Body Parts as Classifiers in South and Central American Languages
Mentor 1
Kelsie Pattillo
Start Date
16-4-2021 12:00 AM
Description
In this project, we are researching body parts as sources for classifiers in Central and South American languages. A classifier is a grammatical feature in which languages use to group nouns. Depending on the language, it can be a word or part of word. Classifiers are found in languages across the world and are especially common among languages spoken in North, Central, and South America, Eastern Asia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. Here, we focus on Central and South American languages to explore embodiment as possible a source for grammatical structures in languages. Embodiment is the theory that humans conceptualize the external world through their bodies, such as in English bottle necks, hands of a clock, and face of a clock. Embodiment appears in grammatical structures like tense markers and prepositions in many languages. Here, we aim to explore the relationship between how we conceptualize the world with our bodies and resources languages use to develop classifier systems. By using a database of body-based classifiers found in a sample of Central and South American languages we hope to show that relationship.
Body Parts as Classifiers in South and Central American Languages
In this project, we are researching body parts as sources for classifiers in Central and South American languages. A classifier is a grammatical feature in which languages use to group nouns. Depending on the language, it can be a word or part of word. Classifiers are found in languages across the world and are especially common among languages spoken in North, Central, and South America, Eastern Asia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. Here, we focus on Central and South American languages to explore embodiment as possible a source for grammatical structures in languages. Embodiment is the theory that humans conceptualize the external world through their bodies, such as in English bottle necks, hands of a clock, and face of a clock. Embodiment appears in grammatical structures like tense markers and prepositions in many languages. Here, we aim to explore the relationship between how we conceptualize the world with our bodies and resources languages use to develop classifier systems. By using a database of body-based classifiers found in a sample of Central and South American languages we hope to show that relationship.
