Body part terms as a semantic basis for grammaticalization: a Mordvin case study into spatial reference and beyond

Body parts have played an important role in the development of theories describing grammaticalization processes (Heine and Kuteva, 2002, pp. 62-63 and 165-171). Within Uralic linguistics, this particular area of study has not yet received a great deal of attention, although the agglutinative character of most of these languages is known to have resulted in a large number of postpositions that are derived from a nominal basis. This paper will focus on body parts as the basis of grammaticalization processes in Mordvin, and compare these findings with expected development paths. For in a recent study, (Suutari, 2006) it is argued that Finno-Ugric languages in some respects do not follow the standard grammaticalization paths. An important part of this paper will therefore be to see whether the developments in Mordvin are in line with these recent findings.