Browsing results for Plants and animals

(1988) Natural kinds

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 14, 2019.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics and lexicography of ‘natural kinds’. In Karl Hyldgaard-Jensen, & Arne Zettersten (Eds.), Symposium on Lexicography III (pp. 155-182). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Abstract:

The views advanced in the present paper can be summarized as follows:

  1. The names of animals (and of other ‘natural kinds’) can, and should, be defined.
  2. In defining such words (as any other words), scientific knowledge should be distinguished from meaning; the place for scientific knowledge is in an encyclopedia, the place for meaning is in a dictionary.
  3. In defining words for animals, the lexicographer should aim at capturing the ‘folk concept’. This means that the cultural stereotypes are just as important for a good definition as ‘objective’ information concerning the appearance or behaviour of the animal in question.
  4. Definitions should be couched in simple and generally understandable terms. The defining vocabulary should be very restricted and should be standardized; it should also be maximally culture-free and based, as far as possible, on lexical universals.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2009) Polish – Emotions, speech acts, motion verbs, animal names

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). The theory of the mental lexicon. In Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger, & Karl Gutschmidt (Eds.), Die slavischen Sprachen/The Slavic languages: Eine internationales Handbuch zu ihrer Struktur, ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Erforsching/An international handbook of their structure, their history and their investigation: Volume 1 (pp. 848-863). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214475.1.11.848

The main thesis of this article is that (contrary to what, for example, Chomsky claims) a great deal is by now known about the mental lexicon. First of all, there is currently a great deal of evidence that at the heart of this lexicon lies a set of sixty or so universal semantic primes, each with its own set of combinatory characteristics. Second, cross-linguistic evidence suggests that large sections of the mental lexicon have a hierarchical structure, with several levels of semantic molecules operating and thus allowing for great conceptual complexity to be combined with relatively simple semantic structures. Third, it is now clear that many sections of the mental lexicon are organized according to a certain pattern, or template, shared by a large number of words. Fourth, a large body of research has shown that the mental lexicon of the speakers of any given language includes many words whose meanings are unique to that particular language, and that such words – a language’s cultural key words – help bind the speakers of a language into a cohesive cultural community.

The chapter focuses in particular on the relatively new areas of semantic molecules and semantic templates. The illustrative material analysed is drawn from Polish and relates to emotions (including but not limited to emotions reminiscent of envy and compassion in English), speech acts (reminiscent of to order and to ask (someone about something) in English), names of animals (mice), and motion verbs.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2022) Danish, Kalaallisut — Environment

Published on August 22, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Maskova, Stephanie. A Semantic Analysis of Snow-related Words in Danish and Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic). Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 225-248. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135079

 

Abstract

This paper emerges from the vexed question whether the allegedly many “Eskimo” terms for snow document a linkage between language, culture, and cognition. Using the semantic explication technique of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, the emic logics embedded in the Kalaallisut snow-related words aputit and nittaappoq and the Danish snow-related words sne and det sner are unfolded. Through a comparison of the findings, the paper discusses how the physical world is conceptualized in both culture-specific and transcultural ways. The explications are based on evidence from semantic consultations and text examples.