The metaphorical extension of classifiers in TawrãMishmi: an exploration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55245/energeia.2025.08Keywords:
classification, classifiers, metaphor, Tibeto-Burman, body partsAbstract
Many languages make use of a morphosyntactic system that imposes a classification on their nominal lexicon. While research on nominal classification that the semantics of the morphemes used in such classification systems is often shaped by paradigmatic and associative relations, less attention has been given to the semantic motivation behind their distribution. This article addresses that gap by exploring how metaphor, as conceptualized by Barcelona (2003a), can account for the semantic distribution of classificatory morphemes.
Drawing on data from the numeral classifier system of Tawrã, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Northeast India, the study examines two types of metaphorical extensions: (1) the interplay between cultural and biological domains, and (2) the use of body parts as mensural classifiers. In the first case, a botanical idiom is identified in which plant biology is metaphorically mapped onto aspects of human society and culture and vice versa. It is argued here that a cognition of the plant world has been part of human evolution. In the second case, body parts are used as mensural classifiers (e.g., one hand(ful) of rice). One explanation for this common metaphor is a cognitive and epistemological model based on the bodily experience that processes indistinctly the natural and the social world. This investigation proposes that cognitive, cultural and social factors are at play behind these metaphorical extensions in the semantic domain. Classifiers thus offer the possibility to follow the use of metaphors to both break down abstract images into concrete nouns and use cognitive resources available from classification to exploit patterns and similarities.
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