Browsing results for German

(2016) German, Polish – Terms of address: HERR vs. PAN

Published on May 12, 2018. Last updated on August 31, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Terms of address as keys to culture and society: German Herr vs. Polish Pan. Acta Philologica [Uniwersytet Warszawski], 49, 29-44.

This article takes up a theme addressed many years ago by Andrzej Bogusławski: a semantic and cultural comparison of the Polish and German terms of address Pan and Herr. Focussing on these two words, the paper seeks to demonstrate that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions and attitudes and provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and social world. At the same time, the paper argues that to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills; and it tries to show that the NSM approach to semantics and pragmatics can help us develop such skills. The explications posited here possess, it is argued, predictive and explanatory power that is beyond the reach of traditional analyses operating with technical labels such as “formal”, ”polite”, “respectful”, “egalitarian” and so on. The paper has implications for language teaching and cross-cultural communication and education in Europe and beyond.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2017) Italian, French, German – Address pronouns

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). Terms of address in European languages: A study in cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics. In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone, & Istvan Kecskes (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use (pp. 209-238). Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_12

One of the deepest differences between English-based human interaction and the interaction based on the languages of continental Europe has to do with terms of address. For speakers of languages like French, Italian, or German it goes without saying that “polite” words such as vous, Lei and Sie are indispensable in daily exchanges with others. What do these words actually mean? To what extent do their meanings differ from one European language to another? Why can some of these terms, for example, vous, be applied to God (or to one’s spouse), whereas others, for example, Sie, cannot?

There has been an upsurge of interest in both nominal and pronominal terms of address in recent years, but most publications in this area focus on frequencies, forms, functions, and sociolinguistic variation, with virtually no mention of meaning. To uncover the secrets hidden in the meanings of such essential tools of daily communication and to bring to light their cultural significance, we need an appropriate methodology. As I hope to show in the present paper, NSM semantics provides the necessary tools and techniques.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2018) English, German – ‘Grace’

Published on May 4, 2018. Last updated on August 21, 2018.

Bolin, Mary (2018). Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Primes, universals, and syntax with data from the semantic field Grace in the Old Testaments of the King James Bible and Martin Luther’s German Bible. University of Nebraska, Lincoln: Faculty Publications. PDF (open access)

This study looks at semantic analysis through the lens of NSM as described by Wierzbicka and others, showing how primes combine syntactically to make culture. The focus is on the semantic field Grace in the Bible’s Old Testament, both in German and English, and on how this field can be analysed using NSM. The explications are preliminary and could be extensively overhauled and edited to make them clearer, more exhaustive, and more contrastive. NSM analysis both confirms things about this data that were already shown by previous analyses, and provides further insights. The optimism, tenaciousness, and forthrightness of this approach make it intriguing and promising and the staunch empiricism of NSM researchers provides a lot of evidence that can be evaluated and used.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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(2020) Polish, English, French, German, Russian — Address terms, Religion

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2020). Addressing God in European languages: different meanings, different cultural attitudes. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24 (2). 259—293. DOI: 10.22363/2687-0088- 2020-24-2-259-293

Abstract

All European languages have a word for God, and this word means exactly the same in all of them. However, speakers of different European languages tend to relate to God in different ways. Each group has its own characteristic ways of addressing God, encoded in certain words, phrases and grammatical forms, which both reflect and shape the speakers’ habitual ways of thinking about God and relating to God. Often, they also reflect some other aspects of their cultural memory and historical experience. In this paper I will compare the meanings of the vocative expressions used for addressing God in several European languages, including “Gospodi” in Russian, “O God” in English, “Mon Dieu” in French, “Herr” in German, and “Boże” in Polish. But to compare those meanings, we need a common measure. I believe such a common measure is available in the “NSM” framework, from Natural Semantic Metalanguage (see e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Wierzbicka 2014a and 2018a; Gladkova and Larina 2018a, b).
The data is taken mainly from well-known works of literature, such as Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Boris Pasternak’s poem “V bol’nice” (“In Hospital”) for Russian, Charles Peguy’s Le mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc and its English translation by Julien Green for French and English, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison poems and Heinrich Böll’s novel Billard um halbzehn for German. The results have shown that each European language offers its users a range of options for addressing God. Some of these options are shared, others appear to be unique to the language. All are underpinned by broader historical phenomena. The exact nature of all these links remains to be investigated.

