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Embodied Conceptualisation in Yorùbá: Evidence from Spatial Topology
Abstract
This study takes evidence from the domain of space to demonstrate that conceptualisation in Yorùbá is grounded in embodied cognition. Analysing data drawn from a corpus of more than one million words, we find that the construction of spatial concepts in Yorùbá is motivated by the anatomical structure and functions of salient body topological models. These include median, coronal, horizontal and container schemas as well as thirteen body organs. These models invoke simulation for spatial concepts through the words primarily associated with their intrinsic biological attributes and values. The conceptual relationship we establish between the human body and the expression of space leads us to one conclusion about the protean nature of body-part words in the Yorùbá language: they are polysemous rather than heterosemous.