Browsing results for Germanic Languages (except English)

(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.


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(2018) Danish – Conversational humour

Published on August 7, 2017. Last updated on November 2, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten (2018). Dark, but Danish: Ethnopragmatic perspectives on black humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 515-531. DOI: 10.1515/ip-2018-0018

This paper explores sort humor ‘black humour’, a key concept in Danish conversational humour. Sort forms part of a larger class of Danish
synesthetic humour metaphors that also includes other categories such as tør ‘dry’, syg ‘sick’, and fed ‘fat’. Taking an ethnopragmatic perspective on humour discourse, it is argued that such constructs function as a local catalogue for socially recognized laughing practices.

The aim of the paper is to provide a semantic explication for sort humor and explore the discursive practices associated with the concept. From a comparative perspective, it is demonstrated that the Danish conceptualization of ‘blackness’ differs from that of l’humour noir, a category of French surrealism, and English black humour with its off-limit topics such as death and handicap. In Danish discourse, sort humor has come to stand for a practice of collaborative jocular non-sense making. It is further argued that the main function of sort humor is to establish or enhance a feeling of ‘groupy togetherness’.


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(2018) Danish – Cultural key words: VOLD

Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on September 13, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten (2018). The grammar of violence: Insights from Danish ethnosyntax and the Wierzbicka-Pinker debate. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 145-167. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.145. PDF (open access)

This paper explores the Danish key word vold ‘violence, abuse’ and scrutinizes its associated ethnosyntax, which is hidden in compound morphology. Focusing on the compounds hustruvold ‘wife vold’ and politivold ‘police vold’, it explores the conceptual syntax embedded in such coinages. Exploring more recent constructs, such as forældrevold ‘parent vold’, the author argues that Danish ethnosyntax embodies a view of the world in which traditional authority figures (men, police, parents) are coded as aggressors, whereas women, citizens and children are coded as victims.

In more general terms, the paper aims to open a new ethnolinguistic research agenda for the study of negative sociality constructs and the positive value system hidden in them. It does so by drawing attention to the differences and similarities of violence-related concepts in ethnolinguistic communities, and to the key role played by ethnosyntax in the elaboration of violence, vold, and similar concepts.

The paper also proposes an explication for the Bislama word faetem ‘punch, fight physically’.


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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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(2019) Danish – Colours and vision

Published on November 28, 2019. Last updated on November 28, 2019.

Levisen, Carsten (2019). “Brightness” in color linguistics: New light from Danish visual semantics. In Ida Raffaelli, Daniela Katunar, & Barbara Kerovec (Eds.), Lexicalization patterns in color naming: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 83-108). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sfsl.78.05lev

Abstract:

This chapter scrutinizes the discourse of “brightness” in colour linguistics. Drawing on insights from visual semantics and linguistic anthropology, and challenging the universal applicability of “brightness”, the study provides new evidence from Danish. The chapter provides a new analysis of the lexicogrammar and linguaculture of lys ‘light, brightness’ in relation to color. The NSM approach is used to provide detailed semantic explications for three grammatical devices based on lys (lys, lys-, and lyse-), along with an analysis of three Danish lys + colour compounds lyserød ‘light red’, lysegrøn ‘light green’, and lyseblå ‘light blue’. Based on the evidence from Danish and other studies in visual semantics, the chapter calls for a renewed focus on the non-chromatic aspects of visual meanings, and for a metalinguistic reform in colour linguistics.

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(2019) Danish — Humour

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on August 18, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten. (2019). The Cultural Semantics of Untranslatables: Linguistic Worldview and the Danish Language of Laughter. In A. Glaz (Ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews: Focus on Translation (pp. 319-346). Palgrave Macmillan. Palgrave studies studies in translating and interpreting

Abstract

Through an in-depth case study of humour concepts in Danish, the chapter develops a cultural-semantic analysis of the untranslatables of laughter, and provides a new account of the worldview engendered by such words. The Danish language of laughter is particularly rich in synaesthetic humour metaphor; the chapter sets out to explicate key categories within this class: sort humor ‘black, murky humour,’ plat humor ‘flat, plain humour,’ fed humor ‘fat humour,’ and tør humor ‘dry humour.’ The analysis is undertaken within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of analysis and takes an explicitly translational approach to language, culture, and worldview. Providing a roadmap for how to navigate in the landscape of translatables and untranslables, the chapter contributes to both translational semantics and linguistic worldview studies.

 


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(2019) Danish — Humour, interjections

Published on August 18, 2023. Last updated on August 18, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten. (2019). Laughter interjections: Contributions to a lexical anthropology of humour (with special reference to Danish). Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 110-130.

 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v10i1.114674

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it seeks to fill a gap in the literature on interjections by suggesting that ‘laughter interjections’ (words such English haha or hehe) make up an important type of interjections that has so far not been accounted for in cross-linguistic work on interjections. Secondly, it argues that laughter interjections are thick with cultural meaning, and that they can play an important role for an “emic turn” in humour studies. Third, it develops a case study on “Danish funniness” with a point of departure in the Danish paradigm of laughter interjections. The paper explores humourous discourse from the perspective of these culturally specific expressive words, and provides high definition analysis of two Danish laughter interjections tøhø and hæhæ, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage technique of explication. The general framework of the study is Lexical Anthropology, an approach to meaning analysis that combines insights from lexical semantics and linguistic anthropology.

 


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(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.

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(2020) Danish – Grammatical categories & constructions

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on August 18, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten (2020). Postcolonial prepositions: semantics and popular geopolitics in the Danosphere. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 169-186). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_9

Abstract:

This study breaks new ground in the semantics of ‘popular geopolitics’. With a case study on two Danish prepositions, i and på, both of which are important for the Danish construal of Greenland, the study develops a new analysis of the popular geopolitics that guide Danish ways of thinking about Greenland. Empirically, the study relies on evidence from social media discourse, which is subjected to the NSM method of analysis. The aim is to provide semantic explications for the two prepositional phrases i Grønland ‘in Greenland’ and på Grønland ‘on Greenland’, and to articulate the cultural scripts that allow speakers to ascribe geopolitical meaning to these prepositions. Drawing on Goddard’s seminal work on spatial semantics, place constructs and ethnopragmatics, the paper develops a postcolonial semantic account of Danish ‘preposition talk’. It is shown that the two prepositions have come to stand for two different Danish attitudes towards Greenland, in short, the på-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland’s ‘Islandness’, and the i-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland as a country among other countries.

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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.

 


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(2020) Swedish — List constructions

Published on January 10, 2022. Last updated on January 10, 2022.

Karlsson, Susanna. (2020). The Meanings of List Constructions: Explicating Interactional Polysemy. In Mullan, Kerry; Peeters, Bert; & Sadow, Lauren (Eds.). Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 1. Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis. Singapore: Springer. pp. 223–240.

 

Abstract:

This chapter engages in the semantic explication of lists in Swedish. For this study, the author analyses lists found in a corpus of naturally occurring tele- phone conversations between friends. The study combines the framework of the natural semantic metalanguage approach with the analytical methods of interac- tional linguistics. The aim of the study is to contribute to the knowledge about how the manner of coordination contributes to our understanding of lists and how the respective list items are meant to be understood to relate to one another. In Swedish conversation, lists come in two syntactic formats: one where the conjunction is produced before the listed item and one where the conjunction comes after the item. There are also two prosodic formats: one that indicates a closed set and one that indicates an open set. The combination of the syntactic and prosodic formats results into three basic types. Explications using the natural semantic metalanguage reveal not only that the list formats display the relationship between the listed items differently but also that the speaker can draw upon the different formats to display an interpersonal stance towards what the other participants can be expected to know or understand about the list. The explications contribute to a heightened under- standing of the differences as well as the similarities of the three list types.

