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Polysemy, Diachrony and the Circle of Cognition
Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture Series Editors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) R.M.W. Dixon (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) N.J. Enfield (University of Sydney)
volume 28
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bslc
Polysemy, Diachrony and the Circle of Cognition By
Michael Fortescue
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: ‘Thinking about’ (M. Fortescue, this volume, figure 5) The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020057091
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 1879-5412 isbn 978-90-04-44951-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44952-7 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Michael Fortescue. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations ix 1
Introduction 1
2
Thinking in General 11
3
Understanding 17
4
Knowing 24
5
Believing 30
6
Remembering 34
7
Thinking about 40
8
Judging (Considering) 46
9
Calculating 50
10
Deciding 53
11
Guessing 56
12
Intending 60
13
Imagining 64
14
Expecting 68
15
Wishing 71
16
Emotional Feelings 74
17
Surprise 80
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vi
contents
18
Experiencing (Feeling) 84
19
Perceiving (Noticing) 90
20
Recognizing 95
21
Full Circle 98
22
What a Surprise! A Closer Look at a Cinderella Category 104
23
The Cross-Linguistic Expression of Categories of Emotion 125
24
Seeming: An Odd One Out? 137
25
Guess: How a Single Category Can Involve All Others 146
26
Conclusions 157 Sources for Languages Cited 163 Appendix 1: A Sentimental Circle 167 Appendix 2: Raw Lexical Data 170 References 222 Index of Authors 230 Index of Languages 231 Index of Subjects 233
Figures and Tables Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
The Circle of Cognition 3 Understanding 20 Knowing 27 Remembering 36 Thinking about 42 Judging (considering) 48 Experiencing (feeling) 86 Perceiving (noticing) 92 English cognitive verbs 99 Japanese cognitive verbs 100 The landscape of surprise 122 Geographical spread of the languages cited
American Sign Language Figures Mind 16 Understand 23 Know 29 Believe 33 Doubt 33 Remember 39 Forget 39 Think 45 Judge 49 Count 52 Guess 59 Mean 63 Imagination 67 Dream 67 Hope 70 Want 73 Feel 79 Love 79 Surprise 83
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figures and tables Notice 94 Seem 145
Tables 1 2 3
Sources of English emotion words 126 Emotions/feelings expressed by emotion roots in Proto-Eskimo ‘Primary’ emotion labels and their nearest equivalents 133
128
Abbreviations asl caus cay ced csy def eci erg excl ie imperf indic infer Kol. nai neg oe of ohg oj on or part pc pe perf pi pinf pl pres prev progr py sg Tun. wg
American Sign Language Causative Central Alaskan Yupik Comparative Eskimo Dictionary Central Siberian Yupik Definite Eastern Canadian Inuit Ergative Exclamatory Indo-European Imperfective Indicative Inferential Kolyma (Yukaghir) North Alaskan Inuit Negative Old English Old French Old High German Old Japanese Old Norse Orientational Participial Proto-Chukotkan Proto-Eskimo Perfective Proto-Inuit Physical inferential Plural Present Previous Progressive Proto-Yupik Singular Tundra (Yukaghir) West Greenlandic
chapter 1
Introduction Cognitive verbs—verbs describing mental states or activity—constitute a subject of considerable interest to both Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. They promise to open a window (just a crack at least) on the invisible workings of the mind, at the same time as displaying a wide variety of historical sources across languages. I have written previously that the relationship among the cognitive verbs of individual languages is essentially one of metonymy, despite the focus on metaphor in Cognitive Linguistic treatments of this area (Fortescue 2001). In the present work I shall spell out in greater detail what the specific metonymic relationships involved are across a restricted but representative selection of the world’s languages, as revealed largely by polysemy.1 The role of metaphor will be reassessed en route. The question of criteria for distinguishing the major cognitive categories and their portrayal as a closed circle will be a returning theme throughout this work, as will the relevance of diachrony. The notion of a “circle” here is germane to Searle’s “Circle of Intentional concepts” (Searle 1983: 26), which I shall return to in chapter 12. The approach also has obvious affinities with semantic map theory. See Croft (2001: 92) for the notion of “conceptual space” and its relationship to individual semantic maps—my Circle of Cognition is an example of the former. As Croft points out, there are hidden assumptions attached to any such approach (Croft 2001: 110). Most importantly, the very parameters chosen to compare are often assumed a priori to be conceptually universal. I shall adopt Croft’s “conventional universalist” position as regards the general relationship of conceptual structure to linguistically expressed semantic structure. This combines the assumption of a universal conceptual basis for semantic structure with acknowledgement of language-specific processes of selection and conventionalization of alternative conceptualizations. Universal conceptual spaces may only be determinable hermeneutically (i.e. abductively), not by pure induction from linguistic expressions alone, and this is how I have built up the present space, by successive trial and error. From this point of view one may expect a certain degree of fluidity of borders and “leakage” from adjacent conceptual domains, but this surely reflects the way the brain works.
1 See Fig. 12 under Sources for the geographical spread of the languages cited.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_002
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A central tenet of the semantic map approach to typology is the “Semantic Map Connectivity” hypothesis (Croft 2001: 96), which states that a given language may lump together different points (contents) on the map, expressing them with similar or overlapping means, but that the areas thus carved out will be continuous on the map. I shall be investigating how well the Semantic Map Connectivity Hypothesis applies to my model. What is implied by it here is that two categories like Believing and Remembering or Knowing and Believing are considered to be adjacent if they tend to host polysemous extensions of word meanings across the proposed border between them. The eighteen specific cognitive categories involved in assembling the model’s overall cognitive space have evolved from continual interplay between “top-down” descriptions of cognitive functions, as described in the psychological and philosophical literature,2 and the “bottom-up” convergence of linguistic meanings and polysemies. Further adjustments and sub-divisions may of course eventually prove desirable. Areas of highest concentration of linguistic forms from different languages will indicate the foci of the categories, while the specific overlaps with adjacent categories will determine their succession. It should constantly be borne in mind that the category labels (with initial capitals) are not equivalent to corresponding English words. A further dimension is added to each category by exemplification of the deployment of individual words (particularly in English) in specific situational contexts. The general approach taken, then, can test the Semantic Map Connectivity hypothesis as applied to a wider domain than is normal within the semantic map paradigm.3 But it can also test another hypothesis, that of the general diachronic derivation of cognitive verbs from terms for more basic sensorimotor and other core functions—a hypothesis related to the central tenet of Cognitive Linguistics concerning “schemas” but also reflected in much of the work by typologists working with endangered hunter-gatherer languages. Let us call it the Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis. The diagrams portraying these relationships consist of two concentric layers, as illustrated in Figure 1. There is a “hub” or “core” divided into four quadrants (sensation, action, feeling and prediction) that encompass the universal pre-verbal functions of the brain. These are related to the circle of (potentially) conscious cognitive categories around the hub to which they relate, as often suggested by the etymology of terms refer2 Including the various forms of “Intentionality” described by Searle (1983), plus forms of mental activity he does not discuss in detail. 3 This hypothesis can also be stated in terms of testable implicational relationships, such as that of Evans & Wilkins (2000: 569) for Australian languages: if a language has polysemy between hearing and thinking it also has polysemy between hearing and understanding.
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introduction Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
Emotion Surprise
Intending
Experiencing
Guessing
Deciding
predict
feel
act
sense
Perceiving
Recognizing
Calculating Judging Thinking about Remembering
figure 1
Understanding Knowing Believing
The Circle of Cognition
ring to the latter. The entire outer circle constitutes the basis of what Sachs (1995: 216) would call “generalizing Mind”—integrative, reflective, abstract cognition. It will be seen that individual words in various languages cover a larger or smaller chapter of the circle’s circumference—an extreme example is the Papuan language Kalam, in which the perceptual verb stem nŋ- covers all eighteen categories, with more specific meanings determined by combinations with other words. But even the English verb ‘think’ covers a good part of the circumference, with more specific meanings narrowed down by the use of following prepositions or adverbs. More precise distinctions in the meanings of individual words can also be made within each category by grammatical means (e.g. by voice, transitivity or aspect), and their argument structures may require, for instance, following clauses as opposed to nominal objects. And of course a given language may have several words within the same general category, distinguished by more specific semantic features or association with particular situational contexts. I shall be focusing upon the most common, general words. The division of the “hub” into four quadrants (cited in single quotes) needs to be justified, as these represent the bodily anchoring of the higher, conscious cognitive categories to which cognitive verbs apply. A good deal is known about the brain structures and sites involved, although they are not limited to unit-
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ary subdivisions and should be regarded as functions, not as objects or precise places. For a readable (and graphic) source covering the general organization of the brain see Carter (1999). For a more technical account see Arbib et al. (1998). It will be seen from Figure 1 that the first of the four quadrants, ‘Sense’ (sensation via the senses), relates to the categories of Perceiving, Recognizing, Understanding, Knowing and Believing. Perceiving of course reflects the five sensory channels, themselves involving complex neural processing between receptors and corresponding cortical areas. Perceiving something in any modality presupposes noticing it, and here arousal and orientation mechanisms are at work (Carter pp. 186–187). Recognizing proceeds from raw sensory perception either by a shorter, automatic route through the limbic system where familiarity with the input stimulus is registered, or by a longer route via stored images, scenes, etc. in the association areas surrounding the primary sensory areas. Here the input is classified and perhaps a word attached to it before still wider associations—including feedback from the faster limbic route—bring it to the surface of consciousness in frontal cortex (Carter pp. 111–119). This may result in Understanding—at the highest level understanding the meaning of words and sentences, which is a function primarily of Wernike’s area on the upper left temporal lobe, but also involves other areas. These include Broca’s speech production area and the angular gyrus involved especially in reading (Carter, pp. 149–153). More widely, understanding something presupposes a satisfactory match between the input and what can be deduced about it and its relation to its context. Knowing will result if what has been understood is then stored in memory, initially in the hippocampus and eventually transferred to de-personalized semantic memory (principally in the temporal lobes). Procedural knowledge of how to do things is another matter—here the putamen (part of the limbic system) is crucially involved. Of the information stored in memory, some will be based on incomplete evidence and strongly affected by emotional (and wishful) factors, i.e. the stuff of Believing. This leads on to the second quadrant, that of ‘Act’ (mental action), which presupposes belief as background premise. This quadrant subtends the cognitive categories of Remembering, Thinking about, Judging, Calculating, and Deciding. Remembering can be involuntary as well as active (and thus in fact straddles the adjacent quadrants), but it is the active kind that forms an important part of general mental activity, whether in the form of summoning up experiences or learnt facts, all contributing, along with emotional factors, to Thinking about something. All active mental activity involves the frontal lobes, and more specifically the dorso-lateral parts of the prefrontal cortex, the “central executive” of working memory, particularly active in planning and Deciding. Other cortical areas will be drawn in depending
introduction
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on the kind of task involved (Carter pp. 188–195), in particular the other components of working memory, the so-called spatial sketch pad (in the parietal lobe) and the phonological loop (maintaining words for a few seconds in the language areas). If, for example, the task is arithmetical (a basic form of Calculating) a region of the parietal lobes will be involved, and if social factors or recognizing other people’s motivations are important (as in various kinds of Judging), other areas of the frontal lobes will be activated (Carter p. 143). Maintaining attention in the course of any mental activity will probably involve the anterior cingulate cortex (p. 182). Deciding on some physical action will activate the secondary motor area, where physical actions are planned before being carried out by the motor areas. This brings us into the ‘Predict’ quadrant, which embraces the categories of Guessing, Intending, Imagining and Expecting. The neural underpinning in this quadrant may be less familiar than for the other three, so a few words of explanation are needed. In recent years the notion of the brain as a “prediction machine” has become popular among cognitive scientists—see for instance Clark (2013). Though it is unlikely that this is the only thing the brain does, it is clear that prediction is a very basic aspect of its functioning. Carter (p. 120) discusses the role hypothesis-forming—guesswork—can have even as regards basic perception. Alexander & Brown (2019) see error prediction as a unifying computational principle (“fundamental neural currency”) across the cortex. Guessing the outcome of a planned action (if it is promising) leads naturally to Intending to carry it out. But prediction concerns not only the likely future outcome of one’s own actions but includes Imagining possible (or even impossible) states of affair and Expecting changes in the external world independent of one’s own actions. All of this activity is probably concentrated in frontal cortex. The category Hoping—which contains an additional ‘wanting’ element—straddles the border between the ‘Prediction’ and ‘Feeling’ quadrants (between Expecting and Wishing), but mainly, as the polysemy shows, belongs to the former. The final quadrant, ‘Feel’ (feeling in the broad sense of bodily experience), subtends the categories of Wishing, Emotional feeling, Surprise, and Experiencing. All of these are functions to some degree of the limbic system, but as regards the central category of Emotional feeling, neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin are also crucially involved (cf. Carter 80– 103). The more negatively valenced emotions involve the amygdala, whereas positive ones activate the dopamine “reward system|” targeting the frontal lobes. As will be discussed in chapter 23, this part of the quadrant divides up into several distinct “primary” emotions. The ventro-medial area of the frontal lobes is involved in conscious—i.e. secondary—emotion (part of the system
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responsible for “core consciousness” in Damasio 2000). I treat Wishing and Surprise as distinct categories here, though they share a common anchoring in pre-conscious ‘feeling’. The former has strong links to Prediction and only weak emotional content, while the latter is anchored in the startle reflex, which is not regarded as an emotion by most researchers today (more on this in chapter 22). Finally, Experiencing combines conscious proprioception of the body’s internal states, such as hunger and pain (involving the hypothalamus and the insula cortex), and diffuse awareness of one’s body in relation to the external environment. Carter (p. 185) mentions the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in labelling stimuli as coming from within or without the body. Polysemy in words in this area confirms the close association of these two kinds of experience, at least in conscious awareness. As an initial example of my approach consider the different senses of Knowing, about a fact or about a person, thing or place (French savoir vs. connaître, etc.)—do these different senses indicate different cognitive categories? And what is their relationship to the core quadrants? On the circle of cognitive categories that I propose it will be seen that there is one category marked simply as Knowing and another as Recognizing. There are other adjacent categories that are obviously related: on the one hand Believing and on the other Understanding. When one looks at the meanings of the relevant terms in a variety of languages the picture becomes clearer: whereas ‘know’ in English covers (at least) two distinct categories, taking either facts or people, etc., as object, terms like French savoir falls within the former category and those like connaître within the latter.4 As will be demonstrated, words across languages tend to cluster within the distinct categories (connaître-like words falling under Recognizing and ‘knowing how to’ ones under Knowing, going with savoir-like words). Most languages that have one word for both meanings (like English ‘know’ or Japanese zonjiru) show bridging polysemy across the intervening Understanding category (thus ‘I know what you mean’ and ‘She knows her French cuisine’). This is not surprising: one understands the nature of something or someone by knowing about it/them. Similarly, between ‘recognize’ and ‘understand’: one has to understand what something or someone is to recognize or identify them. Recognizing is in turn closer to pure perceptual ‘noticing’ (which lacks anchoring in ‘knowledge’). Specific to the focal meaning of Recognizing (as reflected in English verb ‘recognize’) as opposed to ‘knowing a person’ is its more dynamic and momentaneous nature, though a verb like ‘recognize’ can refer to perman-
4 The constructions in which the two verbs enter are also different, only savoir taking a que clausal object. It can also be used intransitively, unlike connaître.
introduction
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ent recognition, like ‘know’. Note that French has a derived form of connaître for focal Recognizing, reconnaître, just as Danish has genkende, a derived form of kende ‘know s.o. or s.th.’ (both with a prefix meaning ‘again’). This derivational extension from a verb of Knowing-as-recognizing is typical of European languages but is not well represented elsewhere. The semantic features distinguishing categories from their neighbours are quite general. Thus Believing is distinguished from Knowing by the feature of weak versus strong evidence, with an element of personal feeling or commitment in the former replacing solid—e.g. perceptual—evidence. Knowing is based on experience gained principally through perception, in other words as (potentially) remembered experience (hence its further adjacency to Remembering), and Believing is also based largely on experience but with downplaying of the criteria of objective truth (repeatable evidence). The polysemy of verbs of Believing and Knowing is widespread, but that between those of say Remembering and Knowing or Believing and Understanding is rare. In general, the language-specific data supports the broad category distinctions I have made, although occasional “gaps” may occur where bridging meanings through intervening categories have been lost historically or constructional or derivational extensions have resulted in what I call “straying” (I shall return to this below). The result in such cases is often homonymy. It should be realized that the borders between adjacent categories are fluid and porous, much more so than the meanings of individual words on either side of them in any given language might suggest. Also the boundary between cognition and (associated) behaviour is quite porous—numerous examples of this will be met in what follows. A further question is as to which sense of a given polysemous word is to be regarded as “basic”, or must we simply accept that some words are equally at home in more than one category? This is ultimately a diachronic question involving the historical source and evolution of the word, but there is another, typological way of looking at it: one might ask in which category do similar terms from across the world cluster? In the case of ‘know’, where a lexical distinction is made between the ‘knowing-as-a-fact’ and ‘knowing-asrecognizing’ senses this would appear to be supported by the etymological data—thus the source of most Indo-European connaître words lies in ProtoIndo-European *gno- (including ‘know’ itself), which would originally have had something like the ‘recognizing’ meaning (cf. Buck 1949/88: 1208). By contrast, words like German wissen (and classical Greek oiða-), used of knowing facts (like French savoir), derive from a perfective form of Proto-Indo-European *weid- ‘see’ (i.e. ‘having seen’). This reflects a sensory source, namely ‘seeing’, as does French savoir, which originally referred to taste rather than sight. Eng-
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lish ‘know’ has evidently extended historically from the ‘recognizing’ sense to replace nowadays its original Knowing word (retained in ‘wit’). The world’s languages that I have examined split as to those having distinct words for the two senses and those having a clear polysemous extension across both categories. The notion of “truth” associated with the category of Knowing is clearly more abstract in some sense than the semantics of Recognizing, but it is still anchored in perception, whether acquired through direct experience, the written word, or mere hearsay. In general I shall avoid talking of meanings that are “basic” when polysemy is involved. In the case of English ‘know’ I shall simply say that (at least) two different cognitive categories are covered by the term. The fact that I have used the English word to label one of the categories should not be given too much significance. As hinted at already, the individual categories will be seen to have their own inner divisions or structure (as do the four inner quadrants). Moreover, words expressing them will often display distinct grammatical/constructional (distributional and morphological) properties, including taking clausal as opposed to np arguments, and some will have active/transitive as opposed to passive/intransitive or middle voice correlates (like those for Remembering). They may also contain terms referring to their opposite or negation (e.g. ‘doubting’ under Believing). Aspect in particular comes into the picture by modulating the original sense of words in the direction of completive, resultative, continuative, frequentative, senses, etc, while retaining the essential non-extended meaning. This may, as mentioned above, result in polysemy seeming to reach across intervening categories by higher-level “straying”, but the original categorical anchoring will generally remain evident (etymologically at least). In some languages this is morphologically marked, in others, like English, this is not necessarily the case. A typical example is the different senses of ‘guess’, which has strayed into Understanding and Believing (via resultative aspectual extensions), as will be seen in chapter 11. But recall also connaître and ‘know’ of recognizing persons: as mentioned, what distinguishes these from focal ‘recognizing’ is aspectual (‘recognizing’ is momentaneous, ‘knowing’ a permanent state). Also tense differences will be relevant: there is, for example, a difference between ‘He’s thinking of opening the window’ (a matter of Intending) but ‘He thought of opening the window’ (mere Thinking about, probably not acted upon). Another way in which meanings of words (or stems) may stray far from their original territory is via derivation. It is no coincidence that languages with the widest polysemy of a small handful of lexical stems (or “roots”) of cognition such as Kalam (Papuan) or Koyukon (Athabascan) should display a wide array of derived phrases or derivational affixes that provide more specific senses.
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These may be anchored in particular cognitive categories that lie far apart on the circle. In English, words like ‘think’ and ‘feel’ (and their equivalents in other languages) have developed—or preserved—the widest polysemy away from their focal meanings, which is not surprising since they represent the most general of mental activities and states. Whether they did so by contracting from still broader extension conformal with the Connectivity Hypothesis or by aspectual or constructional “straying” from a narrower meaning is a matter of diachrony, for which there may or may not be evidence at hand. The polysemy of individual words anchored within a category can be seen as “pointers” in various directions, some towards neighbouring cognitive categories, some towards deeper bodily functions, and some (by constructional “straying”) to affinity with more distant categories. One is reminded of the advice of the Cheshire Cat to Alice when she asked which way to go to get out of the woods: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”, said the Cat. “I don’t much care where –” “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—as long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough!”. This is indeed how the labyrinth of Cognition is organized. One might assume that it is surrounded by an outer ring of general conscious awareness, but it would be misleading to regard that as a further category—consciousness is far too fluid, flickering as it does across the surface of cognitive categories. This will be further discussed in chapter 21. The nearest linguistic generalization for the whole is the concept of Mind and its equivalent in other languages, which I shall briefly return to in the next chapter. There would appear to be no specific “way out” of the circularity leading from meaning to meaning across hazy category boundaries. Yet there is hope of a “way in” to the centre of the labyrinth, the locus of Damasio’s “core consciousness”, as my investigation will attempt to show. For an illustration (not entirely serious!) of how the circle of categories can be seen to hang together in a causally motivated manner, see Appendix 1. In the following chapters I shall discuss each of the eighteen categories in turn, focusing on the polysemies which words expressing them display in particular languages, but also drawing on what is known of their diachronic sources. A general caveat: the lexical data relies largely on dictionary entries, though I have endeavoured to use the best available to me (these are listed following the References).5 I have gathered the raw data in Appendix 2. I shall 5 Most of the Indo-European language forms cited are from Buck (1988), except for contempor-
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then focus on a single category, Surprise, that has not received fully satisfactory treatment in the past and whose position vis-à-vis emotion in particular has remained controversial. This will be useful in giving a more precise picture of the relationship between a “cognitive” word and its neurological underpinnings. Following this I shall turn to a more general consideration of words referring to sub-categories of Emotion in relation to the model. This will have a bearing upon the model’s “sub-categories” in general. Then I shall examine expressions of ‘seeming’, which appear at first sight not to fit well on the Circle. In the concluding chapter I shall return to the distinction beween metonomy and metaphor and their relationship to diachrony: metonymy as association by contiguity within a semantic field, vs. metaphor as a relationship of resemblance or analogy across semantic “domains”. Metonymy will be seen as the principal motivation behind the polysemous extension of word meanings across adjacent categories. It will be argued that there can be multiple metaphorical expressions of the same fundamental meaning, and most of them will have been acquired in relatively late historical periods. True metaphor (as opposed to what I call “quasi-metaphor”) is always “figurative”, containing a sharp break between source and target domains, and can thus be opposed to the development of core-to-periphery polysemy. It is the latter that most directly reflects “embodiment”. The limits of polysemy are reached when the same historical word has been extended along two different routes and adjacency on the circle has been broken so that a contemporary speaker will no longer recognize their relationship (homonymy). Finally I shall assess the model’s support for the two hypotheses mentioned above (the Semantic Map Connectivity hypothesis and the Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis), and, as a corollary, I shall propose an intimate relationship in the past between expressions of thinking and feeling. ary English, French, German, Russian, Danish, Italian, Greek, and Spanish forms taken from the dictionaries indicated. English etymologies from the Collins English dictionary are supplemented by Hoad (1986). Indo-European roots are generally from Watkins (1985). All the Eskimoan forms are from Fortescue et al. (2010), supplemented by individual forms from the West Greenlandic dictionaries given in the References.
chapter 2
Thinking in General The English verb ‘think’ displays extensive polysemy, ranging from central ‘thinking about or over’, to ‘thinking-as-believing’ and ‘thinking-as-judging/ considering’, to thinking as trying to resolve a problem or reach a goal by calculation, by inference or intuitive guessing. Wierzbicka (1980) has think as one of her semantic primitives, but this seems too diffuse for present purposes, covering as it does a number of important distinctions from both a typological and a cognitive perspective (the same applies to her primitive know). Here is the definition given of ‘think’ in the Collins English Dictionary (principal meanings only): “(1) consider, judge or believe (transitive, often with clause as object); (2) exercise the mind as in order to make a decision, ponder (intransitive, often with ‘about’); (3) be capable of conscious thought; (4) remember, recollect; (5) make a mental choice (with ‘of’); (6) expect, suppose (often with clause or infinitive object).” The three principal kinds of thinking discussed in Fortescue (2001) were ‘thinking-as-believing’, ‘thinking-asconsidering/judging’, and ‘thinking-as-general mental activity’. Of course this was over-simplified. What for example of “speaking to oneself”? There is also thinking in sentences—propositions displaying truth and epistemic values as opposed to non-verbal thinking in images or kinaesthetic schemas.1 ‘Thinkingas-believing’ comes under the category of Believing on my Circle of Cognition. ‘Thinking-as-considering/judging’ is a separate category 8, and ‘thinking-asgeneral mental activity’ is split between categories 7 (Thinking about) and more actively projected category 9 (Calculating) respectively. However, it is not always easy to distinguish these categories since many if not most languages have individual words covering two or more of these fundamental meanings. Consider also the nuances expressed in English by specific constructions involving ‘think’, in particular expressions with prepositions/adverbs: ‘think about’, ‘think over’, ‘think of’, ‘think of doing’, ‘think to’, ‘think up’, and ‘think someone/something is –’. Why do these constructions have the nuances that they do? The most general is ‘thinking about’, i.e. simply holding an idea, image or verbal proposition in mind, perhaps while attending to some task. This is 1 Compare Koestler’s (1967: 88–90) distinction between hierarchically organized, abstractive conceptual thinking and more primitive eidetic “picture-strip” thinking. Also Paivio’s (1986) “dual coding” hypothesis, which posits distinct perceptual and verbal codes, either or both of which may be relevant to a particular task.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_003
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reflected in the vague ‘concerning’ sense of preposition ‘about’. Drop the ‘about’ phrase and you have a still vaguer sense of just plain ‘thinking’. If the object of one’s thinking is some fact or situation the ‘that’ construction is natural, as with any object clause of this type (the conjunction itself being optional). ‘Thinking over’ something is more specific, namely a number of alternatives or a more extended series of facts or events—‘over’ suggests some temporal extent. ‘Thinking of’ something is more momentaneous and noncontrolled— it puts more emphasis on the object of thought (‘I just thought of something’), parallel to ‘remind of’ under Remembering. However, if the object is a gerund as in ‘I thought of painting the fence’, the meaning is one of Intending, as in parallel ‘I intended painting the fence’, but weakened by the less directed sense of ‘think of (s.th.)’. ‘Thinking to’ (as in ‘I remembered to lock the door behind me’) expresses a more decisive and active kind of thought, parallel to ‘remember to (do s.th.)’, with the “purpose” sense of ‘to’. To ‘think up’ something is akin to imagining or inventing something, and is paralleled by various non-cognitive contructions of invention such as ‘work up’ and ‘slap up’. Finally, the constructions in ‘think—(e.g. badly) of someone’ (with an adverbial expression) and ‘think someone—(e.g. unfriendly)’ (with an adjective), are parallel to contructions with ‘talk’ and ‘judge’ respectively. There are typical contextual scenarios associated with each of these constructions, as will be further discussed under the three categories of ‘thinking’ treated individually below. Similar remarks could be made about the nuances provided by specific constructions involving ‘know’ under categories 4 and 20. Individual verbs with their predicate frames provide in general the means to manipulate cognitive processes more precisely (“digitally”) than pre-linguistic (“analogue”) cognition on its own allows. Luria (1973: 327ff.) describes the successive phases of thinking thus: confrontation with a situation for which one has no ready-made (inborn or habitual) solution; investigation of the conditions of the problem in order to discover a path leading to an adequate solution; restraining impulsive responses, investigating the components of the conditions, recognizing the most essential features and their correlation with one another; selecting one from a number of alternatives and creating a general plan/scheme for the performance of the task (the general strategy of thinking); choosing the appropriate method and operations adequate for putting the general scheme of the solution into effect (the more specific tactics, using ready-made linguistic, logical, or numerical algorithms); and finally, after an answer is found, comparing it with the original conditions (which may necessitate starting the search over again).2 A strategy leading towards a solution becomes a hypothesis when expressed in words. 2 According to Luria (p. 337 f.) the left parieto-occipital region of the cortex is critical in logical-
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In terms of successive stages of acquisition by children, he cites Vygotsky (1962) on the source of thinking: following an initial stage of external actions (trial and error towards reaching a goal, prior to the interactive acquisition of social speech) there is a stage of internalized speech with the aid of which the necessary searches are made; finally can occur the contraction/condensation of these to specific internal processes or algorithms (p. 328). Vygotsky spoke of “inner speech” in adults as an abbreviated form of external speech essentially involving predicates, with referents understood from context.3 But is thinking without words not possible? In infants? In higher animals? Certainly the early stages in development described by Piaget (1954), starting with the sensorimotor period with the learning of object persistence, quantity persistence, causality, then internalized concrete operations and all the rest, involve forms of thinking. Bermúdez (2007) is a strong advocate of pre-linguistic rationality. He distinguishes Level 1 rationality displayed by higher animals as well as young children (behaviour applicable to token situations and involving some choice but not to full-blown decision-making). Here “proto-inferences” are possible to keep track of regularities between states of affairs—i.e. of Gibsonian “affordances” (possibilities for action/reaction—cf. Gibson 1972). Beyond this is Level 2 rationality, true conceptual thought, that probably requires the acquisition of a language (though does not necessarily involve it). Only at this level is it possible to hold thoughts in the mind and think reflexively about them. It enables instrumental belief-desire couplings such as the knowledge of how to use tools to attain a goal, and is compositional: its elements can be chained and infinitely modulated according to a wide range of circumstances and goals. Be this as it may, the principal polysemies of verbs of Thinking across languages (beyond the three focal categories of Calculating, Judging and Thinking about) are with Remembering, Believing, and (in the other direction around the circle) Deciding, Guessing, Intending and Imagining. These are covered not only by the English verb ‘think’ but also by French penser and Japanese kangaeru, for example. In other languages the extent may be less, but does not usually skip over intermediate categories except in cases of “straying” due to particular grammatical or derivational extensions (examples will be given further on). In some languages the cognate to the English verb, like Danish tænke, can also extend widely in meaning (depending on construction), but may be grammatical thinking (simultaneous, quasi-spatial thought)—it is not involved in the holding in mind of the problem itself (which involves frontal cortex) but in the working out of its solution. 3 I shall avoid here getting drawn further into the debate for or against a specific mental code or “Mentalese”.
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more focused on the focal meanings of Thinking since there are other verbs covering much of the ground of English ‘think’ (thus Danish synes and tro— ‘thinking-as-judging/considering’ and ‘thinking-as-believing’ respectively). In non-European languages the degree and direction of extension may be differently skewed, for example towards the categories of Wishing or Feeling, thus Koyukon stem -len ‘think, desire, want, intend’ (with various more specific nuances according to prefixes). The territory covered by English ‘think’ and its approximate equivalents does not cover the whole of cognition, of course, although thinking is generally regarded as the quintessential attribute of human mentality. Nor is language the essence of thought, although as Whitehead (1966: 35) put it: “Apart from language the retention of thought, the easy recall of thought, the interweaving of thought into higher complexity, and the communication of thought, are all gravely limited”. Feeling, sensing and predicting are just as important. What covers them all is what we in English would call ‘mind’, all the mental categories that are available to and responsive to consciousness. All languages would appear to have at least one word corresponding to this most general and inclusive category of cognition, though it is often not distinguishable from a more ghostly ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’, and in some languages it is polysemous with specific parts of the body.4 The association of thinking with the brain has not always been ubiquitous in Europe—indeed Aristotle considered the heart as the seat of thought. There is great cognitive-cultural variation here, and even the English word ‘mind’ had an earlier sense closer to ‘spirit’ (emotional and moral rather than intellectual) according to Wierzbicka (1989: 50). The earliest reconstructible root for thinking in Proto-Indo-European is *men- ‘think’ (cf. Watkins 1985), from which many of the contemporary words derive, including English ‘mental’ and ‘mind’ itself (via Old English gemynd, related to Old High German gimunt ‘memory’) and Spanish mente ‘mind’. Sanskrit has manas ‘mind, mood’, but also buddhi ‘mind, intelligence, understanding, wisdom, thought’ (from bodhati ‘awake’, whence Buddh ‘the Buddha’, lit. the ‘awakened one’). Latin has mēns ‘mind, intellect, reason, judgement, frame of mind, disposition, intention’, but also animus ‘spirit, mind’, intellegentia ‘intelligence’ (from intellegere—originally ‘comprehend, discern’, literally ‘choose between’), and ratiō ‘reason, calculation, transaction, judgement, system, theory’ (from ie *ar- ‘fit together’, whence also ‘art’ and ‘order’—Watkins 1985: 3). The latter is the source of English ‘reason’, via French raison, referring principally to 4 ‘Soul’, from Germanic *saiwalō, is related to Greek aiolos ‘quick moving, easily moved’. It corresponds best to the core of the Circle, i.e. Damasio’s “proto-self” (see chapter 21). It is certainly more fast-moving than conscious thought!
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logical thinking. French also has esprit ‘mind, wit’ (from Latin spīritus ‘breath’). Greek has nous ‘mind, intelligence, wit’ (whence noo ‘understand, think’— Classical Greek noeo ‘perceive, notice, think, intend’).5 German distinguishes Geist ‘spirit, mind, intellect, wit’ (cf. English ‘ghost’), Vernunft ‘reason’, and Verstand ‘intelligence, understanding’ (cf. verstehen ‘understand’). Old English had gewit ‘mind, intelligence’ (from witan ‘know’) and Danish has sind ‘mind’ (originally ‘sense’, as that English word), as well as fornuft ‘reason, sanity’, and forstand ‘intellect, intelligence’. Icelandic on the other hand has hugur, originally meaning ‘mood’ as well as ‘mind’. Irish has aigne ‘spirit, mind, intention, desire’, and Russian has um ‘mind, intellect, wits’ (also derived form razum ‘reason, intellect’), and mysli ‘mind’—lit. ‘thoughts’. Finnish has mieli ‘mind, thought, mood, opinion’. Outside of Europe we find Arabic ʕaqil ‘mind, intelligence’, but nafsin ‘soul’ (from nafs ‘breath’), and Hindi man ‘mind, heart, soul, wish, temperament’ besides samajh ‘mind, understanding, intelligence, opinion’. Japanese has seishin ‘mind, spirit, soul, heart’ (the first element ‘spirit’, the second ‘soul, deity’), and more colloquially kokoro, literally ‘heart’. Mandarin Chinese has tóunăo ‘brains, mind’ (or năozi, where năo is ‘brain’ and tóu ‘head’), and dàolĭ ‘reason, logical thought, doctrine’, but also xīn ‘heart, mind’, which Yu (2009) describes in great detail as referring both to the physical organ and to the “organ for thinking”, the “seat of thought and emotion”. Dzongkha (Tibetan) has sem ‘mind’ but also ‘lo ‘heart, mind, spirit’. Indonesian has akal ‘mind, intellect, logic, means’ but also hati nurani ‘inner self, conscience’, and adjective sehati ‘of the mind’ (from hati ‘heart’). West Greenlandic has isuma ‘mind, thought, meaning’ (as a verb ‘think’); for sila ‘intelligence, awareness, consciousness’ see the discussion of words for consciousness in chapter 21. Yupik has umyuɣaq ‘mind, thought, idea’ (probably related to umǝr- ‘look closely at’), and Aleut has an’g-(iX) ‘mind, guts’. Yukaghir has önmǝ ‘mind, intellect, memory, feeling, intention’, also čuŋžǝ ‘thought’, and Siberian isolate Ket has an(un) ‘mind’ (apparently associated with the nose/nostrils—Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Nenets (Uralic) has yi ‘mind, thought’, and isolate Ainu has ram ‘heart, mind, meaning’. Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) has łim’aqsti ‘mind, heart (nonanatomical), brain, spinal cord, pithy core of tree’ (the affix -’aqsti is ‘inside’), also -suuqstutl ‘in the mind, in the body or womb’. Yoruba (Niger-Congo) has iyé 5 This is probably an example of a “gap” in the polysemy of a modern verb reflecting an earlier “filled out” polysemy: classical noeo had very broad polysemy from Perceiving through Understanding and Knowing all the way to Intending, but modern noo has shrunk to just Understanding and Thinking (about), though compound ennoo retains the ‘perceiving’ sense besides ‘understand’ and ‘mean’.
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‘mind, understanding’, but also inọ́ ‘mind, belly, inside’.6 Koyukon (Athabaskan) has yenee ‘mind, thought, will’ (and huyo ‘sense, intelligence, mind, will’ in which the root yo is ‘age, wisdom’). Cree (Algonquian) has ma.mitone.yihcikan ‘mind’ (from ma.mitone.yiht- ‘ponder’ and -kan ‘instrument of’), also “final” affix -e.liht-/-e.lim- ‘by thought’. Similar is Kalispel (Salish) lexical suffix -é(ls) of subjective states, both physiological and emotional. Manambu (Papuan) has mawul ‘mind, mindset, understanding’ (lit. ‘insides’), Kwaza (Brazilian isolate) has erito ‘heart, soul’, and Tariana (Arawakan) has -kale ‘heart, mind, breath, soul, life force’.7 I add below the American Sign Language (asl) sign for mind in Riekehof (1978). The interesting thing about these gestural symbols is that although sign language symbols are often iconic that is hardly possible for mental verbs, where metonymy or metaphor must be largely relied upon—if not a completely arbitrary symbol. Which, I wonder, is involved here?
mind 6 Note expressions of emotion like inọ́ mi dọ̀ n ‘I am happy’ (lit. ‘my insides are pleasant’). 7 Thinking as “speaking to oneself” is expressed here by a serial verb construction meaning ‘say-think’ in one’s soul (Aikhenvald, forthcoming).
chapter 3
Understanding The Collins definition of the English verb ‘understand’ is as follows: “(1) know and comprehend the nature or meaning of; (2) realize or grasp s.th.; (3) assume, believe or infer; (4) know how to translate or read; (5) accept as a condition or proviso (often passive); (6) be sympathetic to or compatible with.” English (like most languages) also has more colloquial or specialized expressions of understanding: ‘grasp the meaning’, ‘get it’, ‘see the point’, ‘comprehend’, ‘sympathise with s.o.’, ‘come to an understanding’, etc. Not all of these meanings necessarily apply to the category of Understanding, but there are certain basic parameters that we can take as loosely definitional of the category as such, i.e. recognizing the reasons/causes/meaning of an event, state of affairs, behavior, or sentence. It is also possible to hypothesize as to the pre-verbal, sensorimotor roots of the category, namely grasping the causes, reasons, or affordances of objects/persons and their physical behaviour from perceptual evidence or memory. This will often, but not always, be reflected in the diachronic source of individual ‘understanding’ words, as we shall see. Understanding is the result of thinking about or recognizing the cause of something, or in the longer term of learning something through experience (including reading or being told something), and in turn results in increasing or adjusting one’s knowledge base, either as regards the accumulation of facts or of learning how to do something new. It may involve action (grasping, physical or mental), sensing (seeing, hearing, or internal imagining), and emotion (the desire for and satisfaction at reaching clarity/mental equilibrium after imbalance owing to uncertainty).1 Understanding is something children begin to do already at the sensorimotor stage. One of the most important things they have to understand is so-called Theory of Mind (understanding the motives of other people—cf. Premack & Woodruff 1978). This is a crucial step towards understanding the meaning of words in context, then in isolation (for ‘meaning’ see under Intending). As adults they must also learn to understand pragmatic presuppositions in conversation and bridging inferences in reading texts or hearing connec-
1 According to Whitehead (1966: 45–46), understanding may occur in two modes: internal and external. The former is compositional, understanding how something is made up, the outcome of process (thus close to ‘knowing s.th.’), while the second views the thing as a unitary causal factor affecting its environemnt—the one presupposes the other.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_004
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ted speech. This is largely a matter of reference—what is being referred to by pronouns and noun phrases. Understanding jokes and riddles requires further levels of understanding, skills not attained by everyone (see further under Surprise and Guessing). Here are some sentences typifying situations that involve the category of Understanding. They are limited here to English, but similar (not necessarily identical) scenarios can easily be constructed for other languages. Notice that there is a variety of syntactic construction involved and that they do not all include the verb ‘understand’. ‘Do you understand these instructions?’ ‘It is understood that one should stay at home’. ‘That’s beyond my comprehension’. ‘I understand that you are intending to leave us, James.’ ‘Your reaction is understandable.’ ‘Understand that such behaviour will not be tolerated a second time’. ‘I don’t understand why she should want a divorce.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ ‘I don’t understand women.’ ‘I realize that I’m no longer needed here.’ ‘He understands the need for secrecy.’ ‘I understand his reticence.’ ‘The child knew not to touch the hot oven.’ ‘I can’t understand where the sugar bowl has got to.’ ‘I understood to close the gate after me.’ Polysemy in ‘understanding’ words is somewhat more restricted than with Knowing or Thinking, but it can for example cover all of Believing, Recognizing, Knowing and Thinking. Japanese wakaru, for example, covers ‘understand, recognize, know, learn’ (cf. wakeru ‘divide’ and wake ‘reason, meaning, cause’). See Fig. 2 for the diagrammatic representation of sample words for Understanding, most of which display some degree of polysemy across categories, including with non-cognitive core categories. Notice for example the anchoring of French entendre ‘understand’ in the senses (specifically that of ‘hearing’). Many languages have single words for ‘understanding’ that do not stray far from the focal meaning with apparently little polysemous spread (but bear in mind the caveat about relying on dictionary meanings). Thus Mandarin Chinese dŏng, Turkish anla-, Arabic fham (with all its derivational/inflectional variants), Cree nisitoht-, classical Greek sinnoeo (from noeo ‘think’ of broader polysemy), and
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Indonesian mengerti, are all glossed simply as ‘understand’.2 The broken lines on these diagrams indicate diachronic sources, not necessarily the same as synchronic anchoring. The specific sensory or other core subdivisions are not indicated. Deciding on the category in which to place terms which do display polysemy (where there is doubt) is often aided by the etymology, but in general, as in the case of English ‘understand’, extensions outside the focal category will be more restricted in context and often yield to a more common term within the neighbouring categories. The construction(s) in which the word enters will also typically be more specific when used outside the focal category. As mentioned earlier, there are semantic nuances of words within a category according to constructional or derivational frame and to specific situations in which they are used (e.g. understanding to do s.th.—that is understanding why one should do s.th. then doing it), but these meanings should nevertheless all fall within the basic parameters given for the category. Metaphor is rather widespread in this category, but one must be careful not to see its presence everywhere: the meanings of words also change more slowly through intermediate stages of expansion or contraction and intermediate stages may be lost, giving the appearance of a sudden leap. In particular as regards the present category, links to perception through the senses represent true polysemy rather than metaphor. Thus understanding and hearing (as in the case of French entendre) is a typical polysemy in Australian and Amazonian languages: Dalabon woman ‘hear, listen to, understand’ (but wonarrvn ‘think about’); Warlpiri purda-nyanyi ‘hear, listen to, understand, know, recall, perceive, judge, determine’; Tariana -hima ‘hear, understand, perceive, feel’; Aguaruna antut ‘hear, listen, understand’, but also elsewhere, as in Koyukon O+oo+le+ł+tl’on ‘listen to, understand, obey object O’ (root -tl’on/-tl’ekk ‘listen, hear’, with a specific chain of prefixes); Nahuatl caqui ‘hear, understand’; Central Alaskan Yupik niite- ‘understand, hear’, Aleut tuta- ‘hear, feel, understand’, and, in similar meanings, Chukchi walom-. These have been treated as polysemy by scholars working with languages that display such meanings (e.g. Evans & Wilkins 2000 on Australian languages). There are also languages in which other senses are involved, e.g. Ket t-et ‘understand, know how to’ (from *wet ‘sense, smell, feel’, as in it-a-lam ‘he understands (that)’—Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Algerian Arabic fṭan ‘suddenly understand, wake up’ (besides ftem ‘understand’) seems unique.
2 The Indonesian form is intransitive and related to arti ‘meaning’. There is also transitive paham/faham ‘understand, know (trans.)’, as a noun ‘understanding, belief’, which is probably from the Arabic.
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chapter 3 Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
Emotion Surprise
Intending
Experiencing
Guessing feel
predict
67 act
Deciding
sense
5 12 3
4 Recognizing
Calculating Judging
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3. 4.
French entendre Mandarin Chinese dŏng German begreifen Ket -wet
figure 2
Perceiving
Believing
5. 6. 7.
English ‘understand’ Japanese wakaru Warlpiri purda-nyanyi
Understanding
There is a close connection between understanding and seeing too, as indeed with English ‘see’. French voir could have been marked on Fig. 2 in the same way as entendre but with the “core” polysemy being specifically with ‘seeing’ rather than ‘hearing’. This is again true polysemy, not (necessarily) metaphor. The polysemous meanings are of course distinguished by incompatible contexts of use (cognitive vs. non-cognitive), and this has been taken by cognitive linguists to indicate metaphor across “domains”. I will return in the concluding chapter to arguments as to why this is not really justifiable, since the “domains” concerned cover broad regions of both cognitive and non-cognitive functions and categories. We are dealing here perhaps with degrees of metaphoricity: German begreifen, and English ‘grasp’ (and ‘get’ as in ‘get it’) are also polysemous, but with respect to physical actions rather than sensory perception, as also modern Greek katalambano or antilambanomai (from lambano ‘grasp, obtain’). Yet the relationship is less direct than with ‘seeing’. Whereas visual or auditory perception can clearly reflect the source of understanding (diachronically
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as well as by cognitive proximity), ‘grasping’ relates not to perception but to action, to which understanding is less directly related. Perhaps this could be called a “quasi-metaphor” (hence the dotted broken line in Fig. 2). Other less transparent ‘grasping’ quasi-metaphors include Russian ponjat’, Czech chapat, Italian capire, and Sanskrit grah-. French comprendre, the more common word for understanding in that language, also has its diachronic source in grasping, but unlike the comparable English and German words cannot be used of physical grasping, so is not polysemous at all (at least in its cognitive sense). Actually the case of French entendre is more complex than suggested above, since it can also mean ‘intend’, ‘expect’, and ‘mean’.3 These do not belong to categories contiguous with Understanding (compare the case of modern Greek noo ‘think, understand’ mentioned in chapter 2). In fact this is arguably a case of homonymy from the contemporary point of view, since the ‘intending’ sense and the ‘hearing’ sense both derive etymologically from Latin intendere ‘stretch forth’, but via divergent pathways. The diachronic source and sensory “core” affinity cannot be equated in this case. The Latin term is itself a quasi-metaphor (‘stretching forth (an ear)’). Clearer examples of true metaphor in this area would be English ‘it dawned on him’ or ‘a light went up for him’—compare Danish det gik op for ham (at) ‘he realized/ understood (that)’ (lit. ‘it went up for him (that)’). Other ‘light’ metaphors are found in for example Mandarin Chinese míng-bai ‘understand’ (lit. ‘bright white’) as opposed to non-metaphorical dŏng ‘understand’. Samoan has mālamalama ‘understand, be clear, daylight’. A more culturally specific metaphor is found in West Greenlandic paasi- ‘understand’ (lit. ‘find the entrance (to the fjord)’).4 Germanic languages have metaphors of understanding as coming upon/ standing before of this type, including Modern English ‘understand’ but Old English forstandan—standing before rather than under, like German verstehen. The conceptual shift in modern English may be to reaching below the surface of appearances as opposed to finding an explanation after seeking it. Sanskrit has, besides grah-, avagam-, lit. ‘come down to’, perhaps reflecting something similar. Also Icelandic skilja ‘understand’ (originally ‘sep-
3 It also appears in certain constructions with the ‘understanding’ sense that one would not use comprendre in, and vice versa. 4 Most forms of Eskimoan have a similar lexicalized expression with derivational suffix -si- ‘get, come across’, only the stem varies from language to language. In Greenlandic it is paa- ‘way in (e.g. to a fjord)’, whereas in Canada the stem is usually tuki- ‘direction along (e.g. the longitudinal axis of a fjord)’, and in Alaskan Yupik (and Inupiaq) it is kaŋiq ‘headwaters of river, source’. The basic image is the same (orientation in a boat).
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arate, discern’) and Latin intellegere (from inter- plus legere, ‘select between’) can be considered metaphorical. In all these cases there is no common source in the broader nature of the relevant “domains” (the ‘Sense’ and ‘Act’ quadrants) themselves, only a homology between specific phenomena related to the domains. These metaphors are liable to be later introductions. Many of them are “frozen” and their origin unlikely to be recognized today without informed reflection. Some Indo-European languages have aspectual derivatives of Indo-European *gnō- here (treated under Knowing below), i.e. ‘coming to know’, thus Old English gecnawan ‘understand’, and compounds with jña- ‘know, understand’ in Sanskrit and its descendants such as Hindi samajhānā ‘understand, perceive, think’ (with prefix sam(a)- ‘together with, fully’). There are also closely related verbs here more or less equivalent to English ‘realize’, i.e. of coming to understand of a momentary occurence rather than a state (see further under Recognizing), thus German erkennen ‘realize, recognize’. The verb ‘realize’, note, is either polysemous with or a homonym of ‘realize’ in the original sense of ‘make real’ (from Latin reālis < rēs ‘thing’), depending on whether the historical divergence is felt to be so great as to ensure that the contexts of use are completely distinct—which is probably the case here.5 Also Kwaza connects understanding and knowing, thus ũcenãi- ‘understand, know’, also ‘be careful’, and ‘be shy (animal)’ (and compare related ũcehỹ- ‘know’ under Knowing).6 Less common sources of ‘understanding’ words are for example Irish tuigim ‘I understand’ (perfective of ‘bring’); Czech rozumet ‘understand’ (from common Slavic um ‘mind, knowledge’, Russian razum ‘reason’); Nanai (Tungusic) otola- ‘understand, know how to, manage’; Classical Tibetan No-phrod ‘understand, know, learn’ (literally ‘face-meet’, ‘face’ being associated with ‘true nature’ according to Beyer 1992); Dzongkha hag’o- ‘understand, make out’; and Kolyma Yukaghir önmǝge jaxaj ‘understand’ (lit. ‘reach the mind’). Ainu has eramuan ‘understand, recognize, know’, containing e- ‘thereby’ plus ram ‘mind, meaning’ mentioned in the previous chapter (and cf. ramu ‘think’ under Thinking), plus an ‘exist’. It also has a corresponding negative erampetek ‘not understand’, apparently from e- plus ram plus pew ‘be brittle’ plus -tek ‘in slight degree’ (Refsing 1986). Notable is also Japanese satoru ‘understand, see, perceive, become aware of, realize, be spiritually enlightened’, which has a more elevated, spiritual sense than plain wakaru (hence Zen satori). Nenets 5 The newer usage has also crept into contemporary French, where it is controversial (an Anglicism). 6 Probably from ũce- ‘leave aside, put away for later.’ The element -nãi is a nominalizer of facts or events, with broad uses, e.g. as an adverbializer.
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xameda- ‘understand, recognize, notice’ displays polysemy of an unusual kind, through Recognizing to Perceiving, but also with non-cognitive senses ‘prepare, arrange’, which may represent its source meaning. Yoruba has, beside gbọ́ ‘hear, understand’ (as in gbède ‘understand a language’), also ridí ‘understand the nature of s.th.’ (from rí ‘see, be, have’ and idí ‘source, cause, buttock’), and see mọ̀ ‘know, understand’ under Knowing.7 Below is the obviously metaphorical asl sign for understand—Riekehof describes the idea as “suddenly the light goes on.”
understand 7 Bowen (1885: 79) also has ó ye mi ‘I understand it’, i.e. ‘it is comprehensible to me’, from yé ‘be comprehensible, clear’, which he also gives as ‘lay eggs, be pleased, cease doing’ (homonyms?).
chapter 4
Knowing Here is the Collins definition for ‘know’: “(1) to be or feel certain of the truth or accuracy of (a fact, etc.); (2) to be acquainted or familiar with; (3) to have a familiarity or grasp of, as through experience or learning (e.g. French); (4) understand, have knowledge of or perceive (facts, etc.); (5) to be sure or aware of how to do; (6) experience (deeply, e.g. illness or war); (7) be intelligent, informed or sensible enough (not to); (8) able to distinguish or discriminate.” One might say that to know something is to have fixed the result of thought or experience into permanent memory. Of the three principal senses of English ‘know’, ‘knowing how to’ refers to implicit (“procedural”) memory, and ‘knowing that’ (taking a proposition as a true fact) to “declarative” memory. The latter is the domain of grammatical “factivity” (cf. Lyons 1977: 794f.), often distinguished in subordinate clauses by morphological or constructional means. In languages with evidentiality markers, the source or channel of such knowledge may be obligatorily marked (cf. Aikhenvald 2004), but this combines the category of Perceiving with the present one (there will be more on this in chapter 24). ‘Knowing a person/thing’, on the other hand, is a matter of Recognizing, under which category it appears below, although it too is a matter of retention in memory.1 It should be stressed that memory is in fact distributed throughout all the categories—of sensory gestalts, feelings and actions as well as of facts. Another general point can be made here: categories can be combined in linguistic expressions, for example ‘knowing what one wants’, or ‘wanting to know’ and these in turn may be replaced by unitary lexicalizations (e.g. ‘curious’ in the latter case). The basic parameter common to the category Knowing (as opposed to Recognizing) is reference to one’s permanent store of “facts” about the world, i.e. events, situations, procedures or more abstract relationships (or inferences based on such knowledge), believed to be true or reliably useful for carrying out some specific type of task. Its pre-verbal roots probably lie in the result of mapping the surrounding territory and its resources, recognizing social relationships, and learning physical skills in order to interact reliably with the environ1 Cree makes a different distinction: kiske.lim- ‘know s.o.’ vs. kiske.liht- ‘know s.th./that’, with “final” morpheme -e.lim-/-e.liht- ‘by thought’ in both but with differing grammatical inflection. The inflectional distinction between animate and non-animate objects is a typical trait of Algonquian languages.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_005
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ment at large. When considering knowledge Whitehead (1966: 74) enjoins us to start with such bodily experiences, not with abstract facts.2 Here follow some typical English sentences referring to this category: ‘Do you know the capital of New Zealand?’ ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ ‘I know what it’s like to lose a parent.’ ‘You don’t have to tell him—he knows.’ ‘He knows better than to talk back at her.’ ‘She knows how to run a business.’ ‘He knew too much to be spared by the gunmen.’ ‘Can she ride a bicycle?’ ‘I know nothing about it, officer.’ ‘Who knows where the kitten’s got to now.’ ‘He knew that he didn’t have long to live.’ ‘I’m aware of your position.’ ‘Do you understand how this thing works?’ ‘I know you won’t like this.’ The most common polysemies of Knowing verbs are with Understanding (especially as regards ‘knowing how to’—including the English phrase), also with Believing and Recognizing. Typical examples are Mandarin Chinese dŏngdé ‘understand, know’ (lit. ‘understand-get’—cf. dŏng ‘understand’ in the previous chapter), beside more restricted zhī(dao) ‘know’; Yoruba mọ̀ ‘know, understand, mean’; Manambu (Papuan) -laku- ‘know, understand, be knowledgeable of, obedient’; and Nivkh jajm-/hajm- ‘know, understand’. We are dealing here with widespread metonymy between adjacent categories: if you understand something you first recognize it for what it is (perhaps through simply perceiving it). And if you know something you both understand and believe it, etc. Many languages distinguish all these categories with distinct verbs—e.g. German wissen ‘know (s.th.)’, können ‘can, know how to’, and kennen ‘know s.o.’ (under Recognizing), Russian znat’ ‘know (s.th.)’, umet’ ‘know how to’, and byt‘ znakomy s ‘know s.o.’ (the latter, derived from znat’, belonging under Recognizing). Others apparently have only two, like Aguaruna (Jivaroan) dikat ‘know’ (= Spanish saber) vs. wainat ‘know’ (= Spanish conocer), and similarly with
2 Elsewhere (p. 99) he insists that knowledge is not a static thing, but consists in conceiving possible adjustments to “the partial identity of successive facts in a given route of succession”— including the relative stability of our knowledge of individuals.
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Quechua yachay ‘know, learn’ (as a noun ‘knowledge’) vs. reqsiy ‘know, be familiar with’, and Indonesian tahu ‘know (about)’3 vs. kenal ‘know, be acquainted with’ (see under Recognizing). Kwaza has ũcehỹ- ‘know’ (of fact or person) (and with an areal affix -rjỹ- ũcerjỹ- ‘know a place’), beside areta- ‘know how to, be wise, become tame (animal)’. Some, like English, have essentially one word covering all of these, thus Arabic yaʕrifu ‘know’, Nenets t’en’eva- ‘know, know how to’ (note t’en’evana ‘acquaintance’), Hindi jānnā ‘know, suppose, consider, learn, perceive, recognize, know how to’, and Tamil teri- ‘be known’.4 The extent of polysemy goes further in languages such as Aleut, where haqata‘know (person, thing or fact), know how to, have learnt, understand, remember, recognize’ covers Believing, Recognizing, Knowing, and Remembering as well as Understanding (it is directly related to haqat- ‘know s.o./s.th., find out, learn, recognize’ under Recognizing). In Japanese shiru ‘know, understand’ can extend to Experiencing (compare literary English ‘he knew poverty’).5 In Maaka (Chadic) nòn covers ‘know, be aware of, remember, recognize, be familiar with, know how to do s.th.’. In English it would seem at first that polysemy stretches as far as Judging, as in ‘he is known as a fool’, but this is an example of constructional “straying”: it is a resultative construction—the result of something being generally known is that this is what people judge or consider to be the case. See Figure 3 for some selected polysemies. If one of the two focal ‘knowing’ verbs in languages which lexically distinguish them (like French) also expresses ‘knowing how to’, it will be the ‘knowing that’ one (like French savoir—hence savoir faire). Similarly with modern Greek ksero ‘know, know how to’ (for gnorizo ‘know, recognize’ see under Recognition). Some non-European languages have polysemous terms that extend still further, such as Koyukon, where stem -neek can also cover Remembering and Feeling as well as Knowing and Recognizing, with varying prefix strings. In Nahuatl it extends from Knowing to Experiencing: mati ‘know (fact or person), understand, perceive, feel’, and in reflexive use as an auxiliary also ‘consider, think’ under Judging—another case of constructional “straying” (cf. Launey & Mackay 2011: 291). As was the case with Understanding, one must be wary about assigning the source of individual words for Knowing to metaphor. A case in point, already
3 It also distinguishes hafal ‘know by heart’. 4 Also of knowing a person and knowing how to do s.th., in all cases used impersonally (‘be known’), with “subject” in the dative case. 5 In fact shiru (politer zonji suru) covers ‘know (a fact or person), understand, be conscious of, feel, perceive, experience, infer’, and shikata wo shiru is ‘know how to’ (shikata ‘method’). In Old Japanese it could also mean ‘rule’ apparently (Frellesvig 2010: 62).
27
knowing Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
Emotion Surprise
Intending
Experiencing
Guessing
Deciding
predict
feel
act
sense
Calculating Judging
6 8
Russian znat’ French savoir Nivkh jajm English ‘know’
figure 3
Recognizing
1 2 3 4 5 7
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3. 4.
Perceiving
Believing
5. 6. 7. 8.
Samoan iloa Aleut haqataJapanese shiru Maaka nòn
Knowing
touched on above, is classical Greek oiða- (perfective of ‘see’—ie *weid-),6 like German wissen (and Old English witan), also the etymological link between Russian videt’ ‘see’ and vedat’ ‘know’, and the Irish idiomatic equivalent tā a fhios agam ‘I know’ (lit. ‘knowledge of it is at me’, with nominal fhios from ie *weid-). It is not uncommon to find polysemy between ‘knowing’ and sensory experience—especially ‘seeing’. Thus for example Samoan iloa ‘know, notice, see, recognize, know how to, understand’. Sources in other senses can also be found, notably in French savoir itself (and Italian sapere), from Latin sapere ‘taste’—as in English ‘savour’—but also ‘be wise, have sense’. Koyukon -neek above also covers physical ‘touch’. Note too Luwo (Nilotic) ŋʌʌy ‘know, under6 Deriving from the Greek is the pan-European word ‘idea’, in modern Greek ‘idea, notion, thought’ but in classical times ‘look, form, nature’, closer to its etymological source. This of course was Plato’s ideal form or archetype. Hardly a matter of metaphor—unless one regards the source domain as ‘seeing’ and the target domain as Plato’s ideal world!
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stand, realize’, which is probably related to ŋwaay ‘smell’ according to Storch (2013), though this is not polysemy today as opposed to diachrony (it perhaps reflects an earlier polysemy). In the case of true polysemy, as in Samoan, the same argument can be made as for the relationship between ‘see’ and ‘understand’ in English in the previous chapter. The distinct sense that is relevant depends on context. But the other cases mentioned above do not display pure polysemy, as they either reflect constructional “straying” (aspectual derivation) or, as in the case of French, a probably gradual semantic extension (via ‘have tasted’?). Neither of these processes look like metaphor, though the Romance case could perhaps be termed “quasi-metaphor” or “metaphorically tinged extension”. Other cases that look like metaphor also involve constructional “straying”, namely in those languages in which ‘knowing’ verbs reflect a source in ‘having learnt’, such as West Greenlandic (and most other Eskimoan) ilisima- ‘know all about, be knowledgeable’ (perfective of Proto-Eskimo *ǝlit- ‘learn’), as opposed to the most common ‘knowing’ verb nalunngit-, a negative formation, lit. ‘not be ignorant about’.7 Note also Kalispel (Salish) esi-yo-sten ‘I have learnt it, know it’. Most ‘learn’ words refer primarily to the process of studying or reading rather than its result in knowing, and some like Danish lære and Greek mathaino conflate ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’, but French apprendre, for instance, can—like English ‘learn’—refer to ‘coming to know’ through any source (compare prendre ‘take’). Italian imparare ‘learn’ derives from Latin parāre ‘get, acquire’, while Latin itself has in discō ‘learn’ and docēre ‘teach’ a parallel earlier source, as both derive from ie *dek- ‘receive’ (the first form with reduplication). Russian has učit’(sja) ‘learn, study’, reflexive of učit’ ‘teach’, which is related to privyknut’ ‘get accustomed to’ (as also priučat’(sja) ‘train’ with the same prefix). Note also Aleut haXsaasa- ‘find out about, learn, guess’ (Eastern Aleut also ‘realize, recognize, understand’), related to haqata- above, and Koyukon P+e#hu+le+’aan ‘learn, get used to’ (root -’aan ‘own’), also P+e+do#hu+de+le+’aan ‘learn verbal skill’, and neehudaal’eeyh ‘learn by watching’ (with a different root -’aan ‘see’).8 The reverse development is found in Nuuchahnulth ħamatsap ‘find out, realize, learn’, which is from ħamat ‘know’ (related to ħamup ‘know, recognize, be familiar with’) plus graduative causative affix -sap. Dzongkha distinguishes lhap ‘learn’ from chôzh’u- ‘learn by listening to teachings’. For the wide polysemy 7 Compare also Aleut idaXta-laka- ‘know’, with negative affix -laka- on the same historical stem seen in Proto-Eskimo *iðǝr- ‘be unclear’. Note that I cite Aleut forms as given by Bergsland (1994), only with ‘X’ for hatted ‘x’ for typographical reasons. 8 The ‘#’ sign indicates the break between “disjunct” and “conjunct” prefixes, and P is the object of the following postposition.
