Browsing results for Romance Languages
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2000). “S’engager” vs “to show restraint”: Linguistic and cultural relativity in discourse management. In Susanne Niemeier, & René Dirven (Eds.), Evidence for linguistic relativity (pp. 193-222). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/cilt.198.13pee
If ways of speaking are determined by the cultural values of a speech community, then it must be possible to find examples of communicative patterns reflecting such values. Taking this hypothesis as a starting point, the author analyses expressions supporting the existence of opposing cultural values in French and (Australian) English.
The French ideal is one of “engagement” in the interest of defending individual expression from the pressures of social constraint, whereas the Anglo-Saxon ideal is “not to commit oneself” in the interest of avoiding the risks associated with erroneous opinions and getting involved in other people’s business. Evidence for these orientations at the cultural level is found in each culture in a series of common evaluative expressions deployed by each group with respect to engagement and commitment. These differences in communicative ideology are then related to actual communicative norms such as patterns of interruption and to observed patterns of intercultural misunderstanding.
An earlier version of this chapter was published in 1998 and reissued (unchanged) in 2006 in the LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 451. PDF (open access)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) but, (E) mais, (E) well, (S) discourse interaction, (S) engagement, (S) interrupting, (S) restraint, (T) French
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Maher, Brigid (2000). *Le gabbiette or the caged concepts of human thought: An Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. BA(Hons) thesis, Australian National University.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2001). Sabar, ikhlas, setia – patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘virtues’ in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(5), 653-681. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00028-X
The words sabar, ikhlas, and setia arguably identify core personal virtues in traditional Malay culture. Using Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach, this paper undertakes a contrastive semantic analysis of these terms and their usual English translations, such as patient, sincere, and loyal. A number of significant meaning differences are brought to light, allowing an improved understanding of the cultural semantics of the Malay concepts.
Tags: (E) devoted, (E) faithful, (E) ikhlas, (E) insincerely, (E) loyal, (E) patient, (E) pietas, (E) sabar, (E) setia, (E) sincerely, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2002). Les constructions du type commencer un livre: état de la question et nouvelles perspectives [Constructions of the type commencer un livre: state of the art and new perspectives]. In Dominique Lagorgette, & Pierre Larrivée (Eds.), Représentations du sens linguistique (pp. 167-186). München: Lincom Europa.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Maher, Brigid (2002). Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory and some Italian speech act verbs. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the Pragmatics Society of Japan), 4, 33-48.
This paper examines some Italian speech act verbs, looking at how we can best express their meanings in an accurate way intelligible to people unfamiliar with Italian, but without falling into the trap of ethnocentrism. If we are to achieve a fruitful examination of speech act verbs, a framework for analysis is required, one that helps us to avoid the trap of ethnocentrism. The framework used in this paper is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (or NSM). It is shown that even a relatively brief examination of some Italian speech act verbs can provide an insight into some semantic, pragmatic, and cultural aspects of the Italian language. Even two quite closely related languages, such as English and Italian, differ considerably in the kinds of speech acts they require, and it is important to understand the exact meanings of these speech acts. Looking at the semantic composition of speech act verbs piece by piece, avoiding any reliance on complex culture-specific concepts, we gain not only a clearer insight into their meanings, but also into how speech acts can reflect cultural practices.
The paper also includes a slightly revised explication of the Japanese word on.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) on 恩, (E) raccomandare, (E) raccomandarsi, (E) salutare, (T) Italian
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2002). Un intento de aplicación del metalenguaje semántico natural a las fórmulas de tratamiento españolas [An attempt at applying Natural Semantic Metalanguage to Spanish address forms]. Estudios hispánicos, 10, 61-68.
Written in Spanish.
A lot has been written on address forms from a pragmatic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective. This short study is an attempt at providing a semantic analysis of some of the factors that impact on the use of nominal address forms in Spanish. Semantic components, expressed in a Spanish-based NSM, are provided, but focus on what is conveyed by the address forms – cordiality, spontaneity, emotionality, irony, machismo, etc. – as opposed to what specific address forms stand for.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (T) Spanish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Travis, Catherine (2002). La Metalengua Semántica Natural: The Natural Semantic Metalanguage of Spanish. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings, vol.1 (pp. 173-242). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.60.11tra
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 11, 2018.
Koselak, Arkadiusz (2003). Approche sémantique du concept de honte [A semantic approach of the concept of shame]. Pratiques, 117-118, 51-76. DOI: 10.3406/prati.2003.1995. PDF (free access)
Written in French.
