Browsing results for Language families
Published on April 28, 2018. Last updated on September 8, 2018.
Metom, Lilly (2000). An application and interpretation of Iban emotion concepts of shame/shyness, anger and apology using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and concrete/abstract cultural continuum. In Michael Leigh (Ed.), Borneo 2000: Ethnicity, culture and society. Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Borneo Research Conference (pp. 250-277). Kuching: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.
Cultures differ in their style of communication. Iban culture is no exception. The style of interaction and communication of the Ibans is also unique; expressions of emotion in Iban cannot be simply explained or translated into English since meanings and use of the expressions are culture-specific. Furthermore, drawing on the fact that Iban people are more “concrete” in their relation with other members of the group, expressions of emotion such as anger, embarrassment, joy, fear and others are normally conveyed non-verbally. Hence, this paper explores and investigates how these emotion concepts are expressed and used in the daily conduct of the Iban people. Three categories of selected Iban emotions are explicated and analysed here, namely the emotion expression of shame/shyness, the emotion expression of anger, and the emotion expression of apology. In order to explain culturally the emotion words, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used as an analytical tool to explicate the words, so as to avoid ethnocentric bias.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) adat, (E) jaga adat, (E) kudi, (E) malu, (E) minta ampun, (E) pedis ati, (E) ransi, (E) sorry
Published on August 4, 2018. Last updated on September 15, 2018.
Mulyadi (2000). Struktur semantis verba penglihatan dalam Bahasa Indonesia [The semantic structure of verbs of seeing in Indonesian]. Linguistik Indonesia, 18(2), 77-89. PDF (open access)
Written in Indonesian.
This article deals with the semantic structure of the Indonesian seeing verbs related to seeing. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, it finds that the semantic structure of Indonesian verbs related to seeing involves a combination of the elements MELIHAT ‘see’, MERASAKAN ‘feel’, MENGETAHUI ‘know’, MENGATAKAN ‘say’, and MEMIKIRKAN ‘think’. The clusters that form are MELIHAT/MERASAKAN ‘see/feel’, MELIHAT/MENGETAHUI ‘see/know’, MELIHAT/MENGATAKAN ‘see/say’, and MELIHAT/MEMIKIRKAN ‘see/think’.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) melakukan, (E) melawat, (E) melayat, (E) melirik, (E) melongok, (E) melotot, (E) memandang, (E) membesuk, (E) memeriksa, (E) memperhatikan, (E) menatap, (E) menengok, (E) mengamati, (E) mengawasi, (E) mengerling, (E) mengintai, (E) mengintip, (E) meninjau, (E) menoleh, (E) menyaksikan
Published on December 12, 2018. Last updated on December 12, 2018.
Mulyadi (2000). Struktur semantis verba Bahasa Indonesia [The semantic structure of verbs in Indonesian]. Linguistika, 13, 40-52.
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 August 29, 2018.
Hasada, Rie (2000). An exploratory study of expression of emotions in Japanese: Towards a semantic interpretation. PhD thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)
The present study explores the emotional world of Japanese people. Using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, this thesis attempts to explicate the conceptual organization of aspects of Modern Standard Japanese, with a special focus on the lexicon. This thesis also aims to explicate the cultural norms that are related to the emotion words/expressions with the use of culture-independent, universal Natural Semantic Metalanguage. A great amount of data is taken from various sources: TV or radio broadcasting, actual conversation, published literature both in Japanese and English, film scripts, dialogues in magazines, newspaper/magazine articles, comic books, advertisements, letters, dictionaries, and popular songs.
The work is organized in the following way. Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapter 2 consists of a review of the literature on emotions and includes philosophical, anthropological, and psychological approaches. Chapter 3 demonstrates the importance of linguistic study for the research on emotions, and suggests the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as the most appropriate method for achieving the main goals of this thesis. Chapter 4 discusses the grammatical features of emotion expression sentences. Chapter 5 deals with those body parts terms which are related to emotions in Japanese. Chapters 6 to 11 explicate the meanings of various Japanese emotion words and expressions. Chapter 12 focuses on communication of nonverbal emotion in Japanese culture. Chapter 13 examines characteristic Japanese speakers’ attitudes towards emotions. Chapter 14 is the conclusion.
