“Hard sun, hot weather, skin pain”:
The ethnosyntax and
semantics of temperature
expressions in Ewe
Felix K. Ameka
APPROACHES TO
LANGUAGE-COGNITION
RESEARCH
Domain-centered approachLucy 1997
A domain-centered approach begins with a
certain domain of experienced reality and
asks how various languages encode or
construe it. Usually the analysis attempts
to characterize the domain independently
of language(s) and then determine how
each language selects from and
organizes the domain.
Domain-centered approach -2
In a sense, this approach “asks” of each
language how it would handle a given
referential problem so as to reveal the
distinctiveness of its functioning; ideally it
makes clear the various elaborations and
gaps characteristic of each language’s
coding of a common reality. The strength
of the approach lies in its precision and
control.
Domain-centered approachweaknesses (Lucy 1997)
Domain-centered approaches are
susceptible to several characteristic
weaknesses. First, there is strong
pressure to focus on domains that can be
easily defined rather than on what
languages typically encode. This can
result in a rigorous comparison of a
domain of marginal semantic relevance
(e.g. a few select lexical items).
Weaknesses (2)
Second, the high degree of domain focus,
especially in elicitation procedures, tends
to give a very narrow and distorted view of
a language’s semantic approach to a
situation. … Thus the key question for
any domain-centered approach is how
the domain has been delineated in the
first place and what the warrant is for
including or excluding particular forms and
meanings.
Weaknesses (3)
Third, this approach tends to create bogus
structures. Components of a language
that lack structural unity or significance
but that happen to be deployed together
functionally in referring to the domain are
treated as unified properties of the
language. Apparent unity is often an
artifact of the elicitation process. The
remedy is to demonstrate structural
coherence on language-internal grounds.
Weaknesses (4)
Finally, in seeking influences on thought,
studies adopting this approach often have
difficulty establishing the significance of
purported effects, because the approach
emphasizes what it is possible to say, not
what is structurally salient or habitually
said.
IS “TEMPERATURE” A
LINGUISTIC CATEGORY IN
EWE?
Are there basic ‘temperature”
words in Ewe?
- … the vocabulary [and the grammar FA]
of different languages reflect[s] different
ways of conceptualizing the physical
world. (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007:
788)
Fire in Ewe
- dzo N. ‘fire; juju, black magic’
- Aƒé-á
bi dzo
- House-DEF burn fire
- ‘The house burnt down’
- Dzo
bi aƒé-á
- Fire
burn house-DEF
- ‘Fire consumed the house’
- Aƒé-á
dze
- House-DEF contact
- ‘The house is on fire’
dzo
fire
- Dzo
dze
aƒé-á
- Fire
contact house-DEF
- ‘Fire hit the house’
‘Hot’ Based on fire
Aƒé-á
me
dze
dzo
House-DEF
containing.region contact fire
(Inside) the house is hot
Aƒé-á
me
xɔ
House-DEF
containing.region get
(Inside) the house is hot’
dzo
fire
‘Hot’ Based on fire 2
- The noun dzo ‘fire’ can be reduplicated
and suffixed with the diminutive marker to
form an adjectival modifier
- dzó-dzo-e ‘hot’
- nú dzó-dzo-e ‘a hot thing’
- tsi dzó-dzo-e ‘hot water
‘Hot’ Based on fire (3)
- The predicate expressions for ‘hot’ are
morphologically compositional which
works against their basic status.They can
be an input for forming modifiers
following normal adjectivalisation
processes.
- They are salient. The nominalised form of
one of them is what speakers will offer as
translation of ‘temperature’, namely,
dzoxɔxɔ
Applicability – ‘hot’ terms
Body temperature
Ta-wò
xɔ / dze
- Head-2SG get / contact
- Your head is hot
dzo
fire
Object temperature
- Tsi-ɛ
xɔ / dze
- Water-DEF get / contact
- The water is hot
dzo
fire
Applicability – ‘hot’ terms (2)
Food temperature
Dzogbɔ-a
xɔ /
palp-DEF
get /
The palp is hot
dze
contact
dzo
fire
Ambient temperature
Ya-a
me xɔ /
air-DEF in get /
The air is hot
dze
contact
dzo
fire
Fá ‘cold’ - a basic term?
- Fá ‘become cold, cool’
-
Body temperature
Así-wò
fá
Hand-2SG become.cold
Your hands are cold
- Ɖeví-á ƒé lãme
fá
- Child-DEF POSS
bodybecome cold
- The child(‘s body) is cold (i.e lower than
normal body temperature)
Cold (2)
Object temperature
Tsi-ɛ
fá
water-DEF become.cold
The water is cold
Food temperature
Dzogbɔ́-a
fá
palp-DEF
become.cold
The palp is cold
Cold (3)
Ambient temperature
- Ya-a
me
- Air-DEFcontaining.region
- The air is cold
fá
become.cold
- The intransitive verb fá can be
reduplicated to form an adjectival and this
adjectival can be further marked with the
diminutive
Cold (4)
- Ya
fá-fɛ
- Air
RED-become.cold:DIM
- ‘pleasant cool breeze’
Fa is probably the sole basic temperature
term. It is salient, has wide applicability
and is extended to other domains
Fá in emotion and disposition
- When predicated of body parts
(metonymically for persons) or as
possessed yield interpretations in the
emotion domain
- Nye
lãmefá
- 1SG
bodybecome.cold
- I just froze
- Na
mía ŋútí ná-fá
- Give:IMP
1PL skin SUBJV-cold
- Grant us peace
Use with social ambience
- Mía
gbɔ́
fá
- 1PL
environs be.cool
- There is no bad news at our place
- Mía
gbɔ́
dze /
xɔ dzo
- 1PL
environs contact /get fire
- There is bad news at our place
AMBIENT TEMPERATURE
Grammatical structure
Predications about ambient temperature are
expressed using structures that are more
generally used for phenomenological
utterances.
Such utterances have a structure in which
the subject refers to an environmental
phenomenon, weather phenomenon or a
heavenly body.
West African languages in general do not
use expletive subjects in such utterances
‘World’ as subject
Xéxé.á.me
World
It is cold
fá
become cold
Xéxé.á.me
World
It is hot
xɔ /dze
get/ contact
Xéxé.á.me
World
It is dark
tsyɔ́
become.dark
dzo
fire
‘Ground/ earth’ as subject
- Anyígbá
fá
- Ground
become.cold
- The ground is cold
- Anyigbá
dze / xɔ
- Ground
contact/get
- The ground is hot
dzo
fire
- Anyigbá
pɔ́
- Ground
become.wet ‘
- ‘The ground is wet’(Infer: it is cold)
‘Hard sun’ infer hot ambience
Texture to Temperature
Ŋdɔ nu
le se-sé-ḿ ákpá
Sun mouth
be.atRED-hard too.much
Lit: The sun is too hard
Né
ŋdɔ nu
bɔbɔ lá …
COND
sun mouth
soft TP
When the sun goes down …
Lit: when the sun is soft ….
Bodily symptoms of ambient
temperature
- Afífiá wɔ etsɔ
zã me
- Sweat do day.from.today nightin
- It was hot last night
Nye
ŋui-fũ
ɖó
1SG
skin-hair reach
I am feeling cold
tó
down
WATER TEMPERATURE
Anthropocentricity
- Language on the whole, and the linguistic
domain of temperature in particular, is
strongly governed by anthropocentricity.
First, temperature attributes are chosen
relatively to several temperature
parameters, that are important and salient
for humans, are distinguishable by simple
procedures relating to the human body
and have only very approximate physical
correlates (KOPTJEVSKAJA-TAMM and
RAKHILINA)
Talking about water
temperature
Tsi-ɛ
fá
Water-DEF
become.cold/cool
‘The water is cool/cold’
Tsi-ɛ
gblɔ
Water-DEF
become.lukewarm
‘The water is lukewarm’
Talking about water
temperature (2)
Tsi-ɛ
xɔ dzo
Water-DEF
get fire
‘The water is hot’
Tsi-ɛ
vé
Water-DEF
pain
‘The water is painfully hot’
Tsi-ɛ
fie
Water-DEF
boil
‘The water has boiled’
Water and cultural domains
Verb
Cultural practice
Applicability to other
object
Fá ‘become, cold cool’
Drink, food preparation,
bathing (living humans
especially in hot
weather) washing and
general cleaning etc
Applied for temperature
widely; extended to
emotion and social
ambience
gblɔ ’lukewarm’
Drink, when one cannot
take cool water and for
medicinal purposes;
bathing in not so hot
weather
Not applied outside
water
Dze/ xɔ dzo contact/get
fire
Bathing, also as base for Applied widely for ‘hot’
some food preparation
temperature
or medicine preparation
Vé ‘painfully hot’
‘Bathing (the point at
which one can put one’s
hand in it without feeling
burnt’
Used only for
temperature with respect
to water; but uesd in
other domains, taste;
bodily sensation,
emotion etc.
Fie ‘boil’
For bathing human
corpses; this is carried
out with boiling water
and living humans are
not supposed to heat
their water for bathing to
boiling point. It is also
used for removing body
hair from slaughtered or
more generally dead
animals;
also used for medicinal
purposes i.e sterilizing ;
the state of water
needed for preparing
certain foods
Concluding remarks
- Probably Ewe has only one basic
temperature term
- Expressions for ‘hot’ are complex
involving V and N collocations, but which
are based on the word for ‘fire’. These
partially support the suggestion by
Goddard and Wierzbicka (2007) that the
semantics of ‘hot’ words are linked to a
‘fire’ prototype.
Concluding remarks (2)
- Ambient temperature talked about using
these ‘basic’ expressions as predicates of
phenomenological entities; but it is also
inferred from other predicates. In
particular predications involving texture
denoting verbs and the sun.
- Talking about water temperature reveals
cultural concerns in temperature talk
- Is temperature a linguistic category in
Ewe?