<div style="line-height:1.7;color:#000000;font-size:14px;font-family:Arial"><div style="margin: 0;">Chinese has a construction specific for insulting, derogating, or cursing the addressee, i.e </div><div style="margin: 0;"> ni ge baichi </div><div style="margin: 0;"> 2 CL idiot</div><div style="margin: 0;"> 'You idiot!'</div><div style="margin: 0;">What are special of this construction are: the numeral-free CL-N construction never occurs as the nominal predicate <i>unless</i> the N is an epithet and the whole thing is a speech act of insult.</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;">When the numeral occurs, the Num-CL-N predicate tolerate no epithets at all. And the speaker must commit himself to the truth stated by the predication. But then the whole clause cannot standalone as to constitute a speech act. It is often used adverbially.</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;"> ni yi-ge bingren, *(bu yinggai chi bingjiling)</div><div style="margin: 0;"> 2 one-CL patient NEG should eat icecream</div><div style="margin: 0;"> 'As a patient you should not eat icecream'</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><div style="position:relative;zoom:1"><p style="margin: 0">--</p><div>唐正大</div><div>中国社会科学院语言研究所《中国语文》编辑部</div><div>北京市建国门内大街5号，100732</div><div><br></div><div>Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,</div><div>No.5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing, China; 100732</div><div style="clear:both"></div></div><div id="divNeteaseMailCard"></div><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><p>At 2021-12-15 02:49:02, "Riccardo Giomi" <rgiomi@campus.ul.pt> wrote:</p><blockquote id="isReplyContent" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear all,</div><div><br></div><div>A student of mine would like to investigate the linguistic coding of insults across languages. She is particularly interested in finding out whether languages can have dedicated (uses of) grammatical forms/constructions for this specific purpose. The best example I could come up with so far is the use of the Portuguese third person reflexive possessive adjective (determiner in Brazilian Portuguese) <i>seu/sua</i> with epithets which are meant as insults. An example would be</div><div><br></div><div><i>Cala=te, seu burro!</i></div><div><a href="http://shut.up.IMP.2.SG">shut.up.IMP.2.SG</a>=2.SG.OBJ 3.SG.REFL.POSS <a href="http://donkey.M.SG">donkey.M.SG</a></div><div></div><div>'Shut up, you idiot!'</div><div><br></div><div>(Where, funnily enough, the third person of the adjective/determiner is presumably the polite form!) This is an interesting case, I think, because as far as I can see you never use <i>seu/sua </i>in 'plain' vocatives, nor with terms of endearment, nor, for that matter, with NPs which are not used as invocations. <br></div><div><br></div><div>I am wondering whether anyone is aware of a language which has some grammaticalized form or construction that can be used in this specific way. Note that I am not interested in, say, abusive pronouns or honorifics or general expressions of the speaker's disappointment ('frustrative' markers) but only in grammaticalized means of marking the speech act as an insult.</div><div><br></div><div>Many thanks in advance and best wishes to all,</div><div>Riccardo<br></div><div><br></div><div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.<br></div>University of Liège</div><div dir="ltr">
Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction</div><div dir="ltr">Research group <i>Linguistique contrastive et typologie des langues</i></div><div>F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)</div><div><i></i></div></div></div></div></div>
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