[Lingtyp] “Rear=North” in Mainland Northeast Asia

Sat Dec 26 14:35:35 UTC 2020

Dear all,

> It would be interesting to know whether the relationship between 
> 'back' and 'north' is mainly restricted to languages spoken in the far 
> north of the globe.
Various orientation systems have been described by the Nijmegen project 
group and Ozanne-Rivierre and where orientation is with respect to 
landmarks like mountains and rivers or to winds, cardinal directions are 
seen from the respective viewpoint. In Hupa, North and downstream are 
the same direction.
West Greenlanders face the sea for their orientation system with the 
mountains in their back, so North and right are the same direction (cf. 
demonstrative system).
As for Mainland NE Asia directions may be oriented at and/or calqued 
from China as the dominant power of the region.
The Nivkh (Lower Amur and Sakhalin island) have /ari /'north wind' and 
j-ari-d ~ jəri-d’ 'follow s.o./s.th.' besides 'side wind' and 'onshore 
(south) wind' (otherwise the orientation system is based on the Amur 
river and the mountains or the sea).

Best,
Johanna

Am 26.12.2020 um 08:32 schrieb Jonathon Lum:
> Dear Ian (and all),
>
> A highly relevant paper on this topic (though not specifically on 
> Northeast Asia) is:
>
> *Brown, Cecil H. (1983). 'Where do cardinal direction terms come 
> from?'. /Anthropological Linguistics. /Vol. 25 (2). Pp. 121-161.*
> *
> *
> It appears that where cardinal direction terms are related to terms 
> for 'front', 'behind', 'left' or 'right' at all, the most common 
> situation involves an eastward orientation, i.e. 'east' corresponds 
> with 'front', or 'west' with 'behind', or 'north' with 'left', or 
> 'south' with 'right', or more than one of these correspondences. This 
> is the kind of system described by various others in the thread, and 
> appears to relate to the salience and cultural significance of the 
> rising sun. However, other canonical postures are possible, including 
> the one you describe for Mainland Northeast Asia, but also others 
> (e.g. Hawaiian apparently has a right/north and left/south 
> association). It would be interesting to know whether the relationship 
> between 'back' and 'north' is mainly restricted to languages spoken in 
> the far north of the globe.
>
> Best,
> Jonathon
>
> On Sat, 26 Dec 2020 at 11:55, Siva Kalyan 
> <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com 
> <mailto:sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Sanskrit likewise has /dakṣiṇa/ (> "Deccan [plateau]"), which
>     means both "right" and "south". And I just learned that /teṉ/ in
>     Tamil has the same polysemy. The terms for "north" do not mean
>     "left" in either of these languages, though.
>
>     Siva
>
>>     On 25 Dec 2020, at 9:18 pm, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de
>>     <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
>>
>>     Dear Ian (and all),
>>
>>     In the Middle East, forward/backwards maps on to the cardinal
>>     points at a 90º rotation to what you describe for NE Asia.  In
>>     (poetic) Hebrew, E is 'forward', while in Arabic, N is 'left',
>>     while 'Yemen' is, etymologically, 'right' — in all three cases,
>>     you're facing east.
>>
>>     One might speculate that both systems are sun-oriented, the
>>     Middle-Eastern system towards the highly-valued rising sun, and
>>     the NE Asian system towards the location of the sun at midday.
>>
>>     David
>>
>>
>>
>>     On 25/12/2020 08:29, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
>>>     Dear typologists,
>>>
>>>     I am currently working on a doctoral project focusing on the
>>>     areality of Mainland Northeast Asia (Korea, Mongolia, Northeast
>>>     China, but *not* Japan, Russian Far East, or Southern/Western
>>>     China).
>>>     One of the interesting possible areal features of MNEA languages
>>>     (Tuvan, Manchu, Korean, Mandarin, and Mongolian) that I’ve found
>>>     is that these five languages, except Mandarin, can express
>>>     “North” with the word meaning “rear; back; behind”. Please see
>>>     the map:
>>>
>>>
>>>     (Note that, in Mandarin, /bei/ 北 `North’ and /bei /背 `back;
>>>     backside’ differ only in tone, and are etymologically related)
>>>     I’m curious if this polysemy exists in other areas as well, and
>>>     if so, what would be the motivation? (Historical? Cultural?
>>>     Religious? Cognitive? Climatic?)
>>>
>>>     Regards,
>>>     Ian
>>>
>>>
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>>     -- 
>>     David Gil
>>       
>>     Senior Scientist (Associate)
>>     Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>>     Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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>>       
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