The body and its parts in Tidore, a Papuan language of Eastern Indonesia

This paper discusses properties of body part nomenclature in Tidore. As well as a number of simplex terms that refer to parts of the body, Tidore also has a considerable number of complex terms. Some problems relating to the identification of terms as ‘simplex’ are discussed and it is shown that at least one named part of the body, yohu ‘leg/foot’, does not correspond to a perceptually ‘given’, natural part of the body since it does not include the upper part of the thigh. Inherent possessor terms allow for a lexicalisation-based hierarchy of the human body. It is uncertain, however, whether this partonomy also reflects the conceptualisation of the body and its parts in Tidore. Elicitation of data that do not directly rely on the lexicalisation of partonomic relations may reveal an additional partonomy.