Traduit en plusieurs langues, étudié par de nombreux chercheurs, reconnu pour sa qualité exceptio... more Traduit en plusieurs langues, étudié par de nombreux chercheurs, reconnu pour sa qualité exceptionnelle par le Miles Franklin Award en 2007, roman de résistance et de résilience aborigène, Carpentaria narre et questionne avec intelligence, profondeur, ironie, sensibilité et humour les innombrables tensions politiques et éthiques qui émeuvent les peuples autochtones d'Australie depuis l'invasion des colons britanniques. Poétique, burlesque et onirique, l'histoire épique écrite par l'autrice waanyi Alexis Wright est insufflée d'une voix narrative espiègle qui recrée et s'inspire de l'oralité aborigène autochtone et propulse le lecteur dans un voyage à travers le temps et l'espace, au nord de l'Australie, dans le golfe de Carpentarie, dans la petite ville fictionnelle de Desperance. Entre sécheresse, cyclones et inondations, guerre de la décharge, maire meurtrier, école assimilatrice et mine internationale, les clans rivaux des Midnight et des Phantom survivent et résistent auprès du serpent ancestral qui vit sous leurs pieds. La génération activiste autochtone représentée par Will Phantom et les mécaniciens du bush présidés par Mozzie Fishman ne veut cependant pas que survivre : elle refuse le statu quo et ne supporte plus que leurs terres ancestrales soient blessées et spoliées. Au cours du roman, Elias Smith, un allié blanc, est assassiné ; Will s'attire la foudre de la compagnie minière avoisinante et de son père à cause de son union avec Hope, du clan des Midnight ; le chaos règne jusqu'à ce qu'un feu soit déclenché... Carpentaria est le premier roman aborigène à figurer au tronc commun de littérature à l'agrégation d'anglais. L'esthétique de ce roman polyphonique magistral de 500 pages emporte, bouleverse et élève ; elle requiert aussi curiosité, humilité, patience et concentration. Comprendre son contenu politique nécessite une connaissance de l'histoire coloniale australienne. Cet ouvrage collectif de préparation au concours et de référence sur l'oeuvre contient les outils et références historiques, politiques, linguistiques, anthropologiques et littéraires indispensables à sa compréhension et son analyse. Il s'ouvre sur quelques mots d'Alexis Wright et un poème hommage de l'écrivaine tahitienne autochtone Chantal T. Spitz, puis comprend 17 chapitres de 20 contributeurs français et internationaux qui jettent un éclairage nouveau sur un chef-d'oeuvre du XXI e siècle.
Abstract: In today’s world of global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle, asking for instance:
What difference does it actually make, in terms of the way speakers communicate, to use a new language? To which extent does adopting a new language alter speakers’ day-to-day communication practices? Does it, in turn, affect their social life and ‘world views’?
To answer these questions, the book investigates the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol. The semantic domain considered for this case study is that of emotions, which offers a large set of semiotically and socially rich linguistic devices.
One of the main take-home points of the volume is that language is highly plastic, so that speakers are able to shape their new linguistic code in ways that let them convey the contents they want. This is apparent for instance from the study of the Kriol lexicon, where we observe that speakers easily re-package old meanings under the guise of new word-forms. Another example of the plasticity of language is speakers’ ability to circumvent the absence of certain grammatical tools simply by creating new ones. Overall, linguistic plasticity means that equipped with a new linguistic code, a community of speakers is likely to bend their new tool so that it fulfills their needs for communication.
In spite of this plasticity, not all aspects of Kriol match the language it replaces. For instance, we find important differences in figurative descriptions of emotions. The figurative association of emotions with the belly in particular, which is prevalent in Australian languages, is relatively backgrounded in Kriol. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Kriol speakers maintain a conceptual association between emotions and the belly. In other words, linguistic alteration does not always entail modifications in speakers’ representations.
By and large, in the case under scrutiny, using a new language does not seem to have an enormous impact on the way speakers communicate or think. Notwithstanding other modes of attachment to one’s language – be they esthetical, emotional, political etc. –, such a conclusion may shed a soothing light on language ‘loss’: communities who have already shifted to a new language, or face an imminent transition, should not necessarily feel that this loss threatens their identities or shared values.
This is the first extensive study of the linguistic encoding of emotions in an Australian languag... more This is the first extensive study of the linguistic encoding of emotions in an Australian language, and further, in an endangered, non-European language. Based on first-hand data collected using innovative methods, the monograph describes and analyzes how Dalabon speakers express emotions (using interjections, prosody, evaluative morphology) and the words they use to describe and discuss emotions. Like many languages, Dalabon makes broad use of body-part words in descriptions of emotions. The volume analyzes the figurative functions of these body-part words, as well as their non-figurative functions. Correlations between linguistic features and cultural patterns are systematically questioned.
