In:The Linguistics of Temperature
Edited by Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
[Typological Studies in Language 107] 2015
► pp. 776–791
Temperature terms in Mapudungun
Published online: 11 February 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.107.25zun
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.107.25zun
Mapudungun (unclassified) is spoken in south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina at different altitudes in climates ranging from tundra and subalpine to Mediterranean. This paper surveys the basic semantics and morphosyntax of nine temperature terms, of which wütre ‘cold’, füshkü ‘cool’, eñum ‘warm’ and are ‘hot’ are probably the most frequently used ones. While these terms can be used for tactile, ambient, and personal-feeling temperatures, the other five are specialised for one or two of these kinds of evaluations. Notably, all terms can be used as main verbs in predications; most can also be used as adjectives in order to modify nouns, and only wütre and are are commonly used as nouns referring to ‘cold’ and ‘heat’ respectively.
References (12)
Bickel, Balthasar & Nichols, Johanna. 2007. Inflectional morphology. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 2nd edn, Timothy Shopen (ed.), 169-240. Cambridge: CUP.
Catrileo, María. 1984. Consideraciones lingüísticas en torno a un grafemario uniforme para el mapudungu (Linguistic considerations around a uniform orthography for Mapudungun). In Actas de Lengua y Literatura Mapuche, 29-40. Temuco: Universidad de la Frontera.
Golluscio, Lucía. 1998. Aspecto verbal en mapudungun (Verbal aspect in Mapudungun). In Lingüística y Literatura Mapuches: Aproximaciones Desde Ambos Lados de los Andes, Lucía Golluscio & Yosuke Kuramochi (eds), 35-47. Temuco & Buenos Aires: Universidad Católica de Temuco & Universidad de Buenos Aires.
. 2007. Morphological causatives and split intransitivity in Mapudungun. International Journal of American Linguistics 73(2): 209-238.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2011. “It’s boiling hot!” On the structure of the linguistic temperature domain across languages. In Rahmen des Sprechens. Beiträge zu Valenztheorie, Varietätenlinguistik, Kognitiver und Historischer Semantik, Sarah Dessì Schmid, Ulrich Detges, Paul Gévaudan, Wiltrud Mihatsch & Richard Waltereit (eds), 393-410. Tübingen: Narr.
. 2001b. Dos progresivos y dos resultativos en mapudungun
(Two progressives and two resultatives in Mapudungun). Línguas Indígenas Americanas 1: 63-75.
. 2001c. A selection theory of Mapudungun aspect. In Aktionsart and Aspecto-Temporality in Non-European Languages, Karen Ebert & Fernando Zúñiga (eds), 73-95. Zurich: University of Zurich.
. 2006a. Mapudungun: El habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y un CD (Mapudungun. An Introduction to the Mapuche Language, with Comparative Notes and a CD). Santiago: Centro de Estudios Públicos.
. 2006b. Deixis and Alignment: Inverse Systems in Indigenous Languages of the Americas [Typological Studies in Language 70]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria
2022. Talking temperature with close relatives. In The Typology of Physical Qualities [Typological Studies in Language, 133], ► pp. 215 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.