Browsing results for Niger-Congo
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2013). Comparing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to emotion and the GRID paradigm. In Johnny R.J. Fontaine, Klaus R. Scherer, & Cristina Soriano (Eds.), Components of emotional meaning: A sourcebook (pp. 399-409). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592746.003.0028
Three important starting points of the GRID paradigm are that (a) the words and expressions ordinary people use to talk about their emotional experience are central to emotion research, (b) emotions are multi-componential phenomena, and (c) the study of the commonalities of human emotion should be firmly grounded in cross-cultural research. All these positions find strong resonance in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to emotion. The aim of this paper is to introduce the NSM approach, compare it with the GRID approach, and explore the possibility of a joint effort between them in the quest for a better understanding of both the universals and the culture-specific aspects of human emotions. The examples discussed in the paper are drawn from English, Chinese, and Ewe, a West African language.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Krijtenburg, Froukje, & de Volder, Eefje (2015). How universal is UN ‘peace’? A comparative linguistic analysis of the United Nations and Giryama (Kenya) concepts of ‘peace’. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 194-218. DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.2.2.03kri
It is now commonly accepted that, for the sake of international peace, the provisions of the UN Charter (originally devised to regulate interstate wars) should be interpreted so as to allow for intrastate interference as well. Yet the UN Charter does not explicitly state what the term peace refers to. It seems that the concept underpinning this term is so much the norm that only deviations from it are marked and therefore noteworthy or definable. Still, in view of the wide array of UN peacekeeping missions all over the world, a clear notion of ‘peace’ could make an important contribution to the success of these missions. In view of this, the paper addresses two questions: what lies behind the concept of ‘peace’ embedded in UN discourse, and how internationally salient is it? To provide the necessary perspective, we undertake a comparative ethnolexicological analysis of the UN and Giryama (Kenya) ‘peace’ concepts. The analysis aims to highlight those aspects of Giryama kuelewana and UN peace that are characteristically ‘socially meaningful’ and concludes by highlighting convergences and divergences between them.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Ameka, Felix K. (2015). “Hard sun, hot weather, skin pain”: The cultural semantics of temperature expressions in Ewe and Likpe (West Africa). In Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Ed.), The linguistics of temperature (pp. 43-72). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.35
Temperature is talked about in different ways across languages. In this paper, I explore the linguistic expressions used to talk about temperature focussing on three domains of experience in two languages in an asymmetric contact relation, Ewe and Likpe, both Kwa (Niger-Congo) languages of West Africa. Likpe speakers are bilingual in Ewe but not vice versa. The empirical question addressed is: how do speakers of Ewe and Likpe talk about the hotness and coldness of (i) things such as food and water; (ii) places and the ambience; and (iii) the personal experience of hotness and coldness in one’s body. I will argue that both languages do not have equivalents for ‘temperature’. Secondly I will show that “temperature property”, being a physical quality, is basically expressed using verbs and verb phrases (less so by nouns and ideophones) consistent with their typological profile. Moreover I argue that the range of expressions available in the two languages for talking about ‘water’ is more elaborate than the other domains of experience, some of which are linked to cultural practices such as bathing. I also investigate the construal of ‘hotness’ in Ewe and propose semantic descriptions of the predicates involved representing them in Natural Semantic Metalanguage-style explications. While some of the expressions for ‘hotness’ can be accounted for through a link to ‘fire’, as has been previously suggested, I argue that we need another prototype anchor for other expressions of ‘hotness’, namely, ‘pain’. In the ambient domain, the experience of the temperature generated by the sun itself is talked about using predicates from the domain of the physical property of texture. The conceptual motivations for such usage are also explored.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dze dzo, (E) fá, (E) gblↄ, (E) vé, (E) xↄ dzo
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Bondéelle, Olivier (2015). Polysémie et structuration du lexique: Le cas du wolof [Polysemy and the structure of the lexicon: The case of wolof]. Utrecht: LOT. PDF (open access)
This work deals with the role of polysemy in structuring the lexicon. The thesis proposes a qualitative evaluation of polysemy, comparing it with the other relationships that structure the lexicon. This undertaking makes it possible to verify that polysemy links should not be modeled independently of derivation or conversion links. The results of the evaluation show that the boundary between polysemy and conversion is porous.
The language of study is Wolof, a coastal language of West Africa. This language provides adequate material for the research. A wide range of morphological processes structure the lexicon (derivation by suffixation, derivation by consonantal alternation, conversion by change of the nominal class morpheme).
