The Buryat Body Parts Names: Face

There are six different terms to refer to the ‘face’ in Buryat. The aim of the present paper is to clarify the difference in the usage of all these various terms: which one is used as a body part anatomically, which one is used mostly with metaphorical meanings, which one has a common meaning as appearance, or whether all of them are used equally in all categories. The terms are explored from etymological, semantic and morphological aspects.


INTRODUCTION
In Buryat, 1 six terms are used to refer to the 'face' , including nyūr, šarai, šeg, zühen, dürse and xamar aman, which all cover the same area in the front of the head excluding the ears. Nyūr and šarai are the terms most frequently used by Buryat speakers in ordinary situations. Other terms are used rarely, only in specific situations. The aim of the present paper is to clarify the difference in the usage of all these various terms for 'face' in Buryat: which one is used as a body part anatomically, which one is used mostly with metaphorical meanings, which one has a common meaning as appearance, or whether all of them are used equally in all categories. It will also be investigated whether the etymological background of the words may help to determine the usage of the terms. 2 The other aim of this paper is to find out if there are special suffixes which show special affinity to a specific lexical group, namely, to body parts names. 3 The terms are explored from linguistic point of view. The role of 'face' in the socio-cultural context in Buryat and Mongolian culture is not examined. However, it is important to mention the paper of Lacaze (2000) which investigates the Mongolian term 'body' from ethno-linguistic and cultural aspects.

ETYMOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
From an etymological point of view, the words show a heterogenous picture. The words of Mongolic origin are šarai and zühen, while the words nyūr and dürse are of Turkic origin (for details on the connection of Turkic yǖz 'face' 4 with Mongolic niγur and dürsü 'face' , see Räsänen 1969: 213-214;ESTJa 1989: 259-260). The word šeg is of unknown origin. 1 The speakers of Buryat language, the northernmost Mongolic people, live in the territories of Russia, China and Mongolia. Most Buryat speakers live in three administrative units of the Russian Federation: the Buryat Republic, the Zabaikalskiy, and the Irkutsk Territories. According to the 2010 census, the total number of Buryats in Russia is 461,389 persons. Additionally, at least 45,080 ethnic Buryats live in the northern and northeastern provinces of Mongolia, and approximately 10,000 Buryats live in a small community in Hulun Buir Province, China (Khabtagaeva 2013: 155-156). The Standard Buryat language is based on the eastern Khori-Buryat dialect (for more details and sources, see Skribnik 2003;Khabtagaeva 2013). 2 There is a great number of Mongolic synonymous words which are distinguished by the fact that one is of Turkic origin, while the other is a native Mongolic word. This is one of the semantic criteria used to identify Bulgharic loanwords in Mongolic (for more details and data, see Schönig 2003: 407). The two terms used for 'sand' , namely elesün and qumaq, exemplify such cases. The former is of Mongolic origin and means 'common sand' (e.g. elesün siγurγa 'sandstorm' , elesün čiker 'granulated sugar' , elesün siroi 'sand and dust ' , etc.), the other word is of Turkic origin and generally used with a specialized meaning (e.g. altun qumaγ 'toner powder of golden colour' , mönggön qumaγ 'toner powder of silver colour' , etc.).

zühe(n) ~ žühe(n)
The original meaning of the term zühen is 'colour [the hair of an animal]; complexion' and then the widening of the meaning occurred 'appearance, looks' → 'face' . There are two phonetic variants with initial zand ž-, which go back to the Mongolic affricate *ǰ-. The form zühen belongs to Standard Literary Buryat (Khori Buryat), while žühen is a Western Buryat dialectal form. Etymologically, the word is also of Mongolic origin and is present in almost all Mongolic languages (Nugteren 2011: 389-390). Buryat
The word is of unknown origin, it is also present in Onon Khamnigan in the compound form čig čirai with the same meaning 'face' (Damdinov and Sundueva 2015: 345). In other Mongolic languages, as also in Buryat, čig means 'direction, course; straightness' (Lessing 1996: 179b), which at the first glance, is far from the meaning 'face' and cannot be related to the examined word. I did not find any data from Turkic or Tungusic languages. The word still belongs to the category of 'unknown origin' .
There are four semantic groups of different phrases with adjectives including physical characteristics, the physical condition and only one phrase each denoting the colour of face and emotional characteristics. Typologically, all adjectives used attributively precede the noun. Morphologically, adjectives are derived deverbally and denominally using various Buryat suffixes: Phrases denoting physical characteristics (

šarai
Unlike nyūr, the term šarai is semantically used for expressing the beauty or ugliness of the face and not in an anatomical sense, e.

zühe(n) ~ žühe(n)
The word zühen, which is originally used in reference to the 'colour of an animal' , can also be used as 'colour of face, appearance' , e.g.: (2) tere zühe mū-tai xün xen gēše he/she colour bad-POSS.C person who namely be? Q 'Who is the person with an ugly face? Who is this unpresentable person?'

