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categories, and this is done by chaining together the chief members of each cate-
gory, to form a loose compound.^1 Thus, the compound mara maṇḍi giḍa ‘tree tree
(a synonym) plant’ or simply just mara giḍa ‘tree plant’ is often used to denote the
category of all plants, while a similar construction, hakki pera:ṇi ‘bird mammal’ is
used to refer to animals as a whole. The latter expression can be modifi ed to refer to
certain types of animals, such as in the following example, where the speaker is
talking about the kinds of animals that live on the moss- and lichen-covered branches
of the trees growing in shola (tropical montane) forest patches. The speaker uses the
more elaborate expression phalli pera:ṇi ha:vu sette-bodde ‘gecko mammal snake
green-snake’. This is most likely a nonce coining, i.e. an expression that the speaker
made up in response to a lexical need, whereas the shorter expressions mara giḍa or
hakki pera:ṇi have been permanently incorporated into the Solega lexicon.
A: pa:seya me:le phalli pera:ṇi ha:vu sette-bodde ella baḷte ade
Geckos, snakes and other small animals all live on the moss.3.7 Plants in Place Names
Studies on numerous languages have shown that plant name s are frequently and
productively incorporated into toponyms ( place name s) in for example, England
[ 159 , 160 ] the Middle East [ 161 , 162 ], Hungary [ 163 ], and northern and southern
Australia [ 164 , 165 ]. The plants mentioned in Solega toponyms are also mostly
trees, although the names of vines, shrubs and other prominent species, such as
bamboo , are also sometimes incorporated. The following account of the relation-
ship between Solega place names, plant names and named trees is an extract from a
larger paper on Solega toponyms, published in the journal Anthropological
Linguistics [ 166 ].
Place name s in Solega typically have a bipartite X–Y structure, where Y is
almost always a landscape or hydrological feature (see Table 5.2), although man-
made features such as roads, reservoir embankments or dwellings can also occupy
this slot. Examples include:
bu:di bare ‘ash boulder’
kukkatti ku:ḍu ‘name.of.vine crossroads’
basavana kaḍavu ‘GOD.NAME’s stream’
Position X is, in many cases, occupied by a plant name , as in the second example
above. When X is the name of a god, or refers to a human entity (as in basava-na
kaḍavu above, or kaḷḷa-ra beṭṭa ‘thieves’ mountain’), the GENitive marker -na , -da ,
-ra or -ya is affi xed to X, to indicate that the head noun is associated with X. Rarely,
a tree or animal name also takes the genitive marker, as in te:gi-na kaṭṭe ‘teak
embankment’ or gumma-na guḍḍe ‘ owl hill’. When the head (the fi nal element) of
(^1) There are defi nite prosodic (intonational) and formal linguistic differences between such loose
compounds and ‘true’ compounds such as biḷi sampage mara ‘white sampage tree’.
3 Plants in Solega Language and Culture