'Cloak' and 'Wholeness'– iconicity of the lexemes 'telo' and 'put'

Ivana, Bašić

Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU

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http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/Article.aspx?ID=0350-08611301075B

2013-2020/03/08/18:46:29

Analysis of the lexemes telo and put arrives to the conclusion that the original iconicity of the lexeme telo “body” (<*tel- “a flat surface, a plank”) represents the formation of the amorphous, unformed substance under a pressure, compressing, or division (a cutting off or separation) and refers to the earth or tree as a form of matter. Put/plot (<ie. *pelH- “to cover, skin”) implies the subjective sensations of the body gathered through its own sensitive interface, in which arises the sensitive desire which along with another body initiates a new, alive and sensitive body. The metaphors of the body function like the metaphors of the interrelation between parts and the whole – the human body on a symbolic plane represents a part of the social and cosmic organism so that the metamorphosis of the bodily into the related and social as well as of the bodily, related, and social into the cosmic level is apparent in many ways, from the notion of people as an enlarged family, through the concept of the religious community which establishes itself through eating of the body and drinking of the divine blood, and the mythic accounts of the creation of the cosmos by way of the dismemberment of the divine body, or by way of elemental catastrophes caused by the waywardness of single individuals.

Serbian culture, put, lexical iconicity, body concepts, telo