Temperature is talked about in different ways across languages. In this paper, I explore the linguistic expressions used to talk about temperature focussing on three domains of experience in two languages in an asymmetric contact relation, Ewe and Likpe, both Kwa (Niger-Congo) languages of West Africa. Likpe speakers are bilingual in Ewe but not vice versa. The empirical question addressed is: how do speakers of Ewe and Likpe talk about the hotness and coldness of (i) things such as food and water; (ii) places and the ambience; and (iii) the personal experience of hotness and coldness in one’s body. I will argue that both languages do not have equivalents for ‘temperature’. Secondly I will show that “temperature property”, being a physical quality, is basically expressed using verbs and verb phrases (less so by nouns and ideophones) consistent with their typological profile. Moreover I argue that the range of expressions available in the two languages for talking about ‘water’ is more elaborate than the other domains of experience, some of which are linked to cultural practices such as bathing. I also investigate the construal of ‘hotness’ in Ewe and propose semantic descriptions of the predicates involved representing them in Natural Semantic Metalanguage-style explications. While some of the expressions for ‘hotness’ can be accounted for through a link to ‘fire’ as suggested by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2007), I argue that we need another prototype anchor for other expressions of ‘hotness’, namely, ‘pain’. In the ambient domain, the experience of the temperature generated by the sun itself is talked about using predicates from the domain of the physical property of texture. The conceptual motivations for such usage are also explored.
Adjei, Franscisca Adzo. 2012. Temperature system of Siyasɛ and Ewe. In Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Bruce Connell & Nicholas Rolle (eds), 104-116. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. <[URL], document #2741>
Ameka, Felix K. 1999. The typology and semantics of complex nominal duplication in Ewe. Anthropological Linguistics 41(1): 75-106.
Ameka, Felix K. 2006. Grammars in contact in the Volta Basin (West Africa): On contact induced grammatical change in Likpe. In Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M.W. Dixon (eds),114-142. Oxford: OUP.
Ameka, Felix K. 2007a. The coding of topological relations in verbs: The case of Likpe. Linguistics 45: 1065-1104.
Ameka, Felix K. 2007b. Grammatical borrowing in Likpe (Sɛkpɛle). In Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Yaron Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds), 107-122. Berlin: Mouton.
Ameka, Felix K. 2009a. Likpe. In Coding Participant Marking; Construction Types in Twelve African Languages [Studies in Language Companion Series 110], Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (ed.), 239-280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ameka, Felix K. 2009b. Access rituals in West Africa: An ethnopragmatic perspective. In Ritual Communication, Gunter Senft & Ellen Basso (eds), 127-155. Oxford: Berg
Ameka, Felix K. 2012. Ewe: Its Grammatical Constructions and Illocutionary Devices [Outstanding Grammars from Australia 10]. Munich: Lincom.
Ameka, Felix K. & Essegbey, James. 2006. Elements of the Ewe grammar of space. In Grammars of Space, Stephen C. Levinson & David P. Wilkins (eds), 362-402. Cambridge: CUP.
Ansre, Gilbert. 2000. The Ewe language. In A Handbook of Eweland, Vol. II: The Northern Ewes in Ghana, Kodzo Gavua (ed.), 22-47. Accra: Woeli.
Berlin, Brent & Kay, Paul. 1969. Basic Colour Terms. Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
Bobuafor, Mercy. 2001. Verbal Alternations in Ewe. MPhil dissertation, University of Ghana, Legon.
Bobuafor, Mercy, Osam, E. Kweku & Agbedor, Paul. 2006/07. Some verbal alternations in Ewe. Afrika und Übersee 89: 109-126.
Capo, Hounkpati B.C. 1991. A Comparative Phonology of Gbe. Berlin & Garome: De Gruyter & LABO-GBE
Duthie, Alan S. 1996. Introducing Ewe Linguistic Patterns. Accra: Ghana Universities Press
Firsching, Henrike. 2009. Temperaturtermini in afrikanischen Sprachen [Temperature terms in African languages]. Magisterarbeit, Universität Bayreuth.
Essegbey, James. 1999. Inherent Complement Verbs Revisited. Towards Understanding Argument Structure in Ewe. PhD dissertation, Leiden University.
Goddard, Cliff. 2012. Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics 50(3): 711-743.
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna. 2007. NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic perspective. Studies in Language 34(1): 675-800.
Goudsblöm, Johan. 1992. Fire and Civilization. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Kluge, Angela. 2006. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of grammatical features elicited among the Gbe language varieties of West Africa. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 27(1): 53-86.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2007. Guidelines for collecting linguistic expressions for temperature concepts: Version 1. <[URL]> (11 October 2009).
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2011. “It’s boiling hot!” On the structure of the linguistic temperature domain across languages. In Rahmen des Sprechens. Beiträge zur Valenztheorie, Varietätenlinguistik, Kognitiven und Historischen Semantik, Sarah Dessì Schmid, Ulrich Detges, Paul Gévaudan, Wiltrud Mihatsch & Richard Waltereit (eds), 393-410. Tübingen: Narr.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria & Rakhilina, Ekaterina. 2006. “Some like it hot”: On the semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung) 59(2): 253-269. Special issue The Lexicon: Typological and Contrastive Perspectives, Giannoula Giannoulopoulou & Torsten Leuschner (eds).
Lefebvre, Claire & Brousseau, Anne-Marie. 2002. A Grammar of Fongbe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lucy, John A. 1997. Linguistic relativity. Annual Review of Anthropology 26 : 291-312.
Ofori, Kafui. 2002. Nominalisation in Ewe. In New Directions in Ghanaian Linguistics, Felix K. Ameka & E. Kweku Osam (eds), 173-194. Accra: Black Mask.
Plank, Frans. 2003. Temperature talk: The basics. A talk presented at the Workshop on Lexical Typology at the ALT conference in Cagliari, September.
Reznikova, Tatiana, Rakhilina, Ekaterina & Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Anastasia. 2012. Towards a typology of pain predicates. Linguistics 50(3): 421–465.
Sutrop, Urmas. 1998. Basic temperature terms and subjective temperature scale. Lexicology 4: 60-104.
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria
2022. Semantic maps and temperature: Capturing the lexicon-grammar interface across languages. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 41:1 ► pp. 125 ff.
2020. Cultural Models of Well-Being Implicit in Four Ghanaian Languages. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria & Henrik Liljegren
2017. Semantic Patterns from an Areal Perspective. In The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics, ► pp. 204 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.