Affective coronal alternations in Mapudungun: Sound symbolism, change, and morpho-phonological structure.
This paper examines a series of consonantal alternations conveying 'affective' meanings in the South American language Mapudungun (Catrileo 1986, 2010, 2022). The processes target the rich four-place coronal inventory of the language by shifting consonants in root morphemes to palatal or dental arti...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Linguistics Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 35 - 78 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Cambridge University Press
Feb2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191114978&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191114978 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00222267 LIG jtl: Journal of Linguistics issn: 00222267 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 62 iid: 1 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 191114978 10.1017/S002222672500012X ppf: 35 ppct: 43 formats: tig: atl: Affective coronal alternations in Mapudungun: Sound symbolism, change, and morpho-phonological structure. aug: au: Molineaux, Benjamin affil: The University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles St. Edinburgh EH8 9AD, Scotland, UK su: Sound symbolism Consonants Pattern perception Structural linguistics Emotions Mapuche (South American people) Phonology sug: subj: Sound symbolism Consonants Pattern perception Structural linguistics Emotions Mapuche (South American people) Phonology keyword: augmentatives dentalisation diminutives iconicity Mapudungun palatalisation sound symbolism ab: This paper examines a series of consonantal alternations conveying 'affective' meanings in the South American language Mapudungun (Catrileo 1986, 2010, 2022). The processes target the rich four-place coronal inventory of the language by shifting consonants in root morphemes to palatal or dental articulations. The palatalisations are cross-linguistically common in implying small size, tenderness, closeness, and politeness (e.g. [naʐki] 'cat' [ɲaʃki] 'kitty'); however, the effects of dentalisation are more unexpected, implying distance, abruptness, sarcasm, and rudeness (e.g. [naʐki] 'cat' [n̪aθki] 'damned cat'). While speakers evidently seem to assign sound symbolic value to the alternations, the patterns do not align neatly with cross-linguistically expected 'synaesthetic' correspondences, particularly to do with size symbolism and acoustic frequency (Ohala 1984, 1994). Based on historical metalinguistic commentary and corpus data, I argue that the Mapudungun alternations are long-established in the language, showing a variety of lexicalised forms, and being deeply grammatically entrenched both in their semantico-pragmatic implications and their morpho-phonological structure. As such, any sound-symbolic patterns are fundamentally subordinate to the grammatical architecture. I propose that a more parsimonious analysis of the patterns is an autosegmental one, where floating evaluative morphemes (diminutives and augmentatives) spread [distributed] and [anterior] feature nodes to the target coronal consonants, along with their language-specific pragmatics. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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