Mieszanie nazw dla ‘powiek’, ‘rzęs’ i ‘brwi’ w dialektach słowiańskich
Confusing names of ‘eyelids’, ‘eyelashes’ and ‘eyebrows’ in Slavonic dialects

Summary/Abstract: Polysemy is a distinctive feature of words defining body parts. This was noticed in dialectal research a long time ago. It is confirmed in OLA's materials, therefore Volume 9 of OLA presents numerous maps of pairs for those body parts which have the same names. As it repeated many times in independent research it is unlikely that these are common mistakes. There must be a deeper reason for this fact. Confusing names of body parts has a lot of reasons: the fact that some parts are close to one another, e.g. ‘thigh’ and ‘hip’, confusing smaller parts with wholeness, e.g. ‘cheek’ and ‘face’, similar look, e.g. ‘calf’ and ‘thigh’, similar functions, e.t.c. According to the presented materials the main reason of confusing names of ‘eyelids’, ‘eyelashes’ and ‘eyebrows’ is the fact that these body parts are close to each other. Even clear semantic motivation which indicates basically only one given body part does not disturb transferring the meanings.

• Details
• Contents