Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2016). The pragmatics of kéyĭ (“can”) in Singapore Mandarin. In Alessandro Capone & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 857-876). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_33
This chapter deals with the pragmatics of kéyĭ, the non-Standard Singapore Mandarin equivalent of English can. It describes some of the speech acts it is associated with and represents some of the associated speech norms in the form of cultural scripts formulated in Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It is hoped that the cultural scripts will facilitate a better understanding of the cultural values underlying the use of this word.
The chapter also contrasts some of the speech norms described in it with their English counterparts to highlight their culture-specificity. It further examines examples from standard Mandarin to explain their cultural significance. It is shown that speech acts are often culture-specific, and speech acts specific to one language (in this case, English) cannot adequately describe speech acts specific to another (in this case, Singapore Mandarin). The proposed solution is NSM, which can clearly explain Singapore Mandarin speech acts associated with the word kéyĭ and, in doing so, clarify the language-specific use of the Singapore Mandarin semantic equivalent of the English can.
A number of authentic examples are studied. They suggest that the relationship between Singapore Mandarin speakers is often marked by social obligations (among other things). These obligations have to do with priority given to what one is able to do over what one wants to do. Speakers tend to de-emphasize what one (either the speaker or someone else) wants to do and, in doing so, go against some of Grice’s maxims and Brown and Levinson’s politeness principles. Singapore Mandarin culture, which has a strong presence in Singaporean society, may thus be considered “collectivist”, which means that personal autonomy is not a high-ranking value and may not be something that people, at least among the older generations, are generally familiar with.
It is also noted that some of the Singapore Mandarin ways of speaking associated with kéyĭ have found their way into Singapore English, used also by non-Mandarin speakers, including native English speakers who have lived in Singapore for a substantial period of time. This observation seems to suggest that the speech norms in question are a Singaporean feature rather than merely a feature of Singapore Mandarin.
Explications are proposed for Singapore Mandarin phrases that can be loosely translated as ‘sorrowful’ (lit. ‘can sorrow’; kébēi), ‘lovely’ (lit. ‘can love’; kéài), ‘pitiful’ (lit. ‘can pity’; kélián), ‘suspicious’ (lit. ‘can suspect’; kéyí).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kéài, (E) kebei, (E) kélián, (E) kéyí, (S) “suggestion” or “advice”, (S) doing something for someone, (S) evaluation, (S) getting someone to do something, (S) interpretation of “you can do this”, (S) making an “offer”
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2016). The academic practice of citation. In Alessandro Capone, Ferenc Kiefer, & Franco Lo Piparo (Eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics: Interdisciplinary studies (pp. 189-209). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_10
It is proposed in this paper that citation is primarily about (i) the use of evidence and data to support one’s ideas, and (ii) the sharing of resources and building up of knowledge. It is further hypothesized that how a citation is worded can reflect its strength of claim. Learners of academic English, who need to learn how to use the citation style applicable to their discipline, should ideally also learn what the invariant meaning of citation is about and how to use it to express the strength of claim of what they want to say.
In the discussion of the meaning of citation, this paper showcases a methodology, NSM, which allows us to state meaning with maximal clarity and precision. The NSM methodology has been used extensively to explicate lexical, grammatical and pragmatic meanings. As this paper shows, it can in fact be used to describe anything that has meaning, even if the ‘expression’ cannot fall neatly into any of these linguistic categories.
