Browsing results for English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2008). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, & Susanne Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75-102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75
Abstract:
This is a contrastive NSM analysis of two ethnopsychological constructs (English heart, Malay hati). Rejecting the use of English-specific metaterminology, such as mind, cognition, affect, etc., as both ethnocentric and inaccurate, the study seeks to articulate the conceptual content of the words under investigation in terms of simple universal concepts such as FEEL, THINK, WANT, KNOW, PEOPLE, SOMEONE, PART, BODY, HAPPEN, GOOD and BAD.
For both words, the physical body-part meaning is first explicated, and then the ethnopsychological sense or senses (it is claimed that English heart has two distinct ethnopsychological senses). The chapter also reviews the phraseology associated with each word, and in the case of English heart, proposes explications for a number of prominent collocations: a broken heart, listening to your heart, losing heart and having your heart in it.
The concluding discussion makes some suggestions about experiential/semantic principles whereby body parts can come to be associated with cultural models of feeling, thinking, wanting and knowing. At a theoretical level, the study seeks to draw links between culturally informed cognitive semantics, on the one hand, and the field of cultural psychology, on the other.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) hati, (E) head, (E) heart, (E) mind, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 20, 2018.
Trbojević-Milošević, Ivana (2008). Grammar can hurt: A contrastive view of English and Serbian imperatives. In Katarina Rasulic, & Ivana Trbojević (Eds.), ELLSSAC Proceedings – English language and literature studies: Structures across cultures. Volume I (pp. 103-114). Belgrade: Faculty of Philology.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2008). Re-thinking THINK in contrastive perspective: Swedish vs. English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 225-240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.14god
This chapter builds on:
Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2004). Re-thinking THINK: Contrastive semantics of Swedish and English. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html
Swedish and English differ in interesting ways in relation to how they express the semantic prime THINK and related concepts. At first, it is not even obvious that there is a good Swedish exponent of THINK, because many uses of English think correspond not with Swedish tänka ‘think’, but with either tro (roughly) ‘be of the opinion that’ or tycka (very roughly) ‘feel that’. It is shown that, in fact, English think and Swedish tänka are precise semantic equivalents in canonical NSM contexts, and that tro and tycka, termed “epistemic verbs”, can be explicated in terms of the semantic prime THINK (TÄNKA) and other elements. Similarly, English think has certain complex, i.e. non-primitive uses, namely the “opinion” frame (e.g. She thinks that – –) and the conversational formula I think, and these English-specific constructions can be explicated. All the explications are presented in parallel English and Swedish versions. The contrastive exercise makes it clear that in universal grammar THINK can take a propositional complement (i.e. ‘think that – –’) only when it depicts an “occurrent thought” anchored to a particular time.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [illocutionary assumption], (E) believe (+ clause), (E) believe that, (E) gather that, (E) I think, (E) suppose (+ clause), (E) think that, (E) tro, (E) tycka, (T) Swedish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 16, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 14, 407-425. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00509.x
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 80-101) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Do all people live in a world full of colours? Perceptually, yes (unless they are visually impaired), but conceptually, no: there are many languages which have no word for ‘colour’ and in which the question What colour is it? cannot be asked and presumably does not arise. Yet the powerful and still immensely influential theory of Berlin and Kay assumes otherwise. While building on the author’s earlier work on colour semantics, this article brings new evidence against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and presents a fundamentally different approach. The new data on which the argument is based come from Australian languages. In particular, the article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no “colour talk” (and no “colour practices”), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices. It also offers a methodology for identifying indigenous meanings without the grid of the English concept ‘colour’, and for revealing “the native’s point of view”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) colour, (E) kunjuru-kunjuru, (E) kuruwarri-kuruwarri, (E) yukuri-yukuri, (T) English
Published on July 3, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
François, Jacques (2008). Book review of Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 103(2), 16-26.
Written in French.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Rieschild, Verna (2008). Review article of Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(1), 75-85.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). New semantic primes and new syntactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35-57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.06god
In section 1, we propose a “new” semantic prime — specificational BE — and show how it can be used to analyse some classic problems in the semantics of naming and reference. In section 2, we explore a newly recognised syntactic option of the prime THIS, here termed “abstract THIS/IT”. Both the new possibilities are involved in the semantics of specificational and focus constructions of English. These are the topic of section 3.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 9, 2020.
Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2008). Концепт ‘откровенность’ в русской и английской языковых картинах мира [The concept of ‘frankness’ in Russian and English linguistic world-views]. In Нина Арутюнова [Nina Arutjunova] (Ed.), Логический анализ языка: Между ложью и фантазией [Logical analysis of language: Between lie and fantasy] (pp. 502-514). Москва [Moscow]: Индрик [Indrik].
Written in Russian.
Abstract:
Исследования в области межкультурной прагматики показывают, что для русского языка и культуры характерно наличиел установки (или культурных скриптов) на прямое и открытое выражение своих мыслей и чувств [Вежбицка 2002; Гловинская 2003]. Похожие уста новки характерны и для других культур — например, испанской [Aznarez, Gonazalez 2006]. Однако в некоторых культурах (например, англосаксонской и малазийской) подобное правило менее значимо или отсутствует вообще [Goddard 1997; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Доминиро вание определенной культурной установки находит отражение в се мантике слов, которые по своему значению связаны с этой установ кой [Апресян 2006; Вежбицка 2002; Зализняк, Левонтина, Шмелев 2005; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Данную гипотезу интересно проверить при сравнительном семантическом анализе словпереводных эквивален тов из языков с различными культурными правилами. В работе про водится семантический анализ наречия откровенно в значении харак теристики манеры речи, которое может быть связано с установкой на открытое и прямое выражение своих мыслей и чувств, характерное для русской культуры. Данное наречие сравнивается с его ближай шими переводными эквивалентами candidly иfrankly в английском языке, где доминируют другие культурные скрипты [Wierzbicka 2006а].
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) candidly, (E) frankly, (E) откровенно frankly
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
Gladkova, Anna (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.19gla
An earlier version of this paper was published as:
Gladkova, Anna (2005). New and traditional values in contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in cross-cultural semantics. In Ilana Mushin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93.
This chapter examines the recent trend in contemporary Russian towards increased lexical borrowing from English. In particular, it compares and contrasts the meanings of a recently borrowed value term tolerantnyj with its English equivalent tolerant and the traditionally closest Russian equivalent терпимый terpimyj ‘tolerant/indulgent/forbearing’. A detailed contrastive semantic analysis demonstrates that, although tolerant and терпимый terpimyj are translational equivalents, their meanings do differ and reflect different cultural attitudes across the two societies involved.
The work also shows that the meaning of the new Russian term tolerantnyj does not fully coincide with the meaning of the English tolerant, as it reflects the Russian value system. The analysis is conducted using NSM as its main analytical tool.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) terpet' терпеть, (E) terpimyj терпимый, (E) tolerant, (E) tolerate, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka (2008). Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, & Elsa M. González Álvarez (Eds.), Current trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional and cognitive perspectives (pp. 205-226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/sfsl.60.13god
This study sets out to demonstrate that the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes provides a stable language-neutral medium for fine-grained contrastive semantic analysis, in both the lexical and grammatical domains. The lexical examples are drawn from “yearning-missing” words in English, Polish, Russian and Spanish, while the grammatical examples contrast the Spanish diminutive with the hypocoristic “diminutive” of Australian English. We show that the technique of explication (reductive paraphrase) into semantic primes makes it possible to pin down subtle meaning differences which cannot be captured using normal translation or grammatical labels. Explications for the Polish, Russian and Spanish examples are presented both in English and in the language concerned, thus establishing that the metalanguage being used is transposable across languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 13, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). Componential analysis. In Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 58-67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hoph.2.06god
Previously issued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2005). Componential analysis. In Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics 2003-2005 (12 pages). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.m.comm1
The 2005 text is a heavily revised version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Componential analysis. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jan Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147-153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Abstract:
Componential analysis (CA) in the broadest sense, also known as ‘lexical decomposition’, is any attempt to formalize and standardize procedures for the analysis of word meanings. CA often aspires to represent the cognitive or psychological reality of the speakers, and to shed light on correlations between language and culture.
The idea that word meanings may be broken down into combinations of simpler components is an ancient one, supported by a range of facts. These include the efficacy of paraphrase, the intuitively felt relationships (such as antonymy, hyponymy, partonymy) between word meanings, the fact that sentences may be tautologous, contradictory or odd due to the interplay of the meanings of their constituent words. The assumption of decomposability underlies the definitional side of traditional lexicography. For expository purposes, methods in CA may be described under four headings: the structuralist tradition, linguistic anthropology, generative and typological studies, and paraphrase semantics (1995) / Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (2005/2009). Some other trends and problems are briefly discussed.
