Van Huyssteen 2022a

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English: Afrikaans, construction grammar, etymology, lexicography, profanity, swearing, vulgarity

Afrikaans: Afrikaans, etimologie, konstruksiegrammatika, leksikografie, plat, vloek, vulgêr

English: The purpose of this article is to give an exemplary summary of the existing linguistic descriptions and lexicographic treatments of the contemporary Afrikaans fok (“fuck”), and other related words, such as befok (fucking A), fokken (fucking), fokkol (fuck-all), and opfok (to fuck up), with a view to formulating a research agenda for Afrikaans swearword research. The article is based on research in the project “What the swearword: Multidisciplinary research on language taboos”. Two scientific publications, namely Feinauer (1981) and Dekker (1991), and nine Afrikaans monolingual dictionaries that have appeared since 1991 serve as data to sketch a coherent picture of our existing knowledge about fok. Using these sources, all our existing knowledge about fok is extracted and systematically presented in terms of: (1) etymology; (2) part-of-speech distribution; (3) phonetic and phonological aspects; (4) morphological constructions; (5) syntactic constructions; (6) semantic aspects; and (7) pragmatic aspects. Based on corroborating evidence from Google Books Ngram Viewer, the conclusion is drawn that fok has indeed developed under influence from English fuck (as has been argued by some scholars and dictionaries before), rather than from Dutch fokken. Morphological and syntactic constructions that emerge from these data sources are also formalised, and then presented as a detailed, summative construction network. One of the conclusions is that quantitative data are needed to verify the views, descriptions, and conclusions of these sources (i.e., to verify the construction network with usage data), since none of them is based on corpus or other empirical data. The article concludes with the view that knowledge about and understanding of swearword constructions and other language taboos can contribute to insights into the human brain, mind, and psyche; human interaction with other people and artefacts (such as computers, literature, legislation, etc.); as well as language usage and language change. Such insights can be gained through usage- and user-based research in descriptive linguistics (specifically corpus-based/-driven, construction-based descriptions); applied linguistics (specifically sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics); and various disciplines in the cognitive neurosciences.

Afrikaans: Die oorhoofse doel van hierdie artikel is om ’n eksemplariese opsomming te gee van die bestaande taalkundige beskrywings en leksikografiese bewerkings van hedendaagse fok en ander vormlik verwante woorde (soos befok, fokken, fokkol en opfok). Die artikel se spesifieke doelwitte is om (1) ’n konstruksienetwerk van die fok-familie op te stel wat as hipotese vir verdere navorsing kan dien; en (2) ’n navorsingsagenda vir sodanige verdere navorsing oor fok (maar ook ander Afrikaanse vloekkonstruksies) te formuleer. Twee wetenskaplike publikasies, te wete Feinauer (1981) en Dekker (1991), en nege Afrikaanse verklarende woordeboeke wat sedert 1991 verskyn het, dien as bronne om ’n samehangende prentjie van ons bestaande kennis oor fok te verkry. Een van die belangrikste gevolgtrekkings is dat kwantitatiewe data nodig is om die standpunte, beskrywings en gevolgtrekkings in dié publikasies te verifieer. Die artikel sluit af met die standpunt dat kennis oor en begrip van vloekkonstruksies en ander taaltaboes soos fok kan bydra tot insigte in die menslike brein, verstand en psige, die mens se interaksie met ander mense en artefakte (soos rekenaars, literatuur, wetgewing, ens.), asook taalgebruik en taalverandering. Sulke insigte kan verkry word deur gebruiks- en gebruikersgebaseerde navorsing in die beskrywende taalkunde (spesifiek korpusgebaseerde/-gedrewe, konstruksiegebaseerde beskrywings), die toegepaste taalkunde (spesifiek die sosiolinguistiek, rekenaarlinguistiek, psigolinguistiek en neurolinguistiek), en verskeie dissiplines in die kognitiewe neurowetenskappe.

In: Afrikaans

On: Afrikaans