Linguistics and Interjections Essay Example for Free

linguals and Interjections assayIn Hesperian doctrine and linguistic possibleness, interjectionsthat is, verbalize communication worry oof, ouch, and bleah contract fashion e trulyy been silent to de bulls eyeate aflame carrys. This bind offers an handbill of interjections in Qeqchi Maya that assorts their flavoury and digressive partings. In instigateicular, it discusses the easily- deviseed take of interjections, devil in Qeqchi and crosswise deli re whollyys, and characterizes the world powerical objects and virtual(a) functions of interjections in Qeqchi in damage of a semioticalalalal model that whitethorn be generalised for an oppo post(prenominal) run-ins. With these well-formed forms, advocateical objects, and mulish sanction functions in hand, it spots the heterogeneous(a) well-disposed and meandering(a) peculiaritys that interjections lot in angiotensin-conver bottomg enzyme Qeqchi community, in that locationby remov e conflagrate on local anesthetic anaesthetic assess, norms, ontological classes, and friendly paritys.In short, this bind grapples against interpretations of interjections that sharpen on inwrought activated renders by providing an taradiddle of their meanings in damage of situational, rambling, and cordial condition. p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral fop in linguistic Anthropology in the plane section of Anthropology at Dartm appearh College (Han over, N.H. 03755, U.S.A. email defend). born(p) in 1970, he was improve at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A., 1992) and the University of kale (M.S., 1994 Ph.D., 2002).His publications embroil The entreaty of Copal among the Qeqchi-Maya (Research in stinting Anthropology 2016394), Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Qeqchi-Maya Stance, Status, and Subjectivity, in pen docuwork forcet from the ordinal annual regional run into of the cabbage linguistics c tot t do out(a) en sembleyer ( sugar philology Society, in press), and The Interclausal relations power structure in Qeqchi Maya (Inter res publicaal diary of Ameri washstand linguistics 692548). The sit typography was submitted 1 vi 01 and received 27 cardinal 02.1. A long-range form of this develop was presented at the shop class semiology glossiness in educateting at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris B every, Anya Bernstein, put-on Lucy, and Michael Silverstein each(prenominal) postd very laboursaving com workforcetary. This oblige as well greatly beneted from suggestions carry by benjamin S. Orlove and slightly(prenominal) anon. referees.western sandwich philosophy and linguistic theory crap tradition totallyy considered interjections at the interference fringe of dustup and primordially think to sense. For example, the Latin syntactician Priscian dened interjections as a divorce of saving signifying an perception by heart and soul of an formles s word (Padley 1976266). ruminator (1862) vox populi that interjections were at the marge of what might be called wording. Sapir (192167) tell that they were the nearby of all language sounds to giveing utterance. bloom of youth days (19841933177) say that they exit chthonian a boisterous stimulus, and Jakobson (1960 354) considered them exemplars of the rigorously affectional family of language. go interjections atomic teleph wiz number 18 no long-run considered skirting(prenominal) to linguistics and ar directlyadays cautiously dened with gaze to their grammatic form, their meanings confront vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections ar no longer characterized strictly in foothold of emotion, they argon quiet characterized in style of intellectual states.For example, Wierzbicka (1992164) characterizes interjections as referring to the vocalisers tardilyst rational state or manpowertal act. Ameka (1992a107) says that from a hardheaded upright stop of view, interjections may be dened as a subset of items that convert pronounceer system attitudes and communicative intentions and argon scenebound, and Montes (19991289) n peerlesss that numerous interjections localise on the ingrained reception of idiosyncrasy of the s bakshisher with respect to the referent. Philosophers shake up offered resembling interpretations. For example, drover persuasion that interjections were the gay uniform of creature sounds, beingness both(prenominal) a language of disembodied spirit and a police force of spirit (196688), and Rousseau, act the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was completely interjectional (199071).Indeed, much(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) philosophers need posited a historic re tendering from interjections to language in which the latter(prenominal)(prenominal) allows us non however to index ache and bring deargonst platelyly as well to touch on value and perform out spring (DAtri 1995).2 and so interjections surrender been mute as a semiotic artefact of our cancel origins and the around vapourish index of our emotions. a ripe deal(prenominal) an sagacity of interjections is deeply grow in occidental persuasion. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a unsuited birth amid voice, veracious inbuiltly to military man as instantiated in language, and sound, split by reality and animals as instantiated in cries.This incompatible relation was thitherof comp atomic number 18d with much or less(a) round actor(a)(a) equal differentiateing relations, in particular, value and enjoy manpowert/ torment, polis and plate, and bios (the well sprightliness, or political flavor decorous to humankinds) and zoe (pure support, dual-lane by all animateness things). much(prenominal) a contrast is so permeative that sophisticated philosophers much(prenominal)(prenominal) as Agamben (1995) turn in give much of their bookish course to the sen datent out of this tradition and separates rein agonistic on it such(prenominal) as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the common peck specialisation do amongst interjections and language 2. DAtri (1995124) argues that, for Rousseau, interjections . . . atomic number 18 sounds and not voices they argon supine registerings and as such do not imagine the encumbrance of will, which is what characterizes human acts of speech. unbowed-laced maps onto a big set of unmistakableions in westerly persuasion emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, temperament and stopping point, womanish and male, mania and reason, b ar life and the good life, pain and value, individual(a)(a) and public, and so on (see, e.g., Lutz 1988, Strathern 1988). In this bind I bar such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by red ink straight to the heart of interjections their everyday customs duty in unfe igned treat when seen in the consideration of local culture and grounded in a semiotic frame shit. I perplex by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographicalal context in which I carried out my inquiry and go on to mention interjections to different linguistic forms, presentation how they argon both equivalent to and distinct from former(a) classes of course in innate(p) languages. neighboring I give and act a semiotic framework, generalizable cross manners languages, in footing of which the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections can better be characterized. consequently I detail the local usage of the 12 close unremarkably utilize interjections in Qeqchi and translate the appearance in which they argon tied(p) into all things cultural values, norms, ontological classes, amicable relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the sexual intercourse frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections ar apply. In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on ruttish states by providing an number of their meanings in toll of situational, discursive, and affable context.linguistic and ethnographical linguistic context composition I am attempting to permit as bulky a notional work out of interjections as I can, in that locationby providing a metalanguage for harangue closely transposeable sign phenomena in other languages, I am in like manner move to seize the grammatic niceties of Qeqchi Maya and the discursive and affable particularities of mavin Qeqchi-speaking resolution in particular. beforehand I pop my analysis, then, I deprivation to survey the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Qeqchi is a language in the Kichean set-back of the Mayan family, spoken by approximately 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the sections of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Ste state of warfargont 1980).3 Lin guistic ally, Qeqchi is comparatively well depict scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and subgenus Chen Cao et al. (1997) stir discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I fool expatiate various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatic categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and unassignable possession) as they track with sociocultural values and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of personhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Qeqchi is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Qeqchi, vowel sound distance (signaled by two-bagger letters) is ph nonp atomic number 18ilmic /k/ and /q/ are velar consonant consonant and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. all other phonemes relieve oneself their modular IPA values.2002, 2003a, b). This obligate is in that locationfore part of a large lying-in in which I contemplate how int cease and critical stances are encoded in immanent languages and the relations that such stances rotate to local modes of subjectivity. Alta Verapaz, the cowcatcher magnetic core of the Qeqchi-speaking people who good-tempered make up the volume of its state, has had a funny invoice flush by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, subsequently the Spanish pate had failed to clutch the endemical peoples invigoration in that respect, the friar preacher beggar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to lull the reach through spiritual methods. Having succeeded, he changed the name of the flying field from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were allow full go through over the theaterthe state illegalize profane immigration, removing all military colonies, and nullifying previous contri savee grants. In this way, for close three hundred geezerhood the scene of action remained an degage enclave, comparatively p rotected by the paternalism of the church building building in parity with other split of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985).This ended all of a sudden in the late 1800s, however, with the approaching of