[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

Wed Dec 15 10:39:13 UTC 2021

Dear all,

Thank you very much for a nice set of data and references. This will be
extremely useful.

I will reply to some of you privately, asking for further
comments/data/references. In the mean time, any further feedback is of
course more than welcome!

@Maia & Paolo: I agree with Paolo that *pezzo di / espèce de* are not
grammaticalized, although not for the reason he mentions. After all the
working hypothesis is precisely that languages can have grammaticalized
means of marking a speech act as an insult, so, according to this
hypothesis, the fact that *pezzo di X* never occurs with positively
connotated epithets does not entail that the construction is not
grammaticalized.
A different type of argument for regarding these as lexical constructions
is the fact that premodifying adjectives must agree with *pezzo *and not
with the epithet (and I guess the same goes for French *espèce*), cf. *brutto
pezzo di cretina*, as opposed to **brutta pezzo di cretina*. This suggests
that *pezzo *is the head of the construction; if it had been a
grammaticalized element, I suppose agreement would have been with the
epithet. At any rate, these nouns are not really reserved for marking a
speech act as an insult -- they can also occur in other types of speech
act, e.g. declarative *Quel pezzo di X mi ha rubato la bici *(roughly,
'That dirty X stole my bike').

Best wishes to all,
Riccardo

Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it> escreveu no dia quarta, 15/12/2021 à(s) 11:03:

> In Italian too *pezzo di X  *'espèce de X' , as in *pezzo di idiota *and
> the very insulting, derogating* (*but very much used)* pezzo di merda, *appears
> just in derogating expressions: you will never hear * *pezzo di  genio, *
> nor* *pezzo di benefattore !  *This is, I think, an argument for not
> considering  the construct *'pezzo di X ' *as belonging to the grammar
> (Maia).
>
> Paolo
>
> Prof. Dr. Paolo Ramat
> Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
> 'Academia Europaea'
> 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
> Università di Pavia (retired)
> Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)
>
> piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
> ##39 0382 27027
> 347 044 98 44
>
>
> Il giorno mer 15 dic 2021 alle ore 07:48 Nigel Vincent <
> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> ha scritto:
>
>> Maia is of course right that the English 'you X' is a way of insulting
>> people but that depends on X being an insult. The same construction can be
>> used to praise: 'you genius', 'you darling', etc.
>> Nigel
>>
>>
>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>> The University of Manchester
>>
>> Linguistics & English Language
>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>> The University of Manchester
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
>> Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au>
>> *Sent:* 15 December 2021 1:54 AM
>> *To:* Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>;
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Doesn't the English "you idiot" (you [insult]) qualify as an example?
>> Copula-free adposition is not standard in English predication, and it
>> seems largely limited to second person sing and derogatory adjectives?
>>
>> French has "espèce d'idiot" - not sure whether it qualifies as
>> grammatical or lexical.
>>
>> Cheers, Maïa
>>
>> Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
>> Senior Lecturer, Discipline of Linguistics
>>
>> Graduate Research Coordinator, School of Social Sciences
>>
>> Building M257, Room 2.36
>>
>> The University of Western Australia
>> 35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
>> P.  +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M.  +61 (0) 468 571 030
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
>> Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, 15 December 2021 6:09 AM
>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>
>> Dear Riccardo and all,
>>
>> D’Avis and Meibauer's paper "Du Idiot! Din idiot! Pseudo-vocative
>> constructions and insults in German (and Swedish)" (
>> https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110304176.189/html
>> <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.degruyter.com%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110304176.189%2Fhtml&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Qm0dhs6L0wUoC0ozwJeshZnGlztNFYs2tB0%2FwjH91yo%3D&reserved=0>)
>> might be of interest; see also the thirty studies referring to this paper
>> according to Google Scholar:
>> https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9645899484374998601
>> <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fcites%3D9645899484374998601&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=SiEIXLU6h58y3oPt6JDnSMiqxAD9CDEmDdvrhfbB%2F64%3D&reserved=0>
>> (and so forth).
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Jussi
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *Frá:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> fyrir hönd
>> Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de>
>> *Sent:* þriðjudagur, 14. desember 2021 22:50
>> *Til:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Efni:* Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
>>
>> Dear Riccardo,
>> Sinhala has several levels of politeness in imperatives (marked by
>> affixes), one of which would be rendered as "Do X, you $#!% !!!". I once
>> nearly got beaten up when underestimating the impact that the use of
>> this form can have. I can look up the reference if you want to.
>> Best wishes
>> Sebastian
>>
>> On 12/14/21 19:49, Riccardo Giomi wrote:
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> > 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) /seu/sua/
>> with
>> > epithets which are meant as insults. An example would be
>> >
>> > /Cala=te, seu burro!/
>> > shut.up.IMP.2.SG <http://shut.up.IMP.2.SG
>> <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fshut.up.imp.2.sg%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Wsd38z3IS7%2FaqTyJkGPUkncKamWvN1IwGXTun%2F7NpTI%3D&reserved=0>>=2.SG.OBJ
>> 3.SG.REFL.POSS
>> > donkey.M.SG <http://donkey.M.SG
>> <https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdonkey.m.sg%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cmaia.ponsonnet%40uwa.edu.au%7Ccc94c4625b3c491e5c2808d9bf4e9dc5%7C05894af0cb2846d8871674cdb46e2226%7C0%7C0%7C637751168309659999%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=DAnllkzoCwHEhKOA07WYqh25abAsY2i7%2Fp4%2Bmj134VM%3D&reserved=0>
>> >
>> > 'Shut up, you idiot!'
>> >
>> > (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 /seu/sua /in 'plain'
>> > vocatives, nor with terms of endearment, nor, for that matter, with NPs
>> > which are not used as invocations.
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>> > Many thanks in advance and best wishes to all,
>> > Riccardo
>> >
>> > --
>> > Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.
>> > University of Liège
>> > Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et
>> traduction
>> > Research group /Linguistique contrastive et typologie des langues/
>> > F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)
>> > //
>> >
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