Within recent years, quantitative cross-linguistic research has shown that body parts are one of the least borrowed semantic fields (Tadmor and Haspelmath, ; ; ). With body parts showing many similarities to closed classes, it is simple to assume there is little motivation for a language to borrow body part terms into its lexicon. Yet, despite its lower percentage of borrowings cross-linguistically, some languages employ much higher percentages of borrowings for naming the body. The motivations behind such borrowings across languages remain unexplored but can largely be explained by social factors. As and claim, social factors generally trump linguistic factors as predictors of contact-induced change. This study first discusses proposed inhibitions to lexical borrowing and then examines cases of body part loanwords from various languages showing how they fit into social patterns motivating such borrowings.

近年来，定量跨语言研究表明，身体部位是借用最少的语义领域之一（Tadmor 和 Haspelmath，；；）。由于身体部位与封闭类有许多相似之处，因此很容易假设语言几乎没有动机将身体部位术语借用到其词典中。然而，尽管跨语言借用的比例较低，但一些语言使用更高比例的借用来命名身体。这种跨语言借用背后的动机仍未得到探索，但在很大程度上可以用社会因素来解释。正如并声称，社会因素通常胜过语言因素作为接触引起的变化的预测因素。