Colloquium
Body-Parts in Proto-Tepehua-Totonacan
Dr. Albert Davletshin
Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico
Date: Friday, July 5
Time: 1:30 P.M. - 3 P.M.
Room: ASH 4-70
Meeting ID: 958 5528 9100
Passcode: 736709
A few languages of the World possess somatic affixes which are bound morphemes denoting external body-parts and related notions. An intriguing question is whether body-part terms develop somewhat differently in such languages. The Tepehua-Totonacan languages of Mexico have up to eighty somatic prefixes each and thus offer an excellent opportunity to seek answers to the question. I will show in my talk that 1) somatic prefixes and formatives of body-parts can develop independently from each other, 2) somatic prefixes are subject to grammatical levelling and simplification, and 3) new body-part terms can originate from the prefixes encoding adjacent areas and their combinations. These processes contribute to an intricate history of body-part terminology in Tepehua-Totonacan languages.