The hand (and its parts) as a source (and target) in figurative thought and language

Ad Foolen, Radboud University Nijmegen

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Why hand?

• Embodiment enactive embodiment hand plays a central role in enaction– cf. John Stewart et al. (2010) Enaction. Toward a

new paradigm for cognitive science.

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Linguistic studies

• Kinga Erzse (2006) German and Rumanian• Sonila Sadikaj (2006) German and Albanian• Ahn & Kwon (2007) English• Márquez Linares & Moreno Ortiz (2009)

Spanish• Vainik (2009) Estonian• Staffeldt (2011) German• Anastasios Vogiatzis (2012) Greek and English

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Studies in other fields

• Charles Bell (1833) The hand.• Frank Hamilton Cushing (1892) Manual concepts

(Fieldwork Zuni Indians)• Géza Révész (1958 [1942]) The human hand: a

psychological study.• Frank Wilson (1998) The hand. How its use

shapes the brain, language, and human culture.• Zdravko Radman (ed.) (2013) The hand, an organ

of the mind.

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Chirognomy

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Evolution of hominids

• Bipedalism• Opposite thumb fine grip• Brain evolved as hand-monitor, cf. Gallagher

(2013: 220): “the brain – it doesn’t work by itself, but in a larger system that includes the hands. This makes rationality in some respects enactive or action-oriented.”

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Cortical humunculus

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Ago ergo sum

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Outline

• 2: Hand (and its parts) as target domain• 3: Hand and fingers as source domain• 4: A specific target domain: numerals• 5: Handedness as part of laterality• 6: The gestural origin of language• 7: Conclusion

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2. Hand and fingers as target

• Hand itself: ‘the grasper’• Hand and χέρι• Enfield et al. (2006) Cross-linguistic

categorization of the body• Albanian: Plant Hand (dry, not working)• Paws, claws hand• Andaman: thumb ön-o-bo-tabe ‘head of the

hand’

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Target continued

• Japanese: family fingers. oya ubi = older finger, ko-ubi = child finger. Other fingers: uncle, brother, sister.

• Dutch muis (cf. muscle)• Hand Palm tree (leave)• Finger nail metal nail

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3. Hand as source domain

• Compounds and derivations:• Verbs: Dutch handelen ‘to act, to do business’,

behandelen ‘treat’, afhandelen ‘finish business’, onderhandelen ‘to negotiate’.

• Adjectives: handig ‘handy’, onhandelbaar ‘hard to handle’

• Nouns: washandje ‘wash-cloth’, English handyman, handkerchief

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Phraseologisms in Duden 11: Form

• Hand – Hände – Händchen• Hij heeft er een handje van om X te doen ‘He

has a little hand to do X’, i.e. he tends to do X in a quick and secret way.

• German Händchen halten ‘to hold little hands’

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Duden 11: Form continued

• Quantification: keine, zwei, beide, viele, alle– Mit beiden Händen zugreifen, – Dutch: twee handen op één buik ‘two hands on

one belly’• Adjectives: voll, leer, sauber, schmutzig, gut,

sicher, erste, letzte, frei, lose, fest, locker, offen, hohl, helfend, schützend, klebrig, hart, sanft, linke rechte, grün, treu, gut, sicher.

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Form continued

• Verbs: kriegen, geben, übergehen, greifen; sein, liegen, haben; fallen

• Syntactic function of hand:• - Not often as subject. Eine Hand wäscht die

andere ‚manus manum lavat (Seneca, Petronius)• - More often as object: Die Hände in den Schoß

legen ‚to lay the hands in the lap’, doing nothing• - Most often as prepositional object: Das liegt auf

der Hand ‘that is obvious’.

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Form continued

• Prepositions (hand as PP): in, an, aus, zu durch, bei, auf, unter, von

• Other body parts: Haar, Auge, Mund, Herz, Bauch, Knie, Fuß– Sich vor Lachen auf die Knie schlagen ‚to slap on

your knees because of laughing’. Dutch: Je op je knieën slaan van het lachen.

– Von der Hand in den Mund leben: to be poor, easily spend money. Dutch: Van de hand in de tand leven.

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Semantics of idioms

• Goossens (1990), Geeraerts (2002), Barnden (2010), Radden, Panther, Barcelona, Brdar, etc.

