35.1624, Review: Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: Baranyiné Kóczy and Sipőcz (eds.) (2023)

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Subject: 35.1624, Review: Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: Baranyiné Kóczy and Sipőcz (eds.) (2023)

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Date: 31-May-2024
From: Heli Tissari [heli.tissari at umu.se]
Subject: Anthropological Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Semantics, Sociolinguistics: Baranyiné Kóczy and Sipőcz (eds.) (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.72

EDITOR: Judit  Baranyiné Kóczy
EDITOR: Katalin  Sipőcz
TITLE: Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies
SUBTITLE: The ‘Heart’
SERIES TITLE: Brill's Series in Language, Cognition and Culture
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Heli Tissari

SUMMARY

Iwona Kraska-Szlenk has written a short introductory chapter to the
volume under review which is titled “Embodied lexicon and the ‘head’”.
In it, she discusses the concept of ‘embodiment’ on the one hand and
body part terms on the other and then introduces the rest of the
chapters in the book. However, she also makes a very important claim
about the book (p. 3): “The present publication is unique in bringing
together studies devoted to one body part.”

The chapters that follow the introduction are divided into two parts.
The first part is titled “Comparative studies”, and the second part is
titled “Case studies”. There are seven chapters in the first part, and
six chapters in the second part.

The first of the comparative studies is written by Aleksandra Wilkos
and Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho, who compare metaphors of ‘head(s)’
in European and Brazilian Portuguese. In their theoretical framework
section; they discuss how cognitive linguistics views metaphors and
polysemy, paying particular attention to the concept of the ‘embodied
mind’. This is also the concept that they emphasize in their
conclusions: they say that their data suggests commonalities not only
between European and Brazilian Portuguese but also between languages
more generally.

The second comparative study by Luca Ciucci compares the lexeme ‘head’
in three languages of the Zamucoan family. One of these languages, Old
Zamuco, is no longer spoken. The two other languages are endangered;
they are “spoken in the Chaco lowlands of South America” (p. 28).
Before discussing how the lexeme ‘head’ is used in these three
languages, Ciucci introduces his readers to some of their relevant
morphological features, also devoting a section to historical data.
Then he tells us that, in these languages, the ‘head’ can figuratively
stand for ‘hair’, ‘intellect’, and ‘beginning’, or ‘most important
part of something’, among other things (p. 48).

Next comes a chapter that compares the “noun corresponding to ‘head’
in a few Chadic languages” (p. 53). The chapter takes us from America
to Africa, as Chadic “languages are spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad,
and Niger” (Frajzyngier 1996: 13). The title of the chapter poses a
question: “What the grammaticalization of ‘head’ reveals about the
semantic structure of a language?” Its author, Zygmunt Frajzyngier,
ultimately wants to answer the more general question “why grammatical
systems in some languages code functions that are not encoded in
grammatical systems of other languages” (p. 51). He wants to show that
such differences between languages need not have cultural origins;
this he does by pointing out that only one of the languages he has
studied “has grammaticalized the noun ‘head’ as a marker of the point
of view of the affected subject” (p. 73).

Moving onto the fourth chapter by Helma Pasch, we stay in Africa. She
has titled her chapter “ ‘Head’ in some non-Bantu languages of the
oriental province of DR Congo”. Her focus is on the Ubangian languages
of Zande and Ngbandi. She begins by discussing metonymies and
metaphors, and then continues to the theme of grammaticalization. In
her analysis of ‘head’ metaphors, she makes an important distinction
between the human head (the upper part, e.g., ‘tree-top’) and the
animal head (the important end which may move forward, e.g., ‘point of
knife’). Similarly, in her analysis of grammaticalization, she divides
her findings into ‘head’ = UP and ‘head’ = FRONT, but also adds a
section on ‘head’ as counting unit and category marker.

Then the book takes us to China. Yongxian Luo’s chapter “‘Head’ as a
link of embodiment in Chinese” deals not only with ‘head’ but also
with ‘brain’ and ‘neck’. Luo begins by considering historical sources
and primary meaning of ‘head(s)’; his chapter includes a table
representing “[v]arious forms of pictographs for human head in Old
Chinese and their approximate time depth” (p. 102). Like Pasch in the
previous chapter, Luo discusses both metaphors and grammaticalization.
In the section on grammaticalization, he compares Chinese to Lue, a
Tai language, and Lakkja, “a Kam-Sui language spoken in northeast
Guangxi” (p. 108). Luo’s chapter is aptly summarized in a chart
depicting the “[m]eaning extensions of ‘head’, ‘brain’ and ‘neck’ in
Chinese” (p. 121).

