Browsing results for English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Travis, Catherine (1998). Omoiyari as a core Japanese value: Japanese-style empathy? In Angeliki Athanasiadou, & Elzbieta Tabakowska (Eds.), Speaking of emotions: Conceptualisation and expression (pp. 83-103). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110806007.55
This paper presents a semantic analysis of the Japanese concept of omoiyari, a key word representing core Japanese values. Omoiyari is essential to successful communication and the maintaining of harmonious relations in Japan. A full understanding of this word is extremely insightful into Japanese culture, revealing a great deal about the Japanese “indirect” communicative style; the importance of being “in tune” with others’ unexpressed desires and feelings; the “interdependence” on which group relations are based in Japan; and, in the light of all these factors, the Japanese perception of individuality, or “selfhood”. Furthermore, an understanding of omoiyari provides analysts with a tool with which to examine and describe Japanese culture, allowing them to adopt a kind of Japanese perspective, and thus to gain greater comprehension of some of the values and attitudes on which the society operates.
Omoiyari essentially represents a kind of “intuitive” understanding of the unexpressed feelings, desires and thoughts of others, and doing something for them on the basis of this understanding. Previous analyses of this word have been carried out without establishing an explicit definition of omoiyari, and it has been defined in terms of apparently “close” English equivalents. Such an approach is inherently flawed, as there is no one word for omoiyari in English. It is possible to fully define omoiyari in a way that makes its meaning accessible to non-Japanese speakers, and that is by using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as developed by Wierzbicka and colleagues. This paper will present such a definition, established through an analysis of usage examples. This will then be compared with the meaning of one of its “close” English equivalents, and probably the word most commonly used to translate omoiyari, which is empathy. It shall be shown that, although these two words are similar in some respects, their meanings have much less in common than may be perceived through a superficial analysis, and that these differences reflect real differences in the respective cultures to which these words belong.
Tags: (E) empathy, (E) omoiyari 思いやり
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1998). Anchoring linguistic typology in universal semantic primes. Linguistic Typology, 2(2), 141-194. DOI: 10.1515/lity.1998.2.2.141
In essence, “grammar is one and the same in all languages”, but to establish what this universal grammar really looks like we have to investigate and compare many diverse languages, and for this we need a powerful and universally applicable metalanguage based on empirically established lexico-grammatical universals. The rough and incomplete outline of universal grammar sketched in this paper constitutes both a summary of the results arrived at by theoretical and empirical work over more than three decades (in the so-called “NSM” framework) and a program for further investigations. The author tries to show that it is possible to base investigations of universal grammar and typology on a truly universal, non-technical, non-arbitrary and intuitively intelligible tertium comparationis, and thus give it a secure and reliable foundation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [grammatical] patient, (E) information questions, (E) kivat', (E) opustit', (E) polar questions, (E) that [relative pronoun], (E) when, (E) where, (T) English
Published on July 3, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Universal semantic primes of space – A lost cause? LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 434. PDF (open access)
Reissued in 2007 with divergent page numbering.
In recent years, a new wave of research on language and space has uncovered surprising variation in the linguistic coding of spatial relationships. It is now known that some languages, e.g. Tzeltal, exhibit remarkable lexico-grammatical elaboration of spatial relationships; that in many languages of Africa and Oceania apparently simple spatial relationships such as INSIDE and ABOVE are encoded by means of noun-like words, or by a combination of a preposition and a postposition, each of which may be independently meaningful. It has also been shown that children’s early acquisition of spatial terminology differs markedly between typologically different languages.
In almost all this recent work, the emphasis has been on cross-linguistic variation in spatial semantics. The question then arises whether there any semantic universals of space that are still viable in the light of the attested variation in formal realization and lexico-grammatical elaboration. In particular, what of the semantic primes of space proposed within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework, namely: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, INSIDE, ON (ONE) SIDE, NEAR, FAR?
After an introduction, the body of the paper has three sections. The first argues that three languages that exhibit markedly different spatial characteristics to English (Tzeltal, Longgu, Ewe) nevertheless still contain exponents of the NSM spatial primes. The second takes a fresh look at some of the new results on cross-linguistic variation in the acquisition of spatial semantics, with particular reference to Korean. The third surveys the grammaticalization of spatial meaning in a typological perspective, concluding that the items on the NSM inventory of spatial primes are all found as recurrent dimensions of grammaticalized meaning in a range of languages.
