Browsing results for Slavic

(2010) Spanish, Polish – Exclamations

Wesoła, Justyna (2010). Hiszpańskie wykrzykniki w polskiej praktyce przekładowej [Spanish exclamations in Polish translation practice]. Łask: Oficyna Wydawnicz LEKSEM.

The nature of exclamations is still not fully explained, which means that their definition remains an issue for debate. The increased interest in these units observed in recent years has resulted in relatively numerous studies on exclamations and has contributed to a significant development of knowledge about their phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. However, there are very few works devoted either to the functioning of exclamations in text, or to problems associated with their translation.

This dissertation is the first attempt to analyse Spanish exclamations in the context of Polish translation practice. Its aim is twofold:

1. to characterize Spanish interjections in terms of: a) their frequency of occurrence (in diachronic perspective), b) their possible meanings (explicated in NSM), c) their mode of functioning in three different literary genres (drama, epic and lyric); and

2. to determine what methods are used in the translation of exclamations, and why, and to assign appropriate Polish translation equivalents to individual instances of exclamation.

In addition, an attempt is made to observe the individual preferences of authors and translators and to formulate some general conclusions about exclamations as a category.

(2011, 2012) Polish – DOBROC, PRAWOSC, ODWAGA

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część I. Dobroć. Etnolingwistyka, 23, 45-66.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga. Etnolingwistyka, 24, 19-46.

Written in Polish.

Part I deals with the Polish word dobroć in comparative perspective. An assumption is made that an especially precious source of insight into the values of a given society are the key words used in that society. One of such words in Polish society is dobroć. By analysing the word’s semantics, the author shows the differences between that word and its closest equivalents in a few European languages: the English goodness, the French bonté or the Russian dobrotá. In the Polish hierarchy of values, dobroć ranks high as a positive human feature, manifested in people’s feelings, will and actions. The English goodness (derived from the adjective good) differs from the Polish dobroć in that it does not imply good feelings towards other people. The French bonté, in turn, although used in reference to people who want to do and actually do good things for others, does not, in contrast to dobroć, imply emotional overtones. On the other hand, the Russian dobrotá differs from dobroć in that it is primarily used in reference to someone’s emotional attitude towards others (expressed in one’s facial appearance or the tone of voice) but not actions. The author hypothesizes that bonté does not contain the emotional component (present in dobroć), and that dobrotá does not contain the element of action (present in dobroć and bonté). Neither does dobrotá occupy a central position among Russian values: that place is reserved for žalost’, an axiological category without a Polish equivalent. Similarly, in contemporary English-speaking cultures, greater importance is attached to kindness than to goodness.

Having discussed the semantics of dobroć, the author inquires into the historical and cultural origin of the associated concept and attempts to explain its uniqueness. A hypothesis is put forward that in Polish culture the attitude of the heart and will, reflected in the concept of ‘goodness’, finds its prototype in the figure of the Virgin Mary.

In Part II, the author analyses the concepts prawość ‘righteousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’.

Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in the contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connotations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality.

Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo.

The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness (“being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) Emotions: happiness

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Whatʼs wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück, and sčas’te. In Igor Boguslavsky, Leonid Iomdin, & Leonid Krysin (Eds.), Slovo i jazyk: Sbornik statej k vos’midesjatiletiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana (pp. 155-171). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

There is a huge industry of so-called “happiness studies” that relies on cross-national statistical comparisons, which challengers see as based on false and ethnocentric assumptions. ‘Happiness’ has become a big issue in politics and in economics, but here, too, a lack of attention to the meaning of words leads to unwarranted conclusions and causes confusion and miscommunication. The misunderstandings surrounding happiness, bonheur, and Glück illustrate the need for uncovering, and explaining, the differences between significant words that are wrongly assumed to be readily cross-translatable. In view of the place of ‘happiness’ at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines, a comparison of happiness and счастье sčast’e seems especially topical.

The assumption that all languages have a word like happiness, and that there can be a reliable “index of happiness” based on self-reports (given in different languages) is naïve and untenable. Progress in emotion research in general depends to a considerable extent on increased recognition that language goes deeper in us than many students of emotion (especially psychologists) are willing to admit. Genuine progress requires a greater linguistic and cross-cultural sophistication than that evident in much of the existing writings on the subject.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) English, Russian, Italian – Spatial relations

Stock, Kristin, & Cialone, Claudia (2011). Universality, language-variability and individuality: Defining linguistic building blocks for spatial relations. In Max Egenhofer, Nicholas Giudice, Reinhard Moratz, & Michael Worboys (Eds.), Spatial information theory. 10th international conference (COSIT 2011) (pp. 391-412). Berlin: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23196-4_21

Abstract:

Most approaches to the description of spatial relations for use in spatial querying attempt to describe a set of spatial relations that are universally understood by users. While this method has proved successful for expert users of geographic information, it is less useful for non-experts. Furthermore, while some work has implied the universal nature of spatial relations, a large amount of linguistic evidence shows that many spatial relations vary fundamentally across languages. The NSM approach is a methodology that has helped identify the few specific spatial relations that are universal across languages. We show how these spatial relations can be used to describe a range of more complex spatial relations, including some from non-Indo-European languages that cannot readily be described with the usual spatial operators. Thus we propose that NSM is a tool that may be useful for the development of the next generation of spatial querying tools, supporting multilingual environments with widely differing ways of talking about space.

