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

Sat Dec 26 15:08:03 UTC 2020

Yahgan (Tierra del Fuego) orients with east being 'in' (since huts were
built with their openings facing west) and west being 'out'. When on the
water (they led a pelagic lifestyle)  left was the port/larboard side of
the canoe. But iski 'back' was also the south side (as of a tree).

Jess Tauber

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On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 9:37 AM Johanna Mattissen <
Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de> wrote:

> 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>
> 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> 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
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>
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