Leaving ‘brain’ and ‘neck’ behind, the next chapter continues with
discussing further body parts. It is written by Kelsie Pattillo who
has titled it “From head to toe: How languages extend the head to name
body parts”. Her data “come from 11 languages representing 9 language
families and four geographic areas: South America, North America,
Eurasia, and Australia-New Guinea” (p. 125). She begins by discussing
studies that deal with how human body parts are used to name things
outside the body, but soon moves on to consider the possibility of
using some body parts to name other body parts. Her own study covers
digit terms, knee terms, foot terms, and wrist terms. Her main aim
seems to be to prove a previous suggestion about a cross-linguistic
tendency to be incorrect. The suggestion was formulated as follows by
Wilkins (1996: 273–274): “Where the waist provides a midline, it is a
natural tendency for terms referring to parts of the upper body to
shift to refer to parts of the lower body and vice versa (e.g. ‘elbow’
<-> ‘knee’; ‘uvula’ <-> ‘clitoris’; ‘anus’ <-> ‘mouth’).”

The last chapter in the “Comparative studies” section is by the editor
of the volume, Iwona Kraska-Szlenk. Her topic is “Metonymic extensions
of the body part ‘head’ in mental and social domains”, and she has
collected examples from many different languages ranging from Amharic
to Zapotec. She begins by acknowledging that there has already been
plenty of research on terms for body parts and their various extended
meanings but emphasizes that there is still room for comparative
studies. She then briefly discusses metaphors of ‘head’ before turning
her attention to metonymies. One of her foci is ‘head’ as the locus of
thinking and reasoning; she presents data from French, Indonesian,
Oromo, Polish, and Swahili to illustrate this. An interesting section
in her chapter deals with what she calls “infrequent extensions” which
include, for instance, an example from Pirahã where the lexeme for
‘head’ can be used to refer to ‘language’ (p. 149).

Part Two, “Case studies”, begins with a chapter by Izabela Will who
discusses “The conceptualization of HEAD among the Hausa based on
verbal and nonverbal representations”. After a short introduction, she
gives plenty of examples of how the word for ‘head’ is used in Hausa.
Her analysis is summarized in two figures: one illustrates
“metonymical extension of kai ‘head’” (p. 165) and the other
“metaphorical extension of kai ‘head’” (p. 171). The former includes,
for example, ‘hair’ and ‘person’, and the latter, for example, ‘front’
and ‘top’. As the title promises, Will also deals with how speakers of
Hausa position and move their heads in various situations and which
cultural meanings this carries. She points out, among other things,
that it is polite to turn the head aside and avoid eye contact when
listening to one’s superiors. Lastly, Will deals with gestures that
suggest that ‘head’ is associated with thinking and the mind.

Chapter Nine, in its turn, treats the semantics of Amharic ras ‘head’
and qəl ‘gourd’ > ‘skull’ > ‘head’. The chapter is written by Abinet
Sime who begins it with an Amharic riddle. He then points out that
metaphors and metonymies are not only material for riddles but an
everyday phenomenon. Like many authors of this volume, Sime is
interested in both metaphor, metonymy, and grammaticalization. He
covers the topics of inter-field transfers (e.g., ‘pillow for head’),
intra-field transfers (e.g., ‘head for hair’), and Amharic idioms with
‘head’. The idioms have to do, among other things, with a person’s
intellect and maturity. If one is intelligent, one’s ‘head’ is ‘open’,
whereas an ‘abandoned head’ means the opposite (p. 196). When a person
matures, ‘their head becomes firm’ (p. 197); it is no longer like a
baby’s soft head.

Chapter Ten on ‘head’ idioms in Turkish has five authors: Filiz Mutlu,
Aysel Kapan, Ali Yagiz Sen, Hilal Yıldırım-Gündoğdu, and Aslı Göksel.
They tell us that their “data consists of 350 idioms from a corpus”
and covers “five different lexical items that refer to ‘head’ in
Turkish” (p. 205). However, they especially focus on two terms, baş
and kafa. With the help of the idiom corpus, they are able to identify
more semantic differences between these two terms than a dictionary
entry alone would suggest. They also discuss syntactic differences
between the two terms; these relate to inalienable and alienable
possession.

The next chapter has a funny title, “He cracked his head feverishly”,
and in fact contains many examples of creative expressions. The
subtitle tells us which language is in turn: “Conceptualizations of
HEAD and THINKING in Hungarian”. The author of the chapter is Judit
Baranyiné Kóczy. The chapter includes two important figures, the first
of which is borrowed from a book in Hungarian by Tolcsvai Nagy (2013:
245). It shows the “polysemic network of the Hungarian fej ‘head’”,
with meanings ranging from a body part to person to fruit of a plant
(pp. 221–222). The other important figure summarizes Baranyiné Kóczy’s
own  research on the “conceptualizations of THOUGHT in expressions of
fej ‘head’ in Hungarian” (p. 243) which she presents in the chapter.
She claims that in Hungarian, thoughts can be conceptualized as, for
example, objects in a drug store, music, threads, or plants.

