Trbojević-Milošević, Ivana (2009). Some contrasts in politeness structure of English and Serbian. In Marek Kuźniak, & Bożena Rozwadowska (Eds.), PASE Papers 2008: Studies in language and methodology of teaching foreign languages (pp. 177-184). Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT.
(2009) Historical English – Compound adpositions
Guarddon Anelo, María del Carmen (2009). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage of Old English compound adpositions. ES: Revista de filología inglesa, 30, 61-84. PDF (open access)
This paper examines the lexical content of a number of complex adpositions in Old English and the semantic processes that have produced them. Specifically, I have analyzed the complex adpositions that have in, on and at as controlling elements. The theoretical framework used is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. The semantic primes put forward within this model are used to approach four fundamental aspects: 1) The senses of the component elements that are inherited by the complex adposition and the senses that are blocked; 2) The new senses which were not present in the component elements but arise in the process; 3) The potential semantic incompatibilities that prevent the combination of some adpositions and 4) The internal syntactic organization found in these complex adpositions.
This paper is also concerned with the more general issue of the diachronic evolution of the complex adpositions under analysis. I attempt to unveil the semantic factors that have led to the disappearance of some of these adpositions while others have survived to present-day English.
On the whole, the main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that the explanation of the combinatorial properties of spatial primes can serve to
shed light upon aspects of the grammar of space that have not been clarified yet by the Cognitive Linguistics framework.
No actual explications are put forward in this paper.
(2009) Historical English – Epistemic expressions
Bromhead, Helen (2009). The reign of truth and faith: Epistemic expressions in 16th and 17th century English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This ground-breaking study in the historical semantics and pragmatics of 16th and 17th century English examines the meaning, use and cultural underpinnings of confident- and certain-sounding epistemic expressions, such as forsooth, by my troth and in faith, and first person epistemic phrases, such as I suppose, I ween and I think. It supports the hypothesis that the British Enlightenment and its attendant empiricism brought about a profound epistemic shift in ways of thinking and speaking. In contrast to the modern ethos of empiricism and doubt, the 16th and 17th centuries were dominated by an ethos of truth and faith, which manifests itself (among other ways) in the meanings and usages of epistemic expressions for certainty and confidence.
The study is firmly based on evidence from texts and collocations in the writings of the day and is conducted using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).
Reviewed by:
Gladkova, Anna (2012). Intercultural Pragmatics, 9(2), 281-285. DOI: 10.1515/ip-2012-0016
Levisen, Carsten (2012). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 22(1), 128-129. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1395.2012.01120.x
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2009) Historical English – NSM syntax
Guarddon Anelo, María del Carmen (2009). Un análisis de las propiedades combinatorias de los primitivos semánticos a través de las adposiciones complejas en inglés antigua [An analysis of the combinatorial properties of semantic primes through a study of complex adpositions in Old English]. Revista española de lingüística, 39(2), 93-122. PDF (open access)
This paper presents a study of the lexical content of a number of complex adpositions in Old English and the morpho-semantic processes that have motivated them. Specifically, I have analysed the adpositions which have in, on and at as controlling elements. The theoretical framework supporting this analysis is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth, NSM). The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate
that the explication of the combinatorial properties of the spatial primes put forward in the NSM can serve to shed light upon certain aspects of the grammar of spatial relations that have not received attention by schools highly focused in this type of metalanguage, i.e. Cognitive Linguistics.
The spatial primes are used to address four fundamental issues: 1) Semantic content of the resulting adposition; senses of the constituent elements that are transferred to the complex adposition, senses that are blocked and senses not present in the constituents that arise in the process of compounding; 2) Semantic incompatibilities preventing the combination of certain simple adpositions; 3) Internal syntactic organization found in these complex adpositions. 4) The diachronic evolution of the complex adpositions analyzed in the article. Particularly, I unveil the semantic factors that have led to the disappearance of some of these adpositions while others have survived up to the present day.
