Limb Polysemy in Turkic Languages

Abstract

This work gives an overview of Turkic languages in terms of the presence of HAND/ARM and FOOT/LEG polysemy. This type of polysemy is based on whether the terms HAND and FOOT include or exclude the concepts of ARM and LEG, and vice versa. Due to the fact that the terms HAND and FOOT are meronyms of ARM and LEG, these words are mostly equated, and eventually one or both turn into a polysemous lexeme through semantic change. The majority of Eurasiatic languages display common features with regard to the extension of the limb polysemy, which can be from HAND to ARM as well as from FOOT to LEG. But some Turkic languages have a very strong tendency for the change to happen in the extension of the whole (arm, leg) to part (hand, foot), whereas the rest of them show an opposite development or do not exhibit limb polysemy. In this paper, which determines the general outlines of Turkic limb polysemy, the disparity in question is argued to be the result of semantic change that occurred under the influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors.