“Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology”. In M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm, ed., Linguistics of...

This is a contribution from The Linguistics of Temperature. Edited by Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm.© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

This electronic file may not be altered in any way.The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only.Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet.For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com

Tables of Contents, abstracts and guidelines are available at www.benjamins.com

John Benjamins Publishing Company

http://www.copyright.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.benjamins.com

http://www.benjamins.com

doi 10.1075/tsl.107.11lur© 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company

Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology

Silvia LuraghiUniversity of Pavia

The Italian system of temperature terminology features the basic terms caldo ‘hot’ and freddo ‘cold’, two intermediate terms, tiepido ‘warm’ and fresco ‘cool’, and two terms for extreme temperature, bollente ‘very hot’ and gelato ‘ice-cold’, and might look remarkably symmetrical. However, a closer inspection uncovers a number of asymmetries, regarding both the intermediate and the extreme terms. It is argued that such asymmetries depend on perceptual and experiential factors that constitute the basis for conceptualisation of different degrees of temperature. In addition, data on usage and frequency point toward a special status of fresco with respect to other temperature terms. A diachronic survey of changes in the history of temperature terminology from Latin to Italian indicates that this is a result of the late introduction of this term, which was accompanied by a thorough restructuring of the system of temperature terms.

1. Introduction

This paper is devoted to Italian temperature terminology. As this has never been the topic of any specific study, I aim to cover the basics of the system, including the range of intermediate terms, types of experience which provide the perceptual foundation of the Italian system, and differences between the Italian and the Latin scale of tem-perature, which can explain some peculiarities concerning the usage of temperature terms in Italian. For reasons of space, I cannot explore the equally interesting issue of the abstract domains to which temperature terms can refer through metaphorical extension of their meaning. I limit myself to describing the frequency of concrete vs. abstract meanings of temperature terms in texts.

Plank (2003: 1) remarks that “for distinguishing perceptions/experiences of TEMPERATURE, human languages tend to have basic terms”. Indeed, languages tend to organise their temperature terminology with reference to two distinct basic notions, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, as reflected in the lexicon. However, terms for intermediate temperature vary across languages, as does the degree of elaboration of each pole (see Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2011 for a survey). In his seminal paper, Plank sketches

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing CompanyAll rights reserved

Silvia Luraghi

a typology of systems of temperature terms, based on the number of distinctions that a system can feature besides the basic opposition between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, for example by adding an intermediate, possibly neutral (‘lukewarm’) term, or by elaborating the extremes. He also shows that relatively complex systems can point toward a conceptualisation of temperature as based on a single scale that ranges from one extreme to the other, or on two different scales, one for the hot area and one for the cold area.

The Italian system of temperature terms features both intermediate values for ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ (but no neutral term for ‘lukewarm’), and values for the extremes. The hot and cold areas display the same number of distinctions, and degrees of tem-perature are defined relative to each other on a single, continuous scale. This system might look remarkably symmetrical at first sight: however, this is not the case, as I will show in this paper. Indeed, the system features a number of asymmetries, con-cerning the different ways in which the two intermediate values can be defined, and the ways in which the two extremes are conceptualised. Arguably, asymmetries in the middle field are connected with embodied perception, while asymmetries at the extremes depend on perception of the outside world and on folk beliefs regarding the state of matter.

The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2 I discuss the lexical category of Italian temperature terms, pointing to a difference in the lexicalisation of the extremes as opposed to basic and intermediate terms. In addition, I discuss differ-ent degrees of lexical elaboration in the hot and cold areas, depending on specific degrees of temperature. Section 3 is devoted to the coding of temperature in the three domains of tactile or touch-temperature, ambient (non-tactile) temperature, and personal-feeling temperature. I show that in Italian, as in several other lan-guages, the three different types of temperature have linguistic reflexes that deter-mine the usage of attributive/predicative expressions, of impersonal verbs, and of the possession schema. Section 4 is devoted to the two intermediate terms tiepido and fresco, and to the range of temperature they refer to, in comparison with the neutral concept of ‘ambient temperature’. Section 5 contains a diachronic survey reaching back to Latin, and traces the evolution of the Italian system. I argue that comparison between Latin and Italian indicates that a major restructuring took place. Changes described in Section 5 include the introduction of fresco ‘cool’, the only term among those studied here which is not of Latin origin, and which retains a lower degree of integration, in terms of conceptual basicness (cf. Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2008). In addition, it turns out that Latin temperature terms which do not continue as such in Italian mostly share a semantic development by which they lost the concrete (i.e. temperature) meaning, while preserving the abstract meaning. For these reasons, I try to assess the extent to which temperature terms are used in con-crete, abstract, and, in the case of fresco, alternative meanings by means of a corpus



study. The results are discussed in Section 6. In Section 7 I focus on the extremes. I discuss some lexical differences between the items employed: bollente indicates a state while gelato indicates a result, and the cold side displays a higher degree of lexi-cal elaboration. I argue that they reflect different types of conceptualisation, which ultimately depend on human experience and on perception of the state of matter. Section 8 contains the conclusions.

2. Italian temperature terms

2.1 Degrees on the temperature scale

Beside the two basic terms caldo ‘hot’ and freddo ‘cold’, Italian also has other terms that indicate different degrees of heat/cold. In the middle field between the two extremes, there is a term for ‘warm’ tiepido and one for ‘cool’ fresco: remarkably, neither term is neutral and can be taken to simply mean ‘lukewarm’. At the two extremes there are terms for ‘extremely hot’ bollente (lit. ‘boiling’) and ‘extremely cold’ gelato (lit. ‘icy’).1 Thus, the Italian system can be represented as in Figure 1:

1. Some other terms also exist for the extremes, such as rovente ‘very hot’ and ghiacciato ‘icy’. In particular, rovente, from Latin rubens, present participle of the verb rubesco ‘blush’, ‘become red’ originally indicated the state of heated metal close to fusion and has a limited distribu-tion, while ghiacciato is the past participle of ghiacciare ‘ice’. Remarkably, these are the same type of participles as bollente and gelato (see below, Section 2.2), thus confirming the tendency for extreme heat to be conceptualised as a state and extreme cold to be conceptualised as a result (see Section 7 for discussion). An anonymous reviewer points out that “since adjec-tives are not primary categories, their occurrence is conditioned by their head noun through ‘lexical solidarity’. Hence the noun phrases pietra, ferro rovente (not bollente) and bevenda ghiacciata, sudore ghiaccio (not gelato).” However, this assumption finds limited support in the data. A Google search of pietra bollente vs. rovente does indeed yield more hits for the latter type of expression, but the former is far from being unattested (2.760 vs. 7.410). Note that in the plural, pietre bollenti occurs in the title of a children’s novel, while pietre roventi occurs in the title of a movie, thus pointing toward a similar status of the two NPs. The noun sudore ‘sweat’ occurs with similar frequencies both with gelato and with ghiacciato (3.920 vs. 4.120, remarkably, ghiacciato is not among the possibilities mentioned by the reviewer), but sudore ghiaccio apparently does not occur at all in actual usage. Indeed, the only hits that contain this expression are from the web page of the Treccani Dictionary ⟨http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ghiaccio1/⟩; additional hits contain the nouns sudore and ghiaccio ‘ice’ coordi-nated). Other terms for the extremes mentioned by the reviewer, such as caloroso and gelido, mostly have abstract usage (cf. the reviewer’s examples, applauso caloroso ‘a warm applause’, accoglienza gelida ‘a cold welcome’).

http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ghiaccio1/

http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ghiaccio1/


Silvia Luraghi

extremes

bollente caldo tiepido fresco freddo gelato

intermediate �eld

Figure 1. Degrees of temperature in Italian

This apparently symmetrical scale displays a number of asymmetries, beginning with the type of lexical items involved, as I will show in the next section.

2.2 Areas of the scale and types of lexemes

All terms in the scale described in Section 2.1. are adjectives. However, they are not all of the same type, as I show in this section.

Bhat (1994) draws a distinction between languages, based on their tendency to have nouny vs. verby adjectives, that is, adjectives whose behaviour is more similar to the behaviour of nouns or of verbs. In Italian, adjectives are typically nouny: they dis-play the same grammatical categories as nouns (number and gender), are not distinct from nouns by special affixes, and can occur with articles and be used as nouns.

Among temperature terms, the basic caldo and freddo share all properties of nouns. Note that, while a noun for ‘heat’ also exists, calore, there is no noun for ‘cold’ other than freddo. Remarkably, the existence of calore does not make the occurrence of the NP il caldo ‘heat’ less expected or more ‘marked’ than the occurrence of il freddo ‘cold (noun)’.

In the middle field, fresco and tiepido share morphological properties of nouns; from the syntactic point of view, they also behave as nouns, even though the existence of tepore ‘warmth’ makes il tiepido less likely to be used than il fresco:2 note that this is contrary to what we remarked about il caldo. Thus, a slightly lesser degree of nouniness applies, at least partially, to this part of the scale.

At the extremes we find a completely different situation: bollente and gelato are participles; as such, they do have the same categories of nouns, but they also share the

2. An anonymous reviewer points out that “tiepido is always an adjective and therefore the predicate fa tiepido does not occur (*tiepido in (5))”. However, a Google search yields a signifi-cant number of hits (2.260), featuring largely different occurrences, thus showing that tiepido can be used as a noun, although to a lesser extent than the other terms.



tense category with verbs. Accordingly, they carry special affixes that indicate tense, and at the same time also mark them as adjectives. In particular, bollente is a present participle of the verb bollire ‘boil’, formed with the suffix -ent-, while gelato is a past participle of the verb gelare ‘ice’, and is formed with the suffix -at-. In addition, they cannot occur with articles or behave syntactically as nouns: there is no NP *il bollente, while the NP il gelato does exist, but it has no reference to temperature (it means ‘ice cream’).

Degrees of nouniness vs. verbiness of Italian temperature terms are represented in Table 1. In the table, a scale of decreasing nouniness emerges, whereby the two basic terms caldo and freddo are prototypical adjectives: in fact, given their distribution, they can also be considered nouns. While different degrees of nouniness are not especially relevant to the opposition between the basic terms and the middle field, they are strik-ingly clear at the extremes. As I will argue in Section 6, this mirrors the different types of experience that serve as the conceptual basis for the middle field as opposed to the extremes.

