[Lingtyp] An ideophone for cough?

[Jess Tauber]

I've studied phonosemantics in mimetic/ideophonic terms for more than 40
years. Crosslinguistically, in general, I find that in many cases initial
velar stops encode the notion of DEPTH (a kind of 'potential well'- like
the gravity well of a planet, a volumetric space it is difficult to climb
out of, despite one's best efforts)- so clearing one's throat would have a
natural connection. Lots of languages have velar stop-initial mimetic words
relating to the throat (its orientation relative to the head, for example,
when a dog barks it will straighten out its head, making the path from the
lungs to the lips much more direct).

Jess Tauber

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On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 8:50 AM Jess Tauber <tetrahedralpt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Korean (Seoul dialect) has a number of ideophones for 'cough', with a
> concentration (in terms of initial consonant) in the set beginning with
> initial aspirated k (spelled kh- in the Yale Romanization system). There
> are many others distributed in Samuel Martin's dictionary, however. See
> https://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/KOREAN/korean_english_dic.pdf (at least until
> Russia cuts off access).
>
> 1669 khak, khak-khak; 1670 khallak, khallak khallak; 1671 kayak kayak,
> kayak, kayak-khyak; 1672 khyayk, khellek; 1675 khok-khok, khollang,
> khollak-khollak; 1678 khwulleng, khwullwuk.  These are then extended with
> light verb constructions. In many cases these form sets related to each
> other through augmentative-diminutive shifting involving changing the vowel
> or the consonantal manner (so see also k- and kk- initial forms in the
> first section of the dictionary). These changes detail the distribution of
> the coughing in space and/or time, how forceful it is, and so on.  Also,
> note that the Yale romanization system used in the above forms does NOT
> have an obvious connection to surface phonology.
>
> Jess Tauber
>
>
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> On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 8:06 AM Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> [mˈm̥m], this discussion sounds interesting! For pronunciation and
>> translations for *ahem*, see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ahem with
>> the interlanguage links. I just added *kröhöm*
>> <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kr%C3%B6h%C3%B6m> into the Finnish entry
>> at https://fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/ahem.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jussi
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *Frá:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> fyrir hönd
>> David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> *Sent:* föstudagur, 11. mars 2022 14:47
>> *Til:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Efni:* Re: [Lingtyp] An ideophone for cough?
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Not exactly ideophones or coughing, but English has "harrumph" and "ahem"
>> to denote a sort of fake cough intentionally produced to express
>> disapproval and/or draw attention.  (The two actually seem to differ in
>> their status: whereas the former is kind of a regular verb, I don't think
>> I've ever heard "ahem" pronounced — it seems to exist only in written form.)
>>
>> Do other languages have similar forms?
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 11/03/2022 11:58, Raffaele Simone wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> working on a paper on ideophones and their place in grammar and lexicon I
>> happened to wonder how things are concerning cough.
>>
>> Romance languages and other which I am familiar with do not seem to have
>> a standard ideophone for it and even less a stable an accepted written
>> version of it.
>>
>> Do you know languages that have an ideophone for cough and even more a
>> way of indicating it in writing?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Raffaele
>>
>> --
>> ===============
>> Emeritus Professor, Università Roma Tre
>> Hon C Lund University
>> Membre de l'Académie Royale de Belgique
>> Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France
>> Accademico della Crusca
>> ===============
>> Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>>
>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *Frá:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> fyrir hönd
>> David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> *Sent:* föstudagur, 11. mars 2022 14:47
>> *Til:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Efni:* Re: [Lingtyp] An ideophone for cough?
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Not exactly ideophones or coughing, but English has "harrumph" and "ahem"
>> to denote a sort of fake cough intentionally produced to express
>> disapproval and/or draw attention.  (The two actually seem to differ in
>> their status: whereas the former is kind of a regular verb, I don't think
>> I've ever heard "ahem" pronounced — it seems to exist only in written form.)
>>
>> Do other languages have similar forms?
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 11/03/2022 11:58, Raffaele Simone wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> working on a paper on ideophones and their place in grammar and lexicon I
>> happened to wonder how things are concerning cough.
>>
>> Romance languages and other which I am familiar with do not seem to have
>> a standard ideophone for it and even less a stable an accepted written
>> version of it.
>>
>> Do you know languages that have an ideophone for cough and even more a
>> way of indicating it in writing?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Raffaele
>>
>> --
>> ===============
>> Emeritus Professor, Università Roma Tre
>> Hon C Lund University
>> Membre de l'Académie Royale de Belgique
>> Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France
>> Accademico della Crusca
>> ===============
>> Attività e pubblicazioni // Activity and publications http://uniroma3.academia.edu/RaffaeleSimone
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> --
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>>
>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>
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