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Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2011) Leibniz

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Common language of all people: The innate language of thought. Problems of information transmission, 47(4), 378-397. DOI: 10.1134/S0032946011040065

English translation of a Russian text (2011) published in Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 47(4), 84-103.

As is well known, Leibniz was interested in language throughout his life, and he saw in it a key to the understanding of the human mind. Many of his ideas about language were expressed in unpublished manuscripts, and what has come to us is not always clear. Nevertheless, some of his ideas — even if he did not always consistently adhere to them himself — seem to be both clear and extremely appealing.

I would summarize these ideas as follows:

1. All human thoughts can be decomposed into a relatively small number of elementary concepts;
2. All explanations depend on the existence of some concepts which are self-explanatory (otherwise, they would lead to an infinite regress);
3. The elementary concepts are common to all languages, and can be found by means of semantic analysis;
4. These concepts are the foundation of an innate language, “lingua naturae.” Just as mathematics is, as Galileo said, the language of the physical world, so the innate “lingua naturae” is the language of the inner world, the language of thoughts;
5. This language can be identified;
6. This language can serve as an auxiliary means of mutual understanding for speakers of different languages;
7. This language can help us to reach a greater clarity in our thinking;
8. This language can serve as a means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas.

These are also the main ideas which lie at the basis of the NSM program and from which this program has derived and continues to derive its inspiration.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) Russian – Arguing

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Arguing in Russian: Why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation. Russian Journal of Communication, 4(1/2), 8-37.

This paper discusses patterns of ‘arguing’ which prevails in Russian speech culture and shows that they differ profoundly from those characteristic of modern Anglo culture(s). The author focuses on the extended arguments (spory) in Solzhenitsyn’s novel ‘In the First Circle’ and shows that many linguistic and cultural aspects of the original are lost in the English translation. She argues that this was inevitable because English doesn’t have and “doesn’t need” linguistic resources to render various aspects of Russian communicative practices, which are culture-specific and have no counterparts in Anglophone
culture(s). The paper shows too that the techniques of semantic analysis developed in the “NSM” approach to cultural semantics help explain why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation, and more generally, how they can be used to identify some deep differences between Russian and Anglo
speech cultures and communicative norms.

(2011) Semantic analysis: A practical introduction [BOOK]

Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Revised and expanded version of:

Goddard, Cliff (1998). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The summary below reflects the contents of the second edition.

This lively textbook introduces students and scholars to practical and precise methods for articulating the meanings of words and sentences, and for revealing connections between language and culture. Topics range over emotions (Chapter 4), speech acts (Chapter 5), discourse particles and interjections (Chapter 6), words for animals and artefacts (Chapter 7), motion verbs (Chapter 8), physical activity verbs (Chapter 9), causatives (Chapter 10), and nonverbal communication. Alongside English, it features a wide range of other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Australian Aboriginal languages. Undergraduates, graduate students and professional linguists alike will benefit from Goddard’s wide-ranging summaries, clear explanations and analytical depth. Meaning is fundamental to language and linguistics. This book shows that the study of meaning can be rigorous, insightful and exciting.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2012) Dutch, Serbian – ‘Crazy’

Simonović, Marko (2012). “Ik ben toch niet gek!“ – Othering en normativiteit in het Nederlandse en het Servische vertoog [“I’m not crazy! – Othering and normativity in Dutch and Serbian discourse]. In Jelica Novaković-Lopušina, Tamara Britka, Bojana Budimir, Mirko Cvetković, & Lada Vukomanović (Eds.), Lage landen, hoge heuvels: Handelingen Regionaal Colloquium Neerlandicum (pp. 43-59). Belgrado: ARIUS/Filološki fakultet u Beogradu. PDF (pre-publication version on the author’s Academia page)

The goal of this contribution is twofold. On the one hand, it looks at the “normality” continuum in Serbian and Dutch (comparable to crazy > awkward/weird > strange > peculiar > normal > common in English), in an attempt to identify the main similarities and differences using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. On the other hand, it proposes to move away from the comparison paradigm. Instead, it develops an account approaching languages diffractively (à la Karen Barad), as an ongoing intra-action. Under such an approach, the role of the practices of the (broadly defined) bilingual speaker changes radically: the speaker is invited to live the difference productively and to overcome the ideology of sameness and representationalism. The bilingual speaker is always consigned to being more-than-normal and accountable for how she speaks the constitutive boundary.