Аннотация

Во всех европейских языках есть слово для обозначения Бога, и это слово имеет одинаковое значение. Тем не менее, носители разных европейских языков, как правило, обращаются к Богу по-разному. У каждой группы есть свои характерные способы обращения к Богу, зако- дированные в определенных словах, фразах и грамматических формах, которые отражают и формируют привычные способы мышления о Боге и отношение к Богу. Часто они также от- ражают некоторые другие аспекты культурной памяти и исторического опыта.Статья посвя- щена сопоставлению значений вокативных слов и фраз, используемых для обращения к Богу на нескольких европейских языках, включая «Господи» на русском языке, «O God» на ан- глийском языке, «Mon Dieu» на французском языке, «Herr» на немецком и «Boże» на поль- ском. Для сравнения этих значений необходимо единое измерение. Есть все основания пола- гать, что в качестве такого измерения может быть использован Естественный Семантическмй Метаязык (NSM) (см., например, Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Wierzbicka 2014a и 2018a; Gladkova and Larina 2018a, b и др.). Материал для исследования был взят в основном из из- вестных литературных произведений, таких как роман Льва Толстого «Анна Каренина» и стихотворение Бориса Пастернака «В больнице» для русского языка, «Мистерия о милосер- дии Жанны Д’Арк» Шарля Пеги и ее английский перевод Жюльена Грина для французского и английского языков, тюремные стихи Дитриха Бонхеффера и роман Генриха Белля «Биль- ярд в половине десятого» для немецкого языка. Результаты показали, что каждый европей- ский язык предлагает своим пользователям различные варианты обращения к Богу. Некото- рые из них являются общими, другие представляются уникальными для того или иного языка. Все они обусловлены более широким историческим контекстом, конкретное влияние которого еще предстоит изучить.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2022) Danish, German — Emotions

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

Fenyvesi, Katalin, Bick, Eckhard, & Geyer, Klaus. (2022). Sadness-related Expressions in Danish and German: A Corpus-assisted NSM-analysis. Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 249-273. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135080

Abstract

The study explores sadness-related expressions in two typologically closely related languages in the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework. A systematic corpus enquiry revealed the syntactic patterns and helped to identify the most frequent head-nouns of a number of Danish and German sadness- related expressions. German traurig, for instance, has a distribution similar to that of Danish sørgelig with semiotic products and clauses as subjects. However, when used with human subjects, its distribution aligns with the Danish multi-word expression ked af det. Semantic consultations conducted about the use of the most salient sadness adjectives with some speakers of Danish and German revealed fine-grained differences between German traurig and trist and Danish ked af det and trist respectively. Thus, when used with a human headword, Danish trist is more trait-like while ked af det is more state- like. The concept of sadness-related emotions in Danish and German is discussed, followed by a methodological discussion about the combinability of a quantitative corpus approach, a qualitative semantic consultation approach and NSM explications. Corpus inquiry was used to chart the adjectives’ polysemy, and as a method for creating the NSM explications, consultation data were used.

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(Forthcoming) English, German – Emotions

Published on August 8, 2018. Last updated on October 19, 2019.

Goddard, Cliff (Forthcoming). Vocabulary of emotions and its development in English, German and other languages. In Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Jeanette Altarriba, & Bee Chin Ng (Eds.), Handbook of language and emotion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Abstract:

In broad agreement with many emotion theorists, the NSM approach sees emotion concepts as “blends” of feelings and thoughts, sometimes accompanied by potential bodily reactions. This chapter delineates the semantic fundamentals of emotion vocabulary, demonstrates a framework for fine-grained contrastive analysis, and emphasizes the greater-than-expected semantic variability across languages, epochs, and cultures.

Using examples from English and German, the chapter summarizes findings about semantic templates and semantic components of various kinds of emotion terms, including adjectives (e.g. afraid, angry, ashamed), verbs (e.g. miss, worry), and abstract nouns (e.g. happiness, depression). Minor categories and examples from other, non-European, languages are also briefly considered. It is shown that it is both possible and necessary to differentiate between similar-but-different emotion concepts in a single language, e.g. English happy, pleased, satisfied, and across different languages, e.g. English disgust vs. German Ekel. Likewise, using English happy and happiness as examples, the author shows that the same word can vary in meaning across time. Considerable weight is placed on linguistic evidence such as usage patterns, collocational data, and phraseology.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners