The Linguistic Construction of "Reverence for Mothers and Women": A Linguistic Anthropological Study of the Mosuo Word Group "mi (33)
This article applies linguistic anthropology to analyze the morpheme "mi33" in Mosuo, a language spoken by the Mosuo people around Lugu Lake, southwest China, known for matrilineal families and a "visiting marriage" system. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2011-2012, the author identifies a large word group formed with "mi33," which variously denotes "mother," marks female gender in kinship and ethnic terms, indicates female animals, signifies gregariousness or strong fertility in certain birds and insects, reflects primitive worship of nature/spirits, and conveys meanings like "great" or "primary." Through classifying these usages and comparing them cross-culturally with other ethnic languages, the study reveals how gender cognition and metaphor are embedded in Mosuo language structure, reflecting the culture's distinctive veneration of mothers and women ("尊母崇女," "母尊女贵"). The paper argues that deep analysis of such lexical clusters offers a novel methodological approach in linguistic anthropology for uncovering ethnic cultural characteristics.
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