The overall conclusion is that NSM’s spatial primes are both viable and necessary for the description of spatial meanings within and across languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) move away, (E) move towards, (E) on
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 26, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129-156. DOI: 10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129
Semantic primitives have fallen on hard times. Though their existence was once widely accepted in linguistics, a variety of counter-arguments have since engendered widespread scepticism. This paper examines a selection of anti-primitives arguments with the aim of showing that they fail to apply to the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach.
The most serious of the faulty arguments invalidly link semantic primitives with ‘objectivism’, or with abstractness and non-verifiability, or with implausible views about language acquisition or language processing. Others rely on misanalysed linguistic ‘facts’, or simply fail to come to grips with the most credible pro-primitives position. The anti-primitives arguments are drawn from a broad range of sources, including the philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, language acquisition studies, and cognitive linguistics.
The paper includes explications of the English words break, happy, lie and on.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) break, (E) happy, (E) lie, (E) on
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis & Dirven, René (1999). Conceptualizations in the domain of ‘happiness’ in English: The value of explications and cultural scripts. RASK (International Journal of Language and Communication), 9-10, 157-188.
Open access
Abstract:
In English, conceptualization within the domain of happiness involves a great many emotion words that may appear as nouns, adjectives or even verbs and that are often very close in meaning to one another. They can therefore be expected to be defined in highly circular ways in most current dictionaries. This paper investigates whether NSM can meet the requirement of describing each of the concepts in the domain of happiness in English in a non-circular and exhaustive way. One of the most remarkable results of the application of the NSM approach to the eleven happiness-related concepts selected is the very clear delimitation of and distinction between four groups of concepts: imminent states of happiness, “doing forms” of happiness, event-like forms of happiness, and transient states of happiness.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) bliss, (E) cheerful, (E) delighted, (E) exultant, (E) glad, (E) happy, (E) jubilant, (E) merry, (E) overjoyed, (E) pleased, (E) thrilled
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (1999). The language of anger. MA thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
This dissertation offers an analysis of the hotly debated emotion concept of ‘anger’. For the purpose of this analysis, two influential models are put forward: the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (or NSM) as well as the cognitive processes of metaphor and metonymy introduced by Lakoff and Johnson. The results of the research are far from trivial. In terms of emotion analysis, the two models provide insight into the conceptualization of ‘anger’ and, specifically, comparative insight into the English concept of ‘anger’ and the Greek conceptual equivalent expressed in the word thymos. In terms of model evaluation, the two types of analysis yield results that can be readily contrasted and assessed on the basis of the kinds of insight they offer.
A revised version of Chapter 2 of this thesis – the one that specifically engages with the NSM model – has been published as:
Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (2004). Contrastive semantics of English “anger” and Modern Greek “θymos”. LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 582.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) angry, (E) eknevrizomai εκνευρίζομαι, (E) furious, (E) irate, (E) mad, (E) nevriazomai νευριάζομαι, (E) orgizomai οργιζομαι, (E) thymonomai θυμωνομαι
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Enfield, Nick J. (1999). On the indispensability of semantics: Defining the ‘vacuous’. RASK (International Journal of Language and Communication), 9/10, 285-304.
This paper deals with the semantics of “vacuous expressions” in English and Lao.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Langford, Ian (2000). Forensic semantics: The meaning of murder, manslaughter and homicide. Forensic Linguistics, 7(1), 72-94. DOI: 10.1558/ijsll.v7i1.72
The purpose of this paper is to show how the meaning of an expression referring to a crime can be stated in simple words that anyone can understand. Judges need to explain to juries the meaning of the crime that the accused is charged with, the accused needs to understand it, interpreter and translator need to understand it, and of course, lawyers need to understand the charge when advising clients and when preparing for trial. This paper shows how the forensic linguist can help people involved in the criminal justice system to understand the meaning of expressions referring to crimes. This can be done by a method of analysis which represents meaning through about sixty basic English words and a simple syntax known to all speakers of English.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) homicide, (E) manslaughter, (E) murder
Published on August 10, 2018. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Fabiszak, Małgorzata (2000). An application of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage to diachronic semantics. In Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, & Matti Rissanen (Eds.), Placing Middle English in context (pp. 293-312). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110869514.293
This paper is a methodological exercise in which Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), developed as a method of objective description in cross-cultural research, is applied to diachronic data concerning four Middle English emotion terms from the semantic field of ‘joy’. Wierzbicka’s framework provides the means for describing the data neatly, improves their processing, and contributes to the efficiency of their presentation. The application of her formal methodology has made the usage patterns characteristic of the analysed emotion terms more transparent and easier to generalise over.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) bliss, (E) blithe, (E) delight, (E) joy
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2000). The semantics of Singapore English. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 27.
Published on December 18, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock Onn (2000). The ‘mE’ particle of Singlish. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 18, 25 pp.
The non-standard variety of Singapore English commonly known as Singlish has a set of particles the meanings of which have intrigued and also evaded many researchers. These researchers have described the meanings of the particles mostly with a functional approach, in which the functions of a particle under study are listed, and the meaning of the particle characterized in terms of these functions. Results have proved futile. In this paper, the meaning of the Singlish particle ‘mE’ (commonly spelt ‘meh’ elsewhere) is described using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which involves corpus study, native speaker introspection, and a reductive paraphrase using semantic primitives to represent the invariant meaning. With this semantic model, the meaning of ‘mE’ can be clearly, precisely, and unambiguously stated in simple English. The semantic formula is shown to be applicable to all instances of use, thus achieving empirical adequacy.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) me (particle), (E) meh
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2000). “S’engager” vs “to show restraint”: Linguistic and cultural relativity in discourse management. In Susanne Niemeier, & René Dirven (Eds.), Evidence for linguistic relativity (pp. 193-222). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/cilt.198.13pee
If ways of speaking are determined by the cultural values of a speech community, then it must be possible to find examples of communicative patterns reflecting such values. Taking this hypothesis as a starting point, the author analyses expressions supporting the existence of opposing cultural values in French and (Australian) English.
The French ideal is one of “engagement” in the interest of defending individual expression from the pressures of social constraint, whereas the Anglo-Saxon ideal is “not to commit oneself” in the interest of avoiding the risks associated with erroneous opinions and getting involved in other people’s business. Evidence for these orientations at the cultural level is found in each culture in a series of common evaluative expressions deployed by each group with respect to engagement and commitment. These differences in communicative ideology are then related to actual communicative norms such as patterns of interruption and to observed patterns of intercultural misunderstanding.
An earlier version of this chapter was published in 1998 and reissued (unchanged) in 2006 in the LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 451. PDF (open access)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) but, (E) mais, (E) well, (S) discourse interaction, (S) engagement, (S) interrupting, (S) restraint, (T) French
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 27, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2000). “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81-106. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028746
The “cultural scripts” approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. The author uses this technique to describe and make sense of aspects of Malay communicative style. The proposed Malay cultural scripts are linked with the importance placed on appropriate (patut, sesuai) behavior and on nasihat ‘advice’, and on the need to balas budi (roughly) ‘return good treatment’, to jaga hati orang ‘look after people’s feelings’, and to menghormati ‘show respect, deference’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) menghormati, (S) absolutist orientation towards morality and ethics, (S) attitude towards old people as a social category, (S) attitude towards someone older, (S) behaving well towards other people, (S) being humble, (S) debt of gratitude, (S) importance of giving advice, (S) long memories and desire to revenge, (S) looking after people's feelings, (S) need to apologize, (S) personal autonomy, (S) returning good treatment, (S) returning kindness, (S) thinking before acting, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 29, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2000). Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Yael Ravin & Claudia Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 129-151). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This paper outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) method of semantic analysis and seeks to show that this method enables the traditional ‘definitional’ concept of polysemy to be applied both to individual lexical items and to lexico-grammatical constructions. There is also a discussion of how aspects of figurative language can be handled within the same framework. Naturally, given the space available, the treatment must be incomplete in many respects. The underlying contention is that many of the difficulties experienced by current treatments of polysemy do not spring from the nature of polysemy itself, but from more general problems of semantic and lexicographic methodology, in particular the lack of a clear, practical and verifiable technique for framing lexical definitions.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) graceful, (E) have a + verb, (E) love, (E) send, (E) soft, (E) wrong, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2001). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to the universal syntax of the Singlish existential primitive. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 30.
