Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2004). The particles of Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(9), 739-793. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00070-5
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
Particles constitute one of the most distinctive features of the cultural dialect known as Singapore English. They are highly interactive and play a major role in the integrity and cohesiveness of the Singapore English speech community, offering invaluable insights into Singapore culture. Their semantic study could therefore pave the way for a better understanding of this culture.
The present study investigates the meanings of several particles in Singapore English: three particles la which come in different lexical tones (but are otherwise homophones), the particle wut (commonly spelt as what), and the particle meh. The meaning of each of these particles is stated in the form of a reductive paraphrase couched in simple and universal human concepts so that it can be readily understood by both insiders and cultural outsiders.
The study shows that Singapore English particles are loaded with interactional or pragmatic meanings. It also suggests that the high frequency of use of some particles, including wut and the particles la, is motivated by a cultural norm of interaction.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) la (particle), (E) meh, (E) wut (particle)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2004). Reduplication of nominal modifiers in Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation. World Englishes, 23(3), 339-354. DOI: 10.1111/j.0883-2919.2004.00362.x
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 180-229) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
While the formal properties of reduplication in many languages have aroused the interest of many linguists and much appears to have been done in this area, the same cannot be said about its semantics. It seems that our understanding of the kinds of meaning associated with reduplication processes remains rather limited. This is regrettable, given that language meaning can shed a lot of light on a speech community’s ways of thinking and norms of interaction. In this paper, the object of study is a widely used reduplication process in Singapore English – the reduplication of nominal modifiers. I will endeavour to identify its meaning and articulate it in the form of a reductive paraphrase. I will also try to show that its use may be linked, via meaning, with a culture-specific norm of interaction that seems to be characteristic of Singapore English speakers.
Tags: (E) reduplication of nominal modifiers
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Wong, Jock Onn (2004). Cultural scripts, ways of speaking and perceptions of personal autonomy: Anglo English vs. Singapore English. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 231-248. DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.231
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 139-179) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
Every language variety embodies a set of culture-specific ways of thinking that can be articulated with maximal clarity and minimal ethnocentrism in the form of ‘cultural scripts’ using Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). In this study, perceptions of ‘personal autonomy’ in Anglo culture and in Singapore culture are explored on the basis of linguistic evidence using NSM. These Anglo and Singaporean attitudes to personal autonomy are articulated in the form of cultural scripts, and are thus compared and contrasted. The proposed cultural scripts show that even though Anglo English speakers and Singapore English speakers can both be said to speak the same ‘language’, the cultural values reflected by the two varieties can be radically different from and even at odds with each other.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) doing things willingly, (S) helpfulness, (S) independent thinking, (S) influencing other people’s way of thinking, (S) requests, (S) wanting someone to do something
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (2004). Contrastive semantics of English “anger” and Modern Greek “θymos”. LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 582. PDF (open access)
The emotion concept of ‘anger’ appears to acquire such enormous proportions in human emotionality that it has sparked off heated debate in relation to its purported universality or its language- and culture-specificity. To portray possible differences between anger-related concepts across languages and cultures, a nuanced and illuminating method of contrasting concepts is needed. The use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth NSM) is proposed to this end. The research also carries out the laborious task of testing the applicability of the NSM framework in the investigation of the language of emotions generally. Similar tests involving other emotions have already been conducted by several other scholars; for the purpose of this paper, the implementation of NSM will be attempted in the domain of anger in comparison and contrast to that of Modern Greek θυμός thymos. Both domains are conceptualized in terms of several emotion words. Explications are proposed for the predicative use of the English words angry, mad, furious, and irate, and for the Greek verbs θυμωνομαι thymonomai, νευριάζομαι nevriazomai, εκνευρίζομαι eknevrizomai, and οργιζομαι orgizomai.
This paper builds on Chapter 2 of the author’s MA thesis:
Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (1999). The language of anger. MA thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
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 February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2004). Re-thinking THINK: Contrastive semantics of Swedish and English. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. PDF (open access)
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2008). Re-thinking THINK in contrastive perspective: Swedish vs. English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 225-240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.14god
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka has long postulated THINK as a semantic prime, and a large body of cross-linguistic research demonstrates that lexical exponents of THINK can be identified in a diversity of languages. This result is challenged, however, by the apparent existence in Swedish and other Scandinavian languages of several basic-level “verbs of thinking”. In this study it is argued that the primary senses of Swedish tänka and English think are in fact semantically identical, and correspond to the semantic prime THINK as proposed in NSM theory. Semantic explications are proposed and justified for Swedish tro and tycka, and for the use of I think in English as an epistemic formula. In the process previous NSM assumptions about the semantic prime THINK are shown to have been incorrectly influenced by language-specific properties of English think. Likewise, the widely held Vendlerian view of the relation between thinking about and thinking that is challenged.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [illocutionary assumption], (E) I think, (E) tro, (E) tycka
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Koselak, Arkadiusz (2004). Rêver: questions sémantiques [Dreaming: Semantic questions]. Le langage et l’homme, 39(1), 85-108.
Written in French.
This article looks at some of the semantic aspects of dreaming. After an introduction aimed at exploring the relationship between the etymology of the verb and the ethnology of the process, a description of the meanings of the French verb rêver is proposed, together with the supposedly prototypical conditions for the selection of each meaning. Lastly, we shall look at agentivity, a crucial parameter needed to establish the uniqueness of the verb in the paradigm of mental verbs. The study is set against the backdrop of the cognitive approach to language (broadly defined) and a Wierzbickian perspective is adopted.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2004). Commencer: la suite, mais pas encore la fin [Commencer: The next, but not the final, installment]. Journal of French language studies, 14(2), 149-168. DOI:10.1017/S0959269504001620
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Hughson, Jo-Anne (2004). The study of address pronouns in French and Spanish: A methodological review. Melbourne Papers in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 23-33.
This article surveys various methodological approaches, both traditional and innovative, that have been employed in the field of address pronoun research, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each method. A new methodological approach is then presented, combining quantitative, qualitative and theoretical modes with the intention of eliminating limitations previously encountered in address pronoun research. A description of the theoretical approach, Wierzbicka’s cultural script theory, is then presented and the method applied to data collected in previous studies of address pronoun use in French
and Spanish.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Sahragard, Rahman (2004). Semantic primitives in Persian. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shiraz University, 21(1), 77-93. PDF (open access)
In general, identifying the putative semantic primitives in Persian has proved to be unproblematic. On the whole, this study supports the hypothesized set of universal semantic primitives.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (T) Persian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Sahragard, Rahman (2004). A cultural script analysis of a politeness feature in Persian. In Kyung-Ja Park & Michiko Nakano (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics (pp. 399-423). Tokyo: PAAL Japan. PDF (open access)
Many writers have identified the Iranian system of politeness with a complex concept called تعارف ta’arof. In fact, any description or analysis of the Iranian politeness system without reference to this concept will be deficient and incomplete. This study takes a cultural script approach to describe the Persian concept of تعارف ta’arof. As far as is known, this is the first attempt at analysing and accounting for a Persian concept using this approach.
This study demonstrates that تعارف ta’arof is a part of the culture of being polite in Persian (ادب adab). It is manifested in both verbal and non-verbal communication. The language and the strategies involved are controlled by تواضع tavaazo (humility), urging individuals to lower themselves in self-references and raise others instead. Power, distance, social class, and age are very important in its use. The direction of the frequency of use is from the lower to the upper for all of the above variables. This points to the fact that Persian culture places great emphasis on having احترام ehteraam (respect) for superiors. Having restraint and limiting one’s wants and wishes in front of others is another aspect of تعارف ta’arof usually referred to as رودربایستی rudarbaayesti. تعارف ta’arof is also shown in receiving guests warmly by being polite and respectful and serving them with the best possible refreshments (مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi). Thus, تعارف ta’arof can be seen as the manifestation of ادب adab, احترام ehteraam, تواضع tavaazo, رودربایستی rudarbaayesti, and مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) adab ادب, (E) ehteraam احترام, (E) hayaa حیا, (E) kamru کمرو, (E) mehmaan-navaazi مهمان-نوازی, (E) rudarbaayesti رودربایستی, (E) sharm شرم, (E) ta'arof تعارف, (E) tavaazo تواضع
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2004). Polish and universal grammar. Studies in Polish Linguistics, 1, 9-28.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Travis, Catherine. E. (2004). The ethnopragmatics of the diminutive in conversational Colombian Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics 1(2). 249-274. DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.249
This paper considers the cultural values manifested in the use of the diminutive suffix -ito/-ita in a corpus of conversational Colombian Spanish. It will be demonstrated that this suffix is highly frequent (occurring approximately 600 times in the 70,000-word corpus), and that from its core uses in relation to children and expressing small size it has taken on the pragmatic functions of expressing affection, hedging speech acts and expressing contempt.
Wierzbicka has shown that the frequent use of the diminutive in languages such as Russian and Polish plays a valuable role in realizing the cultural goal of the expression of good feelings towards others. The same can be said of its use in Colombian Spanish, but analysis of the diminutive in conversation reveals that it goes beyond this to realize a range of essential cultural ideals in interaction. Based on a semantic analysis of some of the central uses of the diminutive, I propose a set of cultural scripts to capture the role played by the diminutive in a variety of speech events, scripts which form an important part of the basis for interaction in Colombian society.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2005). The lexical semantics of culture. Language Sciences, 27(1), 51-73.
DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2004.05.001
Abstract:
Culture is one of the… cultural key words of the English language, in popular as well as scholarly discourse. It is flourishing in popular usage, with a proliferation of extended uses (police culture, Barbie culture, argument culture, culture of complaint, etc.), while being endlessly debated in intellectual circles. Though it is sometimes observed that the meaning of the English word culture is highly language-specific, its precise lexical semantics has received surprisingly little attention. The main task undertaken in this paper is to develop and justify semantic explications for the common ordinary meanings of this polysemous word. The analytical framework is the NSM approach, within which a set of semantic explications will be proposed that is framed in terms of empirically established universal semantic primes such as PEOPLE, THINK, DO, LIVE, NOT, LIKE, THE SAME, and OTHER.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) culture
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2005). Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2005). “Why you so Singlish one?” A semantic and cultural interpretation of the Singapore English particle one. Language in Society, 34, 239-275. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404505050104
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 180-229) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
The particle one of Singapore English is widely used in Singapore culture, but it is little mentioned and its invariant meaning has not been described, so that not much is known about its meaning and the cultural norms it reflects. This article provides a detailed semantic analysis of this particle, articulates its meaning in the form of a reductive paraphrase using Natural Semantic Metalanguage, and argues that its use reflects Singapore English speakers’ tendency to speak definitively and exaggeratedly. The discussion of Singaporean speech norms reflected by this particle includes reference to relevant Anglo English speech norms for comparison and contrast.
Tags: (E) one (particle)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2005). Commencer à + infinitif: métonymie intégrée et piste métaphorique [Commencer à + infinitive: Integrated metonymy and the metaphorical pathway]. In Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, & Nicole Le Querler (Eds.), Les périphrases verbales (pp. 381-396). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 11, 2018.
Koselak, Arkadiusz (2005). Quelle honte! Ale wstyd! Observations sémantiques sur quelques emplois de honte et de wstyd [Quelle honte! Ale wstyd! Semantic observations on a few uses of honte et wstyd]. Roczniki Humanistyczne, 53(5), 105-124.
Written in French.