Beyond Australianists and linguists working on emotions, the book will be of interest to anthropological linguists, cognitive linguists, or linguists working on discourse and communication for instance. It is accessible also to non-linguists with an interest in language, in particular anthropologists and psychologists.
Schiewer, G.L., Altarriba, J. & Chin, B. ed., Handbook on language and emotions (HSK), De Gruyter, 2022
The now classical question of "linguistic relativity", which hypothesizes that language can influ... more The now classical question of "linguistic relativity", which hypothesizes that language can influence thought and behavior, becomes a more complex hypothesis when applied to the semantic domain of emotions. This is because the linguistic encoding of emotions can influence not only the way we think about them, but also the way we experience them. This chapter discusses the implications of "emotional linguistic relativity" and reviews the psychological theories of emotions that support this hypothesis. I then show that our current linguistic knowledge about the ways languages across the world encode emotions, although limited in many respects, should be sufficient to test the emotional linguistic relativity hypothesis with respect to resources such as words and metaphors. Overall, it seems that what is needed to progress on this question is interdisciplinary dialogue between linguists, psychologists, as well as anthropologists.
The world’s languages offer myriads of different ways to talk about emotions, and this variation ... more The world’s languages offer myriads of different ways to talk about emotions, and this variation has been an object of study in anthropological linguistics for a long time. This chapter begins by recounting how this interest in the language of emotions emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, initially led by anthropologists who did not study language in and of itself. As presented in the second section, their work nevertheless led them to articulate a core question about language per se: how does it produce or transform emotions? In the last section, I review the multiple perspectives adopted by linguists – other than anthropological linguists – to examine emotional language, ranging from the description of words in individual languages to comparisons across languages, and the holistic study of speech and conversation. Along the way, I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of research on emotional language, suggesting ways forward where possible. Overall, after five decades of remarkable progress in empirical description, the most salient challenge seems to be synthesis and the articulation and structuring of research questions.
The 2011 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society was held at The Australian National Univ... more The 2011 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society was held at The Australian National University in Canberra between the 1st and the 4th December 2011, hosted jointly by the School of Language Studies and the School of Culture, History and Language. The Conference convenors were Jane Simpson and Nicholas Evans. Twenty of the papers presented at the conference were submitted for these proceedings, of which seventeen were accepted for publication after an anonymous peer review by at least two academic referees each. Sixteen articles were revised for publication. Cynthia Allen, Margit Bowler, Loan Dao, David Nash, Maia Ponsonnet and Jane Simpson jointly took care of the peer review and editorial process. The review process for the proceedings was separate from and in addition to that of the conference abstracts. We are grateful to all referees for their meticulous work and their constructive comments.
Traduit en plusieurs langues, étudié par de nombreux chercheurs, reconnu pour sa qualité exceptio... more Traduit en plusieurs langues, étudié par de nombreux chercheurs, reconnu pour sa qualité exceptionnelle par le Miles Franklin Award en 2007, roman de résistance et de résilience aborigène, Carpentaria narre et questionne avec intelligence, profondeur, ironie, sensibilité et humour les innombrables tensions politiques et éthiques qui émeuvent les peuples autochtones d'Australie depuis l'invasion des colons britanniques. Poétique, burlesque et onirique, l'histoire épique écrite par l'autrice waanyi Alexis Wright est insufflée d'une voix narrative espiègle qui recrée et s'inspire de l'oralité aborigène autochtone et propulse le lecteur dans un voyage à travers le temps et l'espace, au nord de l'Australie, dans le golfe de Carpentarie, dans la petite ville fictionnelle de Desperance. Entre sécheresse, cyclones et inondations, guerre de la décharge, maire meurtrier, école assimilatrice et mine internationale, les clans rivaux des Midnight et des Phantom survivent et résistent auprès du serpent ancestral qui vit sous leurs pieds. La génération activiste autochtone représentée par Will Phantom et les mécaniciens du bush présidés par Mozzie Fishman ne veut cependant pas que survivre : elle refuse le statu quo et ne supporte plus que leurs terres ancestrales soient blessées et spoliées. Au cours du roman, Elias Smith, un allié blanc, est assassiné ; Will s'attire la foudre de la compagnie minière avoisinante et de son père à cause de son union avec Hope, du clan des Midnight ; le chaos règne jusqu'à ce qu'un feu soit déclenché... Carpentaria est le premier roman aborigène à figurer au tronc commun de littérature à l'agrégation d'anglais. L'esthétique de ce roman polyphonique magistral de 500 pages emporte, bouleverse et élève ; elle requiert aussi curiosité, humilité, patience et concentration. Comprendre son contenu politique nécessite une connaissance de l'histoire coloniale australienne. Cet ouvrage collectif de préparation au concours et de référence sur l'oeuvre contient les outils et références historiques, politiques, linguistiques, anthropologiques et littéraires indispensables à sa compréhension et son analyse. Il s'ouvre sur quelques mots d'Alexis Wright et un poème hommage de l'écrivaine tahitienne autochtone Chantal T. Spitz, puis comprend 17 chapitres de 20 contributeurs français et internationaux qui jettent un éclairage nouveau sur un chef-d'oeuvre du XXI e siècle.
