Re: The Shift of Antecedent Prepositions to Suffixes ????

>From: Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...>
>
>As for nouns, a word for "back" (the body part) can come to mean "behind";
>sometimes a word for "ground" comes to mean "below"; sometimes a word for
>"head"
>comes to mean "above" or "on top of."
One of the more fun aspects of learning Kaqchikel (Maya) was that, while the
language has just two formal prepositions, they use body parts for all
spacial relationships.

This means that above is literally "at the hair of", behind is "at the back
of", and beside is "at the ears of", if I recall correctly.

The interesting corrolate of this is that spacial relations work
non-prepositionally, too.  So, the roof of the house is "the hair of the
house", the door is its mouth, the cap of a pen is either its hair or its
head (I forget), and handles on a jar or a mug are its ear(s).  Many months
of delight were had by me when I found this all out.

Athey

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