The twofold aim of this paper is to characterize honte ‘shame’ as an emotion and to describe how it surfaces in some common French phrases. The approach is in part linguistic, in part non-linguistic. In the linguistic and more specifically semantic analysis of honte, the author takes his cue from different theoretical frameworks, including the NSM approach.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) coupable, (E) faire honte, (E) fier, (E) gêné, (E) honte, (E) shame
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Van Hecke, Tine (2003). Cultural scripts for French and Romanian thanking behaviour. In Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt, & Ken Turner (Eds.), Meaning through language contrast: Vol. 2 (pp. 237-250). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.100.15van
In her semantic dictionary of English speech act verbs, Wierzbicka (1987:214–215) proposes an all-round definition for the verb to thank that applies as well to the French and Romanian speech act verbs remercier and a mulţumi. However, in order to account for some differences between French and Romanian thanking behaviour, I propose to reduce it in some cases, and to further develop it in others.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Travis, Catherine (2003). The semantics of the Spanish subjunctive: Its use in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Cognitive Linguistics 14(1). 47-69. DOI: 10.1515/cogl.2003.002
This article presents an analysis of the Spanish subjunctive as it is used in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) of Spanish. One of the tenets of the NSM approach, as developed by Wierzbicka and colleagues, is its universality: that the lexicon and the syntactic patterns that comprise the metalanguage are found in all languages of the world. The use of the subjunctive in the NSM of Spanish potentially threatens the proposed “universal grammar” of NSM, as this form is not found in all languages and has a language-specific meaning. Following a discussion of the semantics of this form, I will consider the environments in which the subjunctive is used in the NSM of Spanish, namely with WANT (querer) with non-coreferential subjects, MAYBE (tal vez), NOT THINK (no pensar), and NOT KNOW (no saber). I will show that with WANT (querer) and NOT THINK (no pensar), the subjunctive does not encode a language-specific meaning, but is used to “index” a notion inherent in the proposition with which it occurs. With MAYBE (tal vez) and NOT KNOW (no saber), on the other hand, I will argue that the subjunctive does encode a language-specific meaning, and is therefore a more marked choice in these environments. The analysis shows that different syntactic structures across languages can be semantically equivalent, and the NSM notion of a “universal grammar” is supported.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Koselak, Arkadiusz (2004). Rêver: questions sémantiques [Dreaming: Semantic questions]. Le langage et l’homme, 39(1), 85-108.
Written in French.
This article looks at some of the semantic aspects of dreaming. After an introduction aimed at exploring the relationship between the etymology of the verb and the ethnology of the process, a description of the meanings of the French verb rêver is proposed, together with the supposedly prototypical conditions for the selection of each meaning. Lastly, we shall look at agentivity, a crucial parameter needed to establish the uniqueness of the verb in the paradigm of mental verbs. The study is set against the backdrop of the cognitive approach to language (broadly defined) and a Wierzbickian perspective is adopted.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2004). Commencer: la suite, mais pas encore la fin [Commencer: The next, but not the final, installment]. Journal of French language studies, 14(2), 149-168. DOI:10.1017/S0959269504001620
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Hughson, Jo-Anne (2004). The study of address pronouns in French and Spanish: A methodological review. Melbourne Papers in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 23-33.
This article surveys various methodological approaches, both traditional and innovative, that have been employed in the field of address pronoun research, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each method. A new methodological approach is then presented, combining quantitative, qualitative and theoretical modes with the intention of eliminating limitations previously encountered in address pronoun research. A description of the theoretical approach, Wierzbicka’s cultural script theory, is then presented and the method applied to data collected in previous studies of address pronoun use in French
and Spanish.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Travis, Catherine. E. (2004). The ethnopragmatics of the diminutive in conversational Colombian Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics 1(2). 249-274. DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.249
This paper considers the cultural values manifested in the use of the diminutive suffix -ito/-ita in a corpus of conversational Colombian Spanish. It will be demonstrated that this suffix is highly frequent (occurring approximately 600 times in the 70,000-word corpus), and that from its core uses in relation to children and expressing small size it has taken on the pragmatic functions of expressing affection, hedging speech acts and expressing contempt.
Wierzbicka has shown that the frequent use of the diminutive in languages such as Russian and Polish plays a valuable role in realizing the cultural goal of the expression of good feelings towards others. The same can be said of its use in Colombian Spanish, but analysis of the diminutive in conversation reveals that it goes beyond this to realize a range of essential cultural ideals in interaction. Based on a semantic analysis of some of the central uses of the diminutive, I propose a set of cultural scripts to capture the role played by the diminutive in a variety of speech events, scripts which form an important part of the basis for interaction in Colombian society.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2005). Commencer à + infinitif: métonymie intégrée et piste métaphorique [Commencer à + infinitive: Integrated metonymy and the metaphorical pathway]. In Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, & Nicole Le Querler (Eds.), Les périphrases verbales (pp. 381-396). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 11, 2018.
Koselak, Arkadiusz (2005). Quelle honte! Ale wstyd! Observations sémantiques sur quelques emplois de honte et de wstyd [Quelle honte! Ale wstyd! Semantic observations on a few uses of honte et wstyd]. Roczniki Humanistyczne, 53(5), 105-124.
Written in French.