Abstract: In today’s world of global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle, asking for instance:
What difference does it actually make, in terms of the way speakers communicate, to use a new language? To which extent does adopting a new language alter speakers’ day-to-day communication practices? Does it, in turn, affect their social life and ‘world views’?
To answer these questions, the book investigates the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol. The semantic domain considered for this case study is that of emotions, which offers a large set of semiotically and socially rich linguistic devices.
One of the main take-home points of the volume is that language is highly plastic, so that speakers are able to shape their new linguistic code in ways that let them convey the contents they want. This is apparent for instance from the study of the Kriol lexicon, where we observe that speakers easily re-package old meanings under the guise of new word-forms. Another example of the plasticity of language is speakers’ ability to circumvent the absence of certain grammatical tools simply by creating new ones. Overall, linguistic plasticity means that equipped with a new linguistic code, a community of speakers is likely to bend their new tool so that it fulfills their needs for communication.
In spite of this plasticity, not all aspects of Kriol match the language it replaces. For instance, we find important differences in figurative descriptions of emotions. The figurative association of emotions with the belly in particular, which is prevalent in Australian languages, is relatively backgrounded in Kriol. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Kriol speakers maintain a conceptual association between emotions and the belly. In other words, linguistic alteration does not always entail modifications in speakers’ representations.
By and large, in the case under scrutiny, using a new language does not seem to have an enormous impact on the way speakers communicate or think. Notwithstanding other modes of attachment to one’s language – be they esthetical, emotional, political etc. –, such a conclusion may shed a soothing light on language ‘loss’: communities who have already shifted to a new language, or face an imminent transition, should not necessarily feel that this loss threatens their identities or shared values.
This is the first extensive study of the linguistic encoding of emotions in an Australian languag... more This is the first extensive study of the linguistic encoding of emotions in an Australian language, and further, in an endangered, non-European language. Based on first-hand data collected using innovative methods, the monograph describes and analyzes how Dalabon speakers express emotions (using interjections, prosody, evaluative morphology) and the words they use to describe and discuss emotions. Like many languages, Dalabon makes broad use of body-part words in descriptions of emotions. The volume analyzes the figurative functions of these body-part words, as well as their non-figurative functions. Correlations between linguistic features and cultural patterns are systematically questioned.
Beyond Australianists and linguists working on emotions, the book will be of interest to anthropological linguists, cognitive linguists, or linguists working on discourse and communication for instance. It is accessible also to non-linguists with an interest in language, in particular anthropologists and psychologists.
Schiewer, G.L., Altarriba, J. & Chin, B. ed., Handbook on language and emotions (HSK), De Gruyter, 2022
The now classical question of "linguistic relativity", which hypothesizes that language can influ... more The now classical question of "linguistic relativity", which hypothesizes that language can influence thought and behavior, becomes a more complex hypothesis when applied to the semantic domain of emotions. This is because the linguistic encoding of emotions can influence not only the way we think about them, but also the way we experience them. This chapter discusses the implications of "emotional linguistic relativity" and reviews the psychological theories of emotions that support this hypothesis. I then show that our current linguistic knowledge about the ways languages across the world encode emotions, although limited in many respects, should be sufficient to test the emotional linguistic relativity hypothesis with respect to resources such as words and metaphors. Overall, it seems that what is needed to progress on this question is interdisciplinary dialogue between linguists, psychologists, as well as anthropologists.
