The Meaning Extensions of Human Body Part Terms in Thai Idioms

This paper presents the linguistics evidence from Thai idioms in support of the claim that our bodily experience plays a prominent role in the meaning construction. The data was collected from 29 Thai idiom books. The analysis is primarily based on metaphor, metonymy and chained metonymies in cognitive semantic approach. The data show that metaphor and metonymy are the motivating forces behind the semantic extension in the body part terms in Thai. However, most of the meaning extension of body part terms is found via metonymy. This fact supports the claim that metonymy is a more fundamental cognitive phenomena than metaphor. The most extended meaning found in the data is person. The body part term that its meaning is extended most is hand. This study also is a linguistic manifestation of Thai culture.


Introduction
Humans always use the body part terms to refer to other things, for example, English has such expressions as the mouth of the river, the foot of the mountain or the hand of the clock.In Thai, the body part terms are also used in the extended meanings, for example, คอขวด   (neck bottle) means the upper part of the bottle which is narrow.ปากซอย   (mouth lane) means the entrance.This kind of usage is the comparison of the prominent attributes of the body parts and the part of the bottle and the lane.This makes the meanings of neck and mouth extend its meaning to mean a specific part of an entity.The body part terms are also found in idioms.
In Thai, we are familiar with the idioms such as ชุ บมื อเปิ บ   (soak hand eat), ได้ หน้ า    (lose face), ปอกกล้ วยเข้ าปาก      (peel banana enter mouth).The meanings of these body part terms are not used in the conceptual meanings but extended to be used in the metaphorical meanings.This study is aimed to discover the meanings of human body part terms used in idioms and to analyze the processes of meaning extensions of human body part terms in Thai idioms.The findings of study will reveal the importance of body to meaning construction.
The data of body part terms in this study is limited to the external parts.From the data, there are 12 terms of the upper part, which are head ( ), head ( ), head ( ), face, hair, chin, brow, nose, neck, ear, mouth, and eye; 13 terms of the middle part, which are back, hand (), hand ( , elbow, waist, chest, breast, arm, fist, stomach, belly, shoulder, and finger; 8 terms of the lower part, which are leg, buttock ( ), buttock (  , shin, foot ( ), foot ( , knee, and calf.The total is 34 body part terms used in the study.

Results
The study shows that the meaning extensions of body part terms are varied.Table 1 presents the meaning extensions of body part terms.The study found that the meaning extensions of human body part terms are motivated through metaphor and metonymy.Metaphor is the understanding of one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain whereas metonymy is the conceptual link between two entities in the same frame of reference.However, the findings show that not only single mapping of metaphor or metonymy that explain the meaning extension phenomena in the body part terms, do the serial conceptual mappings which highlight the interaction between metaphor and metonymy as well as chained metonymies also involve.

The Metaphorical Mappings in Body Part Meaning Extension
The findings show that from 33 body part terms, there are 22 words that their extended meaning motivated by metaphor from the conceptual domain of body parts to another different conceptual domains such as health, honor, thought, trust, operation.There are 8 terms in upper part, 11 terms in middle part, and 3 terms in lower part that the meanings are extended metaphorically.Table 2 shows the meaning extensions of body part terms motivated by metaphor.จั บหั วเข่ าพู ด      (touch-knee-talk) 'to talk intimately'

The Metonymic Mappings in Body Part Meaning Extension
The findings show that there are 26 words of which the extended meaning motivated by metonymy.The literal meanings of the body part terms and the extended meanings are related in a variety of relationships, such as PART FOR WHOLE, PART FOR PART, EFFECT FOR CAUSE, INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION, BODY PART FOR LOCATION.There are 12 terms in upper part, 7 terms in middle part, and 7 terms in lower part that the meanings are extended metonymically.Table 3 shows the meaning extensions of body part terms motivated by metonymy.

The Interaction between Metaphor and Metonymy in Body Part Meaning Extension
The findings show that there are 6 words, 4 terms in upper part, 1 term in middle part, and 1 term in lower part that their extended meaning motivated by the interaction between metaphor and metonymy, which Goosens (1995) coined the term 'metaphtonymy', an interplay of metonymies and metaphors in the construction of meaning.With respect to such series of mappings, the findings show that the metonymies based on metaphors are rare according to Taylor (2002), Goossens (2002), Hilpert (2007).The findings show that there are two words which are face and foot () that the metonymies based on metaphors.Table 4 -9 show the meaning extensions of body part terms motivated by the interaction between metaphor and metonymy.The findings in this section support the MIND-as-BODY metaphor by Sweetser (1990), where the physical domain (perceptual domain) is mapped onto the mental domain.