Table 1. Types of lexical items

grammatical categories of nouns

absence of derivational affixes

use with articles

Basic + + +Intermediate + + ±Extremes + – –

Note further that the hot side presents a slightly higher degree of lexical elabora-tion than the cold side. In the case of basic terms, this is shown by the existence of a separate noun to indicate ‘hot’, calore, related to caldo. Similarly, in the middle field we find the noun tepore, related to tiepido. (This is in spite of the fact that, as remarked above, caldo frequently occurs with articles, thus sharing the distribution of nouns.) No such nouns are available for the cold side, in which freddo and fresco are the only items available, both as adjectives and as nouns. Remarkably, the extremes display a reversal in lexical complexity: while no noun is available that corresponds to bollente,3 extreme cold can be referred to with the noun gelo, which means ‘frost’ but also ‘freeze, chill’. I will return to these asymmetries below, Section 5.4.

The distribution of lexical items depending on their lexical class cross-cuts differ-ent temperature zones, as shown in Figure 2.

. The NP bollore exists, but it does not indicate temperature: rather, it refers to the state of boiling of a liquid.


Silvia Luraghi

ADJECTIVES

bollente caldo tiepido fresco freddo gelato

NOUNS calore tepore gelo

ADJECTIVES/NOUNS

Figure 2. Lexical category of Italian temperature terms

3. Domains of temperature

The three domains of temperature, tactile, ambient and personal-feeling, described in Plank (2003) and Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2011), display interesting differences, which concern both the syntactic constructions involved, and the number of possible dis-tinctions. Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2011: 394) remarks that “[l]anguages vary consider-ably as to whether or to what extent the three-fold distinction is made explicit, either by morphosyntactic or by lexical means or by a combination of both.” Italian displays a maximal degree of distinction, making use of three different constructions for the three domains.

In the next sections, I will show how the three domains are coded in Italian, and will argue that three different conceptual schemas are used, which map temperature on three other more abstract domains: quality, state of affairs, and possession. The differ-ent predicational constructions discussed in Section 3.1–3.3 are anticipated in Table 2 (indicated as Cx1,2,3) and Figure 3 (both adapted from Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2011: 399):

Table 2. Hot predications in different domains

tactile ambient personal feeling

Italian L1 (caldo) + Cx1 L1 (caldo) + Cx2 L1 (caldo) + Cx3

HOT HOT HOT

TACT AMB PERS

QUALITY IMPERSONAL STATE OF AFFAIRS POSSESSION

Figure 3. Schemas for conceptualisation of temperature in different domains



.1 Tactile temperature is a quality of a referent

The domain of tactile temperature allows for the whole range of values that I have described in Section 2. Tactile temperature is typically expressed via attributive or predicative constructions, in which temperature terms function as adjectives:

(1) La pietra è fresca /fredda /gelata /tiepida /calda /bollente. the stone be.3sg cool /cold /ice-cold /warm /hot /boiling ‘The stone is (feels) cool/cold/very cold/warm/hot/very hot.’

(2) una bevanda fresca /fredda /gelata / tiepida /calda /bollente a drink cool / cold / ice-cold /warm /hot /boiling4

‘a cool/cold/very cold/warm/hot/very hot drink’

In the domain of tactile temperature, the temperature of a certain referent is indicated by the same coding that indicates qualities, and temperature terms are used as adjec-tives, as in the case of other qualities:

(3) La foto è bella/piccola/vecchia. the photo be.3sg nice/small/old ‘The photo is nice/small/old.’

(4) una foto bella/piccola/vecchia a photo nice/small/old ‘a nice/small /old picture’

.2 Ambient temperature is an uncontrolled state of affairs

Ambient temperature is usually indicated by means of impersonal verbal construc-tions, a coding that is also used more generally to refer to atmospheric phenomena. As there are no specific verbs with the meaning ‘it (= the temperature) is cold/hot’ etc., a periphrastic construction is used, which involves the verb fare ‘do’ in the third person singular and obligatory null subject. The verb ‘do’ functions as a support for temperature terms, apparently treated as direct objects but in fact functioning as pred-icates. Only basic terms and terms in the middle field can occur in this construction, as shown in:

(5) Fa freddo/caldo/fresco/tiepido/*gelato/*bollente. it.does cold/ hot/ cool /warm/ icy/boiling ‘It’s cold/ hot/ cool/warm /very cold/very hot.’

. Note that una bevanda bollente does not mean ‘a boiling drink’, ‘a drink which is in the state of boiling’; rather, it indicates that a drink is as hot as if it had just stopped boiling (this does not mean that the drink has necessarily been boiled).


Silvia Luraghi

To indicate that the temperature is extremely hot or cold, one must use the modifier molto ‘very’ before the temperature term, or a superlative:

(6) Fa molto freddo/freddissimo/molto caldo/caldissimo. it.does very cold /coldest/very hot /hottest ‘It’s very/extremely cold/very/extremely hot.’

As remarked above, impersonal constructions are used for weather expressions in Italian: beside impersonal weather verbs such as piove ‘(it) rains’, nevica ‘(it) snows’, the fare-construction, in which fare ‘do’ is used as a support verb, also occurs in sentences such as:5

(7) Fa bello/brutto. it.does nice/ugly ‘The weather is nice/bad.’

In this construction, temperature terms do not follow the prototypical syntax of adjec-tives, i.e. they do not modify head nouns. Rather, they function as predicates, with the verb ‘do’ only functioning as a support. Accordingly, temperature terms remain non-referential as prototypical adjectives, and do not behave as prototypical nouns: indeed, the nouns calore and tepore do not occur in this construction (see also below, Section (3.3).

. Personal-feeling temperature is a thing possessed

The third domain of temperature, personal feeling, is also expressed verbally, by means of the possession schema. Again, the extremes are not among possible items in this construction (superlatives can be used instead); in addition, in the intermediate field the term tiepido, even though occurring in the construction,6 is not common:

(8) Ho freddo /caldo/fresco/?tiepido/*gelato/*bollente. I.have cold / hot/ cool / warm / icy / boiling ‘I am cold/hot/cool/warm/very cold/very hot.’

Also in this case, the syntax of temperature fits in a broader framework, that is, the syntax of bodily sensations. Compare:

. According to an anonymous reviewer, “fa bello/brutto is not standard Italian.” However, these expressions are perfectly standard for myself, and for all other speakers I asked.

. An anonymous reviewer points out that “the predicate *ho tiepido does not occur at all.” Again, as in the case of fa tiepido (see above, Footnote 2) actual usage does not match this statement. A Google search gives a limited number of hits (536), among which an occurrence in a popular commercial that appeared on television several years ago.


Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology 1

(9) Ho fame / sete/mal di testa. I.have hunger/thirst/headache ‘I am hungry/thirsty; I have headache.’

Thus, the possession schema serves the purpose of coding bodily sensations in Italian; accordingly, personal-feeling temperature is coded in the same way as other bodily sensations. Note that, as in the case of ambient temperature, the terms involved are non-referential (hence more similar to predicative adjectives than to nouns) and their function is basically predicative, as indicated by the non-occurrence of true nouns such as calore in this construction.

. A closer look at the intermediate field

As remarked in Section 2, Italian does not have a term for ‘lukewarm’ that indicates a temperature which is neither on the hot/warm nor on the cold/cool side. One can indicate neutral temperature with the expression temperatura ambiente ‘room tem-perature’ as in:

(10) una bevanda a temperatura ambiente a beverage at temperature ambient ‘a non-refrigerated beverage.’

In the next sections I discuss various issues connected with the intermediate terms tiepido and fresco, including their orientation and the absolute standard by which they can be determined. All examples in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 have been taken from the internet, by googling the relevant terms.

.1 Orientation

Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Rakhilina (2006) discuss the possible orientation of inter-mediate terms. In particular, they point to a difference between Swedish ljummen ‘lukewarm’, a term with no clear orientation, and Russian teplyj ‘warm’, which displays a ‘warming’ orientation. Thus, comparative forms of ljummen (mera ljummen, ljum-mare) can indicate either a temperature which is lower or one which is higher than the standard of comparison. In contrast, comparative forms of teplyj (bolee teplyj, teplee) always indicate a higher temperature than the standard. In addition, the Russian term is often used with body-part terms, has positive connotations in metaphorical uses, and is defined via direct reference to the (human) body.

Even though the Italian term tiepido is also defined by reference to the human body, as I show below, its orientation is not as straightforwardly determinable as the orientation of Russian teplyj, and its metaphorical meaning is basically negative.


2 Silvia Luraghi

In the case of ambient temperature, tiepido seems to only have a warming orienta-tion, similar to Russian teplyj, as shown in:

(11) Gli scienziati hanno scoperto che negli ultimi milioni di anni the scientists have discovered that in.the last millions of years il sud della Groenlandia era più tiepido di quanto ritenuto the south of.the Greenland was more warm of what thought in precedenza. in precedence ‘Scientists discovered that over the last few millions years Southern

Greenland was warmer than what was formerly thought.’

(12) Presto primavera, tempo stabile e clima più tiepido. soon springtime weather stable and climate more warm ‘Springtime starting soon, with more stable and warmer weather.’

However, this does not hold for tactile temperature: in this domain, più tiepido may mean both ‘warmer’ and ‘colder’. Compare:

(13) Comunque se il termosifone è molto distante dalla caldaia potrà capitare che however if the radiator is very far from.the kettle it.might happen that it. sia sempre più tiepido rispetto agli altri! be always more warm regarding to.the other ‘In any case, if a radiator is very far from the kettle it may happen that it is

always colder than the other ones.’

(14) Fintanto che ho fatto fuoriuscire acqua il termosifone è until that I.have done flow.out water the radiator it.is diventato sempre più tiepido. …. Chiusa la valvola become ever more warm closed the valve di sfiato dell’aria e arrestata quindi of outlet of.the air and stopped then la fuoriuscita dell’acqua, il termosifone ritorna freddo. the outflow of.the water the radiator returns cold ‘While I was letting the water out, the radiator got warmer and warmer.

After closing the valve and stopping the water, the radiator gets cold again.’

In addition, when used metaphorically tiepido tends to mean ‘cold’, and conveys a rather negative meaning, as in:

(15) Il pubblico francese sembra essere di gran lunga più tiepido the public French seems to.be of great length more warm



dei propri leader sul ruolo dell’ Europa. of.the own leader on.the role of.the Europe ‘French people seems much less enthusiastic than their leaders regarding

the role of Europe.’

Let us now consider the difference between tiepido and fresco. Not surprisingly con-sidering Examples (11) and (12), in the case of ambient temperature fresco has the opposite connotation with respect to tiepido, and its meaning is on the ‘cooling’ side:

(16) Più fresco e un po’ d’instabilità oggi e domani, poi more cool and a little of instability today and tomorrow, then tanto sole e caldo. much sun and hot ‘Cooler and somewhat unstable today and tomorrow, later sunny and warm.’