Explications included in the 1995 version relate to the emotion term indignant, the speech act verb suggest, the interjection Wow! and the kinship term mother.
Explications included in the 2005 and 2009 versions relate to the emotion term sad, the social category friend, the performative verbs threaten and warn, and the semantic molecule animal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) animal, (E) friend, (E) mother, (E) sad, (E) suggest, (E) threaten, (E) warn, (E) Wow!, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Language and metalanguage: Key issues in emotion research. Emotion Review, 1(1), 3-14. DOI: 10.1177/1754073908097175
Building on the author’s earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the shackles of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-independent perspective. The use of NSM makes it possible to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, as well as a psychological, perspective and thus opens up new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjectivity and psychological experience.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) adēmonein αδημονείν, (E) ekthambeisthai εκθαμβεισθαι, (E) fear, (T) English
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). The language of “bullying” and “harassment”. Quadrant, 53(12), 102-107.
While there is no shortage of various attempted definitions of bullying, they are usually lacking in clarity, precision and explanatory value. This is partly because to provide an adequate definition of bullying one needs to consider closely not only human behaviour but also the meanings of words and ways in which these meanings can be accurately defined and intelligibly explained.
What matters here is not how the word should be used, or what it should mean, but rather, what it actually means as it is normally used by “ordinary people”. It is this plain meaning manifested in “ordinary people’s” use of the word which functions as part of the shared conceptual
currency of speakers of English. To identify this meaning accurately and intelligibly we need a workable methodology. Such a methodology can be found in the so-called “NSM” (from “Natural Semantic Metalanguage”) approach. Using this approach, we can overcome the inadequacies of traditional models of definition, and we can actually explain the meaning of words, in ways which can be both cognitively accurate and socially and educationally useful.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bully, (E) bullying, (E) harassment
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). The ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language concept’ in everyday English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 29(1), 11-25. DOI: 10.1080/07268600802516350
This paper presents a semantic/conceptual analysis of the concepts of communication and language, as represented in the lexicon of everyday English. Section 1 gives a brief orientation to the method to be employed, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka. In the main body of the paper, I propose semantic explications for several senses of the English words communicate, communication and language, supporting these explications by reference to naturally occurring data, and, in the case of polysemy, by reference to distinctive grammatical or phraseological properties of the polysemic meanings. The paper closes with observations on how the differing semantics of the ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language concept’ may contribute to the differing orientations of linguistics and communication studies.
Lexical Semantics; Communication; Language Concept; NSM
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Wearing, Catherine (2009). Metaphor and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1017-1028. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.01.004
Within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework, it is claimed that metaphorical content is paraphrasable by means of explications based on semantic primes. This paper examines this account of metaphor, explores the importance of paraphrasing metaphors for the NSM approach, and argues that the prospects for successful paraphrases are less promising than has been claimed. It is then shown that the explications that have been proposed for the metaphors a soft wine and language is a mirror of the mind do not suffice to explain how these metaphors work, and it describes how NSM explications must be supplemented to generate a more adequate explanation.
No actual improvements to the explications themselves are proposed.
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 September 13, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Exploring English phraseology with two tools: NSM semantic methodology and Google. Journal of English Linguistics, 37(2), 101-129. DOI: 10.1177/0075424209334338
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 10 (pp. 395-406) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press.
The study of phraseology, which not long ago was often dismissed as a linguistic activity of only minor interest, has now come into its own and is an increasingly popular and diversified field, with many different approaches and foci of interest. Significantly, regardless of their particular focus and goals, more and more writers adopt corpus-based approaches to phraseological phenomena. This article arises from a larger study of various phraseological networks based on the English cultural key word sense (as in, e.g., a sense of humour, a sense of direction and a sense of relief), and it explores some types of sense-based collocations with two tools: the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) semantic methodology and Google. The article argues that the use of corpora and the Web combined with the use of NSM methodology opens new perspectives for the semantic and cultural study of English phraseology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mission, (E) sense, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29-53. DOI: 10.1515/IPRG.2009.002
In the mainstream speech culture of Australia (as in the UK, though perhaps more so in Australia), taking yourself too seriously is culturally
proscribed. This study applies the techniques of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) semantics and ethnopragmatics (Goddard 2006b, 2008; Wierzbicka 1996, 2003, 2006a) to this aspect of Australian English speech culture. It first develops a semantic explication for the language-specific expression taking yourself too seriously, thus helping to give access to an ‘‘insider perspective’’ on the practice. Next, it seeks to identify some of the broader communicative norms and social attitudes that are involved, using the method of cultural scripts (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004). Finally, it investigates the extent to which predictions generated from the analysis can be supported or disconfirmed by contrastive analysis of Australian English corpora as against other English corpora, and by the use of the Google search engine to explore different subdomains of the World Wide Web.