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of Japanese oboeru ‘remember, learn (by heart), know, keep in mind, recognize, understand’ see under Remembering. But true metaphors of ‘knowing’ may nevertheless be witnessed in other languages: thus Inuktitut qauji(ma)- ‘know, be conscious’, Alaskan Inupiaq qauži(ma)- ‘be conscious, aware’ and inchoative qaužikɫiq- ‘understand’, which are probably from Proto-Eskimo *qaru- ‘dawn’. Ainu has amkir ‘know’ alongside negative eramiskari ‘not know’, containing ram ‘mind, meaning’ plus (apparently) iska ‘steal’ and causative affix -ri (Refsing 1986: 281—compare eramuan under Understanding in the previous chapter). Perhaps Latin scio ‘know’ (from ie *sek-/skei- ‘cut off’, via ‘discern’) belongs here too. The asl sign below seems to suggest permanent retention (compare the sign for remembering at the end of chapter 6).
know
chapter 5
Believing The Collins definition of ‘believe’ is as follows: “(1) accept as true or real (a statement, opinion or supposition); (2) accept the statement or opinion of s.o. as true; (3) be convinced of the truth or existence of (‘believe in’); (4) have religious faith; (5) think, assume, suppose; (6) think that s.o. is able to do (a particular action).” Believing is thus assuming something to be true, accepting something on trust, with minimal or incomplete perceptual evidence (see chapter 24 about different sources of evidentiality). The English verb ‘think’ in the sense of believing something to be the case based on incomplete evidence belongs here, but in the sense of attributing some property or value to a person or thing. As in the last part of the Collins definition it belongs with Judging. Danish tro ‘think, believe’ belongs here under Believing, while English ‘think’ covers all of these meanings and more, as will be discussed under Thinking (about). A subordinate object clause of believing verbs is associated in some European languages with the subjunctive mood (rather than indicative of knowing verbs), as in Italian Credo che sia già partito ‘I think he’s already gone’. The basic parameters for the category can be summed up as referring to facts/situations/reports taken to be true or (of persons) truthful, but not based on any conclusive, publically demonstrable evidence or proof. This also covers situationally bound conclusions based on partial evidence. The pre-verbal roots of the category lie presumably in assuming an imagined state of affairs (or behaviour or whereabouts of a person) to pertain without clear perceptual evidence for it. Believing can be combined with elements of other categories, in particular Wishing, a combination readily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians. Note that the opposite of Believing is ‘disbelief’ (‘believing s.th. is not the case’), which can be suspended, temporarily uncoupled from one’s conception of reality, but ‘doubting’ something falls in between, i.e. not being convinced of something on available evidence, but not being entirely sure about it (so ‘not believing that s.th. is the case’). The element of ‘hesitation to believe’ brings the ‘doubting’ words close to Guessing, though not the successful ‘guessing’ sense of course. Here are some examples of English sentences involving the category. For the appearance here of ‘guess’ see under Guessing.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_006
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‘She believed him when he said he’d stay with her for ever.’ ‘Don’t believe a word he says.’ ‘I don’t know that she’d ever let on that she’s been married before.’ ‘I think he’s in Düsseldorf right now.’ ‘I believe in the innate goodness of people.’ ‘I don’t believe he’ll be able to come.’ ‘I understand that he left town yesterday.’ ‘I believe he’ll come round in the end.’ ‘I think that should solve the problem with the kitchen sink.’ ‘Are you alright?’—‘I guess so.’ ‘Believe me—it’s going to be a cold winter.’ ‘I doubt that things are going to get any better.’ Polysemy of words pertaining primarily to this category is overwhelmingly with Knowing, but there is also some polysemy with Remembering (see the Ahtna form below). Some of the polysemies between Knowing and Remembering under the next category are also relevant here since the ‘knowing’ words concerned are in languages with no clear distinction between Knowing and Believing. The distinctive element of Believing is ‘taking on trust’, and this is reflected in the widespread category-internal polysemy between words for ‘believing’ and ‘trusting’, as in Greek pisteio ‘trust, believe’ or French croire of similar meaning. Words of both meaning typically distinguish parallel constructional differences between ‘believing/trusting in (s.o.)’ and ‘believing/trusting that (a fact)’. The source of Romance words like croire is Latin crēdere, from ie *kred- ‘heart’ plus *dhe- ‘put’ (a frozen metaphor). This is distinct from ‘trust’ words deriving from Latin fīdere like Italian fidarsi.1 Different again is the source of Germanic words like German glauben and English ‘believe’. The Old English was gelīefen ‘believe’, with the same prefix as the German, related to lēof ‘dear, love’ and lufu ‘love’, so probably via ‘be pleased (with)’ then ‘trust, believe’. Russian verit’ ‘believe’ and doverjat’sja ‘trust (in)’ are derived from nominal vera ‘faith’, related to Latin vērus ‘true’, again reflecting the thin line between Believing and Knowing—but also the strong link between these words and religious belief. In fact the weaker sense of ‘thinking that s.th. is probably the case’ is more typical of modern European languages, though note Nuuchahnulth Ɂuuqłaap ‘think, believe’, which parallels Danish tro in its extent. In oriental languages like Mandarin Chinese and Japanese the relevant words are based on nominals, ‘faith, belief’, thus Chinese xiāng xìn ‘believe in, trust’ (where xiāng is ‘mutu-
1 Or, less directly, earlier Greek peithomai ‘be persuaded, obey, trust’ from peitho ‘persuade’.
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ally’ and xìn is ‘faith, trust, sincerity’ as in xìnrèn ‘believe in, trust’). In Japanese shinjiru ‘believe’ is a verbalization (with suru/-jiru ‘do’) of shin ‘faith, trust, sincerity’, borrowed from the Chinese; ‘believe’ in a neutral sense of ‘thinking so’ is covered by omou (under Judging). Arabic has yuṣaddiqu ‘believe’, but also yuminu in the more religious sense, and yaẓunnu ‘suppose’. West Greenlandic upper- ‘believe’ and transitive upperi- ‘believe in, trust in’ (with parallels in all Eskimoan languages) precludes the weaker ‘thinking’ sense and today has strong Christian associations, but it also has isumaqar- ‘think, believe, consider, mean’ (lit. ‘have (a) thought’, and isumalior- ‘think, believe’—lit. ‘make thought’).2 Chukchi lǝmalaw-, transitive lǝmalo lǝŋ- ‘trust, believe in, be convinced of, obey’ is an emotion verb (morphologically/syntactically marked as such) with fewer—if any—religious associations. Other languages display various kinds of source and/or polysemy. Thus Hindi has mānnā ‘believe, trust, consider, acknowledge, assume, obey’, and Ahtna (Athabaskan) P#l+niic ‘remember, believe, trust’ contains the ubiquitous root -niic ‘move hand, feel’, which covers ‘be alive, awake, know, expect, hear, love’ according to the preceding prefix chain. Indonesian has intransitive berpendapat ‘believe, have an opinion’ (pendapat is ‘opinion’ and dapat ‘find, get’), but transitive percaya ‘believe, trust’. Cree has ta.pwe.htam ‘believe’, consisting of stem ta.pwe. ‘truth’ plus final -eht(am) ‘hear’. Samoan has tali-tonu ‘believe’ (lit. ‘reply-correct’), Nanai has arda- ‘believe, be happy’, and Xhosa (Bantu) has uku-kholwa ‘believe in, be satisfied with’. Nenets has punr’o- ‘believe, be convinced of’, and Kwaza has watxikitse- ‘believe that’, containing watxi ‘true, correct’ (lit. ‘say “that is correct”’). It also has an ‘unsuccessful conjectural modal’ construction with ‘intentional’ affix -here ‘think that—(but not)’, probably from negative -he and interrogative -re (van der Voort 2004: 862). ‘Doubting’ words show little polysemy, but there are some interesting etymologies, notably with the Indo-European root *dwo ‘two’ (‘in two minds’?), notably Latin dubitāre ‘doubt’ (a derivation of dubus as in duplex and duo ‘two’), whence French douter, English ‘doubt’. German has zweifle and Danish tvivle from the same ultimate source.3 Russian somnevat’sja ‘doubt, worry’ is different: it is from Old Church Slavonic sąminěti ‘suspect, doubt’ (cf. miněti ‘think’). And Czech is different again: pochybovat ‘doubt, waver’ is related to Polish chybać ‘shake to and fro’. Doubt and distrust are also closely allied notions, as reflected in Japanese utagau ‘doubt, distrust, suspect’, Samoan māsalosal-
2 Note that I give West Greenlandic forms in the official orthography as in Berthelsen et al. (1997), whereas other Eskimoan forms are phonemicized (as in the ced, Fortescue et al. 2010). 3 The connection with ‘two’ is also seen in Quechua iskayyay ‘doubt, vacillate’ from iskay ‘two’.
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believing
‘doubt, suspect’, and Aleut inaax- ‘be in doubt, have little trust’.4 There is an emotional element in some words here, and it is probably relevant that West Greenlandic equivalent qular(i)- ‘doubt’ (like upper(i)- ‘believe’ above) takes some typical emotion word affixes referring to privately experienced states. This is more obvious in such stems as Chukchi ŋiret- ‘be in doubt or despair, consider impossible, give up’ (the last two meanings acc. Bogoraz 1904–1909), alongside more neutral metiwet- ‘doubt’. Only the latter belongs here, while the first form belongs squarely under Emotional feelings. Note also Nanai rasa- ‘be anxious, doubt’. Some languages (mostly European) have distinct verbs of a more abstract or discursive meaning like ‘suppose’ or ‘assume’, including somewhat more negative (or condescending) ‘presume’, that belong here too.5 Thus French supposer, German vermuten (from Mut ‘mind, spirit’—cf. English ‘mood’), Greek ipotheto ‘suppose, assume’ (cf. English ‘hypothetical’), and Russian predpolagat’ (lit. ‘lay before’). Indonesian has mengandaikan ‘suppose’ (from conjunction andai ‘supposing that’ with transitivizing circumfix me(ng)- -kan), and berandaiandai ‘speak hypothetically, imagine’ (with prefix ber-). The asl sign for believe, trust is as below. The idea given by Riekehof is “holding on to the thought”. The doubt sign involves moving alternate left and right hands up and down. Both are metaphoric.
believe
doubt
4 Aleut also has reflexive inaagni- ‘doubt, lose faith, give up (of a hunter when game does not shown up)’. 5 The source of ‘suppose’ is Latin suppōnere, lit. ‘put under, substitute’, and of ‘assume’ Latin assūmere ‘take up, receive, add to, usurp’.
chapter 6
Remembering The Collins definition of ‘remember’ is: “(1) become aware (of s.th. forgotten) again, bring back to consciousness; (2) retain in conscious mind (idea, intention, etc.); (3) give money as in a will or a tip; (4) mention another person by way of greeting or friendship; (5) mention favorably, as in prayer; (6) commemorate (a person or event).” There are two distinct facets to remembering then (in English at least): it may involve passive reception of an experience, image or idea from the past, or active recalling such an item after searching for it. Memorizing something new is a different matter, one of reinforced learning (compare under Knowing). Van Valin & Wilkins (1993: 508 ff.) discuss the semantics of the English verb ‘remember’, analyzing it as either an “achievement” signaling an inchoative activity (“John suddenly remembered the faucet he left on”); as an “activity” (“John consciously remembered the names of all the linguists that he met at the party”); and as “stative” (“John remembers his first day at school very vividly”). Different object (or complement) types may signal different semantic nuances, for instance the difference between “He remembered that he had done it”, “He remembered doing it”, and “He remembered to do it” (the latter recalling and acting on a prior intention). The common parameters are of experiencing spontaneously or calling back into consciousness an image, scene, event or fact previously experienced or learnt. The pre-verbal roots of the category were presumably little different from this, precluding only the propositional recording of facts mediated through language. Memories, as mentioned earlier, are distributed throughout the cognitive categories and the four quadrants of the core, with “episodic” (personally experienced) memory laid down in the hippocampus, and allocentric semantic memory distributed more widely across the neocortex. Memories are not just fixed recordings of events but require (in adults at least) some degree of reconstruction (whether consciously or not) from abstracted schematic representations. This reflects the hierarchically organized, abstractive nature of memory processes that filter out superfluous detail in the process of laying down memories (see for example Edelman 1987 on the dynamic nature of memory). However, adult memory will still contain some more vivid fragments, emotionally charged eidetic “snapshots” in the manner of very young children (cf. Sachs 1995: 164–165). These are liable to pop up spontaneously or in daydreaming. Words for remembering may in fact develop secondary emotional connotations due to the emotion associated with remembering in certain kinds
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_007
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of context, thus Nanai zongro- ‘remember, miss, be sad’, and Aguaruna anɨɨt ‘remember, miss, love’—compare English ‘remember’ in the sense of commemorating some past sad or tragic event. The opposite of remembering is ‘forgetting’, but there are two distinct meanings that need to be distinguished here: the purely cognitive one and the behavioural one of leaving an object unintentionally behind. The etymology of the forms given in what follows strongly suggest that the behavioural sense came first. Here are some typical sentences exemplifying situations of use of English words within the category: ‘Remember to close the gate after you.’ ‘He remembered closing the gate’. ‘I don’t remember him being invited.’ ‘I suddenly remembered that it was her birthday.’ ‘I believe this is how it happened, inspector. The phone rang and a strange voice …’ ‘They commemorated the bravery and sacrifice of the fallen soldiers.’ ‘I tried to remember what I was meant to be doing on the 30th.’ ‘I can’t remember everything I’ve ever learnt.’ ‘She was remembering all his acts of kindness to her in the past.’ ‘He thought to wipe his fingerprints off the gun.’ ‘He recalled the look of shock on her face when he told her.’ ‘Bear in mind that she’s very fragile after her operation.’ ‘As I recollect, it was close to midnight.’ ‘I forgot it was her birthday today.’ The principal polysemies for verbs of Remembering are with Thinking (about) and Knowing (also Believing in the sense of ‘thinking-as-believing’).1 Some examples of the extent of polysemous verbs from this category are illustrated in Fig. 4. The broadest extent is displayed by Japanese oboeru ‘remember, learn (by heart), know, keep in mind, recognize, understand, experience, feel (including of pain)’. It also has omoidasu of more active recalling (lit. ‘think-put out’), and more passive and metaphoric kokoro ni ukabu ‘come to mind’ (lit. ‘float up in heart’). European languages have a more limited range, typically just into Thinking (about), like ‘remember’ itself (from Late Latin rememorāri, related, with addition of prefix re- ‘again’, to Latin memor ‘mindful, remembering, grate-
1 These are respectively a matter of episodic and semantic memory.
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chapter 6 Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
Emotion Surprise
Intending
Experiencing
Guessing
Deciding
Calculating
4
Judging
3
2
predict
feel
act
sense
Recognizing
1
6
Understanding
5
Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3.
Russian pomnit’ Finnish muistaa English ‘remember’
figure 4
Perceiving
Believing
4. 5. 6.
Luwo par Yukaghir lejtejJapanese oboeru
Remembering
ful for’, in turn from ie *(s)mer- ‘remember’). There are a number of other Romance sources for these words, including Latin reminīscī’, hence English ‘reminisce’ which, by virtue of its continuous, non-momentaneous meaning, extends into ‘Thinking about’. The ultimate source here is ie *men- ‘mind’, as also, independently, reflected in Old English geman, and Russian pomnit’, both ‘remember’.2 There is also French se rappeler ‘remember’, actively directed rappeler ‘recall’ (the same semantics as the English word translating it), and Italian recordare from Latin recordārī ‘think over, be mindful of’ (literally ‘recall to heart/mind’ from cor(d)- ‘heart’—compare the transparent Japanese ‘heart’ idiom above). The route from the latter to the English sense of ‘record’ is via Old French recorder ‘bring to remembrance’, then ‘commit to memory’, and ‘recall, remember, relate’, and finally (in the 16th century) ‘set down in writing’. There is also ‘recollect’, from Latin colligāre ‘gather’, so literally ‘collect again’.
2 Samoan mānatua ‘remember’ (mānatu- ‘think’ plus ergative -a) is a coincidental parallel.
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None of these really qualify as true metaphors (what exactly would the source domain be?), though the expressions originally indicating actions (‘calling’ or ‘collecting’) could be termed quasi-metaphorical in origin, similar to the case of Understanding verbs based on ‘grasping’ in chapter 3. The same applies to German sich erinnern ‘remember’, literally ‘interiorize to oneself’, reminiscent of the Italian form above, but also of Greek thimumai ‘remember’ (originally ‘take to heart, plan, ponder’ < thimos ‘soul, spirit’) and Tamil uȴȴu- ‘remember, think’ (cf. uȴ- ‘inside, mind, heart’). German also has gedenken ‘bear in mind, remember, be mindful of’ (from denken ‘think’). In Manambu ‘I remember’ is literally ‘it sits in my mawul’ (i.e. ‘mind, understanding’, lit. ‘insides’) according to Aikhenvald (2013). Note also French se souvenir ‘remember’ (from Latin subvenīre ‘come to the help of, come to mind’, lit. ‘come up to or under’), perhaps best seen as a “frozen” metaphor. A true metaphor is seen in Yoruba ranti ‘remember’, ran leti ‘remind’—lit. ‘send messenger into ear’, from ran ‘send’ and eti ‘ear’. Unique is also Ainu yaysoitak ‘reminisce, talk to oneself’ (Refsing 1986: 266). Polysemies involving Thinking and Knowing outside of Indo-European languages include Chukchi lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘remember, know’, a transitive verb phrase with lǝɣi ‘known’ and auxiliary lǝŋ- ‘have as’, Aleut an’giisa- ‘think, remember’ (lit. ‘do in one’s guts’), Finnish muistaa ‘remember, think of’, and Luwo par ‘remember, think’ (a reflexive/middle form). The first two languages have alternative expressions, namely Chukchi antǝjaatka rǝtǝ- ‘remember, not forget’ (negative of rǝtǝjaatǝ- ‘forget’ plus a transitive auxiliary verb), and Aleut hadaa axta‘remember, mention’ (lit. ‘pass in a direction’).3 Also Nahuatl ilnàmiqui ‘remember’ extends to ‘reflect on, think about’ when used reflexively, and see under Thinking (about) for Quechua yuyay ‘think, remember’. The polysemy of Yukaghir lejtej- is different: it covers ‘recall, learn, guess’ (with perfective -tej- on the root in lej-di- ‘know’) and with further affixation reaches as far as Recognizing (lejtedej-), so the ‘guessing (correctly)’ sense is probably by aspectual “straying” from ‘having known/understood’, which is what relates it to the category of Guessing. Note also Ket entīŋ ‘remember (< *en-O-t-(a/on)-wəg(ŋ), from enmind’ plus wǝk ‘find’, lit. ‘find in mind’), and olandiŋa taveraq ‘he remembers’, literally ‘it falls into his nose’ (Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Nenets has t’en’e- ‘remember’, related to t’en’eva- ‘know’ under Knowing. Koyukon has derivations of its ubiquitous root -neek ‘touch, feel, be conscious of, hear, recog-
3 Also Eastern Aleut hadaangi- ‘remind’, Atkan ‘mention’, based on hadaa ‘direction’ (here of thought).
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nize, find out, know’, e.g. yenoghelneek ‘he remembered’ and P+pp#le+neek ‘find out, remember, realize, become conscious of P’ (where ‘pp’ is a postposition). Lakhota (Sioux) has kiksuye ‘remember, recall from memory, be conscious’ (from ki- ‘back again’ and ksuya ‘feel pain’ acc. Van Valin & Wilkins 1993: 513). In Australian languages remembering and hearing are closely related, e.g. Arrernte irlpangke(me)- ‘remember, have in mind from before’ (from irlpe ‘ear’ and angke- ‘say, speak’, so ‘having heard in one’s mind s.th. already known’), and Warlpiri lange-ngku mani ‘remember’ (‘ear-erg get’). ‘Forgetting’ words display some interesting etymologies (including metaphorical ones) but, like ‘doubting’ under Believing, little polysemy apart from the cognitive vs. behavioural senses mentioned above. Most languages have one word for both these senses, though the constructions may differ (thus English ‘forget that –’ vs. ‘forget s.th. somewhere’). The Germanic languages show a clear origin for their ‘forgetting’ words in the behavioural sense of ‘leaving behind’. Thus German vergessen ‘forget’ is like English ‘forget’ (Old English forgietan), from ‘get’ with prefix ‘for-’ in various negative senses like ‘destruction’ or ‘exhaustion’, so originally the sense was ‘lose’. Danish glemme ‘forget’ is from Old Norse gleyma ‘be gay, make merry’, which with the dative case could also mean ‘forget’, as still in Icelandic. The progression was presumably from ‘make merry’ through ‘be careless, neglect’ to ‘forget (s.th.)’ in the behavioural sense, then later to the cognitive sense. Also Russian zabyt’ ‘forget’ suggests a behavioural origin—it is from ‘behind’ and ‘be’, so originally ‘be left behind’. Czech equivalent zapomenout has the same prefix as in Russian plus ‘remember’ (as in rozpomenout se). Latin has oblīvīscī ‘forget’ of metaphorical origin—from *ob-linere ‘rub out’. This was inherited by French (oublier) and Spanish (olvidar). Italian on the other hand has dimenticare ‘forget’ (cf. mente ‘mind’, so ‘lose from the mind’). In several languages there are links with ‘confusion’, as for example West Greenlandic uungatsiar- ‘forget s.th. in a moment of confusion’ besides puior-, the usual word for ‘forget’ in Eskimoan languages. Koyukon has root -neh ‘forget’ as in O+e+no#le+neh, but also no#D+neh ‘get confused, forget, make a mistake’, and Chukchi rǝtɣewat- ‘forget’ is from ProtoChukotkan tǝɣiv- ‘unknown’, as also in related (t)ɣiwew- ‘become unclear, confused’. Other interesting sources for such words are Ket ensokŋ ‘forget’ from en‘mind’ and -suk ‘turn back’, and Kolyma Yukaghir joŋto- ‘forget (transitive)’, but ‘sleep (intransitive)’—the Tundra equivalent is pon’i- ‘forget’, which in Kolyma is ‘put, leave, abandon’. Nuuchahnulth has haayaaputl ‘forget’ from haya- ‘not know, be uncertain’ plus affix -aputl ‘up in the air’, also wiikɁaƚputl with negative wiik- plus -Ɂaƚ ‘aware of’. And finally, Yidiɲ has bina-bambi-l ‘forget’ (lit. ‘ear-cover’), also bina-gali-n (lit. ‘hear/think’ plus ‘go’).
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remembering
The asl signs for remember and forget are as below. Riekehof describes the ideas as respectively “knowledge which stays,” and “knowledge which is wiped off the mind.” Both are metaphoric—compare under Knowing for the former, and for the latter compare the origin of Latin oblīvīscī above.
remember
forget
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Thinking about This is the most diffuse of the categories covered by English ‘think’, i.e. general mulling over, pondering or thinking about something. An earlier meaning of English ‘think’ was ‘cause to appear, seem’ (as in ‘methinks’). See Fortescue (2001: 40–42) for a succinct history of the word’s meaning in English. The earliest meaning is close to observable perception and the still earlier source of this and German denken is tied up with that of the word for ‘thank’, and ultimately derives from an Indo-European root *tong- that covered the meaning ‘feel’ as well as ‘think’ (cf. Watkins 1985: 75). The boundaries between this category and neighbouring Remembering and Judging are notably fluid. Consider again the definition of ‘think’ in the Collins dictionary as given in chapter 2: it is especially the “exercising the mind as in order to make a decision, pondering” part of this that is relevant here. The basic parameters of the category are: passively or heuristically perusing the contents of mind (which can involve associative chains of words, images, scenes remembered or imagined and associated feelings), or just holding an image or thought in mind in connection with some mental goal. Its pre-linguistic roots presumably lie in imagining (or daydreaming) in images beyond the here and now. Today of course thinking can also be largely verbal, expressed in sentences with their underlying propositions, truth values and epistemic modulations. Thinking can be speaking to oneself—this is more typical of the Judging and Calculating categories, although one can also spend a lot of time recalling or reconstructing things that have been said by oneself or others (and thinking up suitable responses). Here are some typical English sentences referring to this category: ‘He thought about taking up a new hobby.’ ‘When you think about it, having to give up driving is not such a hardship.’ ‘I was just thinking.’ ‘He was thinking about how it was in the years before he met her.’ ‘He thought long and hard over his criminal past.’ ‘Think before you leap.’ ‘Think of your family before you take such a risk with your life.’ ‘I was thinking I might just look in at Waitrose on the way home.’ ‘Would you consider coming out with me tonight?’—‘I’ll think about it.’ ‘He thought of trying it out himself someday.’ ‘He pondered for a long time whether or not to write a letter to his mp.’ © Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_008
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The area of greatest concentration of ‘thinking’ words among the world’s languages (at least among the languages I have selected) is probably the present category of Thinking (about), for which many languages have distinct words, like Chukchi cimɣ’u- ‘think’, Finnish ajatella ‘think (of, about)’, and Irish smaoinim ‘think, reflect’. Mandarin Chinese has xiăng ‘think (concentrate on an idea)’ as opposed to juéde ‘think (that), feel’ and rénwèi ‘think of (opinion)’ (both under Judging). However xiăng has its own broad polysemous extension into meanings ‘miss, long for, want to, remember’ and ‘intend, plan to’.1 The former group of meanings probably goes with adjacent category Remembering (compare Nanai zongro- ‘remember, miss, be sad’ there),2 whereas the latter group (going under Intending) is either by constructional “straying” (with a following verb—cf. English ‘He thought of going there’) or reflects an earlier “filled in” polysemy like that of English ‘think’ with weakening or replacement in intervening categories. The idiograms for all such mental activity as well as emotional state verbs contain the radical ‘heart’, combined with different “phonetica” (cf. Yu 2009: 2). Japanese kangaeru has by contrast a very broad but contiguous range of meanings, as can be seen illustrated in Fig. 5: ‘think (about, that), consider, believe, suppose, intend, imagine, expect, hope, wish’. This is distinct from another ‘thinking’ verb of equally broad (but not equivalent) range, omou, for which see under Judging, its probable focal meaning. French penser and German denken have as extensive a range as English ‘think’,3 but the Spanish and Danish equivalents, are not quite as extensive, since Danish tænke has distinct Thinking-as-believing and Judging verbs (tro and synes respectively)—although tænke om ‘think of’ (with om ‘about’) also refers to opinion or judgement. Spanish pensar covers Thinking, Intending, and Imagining, but apparently not Believing (covered by creer, cognate of French croire). German also has sinnen ‘think over, meditate’, going with Latin sentīre ‘sense, feel, hear, think, intend’ of broad polysemy (see under Perceiving). Russian dumat’ ‘think’ is very general for thinking today but originally had only the Judging meaning (like related English ‘deem’). It also has soobražat’/soobrazit’ ‘ponder, consider, weigh the pros and cons of, think up or out, understand’ (the 1 Yu (2009: 2) also has sī ‘think (of), consider, long for’ as in sīniàn ‘think of, long for’, and lǜ ‘consider, ponder, concern, worry’ as in sīlǜ ‘consider, contemplate, deliberate’. 2 Also Samoan: mānatu(natu) ‘think, feel lonely, miss’. 3 The meanings of denken in German are broken down in Farrell (1963) as: (1) ‘have opinion that’ (glauben or denken); (2) ‘think of/direct thoughts towards’ (denken an), but also ‘think about’ (nachdenken über); (3) ‘form idea of/imagine’ (sich denken); (4) ‘have an opinion about someone or something’s value’ (halten or denken); and (5) ‘intend/ mean’ (denken or glauben). It is meanings (2) and (3) that belong in the present category.
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chapter 7 Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
6
5 4 3
Intending
Emotion Surprise
Experiencing
Guessing
Deciding 2
Calculating
predict
feel
act
sense
Perceiving
1 Recognizing
Judging
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3.
Chukchi cimɣ’uPitjantjatjara kulini German denken
figure 5
Believing
4. 5. 6.
French penser English ‘think’ Japanese kangaeru
Thinking about
meanings divide between the imperfective and perfective forms, from obraz ‘image’). Arabic has fakkara ‘think, consider’ spreading at least into Judging (the form yufakkinu is glossed ‘think’ but yofaker fee with preposition fee ‘in’ is ‘consider’).4 Indonesian pikir-/ fikir- ‘think’ (and memikirkan ‘think about’ with transitivinzing me(ng)- -kan, nominal pikiran ‘thought, idea’) is probably from the Arabic. Also Ainu ramu ‘think’ (based on ram ‘mind, meaning, heart’) has a broad range extending at least from Believing to Judging (glossed as ‘think, feel’ in Refsing 1986: 265). Other kinds of polysemy are displayed by languages outside of Europe, for example Pitjantjatjara (Pama-Nyungan) kulini ‘listen, think about, understand’ with the typical Australian link to hearing. Though that linkage is arguably a matter of polysemy it should be pointed out that in context the sensory as opposed to cognitive meaning will generally be clear (the first mean-
4 Note related nominals fikra ‘idea’ and tafki:r ‘thought’.
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ing only occurring with auditory objects).5 Manambu (Papuan) has -wukǝ‘think (about), remember, understand (language), hear, listen, smell, miss (s.o.)’ (exact meaning depending on construction), which is clearly anchored in sensory experience. Another Papuan language, Kalam, has gos nŋ- ‘think’ (literally ‘thought-perceive’) based on the extremely wide polysemy of verbal stem nŋmentioned in chapter 1 (and see under Perceiving). Also Sanskrit displays polysemy with perception in cint- ‘perceive, observe’, which in the middle voice is ‘reflect, meditate’, so presumably a matter of constructional straying. Koyukon has yenee#Ø+let ‘think, worry’, and transitive P+pp+yenee+ł+let ‘think about’, with root -let ‘experience event’ and prefixed yenee ‘mind’. This is probably an instance of derivational “straying” from Experiencing, with the additional connotation of worrying, as also in Kwaza tutunitahỹ- ‘think, worry’. The addition of a nuance of (emotional) worrying to Thinking is in itself simply an example of how different categories can combine and (if common enough) become fixed as a connotation of a word principally anchored in one of them. It is evidenced also in West Greenlandic isumagi- ‘think or worry about’ (the transitive/directed form from *icuma-, the common Eskimoan stem for thinking), and also in eqqaagi- ‘be anxious about’, going with eqqarsar- ‘think, speculate’ (and eqqaa(ma)- ‘remember’). Also Indo-European Hindi has this nuance in socnā ‘think, reflect, think out, devise, think anxiously’. Cree has ite.liht- ‘think s.th.’ (it- ‘so, thus’ plus “final” -e.liht-/e.lim- ‘by thought’) as well as ma.mitono.liht- ‘think about s.th., ponder’ (with the same final). Nahuatl has tlanemilia ‘ponder’, an applicative form from nemi ‘move’ (Launey & Mackay 2011: 207), and Ket has d-aneŋ-si-vet ‘I think’, from aneŋ ‘mind’ and -vet ‘do’ (< S-an-(s/il)-bed ‘S thinks (a single thought)’). Yoruba has rò ‘think, meditate, consider, intend, stir, trouble’ (the latter meanings perhaps reflecting the metaphorical source), also mèro ‘consider, meditate’ from mú ‘employ, hold’ plus èrò ‘thought’. As mentioned under Remembering, Quechua has yuyay ‘think, remember’ (as a noun ‘intellect, memory’), and note yuyaypi ‘consciously, intentionally’. Nenets has yid’a yaderŋa ‘he thinks, daydreams’ (lit. ‘his mind goes’), also yib’edor- ‘think’, and yib’er- ‘become wise, grow up’, all based on yi ‘mind’. For Nuuchahnulth t’apata ‘think, consider, plan, decide, guess’ see under Calculating (chapter 9). True metaphor is not widespread in this category apart from clearly idiomatic expressions like ‘rack one’s brains’ and ‘mull over’ (probably from earlier 5 Compare also Yidiɲ bina-n ‘think about, hear, listen, remember’. A different polysemy is found in Arrernte itirre- ‘think’ (i.e. ‘throat’ plus inchoative -irre-, the throat being regarded as the seat of thought). According to R.M.W. Dixon (pers. comm.) Dyirbal ngambal ‘hear’ covers all the cognitive categories, much like Kalam nŋ-.
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‘muddle’), but there is certainly evidence of frozen metaphor in for example French penser (and Latin ponderāre ‘weigh up’, source of English ‘ponder’), also Latin dēliberāre ‘consider well’ (from librāre ‘weigh’), and Danish overveje ‘think, consider’ (lit. ‘weigh over’). Greek skeptomai ‘think, reflect, contemplate’ has its historical origins in an earlier sense of ‘look, examine’. Both ‘reflect’ and ‘contemplate’ in English also belong here (the former from Latin reflectere ‘bend back’, and the latter via Latin contemplum ‘open space for observation’). It is doubtful that speakers would be aware of the origins of any of these today. French also has songer ‘think about/of’, from Latin somniāre ‘dream, think or talk about idly’. Whether this counts as a metaphor or not is also doubtful, the range of meanings in Latin itself being polysemous, by natural extension. Better candidates are Japanese furikaeru ‘reflect on’ (literally ‘look back over one’s shoulder’) and omoimegurasu literally ‘think-turn over’, which straddle both cognition and physical action. More needs to be said at this point about the broader polysemy between thinking in general and feeling in general adumbrated above, since Thinking and Experiencing are far apart on the Circle (and there is no link between them reflected in Fig. 5). We have seen verbs under Believing and Remembering, as well as Thinking, that have included the gloss ‘feel’. These include Latin sentīre, Ahtna -niic, Ainu ramu, Japanese oboeru, and Mandarin juéde, and more will be seen under Judging and Experiencing, including Turkish düşün- and Indonesian merasa. It is only languages like Kalam that show clear polysemy across the whole range (see nŋ- under Perceiving). However, even English ‘feel’ can refer to Thinking and Believing (‘I felt that it was the wrong thing to do’, etc.). As we have seen, the Indo-European source of ‘think’ also appears to reflect an unclear distinction between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’. This may well represent a universal development from a broad polysemy of words referring to mental activity in general to the more differentiated meanings in most languages today, i.e. a large-scale filling in of intermediate meanings with other more specific words, leaving “islands” to which the same words can still be used to refer to (certain kinds of) both thinking and feeling. However, this is no justification for extending the polysemy of English ‘think’ in Fig. 5 to Experiencing or Emotion. In modern English one does not ‘think’ emotions or bodily sensations. However, one can distinguish rational from intuitive thinking—for the former see especially chapter 9 (Calculating) and for the latter chapter 18 (Experiencing), a matter of intuitive feeling. As for the ‘feel that’ example above, this probably represents constructional “straying” into the territory of Believing and/or Judging via analogous ‘that’ clause constructions (see also under Experiencing). These categories share the basic parameters of categorizing and evaluating situations, objects or persons through whatever sensory or proprioceptive channels are
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active. Further detailed investigation of the other words cited above (including their constructional contexts and historical developments, where known) would of course be desirable in substantiating these speculations. I add below the asl sign for think, meditate. Riekehof describes the idea as “something is going round in the head”. This is reminiscent of the source of ‘cogitate’ (i.e. ‘think deeply over a problem’) from Latin cōgitāre, intensive form of agitāre ‘turn over’, hence ‘agitate’, also of Nenets yid’a yaderŋa ‘he thinks’— lit. ‘his mind goes’.
think
chapter 8
Judging (Considering) Compare the Collins definitions of ‘think’ given in chapter 2 to that of ‘judge’: “to hear and decide upon (law); to pass judgement on; to decide or deem something after enquiry or deliberation; to appraise critically; to believe s.th. to be the case, suspect”. And of ‘consider’: “think carefully about or ponder on (problem, decision, etc.); judge, deem, have as an opinion; have regard for, respect; bear in mind as possible or acceptable.” The common ground should be apparent—as should the senses of ‘judge’ and ‘consider’ that do not belong here. Note that some of the territory of English ‘thinking-as-believing’ does belong here: the judging/considering of something to be the case on the basis of thinking about it, or the state of having so judged, as opposed to the state of believing something to be the case on the basis of something other than a personal act of judgement (e.g. hearsay, trust, or publicly held opinion). It is a matter of opinion as opposed to belief then, a distinction blurred by the polysemy of ‘think’, but one evident in other languages (such as Danish synes vs. tro). The basic parameter of Judging can be characterised this way: the act or result of reaching an opinion as to a quality or value applicable to some person, object or event. This presupposes prior Thinking about if not mere belief based on hearsay. The pre-verbal roots of the category lie presumably in reaching a conclusion as to whether an object, person or situation is good or bad, to use, approach, or take advantage of. Some typical sentences in English reflecting this category: ‘I thought she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.’ ‘What do you think about Scarlett Johansson’s acting ability?’ ‘I think it would be nice to take a drive in the country.’ ‘I felt that his decision had to be wrong.’ ‘A glass of wine?’—‘I believe I shall, thanks.’ ‘I think it’s a fake.’ ‘I regard Bartok as the greatest composer of the 20th century.’ ‘I find your behavior reprehensible.’ ‘Do you think this dress suits me?’ ‘He reckons his secretary’s got the hots for him.’ ‘I consider you a fool.’ ‘He judged any further discussion superfluous’.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_009
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Many languages have one verb covering most of the meanings of English ‘think’, including the present one, like French penser and Russian dumat’ mentioned in the preceding chapter, also for instance Turkish düşün- ‘think, feel, believe, consider’. See Fig. 6 for examples of polysemous spread in this category. Note the particularly broad extent of Japanese omou ‘think, suppose, consider, hope, fear, love, imagine, believe, realize, feel like, desire, recall, remember.’1 Broad polysemy focused around the present category is seen in German meinen ‘believe, think, suppose, mean, be of the opinion that, intend,’ and Danish equivalent mene ‘mean, think, be of the opinion that’.2 The Intending meaning of meinen is constructionally limited, e.g. with an adjective/adverb (‘Es böse mit einem meinen’, like the English equivalent ‘mean no good to s.o.’), the Judging sense applied here reflexively to one’s own actions. See under Intending for the usual sense of English cognate ‘mean’ (as in ‘mean to do s.th.’), which has developed a further sense not found in German or Danish, namely ‘signify’, of a word or sentence—i.e. ‘intend s.th. by using a word’. But note that it can also be used of judging a situation, as in ‘This means war, you know.’ Aleut displays a wide polysemous range in anuxta- ‘think (that), suppose, wish, want, intend, need’ (the same stem as in an’g-(iX) ‘mind, guts’ mentioned earlier), which appears to stretch all the way to Wishing. However, the last few meanings are limited to clauses in the optative or intentional moods or to a nominal object (so grammatical/constructional “straying” is probably involved). If you go back far enough you can see a similar extension to Wishing and beyond into emotional territory also in Old English wenan ‘think, expect’ (< ie root *wen‘desire’, so the development here must have been the other way—wishful thinking, via expecting?). For Koyukon de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend’ see under Intending. But the majority of the languages in this survey have distinct words for the Judging category, like Mandarin Chinese rénwèi ‘think of (opinion)’ (also juéde ‘think that, feel’), Indonesian (meng)anggap ‘consider, regard’, and Greek nomizo ‘think, take for, consider’.3 Also Dzongkha ‘no(u)- ‘think (that)’ (cf. ‘nosa ‘thought, opinion’). West Greenlandic (like all Eskimoan) has a transitive suffix with this meaning: -gi- ‘consider as, have as’, and derivatives -sori-/ -sugi- ‘think that –’. The Chukchi equivalent is transitive auxiliary lǝŋ- ‘consider as’. Nenets has tasla- ‘judge, consider, decide’. Nahuatl has toca ‘con1 Also older ‘worry’. Old Japanese had omop- ‘think of, believe’ (Frellesvig 2010: 62). The character for omou contains the ‘heart’ and the ‘field’ radicals (cf. kokoro ‘mind, heart’). 2 From ie *men- ‘think, thought’, as also Old Church Slavonic měniti ‘think, be of opinion’, also Sanskrit man- ‘think, be of the opinion’. 3 Earlier ‘use, practice’, from nomos ‘law, usage, custom’.
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chapter 8 Expecting
Wishing
Imagining
Emotion 5 Surprise
6
Intending
Experiencing
Guessing predict
feel
act
sense
4
Deciding
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Perceiving
1 Recognizing
Calculating Judging
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3.
Danish synes French trouver English ‘consider’
figure 6
Believing
4. 5. 6.
Koyukon de … oode … nee Aleut anuxtaJapanese omou
Judging (considering)
sider (wrongly), claim to be, imagine’ only in compounds (Launey & Mackay p. 291), and compare mati under Knowing, which can also mean ‘consider’. Koyukon has de#O+oo+de+Ø+nee ‘consider, judge, think of/that, calculate’ (with root -nee ‘say, deem’). The polysemy of ‘thinking’ and ‘saying’ (typical of Athabaskan) is also evidenced in for instance Xhosa uku-thi ‘say, think, call’, and Manambu mawula:m wa- ‘think that, have opinion that’, and mawul wa- ‘I think, in my opinion’, from mawul ‘mind’ and wa- ‘say’. There is little true metaphor to be found here, but some expressions clearly derive from earlier sensory experience, specifically of seeing or observing (compare also Classical Greek skeptomai in the preceding chapter). Thus Danish synes, literally ‘it seems/appears to one’ (a reflexive verb, with object-to-subject shift) is related to syn ‘sight’, and French considérer was originally of observing heavenly bodies (cf. Latin consīderāre ‘observe closely’ from sīdus ‘star’). English ‘regard (as)’ was earlier ‘look at’, from Old French regarder, in turn from a Germanic word for guarding, watching over (of garder, as in English ‘ward’ as well as—via French—‘guard’). Perhaps this is a matter of ancient polysemy or
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(as with ‘consider’) of frozen metaphor. But what of English ‘find’ and French trouver used in the present sense of judging (‘I find it amusing’)—are these polysemous or metaphoric? They certainly refer principally (and originally) to the successful result of searching, just as ‘see’ and voir discussed under Understanding reflect their sensorial source. Here it is a matter of action rather than sensing, but this is precisely the sensorimotor “quadrant” relevant for mental activity, i.e. thinking. So my conclusion is the same as there: this is true polysemy, but possibly also metaphor if one sees as definitional transfer from one domain to another, as here from physical activity to mental activity. I shall return to the matter of what counts as a “domain” and whether “frozen” metaphors are true metaphors in the Conclusion. The metaphorical asl sign for judge appears below. Riekehof describes the idea as “thoughts are being weighed in the balance.” We have met the weighing metaphor already in the preceding chapter with French penser and Danish overveje, but not specifically in the Judging sense.
judge
chapter 9
Calculating The Collins definition of ‘calculate’ is: “to solve by a mathematical procedure, compute; to determine beforehand by judgement, reasoning, etc., estimate; design specifically, aim; depend on, rely on.”1 The last meaning is secondary and less important here, the part that is central to this category is ‘determine by judgement, reasoning’. The basic ground is logically guided, rational mental activity aimed at solving a given problem or situation demanding a solution. The category has its roots in pre-verbal activity of manipulating, weighing, touching and counting objects—or just looking at them in order to solve a problem in the mind. Today it includes problem solving with the help of language and propositional thought, including procedures of deduction, either overtly expressed with the help of writing or to oneself (symbol manipulation in both cases). It may be assisted by external aids such as diagrams, models and computers. Of course such aids have long been used for this purpose, as reflected in the etymology of ‘calculate’—from the Latin calculus ‘pebble used by Romans in counting’—and of course finger counting is still practised, not just in “primitive” cultures. Calculating may draw upon intuitive Guessing as well as logical procedures, and will if successful result in conclusions or in ‘thinking up’ new procedures or devices. Some English sentences illustrating the category: ‘I calculate that he’ll be arriving in Rome right about now.’ ‘Let me think of a way out of this dead end.’ ‘He racked his brains for a solution.’ ‘He weighed up the pros and cons of confronting his boss about his grievances.’ ‘He thought he’d try cleaning out the spark plugs before calling the aa.’ ‘They thought up a perfect plan for getting inside the bank unseen.’ ‘The Labour candidate calculated that it would be best to avoid mentioning the necessity of raising income tax until after the election.’
1 The word ‘estimate’ in English has a more specific sense of calculating a measurement with some degree of guesswork, like its source, French estimer (which has the further meaning of ‘consider (that)’).
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_010
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‘I didn’t reckon on having to pay for transport as well.’ ‘He worked out that it would take about ten pounds of tnt to blow up the bridge.’ A good many languages have the same or related words for ‘calculate’ and ‘count’ (treated here as representing the same basic category), and these include the Germanic languages: German rechnen ‘count, calculate, compute, estimate, consider (to be)’ (also prefixed berechnen ‘calculate’), and Danish regne ‘count’, udregne ‘calculate’ (lit. ‘calculate out’). English has cognate ‘reckon’, which extends into Judging, as already illustrated, but has limited, colloquial use in the Calculating sense (‘reckon on’ is roughly ‘take into account’, usually of s.th. reliable). English has a number of other, somewhat more technical or learned words for this category (all borrowed), such as ‘compute’ (from Latin computāre ‘think’). Even English ‘count’ is a loan word, from Old French conter, itself from Latin computāre, spelt in modern French compter. The extended phrase compter sur (English ‘count on’, German rechnen auf ) ‘rely upon’ is probably by derivational “straying” into the category of Believing (i.e. ‘trusting’). Also combining the two basic meanings are Russian sčitat’ ‘calculate, count, consider, reckon’ (but also vyčisljat’ ‘calculate’, from čislo ‘number’), Finnish laskea ‘calculate, estimate, count, include’ (also ‘let down, let go’), Mandarin Chinese suàn ‘calculate, count, figure’, and Indonesian menghitung-hitung ‘calculate’, (ber)hitung ‘count’, sharing the same root. Other languages distinguish the two meanings, like Greek ipologizo ‘calculate’ but arithmo ‘count’; Japanese kanjō suru ‘calculate’ but kazoeru ‘count’; and West Greenlandic naatsorsui- ‘calculate’ (from naatser- ‘wait for s.th. to grow, wait to see how s.th./s.o. will be’) but kisitsi- ‘count’. Arabic has yaʕuddu: ‘calculate’ and yaħsibu ‘count’, however Algerian Arabic has ħseb ‘calculate, count’ for both. Yoruba has s’ìro ‘calculate, reckon’ (from śe ‘do, make’ and r0 ‘tell’?), but also kà ‘count, read, regard’. More unusually, Kwaza has hãte- ‘count, try, taste, experiment’. There is little category-external polysemy in evidence here, but recall Koyukon de#O+oo+de+Ø+nee ‘consider, judge, think of/that, calculate’ in the preceding chapter, which extends into this category. Koyukon also has more category-specific (and complex) P+te#hu+oo+te+ne+ƚ+to ‘count’ (with object P of postposition -te/tuh ‘among’). This is a conversative/ reversative derivation of root -to ‘try, bother, glance’ (also ‘have a problem with, occupy with’). As mentioned under Thinking about, Nuuchahnulth t’apata ‘think, consider, plan, decide, guess’ probably belongs here, where its “focal” meaning or lowest common denominator appears to lie—the polysemy of the word is at all events considerable. In some languages there is polysemy with ‘reading’, as
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in Chukchi rǝlɣǝ- ‘count, calculate, read’ (related to rǝlɣǝlɣǝn ‘finger’), Nenets tola- ‘consider, count, read’, Ket der’ ‘read, calculate’, Yukaghir čuŋ(e)- ‘count, read’ (related to čuŋžǝ- ‘think, thought’), Nahuatl pōhua ‘count, read, relate’, and Samoan faitau ‘read, count’. As regards metaphor, consider English ‘weigh up’ as illustrated in the example sentences above, with the same metaphor already met under Thinking (about) with words like French penser and English ‘ponder’—the metaphor is also relevant to the intervening category of Judging, as we have seen with the asl sign. For other terms to do with the result of logical calculations (like English ‘infer’ and ‘conclude’) see the next category, Deciding, to which the present one naturally leads. It can also lead the other way, back to Judging—e.g. when reaching the conclusion that something is not suitable for a task. The asl sign for count below probably indicates moving a coin. At all events this reflects (iconically) a behavioural rather than a cognitive action.
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Deciding The Collins definition of the English verb ‘decide’ is: “(1) reach a decision; (2) cause to reach a decision; (3) determine or settle (a contest, question or plans); (4) influence decisively the outcome of (a contest or question); (5) to pronounce a formal verdict.” The common element of the category that this reflects is choosing one logically or heuristically determined outcome of cogitation amongst other possible ones (this may produce further action).1 The pre-verbal roots of deciding lie in choosing one thing or one course of action among several possibilities. Here are some typical sentences referring to the category: ‘He decided to apply for the job as cleaner.’ ‘He decided he was too busy at work to join his friends climbing in the mountains.’ ‘Let me know what you decide.’ ‘He determined to reach the top of the mountain, come what may.’ ‘He thought he would join the navy instead.’ ‘Let us conclude that taxes will have to be raised.’ ‘The mathematician deduced on axiomatic grounds that the problem was insoluble.’ ‘He made up his mind to quit his lousy job.’ ‘He resolved to turn over a new leaf.’ There is relatively little polysemy among words for this category, though note English ‘determine’ in the example above (from Latin dētermināre ‘set boundaries to’), which extends from the previous chapter. Latin has dēcernere ‘distinguish, judge, decide, propose’ (from the same source as Old English sceran ‘cut off, shear’—cf. also modern English ‘discern’). Greek has krino ‘judge, consider, decide’, with the same root as Latin dēcernere. Note also Nuuchahnulth waay’aqstutl ‘think over, decide, say to oneself’ (from waay’aqtl ‘think’).2 More typical are words devoted to this meaning, like Finnish päättää ‘conclude, decide, make up one’s mind’ (cf. pää ‘top, end’), Japanese kimeru, Man1 In logic, with its syllogisms and inferences, and scientific experiment with its persuit of “proof”, the crucial factor is consistency of outcome with premises. 2 And compare -suuqstutl ‘in the mind, in the body or womb’.
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darin Chinese juédìng and Dzongkha thâcê-, all ‘decide, determine’.3 Many of these show transparent etymologies. Thus Classical Tibetan has metaphorical thag-tšad ‘decide’ (lit. ‘cut the rope’), and modern Greek has apofasizo ‘decide, resolve, determine’ (from apofaino ‘make known’). English ‘decide’ itself is (like French décider) from Latin dēcidere ‘cut off, determine’ (from caedere ‘cut’). German entscheiden ‘decide’ has a similar origin (from scheiden ‘separate’ plus ent- ‘apart’). The English native idiom ‘make one’s mind up’ relates on the other hand to a broader notion of ‘bringing one’s thoughts to order’ (about a matter requiring a choice). Russian has rešit’ ‘decide, solve’ (and reflexive rešit’sja ‘make up one’s mind to’)—compare English ‘resolve to’ from ‘solve’. Chukchi has vetɣǝcemɣ’o- ‘decide to’ (lit. ‘straight-think’), and West Greenlandic has aalajanger- ‘decide’ (lit. ‘make fast’). Aleut has anuxtani- ‘decide’ (with the intentional mood, from anuxta- ‘think, want’ in reflexive use plus inchoative -ni- ‘begin to’), and Ket has S-(i/in)-S-tos- ‘S conceives an intention, decides to’ (lit. ‘raises himself up in order to’—Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Yoruba has kpinu ‘decide, bargain, consider, resolve, purpose’, and Samoan has fa’ai’u‘decide, conclude’ (lit. ‘cause to finish’). There are hidden/frozen metaphors behind many of these, as the etymologies reveal. Kwaza has an unusual verb of negative decision, were- ‘decide not to, abstain from going, revolt’. There are words specifically for ‘solving’ or ‘resolving’ (e.g. a problem) that display polysemy with Guessing (i.e. with the positive completion of guessing). Most of them derive from the non-cognitive sense of ‘untying’ or ‘loosening’, the Indo-European ones ultimately from ie *leu- ‘loosen, divide, cut apart’. The English words (like French resoudre) are themselves from Latin resolvere ‘loosen, relax, finish, release, unfasten’ and solvere ‘release, loosen, dissolve, free from debt’ (involving an old prefix sē- ‘apart’). Similarly, Greek has lio ‘loosen, solve’, German has lösen ‘loosen, solve, resolve, dissolve’. Finnish has ratkaista ‘decide, settle, determine, resolve, solve’, Turkish has çöz- ‘figure out, solve, work out, untie’, and Japanese has toku ‘untie, solve (problem, riddle)’—also ‘explain, persuade’ with a different written symbol but probably cognate, understood causatively.4 Closely related to ‘deciding’ are words for ‘choosing’, but it is difficult here to distinguish cognitive from behavioural senses of mental or physical selecting: they illustrate well the porous nature of this border. English ‘choose’, like French choisir, is from Germanic *kiusan, in turn from ie *geus- ‘taste, choose’, 3 Japanese also has more “learned” kesshin suru ‘resolve, determine’, and keiketsu suru ‘resolve, settle’. 4 cf. Mandarin Chinese jiě ‘loosen, untie, dissolve, explain’ as in jiě( jué) ‘solve, settle, resolve, finish off’—jué is ‘definitely’.
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as in Latin gustāre ‘taste’. Latin itself has legere and ēligere, as in English ‘elect’ (and ‘select’—from sēligere ‘sort’ with sē- ‘apart’). German wählen and Danish vælge ‘choose’ are on the other hand related to ie *wel- ‘wish, want’ under Wishing. There would appear superficially to be polysemy in some languages with ‘preferring’ words under ‘loving’ (Emotional feeling, chapter 16), for instance Indonesian memilih ‘choose, select, prefer’, but this is probably illusory, the sense of ‘prefer’ here being one of selecting, not of emotion. Constructionally there is also a difference in English: one prefers to do something (Deciding) but prefers something (a weak form of loving or liking). Some languages make a clear distinction between ‘choosing’ and ‘choosing to’, thus Russian vybrat’ ‘choose’ but predpočest’ ‘choose to, prefer to’, and compare Mandarin Chinese xuăn(zé) ‘choose, select’ but yuàn(yì) ‘wish, want, prefer to, be ready to’ (under Wishing). A true case of polysemy by metonymy (with adjacent Guessing) is seen in Xhosa uku-qaʃa ‘choose, guess, hire’ (as opposed to more behavioural uku-nyula ‘select’). An unusual source for a ‘choosing’ verb is found in West Greenlandic qiner- ‘choose, elect, look around for’, from pe *qinǝr- ‘look around’. There are also words referring specifically to the result of preceding calculations/deliberations, in other words to ‘concluding’, like German schließen and Danish slutte (lit. ‘close’) and French déduir, inferir, conclure, respectively from Latin dēducere ‘lead off’, inferre ‘bear in’ and conclūdere ‘close’ (and whence the English cognates ‘deduce’, ‘infer’ and ‘conclude’). Greek has sinago ‘infer, conclude’ (from ‘bring together, collect’), also simperaino ‘deduce, conjecture, presume, infer’ of similar origin. Russian zaklučit’ ‘conclude’ also has its source in ‘closing’. Japanese has suitei suru ‘deduce, infer, presume’ and ketsuron suru ‘conclude, reach a conclusion’, based on “learned” Sinetic nominals. If it is decided that sufficient evidence is not available to form a definite conclusion, Guessing may be called for, the following category. If a positive decision has been made then you can pass over that to a state of Intending. Riekehof gives the asl for decide, determine, resolve (without a picture) as touching the forehead with the index finger then dropping both hands before you into an “F”, palms facing each other. She describes the idea as “You have weighed the thoughts and come to a decision.”
chapter 11
Guessing Let us start as usual with a Collins English dictionary definition. ‘Guess’ is defined thus: “(1) form or express an uncertain estimate or conclusion about s.th. based on insufficient information; (2) arrive at a correct estimate of s.th. by guessing; (3) believe, think, suppose (mainly us).” There are two main perspectives on the process here, firstly the basic parameter of heuristically trying to decide on a solution to a problem or uncertainty (this may be by reference to past experience or by projecting into the imagined future); and secondly focusing on the solution of the problem, the achievement of the goal aimed at. The successful result of guessing is knowing the solution, or understanding a riddle, though of course Knowing and Understanding as such does not always entail previous Guessing. As regards the third meaning, of supposing/believing something to be the case, this is triggered by the specific constructions in which it is used: ‘guess that –’, ‘I guess so’, i.e. the same as those typifying ‘suppose’ and ‘believe’. So this is an example of constructional “straying”— towards but not reaching Believing (it indicates a more tentative state than that). Recall that the word ‘estimate’ in English, as in the Collins definitions above, actually has a more specific sense of calculating a measurement with some degree of guesswork, which links it back to Calculating and Deciding. In terms of pre-verbal roots, Guessing would have been a matter of trying to identify some uncertain phenomenon and resolve the uncertainty. The etymology of ‘guess’ is from Germanic *getisōn ‘try to get’, Old Norse geta ‘get’, ultimately from the Indo-European root *ghend-/ ghet- ‘seize, take’. So an early “quasi-metaphor”? There are many strategies for guessing, depending on the type of situation or game concerned, trial and error being one possibility to fall back on. These will be considered further in chapter 25. A common factor is prediction, which is the general brain function underlying this and the following three categories. This is also the realm of epistemic adverbials on a scale from ‘possibly’ to ‘probably’ to ‘certainly’, covered one way or another in all languages. Compare also such particular guessing expressions as ‘It could be X’ to ‘I’ll bet it’s X’. Some typical situations referring to this category: ‘He guessed that she would forgive him in the end.’ ‘I guessed that I would have a better chance of winning if I bought half a dozen tickets.’
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_012
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‘I think he should have reached Derby by now.’ ‘He guessed the answers to all the questions and won the jackpot.’ ‘He supposed a small bribe would hasten him across the border.’ ‘He guessed her age—and she had to admit he was right.’ ‘He guessed her age—and was off by twenty years’. ‘Scientists estimate that it will take another two years to find a vaccine.’ ‘Guess who I’ve just seen.’ The difference between meanings (1) and (2) above is often expressed with different forms or constructions of the same verb, as for example German raten (1), but erraten (2);1 Danish gætte (på) (1), but gætte sig til (2); Spanish adivinar (1), but acertar (2); Greek eikazo ‘conjecture, guess’ (1), vs. mantevo ‘guess, find out, foretell’ (2); Russian gadat’ (1), but dogadat’, otgadat’, or ugadat’ (2) (a matter of aspect, imperfective vs. perfective, with alternative prefixes); Finnish arvata (1) ‘guess, anticipate’, and arvata oikein ‘guess right’ (2) (with oikein ‘correctly’); and Japanese ateru ‘guess (without evidence)’ (1) (lit. ‘strike, apply’), but umaku ateru (with umaku ‘skilfully’) (2).2 English is in fact rather unusual in not necessarily marking any difference between the two senses of ‘guess’, though there may still be a constructional/aspectual difference: ‘he (has) guessed it’ in the past/perfect implies meaning (2). West Greenlandic distinguishes between intransitive eqqorniaa- ‘guess, gamble, play the lottery’ in sense (1), and transitive eqqoriar(paa) ‘guess (it)’ in sense (2), both from Proto-Eskimo *ǝlqur- ‘hit the mark’ (a frozen metaphor), but with the first form containing -niar- ‘try to’. Nanai has the same metaphor: lāmbo-qāči- ‘guess, recognize’ (from lambo- ‘hit the mark’). Aleut has hiichaaza- in sense (1), and qaXu- (lit. ‘hit exactly’) in sense (2). Chukchi has cicew- ‘guess, understand’3 in sense (2), and cicǝl’et- in sense (1) with another affix, -l’et- of continuous/repeated action (compare also related cicu lǝŋ ‘suspect, be in doubt (about)’). Nenets has xo- ‘find, guess’ and xobtsoku mets ‘guess riddles’ (lit. ‘hold/ use riddles’). Indonesian has tebak, menabak ‘guess’ (tebak-tebakan ‘guessing game’), also menerka ‘guess’ from noun terka ‘guess’, and sangka ‘guess, suspect’. The ‘suspect’ verbs (guessing that something—
1 From the same source as Rat ‘counsel’, Old English rǣdan ‘advise’, and English ‘riddle’—and indeed ‘read’ (interpreting a written document or a riddle). 2 Also ate-zuiryō suru (‘make a (random) guess’) and (a more “learned” word) okusoku suru ‘guess, surmise, form an opinion’. 3 From Proto-Chukotkan *cǝɣic(æŋ)- ‘recognize, understand’. Borrowed into Siberian Yupik sisaaw- ‘sense, understand, figure out’. Chukchi also has kǝcɣep- ‘guess (successfully)’.
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usually something bad—will happen) combine elements of Expecting (also Doubting), as will be seen. Nuuchahnulth has Ɂanaʕap ‘guess right, realize’ in sense (2)—for t’apata ‘guess, consider, think, deliberate’ in sense (1) see under Calculating, where the focal meaning probably lies. This is a relatively rare example of a polysemous extension of a word from another category to cover Guessing, but recall the ‘solving’ words under Deciding as regards sense (2). In Chinese cāi ‘guess, conjecture, speculate’ reflects meaning (1) but doubtless has a resultative combination for (2).4 Koyukon has fixed expressions yuk(yuk) ‘right, you guessed it (a riddle)’, and ghee(hee) ‘I guess so, probably’ but apparently no dedicated verb of guessing apart from the ‘estimation’ one below. In other languages it is unclear whether sense (1) or (2) is distinguished. Thus Cree has nana.toštahika.- ‘guess, take a blind shot at’ (compare nana.tawim- ‘examine’ and nana.tawa.pam- ‘look for’), and Ket has in-S-k-b(a/ol)-de ‘S guesses/feels/suspects (intr.)’ (from *en ‘mind’ + de ‘hear’—Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Samoan has taumate ‘doubt, keep guessing’ (mate on its own is ‘guess’), Yoruba has mamọ̀ dźa ‘guess’ (from mọ̀ ‘know’ and dźa ‘find out’), while Xhosa has uku-qaʃa ‘choose, guess, hire’, introduced under Deciding, where the focus probably lies. More specifically in the ‘measuring’ sense (with affinity to Calculating) are German abschätzen, Danish gisne, and Russian prikidyvat’. French estimer ‘estimate’ has the further meaning of ‘consider (that)’, and is, like the English, from Latin aestimāre ‘assess the worth of’. Koyukon ne#O+oo+de+Ø+lee ‘estimate, judge (position, size, distance of O)’ is derived from root -lee ‘sing’, which can also mean ‘speak in a certain manner’. As regards prediction in the broadest sense (not necessarily attempting to solve a particular problem), most languages have distinct words like German voraussehen, French prévoir and Russian predvidet’ ‘foresee’, literally ‘seeing in advance’, or equivalents based on ‘saying’, like German vorhersagen, French prédire (like English ‘predict’), and Russian predskazivat’. Indonesian has meramalkan ‘predict’ (from ramal ‘prediction’, meramal ‘tell fortunes’), and West Greenlandic has siulittor- ‘warn of in advance, predict’ (from ProtoEskimo *civulǝɣ- ‘go or do before’). These veer towards the behavioural rather than the cognitive, however. Turkish uses the same verb for guessing and predicting: tahmin ‘guess, predict, foresee’. Note also Koyukon: P+no#de+D+lee ‘predict’ (stem -lee ‘song, utter’, with a different prefix chain from the ‘estimate’ word above), and Khwe-‖Ani (Khoisan) ‖x’ám ‘anticipate a threat or danger’ (a
4 cāixiăng ‘suppose, guess, suspect’ with xiăng ‘think’ is closer to meaning (3) above however.
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premonition). Quechua has watuy ‘guess’ and watupakuy ‘foretell, suspect’, but also umulliy ‘predict, foretell’. Riekehof does not explain the asl sign for guess below, which looks like zapping a fly in mid-flight, but there is probably some other explanation!
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Intending The Collins definition of ‘intend’ is: “(1) propose or plan (to do s.th.), have in mind, mean; (2) design or destine (for); (3) mean to express or indicate (words).” The basic feature is the projected course of action decided upon to attain a goal (physical, social or purely mental). This covers also the preverbal source of the category. Some typical sentences illustrating this category follow. Note the use in the second sentence of ‘guess’ in sense (3) of the previous chapter—also the present category involves a degree of uncertainty as to the actual outcome of one’s projected plans and intentions. However, it is actually ‘will’ that bears the ‘intend to’ meaning (as also ‘would’ in the fourth example). ‘He intended to pay him back some day.’ ‘I guess I’ll get that leak fixed today.’ ‘The escaped convict intended never going back to jail again.’ ‘He said he would look into it.’ ‘He has resolved to mend his ways.’ ‘The plan is to improve public transport in the city.’ ‘I’m thinking of going to France next week’. ‘I had it in mind to visit him at Easter.’ ‘Do you intend letting the public know?’ Intending is a cardinal exemplar of Searle’s “Circle of Intentional concepts”, of which he states: “There is no nonintentional standpoint from which we can survey the relation between intentional states and their conditions of satisfaction” (Searle 1983: 79). By “conditions of satisfaction” he means the action that will satisfy the intention to act in a certain way. Intending to do something has a particular relevance in this respect owing to its transparent relationship to action and causality. As Searle puts it (p. 85), intention is “self-referential”, like perception and memory: there is a causal connection between what he calls the “prior intention” and the “intentional action”. It is only his “prior intention” that corresponds to my purely cognitive category of Intending. The difference between perception and intention lies not in their self-referentiality (perceiving an object also presupposes a mental representation of its object), but rather in what Searle calls “direction of fit” (p. 88). In the case of perception it is “from world to mind” whereas in the case of intending it is the reverse (also as regards
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_013
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causality). Whereas the prior intention is “representational”, the intentional action (or “intention in action”) is “presentational”, presenting the conditions of satisfaction of the intentional “object”. The ensuing action is in turn the causal result of the intentional action. The path of causality is thus from prior intention to intentional action and from there to bodily movement (see his diagram, p. 94). Going beyond mere boldly movements, the causal chain can be much more complex and indirect—Searle gives the example of the intentional action of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassin (p. 98). The assassin can be said to have: pulled the trigger; fired the gun; shot the Archduke; killed the Archduke; struck a blow against Austria; and avenged Serbia. This intentional layering is comparable to the hierarchical layering of contexts that I shall discuss in chapter 25. Searle mentions the problem of distinguishing what constitutes a “basic action” in such cases (p. 100)—this is reminiscent of the problem defining “basic emotion” that I discuss in chapter 16. Intentional objects can also be purely mental, as in Searle’s example of being told to imagine the Eiffel Tower (p. 103). Another way to look at Searle’s notion of “intentional action” is in terms of cortical location (a matter not touched on by Searle himself). The principal cortical site of basic, physical intentionality is probably the Supplementary Motor Area (sma), which is situated between the motor cortex and the pre-frontal cortex (Carter 1999: 182). Here Searle’s “prior intentions” (involving dopamine activation of the sma via the basal ganglia—Carter p. 67) are rehearsed as “intentional actions” before they are actually carried out. The proximity of this area to the pre-frontal cortex allows extensions into more abstract prediction and planning for the future. It is surely no coincidence that syntactic structure in Broca’s area of the left frontal lobe is hierarchically and recursively organized just as pre-linguistic planning is. In many languages there is an element of intentionality in expressions of future tense, such as English ‘going to’, which is somewhat stronger than more neutral ‘will’ exemplified above, or French (il) va ( faire) as opposed to use of the simple future tense. English ‘will’, though grammaticalized as the principal English future tense, maintains in some constructions its original ‘wanting to’ sense (e.g. polite ‘if you will’); it can also express imagined probability or expectation. It has arguably shifted from the Old English sense under Wishing to its present position under Intending (especially when stressed—‘I will buy that Mercedes’), passing through Expecting and Imagining. In other languages there is a (category-internal) overlap with ‘planning’ a course of action. The difference between intending and planning is that the former sets a goal while the latter spells out a route to accomplish that goal, given the means available—this may involve several other categories like
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Imagining, Calculating, Wishing, Knowing, and Deciding.1 Thus German has beabsichtigen ‘intend, plan to’ (besides more specific and behavioural planen), and Russian namerivat’ ‘intend to, plan to’ (from mera ‘measure’), alongside planirovat’ ‘plan’. Others have a dedicated ‘intend’ verb, like Danish agte ‘intend’ (as opposed to planlægge ‘plan to’), and Icelandic ætla ‘intend’ (but áforma ‘plan’). Modern Romance languages typically have a phrase based on a noun, thus French: avoir l’intention (de faire) ‘intend’ (and avoir prévu de ‘plan to’), and Spanish tener intencion de ‘intend’. French entendre, from the same Latin source as the noun, can also mean ‘intend’, ‘expect’, and ‘mean’. This does not indicate polysemy all the way from Understanding, however, as discussed under that category, but is probably a matter of homonymy, reflecting divergent historical developments from the Latin source intendere ‘stretch towards’ (also of the senses). Latin itself has destināre ‘intend, determine to’, originally ‘make fast or firm, establish’, which is of course the source of English ‘destine’. Greek displays a wide range of polysemous senses in its equivalents: protithemai ‘intend, display, propose, think, mean’, literally ‘set forth’, which probably represents a quasi-metaphor from the adjacent quadrant of ‘Action’ rather than directly from ‘Prediction’. It also has skopeio ‘take aim, intend, propose, plan’ (the latter related to skeptomai ‘look at’). English also has ‘mean to’, Old English manan ‘signify, tell, complain of’, related to ‘moan’, from Indo-European *mei-no ‘opinion, intent’—for German cognate meinen see under Judging. Outside of Europe, Japanese has phrasal expressions tsumori da ‘intend’ (lit. ‘intention is’) and keikaku suru ‘plan (method or course of action)’ with a Sinetic noun plus ‘do’. Chinese itself has dăsuàn ‘intend’ (lit. ‘hit calculation’). Nenets has yid’e- ‘intend, decide to, solve, think of -ing’ based on yi ‘mind’. Some non-European languages have affixes rather than lexical stems here, thus West Greenlandic -lersaar-, -ssamaar- ‘intend to’, and Nuuchahnulth -Ɂaaqtl ‘intend to, going to’ (from Proto-Wakashan *-’ayq ‘in mind’), also -maaɁatl ‘intending to’, and -n’aħi ‘intend, be ready to’. Aleut has a special ‘intentional’ mood,2 and anuxta- ‘have in mind, think of, suppose, want, wish, desire, decide, intend’ with its wide polysemous reach was already treated under Judging. Also Ainu has an intentional mood consisting of ‘consequential conjunctionalizer’ kusu plus ki ‘do’ (also in the sense ‘about to’). Cree has a ‘preverb’ wi.- ‘intend, want to, be going to’. In fact these two languages reflect a rather common 1 The etymology of ‘plan’ is nominal and quite different from the ‘stretching forth’ one of ‘intend’ given in chapter 3, namely from French plan ‘ground plan’, after Italian pianta ‘plan of an edifice’, in turn from Latin plānus ‘flat’ and plānum ‘level surface’. 2 With auxiliary aĝ- forms a future tense, as in PiitraX waaĝaaĝan aĝikuX ‘Peter is about to come’ (Bergsland 1997: 202).