With tactile temperature, fresco has a less ambiguous orientation than tiepido. Consider:

(17) Il tubo del gas rimane caldo o appena appena fresco. the tube of the gas remains hot or just just cool ‘The gas tube remains hot or it just slightly cools down.’

(18) Ho appena comperato questo frigo ma mentre il I.have just bought this refrigerator but while the reparto surgelatore fa subito freddo il frigorifero a department freezer makes immediately cold the refrigerator at distanza di tre ore è appena fresco. distance of three hours it.is just cool ‘I’ve just bought this refrigerator, but, while the freezer becomes cold

immediately, the other part of the refrigerator is just slightly cool after three hours.’

Apparently, the temperature indicated with appena fresco is always resulting from the process of cooling down. In this connection it is interesting to consider the relation-ships among tiepido, fresco and a temperatura ambiente:

(19) Se gli dai crocchette o cibo in scatola, a temperatura ambiente, if him give biscuits or food in tin at temperature ambient se invece gli cucini qualcosa tu, allora deve if instead him you.cook something you then it.must essere tiepido. be warm ‘If you feed him biscuits or tinned food it must be at room temperature, if

you cook something then it must be warm.’


Silvia Luraghi

(20) Consumare tutto a temperatura ambiente o appena fresco. consume all at temperature ambient or just cool ‘Eat at room temperature or slightly cool.’

Both tiepido in (19) and fresco in (20) are reached by cooling down, but tiepido is somewhat warmer than temperatura ambiente, while fresco is at least slightly below.

.2 How hot are tiepido and fresco?

When fresco and tiepido refer to absolute values, they are clearly distinct, as shown in the following examples:

(20) In ambiente fresco e asciutto, temperatura max 20°C. ‘In cool and dry conditions, maximum temperature 20°.’

(21) Da servire fresco (10°–12°) ma non freddo in ampi calici. to serve cool but not cold in large goblets ‘To be served cool (10°–12°) but not too cold, in large goblets.’

(22) Consigliamo anche dei bagni di collagene di circa 15 we.recommend also of.the baths of collagen of about 15 minuti, con l’immersione delle mani in minutes with the immersion of.the hands in acqua tiepida (temperatura max 30°) water warm (temperature maximum 30°) ‘We also suggest baths in collagen for about 15 minutes, bathe hands in

lukewarm water (maximum temperature 30°).’

(23) Usare acqua tiepida o programma per tessuti delicati (temperatura use water warm or program for fabrics delicate (temperature max 40°) maximum 40°) ‘Wash in lukewarm water or choose a program for delicate fabrics (maxi-

mum temperature 40°).’

It appears that fresco is defined in reference to outside temperature: fresco is slightly above 10 degrees Celsius, but definitely not above 20, that is, it approaches the tem-perature which is considered normal for the living environment. Tiepido is defined with respect to body temperature, as it covers a range close to the body temperature of a living human being (37 degrees Celsius).7 Both tiepido and fresco refer to ‘normal’

. Note however that, contrary to fresco, there is a remarkable difference between the tactile and the ambient reference of tiepido. While tactile tiepido, based on body temperature, is around 37 degrees, this is hardly true for ambient tiepido, which indicates a temperature slightly higher than ‘normal’ outside temperature, i.e. slightly higher than the upper edge of fresco.



conditions of human beings: they are embodied notions, defined in terms of bodily sensations of human beings relative to the surrounding environment and to their own body. In this respect, they function together as a two-sided intermediate term between caldo and freddo, which rather indicate a deviation from the norm. For this reason, they can both be defined in terms of a relatively limited (around ten degrees) range of absolute temperature, whereas this is not possible for caldo and freddo.

. The origin of the Italian system of temperature terms

.1 The Latin system

The Latin system of temperature terms looks quite different from the Italian system that I have described in the preceding sections, in various respects. In the first place, it is a five-term system (cross-linguistically infrequent, according to Plank 2003).8 In the second place, as shown in Table 3, it contains noun-adjective pairs for all degrees of temperature, whereas Italian only contains nouns for part of the hot side (cf. Section 2).

Table 3. Latin temperature terms

adjectives fervidus calidus tepidus frigidus algidusboiling hot warm/lukewarm cold freezing

nouns fervor calor tepor frigus algor

This might look like a remarkably symmetrical system with a neutral middle term, tepidus, but, as we will see in Section 5.2, this is not the case.

A notable difference between the Latin and the Italian systems concerns the type of lexical items involved. The Latin system displays a noun and adjective pair for all terms. Actually, a somewhat higher degree of elaboration exists at the extremes than what is shown in Table 3, given the availability of other terms such as ardor ‘burning’ on the right side, which however is not paired with an adjective. On the left side, the adjective gelidus has no corresponding noun (see Fruyt 2013 for the exact meaning of these and other Latin terms). Lack of either forms points toward a lesser degree of integration for these last two terms, and for the corresponding degrees of temperature.

Italian caldo, tiepido and freddo derive directly from Latin calidus, tepidus and frigidus, but among corresponding nouns only calore from calor and tepore from tepor are available in Italian, while frigus does not have any correspondent. Interestingly, in Latin this noun stands out from the group of other temperature terms, all formed

. As we will see in Section 5.2, terms at located the extremes of the scale proved more prone to semantic change as shown by their evolution in Italian.


Silvia Luraghi

with the suffix -ōr (frigus instead contains a suffix -os, see Fruyt 2013 for morphologi-cal details).9

.2 Did Latin have a neutral term?

