Weather and Language

Abstract

This paper summarizes current findings in the cross‐linguistic study of meteorological constructions. It provides both a typology of weather events and a typology of encoding formats used for the expression of weather in and across languages. The discussion shows that there is a correlation between these two parameters: there are clear tendencies in the distribution of the various encoding types across the various event types. This gives rise to a typology of languages which explains linguistic variation in the encoding of meteorological events.

Weather in Polish: A Contribution to the Typology of Meteorological Constructions

“…However, this type is not a different structural variant. It rather refers to the simultaneous encoding of a given M event through both the predicate and argument‐predicate types (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen ).…”

“…Therefore, the most urgent tasks involve collecting linguistic evidence from different languages and linguistic families, and testing the models and hypotheses proposed so far (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen , 2012:399–400). The present paper responds to this imperative, discussing the encoding of M events in Polish within the model of M constructions formulated by Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen (, )…”

“…M[eteorological] constructions have recently attracted much attention from researchers working in the area of linguistic typology (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen , , , Koptjevskaja‐Tamm , , , Koptjevskaja‐Tamm & Sahlgren and Pustet ). This interest is probably due to two factors.…”

“…On the one hand, the grammatical encoding of M events crosslinguistically exhibits certain regularities that distinguish such constructions from the encoding of the other events (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen :567–570, ) . On the other hand, the internal variation of M constructions has a clear semantic foundation (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen :399) demonstrating to what extent the core grammar or the structure of a language is conditioned by extra‐linguistic reality or the meaning that needs to be conveyed.…”

“…Despite recent advances, the typological framework of M constructions remains in its incipient phase of development. The current typology is based on a relatively small sample of languages and various crosslinguistic principles are regarded as working hypotheses rather than typological rules or even tendencies (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen ). Therefore, the most urgent tasks involve collecting linguistic evidence from different languages and linguistic families, and testing the models and hypotheses proposed so far (Eriksen, Kittilä & Kolehmainen , 2012:399–400).…”