(2021) Danish – Aesthetics

Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Levisen, Carsten. (2021). Pæn, flot, dejlig, and lækker : A lexical anthropology of Danish folk aesthetics.  International Journal of Language and Culture 8(1): 14–34

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00033.lev

 

Abstract:

This paper examines the Danish language of aesthetics from the perspective of four untranslatable adjectives: pæn, flot, dejlig, and lækker. These words are frequent and salient in everyday discourses, and as such they shed light on Danish “folk” conceptions. From the perspective of Lexical Anthropology and NSM Semantics, each of the words are explored and explicated in order to shed light on the ways in which Danish discourse organize positive aesthetic experiences. Sensitive to polysemy, and the variety of lexicogrammatical frames in which the words occur, the paper provides a high-resolution analyses of the “something ADJ frame” which enables discourses of design, food, and art. Based on lexical semantic evidence, the paper locates two themes in Danish discourse: “aesthetic normality” and “ordinary hedonism” which seem to act as cognitive axes around which discourses revolve. The paper argues that words hold the key to understanding the diversity of aesthetic cultures, and that untranslatables in particular, allow for a deep emic understanding of how local configurations of seeing, feeling, touching, and thinking are constituted.

 


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(2021) Danish – Syntax

Published on August 21, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten. (2021). The syntax of something: Evaluative affordances of noget in Danish construction grammar. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 44(1), 3-24.

DOI: 10.1017/S033258652000013X

Abstract

This paper explores ‘the evaluative noget construction’ in Danish. The construction consists of noget ‘something’ juxtaposed by a noun in an evaluative frame such as e.g. Det er noget pjat, ‘It’s nonsense’. With a starting point in cross-linguistic studies on SOMETHING, the paper moves on to explore core members of this evaluative class in Danish, providing a detailed semantic analysis of the construction’s core configurations. The affordance of noget ‘something’ to mean ‘something bad’ is a key to understanding the construction, and from this general premise the class of evaluatives take off in multiple negative direc- tions, providing a snapshot of the Danish linguaculture of evaluation. The paper argues for a Cultural Construction Grammar that can bring together the lexicogrammatical integrationism of construction grammar approaches with the linguacultural holism of the research in ethnosyntax. The goal is to provide high-definition analysis of complex, language-specific constructions in a simple, globally translatable metalanguage.

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(2021) Spanish, Danish – Language Teaching

Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Fernández, Susana S. (2021). The Conceptual Semantics of ‘Latin America’: Popular Geopolitics and Spanish Language Teaching in Denmark. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 5(2021), 31–54

(Open Access)

 

Abstract:

This article explores how the concept of ‘Latin America’ is constructed in connection with the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in Denmark, and how it is received and understood by Spanish learners in the country. The paper explores the concept of Latin America from different perspectives: Danish learners, young Latin Americans and through a historical overview, in order to embrace its complexity. The hypothesis is that the conceptualization of ‘Latin America’ in the context of language teaching in Denmark does not do justice to the diversity and richness of the geographical area and its peoples.

 


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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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(2022) Danish, Kalaallisut — Environment

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

Maskova, Stephanie. A Semantic Analysis of Snow-related Words in Danish and Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic). Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 225-248. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135079

 

Abstract

This paper emerges from the vexed question whether the allegedly many “Eskimo” terms for snow document a linkage between language, culture, and cognition. Using the semantic explication technique of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, the emic logics embedded in the Kalaallisut snow-related words aputit and nittaappoq and the Danish snow-related words sne and det sner are unfolded. Through a comparison of the findings, the paper discusses how the physical world is conceptualized in both culture-specific and transcultural ways. The explications are based on evidence from semantic consultations and text examples.

(2022) Scandinavian languages, Danish – NSM

Published on August 21, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten, Fernández, Susana S., and Hein, Jan (2022) Cognitive Cultural Semantics: A Nordic Guide to Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Scandinavian Studies in Language 13(1): 1–38. https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135133.

No abstract available

 

 


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