Re: Primary Interjections - Universals?

Jan van Steenbergen wrote:

> This whole thing reminds me a bit of something I once
> noticed about sneezing. One would expect that sneezing
> is not language-bound, since it is just a natural,
> human-like thing to do. Languages, of course, have
> their own way of transcribing ("interpreting" might be
> a better word to use in this case) such a sound: a
> Dutch cock says "Kukeleku", while a French cock says
> "Cocorico"),
Regarding the sound of the rooster you might wanna check
out a paper I wrote on animal sounds:

http://home.swipnet.se/escape/animals.pdf

In all European languages (in my sample) except Finnish
and Maltese (but including Hebrew, Hindi and Indonesian,
which are not in the sample) the formula for the crowing
was kVkVLVkV, where |V| is a vowel, |k| is [k] or [g] and
|L| is [r] or [l].

||| daniel

--
danielandreasson @ swipnet.se | http://home.swipnet.se/escape

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