Motivazioni semantiche del nome della trottola tra India ed Europa orientale : Esplorazioni e riflessioni

The article deals with the names of the spinning top in a wide range of Indo-European languages spoken between Indian Subcontinent and Eastern Europe. The main focus is represented by the study of the semantic motivations of these names, which reveal interesting processes of categorization of the spinning top. A remarkable evidence emerging from this exploration is the rather frequent zoonymic motivation of the names of the spinning top. Animal names, especially insects, are often the starting point for naming the spinning top in different languages. Such semantic motivations seem to highlight the important role played by the hum (together with the movement) in the processes of naming the spinning top. This typological trend finds some confirmation in Western Europe as well, for example, in the dialects of Sicily.