(2009) Numbers and counting
Goddard, Cliff (2009). The conceptual semantics of numbers and counting: An NSM analysis. Functions of Language, 16(2), 193-224. DOI: 10.1075/fol.16.2.02god
This study explores the conceptual semantics of numbers and counting, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka (eds.) 2002). It first argues that the concept of a number in one of its senses (number-1, roughly, “number word”) and the meanings of low number words, such as one, two, and three, can be explicated directly in terms of semantic primes, without reference to any counting procedures or practices. It then argues, however, that the larger numbers, and the productivity of the number sequence, depend on the concept and practice of counting, in the intransitive sense of the verb. Both the intransitive and transitive senses of counting are explicated, and the semantic relationship between them is clarified. Finally, the study moves to the semantics of abstract numbers (number-2), roughly, numbers as represented by numerals, e.g. 5, 15, 27, 36, as opposed to number words. Though some reference is made to cross-linguistic data and cultural variation, the treatment is focused primarily on English.
(2009) Polish – Emotions, speech acts, motion verbs, animal names
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(2009) Singapore English, Singapore Chinese – Shared Chinese-based lexicon
Tien, Adrian (2009). Singaporean culture as reflected by the shared Chinese-based lexicon of Singapore English and Singapore Chinese. In T. Shabanova (Ed.), Humanistic inheritance of great educators in culture and education (pp. 71-74). Ufa: BSPU.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Chinese – Human interaction in e-communication
Tien, Adrian (2010). The semantics of human interaction in Chinese E-communication. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook of research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 437-467). Hershey: IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-773-2.ch028
The current study investigates typical, everyday Chinese interaction online and examined what linguistic meanings arise from this form of communication – not only semantic but also, importantly, pragmatic, discursive, contextual and lexical meanings etc. In particular, it sets out to ascertain whether at least some of the cultural values and norms etc. known to exist in Chinese culture, as selected in the Chinese language, are maintained or preserved in modern Chinese e-communication. To achieve his aims, the author collected a sample set of data from Chinese online resources found in Singapore, including a range of blog sites and MSN chat rooms where interactants have kept their identities anonymous. A radically semantic approach was adopted – namely, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) model – to analyse meanings that arose from the data. The analyses were presented and compiled in the way of “cultural cyberscripts” – based on an NSM analytical method called “cultural scripts”. Through these cyberscripts, findings indicate that, while this form of e-communication does exhibit some departure from conventional socio-cultural values and norms, something remains linguistically and culturally Chinese that is unique to Chinese interaction online.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Cultural scripts, language teaching and intercultural communication
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association) 3, 105-119.
Cultural scripts provide a powerful new technique for articulating cultural norms, values and practices using simple, cross-translatable phrasing. The technique is based on many decades of research into cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. This paper illustrates the cultural scripts approach with three examples of pragmatics of Anglo English: request strategies, personal remarks, and phatic complimenting in American English. It argues that the cultural scripts approach can be readily adapted for use in teaching intercultural pragmatics and intercultural communication, and shows with concrete examples (so-called pedagogical scripts) how this can be done.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Emotions: happiness
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research. Emotion Review, 2(3), 269-273. DOI: 10.1177/1754073910361983
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions”. People’s emotional lives depend on the construals they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It applies the NSM approach to the history of ‘happiness’, an emotion that is very much at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines. The article shows how the “history of emotions” can be combined with cultural semantics and why this combination opens new perspectives for the whole interdisciplinary field of emotion research.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English – Cultural key words: STORY
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Story’ – An English cultural keyword and a key interpretive tool of Anglo culture. Narrative Inquiry, 20(1), 153-181. DOI: 10.1075/ni.20.1.08wie
This paper draws attention to the fact that the word story, a unique English cultural key word and a key interpretive tool of modern Anglo culture, has played a significant role in the “narrative turn” in the humanities and social sciences. It discusses some of the implications of this fact. Because the uniqueness and centrality of English story has until now gone unnoticed, many semantic components associated with it have been projected onto other languages, which has lead to the positing of spurious human universals and to claims such as “story is a basic principle of mind”.