But there is more. The goal of this contribution is to spoil othering/normativity/universality for the reader, strategically using the insight that not only are different things “crazy” in different discourses, but also the very scale of measuring “crazy” is discourse/language-specific and ever-becoming. In this sense, there is no transcendental norm(ality) to measure against, only what we make of what has been entrusted to us.


Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2012) English, French, Polish – Emotions: pain

Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Is pain a human universal? Conceptualisation of pain in English, French and Polish. Colloquia Communia, 92, 29-53.

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 127-155) of:

Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Note (11 September 2018): Tags will be added as soon as possible.

(2012) English, Russian – ‘Advice’

Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). ‘Advice’ in English and in Russian: A contrastive and cross-cultural perspective. In Holger Limberg, & Miriam A. Locher (Eds.), Advice in discourse (pp. 309-332). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.221.19wie

This paper argues that the English word advice encodes a language-specific perspective on the universe of discourse and that to analyse discourse in other languages and cultures in terms of this culture-specific English word would involve imposing on them an Anglocentric perspective. The paper introduces a different approach – the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach – based on 60 or so simple and universal human concepts. Using the NSM framework, the paper presents a comparative analysis of Russian and Anglo communicative norms and values associated with the English words advice and advise and their closest Russian counterparts, and demonstrates how the differences in the meanings of these words go hand-in-hand with differences in cultural practices, norms, and values. he paper concludes by proposing contrastive “cultural scripts” for English and Russian, which can be of practical use in language teaching, intercultural communication and education.

(2012) English, Serbian – Modal hedges

Trbojević-Milošević, Ivana (2012). Modal hedges in para-pharmaceutical product instructions: Some examples from English and Serbian. Revista de lenguas para fines específicos, 18, 71-92. PDF (open access)

The paper investigates how modal hedges, understood as expressions of procedural meaning, i.e. expressions containing instructions for the addressee/reader on how to process the propositional content of an utterance/statement are used in product descriptions, advertisements and consumer instructions leaflets for a number of products belonging to the Consumer Health Care category for the purposes of complying with consumer protection laws on the one hand and serving as an implicit disclaimer of manufacturer’s responsibility on the other. The analysis is carried out contrastively for two languages, English and Serbian. The results obtained are discussed and viewed as a matter of cultural variety and difference, especially taking into consideration the fact that consumer protection laws seem to be equally strict in US, UK and Commonwealth, Europe and Serbia.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2012) Russian – NSM primes

Gladkova, Anna (2012). Universals and specifics of ‘time’ in Russian. In Luna Filipović, & Kasia M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), Space and time across languages and cultures: Vol. II. Language, culture and cognition (pp. 167-188). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.13gla

Abstract:

This chapter addresses the question of universal as well as language- and culture-­specific traits in the conceptualization of ‘time’. It tests the NSM hypothesis that the semantic primes WHEN~TIME and NOW should also be found in Russian. It demonstrates that когда~время kogda~vremja and сейчас sejčas are Russian exponents of these primes, while the related terms пора pora, теперь teper’, and нынче nynče are semantically complex. The chapter formulates culturally salient attitudes to time in Russian, such as ‘change’, ‘persistence’, ‘things being outside people’s control’, on the basis of the analysed words. It argues that, because of its universal character, NSM can be regarded as an effective tool in time-related linguistic research.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012) Translatability

Afrashi, Azita & Taheri Ardali, Mortaza (2012). A look at universal concepts and the possibility of translatability. Translation Studies Quarterly [http://journal.translationstudies.ir], 10(37), 73-85.

Abstract:

After introducing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, the authors investigate the use of this approach in translation theory, focusing on the possibility of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic translatability. They conclude that universal human concepts ensure translatability of our thoughts from one language into another since they constitute a basis for genuine human understanding.

More information:

Written in Persian.

This paper contains explications of the Persian words شرم sharm ‘shame’, قهر qahr ‘not on speaking terms’, and غیرت qeyrat zeal in defense of honour‘. It also proposes a shorter explication of the Polish verb tęsknić ‘feel the pain of distance’ than the one in Goddard’s Semantic Analysis (2nd edition, 2011).

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Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2013) Polish – ZWIERZETA, JABLKA

Wierzbicka, Anna (2013). Polish zwierzeta ‘animals’ and jablka ‘apples’: An ethnosemantic inquiry. In Adam Glaz, David S. Danaher, & Przemyslaw Lozowski (Eds.), The linguistic worldview: Ethnolinguistics, cognition, and culture (pp. 137-159). London: Versita.

Open access?

