sky, turtle

[Jess Tauber]

Hi. Crosslinguistically, words for frog hail either from onomatopes (which
CAN be reshaped historically to conform to other perceived motivations by
speakers), physically salient actions such as jump/leap or the tongue
shooting out to catch prey (much rarer), OR (and this is the most interesting
here) the way the frogs vaulted roof of a mouth interacts with the flat lower
jaw- you see this, for instance, across much of SEAsia (in Tai-Kadai, various
Sinitic, etc.). The oral portion of the frog's skull is as shell-like as any
turtle's shell, and the bottom interacts in the same way, just as the flat
earth matches the sky.

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com
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