Published on December 19, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Wong, Jock Onn (2001). To speak or not to speak? The ‘a’ particles of Singlish. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 37, 33 pp.
A more recent publication building on parts of this one is chapter 7 (pp. 230-259) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
Tags: (E) a (Singapore English)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2001). Sabar, ikhlas, setia – patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘virtues’ in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(5), 653-681. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00028-X
The words sabar, ikhlas, and setia arguably identify core personal virtues in traditional Malay culture. Using Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach, this paper undertakes a contrastive semantic analysis of these terms and their usual English translations, such as patient, sincere, and loyal. A number of significant meaning differences are brought to light, allowing an improved understanding of the cultural semantics of the Malay concepts.
Tags: (E) devoted, (E) faithful, (E) ikhlas, (E) insincerely, (E) loyal, (E) patient, (E) pietas, (E) sabar, (E) setia, (E) sincerely, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2001). Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology, 5(1), 1-65. DOI: 10.1515/lity.5.1.1
Are there any word meanings which are absolute and precise lexico-semantic universals, and if so, what kind of meanings are they? This paper assesses the status, in a diverse range of languages, of about 100 meanings which have been proposed by various scholars (linguists, anthropologists, psychologists) as potential universals. Examples include: ‘I’, ‘this’, ‘one’, ‘big’, ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘sweet’, ‘hot’, ‘man’, ‘mother’, ‘tree’, ‘water’, ‘sun’, ‘wind’, ‘ear’, ‘say’, ‘do’, ‘go’, ‘sit’, ‘eat’, ‘give’, ‘die’, ‘maybe’, ‘because’. Though relatively small, the sample is variegated enough to justify the preliminary conclusion that the semantic primes proposed by Wierzbicka (1996) and colleagues are much stronger contenders for universal status than are terms designating natural phenomena, body parts, concrete objects, and other putative experiential or cultural universals.
Tags: (E) give, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). Explicating emotions across languages and cultures: A semantic approach. In Susan R. Fussell (Ed.), The verbal communication of emotions: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 19-53). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
This chapter sketches out the integrated and meaning-based approach to the study of emotions that has been pioneered by Anna Wierzbicka. It seeks to bring together the study of the emotion lexicon of different languages with the study of different “cultural scripts” that are one factor (among others, of course) influencing the expression of emotions in discourse. More than this, it also aims to take in the encoding of emotional meanings by means of other linguistic devices, such as exclamations and specialized grammatical constructions, and even the encoding of emotional meanings in facial expressions and kinaesthetics. Because the Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on simple, universally available meanings, it provides a tool that enables us to undertake this very broad range of investigations across languages and cultures, while minimizing the risk of ethnocentrism creeping into the very terms of description.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amae 甘え, (E) appalled, (E) cemburu, (E) outraged, (E) przykro, (E) sad, (E) unhappy, (S) apologizing, (S) causing 'bad feelings' in others, (S) cheerfulness, (S) displaying insincere good feelings towards someone, (S) emotional caution and sensitivity, (S) responding to favours in a positive way, (S) saying what you feel
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Philosophy and discourse: The rise of “really” and the fall of “truly”. Cahiers de praxématique, 38, 85-112. DOI: 10.4000/praxematique.574
Does it matter that speakers of English have started to use more and more the word really and less and less the word truly? Does it matter that the word really has become very widely used in English – much more so than truly ever was? And does it matter that the references to “truth” in conversation appear to have become much less common than they used to be?
This paper argues that these things are indeed highly significant, that really does not mean the same as truly, and that the phenomenal rise of really throws a great deal of light on Anglo culture – both in a historical and comparative perspective.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (tag question), (E) evidence, (E) fact, (E) real, (E) true, (E) truly, (S) really, (T) English
