[Lingtyp] Seats of emotions: experiencer pronouns, body-part collocations and similar

Mon Jun 29 07:05:06 UTC 2015

Hi Ruth,

thanks! Maia sent me her manuscript and I'm definitely going to devour it.
The reason I was asking is that I found in Daakaka that these idiomatic
phrases for emotions and mental states can be nominalized by a specific
process that is interesting and exceptional in a number of ways. Most
importantly, these nominalizations are exocentric, the meaning of the whole
phrase does not denote a subset of the meaning denoted by the head noun. A
very clear example comes from an expression that does not denote an
emotion, but follows the exact same patterns as those terms:
`nosebleed' literally means `the dripping nose', but is obviously not just
a special kind of nose, and there are sentences such as `there was a lot of
nosebleed in his nose'.

I was wondering how other languages solved the dilemma of nominalizing a
meaning that is only encoded by a complex phrase rather than a single verb
lexeme. It is well possible, as you suggest, that some languages simply
avoid nominal reference to the corresponding meanings.

Best regards,
Kilu

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:09 AM, Ruth Singer <rsinger at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Hi Kilu,
>
> Responding to your second question:
> >2) how are the corresponding nominal notions expressed in these languages
> (anger, happiness, >sadness, love)?
>
> You might be interested to look at Maia Ponsonnet's work on Emotion terms
> in the Australian language Dalabon (http://maiaponsonnet.com/)
>
> She finds that that few emotion nouns are used in the Australian language
> Dalabon. Instead predicates are mainly used. These may be verbal or
> nominal predicates and may involve body part nouns.
>
> My impression is that Australian languages seem not to rely as much on
> nouns referring to emotions such as the English nouns *anger, happiness,
> sadness, love*. And the syntax and semantics of emotions is in many ways
> similar to that of cognition and bodily experiences.
>
> I discuss some idioms and complex verbs that include body part nouns in
> the Australian language Mawng in my thesis:
> http://hdl.handle.net/11343/39232. They appear in a range of
> constructions that can be distinguished syntactically.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ruth
>
> On 29 June 2015 at 11:35, Tasaku Tsunoda <tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp> wrote:
>
>> Dear Kilu,
>>
>>     I have found the following examples.
>>
>> 1. Japanese (my mother tongue)
>>
>> (1) Hara=ga                      tat-ta.
>>      belly/stomach=NOM    rise-PST
>>      LT: 'Belly/stomach rose'.
>>      FT: '[I, etc.] got angry.
>>
>> (2) Watasi=wa    hara=ga                     tat-ta.
>>      I=TOP          belly/stomach=NOM   rise-PST
>>      LT: 'As for me, belly/stomach rose'.
>>      FT: 'I got angry.'
>>
>> In the Japanese culture, hara 'belly/stomach' is considered the seat of
>> emotion.
>>
>> 2. Djaru of Western Australia. Pama-Nyungan Family.
>>     Tsunoda (1981: 197)
>>
>> (3) Ngaju-Ø     nga=rna          munda-Ø     gida-Ø         nyinanga-n.
>>      1SG-ABS   C=1SG.NOM   belly-NOM   good-NOM   stay-PRES
>>      LT: I, belly, stay good.
>>      FT: I am happy.
>>
>> In the Djaru culture, too, munda 'belly' is considered the seat of
>> emotion.
>>
>> C: carrier of enclitic pronouns
>>
>> Tsunoda, Tasaku. 1981. The Djaru language of Kimberley, Western Australia.
>>     Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Tasaku Tsunoda
>>
>>
>> From: Kilu von Prince <watasenia at gmail.com>
>> Date: 2015年6月27日土曜日 17:39
>> To: <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> Subject: [Lingtyp] Seats of emotions: experiencer pronouns, body-part
>> collocations and similar
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> I'm working on an article on expressions of emotions that require an
>> idiosyncratic combination of a subject (typically a body-part) and
>> predicate (typically with a more general meaning such as `be good', `be
>> sweet', `hurt' or similar), as exemplified by the following structure from
>> Oceanic Daakaka:
>>
>> (1) yu-on mwe yaa
>> inside.of-3S.POSS REAL hurt
>> `he/she is angry'
>>
>> I am aware of a few other, typologically diverse languages that show such
>> structures: Acholi (Bavin 1996), Hmong (Clark 1996) and Anywa (Reh 1996),
>> which is described to have `experiencer pronouns'.
>>
>> I would like to know:
>> 1) if you know of other languages with such structures; and
>> 2) how are the corresponding nominal notions expressed in these languages
>> (anger, happiness, sadness, love)?
>>
>> Of course, I'll be happy to cite your published work or cite your
>> personal communication as a source, unless you specify otherwise.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Kilu
>>
>> References:
>> Bavin, Edith L. 1996. Body parts in Acholi: alienable and inalienable
>> distinctions and extended uses. In: Chappell, Hilary, & McGregor, William
>> (eds), e grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part
>> terms and the part-whole relation. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
>>
>> Clark, Marybeth. 1996. Where do you feel? – stative verbs and body-part
>> terms in Mainland Southeast Asia. In: Chappell, Hilary, & McGregor, William
>> (eds), e grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part
>> terms and the part-whole relation. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
>>
>> Reh, Mechthild. 1996. Anywa language. Description and internal
>> reconstructions. (Nilo-Saharan, 11.). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
>> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dr Ruth Singer
> DECRA Postdoctoral Fellow
> Linguistics Program and Research Unit for Indigenous Language
> School of Languages and Linguistics
> Faculty of Arts
> University of Melbourne 3010
> Tel. +61 3 90353774
> http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/academic-staff/ruth-singer
> http://indiglang.arts.unimelb.edu.au/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20150629/663d973a/attachment.htm>