The paper also shows that the English word story is linked with a family of concepts that have no semantic equivalents in other languages and that are unique conceptual artefacts of Anglo culture. It argues that if we can pinpoint these concepts, we can also pinpoint the shared values and assumptions reflected in them. This can be done with the help of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) methodology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English – Mass nouns, unitizers
Goddard, Cliff (2010). A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In Francis Jeffry Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things and stuff: Mass terms and generics (pp. 132-165). New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195382891.003.0008
This chapter follows up earlier work of Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka in which they argued that there are numerous, subtly different, subclasses of mass nouns. These different subclasses presuppose, they claimed, different “conceptualizations” of the nature of a mass. The present chapter concentrates on concrete mass nouns in English, arguing that the formal linguistic properties of mass nouns are systematically correlated with their conceptual content and that this conceptual content can be clearly identified using the tools of Wierzbicka and Goddard’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage system. Some of the cognitive issues raised here involve the extent that there is unity to the notion of mass‐stuff and whether there is any necessary similarity in the relevant part of the mental lives of speakers of different languages, since clearly, languages differ in the types of words that they each treat as mass.
(2010) English – NSM and naturalness
Marusch, Tina (2010). Natural semantic formalisms? A discussion of the naturalness in Wierzbicka’s approach to lexical semantic analysis. Master’s thesis, Technische Universität Chemnitz. PDF (open access)
The underlying assumption of this thesis is that NSM explications are only partly accessible to the intuition of native speakers. That is, although the analysis consists of natural language and the speaker readily understands every word in isolation, the composite meaning is much more difficult to comprehend. Apart from the alleged clarity and simplicity of the vocabulary, there are other factors influencing
comprehension, such as the complexity of the definition. Furthermore, the subtle differences in meaning are not efficiently enough brought out in the explications for test subjects to recognize the differences as such.
The thesis does not exclude the possibility that NSM paraphrases are a useful tool in lexical semantic analysis and that one can learn many things about meaning from them. For a trained linguist, who is familiar with the structure of the explications, the analyses, especially those of abstract concepts, will be very telling. However, the verifiability through the intuition of native speakers cannot be taken for granted.
Therefore, NSM practitioners cannot claim to avoid obscurity that afflicts many other semantic methods. The claim that NSM submits itself to a higher standard of verifiability than any other rival method cannot be upheld.
Although Marusch’s thesis adopts a rather critical stance vis-a-vis the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, as the outline above abundantly demonstrates, it is included in the database because it constructs its case on the basis of a number of slightly adapted explications that have been referred to in more recent NSM literature.
No rating is provided.
(2010) English – SLAP, SMACK
Sibly, Anne (2010). Harry slapped Hugo, Tracey smacked Richie: The semantics of slap and smack. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 30(3), 323-348. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2010.498804
This article analyses and compares the meanings of two English contact verbs: slap and smack. Although they are sometimes regarded as synonymous in their primary senses, evidence is adduced to show that each verb has a distinct meaning. Corpus data are used to identify the everyday patterns of each verb’s use and the analysis and discussion focus on the syntactic and semantic implications of these patterns. Attention is also given to the social and cultural factors that have influenced the way people think about the actions described by the verbs. Meanings are expressed in explications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM); this allows direct comparison of their semantic content. Slap and smack are shown to share many salient semantic features but, at the same time, to have unique characteristics that make them capable of distinctive description. Their prototypical meanings provide a strong conceptual foundation for other senses, including metaphorical uses.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English – Social categories (demonyms, occupation words)
Roberts, Michael (2010). The lexical semantics of social categories: demonyms and occupation words in English. MA thesis, University of New England, Armidale. PDF (open access)
First and foremost, this thesis is an exploration of the lexical semantics of selected English social category words, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It will explicate two sets of social category words, identify commonalities between the explications, and in turn identify sub-classes based upon the shared semantic structures. A subsidiary goal is to explore the syntactic and phraseological properties of each subclass, using online corpora and journals and newspapers from a variety of sources. The three corpora are the British National Corpus–Brigham Young University, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and Collins Wordbanks Online. The question of interest is the extent to which the syntactic and phraseological properties of human social category words can be accounted for by their semantic properties. The thesis makes no attempt to focus on any one particular dialect of English. It generally draws on written English from Australian, British and American sources; however, if it becomes apparent that there are strong differences between these dialects, these differences are mentioned.