This paper deals with the lexical expression of French honte and Polish wstyd (‘shame’), both through the two base words and through some of their derivatives. There are subtle differences between the two, in line with the cognitive and anthropological linguistics premise according to which language accounts for the construction of a worldview in a given culture. The author relies on a certain number of utterances in the two languages to compare honte and wstyd and identify what they share and what the differences are.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) honte, (E) honteux
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2005). Saudade, czyli portugalska tęsknota za czymś, co być mogło, a nie było [Saudade, or Portuguese longing for something that could be, and was not]. In Anna Duszak & Nina Pawlak (Eds.), Anatomia szczęścia: Emocje pozytywne w językach i kulturach świata (pp. 115-123). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Abstract:
The article contains an analysis of the meaning of the Portuguese word saudade, usually translated as Polish tęsknota, melancholia, nostalgia, English longing or yearning, German Sehnsucht, Spanish añoranza. Saudade describes a typical state of mind for the Portuguese, which they claim is untranslatable in other languages. This feeling, although it tends to be included among feelings of sadness, is indispensable to happiness for the Portuguese. If someone feels saudade, it means that they have found something good in their life, something they miss and would like to experience some more of. The component ‘I feel something good’ is very important for this concept. Saudade is also one of the main themes of Portuguese songs. The article investigates the word in various contexts of use and formulates a semantic explication expressed in Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
More information:
Written in Polish.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) saudade
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
Gladkova, Anna (2005). New and traditional values in contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in cross-cultural semantics. In Ilana Mushin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society (16 pp.). http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93. PDF (open access)
Revised and expanded as:
Gladkova, Anna (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Work in contrastive semantics can tell us a great deal about differences between cultures in which the words that are being contrasted are used. Linguists can contribute to the social sciences and to the investigation of values prevailing in different cultures and different societies by detailed semantic analysis, which in turn can be successful if the appropriate methodology is used. NSM is able to reveal subtle differences in the meaning of value words and proves to be an adequate tool for this kind of task.
A detailed semantic analysis allows us to show differences between the concepts терпимы terpimyj and tolerant. Tolerant has a more “social” character since it is an attitude towards something seen as different from social norms. Tерпимы terpimyj is more “personal” in its attitude as it is a reaction towards personal offence. Tolerant is related to the recognition of personal autonomy of thinking and behaviour as well as the idea of social harmony as an opportunity for people to behave and think in the way they want. Tерпимы terpimyj is linked to the value of смиренеи smirenie; it is about not developing bad feelings and negative reactions to those seen as doing bad things and about maintaining the social harmony of positive feeling among people. Thus, tolerant is more “rational” and “liberal” and терпимы terpimyj is more “emotional” and “moral”. The proposed definition of tolerant, formulated in simple universal concepts, also allows us to gauge the possible difference between the new Russian word tolerantnyj and the English tolerant.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) terpet' терпеть, (E) terpimyj терпимый, (E) tolerate, (T) tolerant
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
Gladkova, Anna (2005). Sočuvstvie and sostradanie: A semantic study of two Russian emotions. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Lidil, 32. 35-47. PDF (open access)
Semantic analysis of the word сочувствие sočuvstvie (usually translated into English as ‘sympathy’) shows that it is a complex feeling caused by the awareness of a negative emotional state of another person associated with some misfortunate event and resulting in the sharing of this negative emotional state. When experiencing сочувствие sočuvstvie, a person develops a positive attitude towards another person who is in trouble due to the desire to stop the negative emotional experience of that person and to do something good for that person. Cочувствие sočuvstvie is characterized by the desire to reveal this attitude to the suffering person.
Cострадание sostradanie (usually translated into English as ‘compassion’) has the same semantic structure as сочувствие sočuvstvie, but it is characterized by a stronger character of emotional experience of another person and a consequent stronger negative feeling of the one who feels cострадание sostradanie. The component of showing one’s attitude and feeling is absent in cострадание sostradanie.
Cочувствие sočuvstvie and cострадание sostradanie are important cultural words that support the idea of the significant role of emotional expressions in Russian language and culture. They also extend the value ascribed to communal actions and states to the importance of sharing the negative emotional experiences of others.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) sočuvstvie сочувствие, (E) sostradanie сострадание