Tags: (E) academic citation, (E) use of surname in academic citation
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 20, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, Taboada, Maite, & Trnavac, Radoslava (2016). Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis (Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science. PDF (open access)
This technical report applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to the lexical-semantic analysis of English evaluational adjectives and compares the results with the picture developed in Martin & White’s Appraisal Framework. The analysis is corpus-assisted, with examples mainly drawn from film and book reviews, and supported by collocational and statistical information from WordBanks Online. NSM explications are proposed for 24 evaluational adjectives, and it is argued that they fall into five groups, each of which corresponds to a distinct semantic template. The groups can be sketched as follows: “First-person thought-plus-affect”, e.g. wonderful; “Experiential”, e.g. entertaining; “Experiential with bodily reaction”, e.g. gripping; “Lasting impact”, e.g. memorable; “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent. These groupings and semantic templates are compared with the classifications in the Appraisal Framework’s system of Appreciation. The report concludes with discussion of the relevance of the two frameworks for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) awesome, (E) awful, (E) boring, (E) clever, (E) compelling, (E) depressing, (E) disappointing, (E) disgusting, (E) dismal, (E) disturbing, (E) dreadful, (E) fabulous, (E) fascinating, (E) haunting, (E) inspiring, (E) interesting, (E) original, (E) predictable, (E) sickening, (E) stunning, (E) suspenseful, (E) tense, (E) terrible, (E) touching, (E) woeful
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Gladkova, Anna; Vanhatalo, Ulla; & Goddard, Cliff (2016). The semantics of interjections: An experimental study with Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(4), 841-865.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716415000260
Abstract:
This paper reports the results of a pilot experimental study aimed at evaluating NSM explications of English interjections. It proposes a novel online survey technique to test NSM explications with language speakers. The survey tested recently developed semantic explications of selected English interjections used to mark either ‘surprise’ (wow, gosh, gee, yikes) or ‘disgust’ (yuck, ugh). The results provide overall support for the proposed explications and indicate directions for their further development. It is interesting that respondents’ preexisting knowledge of NSM and other background variables (age, gender, being a native speaker, or studying linguistics) were shown to have little influence on the test results.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Gee!, (E) Gosh!, (E) Ugh!, (E) Wow!, (E) Yikes!, (E) Yuck!, (T) English
Published on July 1, 2017. Last updated on May 3, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2016). Stranger and acquaintance in English: Meaning and cultural scripts. In Agnieszka Uberman, & Teodor Hrehovčík (Eds.), Text – sentence – word: Studies in English linguistics: Vol. 2 (pp. 119-130). Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego.
In English, stranger, acquaintance and friend are perhaps the most common and salient terms for describing social relations that are not place or kinship based. What makes these social categories so special and distinctive in English? The question becomes even more intriguing if we consider that in many languages and cultures, human relations in the social sphere revolve around different social categories.
It is the purpose of this paper to seek an answer to the above question. It aims to shed light on the role and function of the English social category words in question from the standpoint of meaning and culture. Given that Anna Wierzbicka has discussed the meaning of the English term friend at great length, this paper will focus on the less analysed stranger and acquaintance. It seeks to articulate the meanings of both, and spell out some of the assumptions underlying the associated interactional values and norms widely shared by Anglophone speakers.
The two social category words analysed in this paper can be considered as co-occurring concepts of politeness in English. This paper shows how the study of the semantics of words of this nature contributes to a better understanding of the “politeness phenomenon” characteristic of Anglophone society.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (acquaintance), (E) (stranger), (S) interacting with an acquaintance, (S) interaction with strangers, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 5, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214-256. DOI: 10.1075/fol.23.2.03god
This study proposes NSM semantic explications for a cross-section of the English verbal lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. The twenty-five verbs are drawn from about a dozen verb classes, including verbs for non-typical locomotion (crawl, swim, fly), other intransitive activities (play, sing), manipulation (hold), activities that affect material integrity (cut, grind, dig), creation/production (make, build, carve), actions that affect people or things (hit, kick, kill) or cause a change of location (pick up, put, throw, push), bodily reactions to feelings (laugh, cry), displacement (fall, sink) and weather phenomena (rain, snow).
Though the verbs explicated are specifically English verbs, they have been chosen with an eye to their relevance to lexical typology and cross-linguistic semantics (many are drawn from the Verb Meanings List of the Leipzig Valency Patterns project) and it is hoped that the analytical strategy and methodology exemplified in this study can be a useful model for research into other languages. The study demonstrates the application of the NSM concept of semantic templates, which provide a clear “skeletal” structure for explications of considerable internal complexity and which help account for shared semantic and grammatical properties of verbs of a given subclass.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) build, (E) carve, (E) crawl, (E) cry, (E) cut, (E) dig, (E) fall, (E) fly, (E) grind, (E) hit, (E) hold, (E) kick, (E) kill, (E) laugh, (E) make, (E) pick up, (E) play, (E) push, (E) put, (E) rain, (E) sing, (E) sink, (E) snow, (E) swim, (E) throw, (T) English, (T) semantic molecules
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 11, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Cramer, Rahel (2016). “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication. In Donal Carbaugh (Ed.), The handbook of communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89-103). New York: Routledge.
Abstract:
What cultural logic is at play whereby Australians can be friendly and humorous, and yet at the same time derisive, disdainful, and scornful? One of the goals of this study is to explain this paradox by providing a detailed insider perspectives on certain canonical Anglo-Australian (“Aussie”) cultural values and orientations to communication, both at the interpersonal level and in the public sphere. Words and expressions are treated as entry points through which to access cultural meaning.
