Chapter 8. Talking temperature with close relatives
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Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
Abstract
The chapter compares the temperature adjectives (‘hot’, ‘cold’ etc.) across Slavic against a broader typological background. The comparison targets both the systems as a whole and the forms involved in them. The main questions are how (dis)similar the temperature systems of closely related languages can be, and what is stable vs. changeable in the temperature terms of closely related languages. Slavic languages show substantial cross-linguistic variation in their systems (ranging from two to four main temperature values), while on the whole confirming several earlier tentative generalizations in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2015). The temperature terms themselves differ in stability, both in meaning and in form (with ‘warm’ being the most stable term on both counts), even though most of them are traceable to proto-Slavic and even to proto-Indo-European.
Abstract
The chapter compares the temperature adjectives (‘hot’, ‘cold’ etc.) across Slavic against a broader typological background. The comparison targets both the systems as a whole and the forms involved in them. The main questions are how (dis)similar the temperature systems of closely related languages can be, and what is stable vs. changeable in the temperature terms of closely related languages. Slavic languages show substantial cross-linguistic variation in their systems (ranging from two to four main temperature values), while on the whole confirming several earlier tentative generalizations in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2015). The temperature terms themselves differ in stability, both in meaning and in form (with ‘warm’ being the most stable term on both counts), even though most of them are traceable to proto-Slavic and even to proto-Indo-European.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. Methodology at work 29
- Chapter 3. A matter of degree? 57
- Chapter 4. Quality as a two-place predicate 79
- Chapter 5. Typology of dimensions 117
- Chapter 6. The domain of surface texture 161
- Chapter 7. A new approach to old studies 189
- Chapter 8. Talking temperature with close relatives 215
- Chapter 9. Lexical typology of Mandarin Chinese qualitative features 269
- Chapter 10. The qualitative lexicon in Russian Sign Language from a typological perspective 289
- Chapter 11. Constructing a typological questionnaire with distributional semantic models 309
- Language index 329
- Subject index 333
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. Methodology at work 29
- Chapter 3. A matter of degree? 57
- Chapter 4. Quality as a two-place predicate 79
- Chapter 5. Typology of dimensions 117
- Chapter 6. The domain of surface texture 161
- Chapter 7. A new approach to old studies 189
- Chapter 8. Talking temperature with close relatives 215
- Chapter 9. Lexical typology of Mandarin Chinese qualitative features 269
- Chapter 10. The qualitative lexicon in Russian Sign Language from a typological perspective 289
- Chapter 11. Constructing a typological questionnaire with distributional semantic models 309
- Language index 329
- Subject index 333
