Why do the fingers of our hands all have a specific name (thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger) and not the toes of our feet (unless big toe and little toe)? I use the names of the fingers to allow my body to fully relax to fall asleep, thus preventing my mind from wandering to other things that prevent me from falling asleep. For the feet, I have to be content with: “I relax the big toe, the second toe, the third toe, the fourth toe and the little toe.”
Answer
Dear Paul,
wonderful question! The answer has everything to do with what linguists call “markedness.” Things that come in pairs always have one marked. The unmarked member of the pair is what you more or less expect, the so-called ‘default’; the highlighted member is a little more unexpected, more unusual, more surprising. A few examples to make that clear: of the cow – bull pair, cow is unmarked and bull is marked. After all, most cattle are cows and not bulls, and in this case that goes so far that we can generalize the word for a female cow to the name for the whole species. Of the pair king – queen is king unmarked and queen marked – most queens are just queen because they are married to a king, the king is usually ubiquitous, the queen rather hides in the background (marked unfortunately does not take into account with political correctness). Of the couple satisfied – dissatisfied is satisfied unmarked and dissatisfied marked – most people are more often satisfied than dissatisfied after a visit to a restaurant or a play. When you see cattle you mainly expect cows, when you see heads of state you mainly expect kings, when you see people walking out of the theater you mainly expect happy faces. Those expectations in turn have to do with frequency. We expect what we most often encounter or talk about most often. What about fingers and toes? Of the pair of fingers – toes, it is undoubtedly the fingers that are unmarked and the toes marked. If you collect enough texts, you can easily tell: we talk about our fingers more than three times as much as we talk about our toes.
Is that reason enough not to name our toes? Well, yes. Within an unmarked category we like to make further distinctions, within a marked category we seem to feel no need for this. A well-known example is singular-plural. Of those two, singular is unmarked – most things we see in the singular; plural is marked. If we now look at the inflection of a Dutch verb, we see that in the singular we distinguish between persons: 1st person: Woon, 2nd person: Woon
Answered by
Hendrik De Smet
Historical Linguistics
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/
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