Re: Primary Interjections - Universals?

From: "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/)
| Swedish            aj (pronounced /ay/)
| Icelandic         /ay/ & /au/

Pokorny (or at least Wier) reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *wai. Even Latin has
_vae_. Exactly the reverse of Arabic (and probably Common Semitic) _ya_ "oh",
which functions more like a vocative marker.

| 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?

Someone posted on this list that vowel color indicates qualities of things or
concepts, where /i/ is a small, sweet, delicate thing and /a/ or /u/ is a large,
dreary, strong idea. I don't know if that's a linguistic universal, but I read
that Japanese onomatopoeia does just that. Three words meaning "bell" have the
vowels /i/, /a/ and /o/ for "tiny bell", "large bell", and "the bell found in
Buddhist temples" respectively.

| 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

Spanish has _ay_ and Yiddish has _oy_ (could I also include Cockney/Australian
English "oi"?). Combine both and you get _oy vey_  for Yiddish and _ay vaay_ for
Farsi.

~Danny~

Reply