Sobre partes del cuerpo bora

The lexicon of Bora (ISO 639-3: boa) body-parts presents two interesting characteristics. The first one is the polysemy of some words. In some cases, the meaning of one element extends to another or is linked to denote another entity. Hence, words like ihbáu means 'abdomen'. While used to denote this part of the body, it is also used to signal that a person is overweight. Likewise, it can also be used to indicate 'hill', 'mountain' or 'elevation'. Similarly, the word bájui means 'back', but it is also used to indicate the 'row of mountains' or 'mountain range'. Just as these processes of resemantization occur, there is a process of nominal derivation with the change of tone in the Bora lexicon. In this language, the change of tone within a word derives in a pejorative form of the root. For instance, the word núúmiho means ‘ear’. Nevertheless, the switch of its tone to the penultimate syllable changes its meaning. The new word nuumího means now ‘gossipmaker’. In the same way, this process occurs with the word íwahji ‘tooth’, with the tone derivation it becomes iwáhji and means ‘toothless’. This process, although not is exclusive to body parts, turns out to be very productive with this particular lexicon.