A typology of ‘finger’ as ‘little hand’: a shared morphological strategy in Western Yue-speaking Region
Date:
This talk examines a small but revealing morpholexical pattern in Sinitic body-part terminology: the expression of ‘finger’ through a hand-denoting base plus diminutive morphology, or a “little hand” strategy. Rather than treating these forms as isolated lexical curiosities, the talk uses them as a lens for thinking about how body-part meanings, diminutive morphology, and regional distribution intersect in southern China.
Focusing on Western Yue-speaking areas and neighboring comparison zones, the presentation asks why this strategy appears in some local varieties but not others, and how its uneven distribution may relate to localized histories of contact, transmission, and reanalysis. The goal is not to claim a simple one-to-one borrowing path, but to show how a fine-grained lexical detail can open up broader questions about areal formation and variation.
Co-presented with Ching-Hei Yim.