Temperature terms in the Ghanaian languages in a typological perspective

• This talk deals with the conceptualisation of temperature in some of the Ghanaian languages as reflected in their systems of central temperature terms, such as hot, cold, to freeze, etc. We will discuss these systems in the light of a large-scale cross-linguistic collaborative project, involving 35 researchers (including the present authors) and covering more than 50 genetically, areally and typologically diverse languages (Koptjevskaja-Tamm ed. 2015). The key questions addressed here are how the different languages carve up the temperature domain by means of their linguistic expressions, and how the temperature expressions are used outside of the temperature domain. Languages cut up the temperature domain among their expressions according to three main dimensions: TEMPERATURE VALUES (e.g., warming vs. cooling temperatures, or excessive heat vs. pleasant warmth), FRAMES OF TEMPERATURE EVALUATION (TACTILE, The stones are cold; AMBIENT, It is cold here; and PERSONAL-FEELING, I am cold), and ENTITIES whose “temperature” is evaluated.  Although the temperature systems are often internally heterogeneous, we may still talk about the main temperature value distinctions for the whole system. The Ghanaian languages favour the cross-linguistically preferred two-value systems, with water often described by a more elaborated system. An interesting issue concerns conventionalisation and frequency of expressions with a primary meaning outside of the temperature domain, for temperature uses. For instance, the conventionalised expressions for talking about ‘warm/hot’ in Ewe involve sources of heat (‘fire’) and bodily exuviae (‘sweat’). The Ghanaian languages often manifest numerous extended uses of their temperature terms. However, strikingly, none of them conforms to one of the most widely quoted conceptual metaphors, “affection is warmth” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999:50), which is also true for many other languages in (West) Africa and otherwise.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

temperature terms

areal semantics

lexical typology

African languages

Linguistics

lingvistik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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