Browsing results for Icelandic

(2015) Danish, Icelandic – Body parts

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 29, 2021.

Levisen, Carsten (2015). Scandinavian semantics and the human body: An ethnolinguistic study in diversity and change. Language Sciences, 49, 51-66. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2014.05.004

This paper presents an ethnolinguistic analysis of how the space between the head and the body is construed in Scandinavian semantic systems vis-à-vis the semantic system of English. With an extensive case study of neck-related meanings in Danish, and with cross-Scandinavian reference, it is demonstrated that Scandinavian and English systems differ significantly in some aspects of the way in which they construe the human body with words. Reference is made in particular to the neck, throat, and Adam’s apple.

The study ventures an innovative combination of methods, pairing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to linguistic and conceptual analysis with empirical evidence from the Evolution of Semantic Systems (EoSS) project. This combination of empirical and interpretative tools helps to integrate evidence from semantics and semiotics, pinning out in great detail the intricacies of the meanings of particular body words.

The paper concludes that body words in closely related languages can differ substantially in their semantics. In related languages, where shared lexical form does not always mean shared semantics, ethnolinguistic studies in semantic change and shifts in polysemy patterns can help to reveal and explain the roots of semantic diversity.

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tags: , , , ,

(2019) Old Norse-Icelandic – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.

Mackenzie, Colin (2019). Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic personhood constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 116-145). New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-5

Abstract:

Old Norse-Icelandic is the only early medieval language to contain lengthy vernacular accounts of the mythology and pre-Christian practices obliquely evidenced in other Germanic languages. Because of this, Old Norse-Icelandic evidence has been used to reconstruct the nature of the ancestral Germanic psychological system and to inform interpretations of personhood constructs in other Germanic languages, whose surviving literatures are far more Christianized. Old Norse-Icelandic material has also been approached from the standpoint of circumpolar shamanistic beliefs; it has been argued that some features of Germanic psychology are the product of early contact with these circumpolar traditions.

This chapter presents a semantic explication of hugr, the principal personhood construct in Old Norse-Icelandic, and is based on linguistic constructions used in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The explication is framed in NSM to facilitate comparisons with personhood constructs in contemporary languages and cultures, free from the obfuscating terminology of present-day English. It is shown that hugr has less in common with circumpolar personhood constructs than proponents of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism advocate and that it differs in a number of ways from its Old English analogue mōd.

Rating:


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tags: , , , , ,