35.1882, Review: The Grammar of Body-Part Expressions: Zariquiey and Valenzuela (eds.) (2022)

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Subject: 35.1882, Review: The Grammar of Body-Part Expressions: Zariquiey and Valenzuela (eds.) (2022)

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Date: 27-Jun-2024
From: David Robertson [ddr11 at columbia.edu]
Subject: Anthropological Linguistics, Typology: Zariquiey and Valenzuela (eds.) (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.46

EDITOR: Roberto Zariquiey
EDITOR: Pilar M Valenzuela
TITLE: The Grammar of Body-Part Expressions
SUBTITLE: A View from the Americas
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: David Robertson

SUMMARY

(xxv + 499 pp.) Here is a sampling of the ways in which a single
conceptual domain, body parts (BPs), is lexically and grammatically
handled by languages of a fairly coherent geographic region; nearly
all the chapters are devoted to South American languages. Surveying
various regions of that continent is necessarily a typological matter,
and the chapters (most from a themed conference) are descriptive,
referencing crosslinguistic studies with a minimum of specialized
terminology.

Chapter 1 “Introduction”, by the editors (1-13), previews the contents
in detail. Situating the remaining contributions in a worldwide
overview of BP encoding, Christian Lehmann’s Chapter 2, “Foundations
of Body-Part Grammar” (14-76), would seem the authoritative synopsis
to date of this subfield. In carefully economical prose, he condenses
centuries of scholarship into a clear outline verbalizing even those
traits that might simply pass as unquestioned assumptions. He shows
(§2.2) in what ways BPs are and are not prototypical concepts, the
syntactic classes that can encode them, their basic semantic
properties, the important subject of meronymy (part-whole relations),
possession, alienability, control of part (P) by whole (W), BPs’
spatial and instrumental functions in languages, and contrasts with
kinship concepts. In §2.3, he identifies the overall patterns in the
great array of structures involving BPs: attribution of possession,
ascription of a property to a BP, and W & P in many combinations of
participant roles. The concept of the empathy (a.k.a. animacy)
hierarchy is shown to be of enormous use in understanding the patterns
found.

Then come the individual studies, first in Part I, “Categorialization,
Lexicalization, and Semantic Processes Associated with Body-Part
Expressions”. The brief Chapter 3 is “The Use of nayra ‘eye’ in
Muylaq’ Aymara: Body, Time, and Space” by Matt Coler, Bertie Kaal, and
Edwin Banegas-Flores (79-90). It is shown that ‘eye’ conventionally
has a spatial sense as ‘East’, and a temporal one as ‘past’, both with
evidential implications, and the authors argue Aymara conceives of
space and time as a single concept.

Chapter 4, “Pathways and Patterns of Metaphor and Metonymy in
Mixtepec-Mixtec Body-Part Terms” (BPTs) by Jack Bowers (91-125),
examines extended meanings of BPTs. These include parts of non-human W
(e.g. ‘belly of table’) and functions of W (such as ‘eye of house’);
prepositionlike uses (‘the bird is sitting (at) my face’ i.e. in front
of me); and grammaticalizations into benefactives, comparatives,
relativizers, and cause (reason) indicators.

Relevant morphosyntax and semantics are outlined in Chapter 5 “Body
Parts in Toba: From the Biological to the Emotional Domain” by Paola
Cúneo and Cristina Messineo (126-148). BPs have extended use in plant
and animal taxonomy, derived verbs, and affective forms including
pejoratives; internal organs are associated with psychological states
whereas visible organs connote social interactions. Constructions of
active verb + BP convey temporary behavior, while BPs with statives
express permanent states, and those with existentials temporary
states. This language is argued to operate with a decentralized notion
of personhood as a unitary cognitive-emotional interface between
individual and environment.

In Chapter 6, “Body-Part Categorization and Grammar in Piaroa” by
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada (149-187), we learn of terms for BPs and
related concepts: positions, effluvia, animal BPs, and ‘spirit; mind’.
The author discusses the physical extent of reference of several BPTs
in native understanding, also pointing out uses in measurement and
denoting emotion. BP lexemes are shown to occupy a lexicalization
continuum from simplex (only 1 term, ‘tooth’) to complex noun phrases
(2 BPTs for ‘uterus’), most falling between these extremes and
involving CLs (classifiers). At the phrasal level, BPTs can cooccur
with possessor NPs and numerals; also with demonstratives, but only in
elicitation contexts. At the clausal level, although inanimate in this
language, BPTs can be subjects as well as objects or obliques. Further
areal and crosslinguistic research is indicated to account for the
variability in animacy of BPs in regional languages.

