Paulette Roulon-Doko
email: roulon@vjf.cnrs.fr

Lexicalisation of temperature concepts in Gbaya

The chapter provides a systematic description of the temperature terms found in Gbaya, an Ubanguian language spoken in Central Africa. Gbaya has very few nouns and verbs dedicated to temperature but many adjectivesverbal adjectives and ideophonic adjectives. I first present the word classes and the syntactic constructions involved in expressing temperature and examine the different systems of temperature terms with respect to the following five domains: weather conditions, body-parts, the house, food, and water. I then indicate the main cultural specificities or metaphors used to refer to temperature. In conclusion, the domain of temperature is organised opposing two levels WARM / COLD and it is only by juxtaposing the many lexical and syntactic possibilities that an understanding of ways of expressing temperature emerges.

'I let the meal cool down first.' 7 And hot iron too which gets colder when put in water.

Introduction

The Gbaya languages according to the classification of Greenberg, belong to the group 1 of the oriental branch of the sub-family 6 "Adamawa oriental" of the Niger-Congo family, which today are called Ubangian languages. The specific dialect I am studying is Gbaya 'Bodoe as spoken in the Republic of Central Africa (see Map 1).

This introductory section presents the basic information necessary to contextualize the language and the culture.

The Gbaya people are hunters, gatherers and cultivators who live in the West part of the Central African Republic in small villages. Living at a high altitude in a tropical zone of luxuriant savanna, the Gbaya people have all year long an average temperature of 26°C. The nights may be cold, particularly in the dry season. The Gbaya are not accustomed to very hot temperature and complain about it when it goes over 30°C, which only happens at the end of the dry season (end of February).

Gbaya is an isolating language with weak morphology. It is a tonal language with two basic levels, high ( ˊ ) and low ( ˋ ). There is a supra segmental tonal determiner -a high tone noted (D) in the glosseswhich occurs between various elements modifying the tonal melody of the first element 2 Map 1. The gbaya languages depending on the tone of the second one. It is an SVO language, which also makes use of non-verbal predication. Gbaya verbs always express a process where the obligatory subject is either external to the process (transitive construction = transitive voice) or included in the process (intransitive construction = middle voice). Verbs have no lexical tones thus tones on the verb are grammatical elements (TAM). While the verbal predication is dedicated to processive predication, the non-verbal predicates include an essential predicate (PRED.ESS)0 F 1 , a locative predicate (PRED.LOC ) and presentative particules. There is also a nominal predication expressing possession1 F 2 . Gbaya has a clear distinction between verbs and nouns and has three categories of adjectives that may be used both attributively and predicatively as I will develop below.

The present paper is based on natural discourse data collected in the field between 1970 and 2012.

Word classes and syntactic constructions

Nouns

Gbaya has two basic nominal concepts of temperature, opposing the noun g 'cold' to the noun wèè 'heat'. The noun g 'coldness' refers to the 1 In the glosses, the point is the morphem separator. The glosses that are not in the Leipzig Glossing Rules are: D = Tonal modifier, PRED.ESS = essential predicate, PRED.LOC = locative predicate. 2 For more detailed presentation see Roulon-Doko (1995 and A1998).

prototypical meaning, while the noun wèè primarily refers to the permanently hot object 'fire' from which the temperature term 'heat' has developed, as seen in ( 1) and ( 2).

(1) yì bàá g .

water PFV.catch2 F 3 .D cold 'The water is cold.'

(2) yì bàá wèè. Both nouns are used as object of the transitive verb ba 'to take, to catch' to express that the subject, be it an entity or the experiencer (expressed by the noun t meaning 'body') is cold or warm.3 F 4 Thus, when the subject is the human body, it expresses the personal-feeling temperature:

(3) These two terms can also be the subject of the verb ye 'to enter' to express the intense feeling of cold and heat on the part of the experiencer:

(5) 'The man caught a cold.' (from cold to illness)

These two nouns are among the few Gbaya nouns that can be used, without any formal modification, as an adjective in an attributive construction.5 F 6 Both express the property by conversion when placed before the noun they determine. In the following attributive constructions they mean then 'cold' and 'hot':

'Cold water' 'Hot water'

Verbs

In section 2.1 we saw examples where 'heat' and 'cold' appear with three different verbs which meaning is not dedicated for expressing temperature:

ba 'take', ye 'enter' and d 'make'. In this section we will look at five verbs 6 Used as adjectives, they can never be used in a predicative construction.

(11) g yì cold.D water (12) wèé yì fire = heat.D water which meaning focuses specifically temperature when used in an intransitive construction with a specific subject. These subjects have an expected neutral temperature which serves as a point of reference in evaluating the way temperature raises or falls. So do water, body, weather and food, but not house. Thus this domain is not concerned. Verbs do not refer to a specific value as nouns do but indicate a change of temperature (see Table 1). Most of these verbs are specific to some subjects and cannot be used with all of them as I will show.

Water, as rain or water river, is cold, but when it stays in the sun, it warms up: wosi 'to get slightly warm or lukewarm', and when it is put on fire it gets very hot: kp r 'to get very hot'. After reaching a certain degree of heat or warmth, an object's temperature may go down, as expressed by the verbs dengi 'to cool down' and 'to get colder'.

For the human body, the verb gb ŋ 'to heat up' expresses the process of warming up that always refers to sweat. The cooling of the hot body is expressed by two verbs: dengi 'to cool down' and 'to get colder'.

For weather, is it the permanent hot object, the sun, that is the subject of the verb kp r 'to be very hot' to express a very hot temperature. On the other hand, when the weather is 'getting cool or cold', the verbs dengi or are used with the term m 'thing' as subject to refer to the ambient cool temperature.

It is only the verb 'to get colder' that can be used with food as subject referring to tactile temperature.6 F 7 It always expresses the process of cooling, as in the following examples. Section 3 illustrates the use of these verbs and the domains to which they refer.

Adjectives

Gbaya has three subclasses of adjectives8 F 9 : (i) a closed word class of primaliry adjectives exclusively expressing a primary state [raw, new, crude…] and two open word classes of adjectives including (ii) adjectives derived from verbs that express quality as the result of the process of the verb and (iii) ideophonic adjectives whose original lexical form is well established and stable, that express all the qualities, including those already expressed by the two other subclasses. They are particularly used to convey the notion of degree; they can also often associate more than two semantic values such as 'tall and heavy', 'big and high', for instance; or they can be specific to a referent ('swollen for a short element', 'swollen for a long element', etc.). Thus the quality WHITE is conveyed by the adjective bú 'crude, white', by the verbal adjective f ŋ 'faded, whitened', by the ideophonic adjectives mbùy l 'white [temporary]', ndál-ndál 'very white' and ŋ 'with white patterns against red'. From a syntactic point of view, these three categories can be used in an attributive constructionplaced as attribute before the noun that they qualify -, and can all be nominalised producing a derived noun (for ex. 'white' will give 'the white one'). However, they have different ways of being used in a predicative constructionbeing complement to the copular verb ʔ which means primarily 'to lie'. All of them can, depending on variety of modalities, be used as adverbs (like the -ly adverbs in English).

There is no primaliry adjective referring to temperature. The temperature adjectives in Gbaya are either (i) verbal adjectives (VA), or (ii) ideophonic adjectives (IDEO.A). All of them express a temporary concept characteristic of an entity opposing two levels WARM / COLD.

Verbal adjectives

Each of the temperature verbs presented above (see Table 1) produces a verbal adjective (VA) that expresses temperature as the result of the process of the verb they are derived from. Table 2 shows that there are five VAs expressing temperature (3 for WARM and 2 for COLD) which are only used within four domains of temperature, water, body, sun and food. 11 But it is a rare construction; most often the same can be expressed using the verbal expression ba g (catch/cold) as in (1) and (3) above.

Ideophonic adjectives

Gbaya expresses gradability of temperature lexically. For this purpose, there are 17 ideophonic adjectives (IDEO.As) which express specific values of temperature (12 for WARM, 5 for COLD). Most of them refer to a degreehigher or lower than the default valueand some of them to a specific domainweather conditions, body-parts, the house [indoor], food, and water, as indicated in Table 3. These temperature IDEO.As are most often used in a predicative construction. They follow directly the copular verb ʔ . In such a construction, the IDEO.A is used with its basic temperature meaning.1 1 F 12 The IDEO.As can also be placed, without any morphological change, after a temperature verb and function as adverbial modifiers of the verb bringing a semantic characterisation (degree or specific domain).1 2 F 13 So in Gbaya, while verbal adjectives are accepted as attributes most of the time, and more rarely as predicates, IDEO.As are most often used as predicates or as adverbial modifiers when combined with a verb.

I shall present in the next paragraph the use of each of these IDEO.As within the domain they express temperature.

The different systems of temperature terms

Gbaya temperature concepts are organised according to the semantic domain they refer to: weather conditions, body-parts, the house, food, and water, each of them constituting a system on its own.

Weather conditions or ambient temperature

There are five IDEO.As expressing ambient temperature, however none of them are specific to this domain, both being used for weather and body temperature.

Cold

There are no impersonal constructions in Gbaya. The subject of a clause must be a noun or a pronoun and all pronouns refer to animates. Then to express weather conditions Gbaya uses specific nouns as búk 'wind' kórò 'rain', zân 'sky', etc. It is also possible to have the noun 'thing' m as subject in some cases, in particular to express the ambient cold. Referring to cold is the usual way to say 'good afternoon' or 'good evening' using the verb 'to cool', alongside 'good morning' does not refer to temperature but to daylight, the verb used then is 'to be clear, to be clean'. The IDEO.A ngìt-ngìt 'very cold' specifies a higher degree of cold that can be expressed too by mentioning an excess as in (25). The cold of hail which is the highest degree of cold is often expressed by using the IDEO.A 'icy'. 14 Referring to food, it only means 'tasteless' mostly by lack of seasoning. Its use is so specific for sun that I prefer not to count it within the temperature IDEO.A of Table 3.

Heat

For weather conditions, the term wèè 'fire' cannot be used to refer to 'heat'. It is the 'sun' wèsé, the main source of heat and light, which is the permanent hot temperature reference the Gbaya refer to.

It is only after 8 o'clock in the morning that the sun produces warmth. The sun that begins warming things up, when it is sunny, is called a 'halfsun' sàkà-sáká wèsé, which people like very much. Then the sun 'shines' i (lit. be in the distance), first 'beating' bàŋ-bàŋ, next 'glaring' b ɗ ŋb ɗ ŋ. get_very_hot.D too_strong 'It is too hot.' (lit. the sun is too hot / is burning).

After it has been very hot, then in the afternoon it's cool as express in ( 19) and (21).

Body temperature or Personal-feeling

There are 12 IDEO.As expressing personal-feeling temperature. They are used most often in constructions where the experiencer supported by the 'body' is the subject of the verb.

The natural wellbeing for personal-feeling is a neutral temperature which Gbaya refers to using the adverb géè 'ordinary':

(32) t m dúk géè body.D.1SG IPFV.stand ordinary 'I feel well.'

However the temperature of the body can change, either heating up or cooling down as follows.

Cold body

There are four IDEO.As to express degrees of cold for the body. None of them are specific to the body. Two of them follow the verb 'to get colder' expressing the physical sensation that one feels cool as one's body is cold .

(i) The IDEO.A d mìì 'cool, well cooled' expresses a sensation of cold produced by an external factor that refreshes the body to a nice cool sensation the same way it is used for weather temperature in ( 21 The IDEO.A ngìt-ngìt 'very cold' expresses a higher degree of cold for the body. It is also used for weather conditions as in ( 24). The stimulus g 'cold' that produces the cold can be specified as in example below. The highest degree of cold for the body is expressed by the IDEO.A 'icy' following the copular verb ʔ .

