LINGUIST List 13.870

Thu Mar 28 2002

Qs: "Emotion Verbs" in Langs, Postlexical Structure

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  • r.schiering, Girls in caf�s, emotion verbs, nationality
  • Dan Everett, postlexical structure preservation

    Message 1: Girls in caf�s, emotion verbs, nationality

     Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:18:19 +0100 (MET)
    From: r.schiering <r.schieringgmx.de>
    Subject: Girls in caf�s, emotion verbs, nationality


    Dear Linguists,

    Imagine the following situation: Your day's work is done, you feel a little bit tired. A young woman joins you for one more cup of coffee before you go. So you are sitting there in this nice caf� with this nice young woman. And the coffee tastes good, and both of you enjoy smoking innumerable cigarettes and having a conversation. Surprisingly, she doesn't stop the conversation when it comes to linguistics (by now you realize she must be special). As you are trying to explain to her (a non-linguist) what you are doing as a linguist in simple words, she comes up with her own theory about language and nationality. She explains the following (somewhat shortened):

    1) Germans are somehow strange 2) German has very few words denoting nuances of positive emotions for another person (but quite a lot for negative emotions) 3) This lack of positive emotion verbs is directly connected with a lack of emotions 4) Therefore, the german language determines that the Germans are rather emotionless when it comes to liking someone (but not when it comes to hating someone) 5) This might be the reason why Germans are so strange

    You might guess that I was in such a situation yesterday afternoon. Somehow, I didn't want to accept this theory (as I feel like an emotional guy, despite German). Nevertheless I hadn't much to say against it, except for I don't think there is any provable link between the capability of emotions and the capability of expressing such emotions (we know that Sapir-Whorf-style arguments are hard to speak against). I argued that you can (perhaps in any language) paraphrase or describe such emotions, even if you don't have a special word for it. This doesn't count for her, because this includes reflections over your emotions and something like objectivizing, which isn't as immediate as having one word for one emotion. (Not bad isn't it?)

    Now I need your help. She mentioned that other languages (Dutch, French) have a larger set of positive emotion words (I think she meant verbs). For German we could only think of four expressions: 'lieben' ('to love someone'), 'm�gen' ('to like someone'), 'lieb haben' (not as strong as 'to love someone'), 'gern haben' (a little stronger than 'to like someone'), where the last ones are not really simple verb forms. So I would like to ask you to sent me all the positive emotion verbs you know in German, Dutch, French and any other language that behaves interestingly in this domain. I would be especially interested in systems that have one verb for feelings like 'yes I loved him once, and we had a relationship, but this is over and now we are good friends' and such things. Are there languages that do express nuances of positive emotions towards another person in simple verbs?

    As this might be a lesson in how to impress cute young women as a linguist (by the way this should be the main motivation for a 24-year old like me to do linguistics!), I will sent a summary of responses.

    Ren� Schiering Department of Linguistics, Cologne

    Message 2: postlexical structure preservation

     Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:01:37 -0300
    From: Dan Everett <dan_everettsil.org>
    Subject: postlexical structure preservation


    Folks,

    Imagine a process which operates only across word boundaries or at the end of phonological phrases, etc. That is, what Lexical Phonology would likely label a postlexical rule.

    To give a hypothetical example, a process of, say, lenition of voiceless stops at the end of a phonological phrase.

    Now imagine that this process takes phonemes (lexically present segments) as inputs and can only return phonemes as output. That is, the process is structure-preserving.

    In the original formulations of structure-preservation in Lexical Phonology, the idea was to capture the fact that lexical rules did not introduce allophonic/non-phonemic/etc. material. It was assumed, but not crucially, that postlexical rules would not be structure-preserving.

    I would like to know if readers of this list have encountered examples of postlexical structure-preservation. If so, I would also like to know what they think of the theoretical implications of the process.

    If there are sufficient replies, I will post a summary.

    Thanks in advance,

    Dan Everett