The descriptive contribution of this work lies in the exploration of the areas of artefacts and emotions of the Wolof, areas never described previously for an African language from the point of view of structuring the lexicon. The methodology consists in describing the meanings of the lexical units and the semantic links connecting them by a single metalanguage, that of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), introduced here for the Wolof language.
Published on July 26, 2018. Last updated on May 5, 2019.
Tokula, Lillian & Pütz, Martin (2016). Emotion concepts in Igala language (Nigeria): A view from NSM theory. In Gratien G. Atindogbé & Evelyn Fogwe Chibaka (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on African linguistics: Vol. 2 (pp. 948-976). Bamenda (Cameroon): Langaa.
Abstract:
This study highlights the various characteristics of emotion concepts in Igala and shows the areas of overlap among the members of different categories of emotion concepts. The absence of a lexical exponent for FEEL in Igala is shown not to have any relevance to the expression and comprehension of emotive language in Igala, as shown by the side by side explication done simultaneously in both languages for happiness-, love- and fear-like emotions. The authors submit that, contrary to the claims made by the leading developers of the theory, FEEL is not necessary to the semantic explication of emotion concepts universally. They therefore recommend a review of the status of FEEL. In the face of evidence to the contrary from languages such as Igala and Sidaama, its present status as a semantic prime points to (unintended and paradoxical) ethnocentric bias on the part of the developers of the theory – a phenomenon, among others, that motivated the development of the theory in the first place. A re-evaluation of the status of the concept FEEL as a semantic molecule necessary for the semantic explication of emotion concepts in English and some other languages but not as a semantic prime found in ALL languages of the world may be more fitting to the data.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) àyìlò, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀bɔ́, (E) òkpò, (E) ufɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùyɔ̀, (T) Igala
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 25, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Back to ‘mother’ and ‘father’: Overcoming the eurocentrism of kinship studies through eight lexical universals. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 408-429. DOI: 10.1086/687360
This paper addresses one of the most controversial issues in cultural anthropology: the conceptual foundations of kinship and the apparent inevitability of ethnocentrism in kinship studies. The field of kinship studies has been in turmoil over the past few decades, repeatedly pronounced dead and then again rising from the ashes and being declared central to human affairs. As this paper argues, the conceptual confusion surrounding kinship is to a large extent due to the lack of a clear and rigorous methodology for discovering how speakers of the world’s different languages actually navigate their kinship systems.
Building on the author’s earlier work on kinship but taking the analysis much further, this paper seeks to demonstrate that such a methodology can be found in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (developed by the author and colleagues), which relies on 65 universal semantic primes and on a small number of universal “semantic molecules” including ‘mother’ and ‘father’. The paper offers a new model for the interpretation of kinship terminologies and opens new perspectives for the investigation of kinship systems across languages and cultures.
Comments by a number of scholars, including Felix Ameka, follow the paper.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) awofasi, (E) born, (E) duujinda, (E) Father, (E) kamuru, (E) kularrinda, (E) kuntili, (E) kuta, (E) malanypa, (E) mama, (E) mother, (E) ngunytju, (E) thabuju, (E) tɔ, (E) wakatha, (E) wofa, (E) wofasi, (E) yakukathu, (S) kinship, (T) English
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Ameka, Felix K. (2017). Meaning between algebra and culture: Auto-antonyms in the Ewe verb lexicon. In Hilke Reckman, Lisa L.S. Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn, & Rint Sybesma (Eds.), Crossroads semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar (pp. 227-248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.210.14ame
Are meanings about “things in the world” or “things in the mind”? Are they about algebraic calculations or about cultural conceptions? How are multiple senses of a word related? Questions like these continue to be debated by semanticists and are explored in this chapter through a detailed semantic analysis of two verbs in Ewe (Gbe), a Kwa language of West Africa. The two verbs are mie ‘germinate/dry up’ and dró ‘put load up on/down from head’. It is argued that the individual senses of each verb involve directional opposition and that, as such, the verbs are auto-antonyms. From a logical point of view, the interpretations of the verb mie may not look antonymous; however, from the perspective of cultural practices and conceptualizations, the image-schematic representations go in opposite directions. NSM-inspired semantic representations are adopted to show the contrasts in a transparent manner.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dró, (E) mie
Published on July 29, 2018. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Brise, Lillian (2017). Eating regret and seeing contempt: A Cognitive Linguistic approach to the language of emotions in Igala (Nigeria). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b11354
Abstract:
This book, which deals with emotions and their expression in Igala, a Nigerian minority language with about two million speakers, calls for significant revisions within the NSM framework, its universal lexicon and its universal syntax, especially with respect to the prime FEEL. It challenges the claim that, in its present form, NSM is adequate for the analysis of emotion concepts universally. The challenge is based on the way emotions are conceptualized in Igala as well as on the absence of certain semantic primes that the NSM approach considers necessary for the analysis of emotions.