After a long time under rain, you can say:

(39) t m ʔ body.D.1SG IPFV.be icy 'I am completely frozen'

When you are frozen, your arms and legs covered in 'goose bumps' kúí-g literally named 'eggs of cold'.

Hot body

There are nine IDEO.As which express degrees of heat for the body. Four of them are specific to the body. The factors that can raise the body temperature are usually a physical effort and illness.

The IDEO.A wòsì-wòsì 'warm' introduced by the copular verb ʔ refers to thermal comfort. It is also used for the house as in ( 60).

( The first degree of warmth always related to a beginning of a fever is expressed by the IDEO.A 'warm' that can be used also for warm water as in ( 69). The IDEO.A kpóyóyó that is also used for weather temperature as in (29) and hìò-hìò that is specific to the body both mean 'hot'. They refer, when following the copular verb ʔ or the verbal expression ba wèè (catch/fire), to a hot body, be it the result of a physical effort or illness, without any reference to sweat. The IDEO.A kpóróró 'very hot' referring to the body expresses a higher degree of heat. It is also used for weather temperature as in ( 30).

(49) t à ʔ kpóróró body.D.3 SG IPFV.be hot 'He is very hot.'

The IDEO.A h l l 'burning hot' that is specific for the body is always related to sweating, be it the result of a physical effort or illness.

(50)

t à ʔ h l l body.D.3SG IPFV.be burning_hot 'He is very hot and sweats'

While using the verb gb ŋ 'to warm, to heat up' with the experiencer as subject always refers to external factors meaning 'to feel hot' as in ( 46), the interpretation of a hot body by using the verbal expression ba wèè (catch/fire) depends on whether there are external factors (sun or physical effort) or not. If there are no external factors it always refers to fever that raises body temperature as in ( 49) and ( 51).

(51) t wí bá wèè body.D person IPFV.catch fire = heat 'One is feverish.' (lit. his body is hot) Lastly the IDEO.A refers to the highest degree of temperature for the body which always results from illness meaning 'very feverish'. Although 'fever' is named g 'cold', as presented in § 1.1. ( 9), its effect on body temperature is always to make it hot. This reference of fever via both domains of HOT and COLD is also mentioned by A. François in this volume for Vanuatu languages.

(

The house

Five IDEO.As characterize the house temperature, three of them are specific to it. The house that every man builds for his wife is the family home. In fact, all the houses have a fire inside which is used for cooking and for warming up the place: indoor has to be warm.

Cold house

There a two IDEO.As which express degrees of cold within the house. If the fire is put out, the IDEO.A ɓún-ɓún 'cold' expresses that the house is cold, as it also does for the body as in (34), food and water as in ( 64). When a house is unoccupied for a long time, it is referred to literally as 'a cold house' g tùà (cold/house) because there is nobody in it and no fire inside. This can be expressed by using the IDEO.A yìngbìngbì 'very cold' which is specific to the house.

(56) kútùà ʔ yìngbìngbì indoor IPFV.be very_cold 'It's very cold in the house.'

Warm house

There are three IDEO.As which express degrees of heat for the house. The IDEO.A gìwìŋ-gìwìŋ 'warm or hot' that expresses it as a warm ambient temperature focuses on the presence of a fire inside, the same way it is used for the body focusing on a hot body part as in ( 47) and ( 48).

(

Food

This section discusses the temperature words for food, which are made cold or warm/hot on purpose. Three IDEO.As characterize the food temperature, two for heat and one for cold. None of them are specific to food.

Hot food

The verbal expression ba wèè (catch/fire) 'it's hot' is used for food and there are two degrees on the scale of this food temperature: fátátá 'warmed up' and kpóyóyó 'hot'.

( '[Dracaena root is crushed] and packed aside the fire to get hot.'

Cold food

Food is usually cooked and has to be hot to be eaten. Then most frequently its cold is the result of a cooling process expressed by just using the verb 'to get colder' with no reference value as in (63), while combined with the IDEO.A ɓún-ɓún 'cold' it refers to the property fixing a objective value as in ( 64). 'Food / water is cold'

Water

There are four IDEO.As expressing water temperature, three for hot and one for cold.

