Publications
Publication details [#47985]
Geeraerts, Dirk and Veronika Szelid. 2008. Usage-based dialectology: Emotion concepts in the Southern Csango dialect. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 6 (1) : 23–49.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/arcl
Annotation
Applying concepts of Cognitive Linguistics to dialectological data of a traditional kind, the present paper addresses the question whether differences of culture and conceptualization could be detected language-internally, not just across languages. At the same time, it shows that the traditional methodology of evaluating dialectological data at the level of language structure can be challenged by a usage-based cognitive linguistic analysis. The language variant in focus is the Moldavian Southern Csango, an archaic Hungarian dialect. The paper investigates the conceptualization of forty internal qualities (emotions and character traits) on the basis of two usage-based types of analysis: one in one tries to determine the entrenchment of the investigated concepts, and one in which one looks at the semantic relationships between them. The two approaches provide converging evidence that negative concepts are more elaborated in the mind of the Csangos and that the most crucial factor organizing their conceptual system is “morality”.