This book applies the theory of cognitive linguistics to the analysis of a variety of grammatical phenomena in non-Indo-European languages. In previous studies of languages from non-Indo-European families, cognitive linguistics has been remarkably useful in explaining non-prototypical structures as well as more common ones. The book expands that effort into a new set of families and languages.

• Frontmatter 2
• Contents 6
• Introduction - Rice taboos, broad faces and complex categories 8
• Completion, comas and other “downers”: Observations on the semantics of the Wanca Quechua directional suffix -lpu 46
• Speakers, context, and Cora conceptual metaphors 72
• Reduplication in Nahuatl: Iconicities and paradoxes 98
• Conceptual autonomy and the typology of parts of speech in Upper Necaxa Totonac and other languages 142
• Hawaiian ‘o as an indicator of nominal salience 164
• Animism exploits linguistic phenomena 180
• The Tagalog prefix category PAG-: Metonymy, polysemy, and voice 200
• Conceptual structure of numeral classifiers in Thai 230
• A cognitive account of the causative/inchoative alternation in Thai 254
• Conceptual metaphors motivating the use of Thai ‘face’ 282
• Holistic spatial semantics of Thai 312
• The bodily dimension of meaning in Chinese: what do we do and mean with “hands”?* 344