Let us now consider whether tepor/tepidus can be taken as neutral. The following quote from Seneca seems to show that this is what speakers thought:

(24) Frigidum aliquid et calidum novimus: inter utrumque cold:acc something:acc and hot:acc we.know between both tepidum est. Si tepido illi plus frigidi warm it.is if warm:abl that:abl more cold:gen ingessero, fiet frigidum: si plus calidi affudero, I.induce it.becomes cold:acc if more hot:gen I.add fiet novissime calidum. it.becomes again hot:acc ‘We know what cold and hot are: in between them is warm. If I induce cold

in something warm, it becomes cold, if I induce heat, it becomes hot again.’ (Sen. Ep. 92, 21)

As tiepido in Italian, tepidus in Latin may be reached either in the process of warming up or in the process of cooling down, as shown by the meaning of the verb tepescere ‘become tepidus’. Fruyt (2013) remarks that “since the meaning of tepidus ‘lukewarm’, ‘of a moderate temperature’ is based on a differentiation with a reference point and since this differentiation may be orientated either towards warmth or towards cold-ness, the precise orientation of tepidus requires further information to be drawn from the context.” This is in accordance with what I have noted above regarding the mean-ing of tiepido in Italian.

The abstract meaning of tepidus may indicate lack of warmth, as in the case of Italian tiepido: compare Example (15) with (25):

(25) Tepidissime hoc dicebat. warm:superl.adv this he.said ‘He said that without warmth.’ (Aug. Conf. 8, 11)

However, as shown in Fruyt (2013), the abstract meaning of tepidus is also ambiguous, to a greater degree than the abstract meaning of tiepido. As an example of increasing

. An anonymous reviewer points out that the learned form frigido ‘frigid’ is also an Italian outcome of Latin frigus. While this is certainly the case, I do not discuss this term here, because I am not considering metaphorical extensions of temperature terms in Italian, a topic which would deserve a separate paper.



warmth understood in metaphorical sense, Fruyt mentions the verb tĕp-ē-re ‘be luke-warm’, which means ‘start feeling love.’

. The extremes

Let us now consider the two extremes. Neither the pair fervidus/fervor nor algidus/algor remain as temperature terms in Italian: the corresponding fervido, fervore and algido exist (algore is limited to an archaising and latinising register), but they indicate hot and cold only in an abstract sense, mostly with reference to features of personality. The same holds for the noun ardore from ardor, which is a near synonym of fervore; both terms have been borrowed from Latin in English as ardor, fervor with similar abstract meanings.

Some interesting observations can be made with respect to this change. In the first place, there is a consistent tendency for concrete terms to develop abstract meanings (as also shown in Fruyt 2013 regarding Latin terms). Apparently, abstract meanings may be reinterpreted as basic, perhaps due to their frequency,10 and end up replacing the original concrete meanings. Interestingly, in the change from Latin to Italian this tendency only concerns the extremes, while both basic and intermediate terms, which already had several abstract meanings in Latin, have Italian cognates, which preserve both their concrete and their abstract meanings. This indicates a certain degree of marginality of the extremes, not only with respect to the basic terms, but also with respect to the intermediate field. Indeed, this marginality is reflected in the lexical items that have replaced the Latin terms in the Italian temperature scale. As I have shown in Figure 1 and in Table 1, the two extremes are now indicated by participles, which cannot be used as nouns (and have no corresponding nouns).

. The hot and cold areas from Latin to Italian

Comparison between the Latin and the Italian temperature scales crucially depends on the evaluation of the precise position of tepidus in Latin. Given its high degree of vari-ability and ambiguity, one might be tempted to conclude that this term did not belong into the hot area, as Italian tiepido, but rather constituted a neutral middle term. In this case, Latin would feature a symmetrical scale, with similar degrees of elaboration for the hot and the cold areas and a neutral term. The difference between Latin and Italian, in this case, would lie in the shift of tiepido to the hot area, and the consequent lack of a middle term. The two systems could then be represented as in Figure 4.

1. This is only a hypothesis, since figures relative to the various meanings of these terms are not available to my knowledge.


Silvia Luraghi

FERVIDUS CALIDUS TEPIDUS FRIGIDUS ALGIDUS

| | | | |

4B Italian

4A Latin

BOLLENTE CALDO TIEPIDO (NEUTRAL) FRESCO FREDDO GELATO

| | | | | | |

Figure 4. Temperature scales in Latin and Italian

Note however that the etymological meaning of tepidus sets it on the hot side, rather than in a neutral area. Its cognates in the other Indo-European languages all mean either ‘hot’ or ‘warm’, and the reconstructed meaning of the PIE root *tep- is ‘hot’ (see Mallory & Adams 2008: 344–345). Of course, this does not mean that the Latin term cannot have changed its meaning, but the fact that the corresponding Romance terms all remain in the hot area is somewhat suspicious. Inclusion in the hot area both before and after Latin might then point to a similar position in Latin as well. Latin tepidus might perhaps indicate a lower degree of temperature with respect to the reconstructed PIE form, but it had not moved outside the hot area completely. If one accepts this second hypothesis, then, Latin would feature a higher degree of elabora-tion in the hot area, with three terms rather than only two as in the cold area, as shown in Figure 5:

FERVIDUS CALIDUS TEPIDUS (NEUTRAL) FRIGIDUS ALGIDUS

| | | | | |

Figure 5. Temperature scale in Latin – version 2

With respect to this latter interpretation of the Latin temperature scale, the Italian system has become more symmetrical by the introduction of fresco. In spite of this, however, even the Italian system arguably features a higher degree of elaboration in the hot area. I have already remarked that the Latin nouns calor and tepor continue in Italian as calore and tepore, while Latin frigus died out. Thus, while the two hot terms also continue the Latin pattern of adjective-noun pairs, the cold term does not. Interestingly this is also true for the extremes, and also for the metaphorical domains of hotness and coldness: while fervore exists, algore is a latinate calque, sporadically found in a stylistically sophisticated register. So the hot side is lexically richer in Italian than the cold side, in spite of the addition of the intermediate term fresco, which bal-ances the number of possible distinctions on the two sides.



There is however an exception to this tendency: as remarked above, Section 2.2., in the extreme field ‘very cold’ is indicated both by the adjective gelato and by the noun gelo, while there is no such lexical pair either for the other terms in the cold area or for the extreme term in the hot area. This peculiarity of the extreme in the cold area can be explained as a consequence of the type of experience which serves as the base for the terminology at the two extremes, as I will show in Section 7.

. The origin of fresco

In addition to changes at the extremes, the Italian system also features a change in the middle field, with the addition of fresco. Fresco is not of Latin origin: it is a Germanic loanword (cf. Old High German frisk), which was borrowed into Italian, possibly in the early Middle Ages. Its primary meaning, and the first attested meaning in Italian, is not ‘cool’, but ‘newly obtained’ in accordance with its etymological meaning ‘raw, not salted’ (see Köbler 1995: 138). Thus, it differs from all other temperature terms and more rel-evantly from the other term in the middle field, tiepido, whose primary meaning is ‘warm’, that is, the temperature meaning. But this is not the only peculiarity of fresco. Indeed fresco, in spite of being a loanword, might look synchronically as if it were a derivative from freddo, whereas this is certainly not true of tiepido with respect to caldo.

Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2007), following Plank (2003), proposes the following checklist as diagnostics for the integration of temperature terms in the system of a given language:

– Degree of nativisation: is X a native, a nativised or a clearly borrowed, foreign expression?

– Morphological structure: is X (relatively) morphologically simple or derived? – Designation: is X only or primarily used for temperature evaluation, or does it

apply to temperature only secondarily (cf. warm and mild about weather)?

With respect to the above criteria, fresco is much less integrated than tiepido, as shown in Table 4:11

Table 4. Degrees of integration of fresco/tiepido

native non-derived primary meaning

fresco (–) (+) –tiepido + + +

11. I use (+) in the derivation box because, given its phonological shape, fresco could be ana-lysed as derived from freddo, if one were unaware of its etymology.


Silvia Luraghi

. Concrete, metaphorical and alternative meanings: Distribution in texts

In order to substantiate the claim that the temperature meaning is not basic for fresco, I analysed its frequency in texts. I used the Italian Web Corpus (itWaC) with the query tool Sketch Engine, and looked for the lemmas caldo, freddo, tiepido and fresco. Since there are several thousand hits for each of them, I checked the first 200 in order to determine the frequency of concrete vs. abstract meanings. In the case of fresco I dis-tinguished between two concrete meanings, temperature ‘cool’ and non-temperature ‘fresh’. The results of my query are shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Frequency of concrete vs. abstract meanings of temperature terms in itWaC

number of hits

% of concrete (temperature) meaning in the first 200 hits

% of abstract meaning in the first 200 hits

caldo 123,732 63 37freddo 98,885 57 43tiepido 9,312 79 21fresco 70,923 temperature non-

temperature31

23 46

The figures show that the concrete, i.e. temperature meaning is the more fre-quent one for caldo and freddo. It is also more frequent than the abstract meaning for tiepido, to an even greater extent than is the case for basic terms. Remarkably, the hits are much less numerous for tiepido than for caldo and freddo. This might point toward a different cognitive status of tiepido, an issue that I cannot pursue in this paper. I would only like to note that this lesser frequency is made even more striking if compared to the frequency of fresco. As remarked earlier in this paper, fresco has two concrete meanings, a temperature one and a non-temperature one. The latter is about twice as frequent as the former in my sample; in addition, abstract mean-ings are all based on metaphorical extensions from the non-temperature meaning of fresco. If we generalise the percentages in the first 200 hits to the whole corpus, occurrences of tiepido and fresco with temperature meaning are 7,000+ and 16,000+ respectively. Thus, one can conclude, not unexpectedly, that intermediate terms are less frequent than basic ones, which are often also used as hypernyms for the whole domain of heat vs. cold. Less expected, and in need of further study, is the lesser fre-quency of tiepido vs. fresco by 50%. Intriguingly, the frequency of caldo is higher than the frequency of freddo, both in absolute figures and limited to the occurrences of the temperature meaning.


Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology 1

. The extremes

In the preceding sections, I have discussed various differences of the two extreme terms, bollente ‘very hot’ and gelato ‘ice-cold’ with respect to the basic and intermedi-ate terms. I have shown that these terms are not prototypical adjectives, and cannot function as nouns in Italian. Rather, they are participles; they are mostly used for tac-tile temperature and do not occur in the syntactic constructions commonly used in reference to ambient and personal feeling temperature. The difference in the type of lexemes reflects the diachronic development from the Latin to the Italian system of temperature terms, by which Latin terms for the extremes have lost their temperature meaning and only express abstract meanings in Italian. Notably, Latin terms have been replaced.

