Mahmood Naghi Zadeh - Department of Foreign Language and Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Ahvaz, Iran.
Arezu Molavi Vardanjani - Department of Linguistics, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

This study aims to explore the issue of grammaticalization with regard to the body part termsӕr (head) from among Persian language body part items. The present descriptive-analysis study was built onthe cognitive semantics as its theoretical framework, using metaphor and metonymy processes to explain the change of body part terminologies from literal parts-of-body limit to exterior domain of syntax. Persian data,collected from formal/informal and literal/figurative uses, demonstrate various spatial, temporal, counting and reflexive concepts developed from bodily lexemes under consideration. Further results imply that the cognitive process of metonymy best accounts the observedsyntacticshifts

body part term, syntactic extension, metonymy, metaphor