Re: Interjections

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 10:14:04PM -0000, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> > I was working on my Senyecan vocabulary today (my favorite part of
> > conlanging) and I came upon some of the interjections.  I wondered
> > who else might have some interjections in their conlang.  I'm
> > wondering if different emotions call forth similar phonemes, e.g., is
> > pain always "ow"?
>
> By no means.  The Spanish and Italian for "ow" is [a'i], for instance.
> Plus, of course, interjections follow the basic phonology of their
> languages - ISTR that the French equivalent of the stereotypical
> "oof" (e.g. getting punched in the stomach) has either a [2] or a [9] in
> it.
I read somewhere that interjections indicating pain tend, crosslinguistically,
to have low vowels, whereas ones indicating delight often have high front ones.

I don't know how much truth there is to that, nor what psychophysiological
factors would explain it, but must say that opening your mouth muchly (=> low
vowels) when in pain seems intuitively appropriate.

                                                       Andreas