Cold water

Whether it be river water or rain, yì 'water', is the basic reference to express cold for the Gbaya. This is expressed by using the IDEO.A ɓún-ɓún 'cold', also used for the body as in (34), the house as in (55) and food as in (64).

To simply express that hot water gets colder, the verb dengi 'to cool down' is also used focusing more on the drop of temperature that on the lukewarm property. This verb is not specific to water. Every day women carry water from the spring to the house where it is kept in a large pot and used for drinking and cooking. Most often water is put on the fire to be heated up. There are three IDEO.As which express degrees of heat for the water: fátátá 'warmed-up' < 'warm' < wòlòkòsò 'hot'. The IDEO.A fátátá 'warmed-up' only refers to a warming up process and is used with the verbal expression (catch/fire) or the copular verb ʔ . It cannot be used with the verb wosi 'to get (be) lukewarm' which expresses without any IDEO.A the same temperature although in relation to a cooling down process as in (61). The IDEO.A 'warm' refers to the right temperature for bathing a baby. It is the last degree of warmth before getting hot, which can be compared for the body to the first step of fever it refers to as in (43).

'

  6 in the morning, just before the sun comes out, the cold caused by the lack of sun is expressed by the IDEO.A z -z 'tasteless' that refers also to a lack of taste.1 3 F 14 (22) tútùyè z ... morning tasteless.DURATIVE 'In the cool early morning...'Independently of the time you refer to, it is always the noun g 'cold' that is used to express the neutral value of cold as in (7). In the example below it is the subject of the verb d 'to make' with the noun m 'thing' as object when referring to ambient temperature. When it's already cold...' (day or night)

  freezing because of cold water.'

  is a little feverish.' (lit. has a warm body)

  slightly warm' or 'water is lukewarm.'

(

Table 1

 1

		. Verbs of temperature
	Temperature V intr meaning	possible subjects
	COLD	dengi to cool down	water body	weather (thing)
		to get colder	water body	weather (thing) food
	WARM	wosi to get slightly warm	water
		gb ŋ to warm up, to heat up	body
		kp r to get very hot	water	weather (sun)

Table 2 .

 2 Verbal adjectives of temperature

	Temperature VA COLD déngá cooled down meaning	specific to water
	WARM		wósá gb ŋ kp rá	cool, cooled down slightly warm warm, heated up very_hot	water water water	body sun
	(16) ʔám	ŋà	dàŋkálè
	1SG	PFV.eat.D cold sweet_potatoe
	'I ate a cold sweet potato.'
	Used in a predicative construction the VA has to be nominalised and preceded by the instrumental n 'as'.1 0 F 11
	(17)	ŋ-m n
	meal	as cold.NOMINALIZER
	'The meal is cold.' (lit. meal as the cold one)
	(18) yì		bé	n wósáà		ná
	water IPFV.can_be as slightly_warm.NOMINALIZER NEG
	'The water is not tepid.'
	10 The VA wósá 'slightly warm' that can be translated by 'tepid' or 'lukewarm' is the first
	step of warming up for water.

The use of these verbal adjectives no longer refers to the process they come from, rather, they only have a qualifying meaning as in the case of other adjectives. They are more often used in an attributive phrase as kp rá wèsé (very_hot/sun) 'scorching sun', ɗéngá kàf (cooled_down/coffee) 'cold coffee', wósá yì (slightly_warm9 F 10 /water) 'tepid water', gb ŋ (heated_up/body) 'sweaty body' and as in the example below.

Table 3

 3

	. Ideophonic adjectives for temperature
	AA	Meaning	Specific domain
		Body Weather House Food Water

  ).

