Body part terms in Jahai

This article explores the lexicon of body part terms in Jahai, a Mon-Khmer language spoken by a group of hunter-gatherers in the Malay Peninsula. It provides an extensive inventory of body part terms and describes their structural and semantic properties. The Jahai body part lexicon pays attention to fine anatomical detail but lacks labels for major, 'higher-level' categories, like 'trunk', 'limb', 'arm' and 'leg'. In this lexicon it is therefore sometimes difficult to discern a clear partonomic hierarchy, a presumed universal of body part terminology. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.