RVN Webinar Series - Conative calls to animals: From  Arusa Maasai to a cross linguistic prototype
Channel: Rift Valley Network
Date: 2021-08-28

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and 
findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.

How to cite: Karani, Michael and Alexander Andrason. 2021. Conative calls to animals: From Arusa Maasai to a cross-linguistic prototype. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 25/08/2021.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5303947

Abstract: The present article expands our empirical and theoretical knowledge of conative animal calls (CACs) in the languages of the world. By drawing on canonical typology and prototype theory – and by contrasting the original evidence related to the category of CACs in Arusa Maasai with the evidence concerning CACs in other languages that is currently available in scholarship – the authors design a cross-linguistic prototype of a CAC and enumerate its 18 prototypical non-formal (semantic-pragmatic) and formal (phonetic, morphological, and syntactic) features.