Part I concludes with Chapter 7, “A Typology of Body-Part Words in
Eastern Tukanoan Languages” by W.D.L. Silva (188-212). This
contribution surveys possessive constructions throughout Tukanoan,
adducing evidence that Proto-Tukanoan had only a strategy juxtaposing
possessor with possessed noun. It argues that under Arawakan contact
influence, the Eastern branch grammaticalized a word for ‘thing’ into
a dedicated possession marker, and further into an
alienable-possession morpheme.

Part II, “The Grammar of Body-Part Expressions”, opens with Chapter 8,
“Tariana Body Parts in North Arawak Perspective: What makes a Human
Live?” by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (215-237). This study produces one
of the more overt multi-level taxonomies in the book, showing that a
human is composed of (A) -kale ‘soul’ and (B) -daki ‘body’, the latter
comprised of many named parts, most obligatorily possessed and
grammatically animate by default. Both components have their own
distinct grammatical patterns, reflecting this cultural conception of
personhood. Careful note is made of which BPs can be pluralized and
which not; when a BP can take an inanimate shape CL; and so on.

Chapter 9 is “Body-Part Terms in Baure and Paunaka: A Comparative
Analysis” by Swintha Danielsen and Lena Terhart (238-268). In these
languages, most BPs are inalienably possessed (‘blood’ and some
internal BPs for example are not), otherwise requiring a special
“unpossession” morpheme to enable their nonliteral use. In Baure,
possessed BPs of lexical-noun possessors carry person marking on both
P and W. Compounding involving BPs and deriving nouns having
comparatively specific reference is highly productive in Baure, less
so in Paumaka. There are a number of clearly cognate simplex BPTs
between these languages tracing to proto-Arawakan, but many are
noncognate, at least one of them presumably an innovation, apparently
the case too with the noticeable mismatches between complex BPTs.
Limbs tend to be colexified with their extremities. A distinction
between internal versus external portions of BPs and of the body is
pervasive, perhaps ancient.

Still another Arawakan language features in Chapter 10, “The Grammar
of Body Parts in Apurinã”, by Sidi Facundes, Marília Freitas, and
Bruna Fernanda Lima-Padovani (269-285), again having inalienable BPTs.
These are de-possessed by the suffix -txi, which also forms deverbal
nouns, apparently a newer historical development. Kin terms are not
inalienable, although e.g. personal belongings and abstract concepts
are.

Besides Lehmann’s Chapter 2, the only other typological survey in this
collection is Chapter 11, “Topicality, Affectedness, and Body-Part
Grammar”, by Marianne Mithun (286-309). This points out that
grammatical BPT possession strategies enlisted by some languages are
better analyzed as primarily indicating topic status and
non-agentivity of the notional possessor. The preferencing of such
strategies as dative or object marking over explicit mention of
possession is susceptible to spread via contact, independent of the
specific morphemic forms taken in any given language. This is the only
chapter focusing on North American languages, including Iroquoian,
Eskimo-Aleut, Pomoan, Wintun, Yuki, and Wappo. Intrusion of overt
possession marking into these languages is demonstrated in a section
on Central Pomo-English contact (§11.4.4).

A more historically oriented contribution is Chapter 12, “Body Parts
and Possessive Constructions in Mataguayan Languages”, by Verónica
Nercesian and Alejandra Vidal (310-334). In these languages possessed
BPTs display, to various degrees, traces of what must diachronically
have been a prefix *t(V)-, proposed to have been originally a
possessive CL. In perhaps a secondary development, a more or less
identical morpheme shows up also in verbs, to differentiate agentive
from non-agentive intransitive subjects.

Chapter 13 is “Body-Part Terms in Mapudungun: Word-Formation
Strategies and Syntactic Behavior”, by Felipe Hasler, Mariana Poblete,
Consuelo Sandoval, Felipe Neira, Daniela Aristegui, and Ricardo Pineda
(335-372). This study is based on analysis of a large number of texts
spanning more than four centuries. It shows that a large portion of
BPTs in this language are simplex, while few are reduplicated;
compound terms are very common, but few derived terms are found. Older
(often not fully analyzable) terms sometimes coexist with newer, more
transparent, synonyms. The syntactic behavior of the BPTs is examined
following Lehmann’s (cf. Chapter 2) taxonomy. Structures exist to
ascribe BPT possession or BPT-related properties to a W. For a P to be
expressible without reference to a W, it must be part of the predicate
(incorporated, verbalized, etc.) or in the oblique case. W’s higher
position in the empathy hierarchy guarantees that it is not demotable,
and is expressed even when redundant to a construction.

