Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangm... more Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other (Ameka 2006a; Ellis 1984). Taking a cue from earlier studies (e.g. Ameka 1994), where some widespread interactional routines are either inherited, such as agoo 'attention getter', or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo 'well done, continue' which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common expression that accompanies it comes from Ga "obscene insults" sɔɔmi! 'inside female genitalia', onyɛ sɔɔ̀mli 'inside your mother's genitalia' whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: 'I defecate in your mouth'. A second form is the one commonly called "suck teeth", which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the TransAtlantic Sprachbund (Muysken and Smith 2015, van den Berg et al. 2015). Drawing on the representation and categorisation of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of "swearing at" other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of "swearing" and argue that crosslinguistic studies of "swearing", "cursing" or "cussing" and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the "insider" and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another (cf. Wierzbicka 2014a; Haugh 2016). Contrary to the norms in the West, swearing is not universal.
Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, ... more Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, presentations and other public materials. Entries have been developed by different individuals. Please cite authors as indicated on the webpage and front page of the pdf entry. Use of associated stimuli should also be cited by acknowledging the field manual entry. Intellectual property rights are hereby asserted. Creative Commons license This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to share (copy, redistribute) the material in any medium or format, and you are free to adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit in the form of a citation to the original material; you may not use the material for commercial purposes; and if you adapt the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original. Background The field manuals were originally intended as working documents for internal use only. They were supplemented by verbal instructions and additional guidelines in many cases. If you have questions about using the materials, or comments on the viability in various field situations, feel free to get in touch with the authors.
, a huge tree fell in Boston, Mass, USA. The tap root of this tree was firmly planted in the same... more , a huge tree fell in Boston, Mass, USA. The tap root of this tree was firmly planted in the same place some seventy-eight years earlier, on 27th April 1938. This tree was watered on both sides of the Atlantic and flourished and blossomed in Ghana for more than half a century. The sweet-scented flowers from this tree infected, sustained, soothed and nourished many of her students, colleagues and friends. This tree was a store of very vast knowledge, incredible energy and kind-heartedness. Her name was Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu. Mary Esther, you were uprooted from this world too soon, and too quickly and you have left us, the Ghanaian and African Linguistics community, speechless. Your departure has created a void that cannot be filled. I wish that I could tell you I'm not ready to let you go. But you've already departed, And we are feeling so empty.
... 128 Felix K. Ameka Ethnographic and sociolinguistic accounts of greetings in some West Afri... more ... 128 Felix K. Ameka Ethnographic and sociolinguistic accounts of greetings in some West African societies have pointed to the enactment of an ideology of inequality in which ... In English, it has been argued that How are you? is not a question but a greeting (Leech 1983). ...
This paper examines a voice construction in Ewe and Likpe whose formal properties have affinities... more This paper examines a voice construction in Ewe and Likpe whose formal properties have affinities with agentive passives, but whose semantics and functions are distinct from those of such passives. The constructions involve the linking of the Undergoer-like participant in the semantic frame of the event to the subject function, while the Actor-like argument is either not expressed, or is expressed as a dative prepositional (Ewe) or a verbid (Likpe) object, or as a GOAL object in a three place construction in Likpe. The operators in the two languages are experiential in semantics, but they belong to different syntactic categories: Likpe uses the verb ’hear’ plus a nominalised verb complement while Ewe uses a modal, grammaticalised from the verb ‘know’, plus verb construction.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2019
The year 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of JALL. As it happens it is also the International Year... more The year 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of JALL. As it happens it is also the International Year of Indigenous Languages. A decade ago, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of JALL, our Founding Editor Emeritus, Professor Paul Newman, reminded us of the beginnings of JALL and stressed that JALL is founded above all on empiricism, a “scientifically sound, intellectually sophisticated empiricism” (Newman 2010: 11). In addition, the guiding foundational principle as stated in the journal’s first Editorial Statement was that:
A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in... more A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co‐constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from ac...
There are 2,000 or 3,000 languages, for which we have no decent description, that will pass into ... more There are 2,000 or 3,000 languages, for which we have no decent description, that will pass into disuse within the next few generations. Trained linguists are urgently needed to document them. In most cases native speakers can be trained as linguists but in many instances an outsider is required.
Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangm... more Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other (Ameka 2006a; Ellis 1984). Taking a cue from earlier studies (e.g. Ameka 1994), where some widespread interactional routines are either inherited, such as agoo 'attention getter', or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo 'well done, continue' which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common expression that accompanies it comes from Ga "obscene insults" sɔɔmi! 'inside female genitalia', onyɛ sɔɔ̀mli 'inside your mother's genitalia' whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: 'I defecate in your mouth'. A second form is the one commonly called "suck teeth", which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the TransAtlantic Sprachbund (Muysken and Smith 2015, van den Berg et al. 2015). Drawing on the representation and categorisation of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of "swearing at" other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of "swearing" and argue that crosslinguistic studies of "swearing", "cursing" or "cussing" and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the "insider" and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another (cf. Wierzbicka 2014a; Haugh 2016). Contrary to the norms in the West, swearing is not universal.
Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, ... more Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, presentations and other public materials. Entries have been developed by different individuals. Please cite authors as indicated on the webpage and front page of the pdf entry. Use of associated stimuli should also be cited by acknowledging the field manual entry. Intellectual property rights are hereby asserted. Creative Commons license This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to share (copy, redistribute) the material in any medium or format, and you are free to adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit in the form of a citation to the original material; you may not use the material for commercial purposes; and if you adapt the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original. Background The field manuals were originally intended as working documents for internal use only. They were supplemented by verbal instructions and additional guidelines in many cases. If you have questions about using the materials, or comments on the viability in various field situations, feel free to get in touch with the authors.
, a huge tree fell in Boston, Mass, USA. The tap root of this tree was firmly planted in the same... more , a huge tree fell in Boston, Mass, USA. The tap root of this tree was firmly planted in the same place some seventy-eight years earlier, on 27th April 1938. This tree was watered on both sides of the Atlantic and flourished and blossomed in Ghana for more than half a century. The sweet-scented flowers from this tree infected, sustained, soothed and nourished many of her students, colleagues and friends. This tree was a store of very vast knowledge, incredible energy and kind-heartedness. Her name was Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu. Mary Esther, you were uprooted from this world too soon, and too quickly and you have left us, the Ghanaian and African Linguistics community, speechless. Your departure has created a void that cannot be filled. I wish that I could tell you I'm not ready to let you go. But you've already departed, And we are feeling so empty.
... 128 Felix K. Ameka Ethnographic and sociolinguistic accounts of greetings in some West Afri... more ... 128 Felix K. Ameka Ethnographic and sociolinguistic accounts of greetings in some West African societies have pointed to the enactment of an ideology of inequality in which ... In English, it has been argued that How are you? is not a question but a greeting (Leech 1983). ...
This paper examines a voice construction in Ewe and Likpe whose formal properties have affinities... more This paper examines a voice construction in Ewe and Likpe whose formal properties have affinities with agentive passives, but whose semantics and functions are distinct from those of such passives. The constructions involve the linking of the Undergoer-like participant in the semantic frame of the event to the subject function, while the Actor-like argument is either not expressed, or is expressed as a dative prepositional (Ewe) or a verbid (Likpe) object, or as a GOAL object in a three place construction in Likpe. The operators in the two languages are experiential in semantics, but they belong to different syntactic categories: Likpe uses the verb ’hear’ plus a nominalised verb complement while Ewe uses a modal, grammaticalised from the verb ‘know’, plus verb construction.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2019
The year 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of JALL. As it happens it is also the International Year... more The year 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of JALL. As it happens it is also the International Year of Indigenous Languages. A decade ago, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of JALL, our Founding Editor Emeritus, Professor Paul Newman, reminded us of the beginnings of JALL and stressed that JALL is founded above all on empiricism, a “scientifically sound, intellectually sophisticated empiricism” (Newman 2010: 11). In addition, the guiding foundational principle as stated in the journal’s first Editorial Statement was that:
A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in... more A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co‐constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from ac...
There are 2,000 or 3,000 languages, for which we have no decent description, that will pass into ... more There are 2,000 or 3,000 languages, for which we have no decent description, that will pass into disuse within the next few generations. Trained linguists are urgently needed to document them. In most cases native speakers can be trained as linguists but in many instances an outsider is required.
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