The focus is on two clusters of words. In the first cluster are the words laid back and easy going, which are high-frequency descriptors of the preferred Australian interactional style and an indisputable part of the national self-stereotype. The second cluster consists of the twin expressions not taking yourself/anything too seriously and the word irreverence. These expressions, it is argued, are Australian cultural key words and, consequently, deeply implicated in canonical Anglo-Australian conceptions of personhood, social interaction, and humour.
Though the paper includes occasional contrastive remarks about other cultural orientations, its focus is not on cross-cultural communication but on Australian cultural conceptualizations of communication and how these play out in communicational practices.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) easy going, (E) irreverence, (E) laid back, (E) take [...] too seriously, (S) jocular abuse, (S) other people's admiration, (S) social equality, (S) social similarity
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Wong, Jock (2016). “Walking” and “running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2), 303–336. DOI: 10.1075/rcl.14.2.03god
This study examines the conceptual semantics of human locomotion verbs in two languages – English and German – using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Based on linguistic evidence, it proposes semantic explications for English walk and run, and their nearest counterparts in German, i.e. laufen (in two senses, roughly, ‘run’ and ‘go by walking’), rennen (roughly, ‘run quickly’), gehen (roughly, ‘go/walk’), and the expression zu Fuß gehen (roughly, ‘go on foot’). Somewhat surprisingly for such closely related languages, the conceptual semantics turns out to be significantly different in the two languages, particularly in relation to manner-of-motion. On the other hand, it is shown that the same four-part semantic template (with sections Lexicosyntactic Frame, Prototypical Scenario, Manner, and Potential Outcome) applies in both languages. We consider the implications for systematic contrastive semantics and for lexical typology.
contrastive semantics; conceptual semantics; lexical polysemy; manner; verbs of motion; semantic template; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
Published on July 8, 2017. Last updated on August 23, 2018.
Krisna Adi Candra, I Made (2016). Translation method of phrasal verb in novel Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Linguistika, 23(2), 139-147. PDF (open access)
The aim of this research is to investigate the translation of phrasal verbs through the prism of Newmark’s translation theory. The data are phrasal verbs in the source language (English) and their translation in the target language (Indonesian) and are taken from the novel Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) and its Indonesian translation Makan Doa Cinta. The study reveals that no phrasal verb in the source language was translated into a phrasal verb in the target language. A few translations are studied more closely, and NSM is used to explicate the differences that are found to exist between the original verb and its translation.
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) flip over, (E) get back, (E) kembali, (E) menuju, (E) terbalik, (E) walk up
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Gladkova, Anna (2016). Propositional attitudes and cultural scripts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 329-352). Berlin: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12
Abstract:
In linguistic literature inspired by work in philosophy, the key concepts for the analysis of ‘propositional attitudes’ include mental states such as ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’ and ‘know’, among others. This literature, and the work on which it is based, ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualization of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. It also overlooks the fact that categorization of mental states, in general, and ‘propositional attitudes’, in particular, is aligned with cultural attitudes and understandings.
This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of selected words reflecting propositional attitudes in English and Russian. The focus is on to believe vs. считать sčitat’ and on belief vs. мнение mnenie, and the analysis is undertaken in terms of universal meanings, using NSM. It is demonstrated that the supremacy of logical concepts in current scientific thinking is not reflected in the architecture of the mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. Instead, it is argued that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.
The concepts central to the analysis are KNOW and THINK, which have been shown to have exact semantic equivalents in Russian and English as well as other languages. The chapter shows that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles that can be formulated as cultural scripts.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) belief, (E) believe, (E) mnenie мнение, (E) sčitat’ считать, (S) categoricalness, (S) non-imposition, (S) opinions, (S) refusal to compromise, (S) sincerity, (S) truth and untruth, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Two levels of verbal communication, universal and culture-specific. In Andrea Rocci, & Louis de Saussure (Eds.), Verbal communication (pp. 447-482). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110255478-024
Abstract:
Models of the human person embedded in everyday language differ a great deal across languages, cultures and epochs, and often lead us to the heart of the shared cultural values of the speech communities where they are found. Even within European languages, there is considerable diversity. Remarkably, though, all human cultures appear to agree that human beings have a body, which is visible, and ‘something else’, which is not. Models of the human person differ with respect to the construal of that ‘something else’. For speakers of modern English, it is usually interpreted as the ‘mind’; and in the era of global English, the model of a human being as composed of a body and a mind is often taken for granted by Anglophone humanities and social sciences (and even by cognitive and evolutionary science).
