Diminutives and augmentatives in Beja (North-Cushitic)
The evaluative morphology of Beja consists of four devices: gender shift to feminine on nouns, and sound change
(r>l) on nouns, verbs and adjectives form the diminutives. A suffix
-loːj on adjectives, and -l on Manner converbs, form the augmentatives. The analysis focuses
on the evaluative, emotional and other pragmatic values associated with these morphemes, size, endearment, praise, romantic love,
contempt, politeness and eloquence. When relevant, the links to the general mechanism of semantic change,
lambda-abstraction-specification proposed by Jurafsky (1996), is
discussed. This paper also discusses productivity, cases where the evaluative device has scope over an adjacent noun instead of
its host, the distribution of values across semantic domains and genres, and cases of lexicalization. The corpus analysis shows
that the proportional frequency of pragmatic expressive connotations compared to the denotational meaning is higher for
diminutives than for augmentatives. Further, with diminutives, positive emotional values are more frequent than negative ones,
while with augmentatives attested pejorative values are very rare. The analysis is set within a typological framework.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Diminutives
- 2.1Gender shift: masculine > feminine
- 2.1.1Frequency and semantic domains
-
2.1.2Semantics and pragmatics
- 2.1.2.1Body parts
- a.Denotational meaning
- b.Lexicalizations
- 2.1.2.2Geographical terms
- a.Emotions
-
b.Denotational meaning
- 2.1.2.3Artefacts
- a.Emotions
- b.Denotational meaning
- 2.1.3Summary
- 2.2The shift alveolar trill r > alveolar lateral approximant l
- 2.2.1Frequency and semantic domains
- 2.2.2Semantics and pragmatics
- 2.2.2.1Body parts
- a.Denotational meaning and quasi-lexicalizations
- b.Denotational meaning and rhetoric
- c.Emotions
- 2.2.2.2Geographical terms and natural elements
- a.Denotational meaning
- b.Lexicalization
- c.Emotions
- 2.2.2.3Derived nouns
- 2.2.2.4Adjectives
- a.Denotational meaning
- b.Emotions and rhetoric
- 2.2.2.5Verbs
- a.Denotational meaning
- b.Pragmatics and politeness
-
c.Emotions
- 2.2.3Summary
- 3.Augmentatives
- 3.1Gender shift on nouns: feminine > masculine
- 3.2Adjectives and the suffix -loːj
- 3.2.1Denotational meaning
- 3.2.2Emotional meaning
- 3.2.3Summary
- 3.3Manner converbs and the suffix -l
- 3.3.1Denotational meaning
- 3.3.2Lexicalization
-
3.3.3Habituality
- 3.3.4Emotions
- 3.3.5Summary
- 4.Conclusion
- Sources
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra
2012 Round women and long men: Shape, size, and the meanings of gender in New Guinea and beyond.
Anthropological Linguistics 54(1). 33–86.
Bauer, Laurie
1996 No phonetic iconicity in evaluative morphology.
Studia Linguistica 501. 189–206.
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson
1978 Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chafe, Wallace
(ed.) 1980 The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
Cohen, David
1988 Bédja. In
David Cohen (ed.),
Les Langues dans le monde ancien et moderne: Langues chamito-sémitiques, 270–277. Paris: Editions du CNRS.
Corbett, Greville G.
2015 Gender typology. In
Greville G. Corbett (ed.),
The expression of gender, 87–130. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Creissels, Denis
1999 Origine et évolution des diminutifs et augmentatifs dans quelques langues africaines.
Silexicales 21. 51–57.
Darmon, Chloé
2015 A morphosyntactic description of Xamtanga: An Agaw (Central Cushitic) language of the northern Ethiopian
highlands. Lyon: Université Lyon Doctoral dissertation.
de Reuse, Willem J.
1986 The lexicalization of sound symbolism in Santiago Del Estero Quechua.
International Journal of American Linguistics 521. 54–64.
Diakonoff, Igor M.
1988 Afrasian languages. Moscow: Nauka.
Di Garbo, Francesca
2014 Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology: An intra- and intergenealogical typological survey of
Africa. Stockholm: Stockholm University Doctoral dissertation.
Dixon, Robert M. W.
1982 [1977] Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax. Berlin: Mouton Publishers.
Dixon, Robert M. W.
2004 Adjective classes in typological perspective. In
Robert M. W. Dixon &
Alexandra Aikhenvald (eds.),
Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology, 1–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dressler, Wolfgang & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi
1994 Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German and other languages. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Feghali, Michel & Albert Cuny
1924 Du genre grammatical en sémitique. Paris: Geuthner.
Feldman, Harry
1986 A grammar of Awtuw. Canberra: Australian National University.
Fradin, Bernard, Nabil Hathout & Fanny Meunier
2003 La suffixation en -ET et la question de la productivité.
Langue Française 1401. 56–78.
