"hit in/on/to"

[dcoles]

Dear Listers
Teaching English to non-native speakers, I came up empty in response to a student's query. Perhaps you can help.
In a news report regarding a hockey player taken to court for excessive roughness, the announcer included details of a previous case in which the defendent had "hit his opponent in the head with a hockey stick."
The student asked why "in" - not "on the head." 
Certainly a different mental image is conjured when I say "he was hit on the head" and "he was hit in the head," but that's hardly a helpful answer for a non-native speaker. We can be hit "in the gut" but it would sound odd to say we've been hit "on the gut." And in boxing, we hear a hit "to" the shoulder or head.
I thought about the need for a human mechanism as opposed to a falling rock or other inanimate object, but that didn't go very far. (He was hit on the head by a falling rock, Joe hit him in the head .  . . the wind blew in his face . . . etc.)
I also thought about the site of impact - yes, the gut is sometimes soft and squishy but most heads are pretty solid.
So, aside from slang and idiom ("hit on" meaning to chat up or make a pass at, or "hit on an idea" meaning to gain inspiration in thought) I haven't been able to make a suitable rule to sort out these prepositional Shiboleths that mark the speaker. If this has been discussed before, will you let me know where I can find it? If not, will you take a crack at it? I need a ready explanation that will be accessible to advanced ESL learners.
Thanks . . .
Devon Coles 
 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/attachments/20000925/11913f1e/attachment.htm>