šeg
The word šeg besides meaning 'face' can also refer to 'physiognomy' . There are phrases pointing to the physical characteristics as colour of face and also pointing to emotional characteristics of a person: It is an interesting fact that the phrase nyūr xalawithout the reflexive suffix has the meaning 'to feel embarrassed' . Cf. also the Buryat proverb:

šarai
a. There are some verbal phrases such as the following: 'to lose weight': šarai alda-(lit. to lose a face); 'to recover after illness': šarai oro-(lit. to enter on face); b. The term šarai is also used with meaning 'time, period, season': (9) übel-ei šarai ünger-be winter-GEN face pass-TERM 'Winter is over. '

šeg
There are some verbal phrases where the term šeg is also used in compounding with another term šarai with reflexive accusative case endings: 'to look fresher': šeg oro-(lit. to enter on face); 'to turn pale, to change in face': šeg šarai-gā xobxo tata-{face face-ACC.REFL INT.PART pull. down} (lit. to pull down the face); 'to lose one's good looks': šeg šarai-gā mūda-{face face-ACC.REFL spoil} (lit. to spoil a face).

DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
In this study only eight derived forms connected to terms were investigated, one of them is derived with the denominal noun suffixes {NN}, three of them with denominal nomen/adjective suffixes {NN/ADJ}, and four forms are derived with denominal verb suffixes {NV}.

Buryat +mAgAi
The suffix is probably connected to the previous +mAg suffix and consists of +mAg and another diminutive suffix +gAi (cf. Literary Mongolian +GAi), where the internal consonant g is degeminated. The suffix is non-productive in Buryat, only few cases exist, such as hanāmagai 'sharp-witted, smart' < hanā 'thought' . nyūrmagai 'courteous'< nyūr 'face' .
Buryat +mAl-The suffix is non-productive in Buryat, it appears only in one case: nyūrmal-'to accompany; to speak instead of somebody' < nyūr 'face' .

COMPOUNDING
The examples of this category belong to the hendiadys-expressions.
a. For expressing of term 'physiognomy' or 'appearance' , the compound 'face + face' is found, e. b. Another term for 'face' šeg is also grammaticalized, it also used with the dative-locative case but in the reflexive form. It is also a temporal postposition with the meaning 'while, during the time when' . The modifier is usually marked with the participle perfective suffix -hAn, e.g.

CONCLUSION
Among the examined six different terms for 'face' , the most frequently used ones are nyūr and šarai. The investigated material shows that the etymological background does not help to determine the usage of the terms. As a common term for 'face' in an anatomical sense, the Turkic loanword nyūr (cf. Literary Mongolian niγur) is used, while the other term, šarai (cf. Literary Mongolian čirai), is used mostly for expressing beauty and ugliness, colour and emotional characteristics. This latter word is a native Mongolic word. An interesting fact is that the Buryat term šeg (< *čig) of unknown origin is used equally for physical and emotional characteristics of humans. This term is not used often, mostly only in compounds with the term šarai.
Semantically, most metaphors are connected to the term nyūr, six different groups with various metaphorical meanings have been found. Besides the meaning 'face' , the term indicates 'person/personality, a front side/surface of something, page in periodicals, grammatical person' and is also found in phrases denoting the negative human characteristics.
From a morphological perspective, there are no special suffixes which show special affinity to a specific lexical group, namely, to body parts names. Eight different suffixes are investigated and seven of them have a productive character. Only one suffix +mAl-is non-productive in Buryat, it appears in the verbal form nyūrmal-'to accompany; to speak instead of somebody' derived from the term nyūr. There is also a group of various compounds referring to 'face' in Buryat, they are used very often in colloquial speech.
A very important finding of the paper is concerns the grammaticalization of the terms. Nouns in Buryat grammar are used as the temporal postpositions with meaning 'during, while' . With the negative clitic one of the terms is used as a modal adverb with the meaning 'very, very much' .