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Article published In:
Morphology and emotions across the world's languages
Edited by Maïa Ponsonnet and Marine Vuillermet
[Studies in Language 42:1] 2018
► pp. 182–201

The encoding of emotions in Kakataibo (Panoan)

Morphological markers and prosodic patterns

| Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Kakataibo (a Panoan language spoken in Peru) encodes emotional meanings by means of various morphological and prosodic devices. Some of them may be related to pragmatic implications (like the expression of affection by the diminutive), but others constitute dedicated emotional markers (as is the case of the illocutionary suffixes, augmentative nominalizers and nasalized imperatives). The fact that almost all the emotional markers carry nasalization is interpreted here as a possible case of language-internal sound-symbolism between nasalization and (negative) emotional meanings. This paper also shows that in Kakataibo we find a systematic pattern according to which dedicated emotional markers express negative emotions and never positive ones. Both the phonological and the semantic systems described in this paper may reveal patterns relevant for the cross-linguistic research on the grammar of emotions.

Keywords: Kakataibo, Panoan, Amazonia, emotions, nasalization, high pitch
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Kakataibo language and its speakers
  • 3.Data
  • 4.The expression of emotions in Kakataibo
    • 4.1Illocutionary suffixes
      • 4.1.1Complaining negators
      • 4.1.2-iéé ‘accusatory speech’
    • 4.2Augmentative nominalizers
    • 4.3Nasalization alone
    • 4.4Expressive uses of the diminutive -ra ~ -ratsu ‘diminutive’
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The semantic domain of emotions in Kakataibo
    • 5.2Prosody, nasalization and the expression of emotions in Kakataibo
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 19 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.00007.zar
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