The Kawapanan language Shiwilu is examined in Chapter 14, “Plant and
Animal Body-Part Terms in Shiwulu [SIC] Grammar: Classification,
Nominalization, and Incorporation”, by Pilar M. Valenzuela (373-400).
The majority of the CLs in this language, which productively generate
new lexemes, connote human, animal, or plant BPs. Three of these CLs
have grammaticalized into nominalizers of verbs, resulting in
instrumental, agent, and resultant-product nouns, respectively. Two
valency-modifying suffixes verbalize BPTs and other nouns, e.g.
turning ‘blood’ into ‘bleed’ and ‘menstruate’. BPTs incorporate into
verbs, either in full lexical form or as the relevant CLs, often
resulting in predicates of nonspecific, customary situations, with the
BPT argument backgrounded and/or the notional possessor foregrounded
as a core argument.

Another of the diachronic studies here is Chapter 15, “Vestiges of
Body-Part Prefixation in Marubo”, by David W. Fleck (401-424).
Marshaling speakers’ folk-linguistic insights, community historical
information, and comparison with other Panoan languages, the author
seeks to explain the uncharacteristic rarity and nonproductivity of BP
prefixes on verbs in this language. It appears that frequency effects
may explain the present-day Marubo facts: those of BP prefix+root
combinations that were more often used in discourse tended to remain
in this language, while less frequent combinations dropped out.

A related, but obsolescing language, is presented in Chapter 16, “The
Grammar of Body-Part Expressions in Iskonawa: Lexicalization,
Possession, Prefixation, and Incorporation”, by Roberto Zariquiey,
Jaime Montoya, Juana Ticona, Luz Carhuachín, Yessica Reyes, Roxana
Quispe-Collantes, José Paz, and Aarón Torres (425-440). The greatest
number of BPTs in this language are morphologically complex, involving
either BP prefixes or compounding. Possession marking, unusually, is
determined by the referentiality status of the possessor, rather than
by alienability. BPTs combine with adjectivals or nouns, giving a
locative sense, in either of two formations (or both simultaneously).
This language, oddly for its family, prefers BPT incorporation into
verbs over use of the equivalent BP prefix, perhaps as a byproduct of
obsolescence.

The book concludes with another diachronic contribution, Chapter 17,
“Body-Part Nouns, Prefixation, Incorporation, and Compounding in
Panoan and Takanan: Evidence for the Pano-Takanan Hypothesis?”, by
Roberto Zariquiey and Pilar M. Valenzuela (441-466). The authors
enumerate regular sound correspondences between the two
proto-languages, a substantial set of probable cognates (half of which
are BPTs), and suggestive syntactic similarities including verb
incorporation, adjective incorporation, and noun-noun compounding.
They conclude that there is good evidence for the hypothesis that
these families are genetically related.

The above chapters are bookended with the “Contents” (v-vi), “List of
Figures” ((vii-viii), “List of Tables” (ix-x), “List of Abbreviations”
(xi-xvii), “The Contributors” (xviii-xxv), “References” (467-493), and
“Index of Subjects” (494-499).

EVALUATION

This volume exceeds its goals. Exactly as intended by the editors
(page 2), this collection supplies valuable in-depth illustrations of
how BPTs interact with the overall morphology, syntax, and semantics
of individual languages – also, it should be added of many chapters,
the lexical structure thereof. It is not only linguistic typologists
and cognitive linguists who will benefit (loc. cit.), but also
anthropological linguists, and students from the advanced
undergraduate level onward will find their basic training deepened by
seeing it employed in the generally theory-neutral approaches followed
by the contributors. As in any solid typological work, no previous
acquaintance with specialized terminology beyond that used in all
linguistic work is required of the reader.

