Browsing results for Indo-European

(2020) Chinese (Cantonese), English – Intonational morphology [BOOK]

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 9, 2020.

Wakefield, John C. (2020). Intonational morphology. Singapore, Springer, 2020.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2265-9

Abstract:

This book discusses the morphological properties of intonation, building on past research to support the long-recognized relationship between the functions and meanings of discourse particles and the functions and meanings of intonation. The morphological status of intonation has been debated for decades, and this book provides evidence from the literature combined with new and compelling empirical evidence to show that specific intonational forms correspond to specific segmental discourse particles. It also describes how intonation is represented in speakers’ minds, which has important implications for first and second language acquisition as well as for theories and approaches to artificial speech recognition and production.

Chapter 6 of the book presents evidence that strongly indicates that six Cantonese sentence-final particles (SFPs) have English intonational equivalents. These six SFPs divide into three pairs of related particles: the evidential particles 咯 lo1 and 吖吗 aa1maa3; the question particles 咩 me1 and 呀 aa4; and the “only” particles zaa3 and ze1. Each SFP’s meaning is described and an NSM explication of it is presented before showing and discussing the data related to its English equivalent. The data comprise Cantonese-to-English oral translations and their accompanying F0 contours. The translators were ambilingual speakers of L1 Cantonese and L1 English. Based on the fact that each SFP translated into English as the same form of intonation by more than one ambilingual translator in more than one context, it is assumed that the definition given to each SFP also applies to its English intonational equivalent. It is further proposed that these English forms of intonation are tonal morphemes that reside in native-English speakers’ lexicons.

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(2020) Danish – Grammatical categories & constructions

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on August 18, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten (2020). Postcolonial prepositions: semantics and popular geopolitics in the Danosphere. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 169-186). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_9

Abstract:

This study breaks new ground in the semantics of ‘popular geopolitics’. With a case study on two Danish prepositions, i and på, both of which are important for the Danish construal of Greenland, the study develops a new analysis of the popular geopolitics that guide Danish ways of thinking about Greenland. Empirically, the study relies on evidence from social media discourse, which is subjected to the NSM method of analysis. The aim is to provide semantic explications for the two prepositional phrases i Grønland ‘in Greenland’ and på Grønland ‘on Greenland’, and to articulate the cultural scripts that allow speakers to ascribe geopolitical meaning to these prepositions. Drawing on Goddard’s seminal work on spatial semantics, place constructs and ethnopragmatics, the paper develops a postcolonial semantic account of Danish ‘preposition talk’. It is shown that the two prepositions have come to stand for two different Danish attitudes towards Greenland, in short, the på-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland’s ‘Islandness’, and the i-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland as a country among other countries.

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(2020) English – Cultural key words

Published on February 16, 2019. Last updated on February 9, 2020.

Goddard, Cliff (2020). ‘Country’, ‘land’, ‘nation’: Key Anglo English words for talking and thinking about people in places. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 1(2), 8-27.

Abstract:

This is a corpus-assisted, lexical-semantic study of the English words ‘country’, ‘land’ and ‘nation’, using the NSM technique of paraphrase in terms of simple, cross-translatable words. The importance of these words and their derivatives in Anglophone public and political discourses is obvious. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that without the support of words like these, discourses of nationalism, patriotism, immigration, international affairs, land rights, and post/anti-colonialism would be literally impossible.

The study builds on Anna Wierzbicka’s (1997) seminal study of “homeland” and related concepts in European languages, as well as more recent NSM work that has explored ways in which discursively powerful words encapsulate historically and culturally contingent assumptions about relationships between people and places. The primary focus is on conceptual analysis, lexical polysemy, phraseology and discursive formation in mainstream Anglo English, but the study also touches on one specifically Australian phenomenon, which is the use of country in a distinctive sense which originated in Aboriginal English, e.g. in expressions like my grandfather’s country and looking after country. This highlights how Anglo English words can be semantically “re-purposed” in postcolonial and anti-colonial discourses.