Grandi, Nicola
2002 Development and spread of augmentative suffixes in the Mediterranean area. In
Paolo Ramat &
Thomas Stolz (eds),
Mediterranean languages, 171–190. Bochum: Dr Brockmeyer University Press.
Grandi, Nicola
2009 Restrictions on Italian verbal evaluative suffixes: The role of aspect and actionality.
York Paper in Linguistic Series 21. 46–66.
Grice, Paul
1975 Logic and conversation. In
P. Cole &
J. L. Morgan (eds.),
Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.
Haas, Mary
1978 [1976] The Northern California linguistic area. In
Anwar S. Dil (ed.),
Language culture and history: Essays by Mary R. Haas, 353–369. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hamid Ahmed, Mohamed-Tahir
2005 “Paroles d’Hommes Honorables”: Essai d’anthropologie poétique des Bedja du Soudan. Paris, Louvain: Peeters.
Hetzron, Robert
1978 The nominal system of Awngi (Southern Agaw).
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 411. 121–141.
Jespersen, Otto
1922 Language. London: Allen & Unwin.
Jurafsky, Daniel
1988 On the semantics of the Cantonese changed tone.
Berkeley Linguistic Society 141. 304–318.
Jurafsky, Daniel
1996 Universal tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive.
Language 72(3). 533–578.
Matisoff, James A.
1992 The mother of all morphemes. Augmentatives and diminutives in areal and universal perspective. In
Martha Ratcliff &
Eric Schiller (eds.),
Papers from the first annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Society 1991, 293–349. Tempe (AZ): Arizona State University.
Matsumoto, Yoshiko
1985 A sort of speech act qualification in Japanese: chotto
.
UCLA Journal of Asian Culture 91. 149–159.
Németh, Boglárka & Anna Sőrés
Evaluative morphology in the verbal domain. Complex verbs suffixed by -kVdik in
Hungarian. In
Maïa Ponsonnet &
Marine Vuillermet eds.
Morphology and emotions across the world’s languages. Special issue of Studies in Language 42 1
Nichols, Johanna
1971 Diminutive consonant symbolism in western North America.
Language 471. 826–848.
Ponsonnet, Maïa
2018 A preliminary typology of emotional connotations in morphological diminutives and augmentatives. In
Maïa Ponsonnet &
Marine Vuillermet (eds.),
Morphology and emotions across the world’s languages. Special issue of
Studies in Language, 42(1).
Ponsonnet, Maïa & Marine Vuillermet
2018 Introduction. In
Maïa Ponsonnet &
Marine Vuillermet (eds.),
Morphology and emotions across the world’s languages. Special issue of
Studies in Language 42(1).
Roper, E. M.
1928 Tu Beḍawiɛ: An elementary handbook for the use of Sudan government officials. Hertford: Stephen Austin.
Sapir, Edward
1949 [1915] Abnormal types of speech in Nootka. In
D. G. Mandelbaum (ed.),
Selected writings, 179–96. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sasse, Hans-Jurgen
1974 Notes on the structure of Galab.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37(2). 407–438.
Sifianou, Maria
1992 The use of diminutives in expressing politeness: Modern Greek versus English.
Journal of Pragmatics 171. 155–173.
Taine-Cheikh, Catherine
1988 Les diminutifs dans le dialecte arabe de Mauritanie.
Al Wasît 21. 89–118.
Taine-Cheikh, Catherine
2018 Expressiveness and evaluation in Arabic: The singular development of the diminutive in Ḥassāniyya
Arabic. In
Maïa Ponsonnet &
Marine Vuillermet (eds.),
Morphology and emotions across the world’s languages. Special issue of
Studies in Language 42(1).
Trigo, Loren
1991 Scales and diminutivization.
Linguistic Inquiry 221. 578–583.
Vanhove, Martine
2005 ‘La grenouille et le moustique’ ou l’humour poétique bedja. In
Ursula Baumgardt &
Jean Derive (eds.),
Paroles nomades: Ecrits d’ethnolinguistique africaine, 497–502. Paris: Karthala.
Vanhove, Martine
2014a
Beja grammatical sketch
. In
Amina Mettouchi &
Christian Chanard (eds.),
The CorpAfroAs corpus of spoken AfroAsiatic languages. (
) (Accessed 05/12/2016.)
Vanhove, Martine
2017 Le bedja. Leuven, Paris: Peeters.
Vanhove, Martine
2014b
The Beja corpus
. In
Amina Mettouchi &
Christian Chanard (eds.),
The CorpAfroAs corpus of spoken AfroAsiatic languages. (
) (Accessed 05/12/2016.)
Wierzbicka, Anna
1984 Diminutives and depreciatives: Semantic representation for derivational category.
Quaderni di Semantica 51. 123–130.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Adrob, Hassan Ali
2021.
The role of traditional songs in preserving languages of minority: The Beja case in Sudan.
International Journal of Languages and Culture 1:1
► pp. 18 ff.
Torgersen, Henrik
2023.
Diminutivizing L-reduplication in Norwegian.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 46:3
► pp. 357 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.