Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Levisen, Carsten (2018). The grammar of violence: Insights from Danish ethnosyntax and the Wierzbicka-Pinker debate. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 145-167. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.145. PDF (open access)
This paper explores the Danish key word vold ‘violence, abuse’ and scrutinizes its associated ethnosyntax, which is hidden in compound morphology. Focusing on the compounds hustruvold ‘wife vold’ and politivold ‘police vold’, it explores the conceptual syntax embedded in such coinages. Exploring more recent constructs, such as forældrevold ‘parent vold’, the author argues that Danish ethnosyntax embodies a view of the world in which traditional authority figures (men, police, parents) are coded as aggressors, whereas women, citizens and children are coded as victims.
In more general terms, the paper aims to open a new ethnolinguistic research agenda for the study of negative sociality constructs and the positive value system hidden in them. It does so by drawing attention to the differences and similarities of violence-related concepts in ethnolinguistic communities, and to the key role played by ethnosyntax in the elaboration of violence, vold, and similar concepts.
The paper also proposes an explication for the Bislama word faetem ‘punch, fight physically’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) faetem, (E) vold, (S) domestic violence against women, (S) police violence, (T) Danish
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). A ‘sense of entitlement’ encoded in English grammar. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 133-143. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.133. PDF (open access)
This study claims that in English there is a grammatical construction, or even a family of constructions, that expresses the notion of a ‘sense of entitlement’. In sentences like Can I have my apple and cheese, please?, this notion is expressed with the pronoun my. To describe the meaning of this construction in a way that would be understandable not only to speakers of English but also to those whose languages do not contain a word for ‘entitlement’, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is used.
The ‘sense of entitlement’ is expressed when everyday rituals are violated, which disturbs the speaker, e.g. Would you leave me finish my breakfast?. The assumption here is that everyone has the right and wants to perform these regular, ritualistic activities. The range of potential obstacles has not been established at this stage of research but can be captured in the formula “I cannot do now what I always do at this time; this is bad; everybody can know this”.
The meaning of a ‘sense of entitlement’ is connected with such words and expressions as have the right to, be entitled to, personal space, privacy, violate/disturb/interfere, which express some of the major assumptions and concerns of contemporary Anglo-culture. Especially interesting is the connection between the ‘sense of entitlement’ and justice because both are grounded in the existence of voluntarily obeyed principles. It appears that English grammar contains an implicit understanding that everybody has the right to their personal routine that involves having breakfast (my breakfast) or dinner (my dinner) in a particular way, or e.g. reading (my newspaper). It is bad when the routine is disturbed by others.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) sense of entitlement, (T) English
Published on August 7, 2017. Last updated on February 16, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2018). “Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 487-514. DOI: 10.1515/ip-2018-0017
Terms like to joke (and joking) and to tease (and teasing) have a curious double life in contrastive and interactional pragmatics and related fields. Occasionally they are studied as metapragmatic terms of ordinary English, along with related expressions such as kidding. More commonly they are used as scientific or technical categories, both for research into English and for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Related English adjectives such as jocular and mock are also much used in a growing lexicon of compound terms, such as jocular abuse, mock abuse, jocular mockery, and the like.
Against this background, the present paper has three main aims.
In the first part, it is argued that the meanings of the verbs to joke and to tease (and related nouns) are much more English-specific than is commonly recognized. They are not precisely cross-translatable even into European languages such as French and German. Adopting such terms as baseline categories for cross-cultural comparison therefore risks introducing an Anglocentric bias into our theoretical vocabulary. Nor can the problem be easily solved by attributing technical meanings to the terms.
Detailed analysis of the everyday meanings of words like joking and teasing, on the other hand, can yield insights into the ethnopragmatics of Anglo conversational humour. This task is undertaken in the second part of the paper. The important English verb to kid and the common conversational formulas just kidding and only joking are also examined. The semantic methodology used is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach.