The Chained Metonymies in Body Part Meaning Extension
The extended meanings of body part terms are also constructed through chained metonymies, which are metonymies that involve multiple conceptual shifts (Hilpert, 2007).The example of chained metonymies is as follows.
You'll find better ideas than that in the library.(Reddy 1979: 309 in Hilpert, 2007) Ideas  words  pages  books The example above explains that ideas are expressed in words, printed on pages within books, which are found in libraries.We can see that the chained metonymies are different from metonymy because they involve more than one conceptual shift.In the above example, only single metonymic mapping from books (in the libraries) onto ideas are insufficient.However, Hilpert (2007) said that nothing in principle disallows a single metonymic mapping but the chained metonymies have advantage to break up complex conceptual mappings into simple, well-motivated mapping with a strong experiential basis.
The findings show that there are 2 words, which are neck and back, that their extended meaning motivated by the chained metonymy.Table 10 shows the meaning extensions of body part terms motivated by the chained metonymy.(Hilpert, 2007: 10); Back  location  action Figure 1.The processes of meaning extensions of human body part terms in Thai idioms Figure 1 shows that the process of meaning extension found the most in human body part terms is metonymy.This fact supports the claim that metonymy is a more fundamental cognitive phenomena than metaphor (Panther & Radden, 1999).

Discussion
In this study, I explore the importance of body to the emergence of meaning.The data taken from Thai idioms that contain the body part terms reveal that meanings emerge from bodily experiences.The findings suggest that metaphor and metonymy are the important cognitive tools in the meaning extension process.Some examples in the study involve metaphor only, while others involve only metonymy.However, most of the meaning extension of body part terms is found via metonymy.This fact supports the claim that metonymy is a more fundamental cognitive phenomena than metaphor (Panther & Radden, 1999).There are 6 words that their extended meaning motivated by the interaction between metaphor and metonymy, which Goosens (1995) coined the term 'metaphtonymy', an interplay of metonymies and metaphors in the construction of meaning.With respect to such series of mappings, the findings show that the metonymies based on metaphors are rare according to Taylor (2002), Goossens (2002), Hilpert (2007).The findings show that there are two words which are face and foot that the metonymies based on metaphors.
The most extended meaning found in the data is person.This meaning is found in 14 body part terms which are head, face, neck, eye, hand, elbow, arm, finger, leg, buttock ( (, buttock ( ( ,shin, foot ( (, foot ((.Those terms are in every part of human body.The body part term that its meaning is extended most is hand.The meanings of hand are extended to 11 semantic domains.It may be because people use their hands to do many kinds of activities in everyday life. The finding reflects Thai culture in at least 4 aspects which are religious belief, play, martial art, and way of living.In religious belief, it reflects in the idiom หน้ าอิ นทร์ หน้ าพรหม    (face-Indra-face-Brahma) 'powerful people'.Indra, the great diety of Hinduism; Brahma (four-faced god) which discloses that Thai religion is partial Brahmanism.Thai people partially believe in animism, which pre-dated the arrival of Buddhism, considered as the major religion in Thailand.The fact relates to the research results in the conceptual metaphors of death in Thai (Wongthai, 2012) which showed that Thai people believe that death is only the end of the body state but the spirit still exists for the cycle of rebirth.This kind of belief originates from Brahmanism.
In play, some idioms reflect the popular play in Thai culture, chess in หน้ างอเป็ นม้ าหมากรุ ก      (face-bend-become-horse chess) 'to frown' and cards in ถื อไพ่ เหนื อมื อ     (hold-card-upper-hand) 'to be superior'.In martial art, it reveals that Thai boxing or Muay Thai which becomes widespread internationally and use the body part terms as the name of fighting techniques such as หมั ด 'fist' ศอก 'elbow' ,เข่ า 'knee' ,and the idiom that bring the body part term to reflect Thai boxing is มั ดมื อชก    (bind-hand-punch) 'to force someone to do something'.

Table 1 .
The meaning extensions of body part terms From Table1the meanings extended can be categorized into 3 domains: human (including the relationships among them), entities, and time.

Table 4 .
The meaning extensions of face    (overturn-face) 'to floor the top part'The conceptual metaphor is OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS.The conceptual metonymy is PART FOR REGION.The OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS metaphor is extended to a specific region of object via metonymy.

Table 9 .
The meaning extensions of foot  (end-foot) 'the lowest part of the bed'The conceptual metaphor is OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS.The conceptual metonymy is PART FOR REGION.The OBJECTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS metaphor is extended to a specific region of object via metonymy.

Table 10 .
The meaning extensions of neck ถู กคอ   (right-neck) 'to get along well with someone because of the same taste' คอสู ง   (neck-high) 'to love to eat and use expensive things' แตกคอ   (break-neck) 'to be estranged because having different opinion or taste' NECK FOR EATING; EATING FOR TASTE; Neck  eating  taste

Table 11 .
The meaning extensions of back