Wherever possible, the thesis seeks to probe into culturally-based aspects of the conceptual structure of emotion words/expressions, by drawing on a variety of anthropological, psychological, and sociological studies of Japanese society.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (non-verbal communication), (E) ai 愛, (E) aishi 愛し, (E) aisuru 愛する, (E) akogareru 憧れる, (E) atama ni kuru 頭にき, (E) atama o kaku, (E) aware, (E) haji 恥, (E) hara ga tatsu 腹が立っ, (E) hara o tateru 腹を立てる, (E) hara 腹, (E) hazukashii 恥ずかしい, (E) horeru 惚れる, (E) ijirashii いじらしい, (E) itooshii いとおしい, (E) itoshii 愛しい, (E) jihi, (E) joo, (E) kanashii 悲しい, (E) kawaisoo かわいそう, (E) kenage 健気, (E) ki 気, (E) kinodoku 気の毒, (E) koi 恋, (E) koishii 恋しい, (E) koisuru 恋する, (E) kokoro 心, (E) kowai 怖い, (E) kuyashii 悔しい, (E) mune 胸, (E) mushi 虫, (E) nasake 情け, (E) nasakenai 情けない, (E) natsukashii 懐かしい, (E) omoiyari 思いやり, (E) osoreru 恐れる, (E) osoroshii 恐ろしい, (E) sabishii 寂しい, (E) setsunai 切ない, (E) shiawase 幸せ, (E) suki 好き, (E) tanoshii 楽しい, (E) tere-warai 照れ笑い, (E) terekusai 照れくさい, (E) tsurai 辛い, (E) uchooten 有頂天, (E) ureshii 嬉しい, (E) wabishii わびしい, (E) zoq, (S) affection, (S) emotions
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2000). Semantic primes of ‘time’ in Korean. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Linguistics Conference, Seoul National University, Seoul.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2000). Semantic primes of ‘time’ in Korean. Proceedings of Modern Grammar Conference, Taeku.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 27, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2000). “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81-106. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028746
The “cultural scripts” approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. The author uses this technique to describe and make sense of aspects of Malay communicative style. The proposed Malay cultural scripts are linked with the importance placed on appropriate (patut, sesuai) behavior and on nasihat ‘advice’, and on the need to balas budi (roughly) ‘return good treatment’, to jaga hati orang ‘look after people’s feelings’, and to menghormati ‘show respect, deference’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) menghormati, (S) absolutist orientation towards morality and ethics, (S) attitude towards old people as a social category, (S) attitude towards someone older, (S) behaving well towards other people, (S) being humble, (S) debt of gratitude, (S) importance of giving advice, (S) long memories and desire to revenge, (S) looking after people's feelings, (S) need to apologize, (S) personal autonomy, (S) returning good treatment, (S) returning kindness, (S) thinking before acting, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Sahragard, Rahman (2000). Politeness in Persian: A cultural pragmatic analysis. PhD thesis, University of Leicester.
This exploratory study attempts to analyse some features of Persian politeness, in particular the central term of تعارف ta’arof. This important central concept is highly elaborate and complex, and it is often mentioned in Persian conversation, yet surprisingly it has received very little attention in pragmatics.
Using questionnaire, interviews, and discourse completion tasks, this study elicited information on تعارف ta’arof from native speakers: their views and perceptions of the meaning and functions of تعارف ta’arof, the distribution of تعارف ta’arof with regard to age, gender, social class, and familiarity, as well as the language and strategies involved in a few controlled situations. Based on these results, five important components of تعارف ta’arof were identified. They are ادب adab, احترام ehteraam, رودربایستی rudarbaayesti, تواضع tavaazo, and مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi. حیا hayaa, شرم sharm and کمرو kamru are brought up as part of the discussion around رودربایستی rudarbaayesti. The various component concepts, and تعارف ta’arof as a superordinate concept, were then analysed using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as an analytic framework for cultural pragmatics. As a prior step, it was necessary to establish the Persian exponents of NSM primes (referred to by means of the old terminology primitives). The resulting 38 exponents were then used to formulate explications for تعارف ta’arof and its five subcomponents. Conventional descriptive methods of giving explanations were also used.
Another aspect of the study is its investigation of the performance of Iranian EFL learners in polite language situations in English, using a discourse completion questionnaire. The results show that these learners tend to transfer their native تعارف ta’arof norms of being polite in their English responses. EFL teachers in their interviews had suggested this trend. This calls for the adoption of techniques to help learners become aware of the sociopragmatics of being polite in English.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) adab ادب, (E) ehteraam احترام, (E) hayaa حیا, (E) kamru کمرو, (E) mehmaan-navaazi مهمان-نوازی, (E) rudarbaayesti رودربایستی, (E) sharm شرم, (E) ta'arof تعارف, (E) tavaazo تواضع, (T) Persian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 29, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2000). Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Yael Ravin & Claudia Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 129-151). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This paper outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) method of semantic analysis and seeks to show that this method enables the traditional ‘definitional’ concept of polysemy to be applied both to individual lexical items and to lexico-grammatical constructions. There is also a discussion of how aspects of figurative language can be handled within the same framework. Naturally, given the space available, the treatment must be incomplete in many respects. The underlying contention is that many of the difficulties experienced by current treatments of polysemy do not spring from the nature of polysemy itself, but from more general problems of semantic and lexicographic methodology, in particular the lack of a clear, practical and verifiable technique for framing lexical definitions.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) graceful, (E) have a + verb, (E) love, (E) send, (E) soft, (E) wrong, (T) English
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on January 26, 2020.
Amberber, Mengistu (2001). Testing emotional universals in Amharic. In Jean Harkins & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 39-72). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168.35
In her 1999 book Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals, Wierzbicka proposes the following set of working hypotheses:
a. All languages have a word for FEEL.
b. In all languages, feelings can be described as “good” or “bad”.
c. All languages have “emotive” interjections (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively-based feelings).
d. All languages have some “emotion terms” (i.e. terms for cognitively-based feelings).
e. All languages have words overlapping (though not identical) in meaning with the English words ‘angry’, ‘afraid’, and ‘ashamed’.
f. All languages have words comparable (though not necessarily identical) in meaning to ‘cry’ and ‘smile’.
g. In all languages, people can describe cognitively-based feelings via observable bodily symptoms.
h. In all languages, cognitively-based feelings can be described via bodily sensations.
i. In all languages, cognitively-based feelings can be described via figurative “bodily images”.
j. In all languages, there are alternative grammatical constructions for describing (and interpreting) cognitively-based feelings.
The main purpose of the present study is to test the above set of hypotheses in Amharic. The description and analysis presented in the study shows that emotional universals are borne out by the Amharic data. Explications are proposed for words that roughly correspond to the English phrases be happy/be joyful, be sad/be disappointed, be angry at someone/rebuke/reprimand, be ashamed/be embarrassed/be shy, his face became ashen (with fright), I felt sorry.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) affərə, (E) ahe, (E) azzənə, (E) tədəssətə, (E) tək'ot't'a
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 8, 2019.
Harkins, Jean (2001). Talking about anger in Central Australia. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 201-220). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.197
This exploration of a small group of emotion expressions in the Arrernte language of Central Australia takes the view that it is useful and illuminating, when investigating emotional or other meanings, to cultivate awareness of the cultural and intercultural dimensions of the enterprise, and to see both the processes and outcomes of the investigation in this light. It demonstrates the practicality of the NSM approach in facilitating intercultural discussion and understanding of people’s emotional life and behaviour in cultural context, and, furthermore, as a tool for stating meanings in the language of inquiry.
This small study has found confirmation for several of the hypotheses about emotional meanings put forward by Wierzbicka and other practitioners of the NSM approach to semantic analysis, and has raised some questions about other parts of the theory. There was surprising convergence between the Arrernte perceptions and the NSM picture of emotions as cognitively based feelings. Arrernte anger-like feelings all contain the impulse to act, proposed as a universal of anger-like feelings by Wierzbicka (1999). The Arrernte ayeye akweke did not have the full prototype structure for cognitively based feelings (“sometimes a person thinks…”, etc.) proposed by Wierzbicka (1999). An attempt to apply such a frame rendered the ayeye akweke unintelligible in Arrernte, and it is not entirely clear how this problem could be resolved, or whether it would be appropriate to do so. A simplified frame for practical definitional purposes may be the way to go, as it could very well be the case that the full prototype structure is a little too abstract for workable natural language definitions.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ahele-irreme, (E) akiwarre, (E) arnkelye
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 8, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2001). An inquiry into “sadness” in Chinese. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 359-404). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.359
This paper attempts to overcome the methodological problems that plague emotion studies by relying on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Through the explication of three so-called “sadness-like” Chinese emotion terms (悲 bēi, 哀 ai, and 愁 chóu), this paper will show how the NSM approach can provide a neutral comparative grid for further inquiries into the meaning of emotion concepts across languages and cultures.