Building on the NSM analyses, the third part of the paper considers whether it is possible to construct a typological framework for conversational humour based on cross-translatable terminology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amusing, (E) funny, (E) humour, (E) joke, (E) kid, (E) laugh, (E) tease, (T) English
Published on October 18, 2018. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Sadow, Lauren (2018). Can cultural scripts be used for teaching interactional norms? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 91-116. DOI: 10.1075/aral.17030.sad
Although improving the teaching of invisible culture is a recognized need in the TESOL sector, no systematic approach has been developed yet for this purpose, in spite of scholarly calls for a more nuanced focus in classrooms and evidence that teachers are willing to apply such an approach. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between theory and pedagogical need by suggesting that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a useful tool in ELT through which resources for teachers and learners can be developed. In particular, it discusses the results of a pilot study into using cultural scripts to teach cultural norms, demonstrating how they can be applied to classroom teaching situations, and discussing how materials can be developed from the theories.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) disagreement, (S) doing what one wants, (S) saying what one wants
Published on September 25, 2018. Last updated on September 25, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2018). A semantic menagerie: The conceptual semantics of ethnozoological categories. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 539-559. DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-3-539-559. PDF (open access)
This paper proposes and discusses a set of semantic analyses of words from three different levels of the English ethnozoological taxonomic hierarchy: creature (unique beginner), bird, fish, snake, and animal (life-form level), dog and kangaroo (generic level). The analytical framework is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Though ultimately resting on the foundational elements of the NSM system, i.e. 65 semantic primes and their inherent grammar of combination, the analysis relies on the analytical concepts of semantic molecules and semantic templates. These provide mechanisms for encapsulating semantic complexity and for modelling relations between successive layers of the hierarchy. Other issues considered include the extent to which cultural components feature in the semantics of ethnozoological categories, and the extent to which semantic knowledge may vary across different speech communities.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) animals, (E) birds, (E) creatures, (E) dogs, (E) eggs, (E) feathers, (E) fish, (E) kangaroos, (E) snakes, (E) wings, (T) English
Published on August 3, 2020. Last updated on August 3, 2020.
Dziedziul, Paweł (2018). Contronymy and semantic primes. Crossroads: a Journal of English Studies, 21(2), 26-41.
DOI: https://doi.org/0.15290/cr.2018.21.2.03
Abstract:
Contronymy, that is sense opposition invoked by one word, can pose a serious conundrum from a theoretical standpoint. Nonetheless, the prime concern of this paper is to introduce the phenomenon into a broader discussion within theoretical linguistics. To be more specific, the question at hand is: what kind of comprehensive and coherent theoretical construct can be adequate for semantic representation of contronymy? It will be demonstrated that the particular sense opposition can be classified as being linked with direct negation. A theoretical vantage point will be presented that addresses the cause of opposition via the means of NSM theory. This approach may shed some light on how to deal with the problem from a cognitive perspective. The underlying methodological assumptions of the presented framework, based on the idea of semantic primes, prove to be a coherent tool for encapsulating radical sense opposition manifested by contronyms. As an addendum to this prolegomena there will also be presented a brief discussion of some of the implications of contronymy for fields such as the theory of the human mind, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, machine translations and big data structures.
Rating:
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) periodic, (E) screen
Published on September 25, 2018. Last updated on September 25, 2018.
Wong, Jock Onn (2018). The semantics of logical connectors: therefore, moreover and in fact. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 581-604. DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-3-581-604. PDF (open access)
When teaching English words, teachers and textbooks may place more emphasis on “content” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) than on words that contribute to the “textual” aspect of English, such as logical connectors. A consequence is that even if a student has some mastery of grammar and the use of “content” words, they may not be able to produce cohesive texts or construct logical relations.
Teaching the meanings of logical connectors is not easy, and the traditional use of synonyms and examples of use are not always helpful. Using synonyms in English or supposedly equivalents in the student’s first language is not ideal because the student may end up understanding the word from the perspective of another word or, worse, another language. Using examples of use may be helpful to a certain extent but this method does not spell out the invariant meaning of the logical connector in question and students are expected to draw their own conclusions on the basis of a few examples.
