Browsing results for Australian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1986). Particles/clitics for criticism and complaint in Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda). Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 575-596. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(86)90015-9
This paper examines a set of five particle/clitics which are used for criticizing and complaining in Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda) – a Central Australian Aboriginal language. It describes how the illocutionary force of criticism and/or complaint achieved by each particle/clitic is a function of their meaning, culture-specific pragmatics, and both the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts of use. The value of natural language definition is demonstrated through practical application. It is also argued that conversational implicatures may be conventional and, further, that such conventional implicatures can be semantically explicated. The meaning of the implicature is generated as part of an utterance by regular pragmatic rules.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) iknge, (E) itanye, (E) kathene, (E) kwele, (E) me (clitic)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Semantics and the interpretation of cultures: The meaning of ‘alternate generations’ devices in Australian languages. Man, 21, 34-49.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2802645
Abstract:
This article aims to reveal the real meaning of some devices that play a crucial role in the linguistic communication of Australian Aborigines. The elements in question include alternative sets of pronouns, determined by the principle of ‘generation harmony’. It is argued that technical labels such as ‘harmonic’ and ‘disharmonic’ reflect the anthropologist’s rather than the native speaker’s point of view. As an alternative to the use of arcane, and psychologically arbitrary, semantic metalanguage widely used in anthropological and linguistic literature, a semantic metalanguage is proposed, based on a postulated system of universal semantic prim(itiv)es. The interpretation of cultures requires more than translation of native categories into an arcane technical language of the scientist; an analytical framework is proposed by which native categories of thought can be translated into a language that makes it possible (i) to capture native speakers’ meaning, and (2) to make that meaning accessible to people from other cultures.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 10 (pp. 355-370) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Human emotions: Universal or culture-specific? American Anthropologist, 88(3), 584-594.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1986.88.3.02a00030
Abstract:
The search for ‘fundamental human emotions’ has been seriously impeded by the absence of a culture-independent semantic metalanguage. The author proposes a metalanguage based on a postulated set of universal semantic primitives, and shows how language-specific meanings of emotion terms can be captured and how rigorous cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms can be achieved.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 3 (pp. 119-134) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dégout, (E) disgusted, (E) distasteful, (E) embarrassment/embarrassed, (E) fear/afraid, (E) homesick, (E) miss, (E) pine after, (E) repulsive, (E) revolting, (E) shame/ashamed, (E) shame/fear (Nhaalya), (E) tęsknić, (E) tęsknota
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Hudson, Joyce (1986). An analysis of illocutionary verbs in Walmatjari. In George Huttar & Kenneth Gregerson (Eds.), Pragmatics in non-western perspective (pp. 63-83). Dallas: University of Texas at Arlington. PDF (open access)
The twenty-two illocutionary verbs analyzed here represent the main speech acts of Walmatjari, an Australian Aboriginal language spoken along the Fitzroy River in the North of Western Australia. In my description, I follow the approach developed by Wierzbicka (1972, 1980), according to which explications of illocutionary verbs are given in terms of a small set of semantic primitives. The first of the verbs looked at (many) corresponds to the semantic primitive SAY. The others are semantically related to the following list of English verbs: tell, call (out), ask, request, order, respond, refuse, deny, stop, rebuke, prevent, forbid, demand, advise, sing, curse, tease, anger, laugh, talk, scold, quarrel, abuse, scream, confront, speak straight, say what you mean, cause shame, embarrass, stand in, take someone’s part.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) jakuljula, (E) jangkuman, (E) japirlman, (E) japirlyung, (E) jarrmany, (E) jingnyaka, (E) jinjinyung, (E) jirnapung, (E) jula, (E) kurntayikuji, (E) lirrkarnpung, (E) marra, (E) nganymany, (E) nginarrmany, (E) panypanymany, (E) papajarra, (E) pinajula, (E) pinakangka, (E) pinayungka, (E) purntukang, (E) tajjula, (E) tarrurumany, (E) warralpung, (E) yinpa
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Harkins, Jean (1986). Semantics and the language learner: Warlpiri particles. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 559-574. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(86)90014-7
Particles in Australian Aboriginal languages play a crucial role in conveying complex semantic and pragmatic information, posing some seemingly intractable problems for both the descriptive linguist and the language learner. Looking at some Warlpiri particles used for disclaiming authorship, expressing certainty, casting doubt, limiting an assertion, and suggesting something different, this paper attempts to show how a careful semantic analysis might lead to the formulation of descriptions sufficiently clear and explicit to be of practical use. It is argued that hypotheses as to meaning must be stated explicitly in order that they may be verified, or modified as necessary.