The last two case studies take us to Brazil and Australia,
respectively. In Chapter Twelve, Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho
discusses the “[s]emantic extensions of tatini ‘her head’ and tati
‘his head’ in Deni (Arawá)”. Before reporting his findings concerning
‘head’ in Deni, he writes both about cognitive linguistic research on
body part terms and about noun classes in Deni. The noun classes in
Deni comprise inalienably possessed nouns, free nouns, and so-called
ka-nouns. According to Cruz Maciel de Carvalho, neither the first nor
second person forms of ‘head’ are used in Deni to denote other than
the body part ‘head’. He writes: “Conversely, the forms of third
person feminine tatini and masculine tati have been attested to in
other domains of the Deni experience” (p. 255). One of his examples
concerns the river which Deni speakers use as a point of orientation;
they use the form tatini-ne-hene (3POSS-head-F-DIR) to say, ‘up the
river’ (p. 258).

The last chapter has been written by Alice Gaby and John Bradley who
discuss the term wulaya which means ‘head’ in Yanyuwa. They first
introduce the endangered language. Their study itself comprises four
sections, dealing with ‘head’ as a part of the body, metonymic
extensions, metaphorical extensions, and proper names, respectively.
In the proper names section, they break down the place name
Wirdinyjawulaya into three main parts, wirdi nya-ja wulaya (leader
MASC-this head). They explain that the place name means “This hill is
the boss/leader”, which is fitting since the hill “is located at the
highest point on the North Island” (p. 270).

In addition to the chapters described above, the volume under review
contains two indexes, an index of languages, and an index of names.
The index of languages indexes both individual languages and
linguistic families. The index of names indexes authors that the
chapters refer to. If we consider authors that have not themselves
written to the volume, the following appear to be the most popular: I.
Chomé, B. Heine, M. Johnson, T. Kuteva, and G. Lakoff. This reflects
the theoretical orientation of the book. It is nested in cognitive
linguistic research on embodiment, metaphors, and metonymy, and in
grammaticalization research. F. Sharifian’s cultural linguistics
(e.g., 2017) should also be mentioned, although it plays a slightly
smaller role in the book.

EVALUATION

This book is one in a series of books on body part terms which
Kraska-Szlenk has edited. In 2014, she edited a book titled “The body
in language: Comparative studies of linguistic embodiment” with
Matthias Brenzinger. In 2020, she edited another volume, “Body part
terms in conceptualization and language usage”. Moreover, she has
edited a twin volume to the volume under review, together with Melike
Baş, in 2022. It is called “Embodiment in cross-linguistic Studies:
The ‘eye’”. Thus, the volume on the ‘head’ is no longer “unique in
bringing together studies devoted to one body part” (p. 3). That
Kraska-Szlenk has edited all these volumes on body part terms is a
noteworthy achievement. In addition, she has written a comparative
study titled “Semantic extensions of body part terms: Common patterns
and their interpretation” that has been published in the journal
Language Sciences (Kraska-Szlenk 2014).

Considering whether similar books have been edited by other people,
there is one volume in particular that comes to mind, “Culture, body,
and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across
cultures and languages” that was edited by Sharifian, Dirven, Yu, and
Niemeier as early as in 2008. Many of its chapters dealt with the body
part term ‘heart’, although it also covered other body organs such as
the ‘guts’ and the ‘liver’. Thus, one might even venture to say that
Sharifian et al.’s (2008) book brought “together studies devoted to
one body part” (p. 3), the ‘heart’, and thus preceded the two volumes
on the ‘head’ and ‘eye’ edited by Kraska-Szlenk and Kraska-Szlenk and
Baş (2022).

To consider the strengths of Kraska-Szlenk’s volume on the ‘head’, a
major strength is that it is certainly focused. Although the articles
sometimes give examples of expressions attesting other body parts,
such as the ‘neck’ and ‘brain’ mentioned above, the focus is on the
‘head’. The reader is presented with plenty of authentic examples
representing many various languages and attesting the ‘head’.

Another strength of the volume is precisely that it contains empirical
data from many various languages, even endangered languages. It is
important to preserve data, and particularly also data on metaphors,
from endangered languages. This has been emphasized, for example, by
Mühlhäusler (2012), who wrote an introduction to the book “Endangered
metaphors”, promoting linguistic diversity. When a language is lost,
an entire understanding of the world is lost, including important
knowledge on how to best adapt to a particular environment.

