GESTURE NAMES WITH ADAPTORS IN LANGUAGE

The paper deals with non-verbal semiotics, the field focusing on language and body language. The authors analyze gesture names containing adaptors, primarily body-adaptors such as the English idiom a slap on the cheek and Russian poshchechina ‘ditto’ (indicating a passive organ, i.e. an affected body part), French pichenette ‘flick on the nose’ (a passive organ), Serbo-Croatian šaka ‘slap on the cheek, strike with an open hand’ (an active organ). In some cases, a body-adaptor is reflected in the word’s inner form indicating the sound that goes along with the gesture (e.g. the sound of hitting a passive organ, such as the onomatopoeic Russian shlepok , English slap , and Spanish bofetada ), the impact mark (e.g. the French idiom giroflée à cinq feuilles ‘impact mark of four fingers on the cheek; slap on the cheek’), and the possible result or consequence of the gesture (e.g. Italian sganascione ‘a slap so hard that it can dislocate the jaw’). The paper also deals with the semantic transitions from gestures with adaptors to gesture idioms.