Foundations of body-part grammar

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter surveys body-part grammar. Body-part concepts are semantically relational, providing an argument position for their associated whole. In affectedness, they bear a sympathetic relation to their whole. In actions, they participate in the control their whole executes. They are also locations on their body. The semantic relationality may be grammaticalized as inalienability. Possessed nominals based on a body-part term then often have special morphological and syntactic properties. However, many languages subdivide the field of body-part terms based on such criteria as controllability or replaceability, and this may surface in two or more possessive classes into which body-part terms are subdivided. Syntactic constructions crucially involving body-part terms are systematized as follows: (1) Constructions dedicated to the possessive relation: this may be ascribed to the whole or to the part; and this may happen inside a referring expression or in a predication. (2) Propositions attributing some property to a body part: this may or may not instead be attributed to its whole. (3) Propositions comprising both terms of the possessive relation as arguments to some non-possessive predicate: The main choice here is between coding the possessive relation in a possessed nominal and leaving the participant relation of the whole uncoded, or coding the participant relation and leaving the possessive relation to inference. The most important participant relations are, for the whole, actor, undergoer, and indirectus, and for the body-part term, undergoer, instrument, and location. The sympathetic relation between whole and part gives rise to several constructions which are specific for body-part terms. The set of body-part terms emerges as a lexical field, and also as constitutive of a conceptual domain with its own grammar.