The world’s languages offer myriads of different ways to talk about emotions, and this variation ... more The world’s languages offer myriads of different ways to talk about emotions, and this variation has been an object of study in anthropological linguistics for a long time. This chapter begins by recounting how this interest in the language of emotions emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, initially led by anthropologists who did not study language in and of itself. As presented in the second section, their work nevertheless led them to articulate a core question about language per se: how does it produce or transform emotions? In the last section, I review the multiple perspectives adopted by linguists – other than anthropological linguists – to examine emotional language, ranging from the description of words in individual languages to comparisons across languages, and the holistic study of speech and conversation. Along the way, I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of research on emotional language, suggesting ways forward where possible. Overall, after five decades of remarkable progress in empirical description, the most salient challenge seems to be synthesis and the articulation and structuring of research questions.
The 2011 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society was held at The Australian National Univ... more The 2011 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society was held at The Australian National University in Canberra between the 1st and the 4th December 2011, hosted jointly by the School of Language Studies and the School of Culture, History and Language. The Conference convenors were Jane Simpson and Nicholas Evans. Twenty of the papers presented at the conference were submitted for these proceedings, of which seventeen were accepted for publication after an anonymous peer review by at least two academic referees each. Sixteen articles were revised for publication. Cynthia Allen, Margit Bowler, Loan Dao, David Nash, Maia Ponsonnet and Jane Simpson jointly took care of the peer review and editorial process. The review process for the proceedings was separate from and in addition to that of the conference abstracts. We are grateful to all referees for their meticulous work and their constructive comments.
This volume presents nine chapters dealing with emotionally loaded morphology over four continent... more This volume presents nine chapters dealing with emotionally loaded morphology over four continents. The collection is the result of a workshop on “morphology and emotions” (MorphEm) held by the first author at Dynamique du Langage (CNRS) in Lyon on 29–30 April 2015. In this introduction, we first discuss our definitions of the terms “emotions”, “morphology”, and the intersection between the two ( Section 1 ). In Section 2 , we contextualize the study of the morphological encoding of emotions within semantic typology and semantic ecology, and spell out some of the cross-linguistic generalizations that can be made about the morphological encoding of emotions on the basis of the contributions in this volume. In Section 3 , we summarize the findings of the volume on the more specific topic of evaluative morphology, the most widespread type of emotionally loaded morphology. Finally, Section 4 offers a chapter-by-chapter outline of the volume.
In this work, I document and analyze the linguistic devices available to the speakers of the Dala... more In this work, I document and analyze the linguistic devices available to the speakers of the Dalabon language to express or describe emotions. Dalabon is a severely endangered non-Pama-Nyungan of the Gunwinyguan family, spoken in south-western Arnhem Land.
The first three chapters are introductory: Chapter 1 sets the theoretical framework; chapters 2 and 3 the ethnographic and linguistic backgrounds respectively. Chapter 4 presents expressive emotional devices, which include diminutives, interjections, and various prosodic features. Expressive features are prominent in terms of frequency, and relate to culturally central categories such as compassion.
Nevertheless, descriptive emotional features also play an important part. The emotion lexicon is large: at least 160 emotional lexemes, most of them adjectives or verbs. A lot of them are morphologically compound, often involving a body-part. Having discussed the morphology and syntax of these lexemes in Chapter 5 and their semantics in Chapter 6, chapters 7 to 11 question the linguistic association between body-parts and emotions in Dalabon.
Like most languages in the world (and like many Australian languages) Dalabon uses metaphors grounded in physical and physiological metonymies in order to describe emotions. The linguistic and conceptual status of these tropes is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 presents Dalabon emotion metonymies and metaphors related to the body. One of the particularities of Dalabon metaphors of emotions is that in spite of their metaphorical dimension, they remain partly metonymic to the extent that they always represent emotions as states or parts of the person, not as independent entities. As a result, emotions are never represented as forces or opponents. In Dalabon, a metaphor like ‘overwhelmed by love’ for instance, is impossible. Chapter 9 presents emotion metaphors that do not involve the body, in particular metaphors for anger. These metaphors come closer to representing emotions as independent entities—although such representations remain marginal.
Chapter 10 adopts a complementary perspective on Dalabon emotional compound predicates, and shows that metonymies and metaphors are not the only things body-parts ‘do’ in the Dalabon emotion lexicon. Body-parts are also used to specify which part of the person is involved in an emotional behavior. For instance, it is possible to use a compound predicate to say that someone is ‘angry from the hands’, when someone is gesticulating in anger. Such compounds rely on analogy and compositionality, with metonymies and metaphors playing minor roles in their production. In fact, analogy and compositionality produce compounds which, in turn, may suggest new metaphors to the speakers.
Chapter 11 elaborates upon the idea that purely formal linguistic features of a language may suggest new metaphors, or constrain the metaphors available to speakers. Seeking to explain why, in Dalabon, emotions are always represented as states or parts of the person rather than independent entities, I suggest that this may be due to syntactic properties of the language. Namely, the Dalabon preference for some subcategorization patterns, in particular experiencer subjects and body-part possessor raising, could play a constraining role with respect to emotion metaphors.
The topic of this review article is a volume addressing the relationship between polysemy and sem... more The topic of this review article is a volume addressing the relationship between polysemy and semantic change, a relationship which has been important in discussions of semantic theory and method particularly in recent years, and which has the potential to unite synchronic and diachronic approaches. The first part of this article consists of thorough reviews of the fourteen chapters in the volume, entitled From Polysemy to Semantic Change, edited by Martine Vanhove (2008). We review each of them in turn, providing a brief summary of the content of each chapter, as well as comments on the impact of the contribution to the study of polysemy and semantic change, and/or on its limits. The second part of the article presents a general evaluation of the volume, and reflects upon the achievements, limits and perspectives of the study of polysemy and semantic change. Some of the chapters demonstrate that a degree of generalization can be reached on these questions, and provide new and potentially productive ways forward in theory and method; others either do not have such aims, or struggle to provide a useful general framework. We consider why this may be the case, and suggest hypothetical solutions. In particular, we examine the difficulty met with drawing conclusions across semantic domains, and the lack of a framework taking language contact and diffusion into account in the study of semantic change.
Kriol Emotion Glossary (Barunga region)
First draft, September 2019
Compiled by Maïa Ponsonnet, ... more Kriol Emotion Glossary (Barunga region) First draft, September 2019
Compiled by Maïa Ponsonnet, in collaboration with Angela Ashley, Ingrid Ashley, Bonita Bennett, Jurraine Bennet, †Lily Bennett, Queenie Brennan, Alexandra Bush-Martin, Maggie Jentian, June Jolly, Tyrona Manyita, and June Jolly-Ashley.
This is a glossary of emotion words, i.e. words for ‘feelings’ such as einggri/angry, sed/sad, fil sori/feel sorry etc. There are many more Kriol words about feelings than those included here, but this is a start. Also, we have only included words and meanings as used in the Barunga region. There may be different Kriol words, and different meanings, in other regions.
This chapter presents a semantically oriented preliminary typology of interjections in Australian... more This chapter presents a semantically oriented preliminary typology of interjections in Australian languages – an endeavor rendered both difficult and relevant by the scarcity of our linguistic knowledge about interjections.
Although expressivity is indisputably a crucial function of language, expressive features have of... more Although expressivity is indisputably a crucial function of language, expressive features have often been neglected in linguistic descriptions. After discussing how this lack can reflect the gendered structure of language documentation practices, this article addresses the lack in question by discussing the prevalence of emotional values over formal properties in Australian diminutives. The analysis recruits first-hand data from two Australian Aboriginal languages to explore the relationships between grammar and expressivity: how do grammatical properties of linguistic forms shape expressive resources? To shed light upon this question, the study compares the diminutives found in Dalabon and Rembarrnga, two neighboring languages of the Gunwinyguan family that share core grammatical structure and pertain to a “culturally unified” region. The comparison shows that in spite of many mismatching linguistic properties, the emotions that these diminutives can express remain remarkably stable, suggesting strong sociocultural constraints in this semantic domain.
Introduction to:
Ponsonnet, Maïa & Marine Vuillermet, to appear 2018. Morphology and emotions acr... more Introduction to: Ponsonnet, Maïa & Marine Vuillermet, to appear 2018. Morphology and emotions across the world's languages. Special issue, Studies in language 42(1)
This article explores the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their correspon... more This article explores the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their corresponding 'conceptual representations', by considering their respective continuities and discon-tinuities in language shift. I compare the figurative encoding of emotions in Kriol, a creole of northern Australia, with those of Dalabon, one of the languages replaced by this creole, with a particular focus on evidence from metaphorical gestures. The conclusions are threefold. Firstly , the prominent figurative association between the body and the emotions observed in Dala-bon is, overall, not matched in Kriol. Secondly, although this association is not prominent in Kriol, it is not entirely absent. It surfaces where speakers are less constrained by linguistic conventions: in non-conventionalized tropes, and gestures in particular. Indeed, some of the verbal emotion metaphors that have disappeared with language shift are preserved as gestural metaphors. Thus, Kriol speakers endorse the conceptual association between emotions and the body, in spite of the lower linguistic incidence of this association. The third conclusion is that therefore, in language shift, conceptual figurative representations and linguistic figurative representations are independent of each other. The former can persist when the latter largely disappear. Conversely, the fact that speakers endorse a certain type of conceptual representation does not entail that they will use corresponding linguistic forms in the new language. The transfer of linguistic figurative representations seems to depend, instead, upon purely linguistic parameters.