This paper deals with the lexical expression of French honte and Polish wstyd (‘shame’), both through the two base words and through some of their derivatives. There are subtle differences between the two, in line with the cognitive and anthropological linguistics premise according to which language accounts for the construction of a worldview in a given culture. The author relies on a certain number of utterances in the two languages to compare honte and wstyd and identify what they share and what the differences are.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) honte, (E) honteux
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2005). Saudade, czyli portugalska tęsknota za czymś, co być mogło, a nie było [Saudade, or Portuguese longing for something that could be, and was not]. In Anna Duszak & Nina Pawlak (Eds.), Anatomia szczęścia: Emocje pozytywne w językach i kulturach świata (pp. 115-123). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Abstract:
The article contains an analysis of the meaning of the Portuguese word saudade, usually translated as Polish tęsknota, melancholia, nostalgia, English longing or yearning, German Sehnsucht, Spanish añoranza. Saudade describes a typical state of mind for the Portuguese, which they claim is untranslatable in other languages. This feeling, although it tends to be included among feelings of sadness, is indispensable to happiness for the Portuguese. If someone feels saudade, it means that they have found something good in their life, something they miss and would like to experience some more of. The component ‘I feel something good’ is very important for this concept. Saudade is also one of the main themes of Portuguese songs. The article investigates the word in various contexts of use and formulates a semantic explication expressed in Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
More information:
Written in Polish.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) saudade
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 18, 2018.
Travis, Catherine E. (2005). Discourse markers in Colombian Spanish: A study in polysemy. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This book, a revised version of the author’s PhD thesis (Latrobe University, Melbourne, 2001) presents a semantic analysis of a set of four functionally related discourse particles that are particularly frequent in conversational Colombian Spanish. A corpus of four hours of spontaneous conversation is used to study the markers bueno ‘well, OK’, pues ‘well, then’, o sea ‘I mean, that is to say’ and entonces ‘so, then’.
Through a detailed analysis of numerous examples drawn from the corpus, and employing both quantitative and qualitative techniques, it is demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, discourse particles are not just functional particles with indeterminate or context-based semantics. Rather, they have inherent meanings that can be identified and exhaustively defined with an appropriate semantic methodology, such as is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. This study illustrates that this approach, which has been widely applied to the semantics of the lexicon and the grammar, can be extended to the semantics of discourse-based features, supporting the notion that meaning of all aspects of language forms one semantic system. The author proposes four different meanings for bueno, three related meanings for o sea, three core meanings for entonces, and two-way polysemy for pues.
The research reported here also has implications for the study of polysemy, in that it operationalizes the little understood, but classical definition of polysemy of items with “a shared element of meaning”, and it demonstrates that the polysemous relations of discourse markers are centered around an invariant core that can be identified on the basis of their use in discourse. As one of the first corpus-based studies to present a semantic account of the multifunctional nature of discourse markers this book makes an important contribution to research on the relationship between semantics and discourse-pragmatics, and polysemy in discourse.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bueno, (E) entonces, (E) o sea, (E) pues
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
González Ruiz, Ramón, & Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica (2005). Approximación desde el Metalenguaje Semántico Natural a la semántica y la pragmática de algunas expresiones de sinceridad del español actual [A Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to the semantics and pragmatics of some expressions of sincerity in Modern Spanish]. In Manuel Casado Velarde, Ramón González Ruiz, & Óscar Loureda Lamas (Eds.), Estudios sobre lo metalingüistico (en español) (pp. 233-256). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Written in Spanish.
This study, which deals with “sincerity” in Spanish, focuses on the use of clausal adverbs such as sinceramente ‘sincerely’, honestamente ‘honestly’, francamente ‘frankly’, and of phrases with the verbs hablar ‘speak’ and decir ‘say’ (e.g. hablar/decir con sinceridad, francamente, con el corazón en la mano ‘speak/say [something] with sincerity, frankly, with your heart in your hand’). In addition, the authors look at conditional structures in peripheral positions (e.g. si quieres que te diga la verdad ‘if you want me to tell you the truth’). The study involves an analysis, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, of semantic differences between the concepts of sinceridad ‘sincerity’, franqueza ‘frankness’ and honestidad ‘honesty’, and of the pragmatic and discursive functions of these expressions.
For a slightly shorter version of this chapter, see Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica, & González Ruiz, Ramón (2006). Semántica y pragmática de algunas expresiones de sinceridad en español actual.
For a slightly different English version of this chapter, see Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica, & González Ruiz, Ramón (2006), Francamente, el rojo te sienta fatal: Semantics and pragmatics of some expressions of sincerity in present-day Spanish.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) con franqueza, (E) con sinceridad, (E) francamente, (E) honestamente, (E) sinceramente
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Burston, Monique (2006). The French connector certes: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage interpretation. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages (pp. 289-305). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.81.18bur
This paper looks at the meaning and use of the French discourse marker certes in sequences involving an assertive-concessive adverb certes (equivalent to English certainly, admittedly, granted, of course etc.) followed by an apodosis starting with mais (‘but’) or an equivalent adversative expression (as in une faute certes, mais qui est pardonnable ‘a mistake, admittedly, but a forgivable one’). An explication in Natural Semantic Metalanguage shows that certes is at the heart of a “diaphonic” situation: a duality of voices can be heard in the text, of which the second reinterprets, reformulates and integrates the first. The explication also accounts for the fact that certes critically contributes to text coherence, by creating a thematic-rhematic structure.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) certes