Yet the ‘mind’ is a conceptual artefact of modern English – an ethno-construct no more grounded in reality than the French esprit, the Danish sind, the Russian душа duša, the Latin anima, or the Yolngu birrimbirr. The reification of the English ‘mind’ and its elevation to the status of a ‘scientific’ prism through which all other languages, cultures, indigenous psychologies, and even stages in the evolution of primates can be legitimately interpreted is a striking illustration of the blind spot in contemporary social science that results from the ‘invisibility’ of English as a more and more globalized way of speaking and thinking.
This paper demonstrates that the meanings hidden in such language-specific cultural constructs can be revealed and compared, in a precise and illuminating way, through the use of NSM. It also shows how the understanding of such culturally central concepts can lead to better communication across languages and cultures.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) anima, (E) birrimbirr, (E) khilyot-ay, (E) lib-i, (E) mind, (E) nepesh נֶ֫פֶשׁ, (E) psykhe Ψυχη
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Making sense of terms of address in European languages through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Intercultural Pragmatics, 13(4), 499-527. DOI 10.1515/ip-2016-0022
Building on the author’s earlier work on address practices and focusing on the French words monsieur and madame, this paper seeks to
demonstrate that generic titles used daily across Europe have relatively stable meanings, different in different languages, and that their semantic analysis can provide keys to the speakers’ cultural assumptions and attitudes. But to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills. The NSM approach, with its stock of primes and molecules and its mini-grammar for combining these into explications and cultural scripts, provides both the necessary tools and the necessary techniques. The unique feature of the NSM approach to both semantics and pragmatics is the reliance on a set of simple, cross-translatable words and phrases, in terms of which interactional meanings and norms can be articulated, compared, and explained to linguistic and cultural outsiders. Using this approach, this paper assigns intuitive, intelligible and cross-translatable meanings to several key terms of address in French and English, and it shows how these meanings can account for many aspects of these terms’ use. The paper offers a framework for studying the use of terms of address in Europe and elsewhere and has implications for language teaching, cross-cultural communication and education.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) monsieur, (E) Mr [= Mister], (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know, (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know very well, (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know well
Published on May 12, 2018. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Terms of address as keys to culture and society: German Herr vs. Polish Pan. Acta Philologica [Uniwersytet Warszawski], 49, 29-44.
This article takes up a theme addressed many years ago by Andrzej Bogusławski: a semantic and cultural comparison of the Polish and German terms of address Pan and Herr. Focussing on these two words, the paper seeks to demonstrate that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions and attitudes and provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and social world. At the same time, the paper argues that to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills; and it tries to show that the NSM approach to semantics and pragmatics can help us develop such skills. The explications posited here possess, it is argued, predictive and explanatory power that is beyond the reach of traditional analyses operating with technical labels such as “formal”, ”polite”, “respectful”, “egalitarian” and so on. The paper has implications for language teaching and cross-cultural communication and education in Europe and beyond.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Herr, (E) Mr [= Mister], (E) Pan, (E) Pani
Published on December 16, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Mateo Mendaza, Raquel (2016). Old English semantic primes: Events, movement, contact. PhD thesis, Universidad de la Rioja. PDF (open access)
This PhD thesis by publications consists of the author’s three published papers on Old English (2013 on TOUCH, 2016 on HAPPEN, 2016 on MOVE), preceded by an introduction and a summary of results, and followed by conclusions and perspectives for future research. It pursues the research line into the semantic primes of Old English started by Martín Arista and Martín de la Rosa. It aims at defining the criteria for exponent identification in a historical language and at applying to Old English a set of criteria that make reference to morphological, textual, semantic and syntactic aspects and that are ultimately based on markedness theory. The NSM category selected for analysis is Actions, events, movement, contact, which had not been studied in Old English in previous work.
On the descriptive side, the Old English exponents for the semantic primes TOUCH, HAPPEN and MOVE are identified. These exponents correspond, respectively, to the verbs (ge)hrīnan, (ge)limpan and (ge)styrian. The decision to select these rather than any other verbs is based on the fact that, except for some particular cases, they are the candidates that best satisfy the different morphological, textual, semantic and syntactic requirements imposed by the nature of each semantic prime.
