[Lingtyp] Body and soul / body and mind

[Mark Post]

Dear Masha

To Guillaume’s useful comments I’d add that w.r.t. my own experience with Eastern Himalayan TB groups (principally Tani, but my understanding is that these ideas are more general), the concept of “soul” aligns with a realm of spirits, which is construed as a distinct world in a sort of interfaced relationship with the world of humans (this division is attributed to the early separation of two brothers, Tani, the progenitor of humans, and Taro, the progenitor of spirits). The physical world of humans is well-articulated, and indeed physical human and non-human bodies are exhaustively detailed – the practice of butchery being central to traditional lifestyles.

What is not as well-articulated, per my understanding, is the idea of mind as distinct from body, and/or thoughts as distinct from feelings. There is a sense, of course, that thoughts and feelings exist in some abstract sense, and there is vocabulary associated with thinking and feeling but these actions tend to be attributed to the operations of internal organs rather than to the brain, and are certainly not connected in any way to the spirit world.

And just to clarify, these are groups that have not been substantially influenced by Sanskritic or Tibetic cultures, so far as can be seen.

A (very long) book touching on some of these issues is Toni Huber’s Source of Life
https://austriaca.at/8269-6, and some amount of related vocabulary is found in Jackson Sun’s 1993 PhD thesis A historical-comparative study of the Tani (Mirish) branch in Tibeto-Burman, which I don’t see anywhere online but could provide if requested.

All best
Mark

Dr. Mark W. Post | Senior Lecturer (Linguistics)
Co-Director, Centre for Cultural-Linguistic Diversity (Eastern Himalaya)<http://ccld-eh.org/>
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Rm 838 Brennan MacCallum Building | A18 Manning Road | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006 | AUSTRALIA
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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Guillaume Jacques via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, 5 March 2024 at 04:36
To: Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm <tamm at ling.su.se>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Body and soul / body and mind
Dear Masha,

In Sino-Tibetan languages, there is surprisingly a cognate set for "soul", exemplified by Japhug tɯ-rla, Tibetan bla, Jinghpo nùmlā etc  (see other cognates in STEDT Etymon #2264 (berkeley.edu)<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/8tunCVARKgC2W6PyXfG6N9l?domain=stedt.berkeley.edu>). Words translatable by "mind" or "body" vary a lot, but in Tibetan cultural areas they tend to be borrowed from Tibetan (Japhug tɯ-sɯm "mind", tɯ-phoŋbu from Tibetan sems "mind", phuŋ.po "heap, body"), and in Tibetan they have acquired meanings calqued from Sanskrit manas- and skandha-, respectively.

Guillaume



Le lun. 4 mars 2024 à 16:27, Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> a écrit :
Dear colleagues,

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.

I would be grateful for any information / references / pointers.

All the best,
Maria / Masha

Prof. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
tel.: +46-8-16 26 20
tamm at ling.su.se<mailto:tamm at ling.su.se>
http://www.ling.su.se/tamm<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/c1mwCWLVXkU6MKyqxixjKmM?domain=ling.su.se>



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Guillaume Jacques

Directeur de recherches
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