Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2008). Anglo English and Singapore English tags: Their meanings and cultural significance. Pragmatics & Cognition, 16(1), 88-117. DOI: 10.1075/p&c.16.1.06won
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
This study investigates a few Anglo English and Singapore English tags. The focus is on their meaning and the ways of thinking they reflect, rather than their forms and functions. The study contrasts the so-called Anglo English tag questions and the Singapore English tag is it? and tries to show that their semantic and pragmatic differences relate to differences in ways of thinking in the two cultures. For the purposes of this research, meaning is articulated in a paraphrase couched in Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which comprises a set of empirically established semantic primes and a universal grammar.
Tags: (E) It is like this is it?, (E) It is like this isn't it?, (E) It is/isn't like this is it?, (S) alternative viewpoints, (S) disclaiming knowledge
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Bartolo, Kay Frances (2008). ‘Bogan’: Polite or not? Cultural implications of a term in Australian slang. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication, 1(1), 7-20. PDF (open access)
Although changes in the usage of words in English are emerging through globalisation and travel, Australian slang has kept its strong ties to Australian culture. The main aim of this research was to look at the term ‘bogan’, whether it is used in a derogatory way in Australian English, and what effects culture can have on its use and acceptance. Research was conducted using a small corpus built of Australian slang and data taken from ethno‐pragmatic interviews with Australian‐born native speakers of English. It was concluded from the research that the term can be used both negatively, as a negative comment or impolite projection of a social identity onto a person who does not identify themselves within that classification by the older generation, and positively, as a sign of solidarity or a compliment amongst members of the same in‐group by the younger generation. The factors found to affect the result of the use of this term are the cultural stereotype that the user attaches to the meaning and the cultural understanding of the listener.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2008). Ça va? vs How are you? Remarques ethnophraséologiques [Ça va? vs How are you? Ethnophraseological notes]. Synergies-RUI, 1, 101-118.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 8, 2019.
Kim, Heesoo (2008). The semantic and pragmatic analysis of South Korean and Australian English apology speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 257-278.
DOI: https://doi.org.10.1016/j.pragma.2007.11.003
Abstract:
The aim of this study is to undertake a semantic and pragmatic analysis of South Korean apology speech acts, in particular with respect to how South Korean apologetic speech act expressions differ conceptually from Australian English expressions of apology. NSM is used to clarify how the main South Korean apologetic speech act expression mianhada differs conceptually from Australian English sorry; in the process, some distinctive features of South Korean culture are illustrated. South Korean apology speech act strategies are investigated in seven situations; this investigation is modeled on the work of Blum-Kulka and collaborators.
The findings of this study are that the attitudinal meanings of mianhada and sorry, as well as the range of illocutionary acts associated with the two expressions, are different. Decomposing mianhada and sorry into their illocutionary components provides a fine-grained description of what are assumed to be the attitudes and states of mind of South Koreans and Australians, respectively, when performing an apology. The study further suggests that conceptualizing speech act expressions through the use of semantically simple words may help second language learners acquire the proper ways of carrying out speech acts (including non-verbal expressions) in the target language and culture.
More information:
For a different analysis, see:
Yu, Kyong-Ae (2017). Perceptions and functions of Korean mianhada: comparison with American English sorry. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 25(2), 197-224.
Rating:
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) mianhada, (E) sorry
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2008). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, & Susanne Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75-102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75
Abstract:
This is a contrastive NSM analysis of two ethnopsychological constructs (English heart, Malay hati). Rejecting the use of English-specific metaterminology, such as mind, cognition, affect, etc., as both ethnocentric and inaccurate, the study seeks to articulate the conceptual content of the words under investigation in terms of simple universal concepts such as FEEL, THINK, WANT, KNOW, PEOPLE, SOMEONE, PART, BODY, HAPPEN, GOOD and BAD.
For both words, the physical body-part meaning is first explicated, and then the ethnopsychological sense or senses (it is claimed that English heart has two distinct ethnopsychological senses). The chapter also reviews the phraseology associated with each word, and in the case of English heart, proposes explications for a number of prominent collocations: a broken heart, listening to your heart, losing heart and having your heart in it.
The concluding discussion makes some suggestions about experiential/semantic principles whereby body parts can come to be associated with cultural models of feeling, thinking, wanting and knowing. At a theoretical level, the study seeks to draw links between culturally informed cognitive semantics, on the one hand, and the field of cultural psychology, on the other.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) hati, (E) head, (E) heart, (E) mind, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 20, 2018.
Trbojević-Milošević, Ivana (2008). Grammar can hurt: A contrastive view of English and Serbian imperatives. In Katarina Rasulic, & Ivana Trbojević (Eds.), ELLSSAC Proceedings – English language and literature studies: Structures across cultures. Volume I (pp. 103-114). Belgrade: Faculty of Philology.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
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
This chapter builds on:
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. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html
Swedish and English differ in interesting ways in relation to how they express the semantic prime THINK and related concepts. At first, it is not even obvious that there is a good Swedish exponent of THINK, because many uses of English think correspond not with Swedish tänka ‘think’, but with either tro (roughly) ‘be of the opinion that’ or tycka (very roughly) ‘feel that’. It is shown that, in fact, English think and Swedish tänka are precise semantic equivalents in canonical NSM contexts, and that tro and tycka, termed “epistemic verbs”, can be explicated in terms of the semantic prime THINK (TÄNKA) and other elements. Similarly, English think has certain complex, i.e. non-primitive uses, namely the “opinion” frame (e.g. She thinks that – –) and the conversational formula I think, and these English-specific constructions can be explicated. All the explications are presented in parallel English and Swedish versions. The contrastive exercise makes it clear that in universal grammar THINK can take a propositional complement (i.e. ‘think that – –’) only when it depicts an “occurrent thought” anchored to a particular time.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [illocutionary assumption], (E) believe (+ clause), (E) believe that, (E) gather that, (E) I think, (E) suppose (+ clause), (E) think that, (E) tro, (E) tycka, (T) Swedish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 16, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 14, 407-425. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00509.x
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 80-101) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Do all people live in a world full of colours? Perceptually, yes (unless they are visually impaired), but conceptually, no: there are many languages which have no word for ‘colour’ and in which the question What colour is it? cannot be asked and presumably does not arise. Yet the powerful and still immensely influential theory of Berlin and Kay assumes otherwise. While building on the author’s earlier work on colour semantics, this article brings new evidence against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and presents a fundamentally different approach. The new data on which the argument is based come from Australian languages. In particular, the article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no “colour talk” (and no “colour practices”), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices. It also offers a methodology for identifying indigenous meanings without the grid of the English concept ‘colour’, and for revealing “the native’s point of view”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) colour, (E) kunjuru-kunjuru, (E) kuruwarri-kuruwarri, (E) yukuri-yukuri, (T) English
Published on July 3, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
François, Jacques (2008). Book review of Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 103(2), 16-26.
Written in French.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Rieschild, Verna (2008). Review article of Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(1), 75-85.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). New semantic primes and new syntactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35-57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.06god
In section 1, we propose a “new” semantic prime — specificational BE — and show how it can be used to analyse some classic problems in the semantics of naming and reference. In section 2, we explore a newly recognised syntactic option of the prime THIS, here termed “abstract THIS/IT”. Both the new possibilities are involved in the semantics of specificational and focus constructions of English. These are the topic of section 3.
Published on May 10, 2008. Last updated on October 19, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2008). Amor em português [Love in Portuguese]. In Anna Kalewska (Ed.), Diálogos com a Lusofonia: Colóquio comemorativo dos 30 anos da secção Portuguesa do Instituto de Estudos Ibéricos e Ibero-americanos da Universidade de Varsóvia (pp. 408-420). Warszawa: Universidade de Varsóvia, Instytut Studiów Iberoamerykanskich UW. PDF (pre-publication version with different page numbering)
Written in Portuguese.
Every culture has its own ways of speaking, thinking, acting and even feeling, which are reflected in language. In this paper, I analyse a lexical meaning of one Portuguese word, amor. Having as a base a corpus consisting of Lisbon fado songs, I try to look for a semantic invariant of the word amor in fado and to define it in terms of a Portuguese-based NSM.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) amor
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2008). Fado – podejście semantyczne: Próba interpretacji słów kluczy [Fado – a semantic approach: An attempt at interpreting key words]. Wroclaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT.
Written in Polish.
This book interprets a dozen Portuguese-based lexical units, mainly from the domain of emotion, selected through a frequency-based survey of Lisbon fado songs. It is the published version of the author’s PhD thesis, University of Wrocław (2007).
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 9, 2020.
Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2008). Концепт ‘откровенность’ в русской и английской языковых картинах мира [The concept of ‘frankness’ in Russian and English linguistic world-views]. In Нина Арутюнова [Nina Arutjunova] (Ed.), Логический анализ языка: Между ложью и фантазией [Logical analysis of language: Between lie and fantasy] (pp. 502-514). Москва [Moscow]: Индрик [Indrik].
Written in Russian.
Abstract:
Исследования в области межкультурной прагматики показывают, что для русского языка и культуры характерно наличиел установки (или культурных скриптов) на прямое и открытое выражение своих мыслей и чувств [Вежбицка 2002; Гловинская 2003]. Похожие уста новки характерны и для других культур — например, испанской [Aznarez, Gonazalez 2006]. Однако в некоторых культурах (например, англосаксонской и малазийской) подобное правило менее значимо или отсутствует вообще [Goddard 1997; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Доминиро вание определенной культурной установки находит отражение в се мантике слов, которые по своему значению связаны с этой установ кой [Апресян 2006; Вежбицка 2002; Зализняк, Левонтина, Шмелев 2005; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Данную гипотезу интересно проверить при сравнительном семантическом анализе словпереводных эквивален тов из языков с различными культурными правилами. В работе про водится семантический анализ наречия откровенно в значении харак теристики манеры речи, которое может быть связано с установкой на открытое и прямое выражение своих мыслей и чувств, характерное для русской культуры. Данное наречие сравнивается с его ближай шими переводными эквивалентами candidly иfrankly в английском языке, где доминируют другие культурные скрипты [Wierzbicka 2006а].
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) candidly, (E) frankly, (E) откровенно frankly
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
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. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.19gla
An earlier version of this paper was published as:
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. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93.
This chapter examines the recent trend in contemporary Russian towards increased lexical borrowing from English. In particular, it compares and contrasts the meanings of a recently borrowed value term tolerantnyj with its English equivalent tolerant and the traditionally closest Russian equivalent терпимый terpimyj ‘tolerant/indulgent/forbearing’. A detailed contrastive semantic analysis demonstrates that, although tolerant and терпимый terpimyj are translational equivalents, their meanings do differ and reflect different cultural attitudes across the two societies involved.
The work also shows that the meaning of the new Russian term tolerantnyj does not fully coincide with the meaning of the English tolerant, as it reflects the Russian value system. The analysis is conducted using NSM as its main analytical tool.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) terpet' терпеть, (E) terpimyj терпимый, (E) tolerant, (E) tolerate, (T) Russian
Published on August 31, 2018. Last updated on November 5, 2021.
Kurteš, Svetlana (2008). An investigation into the pragmatics of grammar: Cultural scripts in contrast. In Martin Pütz, & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (Eds.), Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 67-85). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110207217.1.67
This paper looks at verbal reflexivity and middleness as exemplified in a set of related verbs in Serbo-Croat, known as ‘se-verbs’. The performed analysis is monodirectional and corpus-based, starting from Serbo-Croat and observing the translation equivalents of the ‘se-verbs’ in English. The pragmatic principles underlying the rules of usage of these verbs, often rather neglected in traditional reference grammars and relevant pedagogical materials, need to be established and analysed in the socio-cultural context in which the examined instances were found to be naturally occurring. The author discusses these pragmatic principles and proposes ways of introducing them into language teaching curricula and relevant pedagogical materials. She also argues for a recognition of Wierzbicka’s ‘cultural scripts’ in foreign language teaching enabling the learner to interpret messages in terms of their underlying cultural norms and values. Examples are taken mainly from modern political discourses and public communication.
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (S) self-promotion, (S) self-protection
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka (2008). Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, & Elsa M. González Álvarez (Eds.), Current trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional and cognitive perspectives (pp. 205-226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/sfsl.60.13god
This study sets out to demonstrate that the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes provides a stable language-neutral medium for fine-grained contrastive semantic analysis, in both the lexical and grammatical domains. The lexical examples are drawn from “yearning-missing” words in English, Polish, Russian and Spanish, while the grammatical examples contrast the Spanish diminutive with the hypocoristic “diminutive” of Australian English. We show that the technique of explication (reductive paraphrase) into semantic primes makes it possible to pin down subtle meaning differences which cannot be captured using normal translation or grammatical labels. Explications for the Polish, Russian and Spanish examples are presented both in English and in the language concerned, thus establishing that the metalanguage being used is transposable across languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 13, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). Componential analysis. In Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 58-67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hoph.2.06god
Previously issued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2005). Componential analysis. In Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics 2003-2005 (12 pages). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.m.comm1
The 2005 text is a heavily revised version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Componential analysis. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jan Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147-153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Abstract:
Componential analysis (CA) in the broadest sense, also known as ‘lexical decomposition’, is any attempt to formalize and standardize procedures for the analysis of word meanings. CA often aspires to represent the cognitive or psychological reality of the speakers, and to shed light on correlations between language and culture.
The idea that word meanings may be broken down into combinations of simpler components is an ancient one, supported by a range of facts. These include the efficacy of paraphrase, the intuitively felt relationships (such as antonymy, hyponymy, partonymy) between word meanings, the fact that sentences may be tautologous, contradictory or odd due to the interplay of the meanings of their constituent words. The assumption of decomposability underlies the definitional side of traditional lexicography. For expository purposes, methods in CA may be described under four headings: the structuralist tradition, linguistic anthropology, generative and typological studies, and paraphrase semantics (1995) / Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (2005/2009). Some other trends and problems are briefly discussed.
Explications included in the 1995 version relate to the emotion term indignant, the speech act verb suggest, the interjection Wow! and the kinship term mother.
Explications included in the 2005 and 2009 versions relate to the emotion term sad, the social category friend, the performative verbs threaten and warn, and the semantic molecule animal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) animal, (E) friend, (E) mother, (E) sad, (E) suggest, (E) threaten, (E) warn, (E) Wow!, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Language and metalanguage: Key issues in emotion research. Emotion Review, 1(1), 3-14. DOI: 10.1177/1754073908097175
Building on the author’s earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the shackles of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-independent perspective. The use of NSM makes it possible to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, as well as a psychological, perspective and thus opens up new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjectivity and psychological experience.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) adēmonein αδημονείν, (E) ekthambeisthai εκθαμβεισθαι, (E) fear, (T) English
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). The language of “bullying” and “harassment”. Quadrant, 53(12), 102-107.
While there is no shortage of various attempted definitions of bullying, they are usually lacking in clarity, precision and explanatory value. This is partly because to provide an adequate definition of bullying one needs to consider closely not only human behaviour but also the meanings of words and ways in which these meanings can be accurately defined and intelligibly explained.
What matters here is not how the word should be used, or what it should mean, but rather, what it actually means as it is normally used by “ordinary people”. It is this plain meaning manifested in “ordinary people’s” use of the word which functions as part of the shared conceptual
currency of speakers of English. To identify this meaning accurately and intelligibly we need a workable methodology. Such a methodology can be found in the so-called “NSM” (from “Natural Semantic Metalanguage”) approach. Using this approach, we can overcome the inadequacies of traditional models of definition, and we can actually explain the meaning of words, in ways which can be both cognitively accurate and socially and educationally useful.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bully, (E) bullying, (E) harassment