(2010) English, Chinese, Korean, Russian – Ethnopsychology and personhood / Mental states
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In Barbara C. Malt, & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72-92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311129.003.0005
Abstract:
The first two sections of this chapter provide an overview of NSM research and findings, with a particular focus on mental state concepts. The next two sections show how NSM techniques make it possible to reveal complex and culture-specific meanings in detail and in terms that are readily transposable across languages. Examples include emotion terms, epistemic verbs, and ethnopsychological constructs in English, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. The next section discusses the relationship between linguistic meanings (word meanings) and cognition and elucidates the theoretical and methodological implications for cognitive science. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that people’s subjective emotional experience can be shaped or coloured to some extent by the lexical categories of their language.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English, Italian – Key words (politics)
Stecconi, S. (2010). Per un’analisi di concetti chiave dell’ambito politico secondo il Natural Semantic Metalanguage: un confronto italiano-inglese. MSc thesis, Università Cattolica di Milano.
(2010) English, Russian – Emotions
Gladkova, Anna (2010). A linguist’s view of “pride”. Emotion Review, 2(2), 178-179.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073909355014
Abstract:
This brief commentary on a paper published in the same issue offers a linguistic perspective on ‘pride’. On the basis of a semantic analysis, it demonstrates that the interpretation of pride put forward in that paper is Anglocentric and consistent with the contemporary use of the English word pride. It compares the English concept of pride with the Russian concept of гордиться gordit’sja and demonstrates their differences. It calls for a psychological account of ‘pride’ free from ethnocentric bias.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English, Russian – Emotions
Gladkova, Anna (2010). Sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology, 16(2), 267-285.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X10361396
Abstract:
This corpus-based study contributes to the description and analysis of linguistic and cultural variation in the conceptualization of sympathy, compassion, and empathy. A contrastive semantic analysis of sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and their Russian translational equivalents sočuvstvie, sostradanie, and sopereživanie uncovers significant differences in the conceptualization of these words, which are explained with reference to the prevalence of different models of social interaction in Anglo and Russian cultures, as well as different cultural attitudes towards emotional expression. The analysis uses NSM, which the author argues is a powerful tool in contrastive studies.
More information:
This paper has been plagiarized in the following publication:
Buyankina, A. S. (2015). Sympathy and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. In С. А. Песоцкая [S. A. Pesotskaya] (Ed.), Коммуникативные аспекты языка и культуры: сборник материалов XV Международной научно-практической конференции студентов и молодых ученых [Communicative aspects of language and culture: A collection of materials of the XVth International Scientific and Practical Conference of Students and Young Scientists]: Vol. 3 (pp. 70-72). Томск [Tomsk]: Изд-во ТПУ [TPU Publishing House].
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Environmental semantic molecules
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Semantic molecules and semantic complexity (with special reference to “environmental” molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 8(1), 123-155. DOI: 10.1075/ml.8.1.05god
In the NSM approach to semantic analysis, semantic molecules are a well-defined set of non-primitive lexical meanings in a given language that function as intermediate-level units in the structure of complex meanings in that language. After reviewing existing work on the molecules concept (including the notion of levels of nesting), the paper advances a provisional list of about 180 productive semantic molecules for English, suggesting that a small minority of these (about 25) may be universal. It then turns close attention to a set of potentially universal level-one molecules from the “environmental” domain (‘sky’, ‘ground’, ‘sun’, ‘day’, ‘night’ ‘water’ and ‘fire’), proposing a set of original semantic explications for them. Finally, the paper considers the theoretical implications of the molecule theory for our understanding of semantic complexity, cross-linguistic variation in the structure of the lexicon, and the translatability of semantic explications.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