	(35) yì		t m	d mìì
	water PFV.cool.D body.D.1SG well_cooled
	'Water has well refreshed me.'
	To express a sensation of higher degree of cold, the only stimulus Gbaya always mentions is the noun g 'cold'. It is then the subject of the verb d
	'to make', with the experiencer supported by a body-part as object.
	(36) g	d	náŋám
	cold PFV.make.D foot.D.1SG
	'My feet are cold.'
	With the same construction, if the object is the whole person, this can mean
	either 'to be cold' or 'to have fever' as in (10).
	(37) g	d	ʔó bêm
	cold IPFV.make	PL	child
	'Children have fever / are cold.'
	(33) ʔám yèé	ɗ	,	t m	d mìì
	(34) t m			ɓún-ɓún
	body.D.1SG PFV.cool.D cold
	'I feel cold.'
	The main factors that cool the body temperature down are yì ' ive e '1 5 F 16 , which is always cold, or ' do ', ic protects from sun, so
	one feels cool. These stimuli are used as the subject of the verb in a
	transitive construction with the experiencer supported by the 'body' as
	object.
				13

1SG PFV.enter.D under.D shadow body.D.1SG PFV.cool.D well_cooled 'I stand under the shadow and my body feels nice and cool.'

(ii) The IDEO.A ɓún-ɓún 'cold' refers to a neutral physical sensation of cold which is also used for food as in (64).

  The verb wosi 'to get slightly warm' and the verbal adjective derived from it, w s 'slightly warm or lukewarm', are both specific to water. They are used for the first step of warming up, when water warms up in the sun, but also when water just put in fire is not yet hot.

	(65) kèì	ʔé	yì	té-wèè,
	when.one IPFV.put water on_fire
	kèì	bá	ʔé	nù,	ká dèngá
	when.one IPFV.take INF.PFV.put ground then PFV.get_colder.D
	'When you heat up some water and take it out of fire, it cools down.'
	(66) yì	dèngà	ʔé
	water PFV.get_colder.D already
	'The water has already cooled down.'
	3.5.2. Hot water
	(67) yì	kp r	ná,
	water IPFV.get_very_hot NEG
	yì	wòsá		wòsí
	water IPFV.get_slightly_warm get_slightly_warm.DET

'Water is not boiling, it gets lukewarm.'

  When drums 'take fire', they do not burn, but are very loud, making everybody dance to their rhythm. Someone who 'puts fire in it', is someone who is totally concentrated on what he is doing. Then your hunting net is fantastically good to catch animals.'In Gbaya, to be refused something can be expressed by the verb d 'to burn' with the experiencer as object showing that according to Gbaya thought a refusal can hurt somebody in the same way as fire does. 1SG PFV.ask.D tobacco hand.D.3SG, and_now.3SG PFV.burn.D.1SG 'I begged him for tobacco and he refused.' Refusing is conceived as burning somebody as in the proverb: hard thing IPFV.burn each_other with water NEG 'Those who eat together don't refuse one another water.' 4.3 Cooling down = calm and well being When the body is nicely cool, whether the weather is cold or hot, this sensation no longer refers to temperature but to quiet, expressed by the verb 'to get colder' or the verbal adjective 'cold'. Using the IDEO.A ɓún-ɓún 'cold' with the verb means feeling cool as in (34) whereas with the expression ba g (catch/cold) it refers to quivering with pleasure. body.D.person PFV.catch.D cold cold 'When you touch a woman you quiver with pleasure.'

	events or miracles. (79) ká y k k m d		wèè m -bà	sàɗì
		then net	of.2 SG IPFV.make fire	INF.VIRTUAL.catch animal
	'(80) ʔám k fá	ndààkà ʔ ráà,	ʔ -nàá	d m
	(81)	ŋ ngá m	d	màá	n	yì	ná
	(82)			t m
		IMP.calm_down body.D.2SG
		'Be quiet.'
	(83) ʔ	t	wèn n		t
		3SG IPFV.say speech with cold body
		'He speaks quietly.'
	(84) kèì	tám	ʔókóò,
		when.one IPFV.touch woman
	69)	ʔ ká t í		bàá	t -	g	d ɓún-ɓún	,
		3PL	IPFV.put water on_fire	in_order_to IPFV.make warm

to_eat then

In the glosses, the English verbs are written without 'to': 'catch' and not 'to catch'.