This article analyzes some of the lexical semantic features of Barunga Kriol, an Australian creol... more This article analyzes some of the lexical semantic features of Barunga Kriol, an Australian creole language (Northern Territory, Australia), in comparison with Dalabon, one of the Australian Aboriginal languages replaced by Barunga Kriol. Focusing on the semantic domain of emotions, this study offers insights into how creole languages select and organize semantic meanings, and to what extent this results in lexical loss or retention. I spell out the exact nature of the lexical resemblances between the two languages, and highlight major differences as well. The conclusions of the study are twofold. Firstly, I show that the Barunga Kriol emotion lexicon shares a great many properties with the Dalabon emotion lexicon. As a result, speakers in Barunga Kriol and Dalabon respectively are often able to package meaning in very similar ways: the two languages offer comparable means of describing events in the world. From that point of view, language shift can be considered to have a lesser impact. Secondly, I show that the lexical resemblances between Barunga Kriol and Dalabon are not limited to simple cases where the lexemes in each language share the same forms and/or meanings. Instead, lexical resemblances relate to a number of other properties in semantics and combinatorics, and I devise a preliminary typology of these 2 lexical resemblances. Beyond the comparison between Barunga Kriol and Dalabon, this typology may tentatively serve as a grid to evaluate lexical resemblances between languages more generally.
Ponsonnet (2014) has shown that Dalabon, a Gunwinyguan language of northern Australia (non-Pama-n... more Ponsonnet (2014) has shown that Dalabon, a Gunwinyguan language of northern Australia (non-Pama-nyungan) has very few emotion nouns – instead, its emotion lexicon contains mostly verbs and adjectives. The language has only two emotion nouns proper: yolh-no ‘pep, feelings’, and yirru ‘conflict, anger’.
What are the causes and implications of this scarcity of emotion nouns in Dalabon? Is this an areal feature? Does it result from a structural property of the language? How does it relate to Dalabon speakers’ shared conceptual representations about emotions? Indeed, it seems that in Dalabon, the rarity of emotion nouns correlates with a limitation on the types of emotion metaphors available – which relates to shared representations of emotions. But the question of the directionality remains open: Does language reflect shared concepts and representations about emotions? Or does the rarity of nouns determine metaphors, which may in turn determine shared representations?
To begin answering these questions, this article presents a pilot survey of emotion nouns in a small sample of nine other Australian languages. The observations resulting from this survey are two-fold. Firstly, Australian languages, in general, seem to have few emotion nouns, although there may be nuances, possibly due to differences in typological profiles. Secondly, there is some semantic convergence among the nouns documented in the ten languages surveyed. Indeed, the semantic profiles of the two emotion nouns (meaning ‘conflict, anger’, and a generic term for ‘feelings’) found in Dalabon are matched by nouns in most of the other languages in the sample.
This article describes the semantic values of reduplication in Barunga Kriol – an English-based c... more This article describes the semantic values of reduplication in Barunga Kriol – an English-based creole of northern Australia –, with a focus on its expressive functions. Barunga Kriol reduplication has two types of functions. Its most frequent meaning is aspectual atelicity. In addition, it has a number of expressive meanings and connotations: hypocoristic usages; descriptions of children's games and imitations; and a softening role in imperatives and reprimands. Contrary to the aspectual value of reduplication which is iconically motivated, expressive values are motivated by the pragmatic association of reduplication with children. Expressive uses of reduplication are rarer and less regular than its grammaticalized aspectual uses, which are very frequent. Aspectual reduplication is optional most of the time, so that explaining its actual distribution in discourse is a complicated matter. This article shows that this distribution can often be explained in the view of the expressive values of reduplication (some of them also conveyed by affixal evaluative morphology in the Australian languages that have been replaced by this creole). Thus, taking into account the expressive dimension of reduplication contributes significantly to the linguistic analysis of the grammaticalized aspectual function of reduplication.