The author argues that NSM’s rigid claims to universality (of its syntax, for example) hinder the elegant description of emotion concepts in Igala and that the status of FEEL has to be re-evaluated. Igala does not have a generic lexical item that fits into the allegedly universal syntax specifications for FEEL and that lends itself to the explication of both physical and emotional (mental) states. FEEL must therefore possibly be downgraded and accorded the status of a semantic molecule rather than a prime. This would make it a language-specific concept, required for the explication of emotion concepts in some languages (e.g. English) but unnecessary in others (e.g. Igala).
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) àjìlò, (E) áɲó, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ dúdú, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀bɔ́, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ́kpabíe, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀kpabíɛ́, (E) ìhìɛ̀nɛ̀, (E) ìmélí, (E) ìwɔ̀, (E) òkpò, (E) ɔ́la ɟìɟìlì, (E) ufɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùgɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùgójì, (E) ùkàtà, (E) ùlàkà, (E) ùwɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùyɔ̀, (T) Igala
Published on April 21, 2018. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
François, Jacques (2017). Review of Bert Peeters (Ed.), Language and cultural values: Adventures in applied ethnolinguistics. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 112(2), 26-32.
Written in French.
Tags: (E) lige, (E) Ordnung, (E) tall poppy
Published on April 27, 2019. Last updated on July 28, 2020.
Thompson, Rachel (2019). Tweaa! – A Ghanaian interjection of “contempt” in online political comments. Ampersand, 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2019.100047 / Open access
Abstract:
This study examines the use of tweaa [tɕʏɪaa], an Akan emotive interjection that expresses contempt for a person, in the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments in Ghana’s 2016 Election (CGCGE16). CGCGE16 comprises reader comments posted in the build-up to Ghana’s presidential elections in December 2016 on www.ghanaweb.com, a news website that guarantees freedom of speech and ensures citizen participation in online sociopolitical discussions. The study employs NSM to unpack the meaning of tweaa and give a fuller understanding of its rhetorical power in online political discourse. It points out that tweaa is derogatory and expresses lack of respect for the user’s target, thus, according to traditional Ghanaian values, its use is unacceptable, especially during asymmetrical interactions. Citizens, however, hide behind the shield of anonymity guaranteed by online platforms, and their ability to circumvent traditional gatekeepers of acceptable speech forms during online discourse, and freely use tweaa to vent their feelings against authority figures.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) tweaa!, (E) Wow!
Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on July 28, 2020.
Thompson, Rachel (2020). Common Akan insults on GhanaWeb: a semantic analysis of kwasea, aboa and gyimii. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 103-122). Singapore: Springer.
DOI:
Abstract:
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) aboa, (E) gyimii, (E) kwasea
Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Ameka, Felix K. and Deborah Hill. (2020). The comparative semantics of verbs of ‘opening’: West Africa vs Oceania. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.). Meaning, Life and Culture. Canberra: ANU Press pp 33-59
DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.02 (Open Access)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) avure, (E) ke, (E) tavangia, (E) vuresia, (E) ʋu
Published on June 18, 2020. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Ameka, Felix K. 2020. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa). In Nico Nassenstein and Anne Storch (Eds.), Swearing and cursing: contexts and practices in a critical linguistic perspective (pp. 121-144). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501511202-006
Abstract:
Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other. Taking a cue from earlier studies, where some widespread interactional
routines are either inherited, such as agoo ‘attention getter’, or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo ‘well done, continue’, which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common
expression that accompanies it comes from the Ga ‘obscene insults’ sɔ́ɔ̀mi! ‘inside female genitalia’, onyɛ sɔ́ɔ̀ mli ‘inside your mother’s genitalia’, whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: ‘I defecate in your mouth’. A second form is the one commonly called ‘suck teeth’, which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund. Drawing on the representation and categorization of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of swearing at other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of swearing and argue that crosslinguistic studies of swearing, cursing or cussing and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the insider and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dzu, (E) tweaa!, (S) invectives