It is most often a human body, it may also be the body of an animal.

Another stimulus could be 'food', as in ŋ-m yèè s r m (food PFV.enter.D sensation_of_fullness) 'He is completely full'.

In Gbaya transcription the hyphen is used to link the elements of a compound name, as in the French transcription for 'oeil-de-boeuf' for example.

Cf. Roulon-Doko (2001) and[START_REF] Roulon-Doko | Le gbaya[END_REF]

Some IDEO.As that have a basic meaning not referring to temperature but that can be used for expressing temperature in some particular domain are not presented in Table3, but are considered in later discussion as z -z 'tasteless' (22) and hàlòè 'too strong' (31).

All the other adjectives can also be used as adverbial modifiers but, unlike the IDEO.As that remain unchanged, they have to be nominalized and placed after the instrumental n 'as', like for the predicative construction in (17) and (18).

As for z -z , that first characterises a very hot chilli, its use is so specific for sun that I prefer not to count it within the temperature IDEO.As of Table3.

This term means both 'river' and 'water'.

For the belly, it is hunger that causes a rise of its temperature.

'They put water on fire to be warm and they bathe the baby.'

The IDEO.A wòlòkòsò 'hot' refers to a higher degree of warmth that does not reach boiling yet.

(70) yì d , ɗòŋáà d wòlòkòsò water IPFV.make warm, after.DEF IPFV.make hot 'Water is warm, after it's hot.'

When referring to coffee it expresses a hot temperature that the Gbaya consider as lukewarm, because people want coffee to be boiling hot.

Cultural specificities or metaphors

Beside all these domains, there are possible extensions of temperature terms that refer to the linguistic "image" of an element that does not objectively reflect the external world but rather offer a cultural picture based on Gbaya's experience and rooted in their culture, like for example, the expression of feelings.1 7 F 18 4.1. The liver = centre of feelings

In Gbaya, sèè wí (liver.D/person) 'the liver' is the centre of feelings.

When one's liver is 'cool' (cold) one feels all right. One is glad and happy when it is 'good', so dí-sèè (good/~) means 'happiness'; unhappy when it's 'bad', so ɗáŋ-sèè (bad/~) means 'unhappiness'; and impatient when it's 'red', so gb -sèè (red/~) means 'impatience'. When one's liver suffers, it heats up, using the verb gb ŋ, meaning one is angry.

Conclusion

There is no generic name for the domain of temperature in Gbaya. The Gbaya temperature terms are organised into three word classes: nouns, verbs and adjectives.

The two nouns 'cold' and 'heat' provide the basis of the Gbaya temperature system with two levels COLD / WARM. The first one has only the prototypical meaning of 'cold', while the second 'heat' is the name of a permanently hot object, the 'fire'. The 'sun', another permanently hot object is only used for weather condition and never gets the prototypical meaning of 'heat', in the same way as 'water' and 'hail' never get the prototypical meaning of 'cold'.

There are five verbs which indicate a change of temperature. They express a process that focuses on the way temperature rises or falls and do not refer to a specific value. Each of them related to a particular subject as water, human body, weather and the sun which have an expected default value serving as point of reference in evaluating this modification, and food which are made cold or warm/hot on purpose.

Otherwise Gbaya uses a lot of adjectives expressing a temporary concept characteristic of an entity. Gbaya has no primary adjective expressing temperature, but there are five verbal adjectives which express objective qualifying meanings corresponding to the temperature values resulting from each verbal process and 14 ideophonic-adjectives which lexicalise temperature grades. Most of them are specific to one or two domains, but no one is valid for all of them, illuminating the importance of the cultural point of view they support.

All these categories stratify the temperature domain into the same two levels COLD and WARM as nouns do, but there are more terms for heat (65%) than for cold (35%).The human body is the domain with the most numerous IDEO.As showing the significant weight of personal-feelings for Gbaya speakers. Water is the domain with the most numerous verbs characterizing it as an element particularly prone to react to temperature changes.

It is only by combining the many lexical and syntactic possibilities that a specific domain for expressing temperature emerges.