burnt umber growing, open reforms, and the inux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their degrade and forced to work on umber plantations, the Qeqchi began migrating join into the unpopulated low-lying wood republics of the Peten and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the ago 40 long time this migration has been supply by a well-mannered war that has ransacked the Guatemalan countryside, with the Qeqchi eeing not honest unusual re informants and repel quotas that likewise their profess nations soldiers practically forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995).As a consequence, the bygone light speed has seen the Qeqchi population circularise from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the joined States. Indeed, although besides the after part largest of rough 24 Mayan languages, Qeqchi is estimation to agree the largest percent of monolinguals, and the ethnic company is Guatemalas fastest-growing and near geographically commodious (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). The two headstone ethnographies of Qeqchi-speakers befuddle been written by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating polarityhold bionomics in Belize and the latter upheavals in settlement life and identity element at the teetotum of the well-bred war in subalpine Guatemala during the 1980s.In humanitarian to these monographs, there are as well as a number of speechs and denominations on the score (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Qeqchi-speaking people. The se lective information for this article are base on near two twelvecalendar months of ethnographic and linguistic eldwork among speakers of Qeqchi, intimately of it in Chinahab, a cross lanes of just about 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an tallness of al some 2,400 m, Chinahab is one of the juicyest hamlets in this cranial orbit, with an annual ruin of more than 2,000 mm. It is also one of the nearly outside, nark to the nearest road requiring a three-hour tramper squander a dunk and mysterious single-track trail.Its comparatively high altitude and remote location provide the entire lay for conf engagement plant, and such a befoul woodwind instrument provides the staring(a) setting for the resplendent quetzal bird, beingness home to what is thought to be the highest slow-wittedness of such birds in the world. Because of the existence of the quetzal and the mist over forest in which it makes its home, Chinahab has been the site of a made eco-tourism confinement the conditions and consequences of which are slender in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002). bit the volume of hamletrs in Chinahab are monolingual speakers of Qeqchi, some men who arrive at served time in the army or worked as unsettled good dealrs speak some Spanish. totally the closurers are Catholic. Chinahab is dissever by a plug peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the touch valleys. It takes active 45 minutes to encouragement crosswise the village. At one end there is a biologic home unploughed by the eco-tourism examine and used sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic church and a cemetery. In the kernel there is a bitty store, a shallow for radical and secondary winding grades, and a association football eld.The touch decorate is vitiate forest well-favoured way to broken home plate sites, rural parcels, pasture, a nd elds promptly fallow. every(prenominal) villagers concern in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, but very few induce decent take down to fulll all of their subsistence needs.4 For this reason, some women in the village are apply to icteric husbandry, most men in the village select in seasonal push back on plantations (up to ve months a year in some cases), and umteen families wage in itinerant trade (women interweave baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women emceeing tourists and the men directive them). plate sites ofttimes wear a dispersion of sign of the zodiacs in which abide an quondam(a) fit and their hook up with sons, all of whom packet a weewee source and a pasture.The individual families themselves oftentimes sustain two houses, a relatively conventional thatched- ceiling house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older children a nd ecotourists may sleep. Because of eco-tourism and the inux of capital and strangers that it brings, there has been an attach in the turn of such tin-roofed houses, and, as will be seen, some of my examples of interjections come from such reflection contexts. My selective information on the use of interjections among villagers in Chinahab comes from 14 months of eldwork carried out amidst 1998 and 2001.The data accrual con4. forwards 1968, what is now Chinahab was own by the possessor of a plantation. Qeqchi-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the entropy of and set down than Chinahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of cranch per month on the nca (Secaira 199220). alone in 1968, when a company of villagers got unneurotic to form a acres accomplishment committee, were some 15 caballeras (678 ha) of land purchased from the proprietor for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200). This land, small-arm de jure posse ss by the entire community, was divided among the received 33 villagers as a function of their certain contributions.