A third strength of the volume is that it is theoretically unified. As
mentioned above, the authors refer to cognitive linguistic research on
embodiment, metaphors, and metonymies, and to research on
grammaticalization. One could perhaps say that the main focus of the
book is on meaning but that there is also a notable focus on
morphology and grammar in many of the articles. A further thread that
runs through the book is culture; the readers acquire information
about many various cultures from different parts of the globe. In
brief, Kraska-Szlenk has succeeded in editing a coherent volume on the
topic of ‘head’ as a body part term.

If one is nitpicky, one can also see potential weaknesses in the book.
To begin with, while the book is theoretically unified, it focuses on
presenting empirical data rather than on pursuing theoretical
discussions. This may cause challenges to a reader not familiar with
all the theoretical issues that are discussed relatively briefly, for
example, the characteristics of languages unknown to the reader.
Moreover, considering that the book contains very much information on
the ‘head’ in many different languages, the readers could have
benefited from a closing chapter summarizing and discussing the
“meaning” and importance of all that information. Such a closing
chapter could have brought together information about characteristics
of the body part term ‘head’ that seem to be common across many
languages and even linguistic families, as well as information about
characteristics of ‘head’ that are particular to specific languages.

As regards the empirical data presented in the chapters, there is
variation in how much data has been analyzed and how it has been
collected. This is of course natural because the authors have used
different research methods, but not every chapter is equally thorough.
To illustrate this point, one can simply consider the length of some
chapters: While Will and Baranyiné Kócsy both write 26 pages about
Hausa and Hungarian, respectively, Gaby and Bradley write only 10
pages about the endangered language of Yanyuwa. Note that this is not
to say that the chapter about Yanyuwa is not important.

This book can be recommended to several different groups of people.
The first two groups that come to mind are general linguists
interested in the body part term ‘head’ and historical linguists
interested in its grammaticalization. A major group that the editor
and authors probably have had in mind are cognitive linguists
interested in how language is embodied or, to be more specific, how
the embodied nature of language is reflected in the use of the term
‘head’. To put it differently, the book is certainly addressed to
people interested in metaphors and metonymies of the ‘head’, and in
their universal versus language- and culture-specific characteristics.
Furthermore, a potential reader could be interested in the endangered
languages of Zamucoan and Yanyuwa, or in any of the languages treated
at length in the book. Interesting examples from the book could surely
also be used in teaching about grammaticalization or ‘embodiment’ to
pique students’ interest in those topics.

Lastly, a few words on potential future research that this book might
inspire. Knowing that Kraska-Szlenk has edited another book on the
‘eye’, one wonders whether she plans to edit further volumes on, for
example, the ‘leg’ or the ‘hand’. If she does so, at some point she
will potentially be able to revisit the topic of “Semantic extensions
of body part terms: Common patterns and their interpretation”
(Kraska-Szlenk 2014), having brought together much more evidence than
previously existed within the covers of single books.

To conclude, to cover a topic comprehensively is a dream that many
scholars aspire to. Kraska-Szlenk seems to be on a journey towards
such a dream, together with her fellow authors and editors.


REFERENCES

Baş, Melike & Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 2022. Embodiment in
cross-linguistic studies: The ‘eye’. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Brenzinger, Matthias & Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (eds.). 2014. The body in
language: Comparative studies of linguistic embodiment. Leiden &
Boston: Brill.
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1996. Grammaticalization of the complex
sentence: A case study in Chadic. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona. 2014. Semantic extensions of body part terms:
Common patterns and their interpretation. Language Sciences 44. 15–39.
Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona (ed.). 2020. Body part terms in conceptualization
and language usage. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2012. Prologue. In Anna Idström & Elisabeth
Piirainen (eds.), Endangered metaphors, 1–14. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sharifian, Farzad. 2017. Cultural linguistics: Cultural
conceptualisations and language. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu & Susanne Niemeier (eds.).
2008. Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body
organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Tolcsvai Nagy, Gábor. 2013. Bevezetés a kognitív nyelvészetbe.
Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. [as listed by Baranyiné Kóczy in the volume
under review, p. 244]
Wilkins, David P. 1996. Natural tendencies of semantic change and the
search for cognates. In Marc Durie & Malcolm Ross (eds.), The
comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language
change, 264–304. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Heli Tissari works as an associate professor of English at Umeå
University in Sweden. Her research interests include cognitive and
corpus linguistics, conceptual metaphors, emotions, English historical
semantics, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), and virtues. Her
latest published chapter in a book dealt with expressions of emotion
and linguistic change.



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