Re: Primary Interjections - Universals?

En réponse à Roger Christian <rogchr75@...>:

>
> For example, compare the following interjections which
> indicate pain or a bad surprise:
>
> English            ow (pronounced /au/)
> French/Spanish     aie/ay (both pronounced /ay/)
You forgot French "ouille" /uj/ used at least as often as "aïe" (and more often
among children).

> Swedish            aj (pronounced /ay/)
> Icelandic         /ay/ & /au/
>
> In my incredibly broad sample :), these interjections
> are diphtongs moving from low to high, and I think
> from lax to tense. English "ouch" is the same with
> concluding stop. Can anyone contradict the thought
> that this might be universal, that is, that
> interjections for pain are back-to-front diphongs?
>
Not back-to-front, but French "ouille" is an example of the fact that it's not
mandatory to have low-to-high diphtongues.

> Meanwhile, I also wonder if primary interjections for
> positive things (happiness, pleasant surprise,
> curiosity, joy) are universally a low back vowel:
>
> English             ah, oh
> French              ah, oh
> Hungarian           oh
>
Even your own example contradicts your claims :)) . Since the sound change that
fused /a/ and /A/ together in French, even "ah" is prononced with a low *front*
vowel. Funny enough, it seems that intejections are partly sensitive to sound
changes.

> And primary interjections for "tastes good," like
> English yum/mmm may be universally /m:/ or at least
> nasals? (Since, hypothetically, the speaker's mouth is
> full.) Polish, Finnish, and Slovenian all have /m:/
>
And French too. For this one i think I would tend to agree with you. What about
the sound used by people to try and impose silence on others? French
has "chut !" /Syt/, English IIRC has "shhh..." /S:/. What do other languages do?

>
> I'm not sure what to think of the English interjection
> "wow" in this hypothesis--maybe it's a
> counter-example. Still minimally, these are at least
> all extremely vocalic.
>
Well, the fact that exclamations are highly vocalic is quite understandable by
the very mechanics of the mouth: by definition an exclamation involves opening
the mouth wide, and it's difficult to make any consonant with a wide open mouth.

> Does anyone know any languages that have anything at
> all different? very different? Any thoughts on the
> matter are appreciated.
>
I think you should look at Japanese. I don't know what interjections it has in
those cases, but I know it's a very interjection-rich language, and it often
has surprising ones.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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