Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2012). Saudade: A key Portuguese emotion. Emotion Review, 4(2). 203-211.
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911430727
Abstract:
This paper analyses the meaning of the Portuguese emotion word saudade, roughly translatable as ‘nostalgia’, in an attempt to show its cultural significance and contradict the view that nostalgia is a marginal feeling, deprived of any practical function. Saudade is not a marginal feeling in Portuguese culture, but an important and basic emotion term going hand in hand with amor ‘love’. Saudade may be viewed as a typically prototypical category, because it covers the whole scale of feelings, from sadness to happiness. The Portuguese claim it has no equivalents in any other language in the world and regard it as a fundamental and distinctive feature of their national identity. Its main characteristic lies in its ambivalence — saudade is both a memory and a feeling; it is both pleasure and pain.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) saudade
Published on July 1, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Hărăbor, Alina (2012). An inquiry into Romanian anger-like and happiness-like emotions. Master’s thesis, Australian National University.
Open access
Abstract:
This thesis seeks to shed light on the inner lives of Romanian people via the language they use to communicate about their emotions. It is the first detailed study analysing these emotions by examining vocabulary, in particular the anger-related emotion words mânie and supărare and the happiness-related words fericire and veselie, as well as the syntactic constructions in which they occur. The thesis also highlights beliefs and cultural values that influence emotional experience.
By using NSM and drawing on instances of natural language (mainly extracted from the Romanian Corpus Linguistic), as well as proverbs, sayings, poems and songs, this study shows that Romanian emotions are very intense and that Romanians have a highly responsive behaviour: they feel and think socially rather than individually. For example, people’s ability to feel something good is intensified when they share a good feeling with someone else. Furthermore, the thesis shows that labels such as anger or happiness cannot be applied to Romanian because the emotional reality expressed in Romanian does not match the Anglo concepts described by these English labels.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) fericire, (E) mânie, (E) supărare, (E) veselie, (S) fericire, (S) mânie, (S) supărare, (S) veselie, (T) Romanian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Gladkova, Anna (2012). Universals and specifics of ‘time’ in Russian. In Luna Filipović, & Kasia M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), Space and time across languages and cultures: Vol. II. Language, culture and cognition (pp. 167-188). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.13gla
Abstract:
This chapter addresses the question of universal as well as language- and culture-specific traits in the conceptualization of ‘time’. It tests the NSM hypothesis that the semantic primes WHEN~TIME and NOW should also be found in Russian. It demonstrates that когда~время kogda~vremja and сейчас sejčas are Russian exponents of these primes, while the related terms пора pora, теперь teper’, and нынче nynče are semantically complex. The chapter formulates culturally salient attitudes to time in Russian, such as ‘change’, ‘persistence’, ‘things being outside people’s control’, on the basis of the analysed words. It argues that, because of its universal character, NSM can be regarded as an effective tool in time-related linguistic research.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) change, (E) nynče нынче, (E) out of one's control, (E) persistence, (E) pora пора, (E) teper’ теперь, (T) Russian
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2012). Spanish pain, el dolor. In Zdzislaw Wasik, & Piotr P. Chruszczewski (Eds.), Languages in contact 2011 (pp. 61-71). Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo WSF.
The present paper is dedicated to the analysis of the Spanish word dolor ‘pain’; my aim is to demonstrate its cultural specificity and uniqueness. On the basis of lexical and textual data I explicate what the meaning of dolor is, and why I consider it very different from pain, its English counterpart. To free my considerations from an ethnocentric bias, I rely on NSM or Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dolor
Published on May 6, 2017. Last updated on November 28, 2019.
Afrashi, Azita & Taheri Ardali, Mortaza (2012). A look at universal concepts and the possibility of translatability. Translation Studies Quarterly [http://journal.translationstudies.ir], 10(37), 73-85.
Abstract:
After introducing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, the authors investigate the use of this approach in translation theory, focusing on the possibility of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic translatability. They conclude that universal human concepts ensure translatability of our thoughts from one language into another since they constitute a basis for genuine human understanding.
More information:
Written in Persian.
This paper contains explications of the Persian words شرم sharm ‘shame’, قهر qahr ‘not on speaking terms’, and غیرت qeyrat ‘zeal in defense of honour‘. It also proposes a shorter explication of the Polish verb tęsknić ‘feel the pain of distance’ than the one in Goddard’s Semantic Analysis (2nd edition, 2011).
Rating:
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) amae 甘え, (E) qahr قهر, (E) qeyrat غیرت, (E) sharm شرم, (E) tęsknić, (E) whinge
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2013). Translatability and the scripting of other peoples’ souls. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 24(1), 1-22. DOI: 10.1111/taja.12018
If anthropology aims at understanding ‘others’, then obviously anthropologists must be interested in the meaning of what those ‘others’ say. But to understand what speakers of a language other than our own say, we need to know what exactly the words and grammatical categories of that other language mean. This article argues that translating indigenous categories into academic English does not allow us to capture indigenous perspectives and leads to what Geertz calls “scripting other people’s souls”. Focusing on cognitive and cultural categories from Australian Aboriginal languages usually linked with English labels such as ‘kinship obligations’ and ‘odd-numbered generations’, the article shows how the ways of thinking encoded in these languages can be explicated from the insider’s point of view, in simple words and simple sentences directly cross-translatable into the indigenous languages themselves.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) loyalty, (E) loyauté, (S) categorization of oneself in relation to other people, (S) categorization of other people in relation to oneself, (S) generational moieties, (S) mutual identification with others, (S) obligations towards extended family, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Levisen, Carsten (2013). On pigs and people: The porcine semantics of Danish interaction and cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 344-364. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846455
There are footprints of pigs all over the Danish language. Pig-based verbs, nouns and adjectives abound, and the pragmatics of Danish, including its repertoire of abusives, is heavily reliant on porcine phraseology. Despite the highly urbanized nature of the contemporary Danish speech community, semantic structures from Denmark’s peasant-farmer past appear to have survived and taken on a new significance in today’s society. Unlike everyday English, which mainly distinguishes pig from pork, everyday Danish embodies an important semantic distinction between grise, which roughly speaking translates as ‘nice pigs’, vis-à-vis svin, which, very roughly, translates as ‘nasty pigs’.
Focusing on the pragmatics of svin-based language, this paper demonstrates how this concept is used in Danish interaction and social cognition. The paper explores systematically the culture-specific porcine themes in Danish evaluational expressions, speech acts and interpersonal relations. The paper demonstrates that ‘pigs in language’ is far from a trivial topic and argues that cultural elaboration of “pig words” and the culture-specific meaning of pigs in Danish not only sheds light on the diverse linguistic construals of “animal concepts” in the world’s languages: it also calls for a cultural-semantic approach to the study of social cognition.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) grise, (E) griseri, (E) svin, (E) svineri, (E) tilsviner, (E) tryne, (E) tryner
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2013). Comparatives without scales: An NSM analysis of English comparative constructions. In John Henderson, Marie-Eve Ritz, & Celeste Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/proceedings. PDF (open access)
This study outlines an analysis of the English comparative construction, framed in the NSM approach to semantics (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds. 2002; Goddard ed. 2008). The analysis differs markedly from conventional accounts in that it does not rely on notions of scales, degrees, or standards of comparison. As required, the analysis successfully models the way in which adjectives with equipollent antonyms behave differently from others with respect to their compatibility with comparative statements (Sapir 1944), e.g. why one can say about two cold items ‘This one is colder than that one’, but not ‘This one is hotter than that one’. Likewise, it can explain asymmetries with respect to evaluative comparisons of “inherently bad” referents (Cruse 1986), e.g. why ‘This year’s famine is worse than last year’s’ is acceptable but ‘Last year’s famine was better than this year’s’ is odd. A similar account appears viable for the English superlative construction. The analysis can be termed an “external” one, in the sense that it takes the meaning of the positive term for granted and embeds it into a configuration of semantic primes that explicates the comparative aspect of the meaning.
Tags: (E) (comparatives), (E) (superlatives)
Published on July 29, 2018. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora (2013). Functional macrocategory and semiautomatic inheritance of semantic features: A methodology for defining nouns. In Valentina Apresjan, Boris Iomdin, & Ekaterina Ageeva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on
Meaning-Text Theory (pp. 11-20). Prague: Charles University.
The aim of this paper is to discuss a possible new methodology when defining concrete nouns such as earring, ring or scarf by their automatic inheritance of semantic features from their macro-categories, in this case accessories. The semantic analysis of the meaning by primes, molecules and lexical functions allows us to arrive at a set of definitions that are more coherent for one lexical field. This methodology could be helpful when building ontologies.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) accessories, (E) bracelet, (E) briefcase, (E) diary, (E) earring, (E) handbag, (E) hat, (E) necklace, (E) ring, (E) scarf, (E) sunglasses, (E) wallet, (E) watch
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Rakić, Jelena. (2013). Emotions in English: Cultural scripts as mediators between language and culture. Facta Universitatis, Series Linguistics & Literature, 11(1), 75-89. PDF (open access)
Among studies on the English language, there is a notable absence of works on the relationship between English and its cultural underpinnings. Also, various research studies on language, emotion and culture lack descriptions of the situation in English, fostering the conclusion that English is culturally neutral. Anna Wierzbicka proposes the term Anglo-culture to cover the culture(s) behind the language, formulating cultural scripts that serve as a basis for modelling interaction, and which are founded on the
linguistic behaviour. We present those scripts relevant for understanding the domain of emotions in Anglo-culture, connecting them to the stereotypes about English reserve and politeness to show that the domain of emotions is a building block in the totality of Angloculture. The lexical items investigated show strong cultural markedness in line with the more general cultural scripts, which serves to prove that they are a useful tool for investigating the relationship between languages and cultures.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Swan, Karen Esther (2013). Borrowing the essentials: A diachronic study of the semantic primes of Modern English. MA thesis, Brigham Young University. PDF (open access)
In order for communication to take place, there must be a set of core concepts that are universal to all speakers. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has proposed an inventory of these concepts, called semantic primes, and uses them as universal concepts in the explication and exploration of cultural values. The English semantic primes, while the majority are Anglo‐Saxon, contain words that have been borrowed from Latin, Old Norse, and French. Borrowing lexical items into core vocabulary has many implications. First, the primes are not entirely stable or immune to foreign influence, even the Anglo‐Saxon primes have been susceptible to the processes of language change. Second, the primes do not reflect the trends of borrowing in English as a whole. And finally, because the primes are core vocabulary, this study opens up a new aspect of English as a mixed language.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2013). On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions involving “laterality”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics [China], 3(2), 153-167.
This study analyses a set of highly English-specific on-constructions of the form [on + NP-PLACE], such as: on the bank of the river, (a house) on the beach, on an island, on the plains, on the street, on a farm. The analysis is conducted in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka. Six semantically discrete construction types are identified and each is assigned a semantic schema framed in the metalanguage of semantic primes. All of them, it is argued, include a semantic component involving “laterality” (semantic prime SIDE), often in combination with a component involving visibility (SEE). These constructions, along with others, constitute a complex network of grammatical polysemy in English.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 9, 2020.
Wakefield, John C. (2013). When cultural scripts collide: Conflicting child-rearing values in a mixed-culture home. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 42(4), 376-392.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2013.838984
Abstract:
This paper discusses some key differences between the child-rearing values of American-English culture and Hong Kong-Cantonese culture. Evidence is drawn from contrasts in the child-rearing-related speech behaviour of people from the two cultures, including the American English-speaking author and his Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking partner. Speaker-oriented cultural scripts written in NSM are developed in an attempt to articulate and explain these differences in verbal behaviour. It is proposed that a major contrast between the two cultures is whether or not parents believe children can or should determine for themselves what is appropriate to say and do.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) giu3, (S) child-rearing behaviour, (S) children require instruction, (S) example setting for children, (S) parental love withdrawal, (S) wh-imperatives
Published on September 30, 2018. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Bromhead, Helen (2013). Mountains, rivers, billabongs: Ethnogeographical categorization in cross-linguistic perspective. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Bromhead, Helen (2018). Landscape and culture – Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This thesis examines the topic of ethnogeographical categorization by looking at the contrastive lexical semantics of a selection of landscape terms in a number of languages. The main languages in focus are English, including the Australian variety of English, French, Spanish, and the Australian Aboriginal language Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara.
