[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

Riccardo Giomi rgiomi at campus.ul.pt
Wed Dec 15 11:38:15 UTC 2021


Dear Paolo,

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 ?
>

Well, judging from the data presented so far in this thread, I would say
that the following are the best cadidates for the status of 'insultive
illocution' markers:

- Portuguese *seu/sua*;
- Tukang Besi postpositive *-'u;*
- Finnish *senkin;*
- Swedish *din;*
*- *Chinese *ni ge;*
*- *Spanish *so.*

(For the time being, I would exclude the Persian construction *?ey +
*derogatory
epithet, because *?ey *is described by Mohammad as a general vocative word,
and the insulting effect seems to be contributed independently by the
lexical meaning of the epithet.)

But of course further verification is needed for (some of) these
constructions, as well as for various other expression patterns mentioned
so far.

Best,
R

>
>
>
> 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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