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(2020) English (Australia) – Lexicography

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Sadow, Lauren (2020). Principles and prototypes of a cultural dictionary of Australian English for learners. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 165-190). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_9

Abstract:

This chapter discusses some of the issues that need to be considered when producing a user-friendly resource intended to familiarize ESL learners with the invisible culture of Australian English. It draws on specialized function lexicography and on the cultural scripts approach as proposed by Goddard. The resource takes the form of an encyclopedic dictionary focusing on Australian values, attitudes and interactional norms and aims to respond to an industry need for pedagogical materials that introduce migrants coming to Australia to the culture embodied in Australian English. Best practice for teaching cultural awareness and related skills is to use a method for teaching that encourages students to reflect on their experience and to analyse it from an insider or emic perspective. The cultural scripts approach, which deconstructs complex cultural elements into simpler and universally intelligible building blocks, provides an effective means to this end. The chapter contends that drawing connections between different cultural scripts and illustrating those connections in a way that promotes the acquisition of concepts for learners is one of the most important elements in cultural dictionary design.

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(2020) English (UK) – Cultural key words

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on July 28, 2020.

Butter, Stella; Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2020). The comfort of home as an ethical value in Mike Packer’s Inheritance. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 85-101). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_5

Abstract:

The loss of, and search for, comfort is at the heart of the 2010 social realist play Inheritance, in which the English dramatist Mike Packer explores the burst of the housing bubble in England by depicting the declining fortunes of a family. The pensioner Harry decides to buy his council house as an inheritance for his sons, but when the economic recession hits, the house is lost. This chapter gauges how the play negotiates meanings and sources of comfort by linking them with the theme of home. Packer’s play is notable for the way it connects the
characters’ understanding of comfort with specific forms of subjectivity, highlighting in particular how comfort may be understood as an ethical value and how neoliberal subjects reduce such ethical comfort to a sensuous appeasement achieved through appropriate technological devices. In order to tease out different dimensions and meanings of comfort in the play, we adopt an interdisciplinary approach, conjoining literary studies and linguistics. In presenting our results, we rely heavily on the method of semantic analysis known as the NSM approach. The interdisciplinary analysis is presented as a first step towards establishing the heuristic value of NSM methodology for enriching the study of literary negotiations of meanings and values while also showing how the inclusion of literary texts in NSM studies helps trace semantic meaning transformations in the wake of changing life worlds.

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(2020) English, Australian Aboriginal English, Bislama – Shame

Published on November 22, 2020. Last updated on November 22, 2020.

Peeters, Bert (2020). Language Makes a Difference: Breaking the Barrier of Shame. Lublin Studies in Modern Language and Literature,  44(1), 27-37.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.1.27-37 (Open Access)

Abstract:
This paper argues against the reification of shame and the use of Anglocentric jargon to explain what it entails. It shows how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage can be used to define shame and set it apart from related concepts in Australian Aboriginal English and in Bislama, an English creole spoken in Vanuatu.

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(2020) English, French – Laughing with others

Published on February 16, 2019. Last updated on November 11, 2020.

Goddard, Cliff, & Kerry Mullan (2020). Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humor studies). Humor, 33(1), 55-77.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2017-0114

Abstract:

This study undertakes a contrastive lexical-semantic analysis of a set of related verbs in English and French (English to joke and to kid, French rigoler and plaisanter), using the NSM approach to semantic analysis. We show that the semantic and conceptual differences between French and English are greater than commonly assumed. These differences, we argue, have significant implications for humor studies: first, they shed light on different cultural orientations towards “laughter talk” in Anglo and French linguacultures; second, they highlight the danger of conceptual Anglocentrism in relying on English-specific words as a theoretical vocabulary for humor studies.

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(2020) English, Italian – Ethnopragmatics

Published on February 9, 2020. Last updated on February 9, 2020.

