Article published in:
Morphology and emotions across the world's languages
Edited by Maïa Ponsonnet and Marine Vuillermet
[Studies in Language 42:1] 2018
► pp. 256–293

Grammatical fear morphemes in Ese Ejja

Making the case for a morphosemantic apprehensional domain

| Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage (CNRS & Université de Lyon)

Grammatical morphemes dedicated to emotions have been little described so far, except for surprise, which may be instantiated in a mirative category. It has even been suggested that an equivalent grammatical encoding for other basic emotions does not seem to occur crosslinguistically. This paper examines three grammatical morphemes in the Amazonian language Ese Ejja (Takanan), namely the apprehensive, the avertive and the timitive, and argues that all three morphemes express fear or its milder version apprehension, i.e. an emotion triggered by an undesirable, (highly) possible event. The morphemes essentially diverge in their syntactic scope (main verb, subordinated verb, or NP), their perspective (that of the speaker or the subject), and the possible absence vs. obligatory presence of a precautionary situation, i.e. the precautions taken to avoid the (consequences of the) feared event. After describing these features in Ese Ejja, the article outlines a crosslinguistic framework for the study of these categories.

Keywords: fear, apprehensive, emotion, grammar, typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Three “fear” morphemes in a single languag
    • 1.2A rarum
    • 1.3Previous literature
    • 1.4Goals and organization of the paper
  • 2.Grammatical overview
  • 3.Semantic features of the apprehensional domain
    • 3.1Oxford English Dictionary
    • 3.2 Wierzbicka (1999)
    • 3.3 Lichtenberk (1995) and Verstraete (2005)
  • 4.The Apprehensive -chana
    • 4.1A main clause marker
    • 4.2Undesirability and (strong) possibility
    • 4.3Precautionary situation
    • 4.4Speaker’s perspective
    • 4.5Control
    • 4.6Origins
  • 5.The Avertive e-V kwajejje~kwanijje
    • 5.1A subordinate clause marker
    • 5.2Undesirability and possibility
    • 5.3Precautionary situation
    • 5.4Speaker’s or subject’s perspectiv
    • 5.5Origins
  • 6.The Timitive =yajjajo
    • 6.1An NP marker
    • 6.2Undesirability and high probability
    • 6.3Precautionary situation, fear symptoms and uncontrolled reaction
    • 6.4Speaker’s or subject’s perspective
    • 6.5Origins
  • 7.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 19 April 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.00010.vui
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