Published on November 19, 2018. Last updated on November 19, 2018.
Годдард, Клифф [Goddard, Cliff] (2009). “Следуй путем рисового поля”: семантика пословиц в английском и малайском языках [“Sleduy putem risovogo polya”: semantika poslovits v angliyskom i malayskom yazykakh / “Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)]. Жанры речи [Zhanry rechi / Speech genres], 6, 184-207.
Russian translation of a paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation Symposium on Ritual Communication, Portugal, 17-23 March 2007. Updated and published in English as chapter 8 of:
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
No English abstract available. The proverbs explicated (in Russian) include: (English) A stitch in time saves nine, Make hay while the sun shines, Out of the frying pan into the fire, Practice makes perfect, All that glitters is not gold, Too many cooks spoil the broth, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Where there’s smoke there’s fire; (Malay) Ikut resmi padi ‘Follow the way of the rice plant’, Seperti ketam mangajar anak berjalan betul ‘Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’, Binasa badan kerana mulut ‘The body suffers because of the mouth’, ‘Ada gula, ada semut ‘Where there’s sugar, there’s ants’, Seperti katak di bawah tempurung ‘Like a frog under a coconut shell’, Keluar mulut harimau masuk mulut buaya ‘Out from the tiger’s mouth into the crocodile’s mouth’, Bila gajah dan gajah berlawan kancil juga yang mati tersepit ‘When elephant fights elephant it’s the mousedeer that’s squashed to death’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). “Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight”: Proverbiality, semantics, and indexicality in English and Malay. In Gunter Senft, & Ellen B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 103-125). New York: Berg.
My objective is to give a balanced, contrastive treatment of the textual semantics, cultural-historical positioning, and interdiscursivity of proverbs in two widely different speech cultures. In what follows, I look first at contemporary English, addressing the way proverbs, as instances of a language-specific category, can be identified on linguistic evidence. I propose a template in the NSM metalanguage to articulate the semantic framing inherent in the proverb genre (essentially, the semantic content of “proverbiality”) and demonstrate the utility of the approach with a full analysis of several English metaphorical proverbs (“A stitch in time saves nine”) and maxims (“Practice makes perfect”). I discuss aspects of the interdiscursivity of proverbs in English, with particular reference to the ethos of modernity. In the remainder of the chapter, I apply a parallel analysis and discussion to proverbs (peribahasa) in contemporary Malay, including the metaphorical Malay proverb Seperti ketam mengajar anak berjalan betul ‘like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Contrastive semantics of physical activity verbs: ‘Cutting’ and ‘chopping’ in English, Polish, and Japanese. Language Sciences, 31, 60-96. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2007.10.002
This study explores the contrastive lexical semantics of verbs comparable to ‘cut’ and ‘chop’ in three languages (English, Polish, and Japanese), using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis. It proposes a six-part semantic template, and argues that this template can serve as a basis for a lexical typology of complex physical activity verbs in general. At the same time, it argues that language-specific aspects of the semantics are often culturally motivated. Nine verbs are examined (English cut, chop, slice, Polish ciąć ‘‘cut’’, krajać ‘‘cut/slice’’, obcinać ‘‘cut around’’, rąbać ‘‘chop’’, Japanese kiru ‘‘cut’’, kizamu ‘‘chop’’), and NSM explications are proposed for each one based on its range of use in natural contexts, thus capturing the semantic similarities and differences in fine-grained detail.
Contrastive semantics; Lexical semantics; Physical activity verbs; NSM; Lexical typology; Semantic template; Lexicology; Polysemy; Semantics and culture
