Gleanings on Naxi Word-Formation through "Mutual Metaphor between Body and Object"
This 2017 paper by Wu Xiaoli and Zeng Xiaopeng uses five groups of Naxi body-part terms, read alongside archaic Dongba pictographic forms, to examine "mutual metaphor between body and object" as a word-formation device. Case studies include: "female genitalia," whose shift to "primary/large" (opposed to a "male"-derived "secondary/small") is read as a trace of Naxi matrilineal society; "up" and "down," both derived by metonymy from household objects and, intriguingly, from "fire"; "belly" and "tongue," shaped by Chinese loan pronunciation and dialectal sound change; "leg," whose subparts are named through body-part and landscape metaphors; and "plow," whose parts map onto human body parts and whose etymon is argued to trace, via a shared word family, to the same "male genital organ" root as the yang deity's name — a reflex of near-universal reproduction-worship. The authors frame this within Shen Jiaxuan's metonymy framework and argue for Dongba-script evidence in reconstructing Naxi historical semantics.
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