Along with the descriptive results, significant advances are made on the methodological side because the three studies in the Old English exponents for these semantic primes contribute to the whole NSM paradigm by designing and implementing a method for indirect searching for prime exponents in historical languages. The indirect methodology proposed for the historical languages is in contrast with the direct method preferred in natural languages, which is based on linguistic analysis carried out by native speakers of the language and, moreover, on the availability of potentially infinite data.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Mateo Mendaza, Raquel (2016). The search for Old English semantic primes: The case of HAPPEN. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 15(1), 71-99. PDF (open access).
This journal article aims at contributing to the research line of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Research Programme by identifying the Old English exponent for the semantic prime HAPPEN. This study applies four different criteria, namely, the morphological, textual, semantic and syntactic one, in order to select the most suitable candidate for prime exponent. The analysis is based on both lexicographical and textual sources. Conclusions are reached on both the descriptive and the methodological side.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Mateo Mendaza, Raquel (2016). The Old English exponent for the semantic prime MOVE. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 36(4), 542-559. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2016.1169976
This journal article engages in the search for the Old English exponent of the semantic prime MOVE as described within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) model. For the semantics of movement and motion, this study draws on the NSM model, which selects the term MOVE as the proper primitive to express the different meanings related both to translational and internal motion. With this background,
this study describes the semantic and syntactic properties of the main Old English verbs related to motion in order to select the best candidate for the exponent of MOVE. The analytical part comprises the application of four criteria of prime identification, including the textual, the morphological, the semantic and the syntactic criterion. The conclusion is reached that the verb (ge)styrian is the Old English exponent for the semantic prime MOVE.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco, & Farese, Piergiorgio (2016). L’italiano in musica: an NSM-based semantic analysis of the musical terms vivace and rubato. Quaderni di semantica, N.S. 2, 131-165.
Abstract:
This paper presents a semantic analysis of two musical terms with which most teachers and students struggle: vivace and rubato. The scope of the paper is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the meaning of these two terms in a clear way; secondly, to analyse the meaning of these terms from the point of view of cultural semantics, which adopts the methodology of the NSM approach to analyse the meaning of words, thus highlight the connection with the meaning of the Italian adjectives from which they derive. Ultimately, the analysis is aimed at illustrating the advantages that NSM-based semantic explications of vivace and rubato can have for pedagogical purposes.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) rubare, (E) tempo rubato, (E) vivace, (T) Italian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2016). The cultural semantics of the Japanese emotion terms ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 8, 32-54.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21159/nvjs.08.02 / Open access
Abstract:
This paper presents a cultural semantic analysis of the Japanese emotion terms 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii. The paper has three aims: (i) to pinpoint the conceptions of 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii as emotion terms in Japanese language and culture; (ii) to highlight the differences in meaning with their typical English translations shame and embarrassing, and show that 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii reflect two different, culture-specific emotion conceptions; (iii) to emphasize the suitability of NSM for cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms in different languages and, in turn, for cross-cultural training.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) embarrassment, (E) haji 恥, (E) hazukashii 恥ずかしい, (E) shame, (T) Japanese
Published on May 10, 2016. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
August-Zarębska, Agnieszka, & Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Recalling the past: The linguistic and cultural images of kurtijo, Sephardic courtyard. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 25(1), 96-117.
DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2016.250107
Abstract:
The present article investigates the concept of kurtijo, roughly ‘courtyard’, ‘home’, in Ladino (also known as Judeo-Spanish, Djudezmo or Sephardi), the language of Sephardic Jews, currently under threat of extinction. It argues that, after the Holocaust, kurtijo became a culturally salient word and may be regarded as a cultural key word in Ladino. Dictionaries and texts of contemporary Ladino poets are used as the main source of data. The meaning of kurtijo is expressed in the form of an NSM explication.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kurtijo
Published on September 8, 2018. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Perović, Slavica (2016). Apologising and the Montenegrin cultural script. Logos et Littera, 1(3), pp. 1-24. PDF (open access)
The paper deals with the representation of the speech act of apology through cultural scripts. The research has been done on a corpus of students’ responses gathered through an interview of the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) type. The speech act of apology is analysed within the politeness theory originated by Brown and Levinson (1987) and the category of ‘face’. The complexity and specificity of this speech act in Montenegrin leads us to establish six semantic components of apologizing for which we devise cultural scripts. Furthermore, two broad categories of apologies are identified: non-verbal and verbal. These are labelled ‘to do is to say’ and ‘to say is to do’, respectively, and give rise to do master scripts. The analysis in this paper relies on the idea of cultural scripts developed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard, executed through the semantic primes of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) (abasement), (E) (admittance), (E) (regret), (E) (responsibility), (E) poniženje, (S) apologies