• Dutch: Hij kreeg de handen er niet voor op elkaar ‘He didn’t get the hands on eacht other for it [the proposal]’

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Vogiatzis (2012): 9 target domains

• 1. help/affection• 2. control/lack of control/freedom• 3. skill/action/lack of ability• 4. money• 5. proximity• 6. assault• 7. responsibility / lack of responsibility• 8. success / failure• 9. certainty

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Poster of right wing party VVD

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Hand in Greek certainty• Βάζω το χέρι μου στη φωτιά [put my hand in fire]: Be sure for

what someone says• Κόβω/δίνω το δεξί μου χέρι [cut/give my right hand]: Be sure for

what someone says• Ψηφίσω κάποιον και με τα δυο χέρια [Vote for sb with both

hands] : Vote for sb without any doubt • Πηγαίνω με το σταυρό στο χέρι [move/go with the cross in hand] :

In an honest way, believing that all others follow the rules as well• Βάζω το χέρι μου στο ευαγγέλιο [put my hand on the Gospel] : Be

sure for what sb says • Να μου κοπεί το χέρι αν [my hand to be cut if]: Used to show that

sb tells the truth

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Other languages

• Dutch certainty: – De hand voor iemand in het vuur durven steken,

‘to put the hand in the fire for someone’– M’n hand eraf ‘my hand off’

• German Aus erster hand, Rumanian: din prima surša (Erzse)

• Albanian: protection not as target domain (Sadikaj)

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Target Domain 6: Assault (and other negative domains)

• - Assault, aggression, fighting: handgemeen, op de vuist gaan, losse handen hebben,

• - If someone is handtastelijk, ‘touching by hand’, he easily touches other people, in particular from the other sex.

• - suicide is called de hand aan zichzelf slaan ‘to put the hand on yourself’.

• - stealing: In Sesoeto you can say o letsoho ‘he is a hand’, meaning ‘he is a thief’

• - Trade and agreements: handjeklap with the diminutive from ‘hand’, combined with the stem of the verb klappen, to ‘clap’. This means that people make a deal to their advantage, secretly, excluding others.

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Other target domains?

• Time, see French maintenant ‘now’, lit. ‘hand holding’, see for different explanations Van Ginneken (1939) and etymological dictionaries

• Character traits and feelings:– Zwaar op de hand zijn ‘to be heavy on the hand’,

i.e. not easy-going– Met de handen in het haar zitten ‘to sit with the

hands in the hair’, i.e. to be desperate

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4. Numerals

• Heine (1997: 21): “The human hand provides the most important model for structuring the numeral system.”

• 5 or 10 as base

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Numerals continued• Stanislaus Dehaene (1997) The number sense: ‘Subitizing’• Dan Everett (2012) about Pirahã• 1: finger• 2: finger, finger• 3: middle• 4: small hand• 5: Austronesian lima• 6: jump• 7: hand and two• 8: two peaks• 9: two hands minus one• 10: decem ‘two hands’• 20: one man

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Depicting numerals

• Cushing (1892: 297): “It seems more than probable that the figures and letters in this system [Roman numerals], representing all numbers up to ten, at least, were selected or devised by their earliest inventors, in either deliberate or spontaneous imitation of the fingers, of, first, the left hand, then of the right, as used and seen in counting.”

• I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X• 1, 2, 3

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Numerals and writing

• Röhr (1994): 82): “the ability to account for the storage of numerical information has always played an integral part in the evolution of different systems of writing.”

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5. Handedness

• Handedness and laterality: general questions (cf. McManus 2002)

• Asymmetry, Corballis (1991) The lopsided ape– Typically human? (Answer: probably yes)– Holistic (hand – foot – brain)? (Answer: probably

no)– Cause of right handedness in humans

• Cushing: heart protecting & fighting; • Wilson: holding child left right hand is free for action)

(Evaluation: unproven stories)

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5. Laterality• ‘Neutral’ hand expressions:• On one hand … on the other hand• Dutch Aan de ene kant … aan de andere kant • German einerseits … andererseits

• Casasanto: individual level, handedness and subjective preferences go together• Cultural level: right side is the preferred one, see:• Latin: Ad dexteram Patris; sinister• To be someone’s right hand, He has two left hands. • German: Das mache ich doch mit links!• German Ehe zur linken Hand, ‘marriage with the left hand’.• But Spanish: positive connotation of mano izquierda ‘left hand’, meaning

‘gentle hand’

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Laterality continued: different names for left and right hand

• - In Anglosaxon, the right hand is called swidra, which means the strong one.

• - Bakongo:– right hand is kooko kwalubakala = the hand of men– left hand is kooko kwalukento = the hand of women

• - Basoeto:– right hand is letsoho la hoja = the hand for eating– left hand is letsoho la botsoara-thebe = the hand for

taking the shield

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Paraskevi Argyriou & Sotaro Kita (2013)

• Left-hand gesture has a stimulating effect on metaphor processing (strengthened awareness of relation between source and target)

• Explaining metaphors to L2 learners, for example: To spill the beans

• Group 1: no gestures • Group 2: right hand gestures• Group 3: left hand gestures (more explanations

involving the source domain)

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6. Gestural origin of language

• Van Ginneken (1939), Corballis (1991, 2002), Armstrong et al. (1995)

• Gestures still play an important role in communication

• Some figurative expressions relate to (emblematic) gestures, like high-five, fingers crossed, thumps up.

• More studies on the relation between figurative language and gesture are necessary.

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7. Conclusion

- Hand is a productive source (and target) domain for figurative expressions.

- This fits the view that enactive embodiment is the basis for cognition and language.

- Further cross-linguistic research is needed to understand the balance between universals and cultural variation in the role of the hand in conceptualization.

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Thank you!