This article presents a preliminary typology of emotional connotations in evaluative morphology, ... more This article presents a preliminary typology of emotional connotations in evaluative morphology, starting with diminutives and augmentatives. I inventory the emotional meanings and connotations found in a sample of nineteen languages for diminutives, and nine languages plus a few additional regional studies for augmentatives. Given the small size of the samples, this typology can only remain preliminary, but it does highlight a number of points. Across languages and continents, diminutives can express positive emotions such as compassion, love and admiration, as well as negative emotions such as contempt. The emotional connotations of augmentatives are more limited, but do display a blend of positive and negative emotions including contempt and repulsion, admiration and respect, endearment and compassion. Diminutives and augmentatives do not contrast sharply with respect to emotional valence (positive or negative), but while diminutives are anchored in intimacy, the emotions conveyed by augmentatives more often relate to broader social contexts.
In Les conceptions de la propriété foncière à l’épreuve des revendications autochtones. C. Travesi & M. Ponsonnet (ed.), Marseille, Les Cahiers du Credo, 2015
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Books by Maïa Ponsonnet
https://theconversation.com/indigenous-languages-matter-but-all-is-not-lost-when-they-change-or-even-disappear-127519
Abstract:
In today’s world of global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle, asking for instance:
What difference does it actually make, in terms of the way speakers communicate, to use a new language? To which extent does adopting a new language alter speakers’ day-to-day communication practices? Does it, in turn, affect their social life and ‘world views’?
To answer these questions, the book investigates the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol. The semantic domain considered for this case study is that of emotions, which offers a large set of semiotically and socially rich linguistic devices.
One of the main take-home points of the volume is that language is highly plastic, so that speakers are able to shape their new linguistic code in ways that let them convey the contents they want. This is apparent for instance from the study of the Kriol lexicon, where we observe that speakers easily re-package old meanings under the guise of new word-forms. Another example of the plasticity of language is speakers’ ability to circumvent the absence of certain grammatical tools simply by creating new ones. Overall, linguistic plasticity means that equipped with a new linguistic code, a community of speakers is likely to bend their new tool so that it fulfills their needs for communication.
In spite of this plasticity, not all aspects of Kriol match the language it replaces. For instance, we find important differences in figurative descriptions of emotions. The figurative association of emotions with the belly in particular, which is prevalent in Australian languages, is relatively backgrounded in Kriol. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Kriol speakers maintain a conceptual association between emotions and the belly. In other words, linguistic alteration does not always entail modifications in speakers’ representations.
By and large, in the case under scrutiny, using a new language does not seem to have an enormous impact on the way speakers communicate or think. Notwithstanding other modes of attachment to one’s language – be they esthetical, emotional, political etc. –, such a conclusion may shed a soothing light on language ‘loss’: communities who have already shifted to a new language, or face an imminent transition, should not necessarily feel that this loss threatens their identities or shared values.
Beyond Australianists and linguists working on emotions, the book will be of interest to anthropological linguists, cognitive linguists, or linguists working on discourse and communication for instance. It is accessible also to non-linguists with an interest in language, in particular anthropologists and psychologists.
Papers by Maïa Ponsonnet
https://theconversation.com/indigenous-languages-matter-but-all-is-not-lost-when-they-change-or-even-disappear-127519
Abstract:
In today’s world of global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle, asking for instance:
What difference does it actually make, in terms of the way speakers communicate, to use a new language? To which extent does adopting a new language alter speakers’ day-to-day communication practices? Does it, in turn, affect their social life and ‘world views’?
To answer these questions, the book investigates the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol. The semantic domain considered for this case study is that of emotions, which offers a large set of semiotically and socially rich linguistic devices.
One of the main take-home points of the volume is that language is highly plastic, so that speakers are able to shape their new linguistic code in ways that let them convey the contents they want. This is apparent for instance from the study of the Kriol lexicon, where we observe that speakers easily re-package old meanings under the guise of new word-forms. Another example of the plasticity of language is speakers’ ability to circumvent the absence of certain grammatical tools simply by creating new ones. Overall, linguistic plasticity means that equipped with a new linguistic code, a community of speakers is likely to bend their new tool so that it fulfills their needs for communication.
In spite of this plasticity, not all aspects of Kriol match the language it replaces. For instance, we find important differences in figurative descriptions of emotions. The figurative association of emotions with the belly in particular, which is prevalent in Australian languages, is relatively backgrounded in Kriol. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Kriol speakers maintain a conceptual association between emotions and the belly. In other words, linguistic alteration does not always entail modifications in speakers’ representations.
By and large, in the case under scrutiny, using a new language does not seem to have an enormous impact on the way speakers communicate or think. Notwithstanding other modes of attachment to one’s language – be they esthetical, emotional, political etc. –, such a conclusion may shed a soothing light on language ‘loss’: communities who have already shifted to a new language, or face an imminent transition, should not necessarily feel that this loss threatens their identities or shared values.
Beyond Australianists and linguists working on emotions, the book will be of interest to anthropological linguists, cognitive linguists, or linguists working on discourse and communication for instance. It is accessible also to non-linguists with an interest in language, in particular anthropologists and psychologists.
The first three chapters are introductory: Chapter 1 sets the theoretical framework; chapters 2 and 3 the ethnographic and linguistic backgrounds respectively. Chapter 4 presents expressive emotional devices, which include diminutives, interjections, and various prosodic features. Expressive features are prominent in terms of frequency, and relate to culturally central categories such as compassion.
Nevertheless, descriptive emotional features also play an important part. The emotion lexicon is large: at least 160 emotional lexemes, most of them adjectives or verbs. A lot of them are morphologically compound, often involving a body-part. Having discussed the morphology and syntax of these lexemes in Chapter 5 and their semantics in Chapter 6, chapters 7 to 11 question the linguistic association between body-parts and emotions in Dalabon.
Like most languages in the world (and like many Australian languages) Dalabon uses metaphors grounded in physical and physiological metonymies in order to describe emotions. The linguistic and conceptual status of these tropes is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 presents Dalabon emotion metonymies and metaphors related to the body. One of the particularities of Dalabon metaphors of emotions is that in spite of their metaphorical dimension, they remain partly metonymic to the extent that they always represent emotions as states or parts of the person, not as independent entities. As a result, emotions are never represented as forces or opponents. In Dalabon, a metaphor like ‘overwhelmed by love’ for instance, is impossible. Chapter 9 presents emotion metaphors that do not involve the body, in particular metaphors for anger. These metaphors come closer to representing emotions as independent entities—although such representations remain marginal.
Chapter 10 adopts a complementary perspective on Dalabon emotional compound predicates, and shows that metonymies and metaphors are not the only things body-parts ‘do’ in the Dalabon emotion lexicon. Body-parts are also used to specify which part of the person is involved in an emotional behavior. For instance, it is possible to use a compound predicate to say that someone is ‘angry from the hands’, when someone is gesticulating in anger. Such compounds rely on analogy and compositionality, with metonymies and metaphors playing minor roles in their production. In fact, analogy and compositionality produce compounds which, in turn, may suggest new metaphors to the speakers.
Chapter 11 elaborates upon the idea that purely formal linguistic features of a language may suggest new metaphors, or constrain the metaphors available to speakers. Seeking to explain why, in Dalabon, emotions are always represented as states or parts of the person rather than independent entities, I suggest that this may be due to syntactic properties of the language. Namely, the Dalabon preference for some subcategorization patterns, in particular experiencer subjects and body-part possessor raising, could play a constraining role with respect to emotion metaphors.
First draft, September 2019
Compiled by Maïa Ponsonnet, in collaboration with Angela Ashley, Ingrid Ashley, Bonita Bennett, Jurraine Bennet, †Lily Bennett, Queenie Brennan, Alexandra Bush-Martin, Maggie Jentian, June Jolly, Tyrona Manyita, and June Jolly-Ashley.
This is a glossary of emotion words, i.e. words for ‘feelings’ such as einggri/angry, sed/sad, fil sori/feel sorry etc. There are many more Kriol words about feelings than those included here, but this is a start. Also, we have only included words and meanings as used in the Barunga region. There may be different Kriol words, and different meanings, in other regions.
Ponsonnet, Maïa & Marine Vuillermet, to appear 2018. Morphology and emotions across the world's languages. Special issue, Studies in language 42(1)
What are the causes and implications of this scarcity of emotion nouns in Dalabon? Is this an areal feature? Does it result from a structural property of the language? How does it relate to Dalabon speakers’ shared conceptual representations about emotions? Indeed, it seems that in Dalabon, the rarity of emotion nouns correlates with a limitation on the types of emotion metaphors available – which relates to shared representations of emotions. But the question of the directionality remains open: Does language reflect shared concepts and representations about emotions? Or does the rarity of nouns determine metaphors, which may in turn determine shared representations?
To begin answering these questions, this article presents a pilot survey of emotion nouns in a small sample of nine other Australian languages. The observations resulting from this survey are two-fold. Firstly, Australian languages, in general, seem to have few emotion nouns, although there may be nuances, possibly due to differences in typological profiles. Secondly, there is some semantic convergence among the nouns documented in the ten languages surveyed. Indeed, the semantic profiles of the two emotion nouns (meaning ‘conflict, anger’, and a generic term for ‘feelings’) found in Dalabon are matched by nouns in most of the other languages in the sample.