The paper first provides a very general discussion of the Chinese emotion lexicon from a morphological point of view, followed by an in-depth semantic analysis of 悲 bēi, 哀 ai, and 愁 chóu in NSM. The discussion draws on linguistic evidence, including well-known textual examples, lexicalized items and conventionalized phrases and idioms that are familiar to the Chinese ear.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ai 哀, (E) bēi 悲, (E) chóu 愁, (T) Chinese
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 8, 2019.
Kornacki, Paweł (2001). Concepts of anger in Chinese. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 259-292). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.255
This paper focuses on five Mandarin Chinese words – 怒 nu, 生气 shēngqì, 恼(火) nao(huo), 憤 fen, 討厭 taoyan – as well as their figurative associations and elaborations, all of which are pertinent to the conceptualization of the “emotions” often rendered with, or comparable to, the English words angry or anger. Ever since Darwin’s classic treatment of emotions, “anger”, “something like anger”, or “a family of anger concepts/expressions” have been recurrently proposed by a number of Western psychologists as one of the “fundamental”, “universal”, “primitive” or “basic” human “emotions”, but this approach has also been criticized. My aim here will be to examine some of the insights that the analysis of the Chinese lexical data might contribute to this debate.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) fèn 憤, (E) năo 恼, (E) năohuo 恼火, (E) nù 怒, (E) shēngqì 生气, (E) tăoyàn 讨厌
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 27, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2001). Los sentimientos morales de la “tristeza” china: una ilustración del acercamiento del Metalenguaje Semántico Natural (MSN) al análisis de algunas emociones chinas “básicas” [Moral feelings of “sadness” in Chinese: An illustration of the NSM approach to the analysis of some “basic” Chinese emotions]. Isegoría, 25, 201-222.
Written in Spanish.
This study undertakes, within the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach developed by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues, a detailed contrastive and comparative semantic analysis of a couple of Chinese emotion concepts: 悲 bēi and 哀 ai (often glossed interchangeably as sadness, sorrow, and grief), which are considered to be basic emotions in traditional Chinese philosophical texts. It illustrates that (a) they are by no means interchangeable, nor are they equivalent of the Western idea of sadness, (b) they are artifacts of the Chinese culture, shaped by Chinese people’s social and moral experiences, and their view of life and the universe. Essentially, 悲 bēi encompasses a fatalistic view, and 哀 ai is a moral emotion.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ai 哀, (E) bēi 悲, (T) Spanish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2001). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to the universal syntax of the Singlish existential primitive. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 30.
Published on December 19, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Wong, Jock Onn (2001). To speak or not to speak? The ‘a’ particles of Singlish. National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Research Papers Series, 37, 33 pp.
A more recent publication building on parts of this one is chapter 7 (pp. 230-259) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
Tags: (E) a (Singapore English)
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 December 8, 2019.
Durst, Uwe (2001). Why Germans don’t feel “anger”. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 119-152). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.115
There is no German word that perfectly matches the English word anger, and none of the German words Ärger, Wut, and Zorn has a clear counterpart in English. Each of the German words has a meaning that is somewhat different, and there is no evidence for the “basicness” of one of these words. To grasp their meanings and to be able to compare them and to define them, we have to submit each word to a detailed semantic analysis.
In this paper, the lexical items Ärger, Wut, and Zorn, which constitute the most frequent and most common ‘anger’ words in German, are subjected to semantic and comparative investigation. The analysis is given within the theoretical framework of the NSM approach to semantics, which has turned out to be a most useful way to gain suitable results for this task.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Ärger, (E) sich ärgern, (E) Wut, (E) Zorn
Published on December 12, 2018. Last updated on December 12, 2018.
Mulyadi (2001). Konsep emosi dalam Bahasa Melayu [Emotion concepts in Malay]. Dewan Bahasa, February 2001, 28-35.
