[Lingtyp] languages with few (emotion) nouns

Tue Dec 10 19:59:14 UTC 2024

Hi Maïa,

Hurukui (a.k.a. Wasembo, [gsp], Trans-New Guinea > Madang) is another
Papuan example.

Some emotions are expressed by adjectives (I show the "cf" examples as
evidence that they are adjectives in this language):

Khane-o *uphu(e)*-e-re.
inside-1sg.poss *heavy*-become-3sg.prs
'I am sad/upset.' (lit. My inside becomes heavy.)

cf. Koi *uphue* maisa.
bag *heavy* bad/intens
'The bag is very heavy.'

Khane-o *may(a)*-e-re.
inside-1sg *good*-become-3sg.prs
'I am happy.' (lit. My inside becomes good.)

cf. Opopo *maya* ome.
thing/food *good* is.not
'It's not good food.'

But some emotions are expressed by initials in a light verb construction.
Sometimes the initial never occurs outside the light verb construction, so
its original word class is not certain (at least at this point in my
analysis of Hurukui LVCs). This is because the light verb in these cases
can be used with initials of various word classes, so selection of *i/e*-
'become' as the LV is not a good diagnostic.

Ima *hauh*-e-ra.
1sg *happy*-become-1sg.prs
'I am happy.'

Ima *hauwah*-e-ra.
1sg *very.happy*-become-1sg.prs
'I am very happy.'

Some emotions, however, are expressed by nouns. Here I use the diagnostic
of inalienable possession morphology, which is not found on other word
classes. Maybe based on this, Hurukui has too many emotion nouns to count
for your sample?

Ima *ura*-n(a)-e-ra.
1sg *fear*-2sg.poss-become-1sg.prs
'I am afraid of you.' (lit. I become/do your fear.)

Ima *orape*-(o)-e-re.
1sg *skin*-1sg.poss-become-3sg.prs
'I am ashamed.' (lit. It becomes/does my skin.)

Ima *hambukha*-n(a)-e-ra.
1sg *liking*-2sg.poss-become-1sg.prs
'I like you.' (lit. I become/do your liking.)

Notably, this last example is undergoing reanalysis as a verb stem rather
than a LVC, so the following is also used:

Ima *hambukh*-(i)-na-ra.
1sg *liking*-(become)-2sg.obj-1sg.prs
'I like you.'

Unlike Nen, mentioned by Nick Evans above, Hurukui doesn't use experiencer
object constructions for what I would consider as emotions, but it does use
them for other experiences, such as 'be sick', 'be hungry', and 'feel cold'.

I am still in the process of analyzing the ubiquitous LVCs in this
language, so my analysis of words like *hauh(V)* 'happy' may change.

Best,
Wesley Kuhron Jones
University of Oregon

On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 9:54 AM Cat Butz via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Hi Maïa,
>
> I can add Dalkalaen (Oceanic) to the list of Papuan/Austronesian that
> don't make a lot of use of distinct nouns to express emotions, which are
> generally expressed by saying that specific body part hurts or feels
> bad. There is some specificity though, so while "I'm angry" is just "my
> insides are sore", "I'm scared" is "my skin is scared", with a specific
> verb for "be scared". There is also a noun for "love", and possibly
> others that I'm forgetting / don't know about.
>
> Anyway, seems like this might be a frequent phenomenon in the
> Oceania/Australia area.
>
> Warmest,
> ---
> Cat Butz (she)
> HHU Düsseldorf
> General Linguistics
>
>
> Am 10/12/2024 01:12, schrieb PONSONNET Maia via Lingtyp:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Nearly two years ago, several of you responded to a query on this list
> > regarding pain interjections.
> >
> > With the help of Christophe Coupé, Kasia Pisanski, François
> > Pellegrino and Aitana Garcia Arasco, we took this further and
> > identified puzzling form-meaning correlations in pain interjections
> > [1].
> >
> > I am very grateful for all your contributions, which confirmed my
> > inclination to investigate the matter.
> >
> > (The data shared on this list was upgraded for published data in the
> > actual data set.)
> >
> > Today, I am considering a different question, namely which emotions
> > languages tend to describe as nouns (rather than words from other
> > classes).
> >
> > In Australian languages this is reasonably easy to investigate [2],
> > due to a relative scarcity of abstract nouns.
> >
> > In order to put the Australian distribution into typological
> > perspective, I am now looking for other languages with small numbers
> > of nouns/abstract nouns/emotion nouns.
> >
> > Any suggestion in this respect will be most welcome !
> >
> > With many thanks again to LingTyp community for such insightful
> > discussions, and for sharing data,
> >
> > Maïa
> >
> > Maïa Ponsonnet
> >
> > Chargée de Recherche HDR @ CNRS Dynamique Du Langage
> >
> > 14, avenue Berthelot, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE  -- +33 4 72 72 65 46
> >
> > Adjunct @ University of Western Australia
> >
> > + + + + +
> >
> > Co-rédactrice en chef du _Journal de la Société des Océanistes_
> >
> > https://journals.openedition.org/jso/
> >
> > __
> >
> > Membre du Comité d'Ethique de la Recherche, Université de Lyon
> >
> >  [3] https://tinyurl.com/cerunivdelyon
> >
> >  __
> >
> >
> >
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1]
> >
> https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article/156/5/3118/3319867/Vowel-signatures-in-emotional-interjections-and
> > [2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07268602.2024.2329890
> > [3]
> >
> https://www.universite-lyon.fr/recherche/comite-d-ethique-de-la-recherche/comite-d-ethique-de-la-recherche-245561.kjsp
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