The language of emotions in Dalabon (northern Australia)
type: CreativeWork
description: In this work, I document and analyze the linguistic devices available to the speakers of the Dalabon language to express or describe emotions. Dalabon is a severely endangered non-Pama-Nyungan of the Gunwinyguan family, spoken in south-western Arnhem Land. The first three chapters are introductory: Chapter 1 sets the theoretical framework; chapters 2 and 3 the ethnographic and linguistic backgrounds respectively. Chapter 4 presents expressive emotional devices, which include diminutives, interjections, and various prosodic features. Expressive features are prominent in terms of frequency, and relate to culturally central categories such as compassion. Nevertheless, descriptive emotional features also play an important part. The emotion lexicon is large: at least 160 emotional lexemes, most of them adjectives or verbs. A lot of them are morphologically compound, often involving a body-part. Having discussed the morphology and syntax of these lexemes in Chapter 5 and their semantics in Chapter 6, chapters 7 to 11 question the linguistic association between body-parts and emotions in Dalabon. Like most languages in the world (and like many Australian languages) Dalabon uses metaphors grounded in physical and physiological metonymies in order to describe emotions. The linguistic and conceptual status of these tropes is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 presents Dalabon emotion metonymies and metaphors related to the body. One of the particularities of Dalabon metaphors of emotions is that in spite of their metaphorical dimension, they remain partly metonymic to the extent that they always represent emotions as states or parts of the person, not as independent entities. As a result, emotions are never represented as forces or opponents. In Dalabon, a metaphor like 'overwhelmed by love' for instance, is impossible. Chapter 9 presents emotion metaphors that do not involve the body, in particular metaphors for anger. These metaphors come closer to representing emotions as i…
abstract: In this work, I document and analyze the linguistic devices available to the speakers of the Dalabon language to express or describe emotions. Dalabon is a severely endangered non-Pama-Nyungan of the Gunwinyguan family, spoken in south-western Arnhem Land. The first three chapters are introductory: Chapter 1 sets the theoretical framework; chapters 2 and 3 the ethnographic and linguistic backgrounds respectively. Chapter 4 presents expressive emotional devices, which include diminutives, interjections, and various prosodic features. Expressive features are prominent in terms of frequency, and relate to culturally central categories such as compassion. Nevertheless, descriptive emotional features also play an important part. The emotion lexicon is large: at least 160 emotional lexemes, most of them adjectives or verbs. A lot of them are morphologically compound, often involving a body-part. Having discussed the morphology and syntax of these lexemes in Chapter 5 and their semantics in Chapter 6, chapters 7 to 11 question the linguistic association between body-parts and emotions in Dalabon. Like most languages in the world (and like many Australian languages) Dalabon uses metaphors grounded in physical and physiological metonymies in order to describe emotions. The linguistic and conceptual status of these tropes is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 presents Dalabon emotion metonymies and metaphors related to the body. One of the particularities of Dalabon metaphors of emotions is that in spite of their metaphorical dimension, they remain partly metonymic to the extent that they always represent emotions as states or parts of the person, not as independent entities. As a result, emotions are never represented as forces or opponents. In Dalabon, a metaphor like 'overwhelmed by love' for instance, is impossible. Chapter 9 presents emotion metaphors that do not involve the body, in particular metaphors for anger. These metaphors come closer to representing emotions as i…
author: Ponsonnet, Mai{u0308}a
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:48Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

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property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/155947