Introduction

People: Body and Mind is the fifth in a series of seven volumes on the lexicon of Proto Oceanic, the ancestor of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. Earlier volumes are: vol.1 Material Culture, vol. 2 The physical environment, vol. 3 Plants, and Vol. 4 Animals. Vol. 6 will be entitled People: Society, while vol. 7 as presently envisaged, will include a sketch grammar and a complete index of reconstructions. Volume 5 contains first a general introduction to the series in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 deals with terms for people, by gender, age and marital status. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with body parts and with bodily functions and states respectively. Chapter 5 presents terms for health and disease. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 contain a detailed examination of verbs: those describing posture and movement, other physical acts not included elsewhere, and verbs of perception. Chapter 9 examines how body-part metaphors are used in expressions of emotion and cognition. Chapter 10 deals with cognition verbs. Chapter 11 explores ways of describing people – by stature, temperament, emotion and evaluation. As in the other volumes, appendices include an index of reconstructions, a full listing of languages by subgroups, and a series of maps locating languages.