[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

Wed Dec 15 11:22:33 UTC 2021

Dear Riccardo, Randy and Maia,
I agree with Riccardo's argument: it is theoretically possible to imagine a
language that has grammaticalized only negative, derogatory and insulting
constructs: are there examples of this language type? Which could be  the
morphological/syntactic means for such a grammaticalization ? And Riccardo
is right in considering  *pezzo* as the head of the construct (though, in
my Italian idiolect, I don't find unacceptable *brutta pezzo di cretina, *i.e.,
roughly, [ [brutta]ADJ.F [pezzo di cretina] ]NP.F ). To Randy's wondering:
not being an Engl. native speaker I can't say whether '*piece of shit*' is
a borrowing from Ital.* pezzo di merda *(decidedly not a funny phrase !)*. *We
need looking into  historical dictionaries/corpora of both languages
All the best,
Paolo

piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
##39 0382 27027
347 044 98 44

Il giorno mer 15 dic 2021 alle ore 11:39 Riccardo Giomi <rgiomi at campus.ul.pt>
ha scritto:

> 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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>>> >
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