Note that, contrary to the basic and the intermediate domains of temperature, at the extremes the cold area displays a higher degree of lexical elaboration in Italian, due to the existence of a noun, gelo ‘extreme cold’, ‘frost’, which has no counterpart in the hot area. In addition, as already remarked in Section 2, the two adjectives are not iden-tical: while bollente is a present participle, gelato is a past participle. Hence the question must be addressed, of why the extremes present such asymmetries.

Bollente and gelato are participles, hence verb forms, and as such they indicate states of affairs. In particular, bollente, which is a present participle, indicates a state or an ongoing process, while gelato, which is a past participle, indicates a result. Arguably, this difference is based in experience. Let us consider a substance which can undergo either process, that of boiling and that of freezing, such as water. From the point of view of human perception, the two processes have a quite distinct aspect, and com-pletely different results.

Indeed, we can observe the water while it is boiling: the water typically bubbles and this state is clearly distinct from non-boiling. However, as a result of boiling the water evaporates, i.e. it disappears and, within the limits of common experience, this process is not reversible. If we stop the process of boiling before the water evaporates (by removing the heat source, for example), the water that has been boiling returns to its non-boiling state, and its temperature decreases rather quickly:12 in other words, boiling can only be observed while it is going on.

Conversely, the process of freezing is not so readily observable: in fact, the only hint we have of the fact that a liquid is freezing is the presence of some ice in it. Thus, the result is part of our perception of the ongoing process. Contrary to boiling, the

12. Indeed the Italian past participle, bollito, can refer to water (or any other liquid) which has undergone boiling at some moment prior to the reference time, and can have cooled down in the meantime.


2 Silvia Luraghi

freezing of water results in a concrete entity. The water becomes ice, and this process is easily reversible, as ice can melt and become water again.

Perceptual differences described above between bollente and gelato are sum-marised in Table 6.

Table 6. Perceptual aspects of boil/freeze

ongoing process easily observed

result stable entity reversable

boil + – –freeze – + +

The higher degree of lexical elaboration displayed by the cold area at the extremes is also connected with our perception and experience of the world. The noun gelo, which indicates extreme cold, also means ‘frost’: again, it refers to an observable state of the environment which has no parallel in the hot area.13

8. Conclusion

In this paper I have provided a description of the Italian system of temperature terms. I have described the different types of lexical items involved and their degree of integra-tion, providing diachronic information as to the origin of lexical differences displayed by the terms under scrutiny. I have especially concentrated on the intermediate terms tiepido and fresco, and have shown differences in their relative frequency and in the range of temperature values they can refer to. I have argued that this range is deter-mined by our experience, relative to the temperature of human body (tiepido) and of outer environment (fresco). Finally, I have shown that our experience and perception of observable processes also provides a basis for the conceptualisation of extreme temper-ature degrees. Issues that I have not addressed include the types of abstract meanings connected with temperature terms, the reasons for different frequencies of the terms in the hot and cold area, the reasons why abstract meanings have partly replaced concrete ones in the development from Latin to Romance, and the relation between different types of lexical items with similar meanings (i.e. noun/adjective pairs where available). These and other issues all deserve being pursued further, as topics of future research.

1. In addition, the cold area also features another adjective, gelido ‘ice-cold’, which I have left out of consideration in this paper.



References

Bhat, D.N. Shankaram. 1994. The Adjectival Category: Criteria for Differentiation and Identifica-tion [Studies in Language Companion Series 24]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/slcs.24Fruyt, Michèle. 2013. Temperature and Cognition in Latin. Revue de Linguistique Latine du

Centre Alfred Ernout. De Lingua Latina 9.Köbler, Gerhard. 1995. Deutsches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Tübingen: Mohr.Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2007. Guidelines for collecting linguistic expressions for tempera-

ture concepts, Version 1. ⟨http://temperature.ling.su.se/images/7/7c/Guidelines.pdf⟩Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2008. Approaching lexical typology. In From Polysemy to Seman-

tic Change: A Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations [Studies in Language Companion Series 106], Martine Vanhove (ed.), 3–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/slcs.106.03kopKoptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2011. “It’s boiling hot!” On the structure of the linguistic tempera-

ture domain across languages. In Rahmen des Sprechens. Beiträge zur Valenztheorie, Vari-etätenlinguistik, Kognitiven und Historischen Semantik. Peter Koch zum 60, Sarah Dessì Schmid, Ulrich Detges, Paul Gévaudan, Wiltrud Mihatsch & Richard Waltereit (eds), 393–410. Tübingen: Narr.

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria & Rakhilina, Ekaterina V. 2006. “Some like it hot”: On the seman-tics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Univer-salienforschung) 59 (2): 253–269. Special issue The Lexicon: Typological and Contrastive Perspectives, Giannoula Giannoulopoulou & Torsten Leuschner (eds).

Mallory, James P. & Adams, Douglas Q. 2008. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford: OUP.

Plank, Frans. 2003. Temperature talk: The basics. Paper presented at the Workshop on Lexical Typology at the ALT conference in Cagliari, September.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/slcs.24

http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/slcs.106.03kop

“Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology”. In M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm, ed., Linguistics of...

Documents

Transcript of “Asymmetries in Italian temperature terminology”. In M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm, ed., Linguistics of...