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From LinguisticsOfTemperature

A lexical typology research project into the fascinating world of temperature terms in the world's languages.

Contents 1 Participants 2 Main Research Questions 3 Temperature in Language and Cognition: Workshop in Stockholm 2010 4 Understanding the project 4.1 Elicitation Toolkit 4.2 Introductory articles 4.3 Introduction to lexical typology 4.4 Introduction to the Word Space Model and Distributional Semantics 4.5 Introduction to the humoral systems of the world 4.6 Introduction to the physiological and neurolinguistic aspects of temperature 5 Bibliography

Participants

Main Research Questions

The proposal focuses on the conceptualisation of temperature in natural languages as reflected in their systems of central temperature terms (hot, cold, to freeze, etc). The project is envisaged as an integrated lexical-typological study of the temperature domain with the aim of describing and accounting for the cross-linguistic variation within it from three different angles:

1. Lexicalization of temperature, e.g: What temperature concepts are encoded as words and what distinctions are made in the systems of temperature terms? Are there universal temperature concepts?
2. Lexicon-grammar interaction, e.g.: How are temperature concepts lexicalized in terms of word classes? In what syntactic constructions are they used?;
3. Semantic derivation and motivation, e.g.: What are the possible semantic extensions of the temperature meanings to other domains? Where from do the temperature terms come? How can the meaning of the temperature terms change within the temperature domain itself? What general metaphorical and metonymical models underlie the semantic evolution of these expressions?

The project aims at the following results:

1. Description of the attested phenomena, of the cross-linguistic variation within them and of the parameters behind it.
2. Generalizations about the attested cross-linguistic patterns and the limits to the cross-linguistic variation
3. Explanations for the attested cross-linguistic patterns and for their distribution across languages.

On a more general level, the project is envisaged as a contribution to a wide range of theoretical discussions focusing on meaning, language vs. cognition vs. culture, linguistic categorization, interaction between lexicon and grammar, relations between synchrony and diachrony, polysemy, etc.
The project’s other contributions embrace developing and testing a methodology for cross-linguistic data collection and analysis, including cross-linguistic word space analysis that does not require parallel data, and a reasonable meta-language for cross-linguistic semantic comparison.

Temperature in Language and Cognition: Workshop in Stockholm 2010

In March of 2010 a workshop on the linguistics of temperature will be held in Stockholm, Sweden. For currently available information on participants, program and logistics, please go here .

Understanding the project

You can read an Abbreviated Project Proposal, a summary if you will, of the full project proposal here. You can can download the General Background for the project here.

Elicitation Toolkit

We are always interested in gathering data from more languages. Maria Tamm has developed an elicitation questionnaire, here available in an English version and a Russian version. There is also a short list of suggested sentences for initial elicitation of temperature expressions in Russian (an English version will follow later).

Introductory articles

We would recommend the following articles as a first introduction to the fascinating world of the linguistics of temperature:

• Sutrop, U. 1999. Temperature terms in the Baltic Area. Estonian: Typological studies, ed. by Mati Erelt, 185–203. Tartu: University of Tartu.
• Tamm, Maria. & Ekaterina Rakhilina. 2006 "Some like it hot": on semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung), a special issue on Lexicon in a Typological and Contrastive Perspective, ed. by Giannoulopoulou, G. & T. Leuschner, 59-2: 253 – 269.

Introduction to lexical typology

This PDF of a SALC 2010 powerpoint presentation will give you an introduction to lexical typology: it introduces some of the fundamental theoretical concepts upon which this project is based.

Introduction to the Word Space Model and Distributional Semantics

This page will give you further insight into the Word Space Model in corpus linguistics, which is used for a subproject.

Introduction to the humoral systems of the world

This page will give you a short introduction to the warm/cold Humoral Systems of Europe, India, Asia and South America.

Introduction to the physiological and neurolinguistic aspects of temperature

We offer a short introduction to some of the available literature on the Physiological and Neurolinguistic Aspects of Temperature

Bibliography

This bibliography is a work in progress - please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any suggested additions or corrections,