Farese, Gian Marco (2020). The ethnopragmatics of English understatement and Italian exaggeration: Clashing cultural scripts for the expression of personal opinions. In Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 1. Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis (pp. 59-73). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_4

Abstract:

This chapter presents a cultural semantic analysis of the differences in the expression of personal opinions between English and Italian. In English, personal opinions are generally understated, whereas speakers of Italian tend to purposely exaggerate when making a statement. As one might expect, opposite communicative styles can lead to cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions. Such cases can be avoided if language learners are provided with efficient tools, which can help them improve their cross-cultural awareness and competence. Adopting the approach of ethnopragmatics, this chapter proposes the theory of cultural scripts as the optimal pedagogical tool to pinpoint the differences in the expression of personal opinions between English and Italian and show how scripts can be used effectively for cross-cultural training.

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(2020) English, Italian, Japanese – NSM

Published on November 9, 2020. Last updated on November 22, 2020.

Farese, Gian Marco (2020). ‘Changing’ and ‘becoming’: new perspectives from cross-linguistic cognitive semantics. Cognitive Semantics, 6, 214-242.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-bja10009

Abstract:

This paper examines the conceptual and semantic relation between ‘changing’ and ‘becoming’ in cross-linguistic perspective to demonstrate that: (i) the assumption that ‘becoming’ is conceptually and semantically related to ‘changing’ is invalidated in at least two cases in which the meaning of ‘becoming’ does not encompass ‘changing’; (ii) the main verbs of ‘becoming’ in different languages are highly polysemous and therefore not cross-translatable in all contexts of use; (iii) differences in meaning reflect different conceptualizations of ‘becoming’ across languages. These results emerge from a contrastive semantic analysis between the main verbs of ‘changing’ and ‘becoming’ in English (change, become), Italian (cambiare, diventare) and Japanese (なるnaru) adopting NSM methodology. This paper also makes a strong case for the epistemic nature of the predicative complements licensed by verbs of ‘becoming’ by showing that a semantic component ‘it is like this, I know it’ emerges consistently from cross-linguistic comparison.

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(2020) English, Russian – Cultural key words

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on November 22, 2020.

Gladkova, Anna (2020). When value words cross cultural borders: English tolerant versus Russian tolerantnyj. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 73-93). Singapore: Springer.

DOI:

Abstract:

This chapter investigates the situation of language change in contemporary Russian with a particular focus on value words. Using data from the Russian National Corpus, it analyses the meaning of the word толерантный tolerantnyj, which has been borrowed from English. It compares its meaning with the English tolerant as a source of borrowing and the traditional Russian term tерпимый terpimyj. The chapter demonstrates a shift in meaning in the borrowed term, which allows it to accommodate to the Russian value system. The meanings of the terms in question are formulated using universal meanings employed in Minimal English, which makes the comparison transparent and explicit.

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(2020) French — Humour

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Waters, Sophia. (2020). The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter. European Journal of Humour Research 8 (4) 31–47

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2020.8.4.Waters

Abstract

This study presents a lexical semantic analysis of the French verb blaguer and related expressions. This verb belongs to a suite of “French humour practices”, and French-English dictionaries translate it as ‘to joke’. However, Anglo-specific terminology such as “joke” does not match the conceptual semantics of blaguer and its related noun blague. Relying on Anglo- specific terms to categorise culture-specific practices perpetuates conceptual and terminological Anglocentrism. This study furthers the call to avoid the dangers of sustaining Anglocentrism in the theoretical vocabulary of humour studies (Goddard & Mullan 2020; Goddard 2018; Wierzbicka 2014a).
Working from the assumption that semantic categories reflect particular ways of speaking, thinking, and behaving, this study’s goal is to capture the insider perspective that French speakers have about the meaning of the verb blaguer and the noun blague. Making local understandings more obvious and accessible to cultural and linguistic outsiders will increase cross-cultural understanding and foster appreciation for the different ways that speakers construct and interpret their world with words (Levisen & Waters 2017).
The analytical tool for this study is the technique of semantic explication couched in the simple cross-translatable and culture-neutral words of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014). Carefully chosen example sentences are drawn from Google searches (google.fr) of authentic language use of the verb blaguer and the noun blague. Comparative reference is made to the verb ‘to joke’ from Australian English to highlight the differences in the conversational humour cultures of French and English speakers (Goddard & Mullan 2020; Béal & Mullan 2013, 2017).

 


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(2020) Humour

Published on August 19, 2021. Last updated on August 19, 2021.

