[Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)

Thu Dec 16 13:54:42 UTC 2021

Dear Nori,

This is really interesting, because it seems as though the suffix has the
effect of turn whatever type of noun into an insult -- even if the noun
itself is not derogatory or negatively connotated in any particular way. I
suppose the same can in principle happen with Portuguese *seu/sua* (and
maybe also for (some of) the other markers we have seem so far?), but the
point is that you really don't usually hear such things as, say, *seu
amigo, seu linguista, seu Paulo* (only e.g. *seu burro/cabrão/idiota* etc.,
i.e. only *seu/sua *+ derogatory epithet). So, if one wants to use *seu/sua
*in this way the resulting expression will of course be interpretable, but
it seems to me as if the use of the 'insultive' marker coerces the
interpretation of an otherwise neutral noun as if it were a derogatory one.

Best wishes,
R

Naonori Nagaya <nagaya at l.u-tokyo.ac.jp> escreveu no dia quinta, 16/12/2021
à(s) 06:29:

> Dear Riccardo,
>
> The suffix -me in Japanese can be used for insulting or derogating someone.
>
> (kono) baka-me!
>  this    idiot-INSULT
> 'You idiot!'
>
> John-me!
> John-INSULT
> 'John!' (insulting John)
>
> gengogakusya-me!
> linguist-INSULT
> 'Linguist!' (insulting a linguist)
>
> It can also be used for forming a humbling first-person pronominal.
>
> watakusi-me=ga        itasimasu.
> 1SG-INSULT=NOM   do(HON)
> ‘I will do (it).’
>
> Best wishes,
> Nori
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 12:58 AM Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it> wrote:
> >
> > Addendum
> >
> > Contrary to what I wrote this morning (h. 11 CET),  it is not completely
> true that  (un)  pezzo di X  'espèce de X' , as in pezzo di idiota appears
> just in derogating expressions: As my wife has noticed, you have un pezzo
> d'uomo  "a tall/big man", un pezzo di ragazzo "a tall and handsome boy" and
> even un pezzo di ragazza "a  tall and beautiful girl" (with no insulting
> intention). The possibility of the positive value of such idiomatic
> expressions lies, I think, in the presence of the indefin. article un: e.g.
> ho incontrato un pezzo d'uomo che... "I met a tall man who...."  On the
> other hand, pezzo di idiota and the like are  usually used in direct speech
> as an insult against your interlocutor, i.e. "you, pezzo di idiota !!"
> > Best,
> > Paolo
> >
> >
> > Il giorno mer 15 dic 2021 alle ore 13:11 Maia Ponsonnet <
> maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au> ha scritto:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >> I agree with all this.
> >>
> >> An interesting observation is that in French, 'espèce de' is versatile
> in gender agreement.
> >> I would accept "une espèce de crétin" (as more formal) but would say
> "un espèce de crétin", treating "crétin" as the head.
> >>
> >> This said, I also agree that it is not specialized for insults.
> >> It is simply an evaluative (pejorative) construction.
> >> You can use it with inanimates as well:
> >>  "ils nous ont servi un espèce de ragout, c'était dégueulasse."
> >> "they served us some sort of stew, it was disgusting."
> >>
> >> Thank you very much for this very interesting discussion, and I would
> be keen to get a summary if someone creates one.
> >> Kind regards, 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
> Riccardo Giomi <rgiomi at campus.ul.pt>
> >> Sent: Wednesday, 15 December 2021 6:39 PM
> >> To: Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it>
> >> Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
> LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Grammatical marking of insults (?)
> >>
> >> 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)
> might be of interest; see also the thirty studies referring to this paper
> according to Google Scholar:
> https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9645899484374998601 (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>=2.SG.OBJ 3.SG.REFL.POSS
> >> > donkey.M.SG <http://donkey.M.SG>
> >> > '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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>
>
> --
> Naonori Nagaya, PhD.
> Department of Linguistics
> The University of Tokyo
> https://sites.google.com/site/naonorinagaya/
>
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