is IN the eye of the beholder
OUT THERE satellites are keeping an eye ON the site
with an eye TOWARD litigation
with every eye UPON him, he then
see ghetto life THROUGH  ghetto eyes [OUT THERE or IN]
IN my [MIND'S] eyes , something is the situation
hit America BETWEEN the eyes
in the [MINDs'] eyes of the Arab countries
to take pictures or to eyeball [LOCATE] it from 500 feet

EDIT at vms.huji.ac.il mentions a rather different usage, derived from
'eye', in modern Hebrew: me-'eyn (lit. from-eye-of) means 'a kind
of'.

Nicholas Ostler (nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk) quotes some old
grammars of Chibcha/Muisca:

Delante, en presencia. Pedro ubana ... upqua-fihistan... Aunque el
primero dice presencia, el segundo dice vista, y asi dice: m-upqua
fihistan zos machiba, ponlo delante de tus ojos, llegalo a tusojos,
o, llega la cosa a tus ojos para que la veas (Gonza'lez de Pe'rez,
Mari'a Stella. 1987. 'Diccionario y Grama'tica Chibcha' - MS
ano'nimo de la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia. Biblioteca
'Ezequiel Uricoechea' 1.  Bogota': Instituto Caro y Cuervo. p. 230)

 ... Estos tres ultimos se dicen de cosa plana, y de cosa que
propiamente no tiene asiento, como el aire (Quesada Pacheco, Miguel
A. 1991. Vocabulario Mosco. 1612. Estudios de Lingu"i'stica
Chibcha, Tomo X, 29-100. Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica.
38v s.v. Sobre:fihista fihistaca fihistana)

 "na" or "n" is a postposition of static location "m-" is a 2nd
person singular personal prefix There is no explicit plural marking
in this language.

"uba" means "face"
"upqua" means "eye"
"fihista" properly means "chest" but is commonly used as part of=
a local periphrasis for "on".

Finally, Monica Macaulay (macaulay at sage.cc.purdue.edu) tells me
     that the 15 Mixtec languages she looked at DO NOT have this
     usage, although it is interesting to see the list of other
     body part terms so used: face, hand, insides/heart, stomach,
     back (of a human),  back (of an animal)/nape, head, mouth,
     side, chest, foot, buttocks, ear, waist, throat
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