Goddard, Cliff. (2020). De-Anglicising humour studies. European Journal of Humour Research 8(4): 48–58

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2020.8.4.Goddard

 

Abstract:

This Commentary has two main aims. The first is to argue that systematic approaches to “humour” have been hampered and skewed by terminological Anglocentrism, i.e. by reliance on terms and categories which are English-specific, such as ‘amusing’, ‘joking’, ‘serious’, and ‘mock’, and even by the banner term ‘humour’ itself. Though some humour scholars have recognised this problem, I contend that they have under-estimated its severity. Anglocentric terminology not only interferes with effective communication within the field: it affects our research agendas, methodologies, and theoretical framings. Needless to say, humour studies is not alone in facing this predicament, which at its largest can be described as the global Anglicisation of humanities and social science discourse.

While calls to make humour studies more conceptually pluralistic are laudable, they cannot fully succeed while ‘full’ Anglo English remains the dominant scholarly lingua franca. The second aim of this paper is to argue that considerable progress can be made by “de- Anglicising English” from within, using a newly developed approach known as Minimal English. This allows re-thinking and re-framing humour terminology and agendas using a small vocabulary of simple cross-translatable English words, i.e. words which carry with them a minimum of Anglo conceptual baggage. For illustrative purposes, I will discuss how complex terms such as ‘wit, wittiness’ and ‘fantasy/absurd humour’ can be clarified and de- Anglicised using Minimal English.

 


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(2020) Minimal English – Health & Narrative Medicine, Autism

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on November 22, 2020.

Forbes, Alexander (2020). Using Minimal English to model a parental understanding of autism. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 191-212). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_8

Abstract:

The challenges faced by families of children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have been well-studied, as have the impacts on the family of this diagnosis. What a parent prototypically thinks when confronted with the word ‘autism’, however, has not been well-studied. This study reviewed liter- ature and examined multiple texts in order to posit two cognitive models held by the prototypical parent of an autistic child. These cognitive models are expressed in Minimal English, allowing readers to ‘get inside the head’ of a prototypical parent who hears that ‘X has autism’. Two scripts (cognitive models) are provided in this study: one noting perceptions of the autistic person and the other noting perceptions of other parents of autistic children. Script 1 reveals how the prototypical parent of an autistic child perceives an autistic person in relation to other people, including how the autistic person thinks, does things, feels and interacts with other people. It further describes how this prototypical parent assumes others perceive autistic people, and how the prototypical parent may want to do things in a particular way with an autistic person as opposed to non-autistic people. Script 2 reveals how the prototypical parent thinks of the parents of an autistic child, including assumptions of shared experiences, social isolation, and fear for the future. This innovative study breaks ground in the use of Minimal English and offers a new way forward for representing prototypical understandings of concepts.

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(2020) Minimal English – Lexicography

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on June 19, 2020.

Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora (2020). Minimal and inverse definitions: A semi-experimental proposal for compiling a Spanish dictionary with semantic primes and molecules. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 191-212). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_10

Abstract:

This chapter reflects on the possibility of compiling a dictionary largely based on a metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules, using a type of definitions that I call ‘minimal and inverse’. It describes progress to date against the backdrop of two research projects I have been associated with in the last few years.

The first one is a collaborative project that has to date involved ninety student researchers working towards an NSM-based learning tool for students of Spanish as a second/foreign language. To find out whether NSM definitions could be put to good use in language learning materials, the student researchers have been subjecting different groups of informants to a number of test definitions over a period
of two academic years.

The second project, running in parallel with the first, is a pilot study, carried out by myself, towards a Spanish dictionary consisting of
minimal and inverse definitions. More than one hundred definitions have so far been constructed, essentially out of semantic primes and molecules. All have been tested on different groups of informants, but only sixty definitions have been found to be satisfactory.

The chapter includes an analysis of some of the data and a discussion of a range of methodological issues. Its main finding is that, on current
expectations, not only is it possible to build a small dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules using minimal and inverse definitions, but it can be extremely rewarding to engage in such a venture in the context of a collaborative project with student researchers.

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