To overcome such pedagogic obstacles, some scholars advocate the use of a maximally clear and minimally ethnocentric metalanguage, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), to capture word meaning. In this paper, the NSM methodology, founded by Anna Wierzbicka, is used to capture the meaning of three logical connectors, therefore, moreover and in fact, for English language teaching purposes.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) in fact, (E) moreover, (E) therefore
Published on November 19, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Mooney, Annabelle (2018). Torture laid bare: Global English and human rights. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 143-167). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_7
The prohibition against torture is a well settled, absolute right in international law and human rights. As such, it presents an ideal case to understand what is at stake in human rights generally. The chapter considers the definitions of ‘torture’ contained in the UN Convention Against Torture and the Rome Statute, and then attempts to distill their essence into clear explanatory texts in Minimal English. This offers a way of thinking about the being at the heart of human rights: the human person.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) cruel treatment, (E) degrading treatment, (E) inhuman treatment, (E) torture
Published on November 19, 2017. Last updated on September 5, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). Talking about the universe in Minimal English: Teaching science through words that children can understand. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 169-200). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_8
Science education faces many challenges, not least that of rendering the key propositions into language that children can readily understand. This chapter applies Minimal English to a canonical science education narrative about changing scientific and pre-scientific understandings of the universe. It attempts to capture the key beliefs and mindsets associated with the views of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Galileo, with a look ahead to the possibilities of further advances in scientific thinking about the cosmos.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (living) creature, (E) day and night, (E) earth, (E) moon, (E) sky, (E) stars, (E) sun, (T) English, (T) semantic molecules
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2018). (White) lies and (pieux) mensonges: Ethnolinguistic elaborations on not telling the truth. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 169-188. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.169. PDF (open access)
The fact that most European languages have a word similar to the verb lie has led many to believe that lying is a universal cognitive category, that all human beings have an intuitive understanding of what it means to lie, and that all forms of discourse involving a lack of truth can be analysed as forms of lying, wherever they occur. This is a myth. Within Europe itself, there are differences, and these become more outspoken once we move further away. Even a Melanesian creole such as Bislama, in spite of being English-based, has no strict equivalent to the verb lie; the closest it gets is by means of the verb giaman, which, unlike lie, refers to a fairly common, sometimes even a necessary course of action.
On the other hand, whereas, at least from an Anglo point of view, lying is mostly felt to be morally reprehensible, there are instances that are not as straightforward. In English, lies that are deemed less bad than others are often referred to as white lies. Other terms exist, but this one is by far the commonest and has a high degree of cultural salience. Does the concept exist in other languages, e.g. French? The phrase pieux mensonge comes to mind. White lies and pieux mensonges are shown to be overlapping categories, but carry different connotations, which are spelled out using a tool known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) lie, (E) pieux mensonge, (E) white lie, (S) truth and untruth
Published on May 4, 2018. Last updated on August 21, 2018.
Bolin, Mary (2018). Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Primes, universals, and syntax with data from the semantic field Grace in the Old Testaments of the King James Bible and Martin Luther’s German Bible. University of Nebraska, Lincoln: Faculty Publications. PDF (open access)
This study looks at semantic analysis through the lens of NSM as described by Wierzbicka and others, showing how primes combine syntactically to make culture. The focus is on the semantic field Grace in the Bible’s Old Testament, both in German and English, and on how this field can be analysed using NSM. The explications are preliminary and could be extensively overhauled and edited to make them clearer, more exhaustive, and more contrastive. NSM analysis both confirms things about this data that were already shown by previous analyses, and provides further insights. The optimism, tenaciousness, and forthrightness of this approach make it intriguing and promising and the staunch empiricism of NSM researchers provides a lot of evidence that can be evaluated and used.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) Barmherzigkeit, (E) compassion, (E) Erbarmen, (E) favour, (E) Gnade, (E) God, (E) grace, (E) Gunst, (E) Güte, (E) kindness, (E) mercy, (E) pity
Published on May 27, 2019. Last updated on July 25, 2020.
Habib, Sandy (2018). Heaven and hell: A cross-linguistic semantic template for supernatural places. RASK, 48, 1–34.
Open access
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to devise a cross-linguistic semantic template for supernatural place terms. To achieve this objective, six supernatural place concepts were analysed, and an explication for each concept was built. Comparing the explications yielded a seven-part semantic template. The usefulness of this semantic template is threefold. First, it eases the task of explicating supernatural place concepts because the parts of the template can serve as guidelines to be followed while constructing the explications. Second, it makes it easier to compare related supernatural place concepts from different languages. Third, it unveils the devices that are embodied in the structure of supernatural place concepts and that enable people to use these complex concepts without difficulty.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) aljanna, (E) gan eden, (E) geyhinom, (E) heaven, (E) hell, (E) jahannam
Published on August 7, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2018). The cultural semantics of address practices: A contrastive study between English and Italian. Lanham: Lexington.
Abstract:
This book presents a contrastive analysis of various forms of address used in English and Italian from the perspective of cultural semantics, the branch of linguistics that investigates the relationship between meaning and culture in discourse. The objects of the analysis are the interactional meanings expressed by different forms of address in these two languages, which are compared adopting the methodology of the NSM approach. The forms analysed include greetings, titles and opening and closing salutations used in letters and e-mails in the two languages. Noticeably, the book presents the first complete categorization of Italian titles used as forms of address ever made on the basis of precise semantic criteria.
The analysis also investigates the different cultural values and assumptions underlying address practices in English and Italian, and emphasizes the risks of miscommunication caused by different address practices in intercultural interactions. Every chapter presents numerous examples taken from language corpora, contemporary English and Italian literature and personal e-mails and letters.
The book encourages a new, innovative approach to the analysis of forms of address: it proposes a new analytical method for the analysis of forms of address which can be applied to the study of other languages systematically. In addition, the book emphasizes the role of culture in address practices and takes meaning as the basis for understanding the differences in use across languages and the difficulties in translating forms of address of different languages. Combining semantics, ethnopragmatics, intercultural communication and translation theory, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach and brings together various fields in the social sciences: linguistics, anthropology, cross-cultural studies and sociology.
Table of contents:
- Analyzing address practices from a cultural semantic point of view
- “Sorry boss”: an unrecognized category of English address nouns
- “Prego, signore”: the semantics of Italian “titles” used to address people
- “Hi, how are you?”
- “Ciao!” or “ciao ciao”?
- “Dear customers, …”
- “Caro Mario,” “Gentile cliente,” “Egregio dottore”
- “Best wishes,” “kind regards,” “yours sincerely”
- “Distinti,” “cordiali,” “affettuosi saluti”
- Italian cultural scripts for address practices
- Australian cultural scripts for address practices
- Address practices in intercultural communication
- Concluding remarks
More information:
Revised version of the author’s PhD thesis, Australian National University (2017).
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (titles of address), (E) a presto, (E) affettuosi saluti, (E) affettuoso, (E) all best, (E) all the best, (E) best, (E) best regards, (E) best wishes, (E) caro, (E) ciao, (E) ciao ciao, (E) cordiali saluti, (E) cordialmente, (E) dear, (E) distinti saluti, (E) egregio, (E) gentile, (E) hi, (E) kind, (E) kind regards, (E) regards, (E) saluti, (E) signora, (E) signore, (E) signori, (E) signorina, (E) simpatico, (E) sincerely, (E) un bacio, (E) un caro saluto, (E) un saluto, (E) vabbè, (E) vabbene, (E) warmest wishes, (E) yours, (E) yours sincerely, (S) address practices, (T) Italian
Published on December 10, 2019. Last updated on December 10, 2019.
Biegajło, Bartłomiej (2018). Totalitarian (in)experience in literary works and their translations: between East and West. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Abstract:
This book explores the different images of totalitarianism in 20th century literature and the capacity of NSM to be adopted in a comparative literary study in the analysis of four totalitarian literary works written in Polish and English, together with their translation into English and Polish respectively. The key question addressed here is the totalitarian experience, which, it is assumed, conditions the literary reflections of the regime provided by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Czesław Miłosz and Tadeusz Konwicki. Brief biographical details are provided with regards to each of the writers and their private experiences are linked with the works they published. Additionally, key concepts are named for each of the works subject to discussion, and it is their cross-linguistic analysis carried out within the NSM framework that forms the core of the book.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Published on August 20, 2018. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). How much longer can the Berlin and Kay paradigm dominate visual semantics? English, Russian and Warlpiri seen ‘from the native’s point of view’. In Diana Young (Ed.), Rematerializing colour: From concept to substance (pp. 67-90). Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing.
Abstract:
How does the outsider linguist find out if speakers of another language have colour terms? Using the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri as a starting point, the author argues that interpretation of the patterns of names produced in response to stimuli (such as Munsell colour chips) is difficult, and one has to take care not to assign English terms to those patterns. That is, in trying to interpret what a word means, we cannot assume that kardirri means ‘white’, because speakers produced this word when looking at chips with colours that English speakers might call ‘white’. The focus here is on determining the senses (intensions) of words – that is, on finding language-specific categories. The Warlpiri lack a word approximating the English word ‘colour’. It is claimed that, if speakers do not have a word for a category such as colour, it is hard to say that in their minds they see the world in terms of a cognitive category ‘colour’ (which is not to deny that they have colour vision).
Examination of dictionary entries in the Warlpiri-English Dictionary establishes the importance of the properties ‘visual conspicuousness’ (the startling pink prunus trees), ‘things shining somewhere’ (sunlight gleaming on the white cockatoos), ‘visual contrasts within an object’ (the dappled pink and green of the japonica hedge), and creating colour reference by comparison with things in the world around (kunjuru ‘smoke’, kunjuru-kunjuru ‘like smoke’, a term conventionally applied to smoke-coloured things). However, even though the Dictionary is a good starting-place for raising such hypotheses, it cannot help us test them, since it is a collection of all words, with little comment on whether they are used frequently or not, and since the words come from several dialects.