Tags: (E) kapi/u, (E) kari, (E) karinganta, (E) kulanganta, (E) marda, (E) murra, (E) nganta, (E) ngarra, (E) ngayi
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Hill, Deborah (1987). A cross-linguistic study of value-judgement terms. MA thesis, Australian National University.
The purpose of this thesis is to try to establish the extent to which the words good, bad, true and right can be considered lexical universals. These words have been chosen because they are value-judgment terms that, individually, have been discussed at length by philosophers. It seems to be assumed by philosophers and semanticists that these words reflect concepts shared by speakers of all languages. By testing whether these words are candidates for lexical universals we can then see the extent to which this assumption is true.
On the basis of information from native speakers from 15 diverse languages, we can say that good and bad reflect language independent concepts (GOOD and BAD). However, in many languages, including English, the range of meaning of bad is narrower than the range of meaning of good. By looking at five of these fifteen languages we can see that the words right and true reflect concepts that are not language
independent. Thus, by taking a cross-linguistic approach, we can shed some light on the work done by language philosophers in the area of value-judgment terms.
The following languages are examined in this thesis: Arabic, Arrernte, Chinese (Mandarin), English, Ewe, Fijian, Finnish, Indonesian, Kannada, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 14, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1989). Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda): Studies in the structure and semantics of grammar. PhD thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)
This thesis is essentially a description of the grammar of Mparntwe Arrernte, the traditional language of Alice Springs, in Central Australia. The main aims of the thesis are two-fold: (i) to provide a comprehensive descriptive overview of the language and (ii) to give some indication of how the language conveys, reflects and responds to the socio-cultural concerns of its speakers. To fulfil these aims, chapters surveying broad areas of the grammar are interleaved with chapters that survey particular grammatical and semantic phenomena in detail. A major concern of the thesis is to describe the semantic, as well as the structural, details of the grammar. Where possible, natural language definitions are provided for grammatical elements and structures.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1990). The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 257-292. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599444
Recent work in cognitive anthropology has laid much stress on the role emotions in general play in regulating and organizing (or even, constituting) social life within a culture. At one level, we may see a system of interrelated emotion concepts as embodying shared understandings of human nature – as a model, or set of models, that people use to interpret each other’s actions and reactions. At another level, we can look to the way emotion words are invoked and deployed in social praxis; indeed, it can be fairly said that the ‘meaning’ (in the fullest sense) of emotion concepts and lexemes cannot be fully appreciated without an account of how they figure in the overall system of social action. This paper addresses the lexical semantics of three emotion verbs in the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara dialects of the Western Desert Language. They are the most salient words in what might broadly be termed the domain of valued or positive feelings – mukuringanyi, roughly ‘want, like, care for’, pukularinyi ‘feel glad, gratified’ and ngalturinganyi ‘feel sorry, concerned for’. The paper uses the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method of semantic description, which represents meanings as reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases, technically known as explications. The cultural significance of the specific P/Y concepts explicated in this paper should be obvious: they relate directly to the social category of walytja ‘kin, relations’, identified by Aboriginal people and anthropologists alike as pivotal to P/Y social life.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kuraringanyi, (E) mukuringanyi, (E) ngalturinganyi, (E) pukul(pa), (E) pukularinyi, (E) walytja
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Testing the translatability of semantic primitives into an Australian Aboriginal Language. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(1), 31-56. DOI: 10.2307/30028013
This study in the methodology of cross-linguistic semantics within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework posits the existence of universal lexico-semantic primitives. Among these are because and want, yet both present translation difficulties in relation to the Western Desert Language of Central Australia. Because apparently has no unambiguous equivalent, and the Western Desert verb closest to want (mukuringanyi) exhibits a range of rather different syntactic and semantic characteristics and is morphologically complex. However, by taking careful account of polysemy and differences in range of use due to non-semantic factors – factors that undermine any simplistic checklist approach to translatability – unique, precise translation equivalents for both terms can be established.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mukuringanyi, (T) English
Published on October 10, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Anger in the Western Desert: A case study in the cross-cultural semantics of emotion. Man, (N.S.) 26(2), 265-279. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803832
This article sets out to show that by adopting a method of semantic description based on reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases (the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach) it is possible to elucidate the meanings of emotion concepts, and their similarities and differences across cultures, within a principled, formal framework. Using this approach, it explores the semantic differences between pikaringanyi, mirpanarinyi and kuyaringanyi, three expressions in the Aboriginal language of the Western Desert of Australia, each of which corresponds to some extent to the English concept of anger.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) kuyaringanyi, (E) mirpanarinyi, (E) pikaringanyi, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1992). Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 119-158. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90049-H
Reissued in an abridged format as:
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The paper examines some of the semantic and pragmatic consequences of a form being both a lexeme (i.e. a simple sign) and a conventional utterance. The approach presented here has far-reaching consequences for the manner in which interjections are identified, analyzed, and subclassified. In particular it it suggested that interjections have all the features attributed to utterances, including the facts that they convey complete propositions and have an illocutionary purpose. Given that interjections are context-bound, it is possible to observe that the referential arguments in the propositions conveyed by interjections are provided by context. As lexemes, interjections have ‘real’ semantic (i.e. propositional/conceptual) content, and within the decomposition of all interjections are basic deictic elements. These ‘primitive’ deictic elements are not tied referentially to any entities until they are placed in context. In this sense both a pragmatic and a semantic approach are required to account for interjections. Interjections are, therefore, shifters (indexicals) by virtue of being built semantically out of basic deictic elements and so should be considered a reasonable topic within the study of deixis.