(2013) Russian – Address forms and social cognition

Gladkova, Anna (2013). ‘Intimate’ talk in Russian: Human relationships and folk psychotherapy. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 322-343.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846453

Abstract:

This paper explores and describes communicative aspects of so-called ‘intimate’ relations in Russian. It illuminates the meanings of the social category terms друг drug ‘close friend’, родные rodnye ‘dear/kin’ and близкие blizkie ‘close (ones)’ and demonstrates their relationship to the culturally salient terms душа duša ‘soul, heart’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost, dear, hidden’. The paper contributes to our understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian ways of talking. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) Russian – Address forms and social cognition / Cultural key words / Ethnopragmatics

Gladkova, Anna (2013). The Russian social category svoj: A study in ethnopragmatics. In Istvan Kecskes, & Jesús Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 219-238). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513735.219

Abstract:

Terms for social categories provide a window into understanding culture. They conceptualize relationships and also relate to a culture’s communicative practices. The term for the Russian social category свой svoj possesses the status of a cultural key word. It is associated with important cultural rules of behaviour specific to people of this kind. It also exists at the intersection of other cultural rules, namely искренность iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost meanings’. The cultural scripts approach and NSM constitute reliable tools for describing these rules in terms that are universal, accessible and easily translatable into other languages.

The results of the study support the idea of a textual character of culture. Culture is best represented as a collection of rules or texts (Geertz), rather than by means of over-riding universalist concepts. The cultural scripts approach as it is implemented in ethnopragmatics is arguably the most adequate way to describe this variety of texts from a linguistic point of view.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) Russian – Cultural key words / Ethnopragmatics

Gladkova, Anna (2013). A cultural semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of the Russian praise words molodec and umnica (with reference to English and Chinese). Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2013, 249-272.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_12

Abstract:

Using data from the Russian National Corpus, this chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words, молодец molodec and умница umnica. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the words in question as well as cultural scripts as a reflection of underlying cultural ideas. Cultural specificity of the terms is established by comparison with other Russian cultural key words and ideas as well as comparison with their closest pragmatic equivalents in English (good boy/girl) and in Chinese (乖 guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) Russian – Social categories

Gladkova, Anna (2013). “Is he one of ours?” The cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180-194.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.06.010

Abstract:

This study illuminates the meanings of the Russian social category terms свой svoj ‘one’s own’, чужой čužoj ‘alien/stranger/foreigner’, наш naš ‘ours’ and не наш ne naš ‘not ours’ using written and spoken data of the Russian National Corpus. The paper contributes to our understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian communicative styles. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) Church Slavonic, Latin – Emotions (passion)

Vukoja, Vida (2014). Passion, a forgotten feeling. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on emotions in discourse (pp. 39-69). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.04vuk

When contemporary sciences and humanities use the term emotion while discussing human mental-sentient dynamics, they usually don’t question its supposed status of a conceptual universal. Yet, despite its frequent usage, the term is surprisingly ambiguous, and its universality status is highly dubious. For
instance, it shows not to be particularly adequate for the analysis of the Croatian Church Slavonic  lexis that expresses phenomena linked to the human mental-sentient dynamics. Instead, this lexis seems to be in concordance with the concepts pertaining to the medieval paradigm relying on the Latin terms passio (Eng. equivalent: passion) and affectus (Eng. equivalent affect). The paradigm is articulated in the most interesting way by Thomas Aquinas and unfortunately almost forgotten or unwarrantably confounded with the paradigm of emotions.

The third option in conceptualizing human mental-sentient dynamics (besides those that rely on emotions on one hand, and passions and affect on the other) argues that the concept FEEL is the most convincing universal candidate. Namely, the researchers of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage hypothesis present substantial theoretical evidence and ample amounts of corroborating data from typologically different languages of the world that back up such a proposal. This paper benefits from this finding, since the word FEEL, and NSM in general, proved to be an adequate tool for delineating similarities and differences between concepts of ‘emotion’, Lat. ‘passio’ and Lat. ‘affectus’.

(2014) English – Emotions / Interjections

Goddard, Cliff (2014). On “disgust”. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73-97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.06god

Abstract:

This study relies on the NSM approach to explore conceptualisations of “disgust” in English via semantic analysis of descriptive adjectives (disgusted and disgusting) and interjections (Ugh! and Yuck!). As well as drawing out some subtle meaning differences between these expressions, the exercise establishes that there is no one-to-one mapping between the meanings of descriptive emotion lexemes, on the one hand, and expressive interjections, on the other.

More broadly, the study seeks to advance the semantic study of “disgust-like” concepts in a cross-linguistic perspective, first, by highlighting aspects of meaning that differ between the English expressions and their near-equivalents in other languages, such as German, French and Polish, and second, by proposing a set of touchstone semantic components that can help facilitate cross-linguistic investigation.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners