Baring the bones: The lexico-semantic association of bone with strength in Melanesia and the study of colexification

A. Schapper

doi:10.1515/lingty-2021-2082

Baring the bones: The lexico-semantic association of bone with strength in Melanesia and the study of colexification

A. Schapper

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

In this article I demonstrate that there is a pervasive lexico-semantic association bones are strength in the languages of Melanesia, but that its linguistic expression is highly varied; languages are scattered along a lexical-to-clausal cline in their expression of the association between bone and strength, with a large number of language-specific idioms based on the association to be observed in Melanesia. I argue that the striking areality of this lexico-semantic association is readily missed in top-down approaches to lexical semantic typology that rely, for instance, on databases of word lists, or on narrow search domains limited to the meanings of simplex lexemes.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	313-347
Number of pages	35
Journal	Linguistic Typology
Volume	26
Issue number	2
Early online date	27 Jul 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2082
Publication status	Published - Jul 2022

Funding

This paper was written up under the auspices of a Brill Fellowship at the Scalinger Institute of the Leiden University Library. Research funding came from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research VENI project “The evolution of the lexicon. Explorations in lexical stability, semantic shift and borrowing in a Papuan language family”, the Volkswagen Stiftung DoBeS project “Aru languages documentation”, the INALCO-funded projet scientifique blanc “Merging meanings in Melanesia”, the Australian Research Council project (ARC, DP180100893) “Waves of words”, and the European Research Council “OUTOFPAPUA” project (grant agreement no. 848532). Numerous linguists aided this study through data and discussion. I am grateful to Alexandre François, Lameen Souag and other members of the Labex group “Lexical typology across time and space” for many helpful discussions on lexical typological topics. Finally, many thanks to two anonymous reviewers and to my fellow editors, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Felix Ameka, whose critical remarks greatly improved this paper. All errors are my own.

Funders	Funder number
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme	848532
European Research Council
Australian Research Council	DP180100893
Volkswagen Foundation

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Baring the bones: The lexico-semantic association of bone with strength in Melanesia and the study of colexification

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