Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology

This paper puts forward, on the basis of evidence and analysis, seven general principles of conceptualization of the body, reflected in the semantic organization of the ‘body and body-parts’ field across languages. It supplies a large set of semantic explications of English body-part terms, and it shows how ethno-anatomies can be described and compared through the use of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). It also returns to the controversial issue of the body-centric character of language and cognition. The paper is, to some extent, a reaction to the Special Issue on “Parts of the body: cross-linguistic categorization” (Language Sciences 28:2–3). One of its goals is to vindicate well-established semantic universals such as body and part, which the Special Issue questions on the basis of raw data, discussed (as is it is argued) in a theoretical vacuum. More generally, the paper argues that semantic typology requires a semantic methodology and it shows what a theoretically-anchored semantic typology can look like.