The thesis argues that languages and cultures categorize the geographical environment in diverse ways. Common elements of classification are found across the selected languages, but it is argued that different priorities are given to these factors. Moreover, the thesis finds that there are language-specific aspects of the landscape terms, often motivated by culture and land use. Notably, this thesis presents ethnogeographical concepts as being anchored in an anthropocentric perspective, based on human vision and experience in space.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis is used throughout. The use of the universal concepts and language of NSM allows the author to clearly state the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the semantics of the landscape terms examined. It is argued that this methodology provides an effective tool in the exploration of ethnogeographical categories.
Areas of landscape vocabulary covered in this thesis include words for ‘long flowing-water places’, such as river, in chapter 3; words for ‘standing-water places’, such as lake, in chapter 4; words for ‘elevated places’, such as mountain, in chapter 5; seascape terms, such as coast, in chapter 6; and words for larger areas of the land, such as desert and the bush, in chapters 7 and 8. The thesis also offers suggestions for new directions for research.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2013). La langue de bois: un pèlerinage ethnolexicologique [La langue de bois: An ethnolexicological pilgrimage]. In Pierre Marillaud & Robert Gauthier (Eds.), La mauvaise parole: 33e Colloque d’Albi Langages et Signification (pp. 196-210). Albi/Toulouse: CALS/CPST.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2013). Râler, râleur, râlite: discours, langue et valeurs culturelles [Râler, râleur, râlite: Discourse, language and cultural values]. In C. Claudel, P. von Münchow, M. Pordeus, F. Pugnière-Saavedra & G. Tréguer-Felten (ed.), Cultures, discours, langues: nouveaux abordages (pp. 117-141). Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2013). Ah méfiance, quand tu tiens la France… Cahiers de praxématique, 60. DOI: 10.4000/praxematique.3872
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Mateo Mendaza, Raquel (2013). The Old English exponent for the semantic prime TOUCH: Descriptive and methodological questions. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(4), 449-466. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.857574
The aim of the article is to identify the exponent for the semantic prime TOUCH in Old English. Therefore, this research contributes to the frame of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Research Programme (NSMRP) by applying it to the study of a historical language. Throughout such an application several descriptive and methodological questions arise. On the descriptive side, it is necessary to propose a cluster of semantic, morphological, textual and syntactic criteria that allow for the identification of the prime at stake, given that the nature of the object of study is not compatible with the translation into the native language generally adopted by the NSMRP. The analysis focuses on the category actions, events, movement and contact, and relies on data retrieved from the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and the lexical database of Old English Nerthus. Although the cluster of criteria evinces a clear candidate for semantic prime it also raises the methodological issue of the distinction between the semantic prime and the hyperonym because some of the criteria used in the search for the former also play a role in the process of identification of the latter. The conclusion is reached that the verb hrīnan is the main exponent for the semantic prime TOUCH in Old English because it satisfies the criteria of meaning, word-formation, textual frequency and syntactic complementation.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2013). Kinship and social cognition in Australian languages: Kayardild and Pitjantjatjara. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 302-321. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846458
While many anthropologists these days dismiss the study of kinship terminologies as something that belongs – or should belong – to the past, from an Australian perspective kin terms must still be seen as an essential guide to the ways in which speakers of many languages understand their social world. This being so, establishing what these terms really mean – from an insider’s, rather than an anthropologist’s or linguist’s point of view – remains an essential task. This paper argues that while this task cannot be accomplished with traditional methods of linguistic anthropology, it can be with the techniques of NSM semantics. The paper shows how this can be done by re-analysing
some basic kin terms in Kayardild and in Pitjantjatjara.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) brother, (E) duujinda, (E) kularrinda, (E) kuta, (E) malanypa, (E) thabuju, (E) wakatha, (E) yakukathu, (S) kinship
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 24, 2018.
Taheri Ardali, Mortaza & Jahangardi, Kiyoomarss (2013). Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In Ataollah Koupal, Shahram Modarres Khiabani, & Javad Yaghoubi Derabi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Language and Linguistics, 27 February 2013, Azad University of Karaj: Vol. 2 (pp. 413-430). Tehran: Neveeseh.
Written in Persian.
No English abstract available.
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) qeyrat غیرت