The author argues against using the word ‘colour’ in the English definitions and translations in the dictionary, because this creates or reinforces a belief that the Warlpiri have a linguistic category of ‘colour’.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kunjuru-kunjuru, (E) sky, (E) yukuri-yukuri, (T) English
Published on September 30, 2018. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Bromhead, Helen (2018). Landscape and culture – Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/clscc.9
This book is based, in part, on the author’s PhD thesis:
Bromhead, Helen (2013). Mountains, rivers, billabongs: Ethnogeographical categorization in cross-linguistic perspective. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
The relationship between landscape and culture seen through language is an exciting and increasingly explored area. This ground-breaking book contributes to the linguistic examination of both cross-cultural variation and unifying elements in geographical categorization.
The study focuses on the contrastive lexical semantics of certain landscape words in a number of languages. It presents landscape concepts as anchored in a human-centred perspective, based on our cognition, vision, and experience in places. The aim is to show how geographical vocabulary sheds light on the culturally and historically shaped ways people see and think about the land around them. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used throughout, because it allows an analysis of meaning which is both fine-grained and transparent, and culturally sensitive.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bay, (E) beach, (E) billabong, (E) bush, (E) cliff, (E) coast, (E) cordillera, (E) cove, (E) creek, (E) dam, (E) desert, (E) field, (E) fleuve, (E) harbour, (E) hill, (E) hills, (E) inlet, (E) island, (E) karu, (E) meadow, (E) mountain, (E) mountain range, (E) mountains, (E) nyaru, (E) ocean, (E) paddock, (E) peninsula, (E) pila, (E) precipice, (E) puli, (E) puti, (E) river, (E) rivière, (E) sea, (E) seaside, (E) shore, (E) sierra, (E) stream, (E) tali, (E) the bush, (E) tjukitji
Published on August 1, 2018. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Jaworska, Anna (2018). NSM exponents of mental predicates in French: Translation, commentary, and lexical elaboration of THINK. Folio: A Students’ Journal, 4, 29-62. PDF (open access)
This paper is devoted to the NSM exponents of “mental predicates” in French. The aim of the study is to examine how NSM applies to French. The paper focuses on a French translation of 99 canonical sentences (formulated in English) and discusses major difficulties in translating those sentences (in the section “Mental Predicates”) into French.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on April 2, 2018. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Martín Arista, Javier (2018). The semantic poles of Old English: Toward the 3D representation of complex polysemy. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 33(1), 96-111. DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqx004
This article, which attempts to explain some aspects of verbal polysemy in Old English, develops its main claims with reference to NSM primes belonging to different categories (mental predicates, speech, actions/events/movement/contact, location/existence/possession/specification, life and death). It does not proceed to the identification of potential exponents, except in the case of the prime TRUE.
No rating is applied, since there is no engagement with NSM as a tool for semantic explication.
Published on November 19, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Farrelly, Nicholas, & Wesley, Michael (2018). Internationalizing Minimal English: Perils and parallels. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 95-112). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_5
This chapter links the development of Minimal English to the concerns of practitioners and analysts of international affairs. Using examples from the Asian region, the authors suggest that, in this new era of multipolar intercultural relations, the need for neutral languages for coordination is greater than ever. A case study of US–China relations shows that using English in ways that do not acknowledge its heavy cultural and power baggage can invite misunderstanding and resistance. The authors argue that Minimal English offers a chance to move from a mode of domination and socialization to a mode of coordination and renegotiation.
The rating below relates to the explications, which were developed by Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard, and Zhengdao Ye.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) big countries, (E) big countries need to "go further", (E) China, (E) international system, (E) promoting the national interest
Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Wierzbicka, Anna. (2018). Polskie słowo Boże w perspektywie porównawczej [The Polish word God in comparative perspective]. In Jolanta Chojak and Zofia Zaron (eds.) Ku rzeczom niebłahym, 221–234. Wydanie I, Warszawa: BEL Studio.
Written in Polish
Abstract
All European languages have a word for God, and this word means exactly the same in all of them. But when it comes to addressing God, the situation is very different. Speakers of different European languages tend to relate to God in different ways. Each group has its own characteristic ways of addressing God, encoded in certain words, phrases and grammatical forms. These words, phrases, and grammatical forms both reflect and shape the speakers’ habitual way of thinking about God and relating to God. Often, they also reflect some other aspects of their cultural memory and historical experience. This paper is about the Polish vocative Boże, commonly used in Polish to address God in prayer. The paper discusses the meaning of this vocative comparing it with addressative expressions such as O God in English, Mon Dieu in French and Gospodi in Russian, within the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Boże!, (E) Dieu, (E) God, (E) O God, (E) Panie, (E) Господи (Gospodi)