Definitions, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to lexical decomposition, are proposed for a varied range of interjections from English, Mparntwe Arrernte (Central Australia), American Sign Language, and Italian.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 11, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Talking about emotions: Semantics, culture, and cognition. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3/4), 285-319. DOI: 10.1080/02699939208411073
Translated into Polish as chapter 4 of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liger, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) displeased, (E) displeasure, (E) glücklich, (E) grateful, (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) joy, (E) liget, (E) pleased, (E) remorse, (E) sad, (E) song, (E) tjituru-tjituru, (E) watjilpa, (E) złość
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Evans, Nicholas (1992). ‘Wanjh! Bonj! Nja!’: Sequential organization and social deixis in Mayali interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 225-244. DOI:10.1016/0378-2166(92)90053-E
This paper examines the semantics and pragmatics of a number of interjections in Mayali, a language of Arnhem Land, Australia. Definitions using Natural Semantic Metalanguage are used to make explicit the complex relations between the lexical meanings of interjections and their
interpretation in context. One class of interjections, which I call organizing interjections, play an important role in structuring discourse and in many cases constitute complete turns in conversational (and also in basically non-verbal) sequences. Their behaviour is explained by making explicit the presuppositions about discourse context, or ‘discourse placedness conditions’, that are part of their lexical meaning. Another two sets of interjections, the ‘Gesundheit set’ and the ‘sorry-for-the-swearing set’, exhibit highly specific presuppositions about social context, or ‘social placedness conditions’. Other interjections have a substantial degree of indirection, making inference necessary for their interpretation. To illustrate this, the interjection mah ‘time to do something!‘, whose agent is not semantically specified, is compared with others like nja ‘you take this now!’, whose agent is made explicit in the semantic representation. To cover cases like mah, it is useful to introduce a distinction between overt indirection, the lack of formally explicit coding of some aspect of meaning (e.g. argument or complement ellipsis), and covert indirection, the absence of some aspect of meaning from the semantic representation itself. All interjections, on this definition, are overtly indirect, but only some (such as mah) are in addition covertly indirect.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) balmarded, (E) bebba, (E) bonj, (E) mah, (E) med, (E) nadjalaminj, (E) ngoi, (E) nja
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1992). Traditional Yankunytjatjara ways of speaking – A semantic perspective. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 12(1), 93-122. DOI: 10.1080/07268609208599472
Yankunytjatjara is a minority dialect of the Western Desert Language, spoken by several hundred people, primarily in the north-west of South Australia. This paper sets out to describe some of the dimensions of communicative competence in the traditional Yankunytjatjara lifestyle. Part One gives a brief outline of the walytja ‘kin, relationship’ system, essential social background for what follows. Parts Two and Three consider, respectively, the elaborately oblique speech style tjalpawangkanyi, and various kinds of boisterous banter and joking, concentrating on characterizing the linguistic devices and rhetorical strategies of these speech styles. In discussion sections at the end of Parts Two and Three, Anna Wierzbicka’s semantically inspired approach to cross-cultural pragmatics is applied to the data.
Note: The tag below identifies the rules for use of the speech styles explicated in this paper as cultural scripts, a term that was not yet current in the NSM framework at the time.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) speech styles
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 14, 2018.
Harkins, Jean & Wilkins, David P. (1994). Mparntwe Arrernte and the search for lexical universals. In Cliff Goddard & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 285-310). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.15har
The set of elements identified here are, at the very least, our best candidates for English-Arrernte lexical translation equivalents, and for elements that will appear in the basic set of propositional structures that comprise NSM definitions. Perhaps more investigation will reveal that they are truly the reflexes of universal properties of mind. Such a goal, however, seems a long way off, and need not detract from the
practical utility of establishing a descriptive metalanguage to facilitate better cross-linguistic semantic comparison.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Evans, Nicholas (1994). Kayardild. In Cliff Goddard & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 203-228). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.12eva
Kayardild is an Australian language spoken in the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria by a population traditionally numbering
around 120 people. Most of the proposed primitives find unproblematic translations into the language. The problems that arise can be divided into problems of combinability and problems of exuberance. Viewed from another angle, these two types of problem underscore the distinction between semantic and lexical universalis: the Kayardild evidence suggests that all the primitives considered in this volume are semantic universals, but that some fail to be lexical universals. In a case like THINK or DO there exist many Kayardild words that contain the relevant semantic component, supporting the claim that they are semantically universal, but they have not been lexicalised in a pure form. The case of putative universals expressible only as senses of gramemes is directly comparable: WANT and COULD are required in the explication of certain gramemes, but are not available in a pure form as lexemes. Yet only when a meaning is lexicalised does it become fully available for translation, which requires the ability to combine freely. Conversely, it may not be until one attempts translation that a particular lexical gap is even noticed, since all the commonest configurations involving a particular semantic primitive may be lexicalised — Kayardild, for example, has ‘do this’, ‘do that’, ‘do well’, ‘do badly’, ‘do what’, ‘do like someone else’ and so forth. By lexicalising all the regularly used combinations, a language can in some cases get by perfectly well without lexical exponents of the primitives themselves.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1994). Lexical primitives in Yankunytjatjara. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 229-262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.13god
All the posited lexical primitives find good candidates in Yankunytjatjara, once polysemy and allolexy are taken into account. In general, the posited exponents are formally simple (monomorphemic) words or clitics; but sometimes they are affixes, and occasionally they are formally complex (i.e. apparently polymorphemic) expressions. There are still some uncertainties about allolexic variants of some primitives, and about how to express certain collocations that the theory predicts are possible. We are not yet in full possession of a Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on Yankunytjatjara. What has been done, however, is to establish its basic lexicon. There would seem to be no serious barrier to the construction of a full NSM based on Yankunytjatjara and mutually translatable with expressively equivalent NSMs of other languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The bulk of this chapter is an abridged and re-edited version of an earlier paper (Wilkins, 1992). The primary purpose of that paper and, hence, this chapter is to argue that the traditional American linguistic view of deictic elements must be expanded to embrace interjections alongside the more standard members such as pronouns and demonstratives. To rescue interjections from the periphery of linguistic concerns requires a demonstration of two points: (a) that interjections share specific linguistic and communicative properties with more standard deictic elements, and (b) that it is possible to render a convincing account of the semantic structure and pragmatic usage of interjections. I attempt to expand this argument, and extend the demonstration of the two forementioned points by tying interjections in with the narrative and deictic center concerns that form the focus of the book in which the new version appears, but that were not explicitly covered in the original paper.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Who are we? The natural semantics of pronouns. Language Sciences, 17(1), 99-121. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(95)00011-J
Working within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of Anna Wierzbicka, this study proposes reductive paraphrase explications for a range of first-person pronominal meanings. A general explicatory schema is first developed for English we. It is then shown how this can be elaborated to accommodate the inclusive/exclusive distinction, dual number and trial number, and how it can be applied to minimal-augmented systems. Data is taken from various languages of Australia and Asia. It is argued that NSM explications are preferable to conventional feature analyses for two reasons: they are less subject to charges of arbitrariness and obscurity; and they are located within a comprehensive theory of semantic representation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) 'ār عار, (E) kami, (E) kita, (E) nayin-nime, (E) ngagurr, (E) ngakorrbbarrah, (E) ngakorru, (E) ngali, (E) ngan'gityemerri, (E) nganana, (E) we, (E) yar, (E) yarrbbarrah, (E) yarru, (E) yukku, (E) yε, (E) ε, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1996). Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145-151. DOI: 10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1
This paper takes issue with the assertion that there is no culture-neutral boundary between what is literal and what is metaphorical, and with the undercurrent of extreme relativism shown in a recent paper published in the same journal. It furthermore makes the point that, to study (and even to identify) the metaphoric systems of other languages, a coherent theory of semantic description is required. It is argued that, despite the enormous semantic differences between languages, there is solid evidence that they share a small set of ‘universal meanings’, which can provide a non-arbitrary and non-ethnocentric vocabulary for cross-linguistic semantics.
The claims contained in this paper are underpinned by discussion of the semantic primes THERE IS and FEEL in Yankunytjatjara.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