Lehmann’s survey (Chapter 2) stands out, and could stand alone, as a
core text from which those participating in an honors or graduate
seminar can pursue the characterization of a given language’s
treatment and use of BPTs. This chapter is a model of concision, both
in its survey of the history of BPT research and in its summary of the
structural patterns found worldwide. It excels at articulating points
that otherwise would go as unexamined assumptions, e.g., that a BP is
not a prototypical physical object in that it is “not clearly
delimited against the rest of the body, is isolated from it only under
special circumstances and therefore does not normally move away from
its body” (15). By bolding select words, it provides relevant
terminology for the reader to use in analyzing any language’s BPTs,
e.g. “vital” BP’s (16), the “sympathetic relation” between BPs and
whole bodies (20), and “derelationalization” of inalienable nouns
(26). The highly organized presentation of this chapter makes it quite
terse and dense; no crossreferencing is made to the other chapters
(although some of them do point to this one). Thus the individual
reader will have to think through the implications of each of
Lehmann’s points. It is helpful that, where certain influential
theories use fuzzy or misleading terms, Lehmann is quick to critique
these, such as “possessor raising” (54) and “possessum demotion” (64).

A number of chapters, including Lehmann’s, could have benefited from a
somewhat stricter editorial touch; his examples from classical sources
use citations in a format opaque to standard linguistic usage, such as
“Ter. Phorm. 506” (on page 64) – which moreover are absent from the
book’s References. Several of the contributions share the trait of
introductory sections that make unduly vague references to large
published works, e.g. “Langacker 2002” in Chapter 3 (79) fails to
distinguish between two studies, and citations broadly of an entire
book such as “Lakoff 1987” (Chapter 5, 127) might be of little use for
the reader wishing to follow up on an author’s point. Similarly, the
invocation of a novel term “ethnosyntax” in Chapter 8 (215) with
neither a definition nor a page-specific citation (we get only
“Enfield 2004”) is an oversight one might hope to see rectified.

One really unfortunate, if minor, deficiency throughout this book is
the graphical illustrations. With few exceptions, the various maps are
quite hard or impossible to usefully read. The “Map of languages that
feature in the volume” (4) includes the entire Western Hemisphere when
it could have zoomed in on just the relevant parts of the Americas,
allowing the language codes to have been put into readable-sized type.
The following page’s “Map of language families in the volume” suffers
from the same issue, and uses very small, black-and-white geometric
figures for each family, many of which overlap with each other. Both
maps omit Iroquoian and Eskimo-Aleut, among others. The map of “Arawak
languages in Bolivia” (240) confusingly seems to depict the
territories of all languages considered Indigenous to that country
including Afroboliviano, without a key to explain that (apparently)
only the darkest zones are Arawakan; however, one such is labeled both
“Yaminahua” (which is a Panoan language) and “Machineri” (which is
Maipuran), whereas Ignaciano (Arawakan) is missing from the Figure.
The map of “Northern California languages” (300) is reproduced
blurrily and with minuscule type, rendering it nearly useless for the
non-specialist.

Not a criticism of the editing but a wish for an optimally usable
survey volume is this: There is no consistent tracking in the Index of
all BPs mentioned in the chapters. “Bone”, though noted in various
chapters, is absent here. “Finger” is assiduously referenced (496),
but not the subparts such as “knuckle”, “joint”, “nail”, which some of
the chapters indeed investigate. In future typological work of this
kind, it may well be useful for the coordinators to compile a sort of
checklist of all BPs found, so that the less universally reported ones
such as “hand lines” (158) or “canine teeth” (131) could then be
investigated and compared. There is no consistent examination in the
various chapters of how BPT grammar treats separable, non-“vital” body
parts, and effluvia or the breath, nor of terminology and grammar for
“body” and subdivisions of it, including “soul” and its equivalents,
so compellingly mentioned in some chapters.

On a similar note about future research that deserves to be inspired
by this volume, only some of its chapters touch upon nonhuman BPs.
Several, but not all, mention plant BPTs (e.g. at 53, 243-244,
378-379), but without taxonomizing these in any detail; the same is
true of those that make any note of animal BPTs (notably 170-171). The
extent of these domains’ parallelism with, or independence from, the
coding of human body parts is clearly an area needing much more work,
and it might deliver compelling insights. For example, body parts of
non-human referents might be found to be encoded on average lower in
the empathy hierarchy than human ones, for various illuminating
reasons of discourse occurrence and cultural portrayal.

Finally, one hopes for similarly excellent regional survey volumes in
future, to give a representative idea of BPT grammar in North America
as well as beyond the Western Hemisphere.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

N/A



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