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polysemy among words of the present category with Expecting and Wishing (through Imagining, implied by both Intending and Expecting), thus Ket has St-(a/ol)-S-waq ‘S wants/intends to do’ (lit. ‘path’ plus ‘put once’), and Koyukon has de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend, guess, surmise’ with root -len ‘intend’. Kwaza has damỹ- ‘intend, want to, be going to’. Compare the case of English ‘will’ above. Also belonging in this category are words like English ‘mean’, in the sense of ‘signify’ applied to words—i.e. intend something conventionally understood by using a word. Searle has written extensively on the relation of meaning to intentionality (Searle 1983: 160–179 and 197–230). In its other sense, applied to human subjects, examples have been given above. Many of these words relate to showing via signs. Thus Italian significare (French signifier, Latin significatio),3 Russian znacit’ (from znak ‘sign’), Finnish merkitȁ (cf. merkki ‘mark, sign’), and German bedeuten (cf. deuten ‘interpret, indicate, augur’), also English denote from Latin dēnotāre ‘point out’. Others relate to more personal intention, such as French vouloir dire ‘mean’ (lit. ‘want to say’), or Italian intendere ‘mean, intend’. Nominals of similar meaning are represented by Japanese imi ‘meaning, purport’, Chinese yìsi ‘meaning, idea, opinion, wish, interest’, West Greenlandic isuma ‘meaning, mind, thought’ (as a verb ‘think’), and Arabic mʕani: ‘meaning’ (from yʕani: ‘mean, imply’). Yoruba has itumọ̀ ‘meaning, interpretation’, and Indonesian has maksud ‘purpose, intention, meaning’ (verbal bermaksud ‘intend’) as well as arti ‘meaning’ (verbal berarti ‘mean’). Greek has several expressions: ennoia ‘sense, meaning, concept, interpretation’ (classical ennoeio ‘think, understand’, related to nous ‘mind’), simasia ‘meaning, significance’ (from simaino ‘mean, signify, signal’), and also noima ‘reflection, thought, sense, meaning, sign’. The asl sign for mean, intend, purpose is as below. Arbitrary?
mean 3 From Latin significāre ‘show, indicate, signify, express’—cf. signum ‘sign, token, mark’.
chapter 13
Imagining The Collins definition of ‘imagine’ is: “(1) form a mental image of; (2) think, believe or guess; (3) suppose, assume (that).” One can imagine the future (for example the result of an intended mental action). If you judge it highly likely to come true, you may expect it to (the next category). But you can also imagine how something was in the past at which you weren’t present. What one imagines may be unlikely to match reality exactly, but it can also result in the action of creating or inventing something new. The basis of the category (and its roots in the pre-verbal world) is the projection of images or scenes (including kinaesthetic action schemas) beyond the sensory here and now—often (but not necessarily) in conjunction with working out how to attain a goal. There may be feelings and words associated with such projections, including feeling what it will be like to obtain the goal. Imagining is the realm of grammatical “irrealis” marking, as in hypothetical conditional sentences. (‘If you hadn’t left the window open the kitten wouldn’t have got out.’) Some typical English sentences from within this category: ‘I imagine you’ll want something to eat before you go to bed.’ ‘He imagined himself receiving a hero’s welcome on arrival back in Australia.’ ‘I can’t exactly see myself turning down the Nobel Prize if they offered it to me.’ ‘Just imagine what it must be like walking on the moon.’ ‘You’re just making it up!’ ‘Picture in your mind taking a swim with a mermaid.’ ‘Don’t imagine you’ll get away with it.’ ‘I can’t imagine what came over me.’ ‘He thought he was some kind of Viking in that bar brawl.’ ‘He conceived of a new way of making beer from pine cones.’ There are a good number of alternative words and phrases in English for nuances (some just stylistic) within this general category, e.g. ‘picture’, ‘make up’, ‘contrive’, ‘concoct’, ‘conceive’, ‘envisage’, ‘surmise’, and ‘invent’. There is rather little polysemy with other categories, and most words within it have some connection with images or pictures, thus the source of ‘imagine’ itself: French imaginer from Latin imāgināri ‘fancy, picture mentally’ (from imāgō
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_014
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‘copy, representation, likeness’, related to imitārī ‘imitate’). French also has se figurer like English ‘picture to oneself’, and concevoir, whence English ‘conceive (of)’. Danish has bilde sig ind ‘imagine’ (with negative connotations) and nominal indbildning ‘imagination, fantasy’, from bild ‘picture’, going with German einbilden sich ‘imagine, presume’, and, more positively, forestille sig ‘imagine’, going with German vorstellen sich (lit. ‘put before oneself’).1 Russian has voobražat’ ‘imagine’ from obraz ‘image’, but also predstavit’ (sebe) (lit. ‘present to oneself’), Icelandic has ímynda sér ‘imagine’ (from mynd ‘picture, image’), and Finnish has kuvitella ‘imagine, figure to oneself’ from kuva ‘picture’ (mielikuvitusta ‘imagination’). Mandarin Chinese has xiăngxiàng (also as noun ‘imagination’—xiăng is ‘think (about), miss, intend to’ and xiàng ‘picture, look like’). Japanese has borrowed this as sōzō (suru) ‘imagine’ (but also, loosely, omou—see under Judging). Indonesian has membayang ‘imagine’ from bayang ‘image, shadow’.2 Are all these ‘picturing’ expressions metaphorical? For instance, from the domain of physical pictures to mental images? The trouble is that “pictures” do not really constitute a domain. The connection is obvious (both “imitate” reality in one way or another) although mental images are far from homologous with physical pictures. And is the parallel meant to be with seeing a picture or making one? At best it is perhaps a question of “quasimetaphors” here, from ‘seeing’ in the ‘Sense’ quadrant to ‘imagining’ in the present ‘Prediction’ one. Other languages are different, including Hindi kalpānā kārnā ‘imagine’ (‘imagination do’), the noun (from the Sanskrit) literally ‘making, forming’. West Greenlandic has isumaannar- ‘imagine’ (lit. ‘just think’), also takorloor‘imagine, see in a vision, phantasize’ (from taku- ‘see’). Ket has S-qasbedeŋ(a/ol)-bed- ‘S imagines things that aren’t true’ (from qas ‘big’ + nominalizer + bed ‘make’—Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Koyukon has a complex continuative expression with a narrower extension: ne#hu+oo+ne+ł+ghun ‘play using the imagination, make-believe, act, play house with dolls’ (with root -ghon ‘make’). For Nahuatl toca ‘consider, imagine’ see under Judging. There are also words similar to English ‘invent’, which has two meanings (as do equivalents in most other languages): on the one hand to produce a useful invention (physical or ideational) through prior imaginative processes, and on the other to make up something palpably untrue (typically producing a purely imaginary story).3 Thus French inventer (like English ‘invent’ from 1 German also has dünken ‘imagine, fancy, seem’, for which see chapter 24. 2 And note berpura-pura ‘pretend, make-believe’. 3 This is close to the meaning of ‘lying’, but not necessarily linked to the situation of a mendacious response to someone else’s questioning or probing.
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Latin invenīre ‘find, come upon’), German erfinden ‘invent’ (i.e. ‘find’), but erdichten ‘make up, invent’ (from dichten ‘compose (a poem or story)’), the same distinction as between Danish opfinde ‘invent’ and opdigte.4 Similarly, Russian has izobretat’ ‘invent’ (originally ‘find’), but pridumyvat’/vydumyvat’ ‘make up, invent’ (derivatives of dumat’ ‘think’, as also zadumat’ ‘plan, intend, conceive the idea of’). Greek has efeirisko ‘invent’ but platho ‘make up, mould, create’, and Japanese has hatsumei suru ‘invent’ but kangae-dasu ‘invent, make up’ (lit. ‘think-bring out’). Chukchi has rǝcimɣ’uv- ‘invent, think up’ (causative of cimɣ’u‘think’—probably based on Russian zadumat’). Then there are words for ‘dreaming’. These have the unique cognitive feature of not referring to a fully conscious state, but to anywhere ranging from dreamfilled rem sleep to hazy daydreaming, but never to a completely unconscious state of deep sleep. Many of these words do refer to ‘sleep’ or ‘going to sleep’, however, including most of the Indo-European languages. Thus Old English swefn ‘dream’ is from ie *swep- ‘sleep’, as is Sanskrit swapna ‘sleep, dream’, Latin somniāre ‘dream’ (via somnium ‘dream, fantasy, daydream, vision’, and somnus ‘sleep’), French songer ‘dream’, Italian sognare ‘dream’ (and sognare ad occhi aperti ‘daydream’—lit. ‘dream with eyes open’).5 Classical Greek has enipnion ‘dream’, and Russian son ‘sleep, dream’ (also snovidenie ‘dream’, lit. ‘sleep vision’), also reflexive verb snitsja ‘dream’. But the Germanic languages (apart from Old English) are different: thus German träumen ‘dream, daydream, be deep in thought, imagine’ (noun Traum) is from Germanic *draugma, related to ohg triogan ‘deceive’ (and Sanskrit druh ‘seek to injure’). The specialized Old English correlate is drēam ‘joy, music’ (in Old Saxon ‘mirth, noise’). Russian also has nouns mečta ‘dream, daydream’ (verb mečtat’) and grjoza ‘daydream, reverie’ (verb grezitsja), and Irish has brinngloid ‘dream, vision’ (related to brinda ‘vision’, brionn ‘fiction, dream’), and verb taidhbhrighim ‘dream’ (related to brighim ‘declare, show’ and bricht ‘spell, charm’). Outside of Indo-European the link to ‘sleep’ is less common, though note Finnish uni ‘sleep, dream’ (noun unelma ‘dream’), and verbal nähdä unta (lit. ‘see a dream’). It also has unrelated haaveilu ‘daydream’ from haave ‘fantasy, illusion’. Kolyma Yukaghir has juŋžo:-di- ‘dream about’ from joŋžo:- ‘go to sleep’, and West Greenlandic has sinnattor- ‘dream’ (noun sinnattugaq), from pi *cinək- ‘sleep’. Kalam has wsn nŋ- ‘dream’, lit. ‘sleep perceive’, with its ubiquitous verb of perception.
4 Danish also has finde på ‘invent, make up’ from finde ‘find’ plus på ‘on’. 5 But French also has rêver ‘dream, be delirious’, noun rêve, apparently differentiated from rage < Latin rabies ‘rage’ (Buck 1988: 269).
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Elsewhere there is no such overt link to sleeping. Thus Turkish has devoted term düş ‘dream’ (verbal gör- düş, lit. ‘see a dream’), and Arabic has ħulm ‘dream’ (verbal yaħlumu). Japanese has yume ‘dream, illusion, vision, reverie’ (and verbal yume o miru, lit. ‘see a dream’), and Mandarin Chinese has yíge mèng ‘dream’ (classifier yíge ‘one/a’ plus noun), and verbal zuò yíge mèng ‘dream’ (with zuò ‘make, do’). Chukchi has retəret ‘dream’, and corresponding verb retəla- or reto ləŋ-, the latter with the auxiliary verb of emotion/perception expressions. Indonesian has besides mimpi ‘dream’ (verbal bermimpi) also berkhayal ‘dream, imagine’ and khayalan ‘dream, hallucination’ (from khayal ‘imagination’). Koyukon has P+aa+no#Ø+loɬ ‘dream about’ (root -ɬol ‘dream’), but also motion verb Ø+ taa ‘move about while lying down, travel in a dream’, and P+e#ɬ+taa ‘have a dream about P’, both from animate classificatory root -taa ‘lie’. Nuuchahnulth has puuw’ica ‘dream’ (verb), but also affix -‘ituɬ/-’itawitl ‘dream about’. Yidiɲ has intransitive biᶁaɽ wanda-n ‘dream’ (with wanda-n ‘fall, drop’), and transitive biᶁaɽ baᶁa-l ‘dream about’ (apparently with baᶁa-l ‘bite’).6 Xhosa has uku-phupha ‘dream’ (noun i-phupha), as opposed to umɓono ‘a vision’. The asl sign for imagination is as below. Riekehof describes the idea as “thoughts circling around.” I also add the sign for dream, which she describes as “the mind going off into fantasies”.
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6 The Dyalŋuy (mother-in-law avoidance language) equivalent is waruŋu gilᶁu-l with gilᶁu-l ‘bite’ (Dixon 1977: 504).
chapter 14
Expecting The Collins definition of ‘expect’ is: “(1) to regard as probable or likely, anticipate; (2) to look forward to; (3) to decide that something is requisite or necessary.” And the definition of closely related ‘hoping’: “to desire with some possibility of fulfilment; have a wish for (a future event/situation); trust, expect, believe (that).” The basic feature of this category is waiting for something to come about, judging that it is reasonably certain to do so. This can involve Imagining (an outcome) or Wishing for its fulfilment. It is distinct from more general ‘waiting’ (‘being obliged to wait’ or ‘on the lookout for’) by the additional element of near certainty. ‘Waiting’ is behavioural, while ‘expecting’ is cognitive, though phrases like ‘waiting for’ can have the cognitive meaning. The roots of the category lie in the instinctive anticipation of something potentially negative (dread) or of something positive (eagerly awaited). Diachronically, ‘expect’ is from Latin expectāre ‘watch for’ (spectāre ‘look at’), and ‘anticipate’ is from anticipāre (lit. ‘take before’). ‘Hoping’ has a stronger emotional element associated with a desired positive outcome or situation. It is situated close to the (porous) border with Wishing— there is conflation of the two in many languages, and some languages display a distinct optative mood shared with Wishing (‘would that –’ expressing a subjective hope or wish). A nuance with a superior moral tinge is found in English in the use of ‘I trust that’ (someone will do something—since I know that they should). This meaning is mediated by the notion of putting one’s trust in/believing in a certain outcome (on the basis of experience or belief). It may be an example of constructional “straying” from ‘trust (that)’ under Believing, or equally well the other way round, ultimately a diachronic matter. Some typical sentences illustrating the category: ‘One would expect a doctor to take better care of his own health.’ ‘They expected the stock market to crash within a week.’ ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’ ‘She awaited the imminent arrival of her aunt with trepidation.’ ‘Let’s hope the weather will improve in June.’ ‘Some people expect the world to end on the 8th of August this year.’ ‘What can you expect? He’s Welsh.’ ‘He hoped that would be the end of it.’ ‘I trust you will continue to listen to good advice.’
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_015
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There is little inter-category polysemy in evidence here apart from that between Hoping and Wishing as in Finnish toivoa or Mandarin Chinese xīwàng, both ‘hope, wish’ (as opposed to odottaa ‘expect, wait for’ in Finnish, and qīdài ‘expect’ and dĕng ‘wait for’ in Chinese). However, Nenets has yenə- ‘hope, believe, trust, rely on’ (and yenəbts ‘support, hope’, with behavioural extensions). Within the category there is often coverage of ‘expecting’ and ‘waiting for’ and/or ‘hoping’ with the same word—e.g. Spanish esperar ‘hope, expect, wait’, and Indonesian mengharapkan ‘expect’, berharap ‘hope’ (both from harap ‘hope’). French has attendre à ‘expect, wait for’, but separate espérer ‘hope’. Xhosa has uku-themba ‘hope, expect, trust’ (and uku-thembeka ‘be trusted’), and also Hindi conflates hope and expectation in ummid ‘expect, hope’. The close association with ‘waiting’ is especially noticeable in cases like German erwarten ‘expect’ (derived from warten ‘wait’) and Russian: ozhidat’ ‘expect’ (from zhdat’ ‘wait’). Danish has forvente ‘expect’ (from vente ‘wait’), also se frem til, literally ‘look forward to’, like the English, emphasizing a positive expectation. Note too Greek anameno ‘wait for, expect’. Further afield, Chukchi has a’tca- ‘expect, wait for’, and Samoan fa’atali ‘wait for, expect’ ( fa’a- is causative, tali ‘answer, receive’). Many languages (like English) have a separate verb for ‘hope’, e.g. Russian, nadejatsja ‘hope’ (originally ‘place oneself on’), and German hoffen ‘hope’. Also West Greenlandic, which distinguishes all three meanings: ilimagi/ilimasug- ‘expect’ (an emotion verb, in Polar Eskimo of s.th. bad), utaqqi- ‘wait (for)’, and neriug- ‘hope’ (in Proto-Eskimo ‘eagerly expect’), also enclitic -toq ‘would that –’. Japanese has (to) omou ‘expect to’ (following a main verb in the future tense—see under Judging for this highly polysymous verb), and nozomu ‘look forward to, hope’, also behavioural verb matsu ‘wait’.1 Outside Europe these meanings may be divided between lexical and morphological means. Thus Aleut has kayu- ‘have hopeful expectation that/for’ (and Eastern Aleut ata- ‘expect’, corresponding to Attuan uta- ‘think’),2 but also affix -Vĝu- ‘look for, expect to, wait for’. Nuuchahnulth has -awił ‘expect, consider to be’ and -’inħi ‘wait for’. Koyukon has P+gho#O+oo+Ø+lee ‘anticipate, expect, suspect P’ (with stem -lee ‘sing, utter’), but also debaa soo’(u) ‘I hope, wish that, I wonder who’ from debaa ‘who’ and soo’(u) ‘dubitive, perhaps’ (as also in P-nodebaa ‘awaiting P’, and fixed optative phrase debaa łonh ‘let’s hope –’ with łonh ‘apparently’). Tariana has stem -wapa ‘wait’ and, as a serial verb, ‘expect’, with following -a ‘go’. Yoruba has daba ‘expect, think of, suppose’, 1 Also, limited to 1st person, the darō (polite deshō) form of the copula da following a verb or adjective (‘I expect that, probably’). 2 And anuxtaasa- ‘hope, want, think about’—with anuxta- ‘think (that), suppose, wish, want, intend’ under Judging, plus applicative -asa- ‘do with, towards’.
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but also metaphorical reti ‘expect, hope’, literally ‘pick the ear’, from eti ‘ear’ acc. Bowen (1885: 67). Then there are verbs of ‘suspecting’ (s.o. of doing s.th. bad, or expecting s.th. bad to be the case or happen), negative counterparts to ‘hoping’: German beargwöhnen, French soupçonner, Spanish sospectar, and Russian podozrevat’ (like Latin suspicere literally ‘look beneath’). West Greenlandic has pasi- ‘suspect s.o.’ (an ordinary transitive verb, unlike ilimagi-). Chukchi cicu lǝŋ, cicǝl’et‘suspect, be in doubt (about)’ (an emotion verb construction) and Indonesian sangka ‘guess, suspect’ were already mentioned under Guessing, but could belong here (‘expecting s.th. bad’)—at least the two meanings easily combine (also with Doubting and Judging). The asl sign for hope, expect is as below. Riekehof describes the idea as “thinking and beckoning for something to come.” Metaphoric, but also partially iconic?
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chapter 15
Wishing The Collins dictionary defines ‘wish’ as follows: “(1) to want or desire s.th. (often that which cannot be or is not the case); (2) to feel or express a desire or hope concerning the future; (3) desire or prefer to be as specified.” And ‘want’: “(1) feel a need or longing for (transitive); (2) wish, need or desire to do s.th.; (3) be lacking or deficient; (4) feel the absence of s.th.” ‘Desire’ itself belongs squarely under the category of Emotional feelings, though there is polysemy with the present category. The basic feature of Wishing is hoping for satisfaction of an unfulfilled (or unfulfillable) goal, i.e. one more distant than in the case of Hoping, and one that is more ardently hoped for. This can have similar pre-verbal roots, mediated by imagery and feeling rather than words. Unlike hoping, wishing can also refer to the past, wishing something had or had not been the case (hence ‘regret’, treated as an emotion in chapter 23). Here are some typical sentences in English: ‘I wish you’d stop playing that trombone in the bathroom.’ ‘I wish you luck.’ ‘May your wish for your country’s prosperity someday be fulfilled.’ ‘He wished to join the navy, but was told his fear of water disqualified him.’ ‘I want you to jump out of that window on the count of three.’ ‘He wished he’d been there himself.’ ‘She wished for a miracle.’ ‘I wish to speak to the manager.’ ‘What do you wish for a Christmas present?’ Many languages distinguish between a weaker ‘wanting’ verb, which may spread into the behavioural/circumstantial sense of ‘lacking’ (the original meaning of the English word)1 and a stronger ‘wishing’ one, which may spread into purely emotional territory, corresponding to still stronger English ‘yearn for’ or ‘long for’. English ‘wish’, note, is often just a politer form for ‘want’, perhaps due to its fulfilment being more remote: ‘I wish you’d leave’ vs. ‘I want you to leave’. Note the constructional differences here: one ‘wishes that s.th. hap-
1 From Old Norse vanta ‘be deficient’, related to English ‘wane’.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_016
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pens’ (but not *‘wants that …’), and ‘wants to do s.th.’ or ‘wants s.o. to do s.th.’ but one only ‘wishes to do s.th.’ or ‘wishes s.o. to do s.th.’ as a more formal or polite equivalent of the latter. The construction ‘want to do s.th.’ with ‘to’ of purpose probably represents a case of constructional “straying” towards Intending (as in ‘intends to do s.th.’). One may also ‘wish for s.th.’ (but not *‘want for s.th.’) or ‘wish s.o. something’ (e.g. ‘all the best’), but can only ‘want something’ for oneself. ‘Wish’ derives ultimately from Indo-European *wen- ‘desire, strive for’, and is reflected also in German wünschen, Danish ønske, and Icelandic óska ‘wish’. Watkins (1985: 76) relates this to the source of ‘win’, i.e. ‘seek to gain’. These Germanic languages also have weaker words like German wollen (Danish vil gerne), and Icelandic þurfa or reflexive mig vantar ‘I want, need’. French has vouloir ‘want to, intend’ vs. souhaiter ‘wish’, similar to Russian chotet’ ‘want to, intend’ vs. želat’ ‘desire, wish for’.2 The ‘intend’ glosses of the French and Russian terms refer to more limited constructions with following infinitives as in vouloir dire and xotet’ skazat’, both ‘mean, intend to say’, but as with English ‘want to’ this may reflect a more general constructional straying to the category of Intending. More “remote” French conditional form ( je) voudrais is politer than indicative veux, and the same can be said of Russian ( ja) xotel by vs. indicative xoču. Spanish has by contrast querer for both ‘wish’ and ‘want to’ and also ‘love’ (< Latin quærare ‘seek’). Latin itself had velle ‘wish, want, be willing’ from ie *wel-, the source of English ‘will’ (also ‘well’ and ‘wealth’) and German wollen ‘want’. A different (typically Celtic) idiom covering the same ground is Irish is toil liom ‘I wish, want’ (lit. ‘there is a wish with me’). Japanese distinguishes iru ‘want, need’, and stronger adjectival hoshii ‘want, wish’ (indicating that the subject ‘is desirable’), but it also has a derivational suffix -tai ‘want/wish to’. Mandarin Chinese yào covers ‘want, wish, need’, though it also has xiăng ‘think/want to’ (for the broad polysemy of which see under Thinking about), and yuàn(yì) ‘wish, want, be ready to’. Hindi cāhnā ‘wish, desire, like, love, choose, need’ displays distinct spreading into emotional feeling, as does Quechua munay ‘desire, want’ (as an adjective ‘cute, agreeable, nice’), which is related to munakuy ‘love’ in the following chapter. Indonesian ingin covers ‘wish, desire, want, feel like -ing’. Other languages have more miscellaneous means of expressing these meanings. Thus Dzongkha has ‘mönlam tap- ‘wish’ (lit. ‘prayer do’), and Ket has qast-it ‘want’ from qas ‘want’, a combining form as in is-qas ‘desire to eat’, plus a root meaning ‘go’ (Vajda & Werner, in preparation). Ainu has desiderative
2 Note that only xotet’ but not želat’ can be used in an impersonal construction: mne xočetsja with the “subject” in the dative case ‘want to V, feel like V-ing’.
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auxiliary rusuy ‘like, want to, feel like’, but also negative etoranne ‘not want’, forming a kind of negative mood indicating distaste (Refsing 1986: 168). Kwaza has desiderative suffix -heta ‘want to’ and stem ai- ‘not want to, not like’. West Greenlandic has a number of derivational affixes: -rusug- ‘want to’, -juma- ‘want to, like to’ (as opposed to related denominal -gug- ‘long for (esp. food)’), but note also eqiagi- ‘not feel like doing s.th.’ (from pe *ǝq(ǝ)ya- ‘be lazy’). Aleut has stems ala- ‘want’ and giXta- ‘want, desire’ but also affixes -Vtu- ‘want to, like to’, -yuug- ‘want to, tend to, need to, like to’ (and note yagnaXta- ‘crave (food or drink)’). For anuxta- ‘want, desire, think, suppose, intend’ see under Judging. Chukchi has circumfix re- -ŋ- ‘want’ as well as stem teɣ’jeŋ- ‘want, desire’ (and ɣǝjinre- or ɣiinu lǝŋ- ‘yearn for’). Xhosa has uku-funa ‘seek, want’, uku-swela ‘want, lack’, and uku-nga ‘wish, seem, may’ (also uku-nqwenela ‘desire, long for’).3 Cree has natawe.liht- ‘want s.th.’ (from natawi- ‘go to do’ plus -e.liht- ‘by thought’), also milwe.lim- ‘like s.o.’ from milo ‘good’ and -e.lim- ‘by thought’ (of animate objects). As a ‘preverb’ it also has no.hte.- ‘want to’. Nahuatl has nequi ‘want to, use’ (also for the immediate future, and reflexive ‘pretend to’). Some North American languages have extensions further into emotional territory, e.g. Nuuchahnulth, which has besides Ɂinis ‘wish, want’ a number of affixes: -c’aqsim ‘want’, -‘ałsimhi ‘want, desire, love, lust after’, and -maʕiiqtl and -miħsa ‘want to’. Koyukon has P+pp#de+Ø/D+lo ‘want, desire, love P’ with root -lo ‘crave’ (for de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend’ with root -len ‘intend’ see under Intending). Yoruba has fẹ́ ‘wish, love, desire’. Unusually, Arrernte has ahentye-ne- ‘want’, literally ‘throat-sit’—recall the association of the throat with cognition in this Australian language. The asl sign for want, desire, wish is as below. Riekehof gives the idea as “drawing an object towards oneself.” Again metaphoric, but also iconic.
want 3 The prefix uku- marks a verbal noun. In the sense ‘wish, would that –’ the main clause is followed by a subordinate one also containing -nga-, as in ndinga angathetha ‘I wish him to speak’ (lit. ‘I wish he may speak’) (McLaren 1955: 130–131).
chapter 16
Emotional Feelings This category covers a wide variety of emotional states and responses (cf. the Collins definition of ‘emotion’ as “any strong feeling, as of joy, sorrow or fear”).1 I shall consequently limit myself to focusing on the lexical expression of one particular emotion, namely ‘love’, which shows interesting variation across languages and is a natural continuation from the ‘desiring’ and ‘liking’ words under Wishing. The Collins definition of ‘love’ is: “(1) to have a great attachment to and affection for; (2) to have passionate desire, longing and feeling for; (3) to like or desire (to do something) very much; (4) to make love to (transitive); (5) to be in love (intransitive).” A broader perspective on emotion words across languages is provided in chapter 23. This has wider relevance bearing on sub-categories in general. Although the category divides up into a number of apparently “natural” sub-categories (specific emotions), these may or may not correspond to linguistic divides. The subdivisions of the core quadrant of ‘Feel’ is assumed to be universal, just as the subdivisions of ‘Sense’ are, reflecting the finite number of sensory channels. The nearest approach to a universally accepted division of “basic” emotions is probably still that of Ekman (1984) based on facial expressions. This differs slightly from that of Johnson-Laird & Oatley (1992), which is based on an examination of emotion words in usage. It is almost definitional of the category that emotions are “valenced”, i.e. feel good or bad, which cannot be said so categorically of the peripheral categories of Wishing or Surprise (despite the former being one of Johnson-Laird & Oatley’s six basic emotions and the latter one of Ekman’s). Bear in mind that we are talking at the cognitive level, i.e. about what Damasio (2000) calls “feelings” as opposed to “emotions”, the latter referring to immediate bodily responses to situations or stimuli.2 “Feelings” are emotional states or reactions evoked by specific types of situational or imagined triggers, susceptible to socio-cultural modulation and specialization. Although this distinction is widely recognised, the question of what constitutes 1 And note the etymology of ‘emotion’ from French émotion, verbal émouvoir ‘stir, agitate, move’, Latin ex-movēre, originally physically of ‘moving out’ (so later ‘out of oneself’?). 2 A terminologically somewhat confusing distinction, although one clearly defined by the author. This difference is akin to that between the substance and the form of emotions according to Aristotle (see Koestler 1975: 274). Note that I have throughout this book used ‘Emotion’ or ‘Emotional feelings’ to refer to the cognitive category, reserving ‘Feel’ for the broader, more primitive core quadrant that covers not only Emotion but also Wishing, Surprise and Experiencing.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_017
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a “basic emotion”, common to all human beings, remains controversial. ‘Love’ is a good example with which to illustrate the situation, since it is clearly common to all humans but its expression and semantic nuances are subject to languagespecific variation in a number of ways—including through the intervention of organised religion. So in that sense it can hardly be called “basic”. Here, then, are some typical sentences falling within this (sub-)category: ‘Julie loves Harry madly.’ ‘I love gardening.’ ‘Love thy neighbour.’ ‘Would you mind looking after the kids for me for an hour or two?’—‘I’d love to.’ ‘He made love to her.’3 ‘He loved to feed the pigeons in the park.’ ‘Animal mothers love their babies—well most of them do.’ ‘Do you take this woman to love and cherish …?’ ‘He’s passionate about stamps.’ ‘I like skiing in the winter.’ As can be seen from some of the sentences above, the passionate sense of the verb can be much watered down to something like ‘like’ or ‘enjoy’ (of a thing or occupation rather than a person) or ‘prefer’ (of a choice).4 The historic root of English ‘love’ (and archaic lief ‘dear’, Old English lufu ‘love’) is ancient, thus Proto-Indo-European *leubhos ‘love, desire’—Sanskrit lubh- ‘long for’ (esp. of violent desire), Latin lubet ‘it is pleasing’. This is also found in modern German lieben and Russian ljubit’ ‘love’. Russian also has weaker nravit’sja, like German gefallen ‘please (one)’ and French plaire ‘please, like’ (with dative “subject”). Czech has milovat from milý ‘dear’, and Polish has more graphic kochać ‘love’ from Old Church Slavonic kosnąti ‘touch’ (presumably via ‘caress’). Danish has elske (especially that between man and woman, from Germanic *aliska ‘nourish, rear’)—it distinguishes this, and nominal elskov, from less physical kærlighed ‘love, charity’, which is an early loan from French cher, Latin cārus, thus kær ‘dear’.5 Note also the weaker expression kan (godt) lige ‘like’ (lit. ‘can
3 In the vicinity of a lively ballroom in Jane Austin’s day, more likely in bed in ours. 4 ‘Like’, in Old English līcian ‘please, be pleasing’, is from the same source as preposition ‘like’, namely Germanic root *līk- ‘appearance, form, body’. ‘Enjoy’ is from Old French enjoir ‘enjoy, rejoice’, from Latin en- ‘in’ plus gaudēre ‘rejoice’, so ‘find pleasure in’, like German genießen. ‘Prefer’ is from Latin præferre, lit. ‘bear in front’. 5 Probably related also to Sanskrit kam- ‘love, desire’, as in nominal kama.
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(well) like’). French has aimer ‘love, like, enjoy’, weaker aimer bien ‘like’ (i.e. ‘love well’, from Latin amāre, probably an infantile word of affection seen in pet names like Greek amma ‘mother, nurse’ acc. Buck 1988: 1110). Other languages do not appear to make such a clear distinction between the stronger and weaker senses, like Arabic ħubb ‘love, love to, like’ (muħib ‘lover’), Nenets men’e- ‘love, like’, Kwaza huruja- ‘love, like’, and Xhosa uku-thanda ‘love, like’ (but note also nominals u-fefe ‘grace, tender affection’, and in-tando ‘love, affection’). Kalam has gos tep nŋ- ‘like’ (lit. ‘perceive good thought’). Spanish, as we have seen under Wishing, has polysemous querer ‘want, love’. Irish has caraim, related to Latin cārus ‘dear’ (as also Welsh caru), but the usual word in Irish is grādhaim ‘love’ (nominal grā, perhaps from Latin grātum ‘favour’). Greek has agapo ‘love’, rarely of sexual love, which is more eirotas ‘love’ (as in eiroteiomai ‘fall in love’). In older Greek fileo was ‘love, have affection for’, thus modern filos ‘friend’. Hindi has pyār kārnā ‘love’ (‘love do’, with noun pyār ‘love, caress’), also lagi/lāgī ‘love, affection, desire’ (cf. lagnā under Experiencing). Like Danish and Greek, Japanese distinguishes between two sorts of love: aisuru ‘love (tenderly), have affection for, be fond of’ (from Chinese ài ‘love’), and koisuru ‘love, fall in love’ (between man and woman). Ainu omap ‘love, like’ is apparently borrowed from Japanese omou, for which see under Judging.6 Nahuatl has tlazòtla ‘love’, related to tlazòti ‘be precious’ (compare Latin cārus above). It also has weaker pāctia ‘please, like’ (like French plaire). Quechua has munakuy ‘love’, related to munay ‘desire, want’ in the previous chapter. An interesting array of expressions is found in the Eskaleut family. First, West Greenlandic has a verb asa- ‘love’ that appears to be unattested elsewhere. Unlike other emotion words, it is not marked morphologically as belonging to that category. In fact it represents an idiosyncratic development from a ProtoInuit stem *ažak- ‘be gentle with’, reflecting the definitional intervention of the Christian missionaries, probably equating it with the love of God, as discussed in Fortescue (2001).7 Suffice it to say that the Proto-Inuit stem is not an emotion one either and that it nowhere else means ‘love’, although the early missionary Paul Egede has ašak- ‘look after, treat well’ in his dictionary of 1750, which is clearly the same as the pi form. West Greenlandic also has nakkori- ‘like’ (lit. ‘consider good’) and kusagi- ‘like, think beautiful’, with -gi- ‘have as’, parallel with the Siberian Yupik equivalent piniqǝ- ‘love, like’ (lit. ‘consider beautiful, 6 It also has uyaykotuaskarap ‘live in loving cooperation’ (Refsing 1986: 221). 7 It is a regular transitive verb, requiring rare antipassive affix -nnig- to become intransitive, thus asannig-, exactly paralleled by Malamiut Alaskan Inupiaq ažaknik- ‘comfort, encourage, soothe s.o.’, the antipassive form of ažak-.
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good’). Central Alaskan Yupik has besides asikǝ- ‘like’ (‘consider good’) a regular emotion root kǝn- as in kǝnkǝ- ‘love’ and kǝnǝɣyuɣ- ‘be in love’ (probably related to pe *ǝkǝŋŋun ‘friend’ with nominal affix -ŋŋun). It also has alakə-, alaŋə- ‘be attracted to a member of the opposite sex’ from pe *ala- ‘desire’, and naklǝkǝ- ‘feel compassion towards, be considerate of’—in Alutiiq (aay) also ‘love’, elsewhere in Yupik ‘pity’, the original meaning in Proto-Eskimo.8 This emotion root, combining pity and love, is widespread in the Inuit world in its original sense of feeling pity for someone, as in North Alaskan Inupiaq naɣliɣiand West Greenlandic nalligi- ‘pity’. The stem comes in turn from Proto-Eskimo *naŋǝ(t)- ‘be used up, suffer’. In East Greenlandic it is nattii- ‘be responsible for, look after affectionately, pity’, and Polar Eskimo has it in both meanings: naɣlii- ‘love, feel pity for’. Most Eastern Canadian Inuktitut also has it in the ‘love’ sense—as opposed to related naakki- ‘be affectionate towards’, naakkiɣi‘pity’ (only the latter marked as an emotion verb by use of the ‘consider as’ affix -gi-). West Greenlandic has the same pair of verb forms, the distinction between the ordinary transitive one (naakki-) and the emotion one naakkigi- is subtle: ‘help someone out of pity’ vs. ‘feel pity for someone’, the former being more behavioural than cognitive. This intimate connection between loving and pitying is not at first sight so evident in Aleut. Here one has maasaatu- ‘love’ (from ma- ‘do’, applicative -asa‘with’ and -atu- ‘want to, like to’), ilaXta- ‘have as companion, be friendly to, love’ (ila ‘companion’ plus -Xta- ‘have as’), and qaĝaXta- ‘like, love’ (based on qaĝa‘be glad’ plus-Xta-). Atkan also has yaxta- ‘love, be affectionate to, be devoted to’. However, Atkan also has qumyux(ta)- ‘love’, which in Attuan is ‘mourn, miss’ rather (cf. Proto-Eskimo cognate *quvya(yuɣ)- ‘be happy’), and Eastern Aleut has kungu(X)ta- ‘love, be friendly to’, which in Atkan is ‘regret, be sorry’.9 One suspects lexical influence on the part of missionaries also here—qumyux(ta)is specifically given a biblical sense (‘love of God’) in Bergsland (1994: 337). The love/pity connection (polysemous?) occurs again in Samoan: alofa ‘love, have pity for, care for’ (as noun ‘love, kindness’), and in Yukaghir, which (alongside anurǝ- ‘love, like’) has jöul’ǝl’ǝ- ‘love, have pity for’, related acc. Nikolaeva (2006) to i:lu:- ‘good, beautiful, dear’. The Tundra dialect has in turn amud’ii ‘love, like’ from omo- ‘good’. Similar is Nanai ulēs’i- ‘love, caress, like’ (from ule(n-) ‘good’). Indonesian has mencinta(i) ‘love’ and bercinta ‘be in love, make love’ (with another prefix), but also menyayangi ‘love’ and menyayangkan
8 Note also kuzɣu- ‘feel compassion towards’, in Hooper Bay/Chevak kuyɣur- ‘be protective’ (of a bird towards its young), related to wg kusagi- above. 9 And related kinguniXta-, in Eastern ‘miss’, in Atkan ‘grieve, be worried, grieve’.
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‘regret’, both from sayang ‘pity, regret, love’ (with different circumfixes), alongside weaker suka, menyukai ‘like’. In fact there is an association between loving and pitying also in Russian according to Levontina & Zalizniak (2001: 319), who discuss zalost’ ‘pity, compassion’ as “a feeling very close to love”. Less common polysemies are seen in Koyukon, where O+oo+ne+Ø+neek ‘like, love, enjoy, be fond of, pleased with O’ is with ubiquitous root -neek ‘move hand, feel, know, remember, recognize’, probably evoking caressing (the prefix combination -oo-ne- is ‘try to’). Dakota has c’antohnaka ‘love’ (lit. ‘heart’ (c’ante) plus ‘push in’ (ohnaka) acc. Boas & Swanton 1911), and Nuuchahnulth has affix -‘aɫak ‘long for, like, be in love with’, as well as stem ʔatqaak ‘prize, covet, fall in love with’ (and also ʕixnaakmiħsa ‘court, woo, desire as a sweetheart’). Kobon has gasɨ göp ‘like, desire’ (lit. ‘thought does’), and Yidiɲ has transitive gayba-ɽ ‘make body feel good’, which probably belongs in the present category. Yoruba has kudọ̀ n ‘love, be fond of’ (but see fẹ́ ‘wish, love, desire’ under Wishing, which can also mean ‘woo, marry’ acc. Bowen 1856: 34). The opposite of ‘love’ is ‘hate’ (or weaker ‘dislike’), with corresponding negative valence. This is evident in such overtly negative forms as Russian nenavidet’ ‘hate’ (originally ‘not look upon (with favour)’), Mandarin Chinese bù xĭhuan ‘strongly dislike’ (lit. ‘not like’), Chukchi ’ǝqu lǝŋ- ‘hate’ (lit. ‘consider bad’), like Central Alaska Yupik asiilkǝ- (from asiit- ‘bad’), and Koyukon ts’o … -t’aa ‘hate’ (from pejorative prefix ts’o- plus -t’aa ‘be thus’). But ‘hate’ is often difficult to distinguish from ‘anger’, especially in languages that can distinguish anger directed at someone or something, like West Greenlandic, which has qinngari-/ qinngarsor- ‘hate, be angry at’ (and older qinngar- ‘suffer because one has broken the cult rule, be irritated’, also ‘call up a helping spirit (of a shaman)’—from pe *qiŋŋar- ‘show displeasure’), and uumigi-, uumissor- ‘hate, be furious with’ (pe *uɣumi- ‘be infuriated’), one of the few clear examples of emotion word metaphor in Eskimoan languages, since it rather transparently derives from pe *uɣu- ‘be heated up’. Note also Finnish vihata ‘hate’, vihastua ‘get angry’, from viha ‘hatred, anger’. There is often overlap with ‘disgust’ words too, as with Nuuchahnulth c’ic’iša ‘loathe, be disgusted’ and West Greenlandic maajugi- ‘feel loathing for, be disgusted by’. Other languages have different origins for their ‘hate’ words. English ‘hate’ itself (and German hassen) is from ie *kād- ‘sorrow, hatred’ acc. Watkins 1985 (as in Classical Greek keδos ‘care, anxiety, grief’ and Old Irish (mis)cais ‘hate’).10 French has détester from Latin dētestāre ‘curse (while invoking a god as witness)’, from pejorative dē- plus test-
10
On its own cais could apparently mean either ‘love’ or ‘hate’, the original meaning probably being ‘care’ acc. Buck (1988: 1133).
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āri ‘bear witness’, as well as more violent haïr (from a Germanic source). Italian odiare is from Latin ōdī ‘hate’—probably ultimately from a root *od- ‘smell’, so through ‘disgust’ (Buck 1988: 1133). The asl sign for feel is as below, the idea being “the finger feels the heart” according to Riekehof, also the more specific sign for love (“pressing to one’s heart”). Both metaphorical, but also to some degree iconic? Compare Classical Tibetan sñiN-ñe ‘love’ (lit. ‘be close to the heart’).11
feel 11
love The opposite asl sign, for hate, dislike, is by contrast pushing away from the body towards the right with both open hands, palms up.
chapter 17
Surprise The Collins definition of ‘surprise’ is: “(1) cause to feel amazement or wonder; (2) encounter or discover unexpectedly or suddenly; (3) to capture or assault suddenly and without warning; (4) to present with s.th. unexpected, such as a gift; (also) the feeling or condition of being surprised.” Surprise is peripheral as an emotion—it ranges between the automatic startle reaction to socially modulated surprise which may result in a lasting attitude to some situation (like Believing). It also has non-cognitive meanings like (3) here. What is common to the cognitive sense is the initial response to an unexpected stimulus, situation, piece of news or event. It bridges Emotional feeling and diffuse Experiencing— and beyond it mere Noticing. I shall return to the category in greater detail as regards its cognitive underpinnings and social modulation in chapter 22, where I provide it with its own category-internal semantic map and touch upon the associated grammatical realm of mirativity, also pragmatic exclamatives. Surprise can be combined with other categories, for instance Believing (specifically its opposite, disbelief), as in ‘I can’t believe he had the gall to ask for his money back!’. Some typical sentences in English for the category: ‘I’m surprised at how warm it is for December.’ ‘I’m amazed that you should think such a thing of me.’ ‘I’m surprised at you! You should know better than to smear paint all over the puppy!’ ‘What a lovely surprise: a box of my favourite liquor-filled chocolates!’ ‘You gave me quite a surprise!’1 ‘He was astonished to find himself driving across an open field.’ ‘The soldiers surprised the enemy troops while they slept in their camp’. ‘The introduction of the solo piccolo at bar 42 is a most surprising effect.’ ‘Fisher surprised everyone by moving his knight to King’s 3’. ‘I was surprised to find my missing sock when rummaging under the bed for the ping-pong ball the kitten had patted under it.’
1 e.g. when startled by someone coming up behind one’s back and speaking loudly.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_018
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‘She surprised herself by blurting out the truth.’ ‘I see the pound’s gone down against the dollar again—it would be surprising if it went the other way.’ First, it is clear that English (like other languages) possesses a wide array of more vivid terms referring to surprise, varying in strength. Thus ‘astonish’ and ‘astound’ (both etymologically ‘be struck by thunder’—cf. French s’ étonner),2 ‘dumbfound’, ‘stupefy’, ‘shock’, ‘flabbergast’, ‘stagger’, ‘stun’, ‘startle’, ‘consternate’, and adjectives like ‘appalled’, ‘aghast’, and ‘agape’. Many of these reveal polysemy with the specific emotion Fear. There are also more idiomatic expressions like ‘take one’s breath away’, ‘be bowled over’, and ‘be taken aback’. I shall focus on the most common expressions here. The word ‘surprise’ itself is from Medieval Latin superpræhendere ‘seize’, via French surprendre, i.e. reflects the Collins sense (3) above. The same sense and similar etymological source is found in German überraschen (literally ‘be swiftly over’), Danish overraske, and Russian zastignut’ vrasplox ‘catch unawares’ (literally ‘fall upon suddenly’). Contrast German wundern sich ‘be surprised (that)’ and Russian udivit’(sja) ‘surprise, astonish, amaze’ (from divo ‘wonder’), reflecting a source in sense (1), a more protracted state of awe with less focus on suddenness. Greek too reflects both sources: ekplisso, kataplisso ‘surprise’ from plisso ‘strike’ in sense (3), vs. thavmazo ‘be amazed at, wonder at’ from thavma ‘wonder, miracle’ in sense (1)—the latter is in turn from Indo-European *dhei-/dhau- ‘see’. Arabic has mufa:jaʔa ‘surprise’, mutafa:jiʔ ‘surprised’, mufa:jiʔ ‘abrupt, surprising’, from root template (m-) f-j-ʔ ‘surprise’, related to adverbial fajʔatun ‘suddenly’ (other relevant roots are ʕ-j-b ‘wonder’ and d-h-š ‘amaze’). More varied possibilities are displayed by Japanese. The principal verb is odoroku ‘be surprised’ (causative odorokasu ‘surprise, bowl over’, also adjectival odorokubeki ‘marvellous, to be admired’). But it also has bikkuri (suru) ‘be surprised, give a start, be frightened, alarmed’, a so-called “psychomeme”;3 and, with Sinetic compounds, fui wo utsu ‘take by surprise’ (literally ‘strike unexpectedly’) and kore wa igai da! ‘what a surprise!’ (lit. ‘this is unexpected!’). Then there is akireru ‘be amazed, dumbfounded, taken aback, disgusted with, shocked at, scandalized by’ (the derived participial akireta is ‘amazing, surprising, absurd’), and, more colloquially, kimo wo tsubusu ‘be frightened out of one’s 2 And note Russian porazit’sja ‘be astounded’—literally ‘be struck’. 3 See Hasada (2001) for further psychomemes: ha’, for rather weak surprise, not necessarily of a good or bad kind, gyo’ much stronger and exclusively in a bad sense, and doki’ of something surprising to oneself and consequently affecting one’s heart beat (doki-doki is the sound the heart makes).
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wits, thunderstruck’ (lit. ‘crush one’s liver’). Note also omowanai ‘I had no ideas that –’, with the negative of omou ‘think’. Mandarin Chinese has găndào jīchīng ‘be surprised’ (găndào is ‘feel’); the Oxford Chinese Dictionary adds that when a surprise is translated into Chinese it is often necessary to categorize the thing that is surprising by using an appropriate noun and to modify it by yìxiăng bú dào de ‘unexpected or surprising’. West Greenlandic also has a number of expressions, the most basic one being tupigusug- ‘be surprised’, tupigi- ‘be surprised at’, an emotion root with -gi- ‘have as’, related to tupag- ‘be startled, have a sudden fright’, which is not an emotion root itself.4 It also has uissuummi- ‘be surprised’, based on uit- ‘open eyes (wide)’, and quarsaar- ‘be frightened, be startled from a sudden shock’, and even more extreme tatamit- ‘get violently frightened, die of fright’, none of them marked as emotion roots, probably by dint of being overtly behavioural. In the transitive ‘surprise doing’ sense it has qaniŋŋar- ‘catch red-handed, surprise s.o. doing s.th.’. Central Alaskan Yupik has alaŋaar- ‘be surprised’, alapǝnnaXtǝ‘surprise’, alaŋru(q) ‘unexpected discovery, apparition, surprise visitor’, and alaiXtǝ- ‘suddenly appear’, all based on a root ala- which also occurs in transitive alakǝ- ‘notice, come upon’ (see under Perceiving). Chukchi has inicɣǝtet- ‘be surprised, wonder’ (transitive rinicɣǝtev-, apparently related to emotion stem ɣiciw- ‘be amusing or interesting’—cf. Koryak ɣicivet- ‘amuse oneself’, also an emotion verb with characteristic affixes -et or -ev). Going with it is corresponding transitive inicɣǝtu lǝŋ- ‘be interested (by s.th.)’ with auxiliary verb lǝŋ-. Then there is wittet- ‘jump back in surprise’ (also ‘break away’ of sea ice, a rare example of metaphor from human action to natural happening). Koryak has jiŋtev- ‘be amazed, surprised, wonder’ (and transitive jǝjiŋtev-, from jiŋt- ‘wonderful, holy’). It also has witev- ‘jump back in surprise’, like the Chukchi, both emotion forms, unlike West Greenlandic equivalent quarsaar- above. Among less common means of expressing this category, note Koyukon s’edegge dehoodeyoh ‘I am surprised at this’ (lit. ‘me-beyond it happened’), where the general verb root -yoh is ‘happen’ and degge is ‘over, more than P, praiseworthy, incredible to P’ as well as ‘surprising’.5 With a different general verb root (-’aanh ‘act in such a manner’) is k’e-degge det’aanh ‘she surprises (everybody) by what she does/ shocks people’ (lit. ‘something-beyond she acts’). And with adverbial prefix dzaa- ‘shocked’ (possibly related to dzaayh ‘heart’) note dzaadolgheɬ ‘she got startled’—the verb root -gheɬ here is ‘move swiftly under the 4 Note also derived nominal tupilak ‘evil spirit brought to life by magic to kill an enemy’. 5 This is described by Jetté and Jones (2000: 129) as referring to an intervening distance (upward), also in the sense of mental or spiritual superiority.
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influence of a strong emotion such as fear’. Also dzaa-gheelet ‘she was scared, frightened, amazed’ (with verb root -let ‘experience event’). Nuuchahnulth has č’iħaa ‘amaze’ (as a noun ‘ghost’), č’iħat ‘in a state of fright’ and č’iħatšitl ‘astonished’, also niɬak ‘amazed’, p’aXak ‘look on intently, be astonished’, but yuwaa ‘be pleasantly surprised’. Kobon has aiö waiö gᵻ ‘be amazed’ (a particle sequence followed by a general verb gᵻ ‘do’), and related Kalam has nawl d- ‘be overcome with astonishment’ (the generic verb here is d- ‘hold, take, seize’ and nawl is an adjunct nominal meaning ‘astonishing’). Another language of Papua New Guinea (but Austronesian this time), Mbula, has kete-imap ‘be astonished’ (literally ‘chest/liver ends’). Lao (Daic) has tok-caj ‘be surprised’ (literally ‘feel heart’), as opposed to tùùn ‘awaken, be startled’, of a purely instinctive reaction. Yoruba too has a metaphorical expression here: ẹnu mi ya ‘I am astonished’ (lit. ‘my mouth opens in wonder’). Unusual polysemy is displayed by Quechua utiy ‘be astonished, fall asleep’. Also sensory verbs like ‘see’ and ‘hear’ can involve an element of surprise and unexpectedness according to context (e.g. ‘I saw that Uncle’s left ear was missing’ under Perceiving). As can learning of something (‘He learnt that his distant aunt had left him a fortune’). In fact it can be argued that while all perception is a matter of noticing differences or contrasts (whether producing responses of interest, alarm or indifference), surprise is simply a matter of noticing unexpected ones. I shall follow this up in chapter 22. The asl sign for surprise, astonished is given below. Riekehof describes the idea as “eyes opened wide in surprise.” This is an example of metonymy, referring to a behavioural correlate of a mental state (compare West Greenlandic uissuummi- above).
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Experiencing (Feeling) The Collins definition of ‘feel’ is as follows: “(1) perceive by touching; (2) have a physical or emotional sensation of s.th.; (3) examine by touch; (4) find (one’s way) by testing or cautious exploration; (5) seem or appear in respect of the sensation given; (6) have an indistinct, esp. emotional conviction, sense; (7) show sympathy or compassion for; (also) have an inclination to do s.th.” And of ‘experience’: “to participate or undergo; to be emotionally or aesthetically moved by, feel.”1 Note that not all Experiencing words are cognitive as opposed to referring to undergoing some outward situation or event, as in ‘He underwent surgery’ or ‘The World Cup winners experienced the adulation of the nation’. What is central to this category is not the perceiving (touching) sense of ‘feeling’ (for which see under Perceiving) but the holistic experience of states largely extrapolated from sensory and emotional input from specific sources. Its roots lie in proprioceptive feelings from within the body as experienced in particular positions, states and situations. It includes experiencing particular bodily needs or sensations but also more diffuse or intuitive interactions with the external world.2 One such sensation we have seen—with very specific bodily roots in the startle reaction—is Surprise. A diffuse feeling, at first just intuited, can be examined in greater sensory detail, which leads on to the following category of Perception. In fact proprioception (of internal body states) is often treated as a “sixth sense”. Some examples of English sentences falling within this category: ‘She felt hot and bothered.’ ‘He felt like he was the only one in the room who noticed it.’ ‘She felt like hitting him in the face.’ ‘Do you feel any pain in your leg when I do this?’ ‘He experienced real hunger for the first time in his life.’ ‘I felt like an idiot.’ ‘He felt out of his depth in the board meeting.’ ‘Do you feel like lunch yet?’ ‘She sensed that she was being followed.’ 1 The English verb and noun ‘experience’ is (via French expérience) from Latin experientia, experior ‘make trial of, test, attempt, find’, experīrī ‘prove’, related to periculum ‘peril’. 2 Whitehead (1966: 72) distinguishes this kind of vague but intense bodily experience from precise but superficial sense perception.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_019
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One can also feel more abstract/socially defined situations or events, for example ‘that things have taken a turn for the better’, or ‘that one is ready to face the music’, also at a higher level still, one can experience aesthetic enjoyment of works of art—‘She felt privileged to be the first to hear the maestro’s new work’ or ‘She felt awed at the sight of the Taj Mahal by moonlight.’ See Fig. 7 for a selection of polysemies in this area. The question arises as to whether English ‘feel’ is genuinely polysemous with the core sensory meaning of touching in the way that ‘see’ is with visual sensing under Understanding. I suspect not: the ‘touch’ sense of ‘feel’ certainly reflects the historical source of the word, but its near homonym ‘touch’ does not itself refer to ‘feeling’ in the sense of the cognitive verb (though one can speak of an event being ‘touching’). The verb ‘feel’ goes back to ie *pōl- ‘touch, feel’, as also in Latin palpāre ‘stroke gently, touch’ (English ‘palpate’), which is probably related to Old High German folma ‘hand’ and Old Norse fálma ‘grope’. The development from touching to generalized feeling was probably via bodily feelings like pain and hunger, then to more socially determined situations holistically experienced. Nor is true metaphor involved: there is no obvious transfer from the “domain” of tactile touching to that of holistic feelings, and there is no obvious homology or inheritance of traits in the latter from the former. The roots, as stated above, lie in proprioceptive bodily feelings, not in a specific, tactile sense. Once again, the distinction between a word’s historical source (which may go through successive stages of semantic extension, contraction, etc.) and its sensorimotor anchoring are not always to be equated—recall the argument as regards French savoir ‘know’, which was originally ‘taste’. From the contemporary point of view, we are left with homonymy: a ‘feel (1)’ and a ‘feel (2)’. In Figure 7 I nevertheless mark the relationship as one of “quasi-metaphor”. Note that the word ‘feel’ in the cognitive sense can also cover Surprise (‘She felt a clammy hand touch the back of her neck’). It can also combine with other categories, e. g. ‘I feel that I know him’, ‘I feel I understand this now’. Moreover, there would appear, as mentioned in chapter 7, to be constructional “straying” from ‘feel that’ (of a state or event) to parallel constructions under Believing and/or Judging. Other Germanic languages that have cognates of ‘feel’ have unrelated words for tactile touching. Thus German has fühlen ‘feel’ (originally of touch, as still in anfühlen), but it also has berören, tasten, and betasten in the tactile sense. Note also spüren ‘notice, feel, be conscious of’ (from Spur ‘trace’) and, more behaviourally, erfahren ‘experience, suffer, undergo’ (from fahren ‘go’) and erleben ‘experience s.th.’ (from leben ‘live’). Danish has føle ‘feel’ but røre (ved) ‘touch’. Swedish has a different word here: känna ‘feel, know (s.o/s.th.)’ (originally ‘recognize’ under Recognizing), as also in känsla ‘feeling (e.g. of cold)’, but tactile (ved)röra. Nevertheless, it once also covered the intermediate category of
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Wishing
Imagining
Emotion 5 Surprise
Intending
1 2
Guessing predict
feel
act
sense
Deciding
6
34
Experiencing
Perceiving
Recognizing
Calculating Judging
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3.
Amharic sǝmma Russian oščutit’ French sentir
figure 7
Believing
4. 5. 6.
West Greenlandic misigiEnglish ‘feel’ Swedish känna
Experiencing (feeling)
Perceiving (by touch), as can be seen in the further nominalization kānsel ‘perception of touch’. Icelandic is different again, with finna ‘feel, find’3 (and finna til of pain), but þreifa á ‘touch, feel’. Finnish has beside koskea ‘touch’ tuntua ‘feel, be felt, seem’ (passive of tuntea ‘feel, know, recognize’ under Recognizing). Note in particular the construction minusta tuntua ‘it seems to me’ with the elative of ‘me’, and nominal tunne ‘feeling, sensation’ (I shall return to this in chapter 24). French sentir ‘feel’ is from highly general Latin verb sentīre ‘discern by the senses, feel, hear, see, undergo, perceive, notice, deem, intend’, and can be used today of diffuse feeling or sensing, but also of touching and smelling (see under Perceiving, also for Italian sentire).4 This is another case of true “core” polysemy, like voir under Understanding. Reflexive se sentir (‘sense oneself’), as in se sentir 3 Compare Old English onfindan ‘be aware, find out, experience’. Old Norse had kenna ‘perceive’ (especially of smell, taste and touching). 4 Note also related sens ‘sense’ from Latin sēnsus ‘faculty of feeling, mode of feeling, thought,
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mieux ‘feel better’, corresponds more specifically to the present category of diffuse feeling, alongside éprouver ‘feel, experience’ (from Latin ex- plus probāre ‘test, try’ < probus ‘good’). In the tactile sense it has toucher, and tâtonner ‘touch’ (cf. German tasten). Russian has čuvstovat’ ‘feel’ and oščutit’ ‘feel (sensation), sense’ as opposed to ščupat’ ‘feel by touch’ and trogat’ ‘touch’, also more behavioural perizhivat’ or upytyvat’ ‘experience s.th.’. Greek has aisthanomai ‘feel’ (in Classical Greek ‘perceive by the senses’) as opposed to aggizo ‘touch’. Japanese has kanjiru ‘feel, sense’ (beside omou ‘feel, think, believe’, etc., of broad meaning, as seen under Judging), as opposed to sawaru ‘touch, feel’, also fixed phrase me ni au ‘experience’ (lit. ‘meet an observation/sight’).5 Mandarin Chinese has găndào ‘feel, sense’ and jēnglì ‘experience’ as opposed to mō ‘touch’. Indonesian has berasa ‘feel (a physical sensation)’ (from rasa ‘feeling, sense, taste’, verbal merasa ‘think, feel’) as opposed to sentuhan ‘touch’. Amharic has sǝmma ‘feel, hear’—note the polysemy between sensation and cognition here, in the first sense of proprioceptive bodily feelings such as hunger, pain, good or bad, in the second of sounds (so distinguishable by context). The same polysemy is found in Turkish duy- ‘feel, hear’ (which also has derivations duyu ‘sense’ and duygu ‘emotion’). This, like the case of English ‘feel’, is rather different from the case of French voir under Understanding and more like that of German begreifen since there is a cross-over from the underlying quadrant beneath Experiencing (i.e. proprioceptive ‘Feel’) to sensory perception as such (in this case ‘hearing’). So again I would characterize the relationship as one of “quasi-metaphor”. Certainly the diachronic source is not in doubt. The case of French (se) sentir seems to be one of more straightforward polysemy, since the verb sentir clearly falls under Perceiving (see that category), and the reflexive form with se signals the extension to proprioception, but it must be admitted that there is a fine distinction involved here. Different polysemous spreads are displayed by other languages, thus Hindi lagnā ‘be attached, be felt (emotion, cold, hunger, etc.), seem, be experienced’, also mahsūs (kārnā) ‘feel, suffer from, perceive, realize, seem to’ (a nominal plus ‘do’). West Greenlandic has misigi- ‘feel, notice, experience’ (from Proto-Eskimo *mǝciɣ- ‘see clearly’),6 but also more specific stems qiia- ‘freeze, feel cold’, anner-
meaning’. Watkins (1985: 58) suggests an ie root *sent- ‘head for, go’ as the source of both English ‘send’ and of Latin sentīre (i.e. ‘go mentally’). 5 There are also a number of adjectives of bodily feeling that act like those of emotion, i.e. refer either to the feeling or to the external circumstances causing it. Thus kurushii ‘it is painful’ or ‘I am suffering’. 6 Polar Eskimo has mihii- ‘get wind of (and be alarmed—animal)’, and East Greenlandic has misiisima- ‘be careful’ (with -sima- of state).
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‘feel pain, hurt’, as opposed to attor- ‘touch’. For malugi- ‘notice, discover, feel (that)’ see under Perceiving (both stems display polysemy). Central Alaskan Yupik has ǝlpǝkǝ- ‘feel, sense’, which refers to any kind of feeling or sensation, physical or mental (and note the negative/caritive form əlpəgitə- ‘be numb, insensitive’).7 Chukchi has lǝɣelǝč’et-, lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘feel, know’ with broad polysemy (from lǝɣi ‘true, known’), beside tejiliŋ- ‘touch, feel’. The first form given is from ordinary Proto-Chukotkan verb stem *ləγæl- ‘recognize’ (plus an affix of repetition), for which see under Recognizing. The second, emotion expression with lǝŋ- is ‘feel, sense’ in Koryak. It also has cəkejew-/-tkejew- in the meaning ‘feel, sense’ as well as ‘be conscious, come to oneself’, from Proto-Chukotkan *təkæj(u)- ‘be(come) conscious’ plus the affix *-æv- found with emotion stems. Tamil has paʈu ‘experience, feel’, for more on which see chapter 23. Koyukon has ł+ts’eek ‘feel pain’, also P+aa#de+D+neek ‘feel pain of/by P’ with root -neek ‘move hand, feel’, as opposed to yaatl’ehneetleyh ‘he touched it with his finger’ from -tleyh ‘move elongated object’.8 Kalispel (Salish) has lexical suffix -é(ls) ‘feel (sick, bad, happy, etc.)’—compare under Mind in chapter 2. Cree has mo.šihta.- ‘feel, experience sense of s.th.’, also itamahciho- ‘feel so (healthwise)’ with it- ‘so’ (and compare milmahciho- ‘feel well’, from milo ‘good’). Kalam has d nŋ- ‘feel’ (lit. ‘take perceive’—note that general stem d- ‘hold, take’ also covers ‘touch’). It also has ygen g- ‘feel cold’ (lit. ‘cold do’) and ywt g- ‘feel pain’ (‘pain do’) with another general stem g- ‘do, make, work, function, happen’, and uncontrolled impersonal constructions like yp yawn g-p ‘I feel hungry’— lit. ‘hunger came to me’ (Foley 1986: 122). Tariana has -rena ‘feel, go through’ (a prolonged experience), but also himeta ‘think (intuitively), feel’ (causative of -hima ‘hear’), especially of momentary physical feelings (cold, heat, etc.) as well as of feeling someone’s presence. Kwaza has kyry- ‘feel shock or pain’ (and ‘make felt’ as of a thorn in the foot). Arrernte has welhe- ‘feel’ of proprioception, from awe- ‘hear, listen’ and reflexive marker -lhe-. See Evans & Wilkins (2000) on the widespread polysemies like this in Australian languages. Yoruba has a variety of expressions with the undergoer as object of the verb, for example ebi kpa mi ‘I am hungry’ (lit. ‘hunger kills/beats me’). 7 The reconstructed Proto-Eskimo form is also *əlpəkə-, in the same meaning. In Central Siberian Yupik it is in fact a fully fledged emotion root of being or becoming aware of something (also of ‘being edgy’). The stem appears in most Inuit dialects outside of wg (including Polar Eskimo) as ikpiɣi- ‘feel (a sensation)’. 8 Root -neek also covers ‘remember, be conscious of, hear, recognize, find out, know’, and the cognate root -niic in related Ahtna covers ‘touch, feel, know, notice, understand, believe, like, read, expect, be awake, remember, grasp, hear’ with different prefix chains. We are dealing here with very extensive polysemies at the root level, not with metaphor from ‘touching’ to ‘feeling’.
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Words for intuition are of particular interest here since, like Tariana himeta above, they refer to a merging of thinking and feeling and also reveal links to Perceiving, Knowing, Believing, Understanding, Guessing and other categories, as reflected in their etymologies.9 As mentioned in chapter 7, this may reflect a very ancient “filled in” polysemy of broad extent, although the specific words in European languages mainly belong to later philosophical traditions. Thus ‘intuition’ itself (in its earliest sense ‘contemplation’, in later philosophical usage ‘immediate knowledge or apprehension’) is from late Latin intuitiō, in turn from intuēri ‘gaze upon’ (tuēri ‘look at, look after’). Verbal ‘intuit’ is a back formation. Greek diaisthesanomai ‘feel, have a presentiment’ (nominal diaisthisi ‘intuition, presentiment’) is literally ‘feel through’—it also has enorasi, literally ‘within-vision’. German has (as descriptive equivalent to the Latin) innere Schau ‘intuition’ (literally ‘inner vision’), but also Erfaren des Wesentliches (‘experience of the essential’), and unmittelbar Erkenntnis (‘immediate knowledge’). Danish has umiddelbar opfattelse (literally ‘immediate understanding’). Also Finnish reflects the ‘inner perception’ origin: sisäinen näkemys ‘intuition’ (literally ‘internal view’), as does Japanese chokkaku, chokkan (suru) ‘intuit, know intuitively, perceive immediately’ (Sinetic compounds, literally ‘immediate perception’). Indonesian gerak hati ‘intuition’ (literally ‘move heart’) is aligned with a number of idioms of Perceiving involving hati ‘heart, mind’ (see the next chapter). Turkish önsezi ‘intuition’ (literally ‘initial guess’) relates on the other hand to Guessing rather than Perceiving. 9 Note the Collins definition: “knowledge or perception not gained by reasoning and intelligenc, instinctive knowledge or insight; anything learned or perceived in this way.”
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Perceiving (Noticing) The Collins definition of ‘perceive’ is: “(1) become aware of s.th. through the senses (esp. sight), recognize or observe; (2) come to comprehend, grasp.” And the definition of ‘notice’: “become conscious, aware of, perceive, note, (transitive) pay polite or interested attention to, recognize or acknowledge.” Like Emotional feeling, this category covers a number of distinct sub-categories in the sensorimotor core, corresponding to the five sensory channels. The common ground is the perceptual awareness of a new stimulus (thing, person, event or situation), through whatever sensory channel or combination of channels is involved, but it is not a matter of sensory awareness alone—it is seeing, hearing, etc., objects, events or situations that correspond to types of stimuli already experienced and recorded in memory. It has its evolutionary roots in the orientation reflex, which is implied by the fundamental meaning of ‘noticing’ something. It is a momentary or at least brief experience compared with the more prolonged nature of Experiencing. Attention is voluntarily holding one’s perception in a certain direction. One can also ‘discover’ something, especially when it means finding something one wasn’t looking for—that English verb contains an element of surprise beyond mere noticing. Here are some typical sentences referring to the category: ‘I noticed that she was wearing the same dress I first saw her in.’ ‘She became aware of another guest in the room wearing the same dress as herself.’ ‘Did you notice the bull in that field?’ ‘I saw that Uncle’s left ear was missing.’ ‘He perceived that he was not alone in the room.’ ‘The sunbathing beauty heard lewd chuckles coming from behind the hedge.’ ‘The conductor noticed that the flautist was playing slightly out of tune.’ ‘Do pay attention to what he’s saying.’ ‘He discovered that his shoelaces had been undone for some time.’ See Figure 8 for some selected polysemies in the category. Besides ‘perceive’ (from Latin percipere ‘get, feel, perceive’, i.e. per- ‘thoroughly’ plus capere ‘seize’) and ‘apprehend’ in the cognitive sense (from Latin apprehendere ‘lay hold of’), English has ‘aware (of)’. This is usually of a continuous state of con-
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scious awareness of a situation (as also in admonitory ‘beware of’) but with ‘become’ it can refer to a brief perceptual experience (‘He became aware of the presence of a burglar in the darkened room’). The word is in Old English gewær, related to Latin vereri ‘be fearful’, from ie *wer- ‘perceive, watch out for’. Old English also had ongītan ‘perceive’ with a ‘seizing’ origin parallel to that of ‘perceive’ itself. ‘Pay attention to’ is more active and refers to a protracted period.1 Other Germanic languages distinguish between more and less momentary versions of this category. Thus German has vernehmen ‘perceive, hear, become aware of, understand, learn (that)’ (another ‘seize’ word by etymology, as also wahrnehmen ‘perceive, notice, give attention to’, lit. ‘realtake’), but also bemerken ‘notice, observe’—compare English ‘mark’ in ‘mark my words’. Similarly with Danish fornemme and mærke (or lægge mærke til— lit. ‘lay mark to’). It also has sanse ‘perceive by the senses’, from the Latin. The Romance words based on the latter, including French sentir ‘touch, smell’, have been touched upon under the preceding category. Italian has sentire ‘hear, listen to, taste, smell, feel’ (also of feeling hot or cold, i.e. a matter of proprioceptive Experiencing). Besides percevoir ‘perceive, feel’ and s’apercevoir ‘notice, realize’, French has remarquer ‘notice, point out, observe’ (the source of English ‘remark’ in its various senses) and faire attention à, corresponding to English ‘notice’ and ‘pay attention to’ respectively, also noter ‘notice (especially a change or error)’ and behavioural sense ‘jot down’, going back like English ‘notice’ to Latin nōtus ‘known’ and notitia ‘fame’ (< ie *gnō-). Greek has diakrino ‘discern, perceive’ (cf. krino ‘judge, consider, decide’ under Judging), also vlepo ‘see, perceive’, but paratiro ‘notice’. In the classical language aisthanomai (under Experiencing) was ‘perceive’, but there was also aio ‘perceive, hear’. In Russian: čuvstvovat’ ‘feel, perceive’ covers both Experiencing and Perceiving, whereas zametit’ ‘notice’ belongs squarely here (cf. metit’ ‘mark’, like German bemerken). Further afield, Japanese has chūi suru ‘notice, pay attention to’ (from Chinese zhùyì ‘notice’) beside more colloquial ki ga tsuku ‘notice, realize’ (lit. ‘the spirit adheres to’). For wakaru ‘perceive, grasp, understand’ see under Understanding. Classical Tibetan has sems-la sbyar ‘pay attention’ (lit. ‘take to mind’) as well as mam-par šes ‘perceive’ (lit. ‘particularly know’). West Greenlandic has emotion root malugi- ‘notice, discover, feel (that)’ which covers the present and the preceding category, where also misigi- ‘feel, notice’ was mentioned.2 Note that 1 ‘Attention’—from ‘attend to’—is via French from Latin attendere ‘apply the mind to, listen carefully’, originally ‘stretch towards’. 2 The intransitive form malugusug- has developed a clear positive sense: ‘be happy about a change (or about receiving s.th. one lacked)’, whereas Proto-Inuit *maluɣə- is reconstructed in the ced as ‘notice that s.th. has changed (for the worse)’ in a more negative sense, as reflec-
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Wishing
Imagining
Emotion
Intending
Surprise
6 4 5
Experiencing
Guessing feel
predict
1 2 3 act
Deciding
sense
Perceiving
Recognizing
Calculating Judging
Understanding Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3.
Chukchi l’uMandarin Chinese zhùyì English ‘perceive’
figure 8
Believing
4. 5. 6.
Tariana hima Italian sentire Kalam nŋ-
Perceiving (noticing)
these perceptual verbs are included among “emotion roots” in Eskimoan languages as witnessed by their specific derivational potential (I shall return to this in chapter 23). They are internally experienced, not behaviourally expressed. Central Alaskan Yupik has alakǝ- ‘notice, come upon’ (the same root as alaŋaar- ‘be surprised’ under Surprise). Aleut has uku- ‘see, watch, become aware of’ (compare Greek vlepo above), also anamasXi- ‘notice, observe’. Similarly, Chukchi uses its verb of visual perception: l’u- ‘see, notice’. This polysemy with ‘seeing’ in the core quadrant of ‘Sensing’ is quite widespread—compare the use of English ‘see’ in the fourth example sentence above. Nenets has sevt’e- ‘notice’ from sev ‘eye’, and Indonesian has melihat ‘see, notice’ besides memerhatikan ‘notice, pay attention to’ (nominal perhatian ‘attention’, from hati ‘heart’). ted in Copper Inuit maluɣi- ‘not like the way a thing is’. All of these belong under Experiencing rather than Perceiving, but in Labrador Inuit the meaning is plain ‘notice’ (and intransitive maluɣusuk- is ‘suspect, notice’, but also ‘feel one’s drink’).
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Nuuchahnulth has naɁa- ‘hear, feel, perceive’ (note related naʔaat- ‘understand’), also piħ- ‘notice, observe, judge’, and affixes -‘aap, ‘hear, perceive, sense, feel’, -Ɂaɬ ‘aware of’, -(y)uɁał ‘perceive’, and -cqmaap ‘notice, pay attention to’, some of which may extend into Experiencing. Likewise displaying polysemy with the specific sense of hearing is Tariana hima ‘feel, perceive, hear, understand’. Koyukon has O+ł+tlo ‘catch sight of, notice, see, perceive’ (from root -tlo ‘glimpse’), k’e+ne+Ø+to ‘notice, glance, move eyes’ (from root -to ‘try, bother, glance’), and O+de+ɬ+’aan ‘watch s.th. moving, notice/perceive’ (from general root -’aan ‘do, see’).3 Samoan has ’amana’ia ‘keep in mind, notice’, and, with broad polysemy, lagona ‘perceive, feel, notice, understand, realize, recognize’, also fa’alogo ‘sense, hear, listen’. Finally, most egregious in its polysemy, Kalam has nŋ- ‘perceive, see, hear, smell, taste, recognize, understand, notice, remember, learn, feel, know, sense, be conscious, awake, think’, covering the entire Circle of Cognition. More specific meanings are achieved by combinations such as wdn nŋ- ‘see’ (lit. ‘eye perceive’), and gos nŋ- ‘think’ (lit. ‘thought perceive’). Even Calculating is covered in nn pag nŋ ‘count’ (lit. ‘arm break perceive’). See under Experiencing and Surprise for two other very general stems g- ‘do, make, function, happen’ and d- ‘hold, take’, with combinations that overlap with nŋ- in those particular areas. An interesting sub-category of Perceiving that contains a degree of emotional feeling is ‘interest’ itself, a more prolonged state (like ‘curiosity’) than ‘noticing’. The word in English (as also French interêt, German interesse, Russian interes, etc.) is from Latin interest ‘it concerns’ (inter- ‘between’ plus est ‘is’).4 Greek has endiaferomai ‘be interested in’ (and endiaferon ‘interest, curiosity’, lit. ‘carrying across’). Japanese has kyōmi ‘interest’ of pleasurable concern, but kanshin of intellectual curiosity, and Mandarin Chinese has (găn) xìngqù (duì) ‘be interested in’ alongside qùwèi ‘interest, delight in, prefer’.5 West Greenlandic has soqutigi- ‘be interested in’, which in nai is ‘take notice of, be fond of’, and in eci ‘consider important’ (from pi *cuq(q)utə- ‘s.th. to care about’, plus -gi‘have as’). With a still more evident emotional strain, Chukchi has peɣciŋu ləŋ-, peɣciŋet- ‘get excited, agitated, interested’,6 and Yukaghir has čen’čə ‘interest, merriment, joke’—Kolyma also has čen’u:- ‘interesting, funny’, and Tundra čen’i‘be interested in, sympathize’.
3 Thus yedetaatl-’aanh ‘he detected her action (and reacted quickly)’. 4 Latin itself has dēlectāre ‘entice, delight, amuse, interest’. 5 The first element of xìngqù (‘enthusiasm’) is the source of the kyō- in Japanese kyōmi, and the second element of qùwèi (‘taste’) is the source of the -mi. 6 Borrowed into Naukanski Yupik as paɣsiiŋa- ‘admire, be interested in’.
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Another relevant distinction mentioned above is between finding something after searching for it and coming across or discovering something more or less by chance—both may further involve Surprise, with which category the present one can combine. Of course scientific discoveries can evoke a powerful response of joyful surprise (‘Eureka!’—lit. ‘I’ve seen it!’), and this is true whether the solution to a problem is actively searched for or stumbled across by chance. Compare West Greenlandic nassaar- ‘find by chance’ vs. nani- ‘find (what one is looking for)’ (neither of them emotion roots). Other languages do not differentiate so sharply, such as English ‘find’ and Japanese equivalent mitsukeru. In some languages finer distinctions are made, e.g. Nuuchahnulth hineʔaɬ ‘find out, discover (that)’, k’iny’ap ‘find, bring back s.th.’, and affixes -iiy’ip ‘find, obtain (after searching)’, -n’aqiiɬ ‘find, come across’, -watl ‘find (looking for s.th. lost)’, as well as -ʔitl ‘find, catch (unawares)’. All of these are more behavioural than cognitive, but illustrate again that individual verbs may cut across the cognitive/behavioural divide, which is something I shall return to in chapter 23 when considering some of the Eskimoan words for emotion involving overt external manifestation like West Greenlandic kimag- ‘be angry’. The asl sign refers directly (iconically) to seeing something specific:
notice
chapter 20
Recognizing Here is the Collins definition of ‘recognize’: “(1) to perceive a person or thing to belong to the same class as s.th. previously seen or known, know again; (2) accept or be aware of (fact, duty, problem, etc.); (3) to acknowledge formally.” Unlike Perceiving (with which (1) overlaps), Recognizing involves identifying individuals or (secondarily) specific known situations or ideas, often as a succeeding stage to perception as such.1 This basically requires the matching of input stimulus with tokens recorded in memory—whether episodic or semantic—though the border with Perceiving is quite porous. A distinction can be made between automatic, unconscious recognition of a thing, situation or event, and conscious recognition involving some degree of analysis in higher association regions of the cortex. It is the latter we are concerned with here. The registering of the identity of a perceived person, thing or event with the contents of memory is of course something that has roots reaching back long before language evolved. It is also the basis for empathy (combined with experiencial or emotional ‘feeling’), which involves the recognition of the behaviour and intentions of other people.2 Some typical sentences referring to this category: ‘He recognized a fellow criminal.’ ‘You’ll know him when you see him.’ ‘I understood what he was up to.’ ‘I perceive a problem here.’ ‘I can hardly recognize John these days.’ ‘He realized that she couldn’t attend his trial herself.’ ‘I recognize poverty when I see it.’ ‘I don’t know him from Adam.’ ‘She recognized her Uncle Harry getting out of the carriage and waved to him.’ ‘I recognize his need to express himself artistically.’
1 Note that the verb ‘identify’ is via late Latin identitās, from Latin idem ‘the same’. 2 ‘Empathy’ is from Greek empatheia ‘affection, passion’ representing German original Einfühlung (lit. ‘feeling in’).
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As discussed under Knowing, the sense of English ‘know’ that refers to recognizing and/or being acquainted with a person or thing belongs here, and in many languages besides English there is polysemy stretching from Knowing, via Understanding, to Recognizing.3 In fact this concerns most European languages, though often with further derivation of the stem involved. Thus French has alongside connaître ‘know s.o./s.th., recognize, experience, be familiar with, have heard about’ also reconnaître ‘recognize’ (with re- of repetition/again). The source of this (and the English) was Latin cognōscere ‘learn, get to know, understand, recognize, perceive’, with prefix co(n)- ‘with’ plus the inchoative form of Indo-European root *gnō-. This probably meant ‘recognize’ originally, as still in the modern Greek derived form anagnorizo ‘recognize’ (with ana- ‘over, up’). Other English cognates include ‘know’, ‘ken’, ‘notice’, ‘acquaint’, and ‘cognition’ itself.4 German has erkennen ‘recognize’ from kennen ‘know s.o./s.th.’, and Danish has genkende ‘recognize’ from gen- ‘again’ plus kende ‘know s.o./s.th.’ (distinct from kunne ‘can, know how to’). Russian has uznat’ ‘recognize’ (perfective of znat’ ‘know’), also related adjectival form (byt‘) znakomy (s) ‘(be) acquainted with’, and Irish has aithním ‘recognize, know, be acquainted with’ (from *ad-gen- < ie *gnō-). Also the negative meaning in Romance languages like French ignorer ‘not know, not have heard of’ is from the negative of the same ie stem *gnō- (via Latin ignārus ‘ignorant’, ignorāre ‘not know’). English ‘ignore’ from this source has undergone a shift to adjacent Perceiving (i.e. not paying attention to). Hindi on the other hand has unrelated pahchānnā ‘recognize, be acquainted with (person), perceive, understand’, displaying wide polysemy. This close relationship between Knowing and Recognizing is also common outside of Indo-European, as with Finnish tunnistaa ‘recognize, identify’, related to broadly polysemous tuntea ‘know, recognize, feel’, of which the first meaning is with accusative case object, the last with partitive object. Indonesian has kenal, mengenal ‘know s.o., be acquainted with, recognize’. Turkish tanɩ- ‘recognize, know, be acquainted with, identify’, and West Greenlandic ilisari- ‘recognize, know (a person or thing)’ from Proto-Eskimo *ǝlit- ‘learn’ (compare ilisima- under Knowing) also belong here. Nanai has taqo- ‘recognize, know (person)’, and Nenets has tumdə- ‘recognize’, from Proto-Uralic *tumtï‘know’. Nuuchahnulth has ħamup ‘know, recognize, be familiar with’ and Luwo has ŋec ‘recognize, know’. Aleut has sixta- ‘recognize, know’ (related to West 3 The last example sentence above could equally well belong under Understanding (with a slight shift of perspective). 4 Also ‘acquaint’ (and ‘be acquainted with’), which comes via Old French accointier from medieval Latin accognitāre ‘make known’, i.e. Latin cognōscere plus intensive prefix ad-. Latin also has agnōscere ‘recognize, acknowledge’.
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Greenlandic misigi- ‘feel, notice’ under Experiencing), and haqat- ‘know s.o./s.th., find out, learn, recognize’ (related to Proto-Eskimo *paqǝt- ‘investigate, find’), also haXsa- ‘find out, realize, recognize, understand’, related to haqata- ‘understand, know, believe, remember’ under Knowing. These latter forms illustrate another common polysemy, namely with Understanding. Thus also Chukchi lǝɣel- ‘recognize, understand’ (cf. lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘know, feel’ under Knowing), and Japanese wakaru ‘recognize, understand’ (for zonjiru and shiru ‘know’—also of a person—see under Knowing). Koyukon has a dedicated root -tl’eet ‘recognize’ (specifically O+oo+ɫ+tl’eet with preceding prefixes). Its only other meaning, with a completely different set of prefixes, is non-cognitive ‘suit, become’. Widely polysemous on the other hand is Khwe-‖Ani ‖ám-a-ã ‘recognize, know, feel, perceive (by bodily senses), anticipate, know what is going to happen’, from ã ‘know’ (also nominal ‘forehead’), used in serial verb combinations with ‖ám ‘taste, smell, touch’, as here.5 Classical Tibetan has No-šes ‘recognize’ (lit. ‘know the face’). There are also words more specifically glossable as ‘realize (that)’, of a situation rather than of a person or thing, a meaning first mentioned under the category of Understanding, with which there is polysemous overlap. Thus German klar einsehen ‘realize’ (lit. ‘see clearly into’), French se rendre compte ‘realize’ (lit. ‘give oneself account’), Russian osoznat’ ‘realize, become aware of’ (derived from znat’ ‘know’), Finnish tajuta ‘realize, comprehend’ (cf. taju ‘consciousness’), Turkish farkina var- ‘realize, know, notice, be aware’ (cf. fark ‘difference’), Aleut ukuXta- ‘see, realize’ (based on uku- ‘see’), Indonesian menyadari ‘realize, be aware of’ (from sadar ‘conscious, aware’), and Nuuchahnulth ħamatsap ‘find out, realize, learn’ (related to ħamup above and ħamat ‘know’ under Knowing). 5 It is also used with kóm of hearing (which can also mean ‘understand’ on its own), or mũũ of seeing (Brenzinger & Fehn 2013).
chapter 21
Full Circle We have now come full circle back to our starting point, literally closing the circle by returning to Understanding and (through it) Knowing, following the polysemous links from category to category. As Chafe (2007: 4) put in discussing the feeling behind humour and laughter, understanding is advanced by a productive interplay between observing and imagining. I would go further and suggest that true understanding of a phenomenon—the wider system behind surface appearances—entails the entire Circle of Cognition. To see how a whole array of cognitive words in a single language fit into the circle, consider Figure (9) for English, containing the most important words treated above in the individual categories. Note especially the considerable overlap in the extent of meaning of individual words—the polysemy illustrated here does not even cover all of the less common nuances. Of course this schematic representation is very rough and conceals a multitude of constructional and aspectual factors that have been touched upon in the course of our survey. Compare that now with Figure 10 illustrating the approximate position of the most important words mentioned in the preceding chapters for Japanese. It will be evident that the polysemies involved are not the same as those in Figure 9. In the course of our survey of cognitive categories we have seen a number of shifts back and forth between words referring to mental states (or potentials for action) and others referring to mental actions. It is only the former that correspond directly to Searle’s notion of Intentionality. More needs to be said about the status of those that don’t. Some categories are more active than others. Thinking itself is generally an active matter rather than a passive state, one that may draw upon all of the other categories in reaching some intended goal—this is what justifies treating active and passive cognitive categories together in the way I have. The separate categories of Calculating and Deciding are entirely active, whereas thinking as Judging may either be an immediate mental action (e.g. of comparison) or reflect a longer term potential state like Believing—but one specifically assigning a quality to some person or thing. The distinction between active and passive senses may be lexically distinguished within some categories, thus within Perceiving the active sense is lexicalized in many languages with terms like English ‘pay attention to’ as opposed to passive ‘notice’. We have seen similar distinctions within the categories of Remembering and Guessing, and within Knowing we have seen the relationship between
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full circle Expecting
Wishing
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Emotion 14
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Intending
Surprise
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Guessing
Experiencing
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predict
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sense
Perceiving
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Calculating
Recognizing 3
Judging
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Understanding 4 Knowing
Thinking about Remembering
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‘understand’ ‘know’ ‘remember’ ‘think’ ‘consider’ ‘feel’ ‘perceive’ ‘believe’
figure 9
Believing
9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
‘calculate’ ‘decide’ ‘guess’ ‘intend’ ‘imagine’ ‘expect’ ‘wish’
English cognitive verbs
active ‘learning’ and resultative ‘knowing (that)’. The more active words tend towards temporal limitation and ambiguity across the border between cognitive and corresponding behavioural meanings (notably so within Calculating and Deciding). When we look more closely at Emotion words in chapter 23 we shall see that even here there can be ambiguity of this kind, namely between the subjective experience of an emotional feeling and the external cause of the emotion. Something similar was already hinted at in connection with the category of Experiencing (chapter 18). The two meanings of English ‘feel’ mentioned there reflect that ambiguity. Despite all of this, it should be understood that even the “passive” forms of cognition involve complex mental activity at the unconscious level—minimally by updating the contents of memory according to ongoing experience (as with Believing). All is process,
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chapter 21 Expecting Imagining
Intending
Wishing Emotion
12
Surprise
11
13 3 2
Guessing
10
1
9 act
Deciding
Experiencing
feel
predict
sense
Perceiving
8 7 Recognizing
Calculating 5 Judging
Understanding 4
6
Thinking about Remembering
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
wakaru (~ ‘understand’) shiru (~ ‘know’) oboeru (~ ‘remember’) kangaeru (~ ‘think’) omou (~ ‘consider’) shinjiru (~ ‘believe’) kanjō suru (~ ‘calculate’)
Knowing
Believing
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
kimeru (~ ‘decide’) ateru (~ ‘guess’) tsumori da (~ ‘intend’) sōzō suru (~ ‘imagine’) hoshii (~ ‘wish’) kanjiru (~ ‘feel’)
figure 10 Japanese cognitive verbs
and words abstracted from context can be misleading. As Whitehead puts it: “The notion of pure thought as in abstraction from all expression is a figment of the learned world. A thought is a tremendous mode of excitement” (Whitehead 1966: 36). In the treatment of the categories so far we have at no point cornered the notion of Consciousness as such, nor recognized any universal way into it from the individual categories. As mentioned in the Introduction, conscious awareness does not surround the circle but flickers around its categories, a cascading of perceptual and verbal images and symbols, more or less marshalled by working memory. All of the categories are only sometimes “awake” and can hardly be activated all at once: there is no privileged route to generalized consciousness (unless, perhaps, for a master yogi!). Damasio’s “core consciousness” of pure bodily self-awareness supporting the “proto-self” is another
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matter: to that there are indeed multiple “ways in”, as reflected in the anchoring of the individual categories in sensorimotor functioning—the corresponding core quadrants of my diagrams. The particular structures underlying “core consciousness” that he proposes include the somatosensory cortices, the cingulate cortices, the insula, the thalamus, the basal forebrain, the hypothalamus, and the superior colliculi, most of them lying close to the mid-line of the brain (Damasio 2000: 192–193). As he puts it: “The hypothesis [of core consciousness] states that core consciousness occurs when the brain forms an imaged, non-verbal, second-order account of how the organism is causally affected by the processing of an object. The imaged account is based on second-order neural patterns generated from structures capable of receiving signals from other maps which represent both the organism (the proto-self) and the object.” Although certain cognitive/mental words have very broad polysemy embracing most of the categories—like Kalam nŋ- ‘perceive’ or Japanese omou—these reflect the activities of consciousness, not its “substance”, the elusive notion of Mind, expressions for which were examined in chapter 2. The brain is hierarchically organized, even at the level of the individual senses, and this is true of all higher levels of consciousness too—there are degrees and levels of consciousness, as Koestler (1975) reminds us. He discusses this in terms of what he calls “holons”: every level of organisation (e.g. of the brain) is both composed of lower level holistic units and in turn is part of a higher level entity (they are “Janus-faced”).1 I would add that consciousness is not just hierarchically organized it is also additive to—not replacive of—lower “core” levels, without which it would be impossible to maintain. It is an abstractive summation of activity at many levels and at many sites.2 The adjective ‘conscious’ is defined by the Collins dictionary as: “(1) relating to a part of the human mind that is aware of a person’s self, environment and mental activity and that to a certain degree determines his choice of actions, (2) alert or awake, not sleeping or comatose, and (3) aware of a particular fact or phenomenon.” It comes from Latin conscius ‘conscious, knowing, guilty, self-conscious’ (from con- ‘with’ plus scīre ‘know’). The word ‘cognition’ (and ‘cognisant’) is on the other hand from Latin cognitiō ‘getting to know, idea, 1 For Koestler the highest level of all was the society in which individual humans are embedded, but it is more relevant in the present context to think of that level as being the internalized reflection of the outer world, containing both the socio-cultural environment and the recognition of other minds within it. Obviously this is not the same as generalized consciousness or Mind. 2 As Whitehead puts it (1966: 108): “Consciousness is an ever-shifting process of abstracting shifting quality from a massive process of essential existence. It emphasizes. And yet, if we forget the background, the result is trivial.”
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enquiry’—a nominalization of (cog)nōscere ‘learn, get to know’, from ie *gnō ‘know, recognize’ (see under Recognizing). Russian has an exact parallel in sosnajuščij (a participial form from znat’ ‘know’), also soznatel’nost’ ‘consciousness, awareness’. In other languages the associations of words for ‘conscious’ are variously with seeing, knowing, waking and watching out for, but also with being alive and thinking. Recall the Sanskrit buddhi ‘mind, intelligence, thought’ from bodhati ‘awake’ mentioned in chapter 2. In German the association is with knowing, and ultimately with seeing: bewußt is from wissen ‘know’ (< ie *weid- ‘see’). Similarly with Danish bevidst and Greek sineiðitos (also from *weid-). Romance languages are unusual in having the same word for ‘consciousness’ and ‘conscience’ (distinguished in English though both from the same source)—thus French conscience ‘consciousness, conscience’ from Latin conscientia. Japanese has ishiki (suru) ‘conscious, aware’ (from i ‘mind’ and shiki ‘know’),3 also shōchi shite ‘aware of, acknowledge, consent to’. Finnish has tietoinen ‘conscious’, related to tietää ‘know, be aware, signify’ (also tajut ‘consciousness’). Indonesian has kesadaran ‘consciousness’ (from sadar ‘be conscious, aware’). Chukchi has cǝkejew- ‘be conscious, feel, come to oneself’ (and nǝ-tkej-qin ‘sensible’), like Koryak ce-ckeju-ŋ- ‘think’ from Proto-Chukotkan *tǝkæj(u)- ‘be(come) conscious’, in turn related to kǝjæv- ‘wake up’. Koyukon has hu-Ø-neek ‘be alive, alert, aware, healthy, conscious’ (with “areal” prefix hu-), and P+yeɬ D+neek ‘know, be conscious of, acquainted with, aware of, understand P’ ( yeɬ is postposition ‘with’ and D is the ‘D-classifier’, here probably expressing reflexivity), both from root -neek ‘move hand, feel’—a very “hands on” perspective on consciousness! Eskimoan languages are of interest here. West Greenlandic has ilisima- ‘be conscious, know’ (mentioned under Knowing), also qaatut- ‘come to one’s senses’ from Proto-Eskimo *qa(C)u(ði)- ‘become conscious’, related to *qa(C)unaɣ- ‘be careful with, watch over’ and probably ultimately *qaru- ‘dawn’ and *qarǝ- ‘come up’ (as mentioned under Knowing). More idiosyncratically, it has sianissuseq ‘consciousness’ from siani(gi)- ‘be aware/ know about, notice, look after, be careful with’, related to sila ‘intelligence, weather, spirit of the air’, as also in silatu- ‘be sensible’ (with -tu- ‘have much’). This is from Proto-Eskimo *cila ‘weather, world, awareness, intelligence, consciousness’. The word has a special background: intelligence/ consciousness was traditionally attributed to the spirits inhabiting the environment, in particular the wind and weather.4 Note also derivative silat ‘surroundings, outside’. In Aleut the cognate sla-X is 3 The corresponding ideogram can also be read as shiru ‘know, learn’. 4 Compare the description by Bogoraz (1904–1909) of the orientational terms referring to wind
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only ‘weather, wind, compass point’. The pan-Eskimoan ‘consciousness’ meaning comes probably from the shamanic conception of the spirit world “out there”, hence in legends silap inua (lit. ‘sila’s human being’) is ‘the spirit of the weather’—a natural object’s ‘inua’ was in general conceived of as its resident spirit. Note also expressions like silaga aalavoq ‘my head is swimming’, literally my sila is moving. This should remind us of the thin line between inner cognition and outer environment, and of why words describing the former so often have their historical source in words for our perception of the latter. directions of the inland Chukchi, each direction being characterized as a particular spirit for whom ritual sacrifices were traditionally made. Think also of the winds from different directions treated as named spirits amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans.
chapter 22
What a Surprise! A Closer Look at a Cinderella Category The category Surprise, situated between Emotion and Experiencing—and Perceiving beyond that—is a good one to focus on in order to illustrate in greater depth the nature of polysemy with adjacent categories and at the same time the anchoring of cognitive categories in bodily functioning. In this chapter I shall look at approaches to the nature of surprise proposed by researchers in different disciplines and contribute a further strand to them. The linguistic expression of the category in a variety of situation types has already been sketched in chapter 17, where it was seen that there is considerable variety in lexical expression across an array of languages. Surprise also impinges on a number of other broad areas such as humour, fear, confusion, and even perception as such (the recognition of differences, contrasts, etc.), all of which I shall touch upon below. I shall not cover the expression of surprise through prosodic or exclamatory means alone, although these pervade the spoken language. But something will be said about the grammatical expression of surprise. My purpose is to build a bridge between the lexical (and grammatical) expression of surprise and its cognitive underpinnings by showing how typological data of the kind presented in this volume can inform the emerging consensus of what surprise actually is and in doing so suggest future directions for further cognitive modelling and testing. The expression of surprise through language is universal, both overtly and covertly, but its status as an emotion—or as something else—has been quite controversial (cf. Shaver et al. 1987: 1068). For a historical sketch of surprise within psychological research see Munnich et al. (2019). As they describe the literature, the phenomenon has been variously linked to production error, uncertainty, and novelty. It has been claimed to play a role in gaze shifting, attention focussing, representational updating, insight, belief revision, conceptual change, and humour. They discuss claims made by some researchers (but denied by others) that the feeling of surprise is a “basic” emotion, as evidenced by putatively universal emotional responses such as autonomic arousal and facial expressions. Some have claimed that surprise has a characteristic valence (either positive or negative) and others that surprise should be characterized as an “epistemic emotion” like curiosity, wonder and awe. The kind of stimulus evoking surprise and the degree of strength of reactions to different types of stimulus vary greatly, reactions ranging from the bare regis© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_023
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tering of a perceptual discrepancy to shock and terror, and this may be picked up variously for lexical expression by different languages/cultures. Clearly there is something common to all human beings as to what constitutes a reaction of surprise, but what exactly are the cognitive and social factors behind its diverse expression across languages? Is surprise a unitary emotion or can it be broken down into sub-units, variously combined according to context? Is it a consistent element in a wider domain of expressions? As Benítez-Castro and Hidalgo-Tenorio (2019: 307), representing Cognitive Psychology, explain: Surprise has been the subject of debate in the psychological literature, with some arguing that it is an affectively valenced state with distinct physiological and motor responses (Plutchik 2003; Soriano et al. 2015), and others describing it as a neutral cognitive state linked to the perception of novelty but lacking the physiology and expressions of emotions (Ortony and Turner 1990; Power and Dalgleish 2008). Martin and White (2005: 50) treat it as a negatively valenced state within insecurity, based on the sudden disruption of one’s affect and cognition produced by any unexpected stimulus. Bednarek (2008: 164), however, posits that surprise is not intrinsically positive or negative; valence resides in the triggering event, but not the feeling. LeDoux (1998: 112–114) discusses different approaches to the question, including Ekman’s influential delineation of six basic emotions reflected in universal facial expressions, with ‘surprise’ as one of them (Ekman 1984). In a study based on word meanings Johnson-Laird and Oatley (1992) have ‘desire’ rather than ‘surprise’ as their sixth. LeDoux’s own approach is evolutionary: he argues against those who deny the existence of basic emotions altogether (as opposed to purely social constructs), and describes the function of emotions in terms of unconscious survival strategies with their roots in our pre-human ancestors. Plutchik (for whom surprise is a basic emotion), presents a “dyad” (blending) theory of emotion, in which primary dyads (once removed) include ‘alarm’, which is ‘fear + surprise’, and tertiary dyads (twice removed) include ‘delight’, which is ‘joy + surprise’ (Plutchik 1980).1 Harkins and Wierzbicka (2001: 5–6) are sceptical of the notion of basic emotions, stressing rather the importance of social/cultural differences in emotional meanings. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Wilson (2010: 324) argue that emotions such as surprise are not holistic
1 First-order dyads involve adjacent items on his circle of emotions, second-order ones are separated by one other emotion, and third-order ones by two.
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and basic but consist of different sets of sub-sense parameters that surface in discourse such as degree of positive or negative evaluation (a pleasant as opposed to a nasty surprise), elements of disbelief or wonder, or degree of suddenness. Within Cognitive Linguistics, emotions have been treated since Lakoff’s seminal analysis of Anger (Lakoff 1987: 380–415) in terms of prototypical scenarios and radial categories. Detailed attempts to present surprise as such a radial category have to my knowledge not been made, although, as we shall see, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Wilson (2010) have made useful suggestions in that direction. I shall present reasons below as to why a different approach to the radial prototype account is called for owing to the “special” nature of surprise. Amongst linguists there has been considerable interest in the grammaticalized manifestation of surprise in the phenomenon of “mirativity”. It was first recognized as a category distinct from evidentiality (though often combining with it) by DeLancey (1997), who defines it in terms of the status of the proposition with respect to the speaker’s overall knowledge structure, irrespective of source of information. The proposition is one which is new to the speaker, not yet integrated into his/her overall picture of the world. Among the languages he presented in his examples was Turkish (whence the phenomenon probably spread to the whole Balkan Sprachbund), as in the following from Slobin and Aksu-Koç (1982: 187): (1) Kema gel-mış Kemal come-mirative ‘Kemal came.’ The authors listed as possible contexts the following, of which the first two are straightforward evidential interpretations: (a) inference: The Speaker sees Kemal’s coat hanging in the front hall, but has not yet seen Kemal. (b) hearsay: The Speaker has been told that Kemal has arrived, but has not yet seen Kemal. (c) surprise: The Speaker hears someone approach, opens the door, and sees Kemal—a totally unexpected visitor. DeLancey crucially goes on to cases where mirativity as an independent category cuts across evidential distinctions such as ‘witnessed’ vs. ‘non-witnessed’, and cites instances in Kalasha, Georgian, and Chinese Pidgin Russian, amongst others. He discusses for example Korean suffix -kun, as in the following (p. 46, from Ko 1989):
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(2) chǝlsu naka-ss-na-po-kun Cheolsu go.out-pres-infer-kun ‘Cheolsu must have gone out.’ This contains an ‘inferential’ evidential marker (-po-) as well as -kun, and would have been uttered appropriately after the speaker had searched around the house without finding Cheolsu, whereas a similar sentence without -kun (but with non-mirative -ci instead) would have suggested that the result of the search confirmed the speaker’s suspicion already. It is debatable whether all the phenomena expressing surprise associated with mirativity (which may involve particles and auxiliary verbs as well as affixes) can really be considered “grammatical”—they may involve optional elements or constructions. A case in point is West Greenlandic derivational affix -riallar-, which when added to a subordinate (temporal) clause adds an element of vividness and surprise to the main clause, as in (3), from Lennert Olsen and Hertling (1988: 66):2 (3) tike-riallar-toq ila-ni aalla-reersima-sut come.in-riallar-part.3sg companion-his.pl leave-already-part.3pl ‘When he came in his companions had (to his surprise) already left.’ In fact DeLancey does discuss instances outside of the grammatical system such as the covert mirativity in certain English conditional constructions and the optional mirativity in Hare (Athabaskan) involving sentence-final particle lõ. They are instances of a broader “semantic mirativity”, which DeLancey suggests is a universal category (p. 48ff.). Aikhenvald (2012) presents a detailed treatment of the phenomenon, which covers a wide range of manifestations across languages. This includes complex predications, such as that in Magar (a Tibeto-Burmese language), which involves a nominalization followed by a copula le; in Archi (Northeast Caucasian) involving auxiliary Xos ‘discover’; and in Tariana (Arawak) involving an affix on the main verb followed by an auxiliary verb. Languages with mirative affixes include Chechen and Caddo. !Xun (Northern Khoisan) and Cantonese have mirative particles, kohà and wo3 respectively.3 Quechua has a ‘sudden dis2 part (participial mood) on both clauses belongs to this construction. 3 The Cantonese particle is described by Aikhenvald (quoting Matthews 1998: 330–331) as expressing information which is “surprising or notable”, used, inter alia, in “realizations”, “disconfirmations”, “informings” and “remindings”. Like the !Xun particle, as described by König (2013) it has the force of a rhetorical question.
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covery’ tense (‘It turned out that –’) which lacks specific emotional content (p. 473). Its status as mirative is thus uncertain—like Chukchi qǝtlǝɣi of the same meaning. Shilluk (western Nilotic) has a mirative 3rd person pronoun indicating ‘something unusual about an O constituent’, and Hone (BenueCongo) has similar forms in all persons (e.g. ‘I unexpectedly …’, etc.) (p. 455/6). Some languages have more than one mirative form, and Lisu (Tibeto-Burmese) has all of four, with distinct particles for new unexpected information, antiexpectation, question-marking, and new and surprising information (p. 460). She also deals with “mirative strategies”, i.e. the employment of devices such as tense forms, irrealis marking, or evidentials with other basic uses to add a mirative nuance (p. 463). A case in point is Yukaghir non-first-hand evidential -l’ǝl, which has mirative uses (Maslova 2003: 174). Aikhenvald summarizes the range of phenomena across languages with the following list of distinct values subsumed for the grammatical category labelled “mirative” (p. 473): (i) sudden discovery, sudden revelation or realization; (ii) surprise; (iii) unprepared mind; (iv) counterexpectation; (v) new information. Each of these can be defined with respect to (a) the speaker, (b) the audience (or addressee), or (c) the main character (in a narrative). She explicitly states in her conclusion that mirativity, or the grammatical category of “expectation of knowledge”, should not be extended to lexical expressions—including lexical verbs and interjections—or to prosodic means alone. This would also seem to include the information structure notion of “newness” (Lambrecht 1994). As this list suggests, surprise and newness are not identical notions. The relationship between the two has not always been clear in the psychological literature, as Barto et al. (2013) have pointed out—they suggest that “novelty” should be reserved for events that have never been experienced in the past, whereas surprise can be evoked by both novel and previously experienced types of event. Clearly the information structure notion of newness is peripheral to the category of surprise.4 Syntactic aspects of the expression of surprise have been less studied, but Wierzbicka (1988) has discussed a number of syntactic distinctions in Eng4 It could nevertheless be argued that it is relevant. Word order (new information first or last in the sentence), presupposition vs. assertion (of new information), and contrastive focus, may all contain an intended element of surprise or at least directed attention aimed at the addressee/ reader, but this is hardly a necessary feature.
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lish (and other European languages). She analyses the distinction in English between to and that constructions in complementary clauses as only partly one of factivity. Thus ‘I was surprised to hear that’ contrasts with sentences like ‘I was surprised that Peter failed’ owing both to the greater factivity of the that construction but also to the fact that the to construction requires the same subject in both clauses, a matter, she claims, of a difference in the complement clause between self-awareness and publicly knowable knowledge (pp. 105–110). She analyses the for … to construction as in ‘It was surprising for X to do Z’ as one of passing judgement on human actions and not of emotion at all (p. 130).5 Further on (pp. 146–147) she discusses French Je m’ étonne qu’ il soit malade ‘I’m surprised that he is ill’ (with subjunctive soit), implicitly comparing it with indicative Je m’étonne qu’il est malade (with indicative est), which would be translated similarly in English. The difference is, she claims, that both accept the factuality of the complement clause, but the indicative is used when the subject does so without emotion, whereas use of the subjunctive adds an element of emotional evaluation. There is a rather more extensive literature on the broader subject of exclamative constructions—of which ‘What a surprise!’ is one. This goes back to Austin’s seminal work on performative utterances (Austin 1962), and Searle (1969) on “expressive” speech acts. It is given a degree of typological coverage in Michaelis (2001). She describes the coding of surprise (i.e. reactions to “noncanonical” situations) in terms of default speaker viewpoint, presupposition, and scalar degree.6 The scalar nature of exclamatives can be seen overtly with expressions like English ‘so’ in ‘It’s so hot!’ (as opposed to non-exclamative ‘It’s very hot’). Similarly with tako ‘so’ in Croatian equivalent Tako je vruce! and in Turkish Oyle zenga ki! ‘He is so rich!’ (so rich.3sg.pres plus exclamatory particle ki). Exclamatives generally presuppose factual propositions, as in ‘The noise they make!’ (and French equivalent Le bruit qu’ils font!), which presupposes that they are in fact making a noise. She summarizes the semantico-pragmatic features shared by exclamatives as follows: (a) Presupposed open proposition (with a degree as the variable); (b) Expression of commitment to a particular scalar extent; (c) Expression of affective stance toward the scalar extent; (d) Person deixis (judge is the speaker by default); 5 Thus *‘I was surprised for Mary to win’ is not possible, whereas ‘I was delighted/sorry for Mary to win’ is. This again suggests the rather special status of surprise. 6 Non-first person subjects are only typical of irrealis sentences like ‘You wouldn’t believe who spoke up’, and the German equivalent: Du würdest nicht glauben, wer sich zu Wort gemeldet hat.
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(e) Identifiability of the referent of whom the scalar property is predicated. Exclamatives are often in the form of wh-questions, as in ‘What a sad story!’ or ‘How hot it is!’, similarly in French Comme il fait beau! ‘How lovely it is!’. Syntactic inversion may also be involved, as in Italian: Dove si arrampicano, questi ragazzi! ‘The places they climb, these boys!’ (lit. ‘where they climb, these boys’), and German Hast du Glück gehabt! ‘Did you luck out!’ (lit. ‘have you luck had!’). Some exclamatives are “hidden”, i.e. embedded in another clause, as in ‘I can’t believe the way they treat us’, or Italian E pazzesco quanto rumore fanno ‘It’s amazing how much noise they make.’ And compare the Mandarin Chinese: (4) (Wŏ) jiănzhí bù găn xiāngxìn tā doū nàme dà le! (I) simply not dare believe 3sg even that.much big perf ‘I simply can’t believe that he’s so big now!’ And the Turkish: (5) Nereye kadar yüzmüşşün ki inanmtyorum where extent swam.2sg excl believe.neg.pres.1sg ‘I don’t believe how far you swam!’ Mirative/ exclamative particles like Turkish ki have been mentioned already for !Xun and Cantonese, which Aikhenvald cites under the rubric of mirativity. Other languages have derivational affixes of an exclamatory/mirative function, for example Polar Eskimo -hi, as in: (6) Ujarak-palug-hi stone-sound.of-excl ‘There was such a noise of stones!’ And West Greenlandic -nnguarsi (usually with qanga ‘when’), as in: (7) Qanga qilli-nnguarsi when be.shiny-excl ‘How shiny it has become!’ Pragmatic/ discourse particles on the other hand are rather marginal to the category of Surprise. These are usually dyadic, in the sense of involving the knowledge and attitudes of both speaker and addressee in a discourse context. Danish particles jo, dog, da, and sgu could be mentioned here, although they have not to my knowledge been mentioned in discussions of mirativity.
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They express more or less emotional responses or emphasis within discourse exchanges and do not necessarily add an element of surprise at the content of the statements to which they are attached. Nevertheless, in context they may be used when expressing surprise, in particular jo as in Jamen det er jo John der går derover! (why! that is jo John who goes over there) ‘Why that’s John over there!’ (Davidsen-Nielsen 1996: 293). Still further removed from mirativity as defined by Aikhenvald but still capable of expressing surprise are “scalar” expressions like English ‘even’ involving unexpectedness over and beyond mere additive ‘also’, as in ‘Even the Lord Mayor showed up at the party’. Other quantitive and temporal expressions containing an element of unexpectedness include ‘only’ (‘Only two people showed up for the party’). Similar expressions exist in most languages, though the territory may not be divided up in exactly the same way as in English—compare for example Mandarin Chinese hái which covers English ‘still, even, yet, still more’ as well as ‘also’. It has an explicit element of unexpectedness in such sentences as zhè hái bù róngyì (this hai not easy) ‘This couldn’t be easier!’/‘It’s very easy!’. West Greenlandic divides such meanings between particles allaat ‘even, moreover’, aatsaat, ‘only then’ (as an exclamation ‘Well I never!’) and clitic -luunniit ‘or’, with a negative verb ‘not even’, as in qujanngilar-luunniit (thank.neg.3sg.indic-luunniit) ‘He doesn’t even say thank you’. The case of Japanese particle mo ‘also, even, notwithstanding’ is interesting here. It is rather weak in its expression of contrast and can often remain untranslated in English, notably with expressions of amount.7 Stronger is sae ‘even’ (to a greater extent than expected), and sura, again ‘even’, but with a stronger negative connotation. Bakari ka ‘not only’ is combined with sae ‘but even’ to express an unusual or unexpected event (all forms from the Kinkyusha dictionary). Other kinds of expressions that can be said to have a weak mirative sense of unexpectedness and/or contrast include for example a further West Greenlandic affix -galuar- ‘however, otherwise, but …’, in subordinate clauses ‘although’, which expresses an unspoken divergence from or contrast with the speaker’s (or general) expectations. Thus in Lennert Olsen and Hertling (1988: 14): atuar-aluar-poq (go.to.school-galuar-3sg.indic) ‘he goes to school, but …’ (e.g. hardly ever shows up). West Greenlandic also has affixes expressing suddenness, such as -riataar-. Clearly the objective ‘sudden’ element of surprise can be separated from the subjective ‘unexpected’ element (as also with corres-
7 As in ichiman en mo (10,000 yen mo) ‘(at least) 10,000 yen’—this might be used if the speaker feels that this is a lot for something to cost. The combination demo ‘even’ (with de ‘being’) is translatable as ‘however’ at the beginning of a sentence, expressing simple contrast.
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ponding English adverbs). In North Alaskan Inuit there is also an affix -niq- ‘I found out that –’ with “realizational” semantics (in Fortescue et al. 2010: 459)— the speaker realizes or perceives something for the first time, not necessarily with any emotional reaction. A “realizational” (or mirative) mood paradigm is found in Makah, and the inferential mood of other Nootkan languages often have this sense too (Fortescue 2007a: 489). We have seen a number of oppositions criss-crossing the domain of surprise as reflected in expressions across the world’s languages. These include descriptive vs. expressive, action vs. experience, subject-oriented vs. objectoriented (causal), momentaneous vs. continuing state, concrete/physical vs. abstract/emotional, weak vs. strong, and positive vs. negative kinds of ‘surprise’. There is also peripheral overlap with what could be regarded as distinct domains, e.g. ‘knowledge’, ‘seeing’, ‘finding’, ‘fear’, ‘confusion’ and ‘humour’. So what is common across languages behind these various expressions? At this point we need to ask a slightly different kind of question: What kinds of surprise are there in everyday life, i.e. what kinds of situations would we describe as involving surprise? We need to go beyond simple dictionary definitions and the few example sentences cited in chapter 17. What follows is a rather heterogeneous selection of such situations which cannot be said to represent a comprehensive coverage for English, let alone any other language—there are certainly cultural differences as regards specific situation types that elicit surprise. The aim here is simply to give an impression of the wide range of surprising events or situations that may evoke various kinds of secondary, context-dependent processing beyond the initial registration of something unexpected. First, there is surprise at an unexpected situation or event (‘I was surprised at Spurs winning the cup’); or at something someone says or intends or did out of character (‘Raymond surprised us all by announcing that he was standing for Parliament’); or at something one reads or hears as an opinion or admission (‘I’m surprised the bishop publically admitted that he’s gay’); or at surprising weather conditions (‘I’m surprised at how warm it is for December’). The surprise evoked can be at a proposition rather than an event or situation (‘I’m surprised that Bach is so popular among teenagers today’). One can also be surprised at someone doing something that goes against accepted social norms (‘It surprised the parishioners when the vicar was arrested for an act of public indecency’, or to a child: ‘I’m surprised at you! You should know better than to do that!’). Disapproval at someone’s appearance could cause this reaction (‘We were surprised—to put it mildly—at the prime minister’s slovenly appearance as he read his speech’). As could someone doing something embarrassing (‘The vicar surprised us by getting the words of the
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Lord’s Prayer mixed up’) or learning that something one had done or said subsequently had to be corrected (‘Constable Jenkins was surprised to learn that the rioter he’d just tasered was in fact his superior officer’). Among instances of a pleasant surprise can be named learning of some unforeseen happy event (‘I’m so happy for John and Fiona—their engagement came as quite a surprise to us’) or when being rewarded or favourably regarded in a competition when disappointment was expected (‘Brown was surprised to get the promotion that everyone thought Jones would get’). Receiving an unexpected gift belongs here of course (‘What a lovely surprise: a box of my favourite liquor-filled chocolates!’), as does surprise at an unexpectedly positive experience (‘I was surprised at how moving the choral concert was’). Children also get pleasure from finding someone who is hiding in hide-and-go-seek (‘She was surprised at finding her little sister hiding in the tiny chest-of-drawers’). The pleasant surprise can occur against a background of misery (‘He was surprised when they told him that the prognosis for recovery from his cancer had dramatically improved with the availability of a new drug’). Surprise can also be evoked by a purely physical event causing a bodily shock, as when reacting to a sudden unexpected physical action, for example when startled by someone coming up behind your back and speaking loudly (‘You gave me quite a surprise!’—an embarrassed explanation following a startled gasp). Or stepping into a tepid shower when expecting a hot one (‘The temperature of the water was an unpleasant surprise’). Shocks of a more social kind can be produced by someone appearing unexpectedly before one (‘His wife surprised him by showing up with a furious look on her face’). Or by realizing one has made a wrong turning on a journey (‘He was surprised to find himself driving across an open field’). Then there are object-oriented meanings (reflecting the original sense of the verb ‘surprise’) as in surprising an animal or bird during a hunt (‘The hunter surprised a deer drinking at the pond’), or in a surprise assault (‘The soldiers surprised the enemy troops while they slept in their camp’). This is close to the meaning of ‘scare’, which too has both subject-oriented meaning (‘They were scared’) and object-oriented meaning (‘They scared them (off)’). One can also surprise someone by catching them unawares when engaged in something untoward (‘He surprised the vicar and the cleaning lady on the floor of the vestry’). Other miscellaneous uses include registering a surprising musical effect (‘The introduction of the solo piccolo at bar 40 is a most surprising effect’) or a surprise move in a game (‘Fisher surprised everyone by moving his knight to King’s 3’). Surprise is also involved in coming across something unexpected when searching for something else (‘I was surprised to find my missing sock
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when rummaging under the bed for the ping-pong ball the kitten had knocked under it’). One may react with surprise to a patently absurd claim that flies in the face of common experience or scientific evidence (‘I’m surprised the president can still deny the reality of climate change’). One may also reach a surprising conclusion by a quite rational procedure (‘Dr Roberts was surprised to find that his calculations indicated England would be almost entirely submerged in less than a century’). And one’s expectations or predictions as one reads a narrative or watches a film may be dashed by some unforeseen turn of the plot, hence the ‘surprise ending’. In somewhat more complex situations, you can be surprised at something when you shouldn’t have been if you had considered all the facts (‘He was surprised that Brown got the promotion, though he knew he was the boss’s nephew’), or of moral indignation (‘I’m surprised that a doctor’s wife could be so heartless’). One can feign surprise (‘She pretended to be surprised when the police told her that her husband had not turned up for work that morning’). One can also surprise oneself (‘She surprised herself by blurting out the truth’). Surprise can be a continuing or reiterated state (‘I’m surprised at how expensive it is living in the city’) or indeed irrealis (‘I see the pound’s gone down against the dollar again—it would be surprising if it went the other way’). Finally, one may see something regarded as unsurprising in the past as surprising in a new context (‘Dave has always been good at fixing technical things, but I was surprised when he managed to fix the satellite dish after it had been hit by lightning’). Of course in more extreme cases one of the stronger equivalents would be more likely to be used—‘I was astonished/ appalled/ shocked to hear that John shot his wife’ would be more normal than ‘I was surprised to hear that John shot his wife’. Expressions of surprise are not limited to statements either, they also cover questions, like rhetorical ‘You went all that way on foot?’ and exclamative utterances like ‘What a surprise!’ discussed above. These may involve special grammatical or lexical marking—as the Cantonese and !Xun particles with rhetorical question force mentioned earlier—or simply rely on intonation. The kinds of situations evoking reactions of surprise in other languages than English can no doubt be extended further. At the other extreme, are purely perceptual experiences of merely registering a change or new state of affairs, of noticing something in an emotionally quite neutral way. Unlike recognizing something, there is no necessary link to episodic memory. But even this limiting case may not be entirely devoid of an emotional element. Noticing something can be an overtly emotional (and surprising) experience, as in ‘He noticed at once that he was the only one not wearing a tie at the reception’.
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I have not yet dealt with the kinds of surprise that are experienced as humorous. What distinguishes them? According to Martin (2007) humour is playful and non-serious behaviour, the emotional tone of which he calls “mirth”. It involves the activation of the limbic reward system in the brain. The stimulus is, as he puts it (on p. 6): an idea, image, text, or event that is in some sense incongruous, odd, unusual, unexpected, surprising, or out of the ordinary. In addition, there needs to be some aspect that causes us to appraise the stimulus as nonserious or unimportant, putting us into a playful frame of mind at least momentarily. Note that “amusement” is an emotion root in both Eskimoan (West Greenlandic tissi(gi)- ‘think funny’) and Chukotkan (Chukchi γiciwu ləŋ- ‘be amused or entertained by’)—these are distinct from emotion roots indicating, for example, happiness (see Table 2 in the following chapter). Koestler (1975: 186) discusses humour in terms of what he calls “bisociation”, i.e. seeing an event, idea or situation from two different, normally unrelated and sometimes incompatible frameworks at once (with oscillation back and forth between them). Chafe (2007) analyses in an entertaining and informative way the emotional feeling behind humour and laughter (which he calls “non-seriousness”), its physiological underpinning and the situations typically triggering it, including cross-cultural variation in genres of humour. Humour is manifest not only in anecdotes or jokes (with unexpected punchlines), puns, riddles, slips of the tongue, teasing, peek-a-boo games with infants, slapstick (with banana peels, etc.), and unusual rhymes in verse, but also in ongoing daily situations or actions that evoke a feeling of mirth by being unexpected (these can be habitual). It is also found in the humorous use of classifiers in Koyukon, e.g. using a classificatory stem for sacks or long rigid things or sloppy substances about a human being (Thompson et al. 1983: 142), and of surprising equative ‘as … as’ and simile ‘like a –’ expressions in English (with equivalent constructions in most other languages), as in ‘He’s as thick as a London fog’ or ‘She looks like a broomstick on legs’. The reaction to more or less novel and surprising stimuli can range from mild amusement to outright hilarity, though jokes can also be aggressive or cruel in context. Absurdity is at the core of circus clowning and artistic surrealism alike, feeding on incongruity. We are now ready to consider the cognitive underpinnings of the varied expressions of surprise that we have examined. What do they all have in common? A first approximation might be reaction to novelty/newness in general.
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But what exactly constitutes newness at its most basic? This question points in the direction of perception as such, which arguably always has some emotional tone to it, if only as a potential element evoked in suitable contexts. Perception is in essence only possible if it involves change or contrast. Think of the crucial visual saccades when reading a page or interpreting a visual scene. Stare at something too fixedly and it “disappears”. Memory too responds to novelty: existing memory traces are probably only updated by new input when there is something novel in it. At a lower neurological level, cortical arousal is evoked by any novel stimulus, but if it is “unimportant” it is rapidly dissipated (LeDoux 1998: 290). Arousal is no doubt a complex matter. Thus encephalographic data have pinpointed event related potential (erp) signals that indicate successive stages in the processing of auditory input. The earliest erp peaks detected in the brainstem indicate early sensory processing, later ones in the auditory cortex probably indicate auditory perceptual processing, and at between 100 and 200 milliseconds post-input an important erp fluctuation occurs in reaction to a mismatch in otherwise identical stimuli. This can be regarded as an unconscious surprise reaction.8 There is a continuum of potential emotional reactions to perceptual unexpectedness ranging from merely noticing a difference (attention) through surprise and/or interest to fear (terror or shock).9 It is more accurate to speak of two orthogonal axes, one of “valence” (from positive to negative), the other of intensity (both central to my schematic analysis below). Addressing the question of the distinction in valence between the initial stage of surprise at an unexpected event and the subsequent stage of cognitive integration or appraisal, Noordewier et al. (2016) see the former as relatively negative but the latter as dependent on the valence, positive or negative, of the outcome. They characterize the uniqueness of surprise as an emotion as being due to its status as a “metacognitive feeling”, signalling an error in one’s cognitive processing. But perception regarded as a cognitive matter is clearly not the whole story: surprise can also be generated by a physical shock as when flinching at a loud
8 Still later components are associated with higher perceptual or cognitive processes. Specifically in relation to speech analysis, a so-called elan fluctuation in the left anterior region of the brain has been associated with phrase structure violation detection, a later one (N400) in the left central region with semantic anomaly detection, and a still later one (P700) with re-analysis or late syntactic anomaly detection (Ingram 2007: 61). 9 There is at least one more peripheral dimension involved, that reflecting what is registered as a “difference” in the first place—see Fortescue (2010), which investigates expressions along the scale of Similitude, a continuum from “same” through “similar” to “different”.
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noise or unknowingly touching a live electric fence. Of course there will usually be perception of the noise or shock immediately following its initial bodily effect. None of this answers the question as to whether surprise is a unitary category, let alone a “basic” emotion. At this point one might consider what it is exactly that might constitute a basic emotion in the neurological as well as the cognitive sense—with the caveat that this is still a controversial matter in psychology. I follow the approach of Damasio (2000), who makes a distinction between “emotions” (i.e. bodily responses to stimuli) and “feelings”— consciously accessible emotional experiences. Emotion involves a complex interplay between sub-cortical structures such as the amygdala (the shock/fear reaction) and the long-term memory systems of the neocortex (containing the experiential background against which novel stimuli play), plus “body loop” feedback. Stimulation of the amygdala produces autonomic responses such as increase in heart rate and the release of stress hormones. Damasio distinguishes between background, primary (universal) and secondary emotions, reflecting an evolutionary development from background (visceral “tone”, general bodily equilibrium) to primary (universal or basic emotion) to secondary (socially molded) emotions (p. 342). As discussed in Fortescue (2016a: 328– 329) a similar movement from physical to more abstract meanings within the semantic development of individual emotion words is often discernible through time. Damasio regards surprise—like Ekman (1984)—as one of the six primary emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust— p. 50). It may then have secondary cognitive extensions which can vary according to context/culture, e.g. amusement as a secondary reaction involving relief that the unexpected event or shock is not threatening to oneself. The conclusion in Fortescue (2017: 89) as regards emotions in general is that “the processing of bodily emotions that result in conscious feelings involves successive stages of abstraction, paralleled by the development of their verbal expression.” This further entails the abstraction of more and more specific contexts of usage adhering to the expression types. LeDoux (1998), although focusing on the emotion of fear, has insights that are highly relevant to surprise too. Thus he describes the dual route from the initial auditory registering of a sudden sound, a “high” cortical route vs. a “low”, much quicker thalamic route, which explains how a surprise response can be automatic, preceding conscious emotional awareness (p. 163ff.). He describes the startle reflex as one of several possible outputs from the amygdala targeting a particular reticular site (p. 160). The role of the amygdala is complemented in its response to a shared stimulus by that of the hippocampus, which contributes to the unified experience a multi-sensory picture of the context (p. 170).
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Corresponding conscious feelings arise in cortical working memory (probably in lateral pre-frontal regions of the brain), in which input from the amygdala is integrated with input from long- and short-term memory, involving specific neurotransmitters (p. 284ff.).10 Ekman et al. (1985) argue against the view that surprise is simply an extreme version of the startle reaction, and that the latter is best not regarded as an emotion (a view shared by Damasio 2000: 71). They characterize the startle reaction in terms of very rapid and characteristic physical movements (summed up on p. 1422, their Table 5). Comparing startle to surprise, these include lowered as opposed to raised eyebrows, and eyes closed as opposed to wide open. They also point out that emotional reactions (like surprise) vary considerably from individual to individual, a matter of “appraisal”, i.e. of individual expectations, memories or habits, which is not the case as regards the startle reaction.11 The latter is more like an automatic reflex that cannot be totally inhibited or simulated convincingly. It is not limited to unexpected events as such, but may be evoked even when anticipated. Nevertheless, this is compatible with the view that surprise is a secondary emotion with an original (evolutionary) source in the primary startle response, whether this is seen as an emotion or not. There are some respects in which the startle reaction resembles an emotion, as the authors in fact point out, namely in its being associated with a characteristic facial expression and its brief latency and duration (as shared with surprise though more extreme). Reisenzein et al. (2019) propose a cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise in which surprise is evoked by unexpected schema-discrepant events, downplaying factors of novelty and valence. They mention the physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance, heart rate deceleration and pupil dilation in surprise induction, but see this and associated facial expression as being unreliable as markers of surprise. Their model combines lines of research going back to Darwin’s treatment of surprise as a basic emotion serving essential biological functions and later cognitively oriented treatments involving
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Alexander & Brown (2019) suggest a specific location in the anterior cingulate cortex in which surprise is signaled. In their Hierarchical Error Representation model top-down error prediction and bottom-up error signaling operate at successively higher hierarchical levels from a more posterior part of the anterior cingulate (linked to sensorimotor cortex) to a more anterior part (linked to the more abstract representations of the prefrontal cortex). See LeDoux (1998: 52) for a discussion of this term introduced by Arnold (1960)—he himself advocates a simplified form whereby appraisal covers the stage between stimulus and feeling without involving a further intermediate stage of “action tendency”.
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schemas, such as Meyer (1988). Schemas (unarticulated theories about objects, events and situations) are continuously monitored for their compatibility with newly acquired information and, if there is discrepancy, updated. The surprise mechanism, which is seen as innate, is crucial here, producing an unexpectedness signal that interrupts ongoing processes and causes an attentional shift. The evolutionary function of this mechanism is to detect schema discrepancies and enable and motivate adaptation to them (p. 53). They identify surprise with the output of the schema-discrepancy detector that when sufficiently intense becomes conscious as a qualitatively unique feeling. They conclude that surprise, which can co-determine emotions such as relief and disappointment, is indeed an emotion itself in so far as it involves a belief-disconfirmation detector intimately linked with the more general goal-discrepancy detector that generates emotion. As regards the type of specific situational representations associated with secondary, contextualized types of surprise, a useful lead can be taken in the “cognitive model” approach of Evans (2009), whereby generic situations as context or frame types are built up on the basis of abstraction from successive episodic ones.12 These may consist of “perceptual images” in the manner of Barsalou (1999), which relate to individuals or types or spatial configurations. Representations of chained series of situations constitute dynamic events (Evans 2009: 197–200). There is much that is shared between related situations (episodic as well as generic) and this need not be redundantly repeated but can be transferred across them (Barsalou’s “transcendence”, facilitating cognitive economy). I should add that it is of course the subjective emotion itself, the feeling, as experienced directly or vicariously on the part of the speaker/experiencer, that is central to the long-term representation of situations evoking emotional responses. This presumably involves feedback loops through limbic system connections. Evans (p. 176) remains critical of certain aspects of Barsalou’s version of “simulation” semantics, in particular as regards his use of the term “perceptual”, since some situations are not solely (or even at all) perceptual, including cognitive and—importantly in the present context—emotional states.13 This should be obvious from the complex situations associated with surprise
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Another relevant approach to “frames” in the broadest sense is that of Rakhilina & Reznikova (2016). They classify prototypical situations in terms of individual predicates and their full set of arguments—“semantic frames”, as opposed to the purely syntactic ones collected in FrameNet (Fillmore & Baker 2000). The prevalence of metaphor and metonymy that we have seen in expressions (even asl signs) referring to cognitive categories in general underscores this point.
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listed above. Essential elements there involve intentions, beliefs and opinions, not just perceptions, and this includes recognizing when a person acts out of character or admits to a misdemeanour, what is or isn’t acceptable in dressing for public appearance, knowing the rules of games or what makes punch lines funny, forming predictions of how a narrative is liable to unfold, and much more. How could these be represented to a speaker? Surely only through resonance with one’s own corresponding cognitive and emotional experiences, through a form of empathy. The semantics of surprise is certainly “simulational” in this sense. Despite all that is shared with other types of primary or basic emotion, surprise stands out as special (hence the controversy as to its exact status). What that specialness consists in, I would argue, is its proximity on the one hand to the sensory perception of differences (recall the discussion of ‘noticing’ and ‘seeing’ as potentially emotional experiences) and on the other to the purely automatic startle reflex, neither of which necessarily involve conscious emotion at all. Also its widely variable valence is not typical of other emotions. As mentioned above, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Wilson (2010) have suggested a radial prototype approach to the linguistic expression of surprise. Rather than a unitary concept, this consists of a number of sub-sense parameters—e.g. disbelief and wonder—which surface in various combinations according to context. The cognitive dimension is for them nevertheless comparable across languages. As they put it (p. 323): We assume that concepts in general, including emotion concepts, have a prototype structure and form radial categories (of diverse size and shape). Their sense modulations can be a consequence of a selection of a particular figure-ground organization and, connected with it, a selection of different profiles as the focal entities (cf. Langacker 1987) in the conceptual structure, but they can also involve different construals of a scene, particularly in the on-line construction of a number of physiological, mental, axiological and eventually interactional parameters. The figure-ground organization in a given scene-construal can be observed by extracting a particular sense parameter from a whole emotion-Gestalt and making it salient. The salience can be linguistically marked by the use of modifiers (adjectival and adverbial phrases), marked word order or a description of possible reactions to an emotion. Note that this appears to assume a whole, presumably universal “emotionGestalt” from which particular salient aspects are evoked in describing a given
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scene by linguistic means that vary across languages. Mackenzie and Alba-Juez (2019: 16) concur with the sub-sense approach to the analysis of emotional expressions in general but emphasize its dynamic aspect: The emotive function, like the evaluative function, is a function of a number of variables that interact with one another. It constitutes a dynamical system of language, and as such, we see it as a process and not as a state. As a process, emotion involves different stages and facets that in discourse are better described as systems or ‘bundles’ than as single, basic emotions. The systems include all the feature and variables that contribute to the expression of the emotion at both the production and reception ends, including the appraisal of the situation, the expectations related to the emotions felt by the speaker and perceived or caused in the hearer or audience, the common-ground knowledge of the interlocutors, the gestures or emotive bodily behaviour (e.g. crying, gasping, blushing, etc.), the polarity or valence of the emotion, etc. Rather than attempting to portray the various nuances of Surprise in a radial array around a prototype (which would not easily represent the underlying dimensions involved), I propose a diagrammatic representation of the domain of surprise as schematized in Figure 11. It represents a closer “zooming in” on the category of that label investigated in chapter 17. The diagram can be seen as a variety of semantic map comparable to the one for “similitude” in Fortescue (2010). As Haspelmath (2003: 237) points out, semantic maps, although principally employed in showing relationships between grammatical morphemes and constructions, can easily be extended to lexical matters. However, the usual two-dimensional graphic portrayal of such maps is not really sufficient for dealing with all but the most simple cases of lexical comparison (as in Haspelmath’s example from Hjelmslev’s well-known analysis of ‘tree’ and ‘wood’ words). The “landscape” map in Figure 11 is by necessity less graph-like and can be understood as three-dimensional. It is built on orthogonal axes of intensity and valence (values referred to by all researchers in the area) around the prototypical core of ‘response to unexpected novelty’. The stimulus is the unexpected item or situation or event, the response is the primary or immediate emotion of surprise, which in turn is anchored in evolutionary terms in the instinctive startle reflex. This can be pictured as a third dimension of “suddenness”, or as a “tail” extending below the prototypical core (the ‘x’ marked at its centre, below which English ‘startle’ belongs, in the direction of greater suddenness). Suddenness to varying degrees is associated with the core, and may be diminished or increased in specific secondary extensions. The right-
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The landscape of surprise
hand extreme of the horizontal (intensity) axis impinges on the domain of Fear, whereas the left-most extreme impinges on that of Perception (which consists in the neutral noticing of differences). The porous borders of these adjacent, overlapping domains are indicated by dashed curves. The words in small print indicate foci (not words in English!) where secondary (social) elaborations may take place in individual languages in specific context types, for instance in situations of indignation, jocularity, terror at “ghosts”, scientific discovery, admiration or disapproval at someone’s actions or appearance, the giving of gifts, and so forth. The diagram is equally relevant to objective descriptive terms and to subjective (i.e. speaker-oriented) expression, e.g. miratives. It can also be understood in dynamic terms, representing potentiality for response along the time axis: the “third dimension” of suddenness is reflected in the pathway of the individual experience of surprise, going from the immediate reaction (below the centre of the core, as it were), too sudden for conscious awareness, to the prototypical core itself in which conscious “appraisal” can begin, and extending outwards to elaborated secondary responses according to context. Whether or not the term “appraisal” is suitably applied to both core and extensions is a moot point—it is surely possible to be conscious of being surprised without knowing exactly what caused it (the “Was it a gun?” reaction upon hearing a loud bang in a crowd). Naturally this only represents a rough approximation to a more complex overall picture, with numerous further foci for the elaboration of secondary
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reactions according to language and culture. The reason this kind of representation is preferable to one with radial extensions around a prototype (with which it is nevertheless germane) is to do with the “special” nature of the category: the various manifestations of the prototypical core (‘response to the unexpected’) may have nothing more in common than the instinctive reflex, and depending on intensity and context this may not even surface as an emotional experience at all. This would be an odd thing to say about anger, sadness, disgust or fear, for example. Also unlike other emotions, which are of either a positive or negative nature, it varies not only on the dimension of intensity but also on that of valence. Different languages will express secondary foci in the domain by heterogeneous means, even though they share the underlying cognitive core, breaking up for example the distinctions of perspective discussed by Lewandowska and Wilson (“Experiencer expresses surprise at Cause”, “Agent causes surprise to Experiencer”, etc.) in different ways. As we have seen in chapter 17, some languages have special object-oriented forms with affixes for causing a recipient to experience the basically subject-oriented dimension of the domain, others make no such distinction. They may utilize different parts of speech (or whole idioms) to express similar meanings. The semantics of individual words may involve nuances and extensions into adjacent cognitive domains not attested in other languages, as we have seen. We have also seen the etymology of terms for surprise in different languages, often suggesting historical derivation from more concrete meanings of sudden physical action to more abstract and temporally extended ones. I have sketched a number of approaches to the question as to the nature of surprise and its relationship to emotion, as proposed by researchers from different disciplines. It remains briefly to characterize the overall picture that has emerged and relate it to my main purpose. It should be clear that despite the variety of expression displayed across languages there is indeed a common, bodily anchored core, albeit one that represents the convergence of a number of dimensions. In particular there would appear to be consensus today that surprise is a complex though rapidly experienced emotion, involving an initial automatic bodily response closely related to (but not necessarily identical with) the startle reflex, and a subsequent conscious feeling strongly affected by context. It seems that most languages (to judge by the array presented in chapter 17) distinguish lexically between sudden, startled reactions and more temporally extended conscious feelings of surprise, positive or negative according to context. Languages like West Greenlandic and Chukchi in fact distinguish the two morphologically, with only the latter experiences being treated as constituting an emotion. This correlates with the complex nature of surprise,
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as does the distinction in Japanese between mimetic expressions (“psychomemes”) and ordinary verbs of surprise, the former being specifically about sudden reactions. As regards the position of Surprise on my Circle of Cognition, its adjacency to (but not integration in) Emotional feeling is clear enough—in Figure 11 it is specifically Fear that is represented (as reflected in the polysemy of many ‘surprise’ words in chapter 17), though other emotional responses are also indicated. Its relationship with Perceiving (which could be characterised as Surprise drained of all emotional intensity) should also be clear from the discussion above. What of Experiencing, that lies between the two categories? Recall that this category is of diffuse bodily experiences, including the “feel” of different kinds of situation or event, rather than being linked to any specific sensory channel. One of those diffuse kinds of experience is that of Surprise. In other words, ‘Perception’ in Figure 11 stands in fact for Perception and Experiencing kaleidoscoped one within the other. One might say that this reflects the natural route to secondary elaboration of a surprising event, namely via the diffuse feel of something unexpected having occurred to the more specific perceptual (or conceptual) investigation of its source.
chapter 23
The Cross-Linguistic Expression of Categories of Emotion It is not my intention to rehash here the whole controversy over “basic” emotions (as discussed in Fortescue 2017: 85ff.). Rather, I shall focus here on the relation between the core and the cognitive categories of my circular model that emotion words reflect rather well. This will also cast light on the general question of sub-categories at both the core and the cognitive levels. Suffice it to say that I agree both with those who see “basic” emotions as a universal reality (though the border with cognition is somewhat fuzzy), and with those who claim that emotions corresponding to words are essentially social constructs and dependent on culturally determined situations of use. Representing the first camp, Ekman’s (1984) “basic” emotions reflect universal facial expressions. As mentioned in chapter 22, these are: happiness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise and sadness. Johnson-Laird & Oatley (1992), taking a lexical approach, have the same items but with ‘desire’ taking the place of ‘surprise’—these two are, not by chance, those I treat as categories distinct from Emotion as such, namely Surprise and Wishing (= ‘desire’). For the view of the opposing camp see the articles in Harkins & Wierzbicka (2001). A slightly different approach is that of Barrett (2006), who distinguishes basic “core affect” from conceptually imposed categories where the former is limited to pleasure vs. displeasure plus activation or deactivation of arousal. This is too simplified to fit well with my own notion of the Core quadrant concerned (‘Feel’). As discussed in the previous chapter, I follow Damasio (2000), who combines the two principal perspectives above in distinguishing between “primary” and “secondary” emotions. Secondary emotions (or “feelings”) like embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, shame and pride, are culturally determined modulations of primary emotions like fear and disgust. There are also “background” emotions such as fatigue and excitement—these fall under my proprioceptively based cognitive category of Experiencing. Damasio describes a general evolutionary development from background to primary to secondary emotions. LeDoux (1998) further argues for an evolutionary perspective on basic emotions, seeing them as unconscious survival strategies with roots in our pre-human ancestors. For him the relation between basic emotions and consciously accessible emotional experiences involves the complex interplay between cortical and sub-cortical structures such as the amygdala and the insula
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_024
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in which bodily reactions are registered. Recall that the divisions of the “core” in my model are taken to be universal, which is uncontroversial as regards the sub-categories corresponding to Perceiving within the ‘Sense’ quadrant, namely the different sensory channels. As regards the ‘Feel’ quadrant, the problem here is how to strip away the secondary socio-cultural overlay from the “primary” emotions, a recurring problem in treatments of the subject. Typology can help by abstracting commonalities across the world’s languages. But etymology can be confusing here, emotions being difficult to put into words without metaphor or metonymy (e.g. of a concomitant behavioural state). This can be illustrated with English. Consider the historical origins of the following words. table 1
Sources of English emotion words
‘sad’ ‘melancholy’ ‘dejected’ ‘depressed’ ‘happy’ ‘amused’ ‘delighted’ ‘content’ ‘pleased’ ‘proud’ ‘confident’ ‘love’ ‘desire’ ‘angry’ ‘annoyed’ ‘hate’
ie *sǝtos ‘satiated’ (cf. ‘satisfied’!) Greek melonkholia, lit. ‘black bile’ (one of the four basic “humours”) Latin dēicere ‘cast down’ Latin dēprimere ‘press down’ from Old Norse happ ‘chance, good luck’ (thus ‘happen’, ‘happenstance’; related to Old Church Slavonic kobu ‘fate’) Old French amuser ‘deceive, entertain’ (and muser ‘meditate, waste time’1) of delit, Latin dēlectāre from dēlicere ‘allure’ (cf. ‘delicious’) Latin contentus ‘having restrained desires’ (from continēre ‘restrain’) of plaisir, Latin placēre ‘please, satisfy’ of prud ‘brave’ (from Latin prodesse ‘be of value’) Latin confídere ‘have complete trust in’ ie *leubhos ‘love, desire’ (and older English lief ‘dear’) of desirer, Latin dēsīderāre ‘desire earnestly’ (< sīdus ‘star’, as also in ‘consider’) from Germanic *aŋg- ‘narrow’ (related to ‘anguish’ and Latin angere ‘strangle’) of anoier, Latin inodiāre ‘make hateful’ (< odium ‘hatred’) from ie *kād- ‘sorrow, hatred’ acc. Watkins 1985 (as in Classical Greek keδos ‘care, anxiety, grief’ and Old Irish (mis)cais ‘hate’)2
1 Whence ‘muse’ as a verb = ‘be absorbed in thought’. 2 As mentioned earlier, on its own cais could apparently mean either ‘love’ or ‘hate’, the original meaning probably being ‘care’ acc. Buck (1988: 1133).
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Sources of English emotion words (cont.)
‘ashamed’ ‘regret’
from ‘shame’, Germanic *skamō, Gothic skanda ‘disgrace’ earlier ‘bewail, grieve (for the deceased)’ via of from Germanic *grǣtan ‘weep’ (with prefix re- ‘again’) ‘embarrassed’ i.e. ‘hampered, tethered’ from Romance, ultimately Portugese embaraçar, baraça ‘cord, halter’ ‘shy’ Germanic *skeuX(w)az ‘scare’ ‘afraid/fearful’ oe fǣr ‘sudden calamity, danger’ ‘frightened’ Germanic, as in oe fryhto (of sudden intense fear) ‘surprised’ from Medieval Latin superpræhendere ‘seize’ (via Old French) ‘astonished’ of estoné (same as ‘astounded’ and ‘stun’, from Latin attonāre ‘stupefy’ < tonāre ‘thunder’) ‘disgusted’ of desgouster, negative derivation of Latin gustus ‘taste’ (whence ‘gusto’) ‘disappointed’ from of desapointer < *dis- and apointer of a good state—a point ‘in good condition’ (originally of removal from office) ‘frustrated’ Latin frustrā ‘in vain’ ‘upset’ related to Middle High German ūfsetzen ‘put on’ ‘irritated’ Latin irritāre ‘provoke, exasperate’ ‘perplexed’ Latin perplexus (< per- ‘thoroughly’ plus plectere ‘entwine’) ‘excited’ from of exciter, Latin excitāre ‘call out or forth’
Obvious examples of metaphor here include ‘embarrassed’, ‘depressed’, ‘upset’, and ‘astonished’, and of metonymy ‘sad’, ‘disgusted’ and ‘regret’. Many of these came as borrowings, with the metaphor and metonymy buried in the etymology. But a similar situation is found without borrowings in other languages like Ket, where the etymology of such words is either opaque or reflects metaphor (e.g. tet-qut ‘be sad’—lit. ‘put crosswise’) or metonymy (e.g. dǝras(iŋ) ‘be happy’ from *daq ‘laugh’ and *qas ‘want to’). In general it will be found that emotional terms generally develop in time from non-emotional ones, in particular ones referring to behavioural manifestations of internal states (e.g. English ‘excite’ above). As I discussed in Fortescue (2016a), Eskimoan emotion roots are useful in delimiting the category since the roots must be combined with a specific set of derivational affixes (I give the 2010 ced forms): *-yuɣ- (Inuit -suk-) for an intransitive state, *-yyaɣ- (Inuit -tsak-, Yupik -yaɣutə-) for intransitive entering a state, *-nar- (Inuit -naq, in some Yupik -narqə-) for a stimulus potentially evoking the emotion concerned, and *-kə- (Inuit -ɣi-) for a transitive emotional state
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table 2
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. (17. 18. 19. 20. 21. (22. 23. 24.
Emotions/feelings expressed by emotion roots in Proto-Eskimo
Fear Loneliness and sad feelings Frustration Anxiety Shame Timidity Apprehension Worry Disgust Not feeling like doing s.th. Anger Regret Jealousy or envy Anguish or suffering Happiness Amusement Feeling at ease) Thankfulness Lust Longing Pity Feeling protective/loving towards) Uncertainty Feeling or noticing (generally)
*alikə-, *naŋyar*aliɣa-, *ar(ə)yu-, *nəka*capir*kappəya*kayŋu*qikə-, *əɣtuɣ*paqu(mi)-, *kama*pəŋəɣ*maRuyuɣ-, *əplər*əq(ə)ya*nəŋ(ŋ)ar-, *qənər-, *uɣumi*qivru*cikna-, *tucu*ikviɣ*quvya(yuɣ)*təmci*quya*əkli*qi(C)əlir*naŋłəɣ*nəryu(ɣ)-, *ukvər-, *nału*əlpəkə-
oriented towards its stimulus. However, the words concerned are not restricted to primary emotions in the sense above, in fact they are clearly themselves secondary, presupposing as elsewhere “filtering” through specific associated social and physical situations, although some of them (as in English) do correspond rather closely to the primary emotions—like West Greenlandic maajug‘be disgusted’. Moreover, the category extends to certain verbs of perception (like misigi- ‘notice’), and excludes certain other words that refer to behaviourally overt manifestations of emotion (like kamag- ‘be angry’, not itself an emotion root). The category as a whole refers then to internally experienced states that are not necessarily accompanied by any outward manifestation. The sub-categories and Proto-Eskimo forms are given in Table 2 (items 17 and 22 are not reconstructible at the Proto-Eskimo stage).
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Emotion verbs may be distinguished constructionally in other languages too (though rarely as consequentially as in Eskaleut). Thus in Tamil verbal expressions of emotion are distinguished morphologically, in their case by compounding emotion nouns like ‘happiness’ with verb -paʈu ‘experience, feel’ (so ‘feel happy’). This also extends beyond emotion, as in pe, but not as far as to Perception, only to Experiencing, as in ‘experience difficulty’, ‘be in a hurry’, etc. (Asher 1982: 208). In Nahuatl most emotion verbs appear in reflexive form, as for example ninozōma ‘I am angry’ (vs. transitive niczōma ‘I annoy him’). This does not mean ‘I annoy myself’ but ‘s.th. annoys me’ (Launey 2011: 55). This reversal of subject and object is sporadically found in European langues, as in French, il me plait, parallel to Nahuatl (nēch)pāctia ‘I like it/ it pleases me’ (lit. ‘it makes me happy’). In Japanese there is a derivational affix -garu ‘appear’ which is usually required on adjectives of emotion with non-first person subjects such as ureshigaru ‘(he is/you are) happy’ as opposed to ureshii ‘I am happy’ (or ureshii desu ka ‘are you happy?’ enquiring of someone else’s feelings). This does not apply to emotion verbs, like yorokobu ‘be glad, delighted’, which are less subjective. In general, these adjectival forms have two interpretations: referring either to the inner feeling or to the external circumstances, thus kowai ‘I am frightened’ or ‘it is frightening’. This extends to adjectives of bodily feeling such as samui ‘I am cold’ or ‘it is cold’. These provide good examples of the porous nature of the boundary between the cognitive (internal) and environmental/behavioural (external) worlds that we have seen elsewhere. As has been pointed out in numerous studies of emotion words, there is considerable variation in the socio-cultural situations to which individual words apply in different cultures. Thus English ‘despise’, according to the Collins definition “look down on with contempt, scorn” (< Latin dē-spicere ‘look down on’), clearly presupposes a particular socio-historical background. But denying their relationship to primary/basic emotions altogether and replacing their analysis with the elements of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (nsm) theory, as in the studies in Harkins & Wierzbicka (2001), does not seem necessary. How one chooses to analyse the situations associated with particular modulations of meaning is another matter. It is clear that some secondary emotional terms cover several different types of situation and may also combine elements of more than one primary emotion, such as Russian soskučit’sja ‘miss, long for, be homesick, become bored’, where the ‘boredom’ meaning seems to refer to a distinct type of situation. However, the two situational meanings (from an English point of view) may often be combined in actual usage with the ‘miss’ meanings in a way that has particularly cultural significance, as argued by Levontina & Zalizniak (2001). It is not by chance that the word contains the root of skučat’ ‘be bored’, which in construction with preposition po (and a suitable comple-
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ment) itself means ‘miss’. What is in common is the element of ‘longing for’, which is a strong version of underlying primary desire (Johnson-Laird & Oatley’s term—my Wishing), plus an element of primary sad.3 Here are some further examples of rather specific emotion terms from those I have listed for Russian, Japanese, Amharic, Mbula, West Greenlandic, Ket, Nuuchahnulth and Koyukon in Appendix 2:4 – West Greenlandic nangiar- ‘be afraid or giddy in a precarious place, be afraid to go out in one’s kayak’ (obviously related to primary fear, but associated with situations particularly relevant to the Arctic milieu); and ilerasug- ‘have a bad conscience, be sorry one has caused another harm’ (transitive ileragi- ‘take care nothing happens to s.th. belonging to another, not want to trouble s.o.’)5 – Nuuchahnulth y’uwaatl ‘be filled with surprise, be grateful’ (primary surprise plus happy in a situation of receiving some gift/service); and Ɂikata ‘desperate because of a depressed state of mind, act recklessly’ (combining primary sad with behavioural consequences of that state in situations where caution would otherwise prevail); and w’aaɁak ‘ashamed because of inferiority or inability, bashful, modest’ – Mbula lele-ipata ‘sad, troubled, helpless in situation’ (lit. ‘insides heavy’; primary sad, but with reference to helplessness to act in a given situation— an outer, behavioural matter); and kuli-imoto used of sensing s.th. vaguely heard or seen inducing fear (lit. ‘skin-fear’) Some of the words in my Japanese and Russian files have strong literary associations but are rather more opaque than English near-equivalents etymologically. They are also relatively free of metaphor except in more recent figurative expressions (not listed). The other languages have more transparent metaphors in this area as well as metonymy of the “external manifestation for inner state” kind, and metaphorically tinged polysemy with other core categories like ‘seeing’. Thus: – West Greenlandic ilunngu- ‘be moved, touched’ (also ‘have inner pain’, from pe *ilu ‘inside’ and *-lŋu- ‘hurt in one’s –’)6
3 As we have seen, I treat Wishing as a distinct peripheral category, adjacent to Emotional feelings as such, since the strong affective element of the latter is not essential to the category. 4 The data from Nuuchahnulth is particularly useful here since Stonham provides all entries with textual examples representing typical situations of use. 5 From pe *əlira-/əliŋra- ‘want to ask for s.th. but not dare’. 6 This may actually be a case of polysemy, since the underlying “source domain” is from the
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– Amharic hode tǝmbboč’abboč’e ‘feel sorry for’, lit. ‘one’s stomach moves (for)’; and note ayyǝ- ‘see, have an emotional experience’ – Mbula mata-siŋsiŋ ‘eager, enthusiastic’ (lit. ‘eye-red’) and mata-putput ‘furious’ (lit. ‘eye-bulging’); also kopo-ŋ rru pu ‘I’m worried about you’ (with kopo ‘(my) body’ plus -(r)ru‘seek’, and ‘you’ as object) and kopo-kutkut ‘be anxious/ have butterflies’ (lit. ‘stomach-be beating’); and kete-malual ‘angry at s.o.’ (lit. ‘liver/chest fight’) – Ket -aŋ-si-vet ‘worry’ (from *aŋ, a root found in negative feelings plus -vet ‘make’; related to (d)aŋ- ‘taste, smell, experience’ used pejoratively; also -aŋenbet ‘agitated, irritated’) – Koyukon ne+le+get ‘be afraid, scared’ (root -get ‘rotten, smelly, fear’); and P-yee(ne) … -let ‘angry’ (lit. ‘within P (a person) there is turmoil’, root -let ‘experience event’); also beyehdoy … -let ‘sad, have hurt feelings’ (lit. ‘s.th. came up in his throat’, root -let ‘experience event’); and yenee … -‘aan ‘worried’ (with yenee ‘thought, mind’, and root -‘aan ‘do, see’) Unlike the cognitive categories, which are internally complex and where words referring to them tend to extend polysemically into neighbouring categories, the primary emotions in the ‘Feel’ quadrant of my model are to be taken as distinct and not so prone to infiltration or blurring.7 They may however be combined in emotional responses to complex situations (much like the combining of basic sensory modalities in complex perceptual events). They may also be combined with behavioural elements. A good example is the notion of ‘awe’, defined in the Collins dictionary as ‘overwhelming wonder, admiration, respect or dread’ (a more lasting emotion than most of those given under Surprise, but allied to ‘wonder’ and ‘amaze’ there). The overlap is both with fear (compare ‘awful’) and with respect—to be in awe of someone is very close to showing them (outward) respect. This is reflected in relatable words in other languages too, some going more closely with the fear, others more with respect.8 Thus German has Furcht ‘fear’ corresponding roughly to English ‘awe’, but also Ehrfurcht ‘awe, respect’ (extended by Ehre ‘respect’). The French dictionary translation of ‘awe’ is crainte melée d’admiration (i.e. ‘fear mixed with admiration’), and the Indonesian equivalent is given as perasaan kagum (lit. ‘feeling of admiration’). Russian has blagogovenie ‘reverance, awe’, and Japanese has ikei ‘awe,
same quadrant (‘Feel’) as underlies both the cognitive categories of Emotional feelings and (proprioceptive) Experiencing. 7 The phenomenon of synaesthesia does occur, however, among a limited number of people, and there may be something similar as regards primary emotions for some people (e.g. of pain being experienced as pleasure). 8 ‘Awe’ itself is from Old Norse agi, related to Giothic agis ‘fear’.
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reverential fear, respect’. Latin has reverentia from reverior ‘stand in awe of, venerate’, but also matus ‘fear, awe’. Greek fobos ‘fear’ can cover ‘awe’, but tromos ‘awe, dread, trembling, fright’ is probably closer. Central Alaskan Yupik has iXXi‘marvel, be amazed, fascinated, awed, stare at’ (from py *ira- ‘be horrified’). In some languages, what is a unitary secondary category in most languages has been split into two, as with West Greenlandic sangiag- ‘jealous’ of a man, but ningar- ‘jealous’ of a woman, but there are also rarer cases where it looks as if one primary (sub-)category has been split into two (which should not be so if the category is universal), as with Nuuchahnulth wiiʕaqtl ‘angry’ of a man, but wiiqsuuqtl of a woman. But this is actually the same stem with distinct affixes, respectively -aqtl ‘inside’ for men, and -suuqtl/-suuqstutl ‘in the mind, in the body or womb’ for women. The primary emotion behind these secondary extensions is the same. If we now consider the actual forms in our selection of languages that correspond most closely to the “basic” emotions of Ekman or Johnson-Laird & Oatley,9 we often find a range of words with closely associated meanings but few that correspond uniquely to the “basic” or primary meaning. This can be seen in Table 3, in which differences in parts of speech and constructions are ignored. What this actually shows, I would claim, is that all the words listed below are in fact expressions of “secondary” emotions since all of them presuppose specific contexts of use which can be consciously examined. The fact that some of the English words correspond to the labels chosen for the primary meanings is an artefact of the analysis. Looking in detail at the meanings of these words one soon finds that they are not as broad as they might appear: nearly all of them contrast with other words semantically close to them but distinct, referring to different situation types. Thus ‘fear’ (or ‘afraid’) is contrasted in English with ‘frightened’, where the latter refers to a sudden event causing fear rather than foreboding of something bad that might happen. As we have seen, Japanese adjectival forms of subjective feelings like ureshii ‘happy’ (ureshigaru of a non-first person) contrast with verbs like yorokobu ‘be glad, delighted, pleased’, of a positive reaction (potentially externalized) to a happy situation or event. In Nuuchahnulth there are parallel (but unrelated) lexical and affixal expressions of the “same” emotion, of which it is difficult to say which is more “basic”, and in Koyukon there is often broad polysemy of the relevant verbal root with other meanings (-get, for
9 Here combined as seven, treating both peripheral surprise and desire (my Wishing) as primary in the manner of the respective authors.
fear/afraid sad disgusted angry happy surprised want
English
bojat’sja pečal’ny otvraščat’sja serdity sčastlivy udivljat’sja želat’
Russian kowai kanashii unzari suru okoru ureshii odoroku hoshii
Japanese ersinikamaajug(i)kamagnuannaartupigi-gug-/-rusug-
Greenlandic
‘Primary’ emotion labels and their nearest equivalents
a The nearest given by Amberber (2001) is mǝrrǝrǝ- ‘taste bitter, be irritated’. b Amberber has wɔddǝdǝ ‘love’.
fear sadness disgust anger happiness surprise desire
table 3
tuħɁin/-ity’ak šiiwaƚ(uk) c’ic’iša wiiq-/-ayuk Ɂuuʕaqtl čiħatšitl -‘ałsimhi
Nuuchahnulth ne-le-get beyehdoy … -let (ekee) yee(ne) … -let -ts’eeyh dzaa … -let de … -lo
Koyukon fǝrra azzǝnǝ?a tǝnaddǝdǝdǝssǝtǝdǝnnǝk’?b
Amharic
-moto ‘fear’ lele-ipata ? kete-malual menmeen kete-imap ?
Mbula
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example, is also ‘rotten, smelly’), the specific emotional sense being determined by a specific choice of (derivational) prefixes. The nearest expression to disgust given by Jetté & Jones for that language is exclamation (e)kee, not a verbal expression at all.10 Similar points could be made about all the items listed here. And yet this does not undermine the contention that there are such things as “basic” or “primary” emotions. The English words conventionally labeling them are not exactly the same thing: they refer in fact to secondary emotions. This can conveniently be illustrated with one particular word, ‘happy’ and its near-equivalents, contrasting the situation with similar words in Russian. In their nsm analysis of emotion words in Russian, Levontina & Zalizniak (2001) argue, like Wierbicka, against the notion of “basic” emotions, pinpointing the culturally specific differences between the Russian ‘happy’ words sčastje, radost, and corresponding adjectives sčastlivy ‘happy, joyful’ and rad ‘glad’, also dovol’ny ‘contented, satisfied’. The basic idea is that the first word refers to a “higher” form of spiritual happiness, perhaps closer to English ‘joy’, whereas the second is more mundane, closer to English ‘glad’. The third corresponds to the more neutral sense of English ‘content (e.g. as I am)’ or the sentiment expressed in ‘I am happy to stay where I am, thanks’ (compare dovol’ny soboj—with oneself, i.e. ‘self-satisfied’). Certainly there are important nuances here, but there is also something obviously common to all these expressions, anchored as they are in a corresponding “primary” emotion, which can be physiologically described in terms of the involvement of specific neurotransmitters, heart beat variations and facial expressions, etc. Consider the following closely related terms in English and the kinds of situations in which they are actually used: ‘happy’, ‘glad’, ‘content’, ‘pleased’, ‘delighted’, ‘joyful’, ‘jubilant’, and ‘cheerful’. Some of these are used of the external behaviour and appearance of a third person (namely the last three listed)—one would not normally say ‘I am joyful/jubilant/cheerful’ about oneself. (Recall the difference between adjectives and verbs of emotion in Japanese mentioned above.) I shall say no more about these. There are also constructional differences in usage between the first five. Thus ‘glad’ generally requires a specific situation or event one is glad for (with a ‘that’ clause, overt or understood), though one can also be ‘glad for someone’ and ‘glad to do something’, and it can be used attributively in certain phrases like ‘glad tidings’. ‘Content’ can either be followed by a ‘that’ clause or by a prepositional phrase with ‘with’, though it can perfectly well be used without
10
And the ‘sad’ term beyehdoy … -let is an idiom meaning literally ‘s.th. came up in his throat’ (the verbal root is highly general -let ‘experience event’).
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any complement. It generally presupposes some hope or expectation that has been satisfied. ‘Pleased’ is much like ‘content’, but can occur in some additional constructions like ‘I am pleased to announce that –’. ‘Happy’, the most general term, can be used in all of these constructions. But what of the semantic nuances? To narrow this down a bit, is there a difference between ‘I am glad (that)’, ‘I’m pleased (that)’, and ‘I’m delighted (that)’, as opposed to more general ‘I’m happy (that)’? The first of these would be appropriate in situations such as ‘I’m glad that you could come’ (I’m not overwhelmingly happy about it, however—this is almost a fixed formula), as also in ‘I’m glad that you got your old job back’ (good for you, but it doesn’t necessarily affect me one way or the other). Saying ‘I’m happy that …’ in these cases would certainly be warmer, expressing a definite positive response to the event. ‘I’m pleased that’ is more like ‘I’m glad that’ but sounds still more detached, on occasion almost official. This in contrast to ‘I’m delighted that’, which is much more strongly affirmative, but would hardly be used of mundane happenings like ‘I’m delighted that you found your biro again’. Conversely, it would hardly be acceptable social usage to say ‘I’m glad you survived the train crash’ to a victim bandaged up in hospital (and certainly not ‘I’m content that you survived’!) Similar distinctions could be made in connection with the other constructions mentioned above, the general point being that all of these words require a degree of “fit” to different situation types. This includes ‘happy’ itself, which presupposes a definite internal feeling when said in first person expressions like ‘I’m happy now the weather has improved’. It likewise presupposes certain behavioural and appearance features of other people when one says ‘He/she is happy now the weather has improved’. It would not be used—or rather, I would not be believed (except ironically)—if I said it during a thunderstorm, or if the third person concerned was in tears. Note that one would not normally say ‘I’m happy that the weather has improved’ (as opposed to ‘I’m glad that the weather has improved’). This somehow removes or weakens the speaker’s inner feeling, projecting it out onto the weather, as it were (‘glad’ is acceptable, being less subjective). It would only be said if there were some contrast with something that the speaker is less than happy with, for example being prevented from going on a holiday but being happy about the good weather at least. A final point: there are several different secondary kinds of ‘happiness’ depending on general context: there is happiness at being in the presence of one’s lover, there is shared jollity in a convivial situation, thankfulness upon receiving assistance in attaining some goal, happiness at being engaged in work that one loves, and many more. The limited typological spread of languages considered in this chapter will hopefully suffice to indicate how typological data can help clarify the univer-
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sality of primary emotions—not in the sense of individual languages having words that directly and uniquely refer to primary emotions, but in the sense that most if not all secondary emotions referred to by these words can be seen to have common roots in the primary emotions, some more directly than others. This applies also to such apparently socio-culturally determined words as those for ‘shame’ and ‘jealousy’, which build on Disgust and Anger (and more), modulated according to socio-cultural “frames”. Primary emotions can be regarded as the sub-categories of core quadrant ‘Feel’ as they relate to the cognitive category of Emotional feeling on my model. This includes the anchoring of the secondary emotion Love, as analysed in chapter 16. Though greatly modified by socio-cultural factors, it can be seen to be anchored in primary happiness, though it also typically contains elements of (at least) desire (whether treated as belonging to a separate category Wishing or as a subcategory of Emotional feelings). The situational variants typically include the relationship between lovers or close friends, that of parents to offspring, and that of individuals to their possessions or various social or national groupings. As with all secondary emotions in actual situations, this one tends to become mixed with other elements (not necessarily positive) to produce more or less unique combinations.11 There are other sub-categories within the ‘Feel’ quadrant that correspond to Experiencing rather than to Emotion as such, in particular all of Damasio’s “background” emotions. 11
There may concomitantly be different blends of neurotransmitters activated. For example, besides the general dopamine reward to the frontal (mainly left hemisphere) cortex in happy situations, a different neurotransmitter, oxytocin, is implicated in the more tender forms of love.
chapter 24
Seeming: An Odd One Out? Verbs like ‘seem’ in English present at first sight a problem for the Circle of Cognition: they appear to straddle several non-adjacent categories. They seem to belong primarily under Perceiving (hence the strong association with underlying ‘seeing’), and yet they precisely undermine the conclusive evidence of the senses. So far as the direct evidence of the senses is not taken at face value illusory Imagining may well be involved (recall that German dünken covers ‘imagine’ as well as ‘seem’). So do these verbs also belong under Imagining? And if the uncertain evidence is nevertheless maintained in the form of a belief despite the weak evidence, their meaning is akin to Believing (as in ‘He seems to be following us’). There is also a link to Judging (‘She seems beautiful to me’),1 and to Emotional feeling, as in Algerian Arabic ḍhar ‘seem (to s.o.), please (s.o.)’ (compare English ‘seemly’ below). Note that Danish synes under the latter category is both ‘think (that)’ and ‘seem’, and, as we have seen in chapter 7, an earlier meaning of English ‘think’ was ‘cause to appear, seem’ (as in ‘methinks’). As regards Experiencing (feeling) we saw in chapter 18 that one of the Collins definitions of ‘feel’ is ‘seem or appear in respect of the sensation given’, and that Finnish tuntua ‘feel’ is also ‘seem’. Similarly, Indonesian has rasanya ‘it appears, seems’ (from rasa ‘feel’). And finally Knowing: at least some uses of ‘seem’ have an evidential force, indicating an inferred source of knowledge. These categories are far apart on the circle, and it seems unlikely at first sight that the words ever applied to intermediate categories. But we need to look more closely at the words themselves. Buck (1988: 1209) states concerning such words in IndoEuropean languages: “Verbs for ‘seem’ are now used most commonly with reference to something that we rather think, but do not know positively, is so. Such a relation to thought, opinion, is original in a few, but most of them are based in origin on the notion of visual appearance. These are mostly cognate with verbs for ‘see’, ‘show’ or ‘shine’, or with adjectives for ‘similar’. Some are reflexive forms of verbs for ‘put’, ‘do, make’, or ‘give’, with development through an intermediate ‘represent’. In these verbs the impersonal use, ‘it seems’ (to me, etc.) is the most widespread.” That many of these words appear in passive/impersonal constructions is a clue as to something constructional going on.
1 Compare also the nominal use of Spanish parecer ‘appear, seem’, i.e. ‘opinion’.
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_025
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First ‘seem’ itself. The Collins definition is: “(1) to appear to the mind or eye, look (as in ‘This seems nice’ or ‘The car seems to be running well’); (2) to give the impression of existing, appear to be (as in ‘There seems no need for all this nonsense’); (3) used to diminish the force of a following infinitive to be polite, more non-committal, etc. (as in ‘I can’t seem to get through to you’).” It is stated that the verb probably comes from Old Norse sœmr ‘befitting’, related to Old English sēman ‘reconcile’, ultimately the same as ‘same’.2 In other words ie root *sem‘one’. The deeper relationship involving ‘Similitude’ is investigated in Fortescue (2010). Let us consider some further situations in which ‘seem’ is typically used—notice the different constructions involved: ‘I seem to have been here before.’ (When experiencing mild déja vu, for example upon turning a corner in a city one is visiting for the first time, or simply when one can’t remember whether one has been somewhere before or not.) ‘This seems a good spot for a picnic.’ (Having kept one’s eyes open for a suitable place while on a holiday jaunt.) ‘He seems guilty to me.’ (All the evidence points in that direction.) ‘I seemed to be the only one in the room not wearing a tie.’ (At an official reception.) ‘There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here, officer.’ (Upon a woman’s husband being arrested for breaking into the neighbour’s house when his front door key wouldn’t work.) ‘I seemed to be walking along a stream full of singing fish.’ (Reporting a dream.) ‘It seems like the country’s going to the dogs.’ (An elderly gentleman’s view of the contemporary moral climate.) ‘He seems nice enough.’ (About an alleged rapist next door.) ‘It seems to me that you are barking up the wrong tree.’ (To a friend’s fanciful attempt to explain a lost item as the result of a break-in.) ‘I seem to have missed my bus.’ (When examining the time table and one’s wristwatch in an empty bus shelter.) ‘You seem to be growing thinner every time I see you.’ (By a worried mother to her son who has flown the nest some time ago to go to university.)
2 The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology gives on sœmr as ‘honour’ (in Middle Swedish ‘befit’), and oe sēman as ‘settle, reconcile’. Hence also English ‘seemly’, ‘similar’ (Latin similis), ‘simple’ (Latin simplex) and (via Old French resembler) ‘resemble’.
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‘She seemed about to faint.’ (Recalling an incident with a customer in a shop.) ‘I seem to remember that it was the next house on the left.’ (Looking for the house one lived in as a child.) As can be seen in the last example, ‘seem’ is compatible with some other cognitive categories (including Remembering), but not all. Thus ‘I seem to recognize this’ and perhaps ‘I seem to understand/know this’, but hardly ‘I seem to believe this’, ‘I seem to think this’, ‘I seem to wish this’, or ‘I seem to feel this’. However one could well say ‘I seemed to hear a voice’ or ‘I seemed to see a castle in the clouds.’ Perhaps it is only possible when evidentiality is involved—in the unacceptable sentences there is no evidence to consider, only immediate feeling or thinking. Compare this with similar uses of near-equivalent ‘appear’, which can be substituted for ‘seem’ in all the sentences above except the last (and the other possible combinations mentioned above). ‘Appear’ seems somehow more objective than ‘seem’, which definitely refers to an inner judgement or feeling. It has in fact two homonymous (?) meanings: besides the near-equivalent one to ‘seem’, also (unlike ‘seem’) ‘show up, come out’, as in ‘The sun appeared from behind a cloud’ (for the origin of which see the common source in connection with Latin and French apparaître below). We can ignore the second meaning (which is not cognitive), except to note that its objectivity might well account (by diffusion) for the nuance of objectivity in the word’s ‘seem’ sense.3 Austin (1962: 36–37) distinguished alternative expressions like ‘He looks/appears/ seems guilty’ and ‘The hill looks/appears/ seems steep’ in terms of what today would be called different kinds of evidentiality. Thus he analyses ‘look’ (a further near-equivalent of ‘seem’) as ‘to have the (literal) look of’, ‘appear’ as more or less the same, but with an added nuance of “under special circumstances” (which may suggest a broader reality behind mere appearance), and ‘seem’ as a matter of actual evidence (of any kind) bearing on whether the person really is guilty or the hill really is steep. Note that ‘look’ in this sense is either combined with an adjective (as above) or with a comparative phrase with ‘like’. With a noun complement (a matter of Judging) it is less likely: ‘He seems a nice fellow’, is fine, but hardly ‘He looks a nice fellow’.
3 The Collins definition of ‘appear’ is: “(1) come into sight or view; (2) seem or look; (3) be plain or clear as after further evidence; (4) to develop or come into being, occur; (5) become publically available; (6) to perform or act; (7) to be present in court before a magistrate or judge.” It is only in meanings (2) and (3) that it is approximately synonymous with ‘seem’.
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As an example of a similar verb functioning as an evidential marker consider Dixon’s description of Jarawara (Arawá family) awine/ awa ‘it appears that, seems that, I think/guess, in my opinion’. He analyses this as a grammaticalized use of awa ‘see, be seen’ (plus continuative -ine) as a “secondary” evidential verb (Dixon 2003: 186). Similarly, LaPolla (2003: 64) glosses the following inferential evidential expression in Qiang (Tibeto-Burman) as ‘seem’: (8) panǝ-le ɦa-Xoǝ-k-ǝn thing-def or-broken-infer-2sg ‘It seems you broke the thing.’ (inference from seeing the broken pieces in the person’s hands) In Apache (Athabaskan) de Reuse (2003: 81–82) gives an example of the “nonmirative inferential” as in (9) with particle golnīī, distinguishing it from the “physical inferential” in (10) with particle nolįh, glossed as ‘seems’: da golnīī (9) chaghąshé doo ákū nádabini’ children neg there 3pl.want.to.go.back neg inf.non.mir ‘I think the children don’t want to go back there.’ (10) mizhaazhé míł na’iłbąąs nolįh dak’eh ałdó’ áí her.little.one with.it 3sg.imperf.asp.drive pinf at.times also that ‘Her daughter seems to drive her at times also.’ (seeing the daughter’s car driving around) In Abkhaz (West Caucasian) Chirikba (2003: 247) glosses the inferential evidential affix -zaap’ as ‘apparently’: (11) ar+t ø-nǝ-(a)j+ba-r-c’oa-wa-zaap’ these they-prev-rec-caus-perish-progr-infer ‘They are apparently killing each other.’ (observing the battle of two protagonists) Also West Greenlandic has evidential affixes which can be glossed ‘seem’ or ‘appear to’ (Fortescue 2003: 293–294): (12) sialler-sima-voq rain-apparently-3sg.indic ‘It appears to have rained.’ (observing the wet ground—the speaker was not present during the rain)
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(13) arnar-palup-poq woman-act/look.like-3sg.indic ‘He seems effeminate.’ (because of his behaviour or appearance) In fact West Greenlandic has an array of affixes with similar meanings: -(r)palaar- ‘appear to be a –, act like a –, one can hear V-ing’; -(r)palug- ‘seem, look, act or sound like a –’ (‘look like -ing’ on verbal stems); -(r)pallag- ‘one can hear V-ing’ or ‘they say he has V-ed’; -gunar- ‘seem to, look like, evidently’ (inferential or sensory); -sima- ‘apparently, evidently’ (speaker not present); -nga‘resemble’; and a “hearsay” enclitic -gooq ‘apparently, it is said’. Central Alaskan Yupik has -ciɬi- ‘appear to have been V-ing/ to have been V-ed’ and -ŋatǝ- ‘seem to be V-ing, seem like’. Japanese has, besides mieru ‘seem’ (passive of mi- ‘see’) and omowareru (passive of omou ‘think’) clitic -rashii ‘like a –’. Nuuchahnulth has a similar affix -cy’ak ‘appear like, seem, resemble’, as in t’icy’ak ‘appears like a large stone’. Tamil has a “hearsay” clitic -aam ‘it seems’. Ainu has a special ‘nominalizer of appearance’ na following copula -ne, but also a specifically visual evidential construction with another nominalizer siri (originally ‘appearance’) followed by interrogative sentential final enta an ya (Refsing 1986: 232). Xhosa is different again: it has a verb uku-nga ‘wish, seem, may, would, should’ (the first sense was mentioned already under Wishing)—the basic meaning is modal/epistemic (McLaren 1955: 128ff.). In other languages the distinction between evidential and epistemic (degree of certainty) may not be clear cut, and this is in fact true also of West Greenlandic, where -sima- and -gunar- align with “other” epistemic affixes. But let us go back to English ‘seem’ and ‘appear’ and their parallel in other European languages. As Buck stated, most of these have their source in words to do with visual appearance, while others relate to ‘thinking’. Of the first type note German scheinen ‘seem, shine’ (in the former meaning with dative object), and Danish synes ‘seem/appear to one’ (related to syn ‘sight’), a reflexive verb with indirect object-to-subject shift—met already in the sense ‘think (that)’ under Judging. The Icelandic equivalent is sýnast, virðast (the former as in Old Norse—from sýna ‘show’—, the latter with verða ‘become’ rather). Greek has fainomai ‘seem’, middle voice form of faino ‘give light, cause to appear’, and Russian has kazat’sja ‘seem’ (reflexive of kazat’ ‘show’). Latin has parēre, apparēre ‘appear’ (the latter, with prefix ad-, specifically ‘come into view’), also impersonal pāret ‘it is evident’ and appāret ‘it is clear’—probably the ‘come into view’ sense was original (and related to Greek peparein ‘show’). This is of course the origin of both English ‘appear’ and French equivalents: paraître ‘appear, seem, come out’ and apparaître ‘appear, show up, come out’, the former mostly with impersonal subject il paraît (que) ‘it seems (that)’. But it also has sembler ‘seem’,
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from Latin similāre ‘make like, be like’ (< similis ‘like’), which brings us back to the origin of English ‘seem’ given above. As regards those to do with ‘thinking’ rather, besides English ‘methinks’ and Old English Þyncan ‘seem’ (related to Þencan ‘think’), there is German dünken ‘seem, imagine, fancy’—the first meaning in an impersonal construction (es dünkt mich/mir), otherwise with direct object (especially sich ‘oneself’ plus an adjective complement), also Swedish tyckas ‘seem’ (reflexive of tycka ‘think’). Classical Greek dokeo ‘think, seem’ is related to dekomai ‘receive’ and Latin docēre ‘teach’. Somewhat less obvious are Serbo-Croatian činiti se ‘seem’ (reflexive of činiti ‘do, make’) and Czech zdát se ‘seem’ (lit. ‘give oneself out as’). Nahuatl has, besides nèci ‘appear, become visible, seem’, mach ‘apparently, it is said, it appears that’ and machia ‘be known, apparent’, related to mati ‘know’. Also Hindi has a link to Knowing: mālūm hota hai ‘seem’ consists of mālūm ‘known, evident’ and the present or perfect of honā ‘be, become’. The link to ‘seeing’ is not just an Indo-European phenomenon. Thus Finnish has näyttää ‘seem’ and nominalized phrase nähdäkseni ‘it seems to me’, from nähdä ‘see’, and Turkish has görün- ‘seem’ from gör- ‘see’. Mandarin Chinese has hăoxiàng ‘seem, appear’, where xiàng is ‘be like, resemble, similar, picture’ and hăo ‘well’ (compare under Imagining). It also has kànlai ‘it seems (that)’ (subject’s impression) with kàn ‘watch, consider’ and lai ‘come’. Aleut has lida‘resemble, seem to be or do s.th.’ from li- ‘appear, come into sight’ plus applicative -Vda-. And finally, Koyukon has comp kk’aa#D+’aan ‘act like, seem to be comp’ with root -‘aan ‘do, see’, as also in nel’aanh ‘it is visible, appears’.4 Yoruba has wò ‘look at, seem, visit, search’, and note highly polysemous ri ‘see, be, have, find’, which can also mean ‘seem’. Kwaza is different: it uses a simulative morpheme -nãixwa ‘resemble, pretend, fake, seem to’, from -nãi ‘be like’ and classifier of things/persons -xwa (van der Voort 2004: 904). The etymological data thus appears strongly to implicate the perceptual anchoring of this category. But what then of the other categories it appears to impinge upon: Knowing, Judging, Believing, Imagining and Experiencing? First, consider the relationship to Knowing, which is the category most immediately relevant to evidentials (which by definition concern ‘source of knowledge’). It should be pointed out at once that evidential expressions or systems do not only concern source of knowledge (seeing, hearing, inferring, etc.), they also serve the important function of distancing a speaker from the information being reported. This is true of items like West Greenlandic “hearsay” clitic
4 comp is ‘complement’. It also has P+kk’e#den-t’aa ‘be like, seem like, look like’ from root -t’aa ‘be/do thus’—-kk’e- is postposition ‘like’ and P its object.
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-gooq, analysed as indicating “displaced responsibility” in Fortescue (2003: 295). This is a social rather than a cognitive matter. It is also true of some English uses of ‘seem’, as in the examples given above: ‘I seem to have missed my bus’ (silly me!) and ‘I seem to remember that it was the next house on the left’ (I may be wrong, but it’s hardly my fault after all these years). We have also seen that ‘seem’ is incompatible with definite knowledge from any source (*‘I seem to know that …’). Rather than indicating source of knowledge as its principal meaning, then, ‘seem’ appears to introduce an element of epistemic doubt or even scepticism, whatever category it is applied to. For example Judging: ‘This seems a good spot for a picnic’ (but I may be wrong) and ‘He seems nice enough’ (but behind appearances it is another matter); or Believing: ‘She seemed about to faint’ (but pulled herself together); or Imagining: ‘I seemed to be walking by a stream full of singing fish’ (but it was only a dream); or Experiencing: ‘I seemed to be the only one in the room not wearing a tie’ (this was my first impression at least). The key feature could be termed Appearance (as opposed to Reality), rather clearly a sub-category of Perceiving (i.e. “in the mind’s eye”). But what are the consequences for my circular model of taking the decision to anchor ‘seem’ just here? There might be no great problem accepting polysemy of ‘seem’ in one direction to Experiencing and in the other as far as Judging (though with a couple of apparent “gaps” to explain), but what of the link to Imagining? Consider the difference between ‘I imagined walking along a stream full of singing fish’ and ‘I seemed to be walking along a stream full of singing fish’. The first sentence describes an objective report of an occurrence beyond the “here and now” of everyday rational experience. It could have been said to a psychiatrist and reported further by him in the third person: ‘He imagined …’. On the other hand it would sound rather odd or contrived if the speaker continued ‘but it was only a dream’, a quite natural continuation of the second sentence (‘I seemed to …’), which describes a subjective experience from the responsibility for which the speaker distances himself. ‘Imagining’ is essentially a projective category, whereas ‘seem’ refers to a form of passive perception. In other words, I would suggest that ‘seem’ in this sense does not pertain to the category Imagining, but belongs under Perceiving and extends only into categories adjacent to it. ‘Seem’ (and similar verbs in other languages) certainly serves an evidential function, and like most evidential expressions is anchored in perception. Only inferential evidentiality may be broader: though it may crucially be based on visual evidence (“after the event”), it may also refer to pure mental actions, i.e. to Thinking (about) and Judging—some languages indeed distinguish a “physical inferential” from other kinds of inferential, thus the difference between examples (9) and (10) in Apache given above. There is not necessarily any polysemy here
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however: evidentiality is after all a linguistic rather than a cognitive category. It indicates the route to knowledge or belief rather than the state of Knowing itself. Inferential evidentials all ultimately involve perceptual evidence, but evidence that is more indirect, relying more on the contents of memory and belief than on immediate experience alone. As for the “gaps” in the circle if ‘seem’ is to be anchored within Perceiving, this is rather easily taken care of. Consider ‘It seems to be George Clooney we are looking at’ (a shot on tv) as an example falling within Recognizing. And ‘It seems to be a case of top dog getting the last word’ (commenting on a company boss overruling a perfectly reasonable plan by a subordinate) as one of Understanding. ‘I seem to have missed my bus’ refers to Knowing and ‘He seems guilty to me’ refers to Believing (combined here with Judging). ‘I seem to have been here before’ refers to Remembering, and ‘There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here, officer’ involves Thinking about. ‘It seems to me that you are barking up the wrong tree’ refers to the adjacent category of Judging (based on inferential evidence). What is common to all of these is the element of doubt and reservation associated with the word. Not all of these meanings can rightfully be termed “evidential”—compare the two Collins examples given above: ‘There seems no need for all this nonsense’, and ‘I can’t seem to get through to you’. Such sentences could well be termed “social” rather than “cognitive”. In sum, ‘seeming’ is not “an odd one out” amongst cognitive categories, it is in fact best regarded as a sub-category of Perceiving. It is nevertheless unusual in adding an attitudinal nuance (of reservation or epistemic uncertainty) into whatever other categories it may extend to or combine with, plus its strong affinity with impersonal constructions. The latter feature reflects the diachronic source of the word (as of many of the equivalent terms in other languages) in the non-cognitive notion of some object or phenomenon “suddenly appearing”, which subsequently developed into the purely cognitive sense. Some languages—including English as regards the word ‘appear’— have maintained polysemy (if not by now homonymy) with the source meaning. A final point: how can I be sure that ‘seeming’ is just a sub-category and not a distinct category in its own right? The answer, I would suggest, is that its basic feature of “Appearance” is covered by the basic parameter of the category Perceiving, which you will recall from chapter 19 is: “the perceptual awareness of a new stimulus (thing, person, event or situation), through whatever sensory channel or combination of channels is involved.” Defining its own basic parameters as a category would not differ significantly from this. What distinguishes it from other sub-categories of Perceiving is the element of doubt or uncertainty alluded to above.
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Below is the asl sign for seem, appear, look, the idea of which Riekehof describes as “suddenly the palm appears”. The meaning seems to reflect the original “suddenly appearing” sense of ‘appear’ and is both iconic (the palm “showing up”) and metaphoric (the palm standing for the object of perception or mental experience).
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Guess: How a Single Category Can Involve All Others Of the 18 categories of cognition the one best suited to illustrate the essential inter-dependence of all of them is Guessing, though we have already seen something similar in the case of ‘planning’ under Intending and ‘intuition’ under Experiencing. Something so simple as trying to solve a riddle may illustrate this inter-dependence. Consider the following one: “It doesn’t burn in the fire and doesn’t drown in water. What is it?” First you must Perceive the sequence of sounds or written symbols that is the trigger to the process, extracting them from sound waves or, as now, from the symbols on the page. You must Recognize them as words of the English language. You must Understand their meaning and context (including the speech act they are performing). What you Know about the concepts corresponding to the words must be activated—that is, what you know about fire, burning, water and drowning. You must Believe that they are being used in a conventional sense (no trickery involved) as a genuine clue. You will also have to Remember what the point of this game is (which you have played before) and the goal you are trying to reach, bearing this in mind the whole time. This will require that you Think about the meaning of the words in relation to that goal, allowing all manner of associations to arise. Some of these you will Judge as more relevant than others and keep them potentially active. Employing strategies of guesswork that have worked before you will try and Calculate whether any of the most salient of these fits the clue. You may Decide that one of them is near enough, so you formulate an initial Guess corresponding to it. By doing so you Intend to complete the task successfully. You Imagine that the person who set you the riddle will either admit that your guess is correct or deny it. You Expect your guess to be correct, but being realistic you know it could be wrong—at least you Wish it to be correct. Your announcing the word whose meaning corresponds to your guess will not be free of Emotion, either of potential triumph or of disappointment. If it turns out that your guess was wrong and the riddler reveals the true solution to be ‘ice’, disappointment is modified by Surprise when you see how the clue so obviously matches the solution, and you Experience defeat. End of game this time. Well, perhaps you guessed the answer already. Bravo. People could no doubt have played a similar game—and guessed the answer—in any language in the
© Michael Fortescue, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004449527_026
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world (at least in any place where ice is known). In fact it is a riddle translated from the original Even (a Tungusic language of Siberia).1 Most languages probably have a word for riddles or similar guessing games, many of them related to their word for ‘guess’, for example German Rätsel;2 French devinette; Spanish acertijo; Italian enigma; Greek ainigma; Russian zagadka; Finnish arvoitus; Japanese nazo ‘riddle, puzzle’; Chukchi kǝcɣepǝjolqǝl ‘riddle’ (lit. ‘thing to be guessed’); Even ngenuker; Nenets xobtsoko (from xo- ‘find’); Indonesian tekateki ‘riddle, puzzle’; West Greenlandic nalorsitsaarut ‘riddle’;3 Aleut lisngiqaĝi-X ‘riddle, parable’ (from lisngi- ‘resemble’); Nuuchahnuth cuuxcuuxwa ‘a guessing game similar to lahal’;4 Nahuatl zāzanilli ‘story, riddle’ (cf. zāzan ‘many things’); and Yoruba alọ ‘riddle’.5 Rather than a nominal expression, Koyukon has an opaque fixed expression tlatsaa k’aaghes’aanaa ‘here is a riddle’ (with verb root -‘aan ‘see’ and the first word probably related to tso ‘amusing’), and verbal O+oo+ɬ+tsaah ‘ask a riddle’ (the root -tsaah is ‘cry’). Something similar (with no actual word for a riddle) may be found in certain other languages too. All of these words, then, imply the kind of multi-category scenario for solving sketched above. For a survey of riddles in a wide array of the world’s languages see Taylor (1951: 871–897), and for a rich coverage of riddling in a single African language (Iraqw) see Mous (2000). Here are a few more of the translated Even riddles, typifying the genre: ‘He eats all day. Doesn’t drink tea or water. At night, going to sleep, he stops eating.’ (Fire) ‘It’s white, but not an Arctic hare, it flies but isn’t a seagull. What is it?’ (Snow) ‘In a blue ocean a bronze plate is floating’ (The sun) ‘An old man sits in a hundred layers of clothing. When they take off his clothes, tears flow.’ (An onion)
1 2 3 4
Taken from the brochure “Ngenuker”, published by Magadanskaj knizhnaj izdatel’stvon (1993). From the same source as raten ‘guess’ and English ‘riddle’ (see chapter 11). From nalorsit- ‘set s.o. a question they can’t answer’ (cf. nalu- ‘not know’). “Lahal is a traditional game of First Nations people. The game pieces consist of 11–13 sticks and 4 bones. The sticks are also painted in different colors for different reasons and are made of different types of wood. The bone game pieces are made of antlers or bone. Two teams play consisting of one to many players. Five players to a team is ideal. The objective of the game is to win sticks by guessing where the unmarked bones are in the opposing teams hands. Drumming and singing with your team helps distract the opposing team. The team that gets all the game sticks wins the game.” (Definition from Wikipedia) 5 Literally ‘which is inverted’ acc. Bowen (1858: 16).
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‘Four brothers under one hat. What is it?’ (A table) ‘Two eagles grasp each other with their talons. What is it?’ (Scissors) ‘The unknown one has two heads, two arms, six legs and one trail. Who is it?’ (A rider) ‘A red fox looks out from her lair, but never leaves it. What is it?’ (A tongue) ‘There are two lowly fellows. Brothers. They compete all the time as to which of them is the fastest. What are they|?’ (Legs) ‘People coming to the forest without axes, without timber, built themselves a house.’ (Ants) And from a completely different part of the world, here are a few riddles translated from Muna, an Austronesian language from Celebes:6 ‘Lined up but not soldiers, bound but not prisoners.’ (A fence) ‘In front a cone, in the middle a drum, at the end a bobbin holder.’ (A pig) ‘It has a neck but no head.’ (A shirt) ‘As a child it wears a sarong, as an adult it goes naked.’ (A bamboo stalk) ‘When hair meets hair, the world disappears.’ (Closing the eyes) ‘Its top is below, its roots are above.’ (A beard) ‘Hold fast above, stir around below.’ (To row a boat) Among other well-known games involving guessing there is Twenty Questions. In Fortescue (1980: 109ff.) I discussed the different strategies that players apply in playing this game, ranging from logical inference to random guessing. The game-specific strategies employed to formulate successive questions on the part of the “guesser” cover: (1) top-down division of the search set (initially defined by “animal, mineral or vegetable”) by a factor of about two; (2) bottomup asking about a property of a specific entity or class within the search set that is intuitively felt to be likely; and (3) asking a question known from experience to be useful in the game. The strategies used for solving riddles, on the other hand, are usually based on recognizing relations of analogy, so the domain of the target object must be guessed from the clue given by recognizing the homologous relations held in common by both domains (i.e. by metaphoric transfer). A more complicated kind of guessing is seen in the televised team
6 From the website www.bahasamuna.org/en/stories‑tales‑texts/100‑Muna‑riddles, edited by René van den Berg (revised 2018).
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game where participants (including professional comedians) have to fill in the blanked out endings of newspaper headlines of an unusual or amusing kind. This task is doubly complex since the participants have to bring to bear not only their experience of such headlines in the British press but also the specific linguistic context of the visible part of the headline (meeting the expectation of a syntactically suitable following phrase) and to devise what would be a still more amusing or outrageous completion of the sentence for the audience, regardless of the actual missing words (the purported target). This latter consideration can override (and usually does) serious guesses as to the target words and constitutes a tactic not unknown to Twenty Questions for that matter. A more mundane kind of guessing can be seen in such ritualized domestic challenges as “Guess who that was” spoken to her husband by a wife who has just answered a phone call that he was not party to. Perhaps he just heard some fragmentary responses produced by his wife. When she replaces the phone she says the words, a jocular command to try and guess correctly, like in a guessing game. The clues and circumstances that he can bring to bear in answering her might include: her intonation of pleasant surprise in uttering the phrase; the tone of her responses on the phone that he could hear (neither serious and impersonal nor chatty as would be suitable to a close female friend); the person(s) from among their acquaintances who could have sparked off her positive reaction; similar situations where that quasi-rhetorical request has previously been made (by herself or a character in a movie, etc.); the inference that it had been someone they had not been expecting to call but had perhaps been talking or thinking about recently (otherwise why would she have uttered these words?); and his own interest (or lack of it) in actually trying to guess—he could simply have replied “No idea” right away. If he does go ahead, the situation is somewhat like that in Twenty Questions, a matter of reducing the search set of potential callers. Now consider another kind of guessing: when you encounter a word you do not recognize while reading a text in a language that you have a basic knowledge of but are not fluent in. In my case Spanish. The following example is plucked from a reading of Eduardo Mendoza’s tongue-in-cheek thriller “El misterio de la cripta embrujada” (“The mystery of the enchanted crypt”). It will provide us with a feel for the multiple layering of context that one brings to bear in guessing the meaning of an unfamiliar word. This is preferable to using a story in English where it’s rare for a native speaker to be held up long enough by an “odd” word to become aware of the complexity involved in supplying it with a meaning, however approximate. Let us look at a specific instance in detail, taken from the third chapter of the book. It concerns the word verja (unfamiliar to me at the time) in the sentence “Llegué calado frente a la verja y comprobé
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que la descripción del comisario habia sido rigurosa.” (“I arrived soaked before the verja and understood that the inspector’s description of the place had been accurate.”) What are the levels of context that helped me make a reasonable guess as to its meaning before checking it in the dictionary? First we need to know the context of the sentence that has been built up in the preceding chapters, in other words the state of my on-going mental model of the narrative at this point.7 The nameless narrator is first met in an asylum, where he has been locked up for five years for antisocial behaviour of a kind only hinted at. The first chapter describes what took place in the office of the asylum director, where he was confronted with two other figures, a police inspector and a nun. The inspector, for whom the narrator had provided certain services in the past, described the background of the case he was now involved with, namely something that happened six years previously in a convent boarding school for young ladies run by the nuns. It appeared that the daughter of a rich industrialist had disappeared from the dormitory one night and could not be found the next morning, although there was no way she could have escaped from the closely guarded, high-walled grounds. The day after her disappearance the inspector (otherwise at a loss in his investigations) was summoned by the mother superior of the institution to her office where the parents of the girl were already present. He was told in no uncertain terms to drop the case by the father, who claimed that the girl had in fact already turned up, but was unable to (or refused to) give an explanation for her disappearance. This the nun confirmed and explained further that the mother superior had then agreed with the parents that the girl could not be allowed to continue at the convent school. The inspector now revealed that another girl has disappeared in exactly the same circumstances, and that he and the girl’s mother agreed that they needed someone to investigate the case who was familiar with the underside of society (perhaps they were thinking of a possible abduction for a ransom), someone it would be easy to disown if things went wrong, in other words the narrator himself. He was told that if he doesn’t obey his instructions to the letter—in particular not to go anywhere near the convent school or the parents of the girl—the consequences for him would be most unpleasant. He was temporarily released into the city (Barcelona) for this purpose. There is a longish passage where he meets his sister and boyfriend in a bar, but is brushed off by them, so he goes off to try and find a place for the night. Not having enough money even for a cheap boarding house he tries his luck in
7 See Fortescue (2007b) for an analysis of how one might build up such a model from a written text.
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the Metro. He manages to sneak in at the crowded station and stretch out on a seat in the first train to arrive and tries to get some sleep, but he is taunted by a group of drunken youth and leaves the train at the next station. We reach the following situation immediately preceding the target sentence and can now enumerate the different contextual factors relevant to my interpretation of the unfamiliar word: a) My ongoing mental model of the narrative at that point: Having left the Metro the narrator has realized he cannot be far from the convent school, so despite the warning of the inspector he has decided to take a closer look at the place. It is raining. The momentum of the narrative at this point is towards his finding the convent—and when he indeed finds himself before its “verja” various possible continuations of the action are held in suspension as he considers what to do next. The narrative is continually generating largely unconscious predictions in my mind as to what is going to happen next, hypotheses which either get reinforced or fade away if no longer relevant. Will he or will he not try to get in? Note that the inspector had described the convent as surrounded by a high wall, but had not used the word verja. b) Knowledge of the narrator’s character, background, and motivations: I know that the narrator is unstable but not necessarily mad; he is observant despite being poorly educated. He has a rough, antisocial side to him which led to his present situation, but he is capable of being humble towards authority and is obviously unhappy about being incarcerated. He is not particularly concerned about keeping his word, so he may be looking for a way to creep into the convent unnoticed. We know that he has the general intention of helping the inspector’s investigation of the case—complying may help get him permanent release. But he is also aware of the inspector’s interdiction about entering the convent. c) General knowledge and expectations: I know—or think I know—that institutions like convents are usually housed in large buildings, often with a wall around them, though my knowledge here is very limited. I assume that they are very private and are rather difficult to get in or out of without explicit permission. I also know that there must be an entrance, however high the walls. d) Knowledge of this genre of text (and its conventions): In thrillers of this kind there are generally representatives of the police who have the authority to interrogate people, and a suspect—if guilty of a crime—
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will try to cover it up. Or—if they are not—try to prove their innocence. At this point we don’t know if the narrator is guilty of anything, but we suspect that he is being manipulated by the inspector in some shady affair. Who is guilty of what is not usually revealed too early in such works as this would deflate the suspense of the action. Clandestinely sneaking into premises at night is a common occurrence in narratives like this. e) Conformal sequence of events leading up to the immediate situation: The sentence containing the word verja that describes the narrator recognizing that he is standing in front of the convent follows on smoothly and logically from the preceding sentences that described him deciding to take a look at the convent but having initial difficulty finding the way because he has been “out of circulation” for so long. There are a limited number of obvious continuations at this point, but his trying to locate a way in is a distinct possibility. f) Overt syntax of target word (part of speech, etc.): The word is clearly a noun (preceded by an article) and stands in the normal position for an object of a preposition ( frente a). g) Clues as to the semantic field to which the word belongs: The singular definite article preceding verja suggests (by a bridging inference) that the noun refers to a typical part of this kind of building (a convent), one that might well be significant enough to mention in the light of what is to follow. It is specifically something one can stand “in front of”. A way in? h) Similarity in form to other, known words or roots: The phonological shape of the word’s initial syllable suggests some possible relation to the international word ‘veranda’, but this is not an obvious candidate for a single highlighted part of a convent. Notice that the overall context here is cumulative, much of it accreting as continually updated background. The actual on-line processing at this point is mainly at a low, linguistic level, but it must continue to be conformal with (a) and (b) above. My guess was in fact that a verja is a gate or doorway of some sort, since this meets all the contextual constraints above, although it could also refer to something more specific to a convent, like a grill in a door. There are no other obvious candidates competing with it except perhaps ‘wall’, since we know the convent is surrounded by a high wall. My guess was verified by a subsequent check in the dictionary, which gives verja as ‘iron gate, iron railings (fence), grill (of a window)’. The ‘grill’ meaning seems best to fit the image
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I have of what the entrance to a convent might look like: a door with a grill through which an inmate may talk to a visitor. My point with this extended example is that there are layers within layers of contextual information bearing upon guesses even as apparently straightforward as this. This reflects the hierarchical nature of cognition in general—compare the layered intentionality mentioned in chapter 12, but also the hierarchical nature of perception: perceiving a seagull, for instance first involves reacting to a (moving) thing, then to seeing that it is a bird, then that it is a seagull, then that it is a herring gull. Close to guessing unfamiliar word meanings is guessing “what happens/ happened next” in real life situations. The expectation of a likely next action or state is after all one of the factors behind guessing the meaning of a new word encountered in a narrative context. In real life situations there are various constraints on the domain of conjecture, and thus on relevant clues—as determined by external circumstances rather than by a narrator or a riddler. Such situations range from recognized abstract “types” to individual ad hoc events, and guesses as to their outcome range from random—e.g. guessing “heads or tails” following the tossing of a coin—to highly informed—e.g. that of a professional meteorologist concerning the weather (here ‘prediction’ rather than ‘guessing’ is the usual term applied!). Expectations of outcomes can be long-term (similar to the way one expects the overall plot to develop within a narrative) or shortterm (similar to the way one expects a word like a preposition to be followed by its object), and may derive either from general knowledge/ beliefs or from personal experience. At the most basic sensorimotor level this includes prediction as to what is going to (or is liable to) happen next in a given physical situation— e.g. when you see a fast cyclist swerve alongside a turning lorry. There may be internal simulation, imagistic thought and projection (empathy) involved. If your prediction does not turn out to correspond to the event’s actual outcome in this instance, relief (and perhaps an element of surprise) is likely to ensue. Still closer to guessing unfamiliar words in a text is guessing familiar words in a noisy context, for example if your partner calls to you from an adjacent room while music is playing, uttering words like “The towel is dry now”, but the words ‘towel’ and ‘dry’ do not register. The immediate domestic context (the wet towel in question having been left on a radiator), the prosodic shape and tone of the utterance, and the likelihood of the words referring to some mutually relevant situation will help reconstruct the muffled words. Further working out of the indirect speech act involved will also be necessary. Other kinds of factor are involved when, for example, you are asked to guess somebody’s age (especially by a lady no longer young). Beside the immediate evidence of the senses and your knowledge of how young or old people of a certain age tend
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to look, there is the question of tact, of your particular relationship with the person concerned, and with your expectation of possible consequences of an ill-judged answer. Also scientific hypotheses are species of guesses (notably those reached by abduction), albeit ones that are well structured, based on complex objective data and statistics, and expressed in words or other symbols. All of these examples are distinct from the sensorimotor planning of one’s own next movement (based on implicit experience) in which no actual guessing is involved, just projection forward, as in judging one’s forward steps in a run-up to a jump. Guessing as I have defined it is at the conscious, declarative level of prediction. What is common to all varieties of guessing as opposed to sensorimotor planning is an uncertainty that needs to be replaced by certainty through mental activity. If the outcome is positive this will result in a satisfying feel (i.e. Experience) of one’s guess “fitting” the evidence. As regards the neural organization of guessing we need to return to the conception of the brain as a “prediction device” mentioned in the Introduction (cf. Clark 2013, and Alexander & Brown 2019). This covers neural activity from lowlevel sensorimotor error prediction to high level (conscious) guessing—there are multiple levels of prediction. These authors refer to Bayesian probability logic based on experiential “priors” projected to present input or future goal, to generate internal models of the source of signals. The basic prediction mechanism is bidirectional, with top-down prediction error proceeding downstream, and bottom-up prediction proceeding upstream. The goal is the removal (the “explaining away”) of discrepancies, allowing a return to (modified) equilibrium. Only new or unexpected input is registered at the sensorimotor level, and eeg responses may reflect competing interpretations. The prediction mechanism here is instantiated in a recursively hierarchical manner, at successively higher levels, constantly building models of the environment and the body’s situation within it, allowing the brain to predict their respective future states. Clark points out that different predictions/ guesses may involve different sensory channels for the same input state, with different uncertainties and priors. In general he proposes the principal of “gist at a glance” (the general scene first, then details filled in), whatever the modality. He also makes the suggestion that the feedforward aspect of the mechanism (prediction error) may be performed by superficial pyramid cells in the cortex, while more stable prediction representations may be a function of lower level cells (with longer distance connections). Perception and action are at all events interwoven in guessing. Prediction is based on preceding abstraction, and planning and prediction probably involve overlapping regions of frontal cortex—both are hierarchically organized and involve recursive embedding. One can envisage a hierarchy of feedback/ feed-
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forward loops allowing error-detection and prediction at every level. The question then arises as to the order in which different levels of context become involved when forming predictions as one reads a text—bottom up (from linguistic forms), top down (from the level of the mental model), or all at once? A reasonable assumption as regards meeting an unfamiliar word is that the first level to be activated is that on which the anomaly (the sudden lack of continuity) is first detected, presumably that of lexical semantics. But to return to the level of cognition and the points made at the outset of this chapter. Guessing is a multifarious category as regards its involvement with other categories in actual mental tasks. This is partially reflected in the split in many languages amongst the cognitive verbs referring to it, a split between those referring to the activity of guessing and those referring to its positive result in a state of Knowing or Understanding, as well as cases of “straying” to Believing, as described in chapter 11. It also displays a particularly transparent relationship with context, which includes the evidence relevant to a particular instance of guessing. The layered or hierarchical nature of context in general is more open to detailed scrutiny here than in relation to other cognitive categories. However, the truth of the matter may well be that all the categories (not just Guessing) imply to some degree all the others in any actual chain of thought. This is what facilitates the successive encapsulation of expressions involving more than one cognitive category compatible with the same complex context, as in ‘He felt that he recognized somebody’, ‘He remembered thinking he had forgotten something’, or ‘He wished that he knew what to expect’. Simply looking at the clearly defined cognitive words and their syntactic frames in a single language like English may obscure the underlying reality. Take the last example above. This can be schematized as wish X (know Y (expect Z)), in which the capitalized items represent our broad cognitive categories, not words of English nor necessarily universal semantic features—as we have seen, the categories have their own internal structure and divisions.8 What ensures that the sentence corresponding to this is conformal with a possible reality is not the syntactic frames of the corresponding words alone (though these too must be conformal), it also concerns the semantic nature of X, Y and Z adhering to the categories themselves. Thus the object of wish, i.e. X, is something (a state of affairs or a thing) that is desirable but not immediately attainable, in fact it can be quite impossible to attain, and this is compatible 8 The sentence could have been, for instance, ‘He wanted to know what to expect’ with the same basic semantic structure, but with the weaker (less emotionally tinged) sense of Wishing that does not assume that the object is not immediately attainable (and of course with the syntactic construction required by ‘want’).
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with know Y, where Y is in context unattainable, as signalled by the “irrealis” past tense of the English verb. The presupposition associated here with wish is that the speaker does not know but desires Y, i.e. expect Z, even though the object of know is generally a fact or situation held to be true by the speaker. But this is precisely the case with the object of expect, i.e. Z, that the speaker does wish were a fact. Z itself refers to a situation or event that the speaker predicts will probably occur though he is not entirely sure that it will. Here it is indicated as quite unknown to the speaker by the use of the wh-question word as object. The whole structure could further be embedded in a Guessing frame—‘She guessed that he wished he knew what to expect’—where the guess presupposes the availability of relevant evidence, and so forth.
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Conclusions We have now examined a wide array of lexical evidence bearing on the relationship between polysemy, metaphor, homonymy, and diachrony. The accumulation of overlapping meanings in words expressing the eighteen hypothesized categories of the Circle of Cognition plus the polysemy demonstrated with adjacent categories has by and large justified the division, though my intention has not been to argue for their rigidly fixed number—the fluidity of the boundaries between the categories militates against being too dogmatic here. The categories—and their labels—may well need to be adjusted. But it is precisely this fluidity that allows the polysemous spread into adjacent categories of the words expressing them. It is also what allows the translation of cognitive terms back and forth between languages and the replacement of more basic words by more nuanced, culturally specific, or metaphorical variants, all sharing the same focal meaning of the category. Metonymy can be seen as the principal motivation behind both the polysemous extensions of word meanings between adjacent categories and between the categories and the sensorimotor and emotional “quadrants” underlying them at a more primitive level of cerebral organization. Polysemy as such needs to be distinguished from the combination of categories (often distant) in single words, examples of which have been discussed under Believing, Thinking, Perceiving, Guessing and Surprise. These are different again from cases of constructional “straying”, where the meaning of the target category overwhelmingly dominates. Homonymy and diachrony enter the picture in considering the historical background of polysemy. Homonymy is seen as a relative matter—relative, that is, to a contemporary perspective. The limits of polysemy are reached when the same historical word has been extended along two different routes and adjacency on the circle has been broken so that a contemporary speaker will not (necessarily) recognize the results as any longer related.1 Typically, they will be used in quite different contexts, syntactically as well as semantically—and, as we have seen, syntactic/constructional “straying” has reinforced the pressure towards homonymy. However, different contexts of use are not definitional of homonyms—the same phonological word within the same cognitive category
1 I am of course not talking here of two historically distinct words that happen to have fallen together phonologically.
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may also appear in a number of different contexts and accordingly display differing syntactic patterning (cf. the difference between ‘think about’, ‘think over’, and ‘think of’ discussed in chapter 2). Yet here the basic parameters of the category concerned are not broken. As regards diachrony, we have seen numerous cases where the diachronic/etymological source of a word does not directly reflect its cognitive anchoring in one of the pre-verbal “quadrants”. This is particularly true when metaphor has been at play. In ontogeny, Shatz et al. (1983) have shown that children’s acquisition of mental verbs in general starts initially with purely pragmatic use before referring to actual mental states, for instance using ‘think’ in utterances modulating assertions or directing interactions, so diachrony is obviously irrelevant there. Then there is metaphor. The Collins definition of metaphor is: “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance”. Metonymy, on the other hand, involves association rather than resemblance or analogy: “contiguity within a semantic field”, as Taylor (1989: 139–140) puts it. He sees metaphor as grounded in metonymy. Metonymic extension may develop from a “core” meaning to an implication of that meaning, and is a central source of polysemy, reflecting in turn the very nature of perception. It should be clear from preceding chapters that there can be multiple metaphorical expressions of the same fundamental meaning, and most of them do not directly reflect the pre-verbal basis of the category but have arguably been acquired in relatively late historical periods. True metaphor, which is always “figurative”, containing a sharp break between source and target “domains”, can thus be opposed to the development of core-to-periphery polysemy, as in the development of words for ‘seeing’ (or, as with Australian languages, ‘hearing’) into ones meaning ‘understanding’. Much hinges here on the definition of “domain”. For Rakhilina & Reznikova (2016: 105–107) a higher order “domain” constitutes all the semantic frames of predicate words that cover it. Thus for the domain of swimming and floating the relevant semantic frames are active swimming, passively drifting with the current, floating on the surface, and the movement of vessels and people in vessels. This is a useful way of looking at the grouping of frames, but may be too narrow to correspond to what cognitive linguists generally mean by “domain” relevant to metaphorical transfer—are we to include the transfer from the “domain” of swimming to that of walking? And where does crawling come in? Another problem arises in cases where one can imagine a gradual transition between sensorimotor and cognitive meanings of the same word via “bridging” mixtures of the kind Evans and Wilkins (2000) discuss. Calling this “metaphor” seems far-fetched. This is not to say that etymology and cognitive “roots” never
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coincide—they precisely do in cases like ‘see’ for Understanding or Knowing. But such transparent relationships can cut across underlying adjacent quadrants, as in the case of words like ‘grasp’ for Understanding. This is what I have dubbed “quasi-metaphor”, precisely because it cuts across quadrants: the source lies in one (e.g. ‘Act’), and the result corresponds to another (e.g. ‘Sense’). Note that I have consistently treated the four “quadrants” as distinct domains, but this is something of an artefact: in fact they are all intimately interconnected, the one leading into the other in a circular manner mirroring the circular interaction of the cognitive categories above them in the course of any actual stream of thought. I have also uncritically used the term “domain” in chapter 22 concerning the semantics of Surprise. Was this inconsistent? I do not think so. The usage is harmless as long as meaning shifts from one such domain to another is not automatically taken to indicate metaphor. As we have seen, the transition between polysemy, normal semantic expansion, and homonymy through intermediate meaning loss can also involve domain shift. Metaphor may itself have to be regarded as a scalar matter, ranging between quasimetaphor (barely distinguishable from cross-category polysemy), through historically frozen metaphor, to “true” (recognizable) metaphor of a transparently figurative nature. What now of the two specific hypotheses mentioned in the Introduction, the Semantic Map Connectivity hypothesis and the Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis? How have they fared? I believe the evidence marshalled above has supported them both to a considerable degree, although the variety of semantic map presented is of a novel kind (purely lexical, and in the form of a closed ring). The overlap between the meanings of words in the same language is greater and the borders of the cognitive categories more porous than in orthodox semantic maps. However, there were no obvious gaps in the polysemic spread of the selection of English and Japanese words illustrated in Figures (9) and (10). A limitation of semantic map theory in general is that if one chooses too broad a conceptual space to map language-specific expressions onto, overlaps and discontinuities are bound to creep in. Does the widespread overlapping of meanings of words from adjacent categories of the Circle undermine my application of the theory? Not necessarily. Caveats simply have to be made about possible multiple exponents of a given meaning and focus placed upon the most “basic” of these, as determined by proximity to the definitional parameters of the category concerned. There will still be overlap due to polysemous extensions in all directions, e.g. the spread of the English words ‘feel’, ‘think’ and ‘seem’ that we have investigated. This certainly represents a divergence from standard semantic map theory, but its connectivity hypothesis has nevertheless shown its relevance to the domain of cognitive verbs, for the
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polysemous spread of the meaning of these verbs has been shown to be overwhelmingly into or through adjacent categories—or with words referring to the sensorimotor and emotional “quadrants” in which they are anchored. As regards the Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis, the diachronic source of individual cognitive verbs—in so far as this can be made out—is overwhelmingly from more concrete sensorimotor or behavioural meanings to more abstract cognitive ones, as can be seen from the etymologies of English emotion words at the beginning of chapter 23 and from many of the etymologies in other languages scattered throughout this volume. The opposite development, from cognitive to sensorimotor or behavioural, has not been seen. Even the deepest cognitive roots of Indo-European that we have met like *weid‘see, know’, *gnō- ‘know, recognize’, and *wen- ‘desire, strive for’ appear to reflect sensorimotor/behavioural actions or states, obviously in the first case, probably in the second (related to ‘can’), and possibly in the last (related according to Watkins to ‘win’). Exceptions to both hypotheses have found reasonable explanations. As regards the Semantic Map Connectivity hypothesis, we have seen gaps in the connectivity as due either to alternative diachronic routes from the same source word (leading to homonymy)—as in the case of French entendre (see under Understanding)—or to constructional “straying” (mainly aspectual) bringing a word closer to some other, not necessarily adjacent category, as for instance in the extension of English ‘guess’ under Guessing to ‘guess that’ under Believing. Semantic change by expansion and contraction of a word’s meaning is a natural historical development and the earlier stages of such a process can easily be lost as contexts of use also change. Gaps in a semantic map sometimes reflect what Haspelmath (2003: 236) calls a “doughnut” phenomenon that can occasionally upset the Semantic Map Connectivity hypothesis, i.e. when some new term “from outside” ousts an expression in the middle of a map.2 We have seen several examples suggesting this in the present investigation. As I suggested in chapter 7 there may once have been wide polysemy of verbs covering both ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ in the past in the languages of Europe, as still in evidence in other languages outside of it today, for example in New Guinea and Australia, but now restricted to more specific “islands” as regards the European verbs of cognition. The descendent of the hypothetical source of English ‘think’ can no longer refer to emotions or feelings, as it may well once have done— recall the mention in chapter 7 of its source in ie *tong-, covering feeling as well
2 An example is discussed in Fortescue (2010) involving the historical replacement of the intermediate space between the ‘same’ and ‘different’ senses of ‘another’ by ‘one like –’.
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as thinking, and consider also the wide polysemy of Japanese omou in Figure 10 of chapter 21, a word with ancient roots covering both areas. The evidence presented in this volume points in fact towards an earlier blurring of the distinction between feeling and thought (and its linguistic expression)—and recall Chinese xīn ‘heart, mind’ mentioned in chapter 2. Indeed, thinking itself can be seen as the gradual evolution of a more abstract mode of feeling—a very Whiteheadian conclusion.3 What do I mean by “abstract” here? Well, look at the distinction I have made throughout between the core and the surrounding circle of cognitive categories: all of the latter are abstract vis-à-vis their bodily anchoring in the (universal) core quadrants, and this includes even emotional “feelings”, as we saw in chapter 23, also Perceiving as opposed to raw sensory input in chapter 19. The core sensorimotor categories themselves can only be felt. It is only by abstraction that feelings are available to conscious thought processes. Abstraction is a summating of complex bodily experience into simpler, generalized units ameanable to mental manipulation and relatable to the contents of memory already laid down, a process greatly facilitated by the largely arbitrary symbols of language. The anchoring of words in specific experiential feelings, however attenuated, fluid, or watered down, remains to guide their deployment in further, novel contexts. It can be said that all the cognitive categories around the circle contain an element of potential emotional valence that can be activated by stimuli or goals (external or internal) that compete as “lures” for conscious attention. Only in the case of Emotional feeling is the valence overt and definitional. Abstraction both selects details for emphasis and—in Whitehead’s words—“stimulates vividness” and “enhances experience”: when followed by “rationalization” it can lead back to concrete experience through exploiting the connectivity between wide-spread mental contents (cf. Whitehead 1966: 123–124). In connection with the Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis, metaphorical expressions appear often to have replaced more basic words within the category concerned or shunted them into adjacent meanings. One thus suspects that ‘seeing’ verbs under Understanding have in some languages been replaced by various metaphorical alternatives presented there. Metonymy appears nevertheless to be the principal force at work, either at some historically earlier stage when there was a broad polysemy reflecting metonymic adjacency, now broken, or when a constructional shift brought the meaning of a word into metonymic proximity to words in some other, more distant category. Bor-
3 Consider his notion of the “conceptual feeling”, which can transcend the here-and-now to grasp what might be and what might have been (cf. Whitehead 1966: 26).
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rowing from a foreign language will often obscure the situation, thus English ‘depressed’ is ultimately from Latin dēprimere ‘press down’, as we have seen, but this passed through Late Latin and Old French before reaching English, and it is not clear where exactly en route it attained its cognitive meaning— perhaps through a “bridging” period in which both meanings existed side by side. Of course the hypothesis will always remain just a hypothesis, since the ultimate diachronic origin of the majority of cognitive verbs lies just beyond the reach of etymology. Perhaps the label of the hypothesis should be ‘Sensorimotor/ behavioural-to-Cognition’, given the numerous examples of behavioural sources such as ‘regret’ from Germanic *grǣtan ‘weep’ or ‘recall’ from ‘call’, but this seems clumsy—the ‘Act’ quadrant of sensorimotor (including kinaesthetic) activity can itself be understood as having behavioural correlates. Another important aspect of the meaning of cognitive verbs that we have observed is the role of context in determining the exact choice of meaning from a wider polysemous range. Recall the case of Pitjantjatjara kulini in chapter 7 which can mean either ‘listen to’ or ‘think about, understand’, the former limited to contexts of auditory stimuli (as object). This is distinct from constructional “straying” as I have defined it, which can shift the meaning of a word to a different category altogether. The kind of semantic shift involved here is either a category-internal matter—including polysemy with the underlying core quadrant, as in this case—or one of homonymy, often reflecting an ancient “broken” metonymy, as in the case of French entendre in chapter 12, which can mean both ‘intend’, ‘expect’, and ‘understand’, depending again on the semantic nature of the verb’s object. Each category has its own natural links to contexts of situation or event types, though these may vary noticeably from culture to culture. It may be useful to envisage a further branching outwards of the semantic frames of individual words into specific situation types in a virtual “outer ring” surroundings the categories. Such complex socio-cultural scenarios will by their very nature be highly heterogeneous and may (as we have seen) combine elements from more than one category. This has been hinted at with the examples of situational usage in English presented in connection with the successive categories treated in this book—a little more detail was provided as regards the categories of Surprise in chapter 22 and Guessing in 25. But this is too vast a subject to hope for anything like satisfactory coverage in a work like this, even for a single language.
Sources for Languages Cited arabic: Collins Arabic Dictionary Essential Edition. 2018. (2nd edition). Glasgow: Collins. chinese (mandarin): Yuan, B. & K. Church. 2008 (3rd edition). Oxford Chinese Mini Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. chukchi: Inenlikej, P.I. 1982. Slovar’ čukotsko-russkij i russko-čukotskij [ChukchiRussian and Russian-Chukchi dictionary]. Leningrad: Prosveščenie. danish: Nielsen, B.K. 1998 (6th edition). Engelsk-Dansk Ordbog. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. english: Hanks, P. (ed.) 1979 (1985). Collins English Dictionary. London/Glasgow: Collins. finnish: Wuole, A. 2000. The Standard Finnish-English, English-Finnish Dictionary. London: Continuum. french: Ormal-Grenon, J.-B. & J. Rubery. 2009 (4th edition). Concise Oxford Hachette French Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. german: Betteridge, H. (ed.). 1960 (3rd edition). Cassell’s German & English Dictionary. London: Cassell. greek: Watts, N. & H. George-Papageorgiou. 1987. Collins Gem Greek Dictionary. Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co. hindi: McGregor, R.S. 1992. The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. icelandic: Taylor, A.R. 1990. Icelandic-English, English-Icelandic Dictionary. New York: Hippocrene Books. indonesian: Davidsen, K. 2015. Compact Indonesian Dictionary. Tokyo: Tuttle. italian: Rubery, J. & L. Riu (eds.). 2010 (4th edition). Pocket Oxford Italian Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. japanese: Masuda, M. (ed.) 1964. Kenkyusha’s Pocket Japanese-English Dictionary. Tokyo: Kenkyusha. And: Vaccari, O. & E.E. Vaccari. 1970 (19th edition). English-Japanese Conversation Dictionary. Tokyo: Vaccari’s Language Institute. ket: Werner, G.K. 2002. Ketsko-russkij i russko-ketskij Slovar. Sankt-Peterburg: Drofa. And: Vajda, E. & H. Werner. In preparation. Yeniseian Etymological Dictionary. koryak: Žukova, A.N. 1967. Russko-korjakskij slovar’ [Russian-Koryak dictionary] Moskva: Sovetskaja entsiklopedija. latin: Morwood, J. 2008. Oxford Latin Mini Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. nahuatl (Classical): Karttunen, F. 1992 (original version 1983). An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman: University of Oklahoma. And: Launey & Mackay 2011 (see References).
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nenets: Tereščenko, N.M. 1982. Nenetsko-Russkij Slovar’. Leningrad: Prosveščenie. quechua: Gonzales, O., C.M. Janney, & E.F. Thompson. 2018. Quechua Spanish English Dictionary. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc. russian: Wheeler, M. & B. Unbegaun (eds.). 2007 (4th edition). Oxford Russian Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. spanish: Clari, M. (managing editor). 2006. Collins Spanish School Dictionary. Glasgow: Harper Collins. swedish: Nöjd, R., A. Tornberg & M. Angström (eds.). 1959 (3rd printing). McKay’s Modern English-Swedish and Swedish-English Dictionary. New York: David McKay Company, Inc. turkish: Collins Turkish Dictionary. Essential Edition. 2019. Glasgow: HarperCollins. west greenlandic: Berthelsen, Chr., B. Jacobsen, R. Petersen, I. Kleivan, & J. Rischel. 1997. Oqaatsit. Grønlandsk-dansk ordbog [Greenlandic-Danish dictionary]. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik/ Ilinniusiorfik. And: Schultz-Lorentzen 1927. Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. yoruba: Bowen, T.J. 1858. Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution.
Other Cited Languages Included in the References abkhaz—Chirikba 2003 aguaruna—Overall 2014 ahtna—Kari 1990 ainu—Refsing 1986 aleut—Bergsland 1994 american sign language—Riekehof 1978 amharic—Amberber 2001 apache—de Reuse 2003 arabic (algerian)—Tapiero 1971 arrernte—Van Valin & Wilkins 1993, and Harkins 2001 cantonese—Matthews 1998 chukchi—Fortescue 2005 (and see above) cree—Wolfart 1996 and Ellis 2000 dakota—Boas & Swinton 1911 dalabon—Evans & Wilkins 2000 dyirbal—Dixon 1972 dzongkha—van Driem 1998 icelandic—Einarsson 1967 (and see above)
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japanese—McClure 2000 jarawara—Dixon 2003 kalam—Foley 1986 kalispel—Vogt 1940 khwe-||ani—Brenziger & Fehn 2013 kobun—Davies 1981 koyukon—Jetté & Jones 2000 kwaza—van der Voort 2004 lao—Enfield 2001 luwo—Storch 2013 maaka—Storch & Coly 2014 manambu—Aikhenvald 2013 mbula—Bugenhagen 2001 nanai—Sem 1976 nivkh—Fortescue 2016 nuuchahnulth—Stonham 2005 pitjantjatjara—Evans & Wilkins 2000 qiang—LaPolla 2003 samoan—Mosel & Hovedhaugen 1992. tamil—Asher 1982 tariana—Aikhenvald forthcoming tibetan (classical)—Beyer 1992 turkish—Michaelis 2001 and Slobin & Aksu-Koç 1982 (and see above) warlpiri—Evans & Wilkins 2000 xhosa—McLaren 1955 !xun—König 2013 yidiƝ—Dixon 1977 yukaghir—Nikolaeva 2006, and Maslova 2003 Indo-European languages cited from Buck (1988): Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Old High German, Old Norse, Old English, Danish, Swedish, Sanskrit, Irish, Russian, Polish, Czech (Bohemian), and Old Church Slavonic. Eskimoan languages besides West Greenlandic (wg) and Proto-Eskimo (pe) in Fortescue et al. (2010): Central Alaskan Yupik (cay), Hooper Bay/Cevak, Alutiiq (aay), Central Siberian Yupik (csy), Canadian Inuktitut, North Alaskan Inupiaq (nai), Polar Eskimo, and East Greenlandic.
figure 12 Geographical spread of the languages cited
166 sources for languages cited
appendix 1
A Sentimental Circle To illustrate how the categories can lead one to the other around the Circle of Cognition consider the following précis of a narrative in the manner of Jane Austin. It starts with the category Believing, and continues around the circle until arriving back at the starting point. It could have started and ended at any point—and in any language.1 We observe a rather plain young girl of good breeding but reduced circumstances sitting pensively on a bench in the garden of a country house where she lives with her widowed mother. She is evidently daydreaming, with a faint, wistful smile on her lips. For she Believes that a certain young man, the dashing son of the neighbouring squire and his wife, is not impartial to her company. She is Remembering the not very propitious first time that they met in the drawing room of the Big House. The squire, Sir Reginald, being away on business, his wife, Lady Prudence, had taken a liking to the sweet-natured, fatherless daughter of ‘those people next door’ and had invited her to take tea with her that afternoon. It was then that the young man had unexpectedly appeared, on leave, it seemed, from his regiment. His uniform was dishevelled and he was limping slightly, as if he had fallen from his horse. He acted strangely distant and morose, as if embarrassed by the presence of the girl and avoided looking her in the eye. She could not help Thinking about the rumours she had heard of the young man’s profligate lifestyle (though she did not really know what was meant by ‘profligate’), and in particular of a certain incident of supposed cowardice under fire. She wondered too about Lady Prudence’s motive in inviting her just at this time when she must have known that her son was expected home. Was something being planned behind her back? She Considered him handsome enough, but inscrutable in his attitude towards her—downright rude in fact. But putting aside the unsubstantiated rumours, and taking into account that he appeared to have met with a recent accident, she Calculated that his attitude towards her might well simply conceal resentment at his mother’s attempt to bring the two of them together in this all too obvious manner. It was possible that his embarrassment in her presence was indicative of an inner shyness beneath the gruff soldierly surface. She Decided to put that hypothesis to a test and the opportunity to do so presented itself when, at his mother’s behest, he accompanied her to
1 Reminiscent of the Caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland. As the Dodo describes it: the racecourse is laid out in a sort of circle and all the party are placed along the course, here and there. They begin running when they like and leave off when they like, so that it’s not easy to know when the race is over. Cognitive verbs as runners?
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her pony trap patiently awaiting her departure in the drive. She asked him point-blank whether he was purposely slighting her. From his stammered apologies she Guessed that he would not be entirely averse to a further, more private meeting. Indeed, as her faithful pony trotted her homeward she fully Intended to allow him a chance to express himself more clearly. But how and when? That chance arose sooner than she expected when a few days later Sir Reginald returned from London and announced that the annual Hunt Ball was to take place as was customary every year at this time. An invitation to the ball, borne by a servant from the Big House, arrived unexpectedly for the young lady and her mother, signed by the squire himself—no doubt at the suggestion of Lady Prudence. That night she could not sleep, Imagining what it would be like at the great ball to which her parents—no hunting enthusiasts—had never been invited before. In her mind she saw the handsome soldier shyly asking her for a dance, taking her hand, and sweeping her off into the ballroom just as the strings launched into a stately quadrille. But what could she really Expect of such a public venue? Would they really have a moment to themselves beyond the reach of parental scrutiny? She knew what she Wished for—the chance for whispered exchanges in some secluded spot where he would admit his faults and she would assure him that with her help he could overcome them, whatever they were … And so it came about that Fate was to allow her wish to be granted. When the night of the ball arrived she was all of a flutter, feeling contradictory Emotions pulling her first one way then another: anxiety, followed by sudden joy, then fear of possible rejection and shame at the presumption of her notion of helping him reform his ways. But the emotion that prevailed as she stepped into the sumptuously illuminated hall, arm in arm with her radiantly smiling mother, was one close to ecstasy. They were ushered towards the ballroom from which the strains of lively music were already emerging. And it was not long before she was approached by the uniformed young man who was the object of her earlier ruminations. And (oh joy!) he requested—shyly indeed, but with an ardent glow in his eyes—the honour of the next dance with her. As they jigged back and forth in a rousing Gay Gordon his face drew at times so close to hers that she could feel his vinous breath on her cheek, but the heady excitement of the dance was suddenly replaced for her by horrified Surprise: the young man, whose exaggerated enthusiasm as he pranced about was in fact bordering on the downright clumsy, collided with a servant bearing a tray of champagne who was passing close by. The glasses were sent flying in all directions and the young soldier careened painfully into a sideboard. Though she Felt like she was experiencing some dreadful dream, the other dancers simply continued dancing as before (in these circles faux-pas were publically invisible) while her beau limped painfully away towards a curtained balcony. Hastening in the same direction, she could not at first see him in the dim moonlight, then she Perceived his silhouette leaning against the balustrade as he adjusted his displaced prosthetic leg—of course, he must have lost the limb in recent active combat, hence his
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prolonged leave! She Recognized the mistake she had made in half believing the malicious rumours she had heard about his cowardly conduct. When he turned his face towards her on hearing her gasp, he knew that his secret was out. “Now I Understand!” she cried and rushed towards him, flinging her arms about him. And when he burst into tears of mingled joy and shame, she Knew that he truly loved her as she now realized that she loved him too. It would not be long before a ring would be produced and the circle complete …
appendix 2
Raw Lexical Data Chapter 2: Mind Latin: mēns ‘mind, intellect, reason, judgement, frame of mind, disposition, intention’ (from ie men-,1 like English ‘mind’; also animus ‘spirit, mind’, ratio ‘reason’, and intellegentia from intellegere—originally ‘comprehend, discern’, from inter + legere ‘choose’) Greek: nous ‘mind, intelligence, wit’ (noo ‘understand, think’—Classical Greek noeio ‘perceive, notice, think’; idea ‘idea, notion, thought’, but Classical ‘look, form, nature’ and Platonic ‘ideal form, archetype’, from ie *weid- ‘see’) French: esprit ‘mind, wit’ (< Lat. spīritus ‘breath’; and raison ‘reason’ from the Latin ratio ‘calculation, transaction, affair, judgement, reason, system, theory’2) Spanish: mente ‘mind’ German: Geist ‘spirit, mind, intellect, wit’ (and Verstand ‘intelligence’) Old English: gewit ‘mind, intelligence’ (from witan ‘know’) Danish: sind ‘mind’ (originally ‘sense’; and forstand ‘intelligence’) Icelandic: hugur ‘mind’ (originally ‘mood, mind’) Irish: aigne ‘spirit, mind, intention, desire’ Russian: um ‘mind, intellect, wits’ (and razum ‘reason, intellect’, mysli ‘mind’—lit. ‘thoughts’) Hindi: man ‘mind, heart, soul, wish, temperament’ (also samajh ‘mind, understanding, intelligence, opinion’) Sanskrit: buddhi ‘mind, intelligence, understanding, wisdom, thought’ (from bodhati ‘awake’, hence Buddh ‘the Buddha’, lit. ‘the awakened one’) Arabic: ʕaqil ‘mind, intelligence’, also nafsin ‘soul’ (from nafs ‘breath’) Finnish: mieli ‘mind, thought, mood, opinion’ Japanese: seishin ‘mind, spirit, soul, heart’ (the first element ‘spirit’, the second ‘soul, deity’; and more colloquial kokoro, lit. ‘heart’; also kangae, lit. ‘thought’) Mandarin Chinese: tóunăo ‘brains, mind’ (or năozi; nao is ‘brain’ and tou ‘head’; sīxiàng ‘thought, idea’) Dzongkha: sem ‘mind’ (and ‘lo ‘heart, mind, spirit’) Chukchi: ɣǝttapɣǝrɣǝn ‘mind. knowledge, consciousness, awareness’ (< pc *ɣǝrtæp‘clever’; also kuvcemɣ’ol’ǝn ‘clever, wise’; cetkejuŋ ‘mind, thought’) 1 Which covered mental activity in the widest sense, including ‘feeling’ (thus Latin mens). 2 From ie *ar- ‘fit together’, whence also ‘art’ and ‘order’.
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Yukaghir: önmǝ ‘mind, intellect, memory, feeling, intention’ (but also čuŋžǝ ‘thought’) Nenets: yi ‘mind, thought’ (and yid’a yaderŋa ‘he thinks’—lit. ‘his mind goes’) Ket: an(un) ‘mind’ (associated with the nose/nostrils by Keta acc. Vajda) Ainu: ram(u) ‘heart, mind, meaning’ Indonesian: akal ‘mind, intellect, logic’ (and hati nurani ‘inner self, conscience’, sehati ‘of the mind (adj.)’, from hati ‘heart’; nalar ‘reason, common sense’) West Greenlandic: isuma ‘mind, thought, meaning’ (as verb ‘think’; also sila ‘intelligence, consciousness’) Aleut: an’g- ‘mind, guts’ Nuuchahnulth: łim’aqsti ‘mind, heart, brain, spinal cord, pithy core of tree’ (-’aqsti is ‘inside’; and pw -‘ayq ‘in mind’—compare -Ɂaaqtl ‘intend to’; also -suuqstutl ‘in the mind, in the body or womb’) Koyukon: yenee ‘mind, thought, will’ (and huyo ‘sense, intelligence, mind, will’—root yo is ‘age, wisdom’) Ahtna: iin/ ni ‘mind, thought’ Cree: ma.mitone.yihcikan ‘mind’ (Wolfart; from ma.mitone.yiht- ‘ponder it’ and -kan ‘instrument of’; note also ‘final’ -e.liht-/-e.lim- ‘by thought’)3 Tariana: -kale ‘heart, mind, breath, soul, life force’ (thinking as speaking to oneself is expressed by a serial verb meaning ‘say-think’ in one’s soul) Kwaza: erito ‘heart, soul’ Manambu: mawul ‘mind, mindset, understanding’ (lit. ‘insides’—Aikhenvald 2015) Yoruba: inọ́ ‘mind, belly, inside’4 (also iyé ‘mind, understanding’ from yé ‘comprehensible’ under Understanding; for èro ‘thought, considering, telling’ see under Thinking) Xhosa: um-phefumlo ‘breath, soul’ (uku-phefumla ‘breathe’)
Chapter 3: Understanding Old English: gecnawan ‘understand’ (‘coming to know’ from ie *gnō- ‘know’; also ongietan ‘perceive, feel, see, understand’) German: verstehen ‘understand’ (and begreifen ‘understand’ < ‘grasp’)5 Danish: forstå ‘understand’ (also begribe < ‘grasp’, and fatte ‘understand, grasp’) Icelandic: skilja ‘understand’ (< ‘separate, discern’) Latin: intellegere ‘understand’ (< inter+ legere ‘select between’)
3 Compare Kalispel lexical suffix -é(ls) of subjective states, physiological and emotional (Salish in general has such suffixes of mental and emotional states, like Wakashan). 4 Also used in expressions of emotion like inọ́ mi dọ̀ n ‘I am happy’ (lit. ‘my insides are pleasant’). 5 Like English ‘understand’, oe forstandan. Compare ‘grasp’ and idiomatic ‘get it’ for the second word.
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French: comprendre ‘understand’ (< ‘grasp’; and entendre ‘hear, understand’ from Latin intendere ‘stretch forth’—directing attention towards something;6 also voir ‘see, understand’) Italian: capire ‘understand’ (< ‘grasp’; and intendere, as the French above) Greek: katalambano, antilambanomai ‘understand’ (< ‘grasp’; also noiotho ‘understand, know, feel, perceive’, and noo ‘think, understand’ from nous ‘mind’—classical sinnoeo ‘understand’—see noeo under Thinking) Russian: ponjat’ ‘understand’ (< ‘grasp’; also vniknut’ ‘penetrate, investigate thoroughly, understand’, and postigat’—lit. ‘befall, strike’; for soobražat’ ‘understand, think’ see under Thinking) Czech: chapat ‘understand, grasp’ (also rozumĕt—cf. Russian umet ‘know how to’, um ‘mind, knowledge’) Irish: tuigim ‘I understand’ (perfective of ‘bring’) Sanskrit: jña- ‘know, understand’ (from ie *gnō- ‘know’; also grah- ‘understand, grasp’, and avagam-, lit. ‘come down to’) Hindi: samajhānā ‘understand, perceive, think’ (as Sanskrit above, with prefix sam(a)‘together with, fully’) Finnish: ymmärtää ‘understand’ Turkish: anla- ‘understand’ Arabic: fham ‘understand’ (and Algerian has fṭan ‘wake up, suddenly understand’) Japanese: wakaru ‘understand, recognize, know, learn’ (cf. wakeru ‘divide’ and wake ‘reason, meaning, cause’; also satoru ‘understand, see, perceive, become aware of, realize, be spiritually enlightened’) Mandarin Chinese: dŏng ‘understand’ (and míng-bai ‘understand’—lit. ‘bright white’) Dzongkha: hag’o-ni ‘understand, make out’ (ha-ma-g’o- ‘not understand’) Classical Tibetan: No-phrod ‘understand, know, learn’ (lit. ‘face-meet’, ‘face’ being associated with ‘true nature’ according to Beyer) Tamil: puri- ‘understand’ (impersonal construction with dative subject) Chukchi: walom- ‘hear, understand’ (and cicev- ‘guess, understand’, cicu lǝŋ ‘suspect’, from Proto-Chukotkan *cǝɣic-; lǝɣel- ‘understand, recognize’—cf. lǝɣi ‘known’ as source of both with /l/~/c/ alternation) Yukaghir: Kolyma önmǝge jaxaj (lit. ‘reach the mind’; and Tundra oldič- ‘have an idea, understand, realize’) Nenets: xameda- ‘understand, recognize, notice, prepare, arrange’ Ket: t-et ‘understand, know how to’ (from *wet ‘sense, smell, feel’, as in it-a-lam ‘he understands (that)’)
6 Also ‘mean, expect, intend’ (via the ‘intending’ route from Latin). And ‘like’ as in comme vous entendez ‘as you like’.
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Nanai: otola-, ‘know (how to), understand’ Ainu: eramuan ‘understand, know, recognize’ (< ram(u) ‘heart, mind, meaning’ + an ‘exist’; and erampetek ‘not understand, not know’ < ram(u) + pew ‘be brittle’ + -tek ‘in slight degree’—Refsing p. 152; compare ramu under Thinking) Indonesian: mengerti ‘understand, know (intr.)’ (related to arti ‘meaning’; and paham, memahami ‘understand, know (trans.)’, as a noun ‘understanding, belief’—from the Arabic?) West Greenlandic: paasi- ‘understand’ (lit. ‘find the way in’;7 also siunersi-, siuneqar‘understand, get s.o.’s opinion’—lit. ‘get what lies ahead’) Inupiaq: qaužikliq- ‘understand’ (lit. ‘begin to know’ from qauži- ‘know’ < *qaru- ‘dawn’ —compare under Knowing) Yupik: csy tusaqǝ-, cay niite- ‘understand, hear’ Aleut: tuta- ‘hear, feel, understand’ (and maasa- ‘make out, understand’; also ukuXta‘see, hear, realize’, and taĝa- ‘try, learn, understand’—only with negation or questions in the latter sense; for haqata- ‘know, understand, remember’ see under Realizing) Koyukon: O+oo+le+ł+tl’on ‘listen to, understand, obey’ (root -tl’on/-tl’ekk ‘listen, hear’) Ahtna: -ts’aan ‘hear, understand’ Cree: nisitoht- ‘understand s.th.’, nisitohtaw- ‘understand s.o.’ Nahuatl: caqui ‘hear, understand’ Tariana: -hima ‘hear, understand, perceive, feel’ (and -anhi ‘understand, recognize’, usually in serial verb combinations, as in -ka-anhi (see-know) and hima-anhi (hearknow) ‘recognize’) Aguaruna: antut ‘hear, listen, understand’ Kwaza: ũcenãi- ‘understand, know, be careful, shy (animal)’ (the -nãi is a nominalizer of facts or events; compare ũcehỹ- ‘know’ under Knowing) Samoan: mālamalama ‘understand, be clear, daylight’ (for lagona ‘perceive, feel, notice, understand, realize, recognize’ see Perceiving) Dalabon: woman ‘hear, listen to, understand’ (and wonarrvn ‘think about’) Warlpiri: purda-nyanyi ‘hear, listen to, understand, know, recall, perceive, judge, determine’ (and langakurra mani, lit. ‘cause to go to the ear’) Xhosa: uku-qonda ‘understand’ (and uku-vakala ‘be heard, understood’ from uku-va ‘hear, feel’) Yoruba: gbọ́ ‘hear, understand’ (as in gbède ‘understand a language’; also ridí ‘understand the nature of’, from rí ‘see’ and idí ‘source, cause, buttock’, and ó ye mi ‘I under-
7 Most forms of Eskimoan have a similar lexicalized expression with derivational suffix -si- ‘get, come across’, only the stem varies from language to language. In Greenlandic it is paa- ‘way in (e.g., to a fjord)’, whereas in Canada the stem is usually tuki- ‘direction along (e.g., longitudinal axis of a fjord)’, and in Alaskan Yupik (and Inupiaq) kaŋiq ‘headwaters of river, source’.
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stand it/ it is comprehensible to me’ from yé ‘lay eggs, be pleased, cease doing, be clear, comprehensible’ acc. Bowen (1885: 79); and see mọ̀ ‘know, understand’ under Knowing)
Chapter 4: Knowing French: savoir ‘know (that), know about, find out about’ (cf. Latin sapere ‘taste, know, be wise’; savoir faire ‘know how to’; for connaître ‘know (a person or thing),’ see Recognizing, but there is some overlap of two verbs when the object is a thing or a fact, though the constructions are different, only savoir taking a que clausal object or being used intransitively) Latin: scio ‘know’ (from ie *sek-/skei- ‘cut off’, so ‘distinguish’—note also English ‘discern’ from Latin for ‘thoroughly sieve’) Greek: ksero ‘know, know how to’ (and Classical Greek oiδa- ‘know’, perfective of ‘see’ < ie *weid-;8 also gignoskein ‘know, judge, think’, and earlier epistamai, in Homer ‘know how to’; for gnorizo ‘know, recognize’ see under Recognition) German: wissen ‘know’ (as Old English witan; and können ‘can, know how to’; see under Recognizing for kennen ‘know s.o.’) Danish: vide ‘know’ (and kunne ‘know how to, can’) Russian: znat’ ‘know (s.th.)’ (also vedat’ ‘know, manage’; for byt‘ znakomy ‘know s.o.’ see Recognizing; umet’ ‘know how to’) Irish: tā a fhios agam ‘I know’ (lit. ‘knowledge is at me’, from ie *weid-) Hindi: jānnā ‘know, suppose, consider, learn, perceive, recognize, know how to’ ( jān ‘knowledge, understanding’, and compare pahchānnā ‘recognize, be acquainted with (person)’ under Recognizing) Finnish: tietää ‘know’ (tieto ‘knowledge, information, word, message’; for tunte- ‘know, feel, touch, notice, recognize’ see under Recognizing—the first meaning with accusative object, the second with partitive; osaavat ‘know how to, can’) Turkish: bil- ‘know (about s.th.), be aware of, informed about’, bildik ‘familiar’ Arabic: yaʕrifu ‘know’ (in all senses) Tamil: teri- ‘know, be known, know how to’ (also of a person; in impersonal construction, subject in dative) Japanese: shiru ‘know (fact or person), understand, be conscious of, feel, perceive, experience, guess, infer’ (politer: zonji suru; and shikata wo shiru ‘know how to’) Mandarin Chinese: zhī(dao) ‘know’ (with idiogram of a dart and a mouth combined, used also for Japanese shiru, in Wieger’s explanation ‘rapid opinion, like an arrow
8 Thus Sanskrit vid- ‘know’.
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hitting the mark’—the dao part means ‘way’; dŏngdé ‘understand, know’—lit. ‘understand get’; huì ‘know how to’; for rènshi ‘know (s.o.)’ see Recognizing). Chukchi: lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘know’ (for lǝɣel- ‘recognize, understand’ see Recognizing) Nivkh: jajm- ‘know, understand’ Nenets: t’en’eva- ‘know, know how to’ (and t’en’evana ‘acquaintance’; cf. t’ene’- ‘remember’ below) Nanai: sā- ‘know’ Ainu: amkir ‘know’ (and eramiskari ‘not know’ < ram(u) ‘heart, mind, meaning’ + iska ‘steal’ + -ri ‘causativizer’—Refsing p. 152) Dzongkha: shê- ‘know (s.th.)’ (also ‘know how to’; honorific khen) Yukaghir: Kol. lejdi:- ‘know, know how to’ (with transitivizer -di-), Tun. kurili- ‘know, recognize, remember’ (for lejtej- ‘recall, learn, remember, guess’, also ‘understand’, with perfective -tej-, see Remembering) Ket: it-p-ar-em ‘know, be able’ (italam ‘he knows’ (intr.) and it-pe-ram ‘I can/know how to’; from *wet ‘sense, feel, smell, understand’) Indonesian: tahu ‘know (about)’ (and mengetahui ‘know s.th., have knowledge of’, with prefix me(ng)- and suffix -i, often indicating repetition; for kenal/mengenal ‘know, be acquainted with’ see under Recognizing; hafal ‘know by heart’) West Greenlandic: nalunngit- ‘know (fact or person), understand’ (nalu- ‘be ignorant about, not know’ plus negative -nngit-; ilisima- ‘know all about, be knowledgeable, be conscious’, from Proto-Eskimo *ǝlit- ‘learn’—for related ilisari- ‘know, recognize’ see under Recognizing) Inuktitut: qauji(ma)- ‘know, be conscious’ Inupiaq: ilyisima- ‘know’ (and qauži(ma)- ‘be conscious, aware’, probably from ProtoEskimo *qaru- ‘dawn’) Aleut: haqata- ‘know, have become acquainted with’ (and haqataasa- ‘know about/as, consider as’; haakula- + neg. ‘know how’; and Atkan idaXta-laka- ‘know, understand’ with negative affix -laka- on the same stem seen in Proto-Eskimo *iðǝr- ‘be unclear’) Koyukon: P+yeł D+neek ‘know, be conscious of, be acquainted with P’ (root -neek ‘move hand, feel’) Ahtna -niic ‘know, notice, touch, feel, etc.’ Cree: kiske.lim- ‘know s.o.’, kiske.liht- ‘know s.th./that’ (with final -e.lim-/-e.liht- ‘by thought’; cf. kiskinohama.so- ‘learn’ below) Nuuchahnulth: kamat ‘know’ (hašił ‘know about, have news of’; and huħtakw ‘know how’; haya.- ‘not know, be uncertain’—and see under Believe) Kalispel: esi-yo-sten ‘I have learnt it, know it’ Nahuatl: mati ‘know (fact or person), understand, perceive, feel’ (and ‘consider, think that’ as reflexive auxiliary, also ‘it seems’; and ninomati ‘I feel well, have a feeling that –’; related ìmati ‘know how to’; macho ‘he is known’) Quechua: yachay ‘know, learn’ (as noun ‘knowledge’; for reqsiy ‘know, be familiar with’ see under Recognizing)
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Tariana: -yeka ‘know’ (in all three senses; and note forms of evidentiality: ‘infer that’ vs. ‘guess that’)9 Aguaruna (Jivaroan): dikat ‘know’ (= Spanish ‘saber’), wainat ‘know’ (= ‘conocer’) (and dikapit ‘know oneself, feel’) Kwaza: ũcehỹ- ‘know’ (of fact or person—probably from ũce- ‘leave aside, put away for later’ (-hỹ- is a nominalizer/neutral classifier—van der Voort 2004: 866); ũcerjỹ‘know a place’ (with -rjỹ ‘area’); areta- ‘know how to, be wise, become tame (animal)’) Kalam: mnm nŋ- ‘know a language’ (from mnm ‘speech’ and nŋ- ‘know, perceive, see, etc.’, for which see under Perceiving) Samoan: iloa ‘know, notice, see, recognize, know how to, understand’ (also sisila/ silafia ‘see, know’ and mautinoa ‘know with certainty, be convinced of something’) Arrernte: kaltye ‘know, know how to, be knowledgeable about’ (with related derivations ‘learn’, ‘teach’; and italare- ‘know that, remember to’) Manambu: -laku- ‘know, understand, be knowledgeable of, obedient’ Khwe-‖Ani: ã ‘know’ (from meaning ‘forehead’; usually in serial verb combinations with ‖ám ‘taste, smell, touch’ see under Recognizing) Xhosa: ukw-azi ‘know’ (ukwazisa ‘inform, notify’—ukw-/uku- is verbal noun formant; is-azi ‘knowing man, sage’, is-aziso is ‘a notice’; uku-qhela ‘be accustomed to, know well’) Luwo (Nilotic): ŋʌʌy/ ŋʌy ‘know, understand, realize’ (in static sense, the latter form is transitive, probably related to ŋwaay ‘smell’) Maaka (Chadic): nòn ‘know, be aware of, remember, recognize, be familiar with, know how to do s.th.’ (borrowed from neighbouring Kanui nongîr ‘get to know’) Yoruba: mọ̀ ‘know, understand, mean’ And ‘learning’ words (though most of these are not strictly about cognition): German: lernen ‘learn, study, get to know’ (but lehren ‘teach’) Danish: lære ‘learn, teach’ Old Norse: munda ‘aim, learn’ (from ie *men- ‘mind’) French: apprendre ‘learn, learn of’ (cf. prendre ‘take’) Italian: imparare ‘learn’ (cf. Latin parāre ‘get, acquire’) Greek: mathaino ‘learn, teach’ Latin: discō ‘learn’ (and docēre ‘teach’, both from ie *dek- ‘receive’, the first form with reduplication) Russian: učit’(sja) ‘learn, study’ (reflexive of učit’ ‘teach’; related to privyknut’ ‘get accustomed to’—note also priučat’(sja) ‘train’) 9 In KumandeneTariana -anhe is now used for ‘know s.o. or s.th.’, influenced by neighbouring Hohôdene—in Wamiarikune Tariana it is ‘recognize’ (Aikhenvald pers. comm.).
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Finnish: oppia ‘learn’ (opiskella ‘study’, opettaa ‘teach’) Turkish: öğren- ‘learn’ Arabic: taʕalam ‘learn’ Japanese: narau ‘learn, study’ (for oboeru ‘commit to memory, learn, remember’ see under Remember, and for wakaru ‘understand, learn, know’ see under Understanding) Mandarin Chinese: xuéxi ‘study, learn’ Dzongkha: lhap ‘learn’ (and chôzh’u- ‘learn by listening to teachings’) Chukchi: ɣǝjulet- ‘learn’ (and causative rǝɣjiwet- ‘teach, show’) Yukaghir: Kol. kisiej- ‘learn’ (from kise- ‘show, teach’; also mör- ‘learn, feel’, Tun. mödi‘hear, listen, understand’—apparently from Tungusic mede- ‘feel, notice’ (Tun. mörej- ‘touch’)—and Tun. uraa- ‘learn, study’ probably from Yakut üöraa- ‘learn’) West Greenlandic: ilinniar- ‘study’, ilikkar- ‘have learnt’ (and causative ilinniartit‘teach’; cf. ilisima- ‘know’, with a different affix, from pe *əlit- ‘learn’) Aleut: hachiga- ‘learn, teach’, haXsaasa- ‘find out about, learn, guess’ (Eastern also ‘realize, recognize, understand’; and taĝa- ‘try, learn, get used to, understand’—cf. pe *narǝ- ‘smell’) Koyukon: P+e#hǔ+le+’aan ‘learn, get used to’ (root -’aan ‘own’; and P+e+do#hǔ+de+le+ ’aan ‘learn verbal skill’; neehǔdaal’eeyh ‘learn by watching’—different root -’aan ‘see’) Cree: kiskinohama.so- ‘learn’ Nuuchahnulth: ħamatsap ‘find out, realize, learn’ (cf. ħamat ‘know’ plus graduative causative -sap; kamatsap ‘find out, learn’—cf. kamat ‘know’) Samoan: a’o ‘learn’ Xhosa: uku-funda ‘learn, read’
Chapter 5: Believing (and Doubt) Old English: gelīefen ‘believe’ (cf. lēof ‘dear, love’ and lufu ‘love’, so probably via ‘be pleased (with)’ to ‘trust, believe’) German: glauben (as the Old English) Danish: tro ‘think, believe’ (originally ‘trust’, related to ‘trust’ and ‘true’, thus betro ‘entrust’) French: croire ‘believe, think, trust in’ (< Lat. crēdere, from ie *kred- ‘heart’ plus *dhe‘put’) Spanish: creer ‘believe, think’ Irish: creidim ‘believe’ Greek: pisteio ‘trust, believe’ (earlier peithomai ‘be persuaded, obey, trust’ from peitho ‘persuade’, related to Latin fīdere ‘trust’) Russian: verit’ (< vera ‘faith’, related to Latin vērus ‘true’)
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Hindi: mānnā ‘believe, trust, consider, acknowledge, assume, obey’ Finnish: uskoa ‘believe’ (usko ‘faith’) Turkish: inan ‘believe, trust’ Arabic: ṣidq ‘believe’ ( yuṣaddiqu; and yuminu in religious sense; also yaẓunnu ‘suppose’) Japanese: shinjiru ‘believe’ (shin is ‘faith, trust, sincerity’ and jiru is ‘do’; ‘believe’ in a neutral sense of ‘thinking so’ is covered by omou) Mandarin Chinese: xiāangxìn ‘believe in, trust’ (xiang is ‘mutually’ and xin is the same as Japanese shin) Dzongkha: dendzi ri- ‘believe’ (lit. ‘credence accord’) Nanai: arda- ‘believe, be happy’ Nenets: punr’o- ‘believe, be convinced of’ Yukaghir (older Tundra): ewie- ‘believe’ (< *öw- ‘be’—thus also Kolyma öjjǝ ‘real, true’) Chukchi: lǝmalaw-, lǝmalo lǝŋ- ‘trust, believe in, be convinced of’ (an emotional verb) Indonesian: berpendapat ‘believe, have an opinion (intr.)’ (with prefix ber—-noun pendapat is ‘opinion’ and dapat is ‘find, get’; percaya ‘believe, trust (trans.)’, and kepercayaan ‘belief, faith’) West Greenlandic: upper(i)- ‘believe, trust (in)’ (and isumaqar- ‘think, believe, consider, mean’; and tatigi- ‘rely on’) Aleut: lu- ‘believe’ (perhaps related to Eskimoan ilumun ‘truly’ under pe *ilu ‘inside’) Nuuchahnulth: Ɂuuqłaap ‘think, believe’ (and t’aq ‘exactly, really, true’ and derived: ‘really think’) Nahuatl: neltoca ‘believe’ (from nelli ‘s.th. true’ plus toca ‘consider’) Ahtna: P#l+niic ‘remember, believe, trust’ (root -niic ‘move hand, feel’, which covers ‘be alive, awake, know, expect, hear, love’ and ‘intelligent’ according to prefix chain) Samoan: tali-tonu ‘believe’ (lit. ‘reply-correct’) Kwaza: watxikitse- ‘believe (that)’ (from watxi ‘true, correct’, lit. ‘say “that is correct”’— van der Voort 2004: 964 and pers. comm.; and note ‘intentional’ affix -here ‘think that—(but not)’, an ‘unsuccessful conjectural modal’, probably from negative -he and interrogative -re—p. 862) Xhosa: uku-kholwa ‘believe in, be satisfied with’ (i-kholwa ‘Christian’) Yoruba: gbà … gbọ́ ‘believe, obey’ (lit. ‘receive … hear’) Words for ‘doubt’: Greek: amfivallo ‘doubt, put about on all sides’ (lit. ‘throw around’; classical apisteo ‘doubt, disbelieve’ from pistos ‘trustworthy’—modern apisto ‘be unfaithful’) Latin: dubitāre ‘doubt’ (derivative of dubus as in duplex and duo ‘two’) French: douter (from the Latin) German: zweifle (from *dui-, related to ‘two’)
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Danish: tvivle (as the German) Russian: somnevat’sja ‘doubt, worry’ (< ocs sąminěti ‘suspect, doubt’, miněti ‘think’) Czech: pochybovat ‘doubt, waver’ (cf. Polish chybać ‘shake to and fro’) West Greenlandic: qular(i)- ‘doubt’ (like upper(i)- has some emotion word derivations) Aleut: inaax- ‘be in doubt, have little trust’ (and reflexive inaagni- ‘doubt, lose faith, give up (hunter when game not shown up)’) Chukchi: metiwet- ‘doubt’ (and ŋiret- ‘be in doubt or despair, consider impossible, give up’—last two meanings acc. Bogoraz) Nanai: rasa- ‘be anxious, doubt’ Japanese: utagau ‘doubt, distrust, suspect’ Mandarin Chinese: huáiyí ‘doubt’ Finnish: epäillä ‘doubt’ Arabic: yarta:bu ‘doubt’ Turkish: kuşku duy- ‘doubt’ (lit. ‘hear/feel doubt’) Koyukon: (only particle dok’edee ‘doubtfully, probably not’) Quechua: thukiy ‘doubt’ (also iskayyay ‘doubt, vacillate’ from iskay ‘two’) Samoan: māsalosal- ‘doubt, suspect’ Also words meaning ‘assume’,10 or ‘take for granted’ (compare under Guessing): French: supposer (and présumer) Spanish: suponer ‘suppose’ Greek: ipotheto ‘suppose, assume’, nomizo ‘think’ Finnish: olettaa ‘assume, suppose’ German: vermuten (also mutmaßen ‘have an idea about, presume, conjecture’, and annehmen ‘assume’) Danish: formode (besides antage ‘assume’) Russian: predpolagat’ Japanese: omou (see under Judging; also katei suru ‘assume tentatively’) Indonesian: mengandaikan ‘suppose’ (conjunction andai ‘supposing that’ with transitivizing circumfix me(ng)- … -kan; and berandai-andai ‘speak hypothetically, imagine’, with prefix ber-)
10
Note the source of ‘assume’: Latin assūmere ‘take up’. Also somewhat more negatively ‘presume’ (in advance).
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Chapter 6: Remembering (and Forgetting) English: ‘remember’, ‘recollect’, ‘recall’ (the former from Late Latin rememorāri, related, with addition of prefix re- ‘again’, to Latin memor ‘mindful, remembering, grateful for’, in turn from ie *(s)mer- ‘remember’; oe gemunan) German: sich erinnern ‘remember’ (also gedenken ‘bear in mind, remember, be mindful of’) Danish: erindre ‘remember’ (also komme i hu, huske—cf. on hugsa ‘think’; and note minde ‘remind’, as noun ‘memory’, from ie *men- ‘mind’) Swedish: ihågkomma ‘remember’ Old Norse: minna French: se rappeler ‘remember’ (compare English ‘recall’; and se souvenir < Lat. subvenīre lit. ‘come up to or under, assist’) Latin: reminīscī ‘remember’ (< ie *men- ‘mind’; and memoria, memor ‘mindful’—< ie *(s)mer- ‘remember’) Italian recordare ‘remember’ (< Lat. recordārī, lit. ‘recall to heart/mind’, from cor/cordis ‘heart’) Irish: cuimhnighim ‘remember’ (prefix *kom- with *men-) Greek: thimumai ‘remember’ (originally ‘take to heart, plan, ponder’ < thimos ‘soul, spirit’; Classical memnimai < *men-) Russian: pomnit’ ‘remember’ (< *men-) Czech: pamatovat, rozpomenout se (na) ‘remember’ Hindi: yād (kārnā) ‘remember’ Sanskrit: smṛ- ‘remember’ Finnish: muistaa ‘remember, think of’ (< Proto-Uralic *muja- ‘feel, touch’?) Turkish: hatirla ‘remember’ Arabic: tuðkar (yataðakkaru) ‘remember’ Tamil: uȴȴu- ‘remember, think’ (cf. uȴ- ‘inside, mind, heart’) Japanese: oboeru ‘learn (by heart), know, remember, keep in mind, recognize, understand, experience, feel’ (also of pain; omoidasu of more actively recalling (lit, ‘thinkbring out/show’); also kokoro ni ukabu ‘come to mind’, lit. ‘float up in heart’) Mandarin Chinese: xiăngqĭ ‘remember’, jì(de) ‘remember, have in mind’ (character based on the radical meaning ‘speak/words’ and related to the idea of recording something in words—including the writing of annals) Dzongkha: pcäre tang- ‘remember’ (or pcäre tâm-, lit. ‘remembrance dispatch’) Chukchi: antǝjaatka rǝtǝ- ‘remember, not forget’ (neg. of rǝtǝjaatǝ- ‘forget’; and lǝɣi lǝŋ‘remember, know’) Yukaghir: lejdi- ‘remember, know’ (with trans.-er -di, and lejtej- ‘recall, learn, guess’ (with perfective -tej-); also Kol. önmǝgǝ-l’i:- ‘remember—lit. have in mind’, from önmǝ ‘mind, memory, feeling, intention’; Tun. also has kurilii- ‘remember, recognize, know’)
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Ket: entīŋ ‘remember (from en- mind’ + *wǝk ‘find’; d-e:n-ba-r-o ‘he remembers me’, lit. ‘he finds me in mind’, and note olandiŋa taveraq ‘he remembers’, lit. ‘it falls into the nose’—or anundiŋa ‘into the mind’) Nenets: t’en’e- ‘remember’ Ainu: yaysoitak ‘reminisce, talk to oneself’ Nanai: saro- ‘remember, come to consciousness’, zongro- ‘remember, miss, be sad’ Indonesian: ingat, menginat ‘remember, bear in mind’ West Greenlandic: eqqaa(ma)- ‘remember’ (cf. iqqarsar- ‘think about s.th.’ under Thinking) Aleut: hadaa aXta- ‘remember, mention’ (lit. ‘pass in a direction’; hadaangi- ‘remind, mention’ with hadaa ‘direction (of thought)’; and (ilaming) aĝat- (with loc. refl.) ‘remember, bring to mind’—lit. ‘bring somewhere’; an’giisa- ‘think, remember’ (< an’g- ‘guts’); Eastern daĝ- ‘remember, know’, same as synonym meaning ‘grasp’?) Koyukon: yenoghelneek ‘he remembered’ (root -neek ‘remember, feel, be conscious of, hear, realise, recognize, find out, know’; P+pp#le+neek ‘find out, remember, realise, become conscious of’) Cree: kiskisi- ‘remember’ (cf. kiske.liht- ‘know s.th.’) Lakhota: kiksuye ‘remember, recall from memory, be conscious’ (from ki- ‘back again’ and ksuya ‘feel pain’) Nuuchahnulth: tl’uu ‘remember, recall, bear in mind’ Nahuatl: ilnàmiqui ‘remember’ (and reflexive ‘reflect on, think about’) Quechua: (for yuyay ‘remember, think’ see under Thinking) Tariana: -awada ‘remember, recall, think of’ Aguaruna: anɨɨt ‘remember, miss, love’ Kwaza: buru- ‘remember’ Kalam: nŋ- (for ‘know, perceive, see, hear, feel, remember, sense, be conscious, awake, think’ see under Perceiving) Samoan: mānatua ‘remember’ (‘think’ plus ergative -a) Arrernte: irlpangke(me)- ‘remember, have in mind from before’ (from irlpe ‘ear’ and angke- ‘say, speak’, so ‘having heard in one’s mind s.th. known’) Warlpiri: lange-ngku mani ‘remember’ (lit. ear-erg get) Manambu: wukǝ-mawul ‘memory, thought’ (and see under Mind for mawul and Knowing for wukǝ-; ‘I remember’ is lit. ‘it sits in my insides’ with mawul) Luwo: par ‘remember, think’ (a reflexive/middle form) Xhosa: uku-khumbula ‘remember’ (uku-khumbuza ‘remind’) Yoruba: ranti, niran ‘remember’ (and ran leti ‘remind’—lit. ‘send messenger into ear’ from ran ‘send’ and eti ‘ear’)
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And words for forgetting: Greek: lismono ‘forget’ (deriv. of lismon ‘unmindful’; classical lanthanomai ‘forget’, middle voice of lanthano ‘escape one’s notice’) Latin: oblīvīscī ‘forget’ (< ob-linere ‘rub out’) French: oublier ‘forget’ Spanish: olvidar Italian: dimenticare ‘forget’ (cf. mente ‘mind’) German: vergessen ‘forget’ (like English ‘forget’, oe forgietan, with negative sense of prefix plus ‘get’, so originally ‘lose’) Danish: glemme ‘forget’ (from Old Norse gleyma ‘be gay, make merry’, with dative case also ‘forget’, as still in Icelandic; the progression was presumably from ‘make merry’ through ‘be careless, neglect’ to ‘forget (s.th.)’ in the behavioural sense) Russian: zabyt’ (from ‘behind’ and ‘be’, so originally ‘be left behind’) Czech: zapomenout (with za- as in Russian plus ‘remember’) Finnish: unohtaa ‘forget, leave somewhere’ (unohdus ‘oblivion’) Turkish: unut- ‘forget’ Tamil: marantu- ‘forget’ Arabic: yansa: ‘forget’ Japanese: wasureru ‘forget’ Mandarin Chinese: wàng ‘forget’ Nanai: omro- ‘forget’ Nenets: yurə- ‘forget’ Ainu: oyra ‘forget’ Ket: ensokŋ ‘forget’ (from en- ‘mind’ and -suk ‘turn back’) Chukchi: rǝtɣewat- ‘forget’ (from Proto-Chukotkan *tǝɣiv- ‘unknown’, as also in (t)ɣiwew- ‘become unclear, confused’) Yukaghir: Kol. joŋto- ‘forget (trans.), sleep (intrans.)’ (Tun. pon’i- ‘forget’—in Kol. ‘put, leave, abandon’) Indonesian: lupa ‘forget’ West Greenlandic: puior- ‘forget’ (also uungatsiar- ‘forget s.th. in moment of confusion’) Aleut: ugunu- ‘forget’ (related to the second wg form above; Eastern also iĝu- ‘forget, leave behind’) Nuuchahnulth: haayaaputl ‘forget’ (from haya- ‘not know, be uncertain’ plus -aputl ‘up in the air’; also wiikɁaƚputl ‘forget’ with neg. wiik- plus -Ɂaƚ ‘aware of’) Nahuatl: ilcāhua ‘forget’ Quechua: qonqay ‘forget’ (and qonqaylla ‘suddenly’) Kwaza: hewedutu- ‘forget’ Koyukon: -neh ‘forget’ (as in O+e+no#le+neh; also no#D+neh ‘get confused, forget, make a mistake’)
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Yidiɲ: bina-bambi-l ‘forget’ (lit. ‘ear-cover’; also bina-gali-n, lit. ‘hear/think’ plus ‘go’) Samoan: galo ‘forget’ Yoruba: gbagbe ‘forget’ (from gba ‘take away’ and igbe ‘forgetting, taking’)
Chapter 7–9: Thinking (and Judging and Calculating) Old English: wenan ‘think, expect’ (< ie root *wen- ‘desire’) German: denken (like the earlier meaning of English ‘think’—‘cause to appear, seem’11—tied up with the meaning of ‘thank’, and ultimately with an Indo-European root *tong- covering the meaning ‘feel’ as well as ‘think’; also meinen ‘believe, think, suppose, mean, intend, be of the opinion that’;12 glauben ‘think, believe’ (cf. oe gelīfan = modern English ‘believe’), and sinnen ‘think over’, going with Latin sentīre) Danish: tro ‘think, believe’, tænke (på/over) ‘think (over)’, synes ‘think, seems to one’ (see under Seeming for the latter; note other extensions of tænke: tænke om ‘think of’, tænke sig ‘intend, imagine’; also overveje ‘think, ponder, consider’ and mene ‘mean, think, be of the opinion that’) French: penser ‘think’ (going with Latin ponderāre ‘weigh, consider’ below; also songer ‘think of/ about’ from Latin somniāre ‘dream, think or talk about idly’, réfléchir ‘reflect’ from Latin reflectere ‘bend back’, regarder (à) ‘think about, look at’, and trouver ‘find, consider’; considérer ‘consider’ (originally of observing heavenly bodies) is from Latin considerāre ‘observe closely’; for il me semble ‘I think that –’ see under Seeming) Spanish: pensar ‘think, intend to, imagine’ Latin: sentīre ‘think, deem, feel, see, hear, notice, intend’ (and ponderāre ‘weigh, consider’—thus English ‘ponder’; also deliberāre ‘consider, think’ from liberāre ‘weigh’, lībra ‘scales’) Russian dumat’ ‘think’ (related to English ‘deem’, the original ‘judging’ meaning; and myslit’, polagat’; Old Church Slavonic měniti ‘think, be of opinion’; soobražat’ ‘ponder, consider, weigh the pros and cons of, think up or out, understand’, from obraz ‘image’) Greek: skeptomai ‘think, reflect, contemplate’ (earlier ‘look, examine’; and nomizo ‘think, take for, consider’—earlier ‘use, practice’, from nomos ‘law, usage, custom’;
11
12
As in ‘methinks’. The meanings of denken in German are broken down in Farrell (1963) as: (I) “have opinion that” (glauben or denken); (2) “think of/direct thoughts towards” (denken an), but also “think about” (nachdenken uber); (3) “form idea of/imagine” (sich denken); (4) “have an opinion about someone or something’s value” (halten or denken); and (5) “intend/ mean” (denken or glauben). Note also ‘das hab ich mir wohl gedacht!’ (‘I thought as much!’). From ie *men- ‘think, thought’.
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also ennoo ‘understand, mean, intend’, classical ennoeo ‘think, understand’, compound of noeo ‘think, perceive, intend’) Irish: smaoinim ‘think, reflect’ (silim ‘think, consider, expect’, ceapaim ‘think, be of opinion’ (from ‘stop, seize, catch’, denom. from ceap ‘block’?); Old Irish imrādim ‘think, consider’, lit. ‘speak about’) Hindi: socnā ‘think, reflect, think out, devise, think anxiously’ Sanskrit: cint-/cit- ‘perceive, intend’, in middle voice ‘reflect, meditate’ (cinta ‘thought, apprehension’; also dhi- ‘think’, earlier ‘observe’, and man- ‘think, be of the opinion’) Finnish: ajatella ‘think’ (harkita ‘consider, deliberate’) Turkish: düşün- ‘think, feel, believe, consider’ Arabic: yufakkinu ‘think’ ( fakkara ‘think, consider’ and yofaker fee from it; fikra ‘idea’) Tamil: nene- ‘think’ (also yooci-) Japanese: kangaeru ‘think (about, that), consider, believe, suppose, intend, imagine, expect, hope, wish’ (and omou ‘think, suppose, consider, hope, fear, love, imagine, believe, realise, feel like, desire, recall, remember’,13 probably with focus under Judging; also furikaeru ‘reflect on’—literally ‘look back over shoulder’; and omoimegurasu lit. ‘think-tum over’) Mandarin Chinese: xiăng ‘think (concentrate on idea), consider, ponder, miss, long for, intend, plan to, want to’, juéde ‘think that’ (and rénwèi ‘think of (opinion)’—the characters for all such mental activities contain the radical ‘heart’, combined with different phonetica) Dzongkha: ‘no(u)- ‘think (that)’ (‘nosa ‘thought, opinion’; and ta-wacin ‘think that’, lit. ‘look-if’) Chukchi: cimɣ’u- ‘think’ (and lǝŋ- ‘consider as’) Nanai: mud’ilči- ‘think’ (muru(n-) ‘thought’) Nivkh: kǝmlǝ- ‘think’ (and tasla- ‘judge, decide, consider’) Nenets: yi yader- ‘think, daydream’ (lit. ‘mind goes’; and yib’edor- ‘think’, yib’er- ‘get wise, grow up’, yib’eta ‘clever’, from yi ‘mind’ plus p’er’e- ‘hold on to’?) Yukaghir: čuŋžǝ- ‘think, thought’ (and note čuŋ(e)- ‘count, read’) Ket: S-an-(s/il)-bed ‘S thinks (single thought)’ (d-aneŋ-si-vet ‘I think’, lit. ‘mind-do’) Nanai: duɳgu-duɳgu oda ‘be deep in thought, be sad’ (based on duɳgu-duɳgu (bi) ‘be sad’) Ainu: ramu ‘think (that)’ (as noun ‘heart, mind, meaning’—cf. under Mind; also yaynu ‘think, consider’) Indonesian: pikir-/ fikir- ‘think’ (and memikirkan ‘think about’ with transitivinzing me(ng)- -kan; pikiran ‘thought, idea’—probably from the Arabic; (meng)anggap ‘consider, regard’) 13
Also older ‘worry’. oj omop- ‘think of, believe’. The character for omou contains the ‘heart’ and the ‘field’ radicals (cf. kokoro ‘mind, heart’).
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West Greenlandic: eqqarsar- ‘think, speculate’ (and eqqaagi- ‘be anxious about’, and note eqqanar- ‘look threatening’—see also under Remembering; and isumalior‘think, believe’, isumaqar- ‘think, believe, consider, mean’ under Believing; also isumagi- ‘think or worry about’; -sori-/ -sugi- ‘think that –’, containing -gi- ‘consider, have as’) Central Alaskan Yupik: cumǝX(tǝ)- ‘think, worry’ (especially about food supply; -nakǝ‘consider (to be)’ from *-nar- ‘be such as to’ and *-kǝ- ‘have as, consider as’) Aleut: anuxta- ‘think, suppose, wish, want, intend, need’ (and related aan’gilakada‘think, worry’ from an’gi- ‘mind, intestines’; and -chXi- ‘think, cause to, let’; ataasa‘think to be, take for’) Ahtna: -nii ‘say, think, consider’ (and -zen ‘think, want’—a common Athabaskan polysemy) Koyukon: de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend’ (also ‘think’ in sense ‘guess, surmise’, root -len ‘intend’—pl. subject with -daakk rather; and P+pp+yenee+ł+let ‘think about’, yenee#Ø+let ‘think, worry’—root -let ‘experience event’, and yenee ‘mind’; de#O+oo+de+Ø+nee ‘consider, judge, think of/that, calculate’—with root -nee ‘say, deem’; P+te#hu+oo+te+ne+ƚ+to ‘count P’ with pp. te/tuh ‘among’, a conversative/reversative derivation of root -to ‘try, bother, glance’—also ‘have a problem with, occupy with’) Cree: itêliht- ‘think s.th.’ (Ellis’s form; it- ‘so, thus’ plus final -êliht-/-êlim- ‘by thought’; Wolfart has ite.yihtam ‘he thinks s.th. of him’ (see also under Wishing); inverse ite.lihta.kosi ‘be so thought, be considered, seem’; and ma.mitono.liht- ‘think about s.th., ponder’)14 Nuuchahnulth: waay’aqtl ‘think’ (and waay’aqstutl ‘think over, decide, say to s.o.’; Ɂuuqłaap ‘think, believe’; cf. affixes -’aqsti is ‘inside’ and Proto-Wakashan *-‘ayq ‘in mind’; for t’apata ‘think, consider, decide, plan, guess’ see Intending) Kalispel: nté(ls) ‘think, want’ (with lexical affix -é(ls) of subjective states) Nahuatl: toca ‘consider (wrongly), claim to be, imagine’ (only in compounds—Launey p. 291; also tlanemilia ‘ponder’—applicative of nemi ‘move’) Quechua: yuyay ‘think, remember’ (as noun ‘intelligence, memory’; yuyaypi ‘consciously, intentionally’) Tariana: -anihta ‘think, reason’ (and -awada ‘think of (s.th.), remember’; for himeta ‘think (intuitively), feel’ see under Experiencing) Kwaza: tutunitahỹ- ‘think, worry’
14
In another dialect of Cree Wolfart has transitive ‘final’ -e.yi(m/hta)- of directed mental action, which is lexicalized in verbs of feeling/sensation as well as pure cognition, e.g. kanaw-e.yi-m- ‘watch over’ (Ellis has kanawêlim- ‘keep s.o.’) from kanaw- ‘watch’ (Wolfart 1996: 429).
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Manambu: -wukǝ- ‘think (about), remember, understand (language), hear, listen, smell, miss (s.o.)’ (exact meanings depend on construction; mawula:m wa- ‘think (that), have opinion that’, mawul wa- ‘I think, in my opinion’—from mawul ‘mind’ and wa‘say’; see also under Mind for construction with -kale ‘heart, mind’) Kalam: gos nŋ- ‘think’ (nŋ- ‘perceive, see, hear, feel, know, sense, be conscious, awake, think’) Samoan: mānatu(natu) ‘think, feel lonely, miss’ (and mā-faufau ‘think, consider, reflect, ponder’ with de- ergative of ‘plan’; fā ‘decision, think (wrongly)’; fa’apēlā ‘suppose, think, say’, lit. causative of ‘like that’) Yidiɲ: bina-n ‘think about, hear, listen, remember’ (trans.) (also ŋuyar gadan ‘think about’ (with gadan ‘come’), ŋuyar wandan ‘think (intr.)’ (with wandan ‘drop, fall down’); and Evans & Wilkins have binangal ‘hear, listen to, think about, remember’) Pitjantjatjara: kulini ‘listen, think about, understand’ (the latter meanings with nonauditory objects) Dyirbal: ngamba-yirri-y ‘think’ (ngambal ‘hear’ covers all the mental activity categories, much like Kalam nŋ- acc. Dixon, pers. comm.). Arrernte: itele-are- ‘know, realize, remember, think, understand’ (lit. ‘see/ look for/meet with the throat’—Evans & Wilkins 2000; Van Valin & Wilkins itelare- ‘know that, think about, remember, know to (do s.th.)’, for which see under Knowing, and itirre‘think’, i.e. ‘throat’ plus inchoative -irre-, he throat being regarded as the seat of thought) Xhosa: uku-thi ‘say, think, call’ Yoruba: rò ‘think, meditate, intend, stir, trouble’ (also gbimọ̀ ‘consider, advise, consult’ (gbà ‘take’ plus mọ̀ ‘know’); mèro ‘consider, meditate’ (from mú ‘employ’ plus èro ‘thought’)) And words specifically for ‘calculating’:15 English: ‘reckon’ German: berechnen ‘calculate’, rechnen ‘count, calculate, compute, estimate, consider (to be)’ (and rechnen auf ‘rely upon’) Danish: regne (ud), udregne ‘calculate’ French: calculer (and compter ‘count’) Greek: ipologizo ‘calculate’ (arithmo ‘count’) Russian: sčitat’ ‘calculate, count, consider, reckon’ (and vyčisljat’ ‘calculate’) Finnish: laskea ‘calculate, count’
15
‘Calculate’ is from Latin calculus ‘pebble used in counting’. And note ‘cogitate’ from Latin cōgitāre, intensive form of agitāre ‘turn over’ (hence ‘agitate’).
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Arabic: yaʕuddu: ‘calculate’ (but yaħsibu ‘count’; Algerian has ħseb ‘calculate, count’) Tamil: eɳɳu- ‘count’ Japanese: kanjō suru ‘calculate’, kazoeru ‘count’ Mandarin Chinese: suàn ‘calculate, count, figure’ Chukchi: rǝlɣǝ- ‘count, calculate, read’ (related to rǝlɣǝlɣǝn ‘finger’) Ket: der’ ‘read, count’ Nenets: tola(bə)- ‘consider, count, read’ Indonesian: menghitung-hitung ‘calculate’ ((ber)hitung ‘count’) West Greenlandic: naatsorsui- ‘calculate’ (from naatser- ‘wait for s.th. to grow, wait to see how s.th./s.o. will be’; kisitsi- ‘count’) Nuuchahnulth: huks ‘count’ Nahuatl: pōhua ‘count, read, relate’ Quechua: yupay ‘count’ Kwaza: hãte- ‘count, try, test, experiment’ Samoan: faitau ‘read, count’ Yoruba: s’ìro ‘calculate, reckon’ (from śe ‘do, make’ and r0 ‘tell’?; but kà ‘count, read, regard, act upon’) For other words to do with logically inferring (like English ‘infer’, ‘conclude’, ‘deduce’) see under Deciding.
Chapter 10: Deciding German: entscheiden, beschließen ‘decide’ (lit. ‘separate’; lösen ‘solve’) Danish: beslutte (sig) ‘decide’ French: decider de ‘decide’ (from Latin dēcidere ‘cut off’) Latin: dēcernō ‘distinguish, judge, decide, propose’ (from the same source as Old English sceran ‘cut off, shear’; and diiūdicō ‘decide, judge, determine, distinguish’) Greek: apofasizo ‘decide, resolve, determine’ (from apofaino ‘make known’; and krino ‘judge, consider, decide’, going with Latin dēcernō; lio ‘solve, resolve, loosen, untie’) Russian: rešit’ ‘decide, solve’ (and reflexive rešit’sja ‘make up one’s mind to’) Finnish: päättää ‘conclude, resolve, decide, make up one’s mind’ (cf. pää ‘top, end’; and ratkaista ‘decide, settle, determine, resolve, solve’) Turkish: çöz- ‘figure out, solve, work out, untie’ Japanese: kimeru ‘decide’ (and toku ‘solve, untie, dissolve’—also ‘explain, persuade’ with a different symbol but probably a homonym—cf. Chinese jiě; kesshin suru ‘resolve, determine’, keiketsu suru ‘resolve, settle’) Mandarin Chinese: juédìng ‘decide’ ( jué is ‘definitely’ and dìng is ‘fix, decide’; jiě( jué) ‘solve, settle, resolve, finish off’ ( jiě is ‘loosen, untie, dissolve, explain’)
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Dzongkha: thâcê- ‘decide’ Classical Tibetan: thag-tšad ‘decide’ (lit. ‘cut the rope’) Chukchi: vetɣǝcemɣ’o- ‘decide to’ (lit. ‘straight-think’) Ket: S-(i/in)-S-tos- ‘S conceives an intention, decides to’ (lit. ‘raises self up in order to –’) West Greenlandic: aalajanger- ‘decide’ (lit. ‘make fast’; for eqqor- ‘guess right’ see under Guessing) Aleut: anuxtani- ‘decide’ (with intentional mood; cf. anuxta- ‘think, want’ in reflexive use plus -ni- ‘begin to’) Nuuchahnulth: waay’aqstutl ‘think over, decide, say to oneself’ (from waay’aqtl ‘think’; for t’apata ‘think, consider, decide, plan, guess’ see Intending) Kwaza: were- ‘decide not to, abstain from going, revolt’ (and note adverb watxile ‘finally, decide to do, then’) Samoan: fa’ai’u- ‘decide, conclude’ (lit. ‘cause to finish’) Yoruba: kpinu ‘decide, bargain, consider, resolve, purpose’ Words for choosing: English: ‘choose’ (from Germanic *kiusan < ie *geus- ‘taste, choose’, as in Latin gustāre ‘taste’) French: choisir (from the Germanic) Spanish: escoger ‘choose’ (from coger ‘take, pick up’) Latin: legere, ēligere ‘choose’ (the second form > English ‘elect’; ‘select’ is from sēlegere ‘sort’ with sē- ‘apart’) German: wählen ‘choose’ (related to ie *wel- under Wishing) Danish: vælge (as the German) Greek: dialego ‘choose’ Russian: vybrat’ ‘choose’ (and predpočest’ ‘choose to, prefer to’) Finnish: valita ‘choose, elect’ Japanese: erabu ‘choose, select, prefer’ Mandarin Chinese: xuăn(zé) ‘choose, select’ (for yuàn(yì) ‘wish, want, prefer to, be ready to’ see under Wishing) West Greenlandic: qiner- ‘choose, elect, look around for’ (from pe *qinǝr- ‘look around’) Aleut: qimit- ‘choose, select’ Koyukon: (comp) de#O+Ø/le+loh ‘affect choose, do to, fix, make, get, alter O’ (i.e. ‘affect O by a single action in the manner of comp’; the root -loh (suppletive with -yoh) is ‘comp occurs’ where comp—complement—is some event, thus saasee denloh ‘she chose the clock’) Nuuchahnulth: ɬaš(a) ‘choose, pick out, select’ Quechua: akllay ‘choose’ Indonesian: memilih ‘choose, select, prefer’
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Xhosa: uku-qaʃa ‘choose, guess, hire’ (and uku-nyula ‘select’) And deciding as the specific result of calculation: German schließen (lit. ‘close’, as also English ‘conclude’ from the Latin) Danish slutte (as the German) Greek sinago ‘infer’ (but simperaino ‘deduce, conjecture, presume, infer’) French déduir, inferir, conclure (lit. ‘lead out’, ‘carry in’ and ‘close’ respectively, from the Latin) Spanish deducir, inferir Russian zakluchit’ (lit. ‘close, conclude’) Japanese suitei suru ‘deduce, infer, presume’ (also ketsuron suru ‘conclude, reach a conclusion’)
Chapter 11: Guessing (and Predicting) English ‘guess’ (from Germanic *getisōn ‘try to get’, Old Norse geta ‘get’, ultimately from the Indo-European root *ghend-/ ghet- ‘seize, take’; ‘estimate’ has a more specific sense of calculating a measurement with some degree of guesswork, as in similar words glossed thus below) French: deviner ‘guess’ (and estimer ‘estimate, consider (that)’) Spanish: adivinar ‘guess’ (acertar ‘guess (correctly)’) German: raten ‘guess, advise’ (erraten ‘guess (correctly)’—compare Old English rǣdan ‘advise, council, solve a riddle’; abschätzen ‘estimate’) Danish: gætte (på) ‘guess’ (gætte sig til ‘guess (correctly)’; gisne ‘estimate’) Greek: eikazo ‘conjecture, guess’ (mantevo ‘guess, find out, foretell’) Russian: gadat’ ‘guess’ (and dogadat’, otgadat’, or ugadat’ ‘guess correctly, figure out’;16 prikidyvat’ ‘estimate’) Finnish: arvata ‘guess’ (arvata oikein ‘guess right’) Turkish: sez- ‘guess’ Japanese: ateru ‘guess’ (without evidence, lit. ‘strike, put’; and umaku ateru ‘guess correctly’)17 Mandarin Chinese: cāi ‘guess, conjecture, speculate’ (and cāixiăng ‘suppose, guess, suspect’—xiăng is ‘think’)
16 17
A matter of different perfective aspect forms with varying nuances of completion. Also ate-zuiryō suru (‘make a (random) guess’) and okusoku suru ‘guess, surmise, form an opinion’; for shiru ‘know, infer, guess, etc.’ see under Knowing.
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Chukchi: cicǝl’et- ‘guess, suspect’ (with -l’et- of continuous/repeated action; cicew‘guess, understand’18) Nanai: lāmbo-qāči- ‘guess, recognize’ (lambo- ‘hit the mark’) Ket: in-S-k-b-(a/ol)-de ‘S guesses/feels/suspects (intr.)’ (from *en ‘mind’ + de ‘hear’) Nenets: xo- ‘find, guess’ (and xobtsoku mets ‘guess (lit. hold, use) riddles’; also jedt’e‘hit, aim at, come across, guess’) Indonesian: tebak, menabak ‘guess (trans.)’ (tebak-tebakan ‘guessing game’, teka-teki ‘riddle, puzzle’; also menerka ‘guess’ from noun terka ‘guess’; sangka ‘guess, suspect’) West Greenlandic: eqqoriaa- ‘guess’ (trans., and intrans. eqqor- ‘guess (correctly)’ from Proto-Eskimo *ǝlqur- ‘hit the mark’; also eqqorniaa- ‘guess, gamble, play the lottery’ with -niar- ‘try’) Aleut: hiichaaza- ‘guess’ (and qaXu- ‘guess correctly’, lit. ‘hit exactly’; also haXsaasa‘find out about, guess, learn’ under Knowing) Nuuchahnulth: Ɂanaʕap ‘guess right, realise’ (for t’apata ‘guess, consider, think, deliberate’ see under Thinking/Calculating) Koyukon: ne#O+oo+de+Ø+lee ‘estimate, judge (position, size, distance of O)’ (for P+ gho+O+oo+Ø+lee ‘anticipate, expect, suspect (P of being, doing O)’ see under Expecting)19 Cree: nana.toštahika.- ‘guess, take a blind shot at’ (note nana.tawim- ‘examine’ and nana.tawa.pam- ‘look for’) Quechua: watuy ‘guess’ (and watupakuy ‘foretell, suspect’) Samoan: taumate ‘doubt, keep guessing’ (mate ‘guess’) Xhosa: (for uku-qaʃa ‘choose, guess, hire’ see under Deciding) Yoruba: amọ̀ dźa ‘guess’ (nom., verbalized with śe ‘do’, also verbal mamọ̀ dźa, from mọ̀ ‘know’ and dźa ‘find out’) And as regards prediction (not attempting to solve a particular problem), most languages have distinct words like the following: German: voraussehen (and vorhersagen) ‘predict’ Danish: forudse French: prévoir ‘foresee’ (and prédire ‘predict’) Spanish: pronosticar
18 19
From Proto-Chukotkan *cǝɣic(æŋ)- ‘recognize, understand’. Borrowed into csy sisaaw‘sense, understand, figure out’. Also kǝcɣep- ‘guess (successfully)’. From root -lee ‘sing’ (which can also mean ‘speak in a certain manner’). Compare fixed expressions yuk(yuk) ‘right, you guessed it (riddle)’, and ghee(hee) ‘I guess so, probably’.
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Russian: predvidet’ (and predskazivat’) Finnish: ennustä ‘predict, forecast’ Turkish: tahmin ‘guess, predict, foresee’ Japanese: yohō suru ‘predict’ Indonesian: meramalkan ‘predict’ (from ramal ‘prediction’, meramal ‘tell fortunes’) West Greenlandic: siulittor- ‘predict’ Koyukon: P+no#de+D+lee ‘predict’ (stem -lee ‘song, utter’) Quechua: umulliy ‘predict, foretell’ Khwe-‖Ani: ‖x’ám ‘anticipate a threat or danger’ (a premonition)
Chapter 12: Intending German: beabsichtigen ‘intend, plan’ (and planen ‘plan’) Danish: agte ‘intend, respect’ (planlægge ‘plan to’; for tænke sig ‘have in mind’ see Imagining) Icelandic: ætla ‘intend’ (and áforma ‘plan’) French: avoir l’intention (de faire) ‘intend’20 (avoir prévu de ‘plan to’) Spanish: tener intencion de ‘intend’ (for pensar ‘think, intend, imagine’ see Thinking) Latin: destinō ‘intend, determine to’ Greek: protithemai ‘intend, display, propose, think, mean’ (lit. ‘set forth’, and skopeio ‘take aim, intend, propose, plan’, related to skeptomai ‘look at’) Russian: namerivat’ ‘intend to, plan to’ (from mera ‘measure’; and planirovat’ ‘plan’; for zadumat’ ‘plan, intend, think up’ see under Imagining) Hindi: irādā (kārnā) ‘intend’ Finnish: aikoa ‘intend’ Japanese: tsumori da ‘intend’ (keikaku suru ‘plan (method or course of action)’) Mandarin Chinese: dăsuàn ‘intend’ (lit. ‘hit calculation’) Ket: S-t-(a/ol)-(S)-xwaq-/ S-t-(a/ol)-S-waq ‘S wants/intends to do’ (lit. ‘path’ + ‘put once’) Ainu: kusu ki ‘intentional mood, about to’ (consequential conjunctionalizer + ‘do’— Refsing p. 206) Nenets: yid’e- ‘intend, decide to, think of -ing, solve’ (and yatnə- ‘intend, prepare to’) Indonesian: berniat ‘intend’ (and bermaksud ‘intend’ from maksud ‘purpose, intention, meaning’) West Greenlandic: -lersaar-, and -ssamaar- ‘intend to’ Aleut: (note intentional mood; for anuxta- ‘have in mind, think of, suppose, want, wish, desire, decide, intend’ see under Judging)
20
From Latin intendere ‘stretch towards’.
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Nuuchahnulth: -Ɂaaqtl ‘intend to, going to’ (from Proto-Wakashan *-’ayq ‘in mind’; and -maaɁatl ‘intending to’, -n’aħi ‘intend, be ready to’; for t’apata ‘plan, decide, think, consider’ see under Thinking/Calculating). Koyukon: de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend, guess, surmise’ with root -len ‘intend’ (see under Wishing also) Cree: wi.- ‘intend, want to, be going to’ (preverb) Kwaza: damỹ- ‘intend, want to, going to’ Yoruba: gbèro ‘intend, consider, consult, think’ And note words for ‘meaning’—i.e. as intended by the use of a word: English: ‘mean’ (Old English manan ‘signify, tell, complain of’, related to ‘moan’, < ie *mei-no ‘opinion, intent’; and ‘denote’ from Latin nota ‘mark’) German: bedeuten ‘mean’ (cf. deuten ‘interpret, indicate, augur’) Danish: betyde (as the German) French: signifier ‘mean’ (from Latin significāre ‘show, indicate, signify, express’—cf. signum ‘sign, token, mark’; and vouloir dire—lit. ‘want to say’) Italian: significare (and voler dire; also intendere ‘mean, intend’) Russian: znacit’ ‘mean’ (cf. znak ‘sign’) Greek: ennoia ‘sense, meaning, concept, interpretation’ (and simasia ‘meaning, significance’ from simaino ‘mean, signify, signal’; also noima ‘reflection, thought, sense, meaning, sign’) Latin: significātiō ‘expression, sign, indication, suggestion’, also sēnsus ‘sense, sensation, idea, meaning’ Hindi: māne ‘meaning’ Finnish: merkitä ‘write down, make a note of’ (cf. merkki ‘mark, sign, token’) Arabic: maɁna:/ mʕani: ‘meaning’ (and yʕani: ‘mean, imply’) Japanese: imi ‘meaning, sense’ Mandarin Chinese: yìsi ‘meaning, idea, opinion, wish, interest’ Indonesian: arti ‘meaning’ (berarti ‘mean’) West Greenlandic: isuma ‘meaning, thought’ (see under Thinking) Yoruba: itumọ̀ ‘meaning, interpretation’
Chapter 13: Imagining French: (s’)imaginer ‘imagine’ (from Lat. imāgināri ‘fancy, picture mentally’, from imāgō ‘copy, representation, likeness’, related to imitārī ‘imitate’; also se figurer) German: vorstellen sich ‘imagine’ (lit. ‘put before oneself’; and dünken ‘imagine, seem’) Danish: forestille sig ‘imagine’ (and tænke sig ‘have in mind, imagine’; indbilde sig, indbildning ‘imagination, fantasy’)
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Icelandic: imynda sér ‘imagine’ (from mynd ‘picture, image’) Russian: voobražat’ (from obraz ‘image’; also predstavit’ (sebe) ‘imagine’, lit. ‘present to oneself’) Greek: fantazomai ‘imagine, fancy, think, believe’ (note fantazu ‘stand out, make an appearance’, fantasia ‘imagination, vanity’—the latter in Classical Greek taken over by Latin in senses ‘appearance, mental process, sensory perception, imagination’ < fantazein ‘make visible’, fantazosthai ‘imagine, have a vision’) Hindi: kalpānā kārnā ‘imagine’ (‘imagination do’, the noun lit. ‘making, forming’, from the Sanskrit) Finnish: kuvitella ‘imagine’ (from kuva ‘picture’; mielikuvitusta ‘imagination’) Japanese: sōzō suru ‘imagine’ (the sō symbol corresponding to that of Chinese xiăng; but also, loosely, omou) Mandarin Chinese: xiăngxiàng (also as noun ‘imagination’; xiăng is ‘think (about|), miss, intend to’ and xiàng ‘picture, look like’) Ket: S-qasbedeŋ-(a/ol)-bed- ‘S imagines things that aren’t true (intr.)’ ( from qas ‘big’ + nominalizer + bed ‘make’) Indonesian: membayang ‘imagine’ (from bayang ‘image, shadow’; and note berpurapura ‘pretend, make-believe’) West Greenlandic: isumaannarpoq ‘imagine’ (lit. ‘just think’, corresponding to Danish indbilde sig; and takorloor(paa) ‘imagine, see in a vision, phantasize’) Koyukon: ne#hu+oo+ne+ł+ghun ‘play using the imagination, make-believe, act, play house with dolls’ (from -ghun ‘make’) Kalam: (nŋ- ‘perceive’ covers also ‘imagine’—see under ‘dreaming’ words below) And ‘invent, conceive of’ words: French: inventer (from Latin invenīre ‘find, come upon’) German: erfinden, erdichten ‘invent’ Danish: opfinde ‘invent’, opdigte, finde på ‘invent, make up’ Russian: izobretat’ ‘invent’, pridumyvat’/vydumyvat’ ‘make up, invent’ (zadumat’ ‘plan, intend, conceive idea of’) Greek: efeirisko ‘invent’, platho ‘make up’ Finnish: keksiȁ ‘invent, contrive, concoct’ (and kehita ‘invent, develop’) Japanese: hatsumei suru ‘invent’, kangae-dasu ‘invent, make up’ Mandarin Chinese: fāmíng ‘invent’ Chukchi: rǝcimɣ’uv- ‘invent, think up’ (causative of cimɣ’u- ‘think’—probably based on Russian zadumat’)
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And words for dreaming: Old English: swefn ‘dream’ (from ie *swep- ‘sleep’, Sanskrit swapna ‘sleep, dream’; and drēam ‘joy, music’ (Old Saxon ‘mirth, noise’)) German: träumen ‘dream, daydream, be deep in thought, imagine’ (from noun Traum < Germanic *draugma, related to ohg triogan ‘deceive’—cf. Sanskrit druh ‘seek to injure’) Latin: somniāre ‘dream’ (somnium ‘dream, fantasy, daydream, vision’, and somnus ‘sleep’ from ie *swep-) French: songer ‘dream’ (noun songe, from ie *swep-; and rêver ‘dream, be delirious’, noun rêve ‘dream’, apparently differentiated from rage < Latin rabies ‘rage’) Italian: sognare ‘dream’ (and sognare ad occhi aperti ‘daydream’—lit. ‘dream with eyes open’) Greek: oneiro ‘dream’ (verb oneirevomai; classical Greek enipnion < ie *swep-) Russian: mečta ‘dream, daydream’ (verb mečtat’; also son ‘sleep, dream’, snovidenie ‘dream’ (lit. ‘sleep vision’), and reflexive verb snitsja ‘dream’, from ie *swep-; grjoza ‘daydream, reverie’, verb grezitsja) Irish: brinngloid ‘dream, vision’ (cf. brinda ‘vision’, brionn ‘fiction, dream’; and verb taidhbhrighim ‘dream’, related to brighim ‘declare, show’ and bricht ‘spell, charm’) Finnish: uni- ‘sleep, dream’ (noun unelma ‘dream’, and nähdä unta lit. ‘see a dream’; also haaveilu ‘daydream’ from haave ‘fantasy, illusion’) Turkish: düş ‘dream’ (verbal gör- düş, lit. ‘see a dream’) Arabic: ħulm ‘dream’ (verbal yaħlumu) Japanese: yume ‘dream, illusion, vision, reverie’ (and verbal yume o miru, lit. ‘see a dream’) Mandarin Chinese: yíge mèng ‘dream’ ( yíge ‘one/a’ plus noun, and verbal zuò yíge mèng ‘dream’ with zuò ‘make, do’) Nenets: yude(btso) ‘dream’ (for yi yader- ‘think, daydream’ see under Thinking) Chukchi: retəret ‘dream’ (and verb retəla-, reto ləŋ-, the latter with the emotion/perception construction) Yukaghir: Kol. juŋžo:-di- ‘dream about’ ( joŋžo:- ‘go to sleep’; Tun. nuŋnin’- ‘dream’) Nivkh: təj- ‘dream’ Indonesian: mimpi ‘dream’ (verb bermimpi; and colloquial lamunan, verb melamun ‘daydream, fantasize’; also khayal ‘imagination’, verbal berkhayal ‘dream, imagine’, khayalan ‘dream, hallucination’) West Greenlandic: sinnattur- ‘dream’ (noun sinnattugaq, from pi *cinək- ‘sleep’) cay: qavaŋur- ‘dream’ (noun qavaŋuq, from py *qavar- ‘sleep’) Koyukon: P+aa+no#Ø+loɬ ‘dream about’ (root -ɬol ‘dream’; and motion verb Ø+ taa ‘move about while lying down, travel in a dream’, P+e#ɬ+taa ‘have a dream about P’, from animate classifier root -taa ‘lie’)
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Nuuchahnulth: puuw’ica ‘dream’ (verb; also affix -‘ituɬ/’-itawitl) Quechua: mosqhoy ‘dream, daydream’ (verb mosqhokuy) Kalam: wsn nŋ- ‘dream’ (lit. ‘sleep perceive’) Yidiɲ: biᶁaɽ wanda-n ‘dream’ (intr.) (with wanda-n ‘fall, drop’, and biᶁaɽ baᶁa-l ‘dream about’, apparently with baᶁa-l ‘bite’—Dyalŋuy (mother-in-law avoidance language) equivalent: waruŋu gilᶁu-l with gilᶁu-l ‘bite’, Dixon 1977: 504) Xhosa: uku-phupha ‘dream’ (verb, noun i-phupha; also umɓono ‘a vision’) Yoruba: lá ‘dream’ (lalá ‘have a dream’)
Chapter 14: Expecting (and Hoping) German: erwarten ‘expect’ (warten ‘wait’, beargwöhnen ‘suspect’) Danish: forvente ‘expect’ (vente ‘wait’, mistænke ‘suspect’; se frem til ‘look forward to’) French: attendre à ‘expect, wait for’ (soupçonner ‘suspect’) Spanish: esperar ‘hope, expect, wait’ (suponer ‘suppose, expect’, sospectar ‘suspect’) Russian: ozhidat’ ‘expect’ (podozrevat’ ‘suspect’) Greek: anameno ‘wait for, expect’ Hindi: ummid ‘expect, hope’ Finnish: odottaa ‘expect, wait for’ Japanese: to omou ‘expect to’ (with future tense; nozomu ‘look forward to, hope’; matsu ‘wait’) Mandarin Chinese: qīdài ‘expect’ (and dĕng ‘wait for’) Chukchi: a’tca- ‘expect, wait for’ (for cicu lǝŋ, cicǝl’et- ‘suspect, be in doubt’ see under Guessing) Yukaghir: mie- ‘wait (for)’ Nenets: ŋat’enə- ‘expect’ (ŋat’e- ‘wait’) Indonesian: mengharapkan ‘expect’, berharap ‘hope’ (both from harap ‘hope’) West Greenlandic: ilimagi- ‘expect’ (in Polar Eskimo of ‘s.th. bad’; utaqqi- ‘wait (for)’, pasi- ‘suspect s.o.’) Aleut: kayu- ‘have hopeful expectation that/for’ (Eastern ata- ‘expect’, Attuan uta‘think’; -Vĝu- ‘look for, expect to, wait for’) Nuuchahnulth: -awił ‘expect, consider to be’ (-’inħi ‘wait for’) Koyukon: P+gho#O+oo+Ø+lee ‘anticipate, expect, suspect’ (with stem -lee ‘sing, utter’) Tariana: -wapa ‘wait’ (and with following -a ‘go’ as serial verb ‘expect’) Samoan: fa’atali ‘wait for, expect’ ( fa’a- is causative, tali ‘answer, receive’) Xhosa: uku-themba ‘hope, expect, trust’ (and uku-thembeka ‘be trusted’) Yoruba: daba ‘expect, think of, suppose’ (and reti ‘expect, hope’, lit. ‘pick the ear’ from eti ‘ear’ acc. Bowen 1885: 67)
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And hoping: French: espérer ‘hope’ (< Latin spero21) German: hoffen ‘hope’ Danish: håbe ‘hope’ (and adverbial forhåbentlig ‘hopefully’) Russian: nadejatsja ‘hope’ (lit. ‘place oneself on’) Greek: elpizo ‘hope’ Finnish: toivoa ‘hope, wish’ Japanese: nozomu ‘hope’ (also -tai) Mandarin Chinese: xīwàng ‘hope, wish’ Chukchi: mǝcwǝnat- ‘hope’ Yukaghir: Kol. mond’onno- ‘hope’ (intr., based on mon- ‘say’, but also erendej- ‘hope’ from Yakut; Tun. oŋaa- ‘hope for, fit in’, based on oŋ- ‘put on’) Nenets: yenə- ‘hope, believe in, trust, rely on’ (and yenəbts ‘support, hope’) Ainu: yakun pirka ‘I hope that’ (conjunctionalizer of uncertainty + ‘fine’—Refsing p. 256) West Greenlandic: neriug- ‘hope’ (in Proto-Eskimo ‘eagerly expect’; and enclitic -toq ‘would that’) Aleut: anuxtaasa- ‘hope, want, think about’ (see anuxta- under Judging plus -asa- ‘do with, towards’; and un’gi- ‘hope for, rely on’) Koyukon: debaa soo’(u) ‘I hope, wish that, I wonder who’ (from debaa ‘who’ and soo’ ‘dubitive, perhaps’—and P-nodebaa ‘awaiting P’; also fixed optative phrase debaa łonh ‘let’s hope –’ with łonh ‘apparently’) Samoan: fa’amoemoe ‘hope’
Chapter 15: Wishing (and Wanting) Old English: willian ‘will’ (i.e. ‘intended future’), wyscan ‘wish’ (and modern ‘want’— earlier meaning ‘lack’ < ie *wen- ‘desire’) German: wünschen ‘wish’, wollen ‘want’ (and mögen ‘want, wish, like, desire’) Danish: ønske ‘wish, want’ (related to English ‘wish’) Icelandic: þurfa ‘want, need’ (and mig vantar ‘I want, need’; óska ‘wish’) French: vouloir ‘want to, intend’ (from the Latin; and souhaiter ‘wish’) Spanish: querer ‘want, wish’ (< Lat. quærare ‘seek’) Latin: velle ‘wish, want, be willing’ (< ie *wel-) Irish: is toil liom ‘I wish, want’ (lit. ‘there is a wish with me’)
21
But English ‘expect’ from Latin expectāre ‘watch for’, spectāre ‘look at’.
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Greek: thelo ‘want’, eikomai ‘wish, desire’ Russian: xotet’ ‘want to, intend’, želat’ ‘desire, wish for’ Hindi: cāhnā ‘wish, desire, like, love, choose, need’ Sanskrit: iṣ- ‘wish, desire’ (related to English ‘ask (for)’) Finnish: haluta ‘want’, haluavat ‘wish’ Turkish: dile- ‘wish’ (iste- ‘want’) Arabic: yatamanna ‘wish’ (and yuri:du ‘want’, raɣba ‘desire’ (n.), Algerian bɣa ‘want, desire’) Japanese: iru ‘want, need’, hoshii ‘want’ (and -tai ‘want to’) Mandarin Chinese: (xiăng)yào ‘want, wish, need’ (or xiăng ‘think’ alone; yuàn(yì) ‘wish, want, prefer to be ready to’) Dzongkha: ‘mönlam tap- ‘wish’ (lit. ‘prayer do’) Tamil: veeɳt- ‘want, need’ (impersonal, dat. subject) Yukaghir: Kol. erdii ‘want, wish’ (Tun. omod’i- from omo ‘good’) Chukchi: re- -ŋ- ‘want’, teɣ’jeŋ- ‘want, desire’ (and ɣǝjinre-, ɣiinu lǝŋ- ‘yearn for’) Ket: qas-t-it ‘want’ (from qas ‘want’—a combining form as in is-qas ‘desire to eat’—plus forms of ‘go’; and note qoʔj ‘desire, wish’) Nenets: xərva- ‘want’ Ainu: rusuy ‘desiderative, want, feel like’ (and etoranne ‘not want’—‘neg. mood indicating distaste’) Indonesian: ingin ‘wish, desire, want, feel like -ing’ (and noun keinginan ‘wish, want’) West Greenlandic: -rusug- ‘want to’, -jug- ‘long for’ (- juma- ‘want to, like to’, and -jumaneru- ‘prefer to’ with -neru- ‘more’; eqiagi- ‘not feel like doing s.th.’, from pe *ǝq(ǝ)ya- ‘be lazy’) Aleut: ala- ‘want’, giXta- ‘want, desire’ (and maatu-, -Vtu- ‘want to, like to’, -yuug- ‘want to, tend to, need to, like to’; yagnaXta- ‘crave (food or drink)’; anuxta- ‘want, desire, think, suppose, intend’—from an’g- ‘mind, guts’) Nuuchahnulth: -c’aqsim ‘want’, -‘ałsimhi ‘want, desire, love, lust after’, -maʕiiqtl, -miħsa ‘want to’, Ɂinis ‘wish, want’ Koyukon: P+pp#de+Ø/D+lo ‘want, desire, love’ (root -lo ‘crave’; for de#ye+ne+Ø+len ‘think, desire, want, intend’ with root -len ‘intend’ see under Intending—for pl. subject with -daakk rather) Cree: no.hte. ‘want to’ (preverb—Wolfart; Ellis has natawê.liht- ‘want s.th.’ (natawi- ‘go to do’ plus -ê.liht- ‘by thought’); note natawâ.paht- ‘go to see or fetch’)22 Nahuatl: nequi ‘want to, use’ (also immediate future, and reflexive ‘pretend’; elēhua ‘lust after, desire’; and tlani ‘want, request, order, work to bring about’ in compounds) Quechua: munay ‘desire, want’ (as noun ‘cute, agreeable, nice’)
22
And note milwê.lim- ‘like s.o.’ from milo ‘good’ and -ê.lim- ‘by thought’.
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Tariana: -na ‘want, desire’ Kwaza: -heta ‘want to’ (desiderative suffix; and ai- ‘not want to, not like’, and dukyri‘long for s.o., be sad’; for damỹ- ‘intend, want to’ see under Intending) Arrernte: ahentye-ne- ‘want’ (lit. ‘throat-sit’) Samoan: mana’o ‘want, desire’ (and in combinations fia ‘want, like to’) Xhosa: uku-funa ‘seek, want’, uku-nga ‘wish, seem, may’ (and uku-nqwenela ‘desire, long for’; but uku-swela ‘want, lack’) Yoruba: fẹ́ ‘wish, love, desire’
Chapter 16: Emotional Feeling (Love) English: ‘love’23 (and weaker ‘like’ and ‘prefer’) German: lieben ‘love’ (gern haben ‘like’, gefallen ‘like’ (impersonal with dative subject), vorziehen ‘prefer’—lit. ‘pull in front’) Danish: elske ‘love’ (esp. between man and woman, nom. elskov, from Germanic *aliska ‘nourish, rear’; kær ‘dear’ and kærlighed ‘love, charity’ is an early loan from French cher, Latin cārus; kunne (godt) lige ‘like’, foretrække ‘prefer’) French: aimer ‘love, like’ (Latin amāre, probably from an infantile word of affection seen in pet names like Greek amma ‘mother, nurse’ acc. Buck p. 1110; aimer bien ‘like’—lit. ‘love well’; préférer ‘prefer’—Latin præferre, lit. ‘bear in front’) Spanish: querer ‘want, love’ Russian: ljubit’ ‘love’ (nravit’sja ‘like’—impersonal with dative subject) Czech: milovat ‘love’ (from milý ‘dear’) Polish: kochać ‘love’ (from Old Church Slavonic kosnąti ‘touch’, via ‘caress’) Irish: grādhaim ‘love’ (nom. grā, perhaps from Lat. grātum ‘favour’; also Irish caraim ‘love’, related to Latin cārus ‘dear’ and, probably, the Sanskrit below) Greek: agapo ‘love’ (rarely of sexual love, which is more eirotas ‘love’ and eiroteiomai ‘fall in love’; in older Greek fileo was ‘love, have affection for’, thus modern filos ‘friend’; protimo ‘prefer’—cf. timo ‘honour, respect’) Sanskrit: kam- ‘love, desire’ (nominal kama; also sneha- ‘love, feel affection for, attachment’ from snih- ‘sticky’, and juṣ- ‘taste, enjoy, love, caress’) Hindi: pyār kārnā ‘love’ (‘love do’, with noun pyār ‘love, caress’; also lagi/lāgī ‘love, affection, desire’—cf. lagnā under Experiencing) Finnish: rakasta ‘love’ (rakas ‘dear’; pitää enemman ‘prefer’, lit. ‘like/hold more’) Turkish: sev- ‘like, love’
23
And note ‘lief’ (dear), Old English lufu ‘love’ < ie *leubhos ‘love, desire’—Sanskrit lubh‘long for’ (esp. of violent desire), Latin lubet ‘it is pleasing’.
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Amharic: wɔddǝdǝ ‘love’ Arabic: ħubb ‘love, love to, like’ (muħib ‘lover’; Algerian ħabb ‘love, want, desire’) Tamil: piʈi- ‘like’ Japanese: aisuru ‘love (tenderly) have affection for, be fond of’ (and koisuru ‘love, fall in love’ between man and woman) Mandarin Chinese: ài ‘love’ (xĭhuan ‘prefer, like, be pleased with’) Classical Tibetan: sñiN-ñe ‘love’ (lit. ‘be close to the heart’) Ainu: omap ‘love, like’ (cf. Japanese omou under Judging; also uyaykotuaskarap ‘live in loving cooperation’—Refsing p. 221) Chukchi: ‘əlγu ləŋ- ‘love’ (and related Itelmen lftalate-s) Alutor: γanjŋu ləŋ- ‘like, find attractive’ (Fortescue 2005—apparently from ProtoChukotkan *γəjin(ðæ)- ‘desire’) Nanai: ulēs’i- ‘love, caress, like’ (from ule(n-) ‘good’) Nenets: men’e- ‘love, like’ Ket: dinte/ dint’u ‘love’ Yukaghir: anurǝ- ‘love, like’ (and Kol. jöul’ǝl’ǝ- ‘love, have pity for’, interj. jöulugǝ ‘poor thing!’, related to i:lu:- ‘good, beautiful, dear’; Tun. has amud’ii ‘love, like’ from omo‘good’) Indonesian: mencinta(i) ‘love’ (bercinta ‘be in love, make love’; also menyayangi ‘love’, menyayangkan ‘regret’, from sayang ‘pity, regret, love’; suka, menyukai ‘like’) West Greenlandic: asa- ‘love’24 (and nakkuri- ‘like’—lit. ‘consider good’; kušagi- ‘like, think beautiful’) East Greenlandic: nattii- ‘be responsible for, look after affectionately, pity’ Polar Eskimo: naɣlii- ‘love, feel pity for’ Inuktitut (eci): nalliɣi- ‘love’ (nai naɣliɣi- is ‘pity’; also naakki- ‘be affectionate towards’) cay: kǝnkǝ- ‘love’, kǝnǝɣyuɣ- ‘be in love’ (probably related to pe *ǝkǝŋŋun ‘friend’; also alakə-, alaŋə- ‘be attracted to a member of the opposite sex’ from pe *ala- ‘desire’; asike- ‘like’ (lit. ‘consider good’); naklǝkǝ- ‘feel compassion towards, be considerate of’—in aay also ‘love’, elsewhere in Yupik ‘pity’, the original meaning in pe; also kuzɣu- ‘feel compassion towards’—in Hooper Bay/Cevak kuyɣur- ‘be protective (bird towards young)’) csy: piniqǝ- ‘love, like’ (also Nunivak; lit. ‘consider beautiful, good’)
24
This has an idiosyncratic background, and is not an emotional root at all (it is transitive, requiring antipassive affix -nnig- to become intransitive). The complex way this has developed from pi *ažak- ‘be gentle with’, involving the definitional intervention of Christian missionaries, is laid out in Fortescue (2001). Note also Malamiut nai antipassive ažaknik- ‘comfort, encourage, soothe s.o.’, parallel with the Greenlandic intransitive form asannig-.
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Aleut: maasaatu- ‘love’ (from ma- ‘do’, -asa- ‘with’ and -atu- ‘want to, like to’; and Atkan qumyux(ta)- ‘love’—in Attuan ‘mourn, miss’ rather; cognate of pe *quvya(yug)- ‘be happy’; also ilaXta- ‘have as companion (ila), be friendly to, love’, qaĝaXta- ‘like, love’, Atkan yaxta- ‘love, be affectionate to, be devoted to’, and Eastern kungu(X)ta- ‘love, be friendly to’ (Atkan ‘regret, be sorry’)25) Koyukon: O+oo+ne+Ø+neek ‘like, love, enjoy, be fond of, pleased with’ (with root -neek ‘move hand, feel’—also ‘know, remember, recognize’; -oone- is ‘try to’; and P+pp#de+ Ø/D+lo ‘want, desire, love’ with root -lo ‘crave’—see under Wishing) Ahtna: u+n+niic ‘love, like’ (root -niic ‘move the hand, feel’) Dakota (Sioux): c’antohnaka ‘love’ (lit. ‘heart’ (c’ante) plus ‘push in’ (ohnaka)—Boas & Swanton 1911: 893) Nuuchahnulth: -‘ałsimhi ‘want, desire, love, lust after’ (see under Wishing; also -‘aɫak ‘long for, like, be in love with’; kwinɁaƚ ‘long for’, kwinɁiič ‘pine for’; ʔatqaak ‘prize, covet, fall in love with’, also ‘hesitate’; ʕixnaakmiħsa ‘court, woo, desire as a sweetheart’) Nahuatl: tlazòtla ‘love’ (cf. tlazòti ‘be precious’, tla- is ‘consider as’; pāctia ‘please, like’ (lit. ‘make happy’ with subject as obj.)) Quechua: munakuy ‘love’ (cf. munay ‘desire, want’ under Wishing) Samoan: alofa ‘love, have pity for, care for’ (as noun ‘love, kindness’) Kwaza: huruja- ‘love, like’ Kalam: gos tep nŋ- ‘like’ (‘thought-good-perceive’) Kobon: gasɨ göp ‘like, desire’ (lit. ‘thought-does’) Yidiɲ: gayba-ɽ ‘make body feel good’ (trans.) Xhosa: uku-thanda ‘love, like’ (ufefe ‘tender affection’, in-tando ‘love, affection’) Yoruba: kudọ̀ n ‘love, be fond of’ (and see fẹ́ ‘wish, love, desire’ under Wishing, which can also mean ‘woo, marry’ acc. Bowen) And words for ‘hating’: German: hassen ‘hate’ (like the English, from ie *kād- ‘sorrow, hatred’, as in Classical Greek keδos ‘care, anxiety, grief’) French: détester ‘hate’ (from Latin dētestāre ‘curse (while invoking a god as witness)’, from pejorative dē- plus testāri ‘bear witness’; and more violent haïr from a Germanic source) Italian: odiare ‘hate’ (from Latin ōdī ‘hate’—probably ultimately from a root *od- ‘smell’, so through ‘disgust’—Buck 1988: 1133) Old Irish: (mis)cais ‘hate’ (on its own cais could apparently mean either ‘love’ or ‘hate’, the original meaning probably being ‘care’ acc. Buck p. 1133) 25
And kinguniXta- Eastern ‘miss’, Atkan ‘grieve, be worried, grieve’.
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Greek: miso ‘hate’ Russian: nenavidet’ ‘hate’ (originally ‘not look upon (with favour)’) Finnish: vihata ‘hate’, vihastua ‘get angry’ (from viha ‘hatred, anger’) Japanese: kirau ‘hate, dislike, be prejudiced against’ (and nikumu ‘hate, detest’) Mandarin Chinese: hěn moŭrén ‘hate (s.o.)’ (and bù xĭhuan ‘strongly dislike’) Chukchi: ‘ǝqu lǝŋ- ‘hate’ (lit. ‘consider bad’) Nivkh: esqa- ‘hate, loathe’ West Greenlandic: qinngari-/ qinngarsor- ‘hate, be angry at’ (and older qinngar- ‘suffer because one has broken the cult rule, be irritated’, also ‘call up a helping spirit (of a shaman)’—from pe *qiŋŋar- ‘show displeasure’; and uumigi-, uumissor- ‘hate, be furious with’, from pe *uɣumi- ‘be infuriated’ < *uɣu- ‘be heated up’; maajugi- ‘feel loathing for, be disgusted by’) Central Alaska Yupik: asiilkǝ- ‘hate’ (lit. ‘consider bad’—asiit- ‘bad’) Aleut: inaayuXta- ‘hate, dislike, not want around’ (and Eastern kaxta- ‘be vexed at, hate’) Koyukon: ts’o … -t’aa ‘hate’ (from pejorative prefix ts’o- plus -t’aa ‘be thus’) Nuuchahnulth: c’ic’iša ‘loathe, be disgusted’ Quechua: cheqniy ‘detest’ Indonesian: membenci ‘hate’ (or rasa benci ‘feel hatred’) Xhosa: uku-dela ‘despise’ (and uku-thiya ‘hate, entrap’, also ‘bestow a name on’)
Chapter 17: Surprise English: ‘surprise’ (from Medieval Latin superpræhendere ‘seize’, via the French)26 French: surprendre, être surpris (and s’étonner, lit. ‘be thunderstruck’) German: überraschen (literally ‘be swiftly over’; also impersonal wundern sich ‘be surprised (that)’). Danish: være forbavset (and komme bag på (en), literally ‘come on one from behind’; overraske—like the German) Russian: udivit’ ‘surprise, astonish, amaze’ (cf. divo ‘wonder’; also zastignut’ vrasplox ‘catch unawares’ (literally ‘fall upon suddenly’), and porazit’ (literally) ‘strike (one)’) Greek: ekplisso, kataplisso ‘surprise’ (earlier ‘terror’, from plisso ‘strike’; thavmastos ‘astonishing’, thavmazo ‘be amazed at, wonder at’ from thavma ‘wonder, miracle’, in turn from Indo-European *dhei-/dhau- ‘see’)
26
Also, more vividly, ‘astonish’ and ‘astound’ (both etymologically ‘be struck by thunder’— cf. French s’ étonner), ‘dumbfound’, ‘stupefy’, ‘shock’, ‘flabbergast’, ‘stagger’, ‘stun’, ‘startle’, ‘consternate’, ‘catch unawares’, and ‘spring upon’. And adjectives like ‘alarmed’, ‘appalled’, ‘aghast’, ‘confused’ and ‘agape’. There are also more idiomatic expressions like ‘take one’s breath away’, ‘be bowled over’, and ‘be taken aback’.
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Arabic: mufa:jaʔa ‘surprise (n.)’ (and mutafa:ji ‘surprised’, mufa:jiʔ ‘abrupt, surprising’, from root template (m-) f-j-ʔ ‘surprise’, related to adverbial fajʔatun ‘suddenly’; other roots are ʕ-j-b ‘wonder’ and d-h-š ‘amaze’; Algerian has staʕjab ‘be astonished’) Japanese: odoroku ‘be surprised’ (and odorokasu ‘surprise, bowl over’, also adjectival odorokubeki ‘marvellous, to be admired’; bikkuri (suru) ‘be surprised, give a start, be frightened, alarmed’—a ‘psychomeme’;27 also fui wo utsu ‘take by surprise’ (literally ‘strike unexpectedly’) and exclamatory kore wa igai da! ‘what a surprise!’ (lit. ‘this is unexpected’); akireru ‘be amazed, dumbfounded, taken aback, disgusted with, shocked at, scandalized by’ (participial akireta is ‘amazing, surprising, absurd’); also omou can indicate surprise, esp. in negative omowanai ‘I had no idea that –’; and more colloquially kimo wo tsubusu ‘be frightened out of one’s wits, thunderstruck’ (lit. ‘crush one’s liver’)) Mandarin Chinese: găndào jīchīng ‘be surprised’ (găndào is ‘feel’; the Oxford Mini Chinese Dictionary adds: when a surprise is translated into Chinese it is often necessary to categorize the thingthat is surprising by using an appropriate noun and to modify it by adding yìxiăng bú dào de ‘unexpected or surprising’) Chukchi: inicɣǝtet- ‘be surprised, wonder’ (transitive rinicɣǝtev-, apparently related to emotional root ɣiciw- ‘be amusing or interesting’ (cf. Koryak ɣicivet- ‘amuse oneself’)—like this it is itself an emotional root (with characteristic affixes -et or -ev), going with a corresponding transitive form inicɣǝtu lǝŋ- ‘be interested (by s.th.)’ (with auxiliary verb lǝŋ-); wittet- ‘jump back in surprise’—also ‘break away’ of sea ice) Koryak: jiŋtev- ‘be amazed, surprised, wonder’ (and transitive jǝjiŋtev-, from jiŋt- ‘wonderful, holy’; note also witev- ‘jump back in surprise’, an emotional form (unlike West Greenlandic equivalent quarsaar-)) Nenets: pəsa- ‘be surprised’ Lao: tok-caj ‘be surprised’ (literally ‘feel heart’; also tùùn ‘awaken, be startled’, of a purely instinctive reaction) Indonesian: mengeyutkan ‘surprise (trans.)’ (from kejut ‘surprised, startled’, and menghérankan ‘astonish’ from héran ‘astonished, amazed’) West Greenlandic: tupigusug- ‘be surprised’, tupigi- ‘be surprised at’ (an emotional root, related to another stem, tupag- ‘be startled, have a sudden fright’, not an emotional root;28 also uissuummi- ‘be surprised’, based on uit- ‘open eyes (wide)’, and quarsaar‘be frightened, be startled from a sudden shock’, and even more extreme tatamit- ‘get
27
28
See Hasada (2001) for further psychomemes: ha’, for rather weak surprise, not necessarily of a good or bad kind, gyo’ much stronger and exclusively in a bad sense, and doki’ of something surprising to oneself and consequently affecting one’s heart beat (doki-doki is the sound the heart makes). Note also derived nominal tupilak ‘evil spirit brought to life by magic to kill an enemy’.
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violently frightened, die of fright’; pakasar- ‘surprise, jostle (s.o.)’ and qaninngar‘catch red-handed, surprise s.o. doing s.th.’, none of them emotional roots.) Central Alaskan Yupik: alaŋaar- ‘be surprised’, alapǝnnaXtǝ- ‘surprise’ (also alaŋRu(q) ‘unexpected discovery, apparition, surprise visitor’, and alaiXtǝ- ‘suddenly appear’, all based on a root ala-, which also occurs in transitive alakǝ- ‘notice, come upon’ under Perceiving; also iiXa(yuɣ)- ‘be amazed, horrified’ and iXXi- ‘marvel, be amazed, fascinated, awed, stare at’ from py *ira- ‘be horrified’) Koyukon: s’e-degge dehoodeyoh ‘I am surprised at this’ (lit. ‘me-beyond it happened’, where the verb root -yoh is ‘happen’ and degge is ‘over, more than P, praiseworthy, incredible to P’ as well as ‘surprising’;29 and with a different general verb (-’aanh ‘act in such a manner’) k’e-degge det’aanh ‘she surprises (everybody) by what she does/ shocks people’ (lit. ‘something-beyond she acts’; and with adverbial prefix dzaa- ‘shocked’ (possibly related to dzaayh ‘heart’) dzaa-dolgheɬ ‘she got startled’— the verb root -gheɬ here is ‘move swiftly under the influence of a strong emotion such as fear’); and dzaa-gheeleet ‘she was scared, frightened, amazed’ (with verb root -let ‘experience event’)) Nuuchahnulth: č’iħaa ‘amaze’ (as noun ‘ghost’; č’iħat ‘in a state of fright’ and č’iħatšitl ‘astonished’; niɬak ‘amazed’; p’aẋak ‘look on intently, astonished’, and y’uwaatl ‘be filled with surprise, be grateful’) Quechua: utiy ‘be astonished, fall asleep’ (from uti ‘sleepy’) Kwaza: dadahỹ- ‘startle, be startled’ Kobon: aiö waiö gᵻ ‘be amazed’ (a particle sequence followed by a general verb gᵻ ‘do’) Kalam: nawl d- ‘be overcome with astonishment’ (the generic verb here is d- ‘hold, take, seize’ while nawl is an adjunct nominal meaning ‘astonishing’) Mbula: kete-imap ‘be astonished’ (literally ‘chest/liver ends’) Arrernte: apateme ‘astonished, shocked’ (atnulkeme ‘shocked, surprised’) Yoruba: ẹnu mi ya ‘I am astonished’ (lit. ‘my mouth opens in wonder’)
Chapter 18: Experiencing (Feeling) German: fühlen ‘feel’ (originally of touch, as also berören, anfühlen, also tasten, betasten; note also spüren ‘notice, feel, be conscious of’; erfaren, erleben ‘experience (s.th.)’) Danish: føle ‘feel’30 (but røre (ved) ‘touch’) Swedish: känna ‘feel, know’ (originally ‘recognize’, känsla ‘feeling’) Icelandic: finna ‘feel, find’ (and finna til of pain; but þreifa á ‘touch, feel’) 29 30
This is described by Jetté and Jones (2000: 129) as referring to an intervening distance (upward), also in the sense of mental or spiritual superiority. Related to Old Norse fálma ‘grope’ and possibly Latin palma ‘palm’.
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French: se sentir ‘feel’ (sentir ‘feel, sense’—compare under Perceiving; éprouver ‘feel, experience’; and note émotion from émouvoir ‘stir, agitate, move’ (originally physically); but toucher, tâtonner ‘touch’) Russian: oščutit’ ‘feel (sensation), sense’ (for čuvstovat’ ‘feel’ also ‘perceive by senses’ under Perceiving; ščupat’ feel by touch’, and trogat’ ‘touch’ (from ‘snatch, grasp’); perizhivat’, upytyvat’ ‘experience s.th.’) Greek: aisthanomai ‘feel’ (Classical Greek ‘perceive by the senses’; and aggizo ‘touch’) Hindi: lagnā ‘be attached, be felt (emotion, cold, hunger, etc.), seem, be experienced’ (for lagi/lāgī ‘love, affection, desire’ see under Emotional Feeling; also mahsūs (kārnā) ‘feel, suffer from, perceive, realize, seem to’) Finnish: tuntua ‘feel, be felt, seem’ (passive of tuntea ‘feel, know, recognize’—see under Recognizing; minusta tuntua ‘it seems to me’ with the elative, tunne ‘feeling, sensation’) Turkish: duy- ‘feel, hear’ (duygu ‘emotion’, duyu ‘sense’) Arabic: yašʕuru ‘feel’ Tamil: paʈu ‘experience, feel’ (compounded with emotion nouns like ‘happy’ as ‘feel happy’, also ‘experience difficulty’, ‘be in a hurry’, etc.—Asher p. 208) Japanese: kanjiru ‘feel, sense’ (beside omou ‘feel, think, believe’, etc. of wide meaning; but sawaru ‘touch, feel’)31 Ainu: sanpe wen ‘feel sick’ (lit. ‘heart bad’) Mandarin Chinese: juéde ‘feel, think’, găndào ‘feel, sense’ (but mō ‘touch’; jēnglì ‘experience’) Dzongkha: nyamnyong ‘experience’ Chukchi: lǝɣelǝčet-, lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘feel, know’ (lǝɣi ‘true, known’—see under Knowing; but tejiliŋ- ‘touch, feel’)32 Yukaghir: mediim ‘understand, hear, listen, feel’ (and Kol. mödinu- ‘feel, touch’, Tun. mörej- ‘touch, smell’—apparently all from Tungusic mede- ‘feel, notice’; note also eju- ‘feel, smell’ (tr.) and Tun. čaaqarej- ‘suffer from the cold’) Indonesian: berasa ‘feel (physical sensation)’ (from rasa ‘feeling, sense, taste’, as aslso merasa ‘think, feel’) West Greenlandic: misigi- ‘feel, notice, experience’ (but pe *mǝciɣ- is ‘see clearly’— Polar Eskimo has mihii- ‘get wind of (and be alarmed—animal)’, and East Greenlandic has misiisima- ‘be careful’; note also qiia- ‘freeze, feel cold’, anner- ‘feel pain, hurt’, and attor- ‘touch’; for malugi- ‘notice, discover, feel (that)’ see under Perceiving)
31 32
And note me ni au (lit. ‘meet a sight’), and German erfaren, erleben ‘experience’. Koryak ləγi ləŋ- can, as mentioned above, mean ‘feel, sense’ in a rather general sense (Russian oščutit). This in turn is related to ordinary stem pc *ləγæl- ‘recognize’ (in Chukchi ‘recognize, understand’, in Koryak and Alutor simply ‘recognize’). Chukchi also has
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cay: ǝlpǝkǝ- ‘feel, sense’33 (note the negative/caritive form əlpəɣitə- ‘be numb, insensitive’) Aleut: tuta- ‘hear, feel, understand’ (but hadĝa- ‘touch’) Nuuchahnulth: č’itas ‘feel cold’, yayaaƚ’ap ‘feel very sore’ (for naʔa- ‘hear, feel, perceive’, also -’aap ‘hear, perceive, sense, feel’ see under Perceiving; tl’uƚ ‘feel, grope’) Koyukon: ł+ts’eek ‘feel pain’ (also P+aa#de+D+neek ‘feel pain of/by P’ from -neek ‘move hand, feel’; and yaatl’ehneetleyh ‘he touched it with his finger’ from -tleyh ‘move elongated object’)34 Cree: mo.šihta.- ‘feel, experience sense of s.th.’ (and itamahciho- ‘feel so (healthwise)’ with it- ‘so’, milmahciho- ‘feel well’, from milo ‘good’) Kalispel: -é(ls) ‘feel (sick, bad, happy, etc.’) (lexical suffix, see under Mind) Tariana: -rena ‘feel, go through’ (prolonged experience) Kwaza: kyry- ‘feel shock or pain’ (and ‘make felt’ as of thorn in foot) Kalam: d nŋ- ‘feel’ (lit. ‘take perceive’ (d- is also ‘touch’); also ygen g- ‘feel cold’—lit. ‘cold do’—and ywt g- ‘feel pain’, and Foley (pp. 121–122) also has uncontrolled impersonal constructions like swk yp ow-p ‘I feel like laughing’ (lit. ‘laughing came to me’) and yp yawn g-p ‘I feel hungry’ (lit. ‘hunger came to me’)) Samoan: (for lagona ‘feel, recognize, realise, notice’ see under Perceiving) Arrernte: welhe- ‘feel’ (proprioceptive; from awe- ‘hear, listen’ and reflexive marker -lhe-) Amharic: sǝmma ‘feel, hear’ (note polysemy between sensation and cognition—in the first sense of bodily feelings such as hunger, pain, good or bad, in the second of sounds) Xhosa: uku-va ‘hear, feel’ (and uku-vakala ‘be understood’) And words for intuition: English: ‘intuition’ (earliest sense ‘contemplation’, in later philosophical usage ‘immediate knowledge or apprehension’; from late Latin intuitiō, < intuēri ‘gaze upon’, tuēri ‘look at, look after’; verbal back formation ‘intuit’) French: intuition (and avoir l’intuition de ‘have an intuition about’)
33
34
cəkejew-/-tkejew- in the meaning ‘feel, sense’ as well as ‘be conscious, come to oneself’, from pc *təkæj(u)- ‘be(come) conscious’ plus the affix *-æv- found with emotional roots. pe *əlpəkə-, the source of this stem, is not far removed in meaning from that of pi *malugəin meaning (see the wg reflex under Perceiving). It refers to any kind of feeling or sensation, physical or mental. In Central Siberian Yupik it is in fact a fully fledged emotional root of being or becoming aware of something (also of ‘being edgy’). -neek also covers ‘remember, be conscious of, hear, recognize, find out, know’, and the cognate root -niic in closely related Ahtna covers ‘touch, feel, know, notice, understand, believe, like, read, expect, be awake, remember, grasp, hear’ with different prefix chains.
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Greek: diaisthesanomai ‘feel, have a presentiment’ (lit. ‘feel through’, diaisthisi ‘intuition, presentiment’, also enorasi, lit. ‘within vision’) German: innere Schau ‘intuition’ (lit. ‘inner vision’; also Erfaren des Wesentliches, lit. ‘experience of the essential’, and unmittelbar Erkenntnis, lit. ‘immediate knowledge’) Danish: umiddelbar opfattelse (lit. ‘immediate understanding’) Russian: postigat’ intuitivno (lit. ‘comprehend intuitively’) Finnish: sisäinen näkemys ‘intuition’ (lit. ‘internal view’) Turkish: önsezi ‘intuition’ (lit. ‘initial guess’) Arabic: ħads ‘intuition’ Japanese: chokkaku, chokkan (suru) ‘intuit, know intuitively, perceive immediately’ (lit. ‘immediate perception’) Indonesian: gerak hati ‘intuition’ (lit. ‘move heart’) Tariana: himeta ‘think (intuitively), feel’ (causative of -hima ‘hear’, especially of momentary physical feelings (cold, heat, etc.) as well as of s.o.’s presence)
Chapter 19: Perceiving (Noticing) Old English: ongītan ‘perceive’ (and onfindan ‘be aware, find out, experience’; modern English ‘sense’, ‘apprehend’ and ‘be aware of’—oe gewær—cf. Latin vereri ‘be fearful’ < ie *wer- ‘perceive, watch out for’ as also related ‘beware’, ‘wary’, ‘guard’)35 Old Norse: kenna (esp. of smell, taste and feeling) German: vernehmen (i.e. ‘seize’; also wahrnehmen, bemerken ‘notice, observe’) Danish: fornemme (and sanse ‘perceive by the senses’; mærke, lægge mærke til ‘notice’) Latin: sentīre (sēnsus ‘perception, sense, sensation, emotion, idea’; and percipere ‘get, feel, perceive’—from per ‘thoroughly’ plus capere ‘seize’) French: percevoir ‘perceive, feel’ (and sentir ‘touch, smell’—compare under Experiencing; remarquer, faire attention à, noter ‘notice’36) Italian: sentire ‘hear, listen to, taste, smell, feel’ (also of feeling hot, etc.—cf. Experiencing). Greek: diakrino ‘discern, perceive’ (and vlepo ‘see, perceive’; paratiro ‘notice’; classical aisthanomai ‘perceive’, aio ‘perceive, hear’) Irish: cēadfadh ‘perceive’ (from ‘with’ and ‘be’; and airigim ‘pay attention to, watch’) Russian: čuvstvovat’ ‘feel, perceive’ (zametit’ ‘notice’) Finnish: huomata ‘notice’ Turkish: farkina var- ‘realize, notice’ ( fark ‘difference’)
35 36
And note English ‘see’ in e.g. ‘I saw that Uncle’s left ear was missing’. From Latin notitia ‘fame’, nōtus ‘known’ (< *gnō-).
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Japanese: ryōkai suru ‘perceive, apprehend’ (and ki ga tsuku ‘notice, realise’—lit. ‘the spirit adheres to’, nominal chūi ‘notice, attention’; for wakaru ‘perceive, grasp, understand’ see Understanding,) Mandarin Chinese: zhùyì ‘notice’ (like Japanese chūi) Classical Tibetan: sems-la sbyar ‘pay attention’ (lit. ‘take to mind’; also mam-par šes ‘perceive’—lit. ‘particularly know’). Tamil: gavani ‘pay attention’ (from gavanam ‘attention’) Chukchi: l’u- ‘see, notice’ (for cəkejew- in the meaning ‘feel, sense’ as well as ‘be conscious, come to oneself’, with the affix -ew- characteristic of emotional roots see under Experiencing) Nenets: sevt’e- ‘notice’ (from sev ‘eye’) Indonesian: memerhatikan ‘notice, pay attention to’ (perhatian ‘attention, interest’, from hati ‘heart’; also melihat ‘see, notice’) West Greenlandic: malugi- ‘notice, discover, feel (that)’37 (for misigi- ‘feel, notice’ see Feeling) Central Alaskan Yupik: alakǝ- ‘notice, come upon’ (same root as alaŋaaR- ‘be surprised’ under Surprise) Aleut: uku- ‘see, watch, become aware of’ (anamasXi- ‘notice, observe’; and note haXsa/haqata- ‘understand, realise, recognize’ under Recognizing) Nuuchahnulth: naɁa-, -‘aap ‘hear, feel, perceive’ (and note related naʔaat- ‘understand’; -Ɂaɬ ‘aware of’, -(y)uɁał ‘perceive’; piħ ‘notice, observe, judge’, -cqmaap ‘notice, pay attention to’) Koyukon: O+ł+tlo ‘catch sight of, notice, see, perceive’ (root -tlo ‘glimpse’; and k’e+ne+Ø+ to ‘notice, glance, move eyes’ from root -to ‘try, bother, glance’; also O+de+ɬ+’aan ‘watch s.th. moving, notice/perceive’, and yedetaatl-’aanh ‘he detected her action (and reacted quickly)’ with root -’aan ‘do, see’) Cree: pisiska.paht- ‘notice s.th.’ Tariana: hima ‘feel, perceive, hear, understand’ Kalam: nŋ- ‘perceive, see, hear, smell, taste, recognize, understand, notice, remember, learn, feel, know, sense, be conscious, awake, think’ (and specifically wdn nŋ- ‘see’— lit. ‘eye perceive’—and gos nŋ- ‘think’—lit. ‘thought perceive’) Yidiɲ: binagal ‘paying attention’ (adj.; cf. bina ‘ear’, binaŋa-l ‘hear, listen’) Samoan: ’amana’ia ‘keep in mind, notice’ (and lagona ‘perceive, feel, notice, understand, realise, recognize’; fa’alogo ‘sense, hear, listen’—causative of ‘perceive’) Yoruba: bikíta ‘notice’ (and kiyesi ‘notice, look, attend to’)
37
And intransitive malugusug- has a clear positive sense: ‘be happy about a change (or about receiving s.th. one lacked)’. pi *maluɣə- ‘notice that s.th. has changed (for the worse)’ had a more negative sense, as reflected in Copper Inuit maluɣi- is ‘not like the way a thing is’ and
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And words for interest: English ‘interest’ (French interêt, German interesse, verbal sich interessieren, Russian interesovat’sja, etc.—from Latin interest ‘it concerns’ < inter- ‘between’ and est ‘is’38) Greek: endiaferomai ‘be interested in’ (endiaferon ‘interest, curiosity’, lit. ‘carrying across’) Finnish: kiinnostaa ‘interest’ (with partitive object; and nom. mielenkiinto ‘interest’, lit. ‘mind fixed’) Turkish: ilgi ‘interest, curiosity’ (verbal ilgenmek) Japanese: kyōmi ‘interest’ (of pleasurable concern; kanshin of intellectual curiosity) Mandarin Chinese: (găn) xìngqù (duì) ‘be interested in’ (the first element, ‘enthusiasm’, is the source of the kyō- in Japanese kyōmi; and qùwèi ‘interest, delight in, prefer’, with the second element, ‘taste’ in Japanese kyōmi) Chukchi: peɣciŋu ləŋ-, peɣciŋet- ‘get excited, agitated, interested’39 (for inicɣətu ləŋ- ‘be interested’ see under Surprise) Yukaghir: čen’čə ‘interest, merriment, joke’ (and Kol. čen’u:- ‘interesting, funny’, Tun. čen’i- ‘be interested in, sympathize’) Indonesian: minat ‘interest’, berminat ‘be interested’ West Greenlandic: soqutigi- ‘be interested in’ (in nai ‘take notice of, be fond of’, eci ‘consider important’; from pi *cuq(q)utə- ‘s.th. to care about’, plus -gi- ‘have as’) Cree: cihke.liht- ‘be interested in s.th.’ (and kiste.liht- ‘be interested in, respect, esteem s.th.’)
Chapter 20: Recognizing French: reconnaître ‘recognize’ (and connaître ‘know s.o./s.th., recognize, experience, be familiar with, have heard about’—compare under Knowing; ignorer ‘not know, not have heard of, not feel’—from Latin ignārus ‘ignorant’, ignorāre ‘not know’ neg. of ie *gnō-) Latin: cognōscō ‘learn, get to know, understand, recognize, perceive’ (from Indo-European root *gnō- (originally ‘recognize’ like the Greek below) from which English ‘know’, ‘ken’, ‘notice’ and ‘cognition’)40
38 39 40
in Arctic Quebec (Tarramiut) ‘doubt s.th.’s value’—but in Labrador plain ‘notice’ (where maluɣusuk- is ‘suspect, notice, feel one’s drink’). Latin itself has dēlectāre ‘entice, delight, amuse, interest’. Borrowed into Naukanski Yupik as paɣsiiŋa- ‘admire, be interested in’. Also ‘be acquainted with’, via of from Latin accognōscere ‘know perfectly’, with intensive ad-.
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Italian: riconoscere ‘recognise’ (conoscere ‘know (person/place)’, ignorare ‘be unaware of’) Greek: anagnorizo ‘recognize’ (with ana- ‘over, up’) German: erkennen ‘recognize’ (from kennen ‘know s.o./s.th.’) Danish: genkende ‘recognize’ (from kende ‘know s.o./s.th.’ (distinct from kunne ‘can, know how to’), with gen- ‘again’) Russian: uznat’ ‘recognize’ (perfective of znat’ ‘know’; byt‘ znakomy s ‘know, be acquainted with’) Irish: aithním ‘recognize, know, be acquainted with’ (from *ad-gen- < ie *gnō-) Hindi: pahchānnā ‘recognize, be acquainted with (person), perceive, understand’ Finnish: tunnistaa ‘recognize’ (and tuntea ‘know, recognize, feel’—the first meanings with accusative object, the last with partitive; for passive tuntua ‘feel, be felt, seem’ see under Experiencing) Turkish: tanɩ- ‘recognize, know, be acquainted with, identify’ Chukchi: lǝɣel- ‘recognize, understand’ (cf. lǝɣi lǝŋ- ‘know, feel’ under Knowing) Japanese: wakaru ‘recognize, understand’ (for zonjiru and shiru ‘know’—also of a person—see under Knowing) Mandarin Chinese: rènchū ‘recognize’ (and rènshi ‘know (s.o.)’) Ainu: (for eramuan ‘understand, know, recognize’ see under Understanding) Dzongkha: ngoshê- ‘recognize’ Classical Tibetan: No-šes ‘recognize’ (lit. ‘know the face’) Nanai: taqo- ‘recognize, know (person)’ Nenets: tumdə- ‘recognize’ (< pu *tumtï ‘know’) Indonesian: kenal, mengenal ‘know s.o., be acquainted with, recognize’ West Greenlandic: ilisari- ‘recognize, know (a person or thing)_’ (from Proto-Eskimo *ǝlit- ‘learn’—and compare ilisima- and nalunngit- under Knowing) Aleut: haqat- ‘know s.o./s.th., find out, learn, recognize’ (and haXsa- Eastern ‘find out, realize, recognize, understand’, Atkan ‘remember’—cf. pe *paqǝt- ‘investigate, find’, and for haqata- ‘know’ see under Knowing; also sixta- ‘recognize, know’, related to pe *məciɣ- ‘be clearly visible’) Koyukon: O+oo+ɫ+tl’eet ‘recognize’ Nuuchahnulth: ħamup ‘know, recognize, be familiar with’ (like French connaître) Quechua: reqsiy ‘know, be familiar with’ (and reqsikuy ‘recognize’) Luwo: ŋec ‘recognize, know’ (active, goal-oriented acc. Storch) Khwe-‖Ani: ã ‘know’ (from nominal meaning ‘forehead’; usually in serial verb combinations with ‖ám ‘taste, smell, touch’, i.e. as ‖ám-a-ã ‘recognize, know, feel, perceive (by bodily senses)’; which can also mean ‘anticipate, know what is going to happen’, or with kóm by hearing (which can also mean ‘understand’ on its own), or mũũ by seeing—Brenzinger & Fehn 2013)
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And ‘realizing’ words: German: klar einsehen ‘realize’ French: se rendre compte de ‘realize’ Russian: osoznat’ ‘realize, become aware of’ Finnish: tajuta ‘realize’ (cf. tajut ‘consciousness’) Turkish: farkinda ‘realize, know, notice, be aware’ (cf. fark ‘difference’) Japanese: (see (to) omou under Judging) Indonesian: menyadari ‘realize, be aware of’ (see sadar ‘conscious, aware’ under Consciousness) Aleut: ukuXta- ‘see, realize’ Nuuchahnulth: ħamatsap ‘find out, realize, learn’
Chapter 21: Consciousness French: conscience ‘consciousness, conscience’ (conscient ‘conscious’41) Italian: coscienza ‘consciousness, conscience’ (conscio ‘conscious’) German: bewußt (cf. wissen ‘know’ < ie *weid- ‘see’) Danish: bevidst Greek: sineiδitos (also from *weid-) Russian: soznajuščij (soznatel’nost’ ‘consciousness, awareness’) Japanese: ishiki (suru) ‘conscious, aware’ (from i ‘mind’ and shiki ‘know’, also to be read as shiru ‘know, learn’; and shōchi shite ‘aware of, acknowledge, consent to’) Mandarin Chinese: yìshìdào ‘conscious, aware’ Arabic: wa:ʢin ‘conscious’ (waʢa: ‘consciousness’) Finnish: tietoinen (related to tietää ‘know’, tajut ‘consciousness’) Chukchi: cǝkejew- ‘be conscious, feel, come to oneself’ (and nǝ-tkej-qin ‘sensible’; Koryak ce-ckeju-ŋ- ‘think’; < pc *tǝkæj(u)-, related to kǝjæv- ‘wake up’) Indonesian: kesadaran ‘consciousness’ (from sadar ‘be conscious, aware’) West Greenlandic: ilisimavoq ‘be conscious, know’ (and ilisimavaa ‘knows it’, < pe *ǝlit‘learn’), qaatut- ‘come to one’s senses’ (< pe *qa(C)u(ði)- ‘become conscious’42);
41
42
English ‘conscious’, from Latin cōnscius ‘conscious, knowing, guilty, self-conscious’ (cf. con‘with’ and scīre ‘know’). Note also related English ‘cognisant’ (from Latin cognitiō ‘getting to know, idea, enquiry’—cf. noscere ‘learn, get to know’; note also ‘come to one’s senses’, ‘have one’s wits about one’, and ‘come to’). Related to qa(C)unaɣ- ‘be careful with, watch over’ and perhaps qaru- ‘dawn’, qarǝ- ‘come up’. Note also Sir. umiɣcǝX ‘thought, consciousness’, py umjuɣžaq ‘mind, thought’, probably related to umǝr- ‘look closely at’.
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sianigi- ‘be aware/ know about, look after, be careful with’ and sianissusiq ‘consciousness’ (from sila in sense ‘intelligence’ as also in silatu- ‘be sensible’ < pe *cila ‘weather, world, awareness’)43 Nuuchahnulth: -Ɂaɬ ‘aware of’ Koyukon: hu-Ø-neek ‘be alive, alert, aware, healthy, conscious’, P+yeɬ D+neek ‘know, be conscious of, acquainted with, aware of, understand P’ (from root -neek ‘move hand, feel’) Kalam: nŋ- ‘perceive, see, hear, feel, know, sense, be conscious, awake, think’, etc. (and specifically wdn nŋ- ‘see’—lit. ‘eye perceive’—and gos nŋ- ‘think’—lit. ‘thought perceive’)
Chapter 23: The Cross-Linguistic Expression of Emotion Amharic (Amberber in Harkins & Wierzbicka 2001) dǝssǝtǝ- ‘be happy, pleased’ azzǝnǝ- ‘be sad, disappointed, sorry for’44 fǝrra ‘be frightened, fear’ tǝnaddǝdǝ- ‘be angry, distressed’ k’ot’t’a- ‘be angry (verbally expressed)’ affǝrǝ- ‘be ashamed, embarrassed, shy’ mǝrrǝrǝ- ‘taste bitter, be irritated’ tǝnǝkka ‘be touched’ (both literal and emotionally moved) ayyǝ- ‘see, have emotional experience’ wɔddǝdǝ ‘love’ c’ǝnnǝk’ǝ ‘worry’ t’ǝlla ‘hate’ dǝnnǝk’- ‘be astonished’ k’ǝnna- ‘be jealous’
43
44
Proto-Eskimo *cila (and related wg sianigi- ‘be aware of’) has a special background, perhaps shamanistic: intelligence/consciousness appears to have been associated traditionally with the spirits inhabiting the environment, in particular the weather. A clue can be seen in the description by Bogoraz of the directional terms of the inland Chukchi, each direction being characterized as a particular spirit for whom ritual sacrifices were traditionally made. Also idiomatic hode tǝmbboč’abboč’e ‘feel sorry for’, lit. ‘one’s stomach move (for)’.
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Mbula (Austronesian from Papua, Bugenhagen in Harkins & Wierzbicka 2001)45 menmeen ‘be happy’ kaipa ‘selfishly rejoice’ -ŋu ‘be offended’ -moto ‘fear’ (often with preceding kuli ‘skin’: kuli-imoto is apparently used of sensing s.th. vaguely heard or seen inducing fear) ka-miaŋ ‘be ashamed/embarrassed’ (an existential construction with miaŋ ‘shame’; often with preceding kuli ‘skin’) -mbur(bur) ‘jealous’ (usually preceded by mata ‘eye’) Also numerous metaphorical or behavioural usages of body part words such as: mata-siŋsiŋ ‘eager, enthusiastic’ (lit. ‘eye-red’) mata-putput ‘furious’ (lit. ‘eye-bulging’) kopo-ŋ rru pu ‘I’m worried about you’ (with kopo ‘(my) body’ plus -(r)ru- ‘seek’, and ‘you’ as object) kopo-kutkut ‘be anxious/ have butterflies’ (lit. ‘stomach-be.beating’) kopo-ikam keu ‘get a sudden fright’ (lit. ‘body-do.wrinkling’; and similarly kete-ikam keŋ, lit. ‘liver/chest snap/quickly move up’) lele-isaana ‘feel bad/ sorry for’ (with lele- ‘insides’, so lit. ‘one’s insides deteriorate’) lele-ambai ‘be happy/ content’ (lit. ‘insides good’) lele-iurur ‘be perplexed’ (with iurur ‘put’) lele-ipata ‘sad, troubled, helpless in situation’ (lit. ‘insides heavy’) lele-imbukmbuk ‘anxious’ (lit. ‘insides swelling’) lele-ikam uraata ‘be emotionally moved’ (lit. ‘insides do work’) lele-imbai ‘be upset with s.o.’ (lit. ‘insides poor’, of someone else’s behaviour) kete-malual ‘angry at s.o.’ (lit. ‘liver/chest fight’) kete-ibayou ‘furious at s.o.’ (lit. ‘liver/chest hit’) kete-imap ‘be astonished’ (lit. ‘liver/chest end’) Ket (Vajda & Werner, In preparation) ajet- ‘angry’ (in Old Ket also ‘brutal’; probably related to Proto-ket *a:dǝ ‘sick, hurt’) -aŋ-si-vet ‘worry’ (from *aŋ, a root in negative feelings plus -vet ‘make’; related to (d)aŋ‘taste, smell, experience’ used pejoratively; also -aŋenbet ‘agitated, irritated’, -aŋtet ‘anxious, suffering’, and -aŋadiŋ-a-vet ‘grieve (for deceased)’ with *-ad- ‘pain’) dɨgɨs ‘be joyful’ (from *daq ‘laugh’ and *qas ‘want to’; dǝRas(iŋ) ‘be happy’) 45
Not bodily feelings like pain, for which -yamaana ‘feel’ used.
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ketan/ ketɨn ‘take offense’ (from ket ‘disgust’) dinte/ dint’u ‘love’ (root -te/ -t’u) hɨlasbet ‘be delirious’ (from *pɨr ‘hot’ + wes ‘similar’ and -bet ‘make’) qos-(aj-)den ‘fear’ (lit. ‘fear-go’; southern Ket qoran (boɣotn) ‘afraid’)) (-da)-qoj ‘get angry’ (and qǝjbes ‘angry, mean’ from qǝj ‘bilious’ and -wes ‘resemble’; southern Ket qǝj-ba-n- ‘get angry’ from *qǝj/qoj ‘bilious’ + *kan ‘belly’—cf. *qǝl ‘bile’) satey ‘shame, embarrassed’ sǝlej ‘yearn for, miss, be bored’ (sǝl apparently onomatopoeic + ej ‘sound’) tet-qut ‘be sad’ (lit. ‘put crosswise’) ǝ:ndo- ‘envy’ (lit. ‘jab’, from *ǝqǝn ‘branches’ + *dog ‘cut’) qoʔj ‘desire, wish’ Koyukon (Jetté & Jones 2000) oo-ne … -neek ‘love, like, enjoy’ (from root -neek ‘feel’ in sense of sensory perception, also ‘know, remember, recognize’; -oone- is ‘try to’) ts’o … -t’aa ‘hate’ (from pejorative prefix ts’o- plus -t’aa ‘be thus’) ne+le+get ‘be afraid’ (from root -get ‘rotten, smelly, fear’, also found in ‘angry’ below) dzaa … -let ‘surprised, scared, amazed’ (from dzaa ‘shocked’, probably related to dzo ‘chest’, and -let ‘experience event’) P-yee(ne) … -let ‘angry’ (lit. ‘within P there is turmoil’ with root -let ‘experience event’; also k’e+ne+Ø+ get, with root meaning ‘rotten’) -ts’aa ‘jealous, envious’ (stem; also ts’e#O+ɬ+den+e ‘be jealous of one’s spouse’, from pejorative ts’e- and root -den ‘be skilled’) ooyo ne-laa ‘ashamed, shy’ (from ooyo ‘shame’46 and root -laa ‘be (in state)’) -ts’eeyh ‘happy’ (stem; also soonaaneyh nelaanh ‘he is happy’—lit. ‘his joy is’, from soo‘good’, -neek ‘feel’, i.e. ‘joy’, plus root -laa ‘be’) beyehdoy … -let ‘sad, have hurt feelings’ (from root -let ‘experience event’, lit. ‘s.th. came up in his throat’—cf. yehdoyet ‘interior of throat’) yenee … -‘aan ‘worried’ (with yenee ‘thought, mind’, as also in yenee … -let ‘think, worry’ plus root -‘aan ‘do, see’) (and (e)kee/ ekeeyaa’ ‘exclamations of disgust’) Japanese (Kenkyusha dictionary (1964) and Vaccari & Vaccari 1970) ureshii ‘happy, glad’47 yorokobu ‘be glad, delighted, pleased’ 46 47
ooyo ‘shame’ is from -yo ‘wise, age, cautious’. Note that the adjectives here (ending in -i) are more subjective, typically used of first per-
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okoru/ ikaru ‘angry’ nayamu ‘troubled, worried’ kowai ‘afraid’ osoreru ‘fear’ (oj osori- ‘fear, dread’) ojikeru/ ojiru ‘frightened, scared’ kōzen ‘elated, triumphant’ hoshii ‘want, desire’ hokori ni omou ‘be proud of’48 taikutsu suru ‘be bored’ kanashii ‘sad, sorrowful, mournful’ (in Old Japanese also ‘dear’, from kane- ‘be unable to do’—Frellesvig p. 85) itamu ‘grieve, mourn’ (also ‘feel pain’, itai ‘painful’) natsukashiku omou ‘long for, miss’ (natsukashii ‘dear, longed for sentimentally’) kirau ‘hate, dislike, be prejudiced against’ nikumu ‘hate, abhor, have a hatred for’ oshii ‘regret’ okashii ‘be amused, suspicious, find strange’ kōkai suru ‘regret’ iya ‘repugnance, not like’ omoshiroi ‘interesting’ (omishirogaru ‘amuse oneself’) urameshii ‘bear a grudge, be bitter’ (urami ‘regret’) nikumu ‘hate, detest’ gekkō suru ‘get excited, indignant, enraged’ urusagaru ‘be annoyed’ (urusai ‘annoying’) sabishii ‘lonely’ (oj ‘sad, lonely’, from sabwi- ‘get desolate’—Frellesvig p. 92) hazukashii ‘ashamed, shy’ anjiru ‘be anxious’ shittobukai ‘jealous’ urayamu ‘envy’ aisuru ‘love’ (and koisuru of man and woman) wabishii ‘miserable, forlorn, unhappy’ (‘lonely’ in oj, from wabwi- ‘be disappointed, embarrassed’—Frellesvig p. 98) mezurashii ‘curious’ unzari suru ‘be disgusted (with)’ (and kimochi waruku suru, lit. ‘make one’s feeling/ mood bad’)
48
son subjects, and require derivation with -garu ‘appear’ for use with other subjects, e.g. ureshigaru ‘appear happy’. And kōman na ‘proud, haughty, boastful’, takaburu ‘proud, arrrogant’ (behavioural?).
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odoroku ‘be surprised’ (and bikkuri suru) akireru ‘be shocked’ (under Surprise) Note also the ‘psychomemes’ (usually with following suru or to) discussed in Hasada (2001): hara-hara: used of having a feeling that s.th. bad could happen while observing s.th. going on49 hiya-hiya: as the preceding but not limited to 3rd person it could happen to (related to hiyasu ‘cool, chill’). biku-biku: stronger than the first two about some danger to oneself (causing shaking/ trembling) odo-odo: when s.o. is in a helpless situation that could prove bad for one. Others from McClure (2000) include: uki-uki suru ‘be buoyant, happy’ (from uku ‘float’) uttori suru ‘be enchanted’ oro-oro suru ‘be in a dither’ unzari suru ‘be fed up’ gakkari suru ‘be disappointed’ kuyo-kuyo suru ‘worry’ waku-waku suru ‘be excited, thrilled’ Nuuchahnulth (Stonham 2005) wiiq ‘angry, unpleasant, rough (weather)’ (as in wiiʕaqtl (of a man), wiiqsuuqtl (of a woman) ‘angry’, with respectively -aqtl is ‘inside’ and -suuqtl/-suuqstutl ‘in the mind, in the body or womb’; wiiʕaqstutl ‘get angry’) -ayuk ‘be angry because of –’ -mi.ħa ‘be angry at, suffer from’ p’išsuuqtl ‘angry, mad’ (from p’išaq ‘bad’) Ɂuušsuuqtl ‘bad-tempered, angry’ (Ɂuuš is ‘something’) Ɂuusuqta/-suqta ‘be aggrieved, suffer injury’ hayaaɁaqtl ‘be afraid’ (cf. haya(a) ‘not know, be uncertain’, also perhaps hayak ‘silly, lustful’) wiicukwitl ‘be scared, hesitate’ (cf. wiicaak ‘shy’ below) huw’aqtl ‘afraid, uneasy’ 49
hara-hara is also used of s.th., light falling down, like petals, causing sadness.
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tuħɁin ‘fear’ (tuuħuk ‘afraid’) -ity’ak ‘be afraid of’ -miiɁak ‘fear, be afraid (lest)’ wiicaak ‘shy, hesitant’ (cf. wiics ‘be behind, unsatisfactory, inferior’) čiħatšitl ‘amazed’ (čiħaa ‘amaze’ under Surprise, also niƚak ‘amazed’, and Ɂuušp’aƚ, m’ickw ‘marvel at, admire’—-p’aƚ- is ‘look on admiringly at’, so behavioural?, as also p’aXak ‘astonished, look on intently’?) yuwaa ‘be pleasantly surprised’ y’uwaatl ‘be filled with surprise, be grateful’ y’imħaa ‘be ashamed’ w’aa ‘ashamed, bashful’ (and w’aaɁak ‘ashamed because of inferiority or inability, bashful, modest’) hiiniħa ‘be anxious, nervous’ yaamiħsa ‘be anxious’ (apparently from yaakw ‘be sore’, as in yaaɁak, plus -miħsa ‘want’) yaaɁak ‘sore, enthusiastic, eager’ Ɂikata ‘desperate because of a depressed state of mind, act recklessly’ -‘i.kw ‘be fond of’ Ɂuuʕaqtl ‘glad, happy’, Ɂuuʕaqstutl ‘get happy’ čitak, čaxtak, katak ‘proud, glad, happy, cheerful’ našaakw ‘glad, happy, joyous’ tluƚ ‘good, happy, attractive, clean’ (behavioural?) hutiiq ‘jealous’ c’ic’iša ‘loathe, be disgusted’ čaawiq ‘sulking, drooping, moping, miserable’ ƚakw ‘poor, pitiful, miserable’ (behavioural?—cf. ƚaksuuqtlaħ suutiƚ ‘I have pity for you’, also ƚaakwiiƚ ‘mistreat’) Ɂaasiƚa ‘poor, wretched, miserable, unfortunate’ (behavioural?) čaɁaakw ‘regretful of the misconduct of oneself or of a friend’ šiiwaƚ(uk) ‘sad, downhearted, sorrowful’ ya(a)č’aat ‘be sorry for s.o.’s loss or situation’ (-č’aat ‘sorry for’) ʕatiqak ‘thankful’ (ʕatiqšitl ‘thank’) wisc’at ‘be tired of waiting’ (behavioural?) -‘ałsimhi ‘want, desire, love, lust after’ (and see further under Wishing) West Greenlandic (Fortescue 2016a) nangiar- ‘be afraid or giddy in a precarious place, be afraid to go out in one’s kayak’ (trans. nangiari- ‘afraid of’; from pe *naŋyar- ‘be afraid in a precarious place’) ersi- ‘be afraid’ (pi *iqci-, related to Proto-Yupik *ira- ‘be horrified’ and *ircuɣ- ‘grimace’ of child about to cry)
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tupigi- ‘be surprised at’ (from pe *tupəkə- ‘be surprised or excited at’) uloriagi- ‘be afraid of, consider dangerous’ (pe *ulurya- ‘flinch in fear’) tatamit- ‘get violently frightened, die of fright’ (pe *tatamə(t)- ‘be startled or terrified’) aliasug-, aliagi- ‘grieve over, be sorrowful’ (and aliatsaC- ‘be(come) in despair by sorrow over s.th.’; from pe *aliɣa- ‘be lonely’, which is derived from a pe stem *ali ‘far away’) nika- ‘be sad, depressed, mourn over’ (but transitive nikagi- ‘think s.o./s.th. insignificant, not much’, from pe *nəka- ‘feel inferior or unworthy’) arajug- ‘be tired of s.th., lose interest in’ (from pe *ar(ə)yu- ‘be tired or homesick’) kappiasug- ‘be worried’ (kappiagi- ‘be worried about’ (e.g. a sick person); from pe *kappəya- ‘feel anxious’, from *kapət-/kapəg- ‘fit tightly’) allagi- ‘find s.th. strange’ (from pe *atlayuɣ- ‘feel strange’, derived from *atla ‘other’ and the intransitive emotional root affix -yug) kanngusug- ‘feel shame’, kanngugi- ‘be ashamed of’ (from pe *kayŋu-) kiserlior- ‘live alone’ (kiserliorneq ‘loneliness’; from pe *kǝði- ‘alone, only’) qissaar- ‘be shy, embarrassed’ (and qissigi- ‘be shy, afraid of, have caught a glimpse of’; from pe *qikə- ‘be shy or respectful’) qinngari-/ qinngarsor- ‘hate, be angry at’ (and older qinngar- ‘suffer because one has broken the cult rule, be irritated’, also ‘call up a helping spirit (shaman)’; from pe *qiŋŋar- ‘show displeasure’) talori-, talorug- ‘be shy (towards), not dare approach’ (pe *tałur- ‘be intimidated by s.o.’) paqumisug-, paqumigi- ‘be superstitious about s.th., feel disgust for’ (pe *paqu(mi)‘dread or be wary’) kamag- ‘be angry’ (pe *kama- ‘be nervously attentive’, Polar Eskimo has kamahuk- ‘be agitated, busy’) isumagi- ‘be worried about’ (and isumaaluC- ‘be worried, nervous’, from pi *icumaalugə- ‘worry about’ from *icuma- ‘think’) maajug- ‘be disgusted’ (maajugi- ‘feel loathing for’; from pe *maruyuɣ- ‘feel disgusted’ which may be derived from pe *maqə- ‘ooze’, *maqu- ‘suppurate’) quiasug- ‘be amused, think s.th. funny’ (pe *quvya(yuɣ)- ‘be happy’) quilerta- ‘be uneasy, scared’ (earlier ‘fear suffering damage’; pi *quiliqta- ‘tremble?’) narrugi- ‘dislike, despise, turn up nose at’ (and narraC- ‘be offended’; from pi *narru‘dislike or be disgusted by’, which is probably related to pe *narciɣ- ‘wrinkle nose’ and *narə- ‘smell’) ningar- ‘jealous (a woman)’ (and ninngaC- ‘be bad-tempered, hysterical (of a child)’; from pe *nəŋ(ŋ)ar- ‘be angry’) mamia(sug)- ‘be offended’ (pe *mam(ə)ya-) uumigi-, uumissor- ‘hate, be furious with’ (pe *uɣumi- ‘be infuriated’; one of the few clear examples of emotional metaphor in Eskimoan languages, since it fairly transparently derives from *uɣu- ‘be heated up’)
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uggu(a)r- ‘be annoyed, angry’ (uggori- ‘be annoyed at’ (from pe *uɣɣuR- ‘regret’— probably be a link to *uɣu- above)) ujariagi- ‘miss s.th. one has been used to’ (from pi *ivariatci- of this meaning, from pe *ivar- ‘look for’) sangiag- ‘jealous (man)’ (from pi *caŋiak-, which may be related to pe *caŋimmir‘want more’) tusu- ‘be jealous, envious’ (from pe *tucu- ‘admire, envy’) usori- ‘envy, wish to be in another’s place’ (pe *ucur- ‘praise or envy’) ippigi- ‘find s.th. annoying, unfamiliar or unsuitable, feel pain from’ (and intransitive ippigusug- ‘not feel well, have a pain’ of bodily feeling; from pe *ikviɣ- ‘suffer’) ilunngu- ‘be moved, touched’ (also ‘have inner pain’ (pe *ilulŋu- ‘hurt inside’, consisting of *ilu ‘inside’ and *-lŋu- ‘hurt in one’s –’)) peqqissimi(gi)- ‘regret’ (probably from pe *pinqiɣ- ‘be careful’ plus -si- ‘become’ and -Vmi- ‘a bit’) nuannaar- ‘be happy’ (pe *nunannir- ‘be enjoyable’, from nuna ‘land’ (probably via nunat- ‘go to visit another settlement’) and -n(n)ir- ‘be good to do’) tissigi- ‘find s.th. funny’ (pe *təmci- ‘be or find funny’). tulluut(i)- ‘be delighted, feel satisfied, comforted’ (and tulluusimaar- ‘be proud and content’; from pe *tut- ‘land’ plus -l(l)u(C)ar- ‘well’ and applicative -ut(i) used reflexively) qujagi-, qujamasug- ‘be thankful’ (pe *quya- ‘be thankful’) ilerasug- ‘have a bad conscience, be sorry one has caused another harm’ (and ileragi‘take care nothing happens to s.th. belonging to another, not want to trouble s.o.’; from pe *əlira-/əliŋra- ‘want to ask for s.th. but not dare’) illigi- ‘feel like s.th. (food)’ (and illigug- ‘one’s mouth waters (in expectation of food’; from pe *əkli- ‘lust for (sexually)’) qiiler- ‘long for s.th.’ (from pe *qi(C)ət- ‘be convulsed’ and its derivative pe *qi(C)əlir‘be worked up (with longing)’) kajunger- ‘desire, long for s.th.’ (and kayuŋiri- ‘be attracted by’, from pi *kayuŋŋiq- ‘be eager to go’, from pe *kayu- ‘strong’) nalligi- ‘be sorry for’ (also naakki(gi)- ‘be sorry for, have sympathy with’, from pe *naŋłəɣ- ‘feel sorry for s.o.’) asa- ‘love’ (from pi *ažak- ‘be gentle with’, involving the definitional intervention of Christian missionaries) eqqasug- ‘be worried’ (pe *ənqa(r)- ‘remember’) sapiug- ‘not believe in oneself, don’t think one can manage s.th.’ (from pe *capǝ- ‘block’, with applicative -ut(i)- used reflexively) -jug-, -rusug- ‘want’
raw lexical data Russian (2007 Oxford Russian Dictionary; also Levontina & Zalizniak 2001) rad ‘glad’ dovol’ny ‘contented, satisfied’ sčastlivy ‘happy, joyful’ ogorčit’sja ‘be upset, distressed’ tosklivy ‘melancholy, depressed’ (and toskovat’ po ‘yearn for, miss’) obidet’sja ‘be offended, hurt, resent’ bojat’sja ‘fear, be afraid’ (and opasat’sja ‘fear, beware of, avoid’) skučat’ ‘be bored’ (with po ‘miss, yearn for’) soskučit’sja ‘miss, long for, be homesick. become bored’ žalet’ ‘pity, feel sorry for, regret’ sožalet’ ‘regret’ dosadovat’ ‘be annoyed (with)’ stydit’sja ‘be ashamed’ sovestit’sja ‘be ashamed, have a bad conscience’ serdity ‘angry’ gnevat’sja ‘be angry (with)’ strašit’sja ‘fear, be afraid (of)’ vstorgat’sja ‘be delighted, go into raptures (over)’ nenavidet’ ‘hate’ (lit. ‘not look upon (with favour)’—Buck 1988: 1133) grustny ‘sad, melancholy’ pečal’ny ‘sad, regretable’ revnovat’ ‘be jealous’ zavistlivy ‘envious’ nervny ‘nervous’ zabotit’sja ‘worry’ (and ozabočenny ‘anxious’) volnovat’sja ‘get excited’ otčajanny ‘desperate’ (otčajivat’sja ‘despair’) zabavljat’sja ‘amuse oneself’ (and tešit’sja) serdity ‘angry’ (serdit’sja ‘get angry, cross’) odinokij ‘lonely’ razočarovat’sja ‘be frustrated, disapponted’ rasstrajivat’sja ‘be upset, in disorder’ zastenčivy ‘shy’ robet’ ‘be shy, timid’ stradat’sja ‘anguished’ otvraščat’sja ‘be disgusted’ blagodarny ‘thankful’ poražat’sja ‘be astonished’
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udivljat’sja ‘be surprised’ rastroganny ‘touched, moved’ ljubit’ ‘love’ uverenny ‘confident’ ozadačenny ‘perplexed’ gordit’sja ‘be proud’ želat’ ‘desire, wish (for)’
Chapter 24: Seeming English: ‘seem’ (from on sœmr ‘seemly, fitting, honour’ (in Middle Swedish ‘befit’), and compare oe sēman as ‘settle, reconcile’, hence also English ‘seemly’, ‘similar’ (Latin similis), ‘simple’ (Latin simplex) and (via Old French resembler) ‘resemble’— as under French below—so ultimately the same as ‘same’, from ie root *sem- ‘one’; for ‘appear’ see under the French, both in its ‘seem’ and its ‘show up’ sense; ‘think’ was originally ‘cause to appear, seem’—cf. ‘methinks’ and Old English Þyncan, related to Þencan ‘think’) German: dünken ‘seem, imagine, fancy’ (the former meaning in impersonal construction (es dünkt mich/mir), the latter with direct object, esp. sich ‘oneself’ plus an adjective; also scheinen ‘seem, shine’, in the former meaning with dative object, like dünken) Danish: synes, literally ‘it seems/appears to one’ (a reflexive verb, with indirect objectto-subject shift—also ‘think (that)’ under Judging; related to syn ‘sight’) Swedish: tyckas ‘seem’ (reflexive of tycka ‘think’) Old Norse: sýnas ‘seem’ (esp. with dative object like sýnist mer ‘it seems to me’, from sýna ‘show’; soma ‘beseem’, from sœmr ‘befitting’, related to Old English sēman ‘reconcile’ above; also Þykja ‘seem’, like oe Þynkan) Icelandic: sýnast, virðast (the former as on, the latter with verða ‘become’ rather) Greek: fainomai ‘seem’ (middle of faino ‘give light, cause to appear’; also classical dokeo ‘think, seem’, relat. to dekomai ‘receive’ and Latin docēre ‘teach’) Latin: parēre, apparēre ‘appear’ (the latter with prefix ad- specifically ‘come into view’; probably in the ‘come into view’ sense originally; pāret ‘it is evident’, appāret ‘it is clear’; probably related to Greek peparein ‘show’) French: paraître ‘appear, seem, come out’, apparaître ‘appear, show up, come out’ (the former with impersonal subject il paraît ‘it seems (that)’, both from the Latin; also with impers. subject sembler ‘seem’ as in il me semble ‘it seems to me, I think –’, from Latin similāre ‘make like, be like’ < similis ‘like’) Irish: samhluighim ‘appear, be like, seem’ (< samhail ‘likeness’) Russian: kazat’sja ‘seem’ (from kazat’ ‘show’; but ocs javiti sę < javiti ‘show’)
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Serbo-Croatian: činiti se ‘seem’ (from činiti ‘do, make’) Czech: zdát se ‘seem’ (lit. ‘give oneself out as’) Hindi: mālūm hota hai ‘seem’ (consisting of mālūm ‘known, evident’ and the present or perfect of honā ‘be, become’) Finnish: näyttää ‘seem’ (nähdäkseni ‘it seems to me’, from nähdä ‘see’; and tuntua ‘feel, seem, know, recognize’ under Experiencing) Turkish: görün- ‘seem, appear’ (from gör- ‘see’) Arabic: yabdu: ‘see’ (Algerian bân, but also ḍhar ‘seem (to s.o., please s.o.’)) Abkhaz: -zaap’ ‘apparently’ (inferential evidential affix) Japanese: mieru ‘seem’ (passive of mi- ‘see’; also -rashii ‘like a-’ and ‘it seems to me that – ’; and omowareru ‘seem’, passive of omou ‘think’) Mandarin Chinese: hăoxiàng ‘seem, appear’ (xiàng is ‘be like, resemble, similar, picture’, hăo ‘well’—see under Imagining; also kànlai ‘it seems (that)’ (the subject’s impression)) Ainu: -ne na ‘it seems’ (copula -ne + nominalizer of appearance na—Refsing p. 137; also interrogative sentence final siri enta an ya ‘it appears that’ (from visual evidential), containing nominalizer siri, originally ‘appearance’—p. 232) Indonesian: rasanya ‘it appears, seems’ (cf. rasa ‘feel’) West Greenlandic: -(r)palaar- ‘appear to be a –, act like a –, one can hear V-ing’; (r)palug- ‘seem, look, act or sound like a –’ (‘look like’ on verbal stem), -(r)pallag‘one can hear V-ing’ or ‘they say he has V-ed’, -gunar- ‘seem to, look like, evidently (inferential or sensory)’, -sima- ‘apparently, evidently’ (and -nga- ‘resemble’ (< pe -ŋa- ‘look like’), -gooq ‘apparently, it is said’) cay: -ciɬi- ‘appear to have been -ing/ -ed’ (and -ŋatǝ- ‘seem to be -ing/, seem like’) Aleut: lida- ‘resemble, seem to be or do s.th.’ (< li- ‘appear, come into sight’ + applicative -Vda-, relat. to pe ǝɬi- ‘put/act in a certain way’) Nuuchahnulth: -cy’ak ‘appear like, seem, resemble’ Nahuatl: nèci ‘appear, become visible, seem’ (latter meaning in Launey; mach ‘apparently, it is said, appears that’, machia ‘be known, apparent’, relat. to mati) Koyukon: comp kk’aa#D+’aan ‘act like, seem to be comp’ (with root -‘aan ‘do, see’, as also in nel’aanh ‘it is visible, appears’; and P+kk’e#den-t’aa ‘be like, seem like, look like’ from root -t’aa ‘be/do thus’—kk’e- is postposition ‘like’) Kwaza: -nãixwa ‘resemble, pretend, fake, seem to’ (simulative morpheme, from -nãi ‘be like’ and classifier of things/persons -xwa—van der Voort 2004: 904) Jarawara: awine/awa ‘it appears that, seems that, I think/guess, in my opinion’ (grammaticalized from awa ‘see, be seen’ plus continuative -ine—Dixon p. 186) Xhosa: uku-nga ‘wish, seem, may, would, should’ (see under Wishing) Yoruba: wò ‘look at, seem, visit, search’ (dibì ‘resemble’; and note rí ‘see, be, have, seem, find’)
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Index of Authors Aikhenvald, A.Y. 16n7, 24, 107–108 Alexander, W.H. & J.W. Brown 5, 118n10, 154 Austin, J. 109 Barrett, L.F. 125, 139 Barsalou, L. 119 Benítez-Castro, M.-A. & E. Hidalgo-Tenorio 105 Bergsland, K. 28n7, 62n2, 77 Bermúdez, J.L. 13 Buck, C.D. 9n5, 78n10, 79, 126n2, 137, 141
LaPolla, R.I. 140 LeDoux, J. 105, 117, 118n11 Levontina, I.B. & A.A. Zalizniak 78, 129 Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. & P. Wilson 105, 120, 134 Luria, A.R. 12
Carter, R. Chafe, W. Clark, A. Croft, W.
Paivio, A. 11n Piaget, J. 13 Plutchik, R. 105
4–6, 61 98, 115 5, 154 1–2
Damasio, A. 6, 9, 14n, 74, 100–101, 117–118, 125 DeLancey, S. 106–107 Dixon, R.M.W. 67n, 140 Edelman, G. 34 Ekman, P. 74, 105, 118, 127 Evans, N. & D. Wilkins 2n3, 19, 88, 158 Evans, V. 119
Mackenzie, J.L. & L. Alba-Juez Martin, R.A. 115 Michaelis, L. 109
121
Rakhilina, E. & T. Reznikova 119n12, 158 Reisenzein, R. et al. 118 de Reuse, W.J. 140 Riekehof, L.L. 16, 23, 39, 45, 83, 145 Sacks, O. 3, 34 Searle, J.R. 1, 2n2, 60–61, 63 Shatz, M. et al. 158 Taylor, J. 158
Harkins, J. & A. Wierzbicka 105, 125, 129 Haspelmath, M. 121, 160 Hoad, T.F. 10n
Vajda, E. & H. Werner 15, 19, 37, 54, 65, 72 Van Valin, Jr., R.D. & D.P. Wilkins 34, 38 Vygotsky, L.S. 13
Johnson-Laird, P.N. & K. Oatley 74, 105, 125
Watkins, C. 10n, 14, 38, 40, 72, 78, 87n4 Whitehead, A.N. 14, 17n, 25, 84n2, 100, 101n2, 161 Wierzbicka, A. 11, 14, 108–109
Koestler, A. 11n, 74n2, 101, 115 Lakoff, G. 106 Langacker, R.W. 120
Index of Languages Abkhaz 140 Aguaruna 19, 25, 35 Ahtna 32, 88n8 Ainu 15, 22, 29, 37, 42, 62, 72, 76, 141 Aleut 15, 19, 26, 28, 33, 37, 47, 54, 57, 62, 69, 73, 77, 92, 96–97, 102, 142 Alutiiq 77 American Sign Language (asl) 16, 23, 29, 33, 39, 45, 49, 52, 55, 59, 63, 67, 70, 73, 79, 83, 94, 145 Amharic 87, 131, 211 Apache 140, 143 Arabic 15, 18–19, 26, 32, 42, 51, 63, 67, 76, 81, 137 Arrernte 38, 43n, 73, 88 Cantonese 107 Central Alaskan Yupik (cay) 19, 21n4, 77– 78, 82, 88, 92, 132 Central Siberian Yupik (csy) 76, 88n7 Chukchi 19, 32–33, 37, 38, 41, 47, 52, 54, 57, 66–67, 69–70, 73, 78, 82, 88, 92–93, 97, 102, 115, 123 Cree 16, 18, 24n, 32, 43, 58, 62, 73, 88 Czech 21–22, 32, 38, 75, 142 Dakota/Lakota 37, 78 Dalabon 19 Danish 14–15, 21, 28, 30, 32, 38, 41, 44, 47–48, 51, 55, 57–58, 62, 66, 69, 72, 75, 81, 85, 89, 91, 102, 110–111, 137, 141 Dyirbal 43n Dzongkha 15, 22, 28, 47, 54, 72 East Greenlandic 72 Even 147 Finnish 15, 37, 51, 53–54, 57, 63, 65–66, 69, 78, 86, 89, 96–97, 102, 142 French 6, 13, 15, 18, 20–21, 26–28, 31–33, 37–38, 41, 44, 48, 51, 54–55, 58, 61–66, 69–70, 72, 74–76, 78, 81, 86–87, 91, 93, 96–97, 102, 109–110, 141–142 German 15, 20–22, 25, 31, 35, 37–38, 41, 47, 51, 54–55, 57–58, 62–63, 65–66, 69, 72,
75, 78, 81, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95n2, 96–97, 102, 109n6, 131, 141–142 Greek 14–15, 18, 20–21, 26–28, 31n, 33, 37, 44, 48, 51, 53–55, 57, 62–63, 66, 69, 76, 78, 81, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95n2, 96, 102, 141 Hindi 15, 22, 26, 32, 43, 65, 69, 72, 76, 87, 96, 142 Icelandic 21, 62, 65, 72, 86, 141 Indo-European (ie) 14, 22, 31–32, 35, 40, 54, 56, 60, 72, 75, 81, 85 Indonesian 19, 32, 51, 55, 63, 65, 67, 69–70, 72, 77, 87, 89, 92, 96, 131 Inuktitut (eci) 29, 77, 173n Inupiaq (nai) 29, 76–77, 113 Irish 27, 72, 76, 78, 96 Italian 21, 28, 30, 63, 91, 110 Japanese 6, 13, 15, 18, 22, 26, 32, 35, 41, 44, 47, 51, 53–55, 57, 62, 65–67, 69, 72, 76, 81–82, 87, 89, 91, 93–94, 97, 100, 111, 124, 129, 131–132, 141, 213–215 Jarawara 140 Kalam 3, 8, 43, 66, 76, 83, 88, 93 Kalispel 16, 28, 88 Ket 15, 19, 37–38, 43, 52, 54, 58, 63, 65, 72, 126, 131, 212–213 Khwe-||ani 58, 97 Kobun 78, 83 Korean 106–107 Koryak 82, 88, 102 Koyukon 8, 16, 19, 26–28, 37–38, 43, 47–48, 51, 58, 63, 65, 67, 69, 73, 78, 82–83, 88, 93, 97, 102, 115, 131–132, 134, 142, 147, 213 Kwaza 16, 22, 26, 32, 43, 51, 54, 63, 73, 76, 88, 142 Lao 83 Latin 14, 21–22, 27–29, 31–33, 35, 38, 41, 44– 45, 48, 50–51, 53–55, 58, 62–64, 66, 68, 70, 72, 74–76, 81, 84n1, 85–87, 89–91, 93, 95n1, 96, 101, 132, 138, 142 Luwo 27, 37, 96
232 Maaka 26 Manambu 16, 25, 37, 43, 48 Mandarin Chinese 15, 18, 21, 25, 31, 41, 47, 51, 54n4, 55, 58, 62–63, 65, 67, 69, 72, 76, 78, 82, 97, 91, 93, 110–111, 142 Mbula 83, 130–131, 212 Muna 148 Nahuatl 19, 26, 37, 43, 47, 52, 65, 73, 76, 129, 142 Nanai 22, 32–33, 35, 57, 77, 96 Nenets 15, 26, 32, 37, 43, 45, 47, 52, 57, 62, 69, 76, 92, 96 Nivkh 25 Nuuchahnulth 15, 28, 31, 38, 51, 62, 67, 69, 78, 83, 93–94, 96–97, 130, 132, 141, 147, 215–216 Old Church Slavonic 32, 47n2, 53, 58, 75 Old English (oe) 14–15, 21–22, 27, 31, 35, 38, 47, 53, 57n1, 62, 66, 75n4, 83, 86n3, 91, 142 Old Norse (on) 38, 56, 71n, 85–86, 131n8, 138 Pitjantjatjara 42 Polar Eskimo 69, 77, 110 Polish 32, 75 Proto-Eskimo (pe) 27, 29, 55, 57–58, 73, 77– 78, 87, 88n7, 102, 127–128, 130n5 Qiang 140 Quechua 26, 32, 37, 43, 59, 72, 76, 83, 107
index of languages Russian 15, 21–22, 25, 27, 31–33, 35, 38, 51, 54–55, 57–58, 62–63, 65–66, 69, 72, 75, 78, 81, 87, 91, 93, 96–97, 102, 129, 131, 219–220 Samoan 21, 27–28, 32, 36n, 41n2, 52, 54, 58, 69, 77, 93 Sanskrit 14, 21–22, 43, 66, 75n5 Serbo-Croatian 142 Spanish 14, 25, 38, 41, 62, 69–70, 72, 76, 137n, 149–150 Swedish 85, 142 Tamil 26, 37, 129, 141 Tariana 16, 19, 88, 93, 107 Tibetan 22, 54, 79, 91, 97 Turkish 18, 47, 54, 58, 67, 87, 89, 96–97, 106, 109–110, 142 Warlpiri 19 West Greenlandic (wg) 15, 21, 27, 32–33, 38, 43, 47, 51, 54–55, 57–58, 62–63, 65–66, 69–70, 73, 76–78, 82, 87–88, 91, 93–94, 96, 102, 107, 110–111, 115, 123, 128, 130, 132, 140–142, 216–218 Xhosa 32, 48, 55, 58, 67, 69, 73, 76, 141 !Xun 107 Yidiɲ 38, 43n, 67, 78 Yoruba 15, 23, 25, 37, 43, 51, 54, 58, 63, 70, 73, 78, 83, 88 Yukaghir 15, 22, 37–38, 52, 66, 77, 93, 108
Index of Subjects Abstraction 161 Appearance 141, 143–144 Appraisal 118, 122 Aspect 8, 57 Assuming 30, 33
Forgetting 38–39 Frames 119, 162 Frontal cortex 4–5, 154 Frozen metaphor 22, 31, 44, 49, 54, 57, 159 Future tense 61
Basic emotion 104, 120, 125, 132 Behavioural meanings 52, 62, 68–69, 79, 82–83, 91, 94, 99, 126–127, 129, 131, 161– 162 Believing 30–33 Bridging meanings 6–7, 162 Broca’s area 4
Gaps 7, 15n, 144, 160 Guessing 56–59, 146–156
Calculating 50–53, 55 Choosing 54–55 Cognitive Linguistics 1–2, 106 Conceptual space 1, 159 Concluding 55 Consciousness 4, 6, 9, 100–103 Considering 46–49 Context 150–153, 155, 162 Core-to-periphery polysemy 10 Counting 51–52 Deciding 53–55 Diachrony 1, 9, 157–158 Domain 10, 20, 159 Doubting 32–33 Dreaming 66–67 Dual coding 10n Embodiment 10 Emotion verb 127–129 Emotional feeling 74–79 Episodic memory 34 Event related potential (erp) 116 Evidentials 106, 143–144 Exclamatives 109–110 Expecting 68–70 Experiencing 84–89 Factivity 24 Feeling 84–88, 117 Feeling and thought 161 Finding 94
Hating 78–79 Hearing 18, 21, 38 Heart 14–15, 79, 81, 89 Hippocampus 4, 34, 117 Homonymy 157 Hoping 68–70 Humour 115 Imagining 64–67 Inference 54n1, 106, 140, 148, 152 Intending 59–63 Intentionality 2n2 Interest 93 Intuition 89 Inventing 65–66 Irrealis 64 Judging 46–49 Knowing 6–7, 24–29, 96 Learning 17, 24, 28, 83 Limbic system 4–5, 119 Loving 74–78 Meaning 63 Mental action 4, 64, 98, 185 Mental model 151 Mentalese 13n3 Metaphor 1, 10, 19, 26, 29, 65, 158–159 Metonymy 1, 10, 157–158, 161 Mind 3, 9 Mirativity 106–108 Neurotransmitters Noticing 90–94
136n
234 Perceiving 90–94 Polysemy 1, 6–9, 11, 17, 20, 25–27, 35, 37, 49, 85, 87, 143, 157 Predicting 5, 58–59, 154 Procedural knowledge 4, 24 Proto-self 101 Prototype 121 Quadrant 3–5, 49, 126, 159 Quasi-metaphor 10, 27, 56, 87, 159
index of subjects Semantic memory 4 Sensory channels 4, 44, 90, 126 Sensorimotor-to-Cognition hypothesis 2, 159–160 Socio-cultural scenarios 74, 101, 125, 129, 136, 162 Soul 14–15 Startle reflex 118, 120–121 Straying 7–8, 26, 56, 157, 160 Surprise 80–83, 104–124
Radial category 121 Realizing 97 Reason 14–15 Recognizing 6, 95–97 Remembering 34–39 Riddles 146–148
Theory of Mind 17 Thinking (in general) 11–16 Thinking about 40–45 Twenty Questions 148–149
Scalar expressions 111 Schemas 2 Seeing 7, 20, 27, 48, 92 Seeming 137–145 Semantic map connectivity hypothesis 2, 159–160 Semantic maps 1, 121, 159–160
Valence 116
Understanding 17–23
Wanting 71–72 Wernike’s area 4 Wishing 71–73 Working memory 5, 100