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
(2004) French, Spanish – Address pronouns
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.
(2004) Korean – Address forms and social cognition / Ethnopragmatics
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2004). Not just words: Korean social models and the use of honorifics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 189-210.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.189
Abstract:
This study demonstrates that it is possible to describe cultural values and their associated communicative norms in simple terms and from an insiders’ perspective, even in the case of languages such as Korean, which is widely known for its highly culture-specific and extremely elaborate system of honorifics. Adopting NSM principles, and in particular the cultural scripts approach, the study attempts to capture and articulate Korean cultural rules about social relationships and the associated communicative norms as reflected in the honorific system and present in numerous fixed expressions. Cultural scripts are presented in both the English and Korean versions of the metalanguage.
In addition, the paper tries to articulate the shared understanding behind the existence of honorifics as a social practice, namely, that differential usage of words can send specific social messages about how interactants regard each other. In the case of Korean, relevant components include a ‘vertical’ model of society in which people are commonly thought of as ‘above’ or ‘below’ oneself, a recognized category of revered senior people (Korean 노인 noin), and the importance of relative age differences in one-to-one interaction.
More information:
This paper is part of a special issue on cultural scripts.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2004) Korean – Ethnopsychology and personhood
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2004). Korean maum vs. English heart and mind: Contrastive semantics of cultural concepts. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html.
Abstract:
In this paper, an attempt is made to compare three highly distinct concepts, the Anglo concepts of ‘heart’ and ‘mind’, as well as the Korean concept of 몸 maum. An appropriate analysis of 몸 maum appears to be essential for understanding Korean folk psychology. The attempt is underpinned by the principles of the NSM approach so as to enable outsiders to see the cognitive structure of the analysed concepts through the same window as native speakers. Similarities and differences between the three concepts reflect different folk views on similar psychological entities. The overlap and discrepancies between the NSM explications explain why the Anglo terms can serve as translational equivalents in some contexts but not in others. The Anglo concepts reflect the Anglo culture-specific way of conceptualizing while the Korean concept 몸 maum reflects the Korean way.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2007). Contrastive semantics of Korean ‘maum’ vs. English ‘heart’ and ‘mind’. The Journal of Studies in Language, 22(3), 171-197.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2004) Malay – Speech act verbs (PUJUK)
Goddard, Cliff (2004). Speech-acts, values and cultural scripts: A study in Malay ethnopragmatics. In Robert Cribb (Ed.), Asia examined: Proceedings of the 15th biennial conference of the ASAA. PDF (open access)
The speech act lexicon of any language provides its speakers with a readymade “catalogue” of culture-specific categories of verbal interaction: a catalogue that makes sense within, and is attuned to, a particular portfolio of cultural values, assumptions, and attitudes. So it is that a microscopic examination of the semantics of speech act verbs can shed a great deal of light on broader cultural themes, but equally the significance of any particular speech act category can only be fully understood in broader cultural context.
This study illustrates these contentions with the Malay speech act verb pujuk, which can variously translated as ‘coax’, ‘flatter’, ‘persuade’, or ‘comfort’, but which really has no precise equivalent in English. Naturally occurring examples are given from Bahasa Melayu, the national language of Malaysia. The methods employed are the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, and its companion, the theory of cultural scripts. I propose a single semantic explication for pujuk which accounts for its diverse range with much greater precision than any normal dictionary definition; but the explication must be read against the background of several Malay cultural scripts reflecting the important role of feelings and “feelings management” in the Malay tradition, as reflected in expressions like timbang rasa ‘lit. weigh feelings’, jaga hati orang ‘minding people’s feelings/hearts’, ambil hati ‘lit. get heart, be charming’, among others.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2004) Persian – NSM primes
Sahragard, Rahman (2004). Semantic primitives in Persian. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shiraz University, 21(1), 77-93. PDF (open access)
In general, identifying the putative semantic primitives in Persian has proved to be unproblematic. On the whole, this study supports the hypothesized set of universal semantic primitives.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
(2004) Persian – Politeness
Sahragard, Rahman (2004). A cultural script analysis of a politeness feature in Persian. In Kyung-Ja Park & Michiko Nakano (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics (pp. 399-423). Tokyo: PAAL Japan. PDF (open access)
Many writers have identified the Iranian system of politeness with a complex concept called تعارف ta’arof. In fact, any description or analysis of the Iranian politeness system without reference to this concept will be deficient and incomplete. This study takes a cultural script approach to describe the Persian concept of تعارف ta’arof. As far as is known, this is the first attempt at analysing and accounting for a Persian concept using this approach.
This study demonstrates that تعارف ta’arof is a part of the culture of being polite in Persian (ادب adab). It is manifested in both verbal and non-verbal communication. The language and the strategies involved are controlled by تواضع tavaazo (humility), urging individuals to lower themselves in self-references and raise others instead. Power, distance, social class, and age are very important in its use. The direction of the frequency of use is from the lower to the upper for all of the above variables. This points to the fact that Persian culture places great emphasis on having احترام ehteraam (respect) for superiors. Having restraint and limiting one’s wants and wishes in front of others is another aspect of تعارف ta’arof usually referred to as رودربایستی rudarbaayesti. تعارف ta’arof is also shown in receiving guests warmly by being polite and respectful and serving them with the best possible refreshments (مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi). Thus, تعارف ta’arof can be seen as the manifestation of ادب adab, احترام ehteraam, تواضع tavaazo, رودربایستی rudarbaayesti, and مهمان-نوازی mehmaan-navaazi.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
(2004) Polish – NSM syntax
Wierzbicka, Anna (2004). Polish and universal grammar. Studies in Polish Linguistics, 1, 9-28.
(2004) Spanish (Colombia) – Diminutives
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.
(2005) English – Cultural key words
Goddard, Cliff (2005). The lexical semantics of culture. Language Sciences, 27(1), 51-73.
DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2004.05.001
Abstract:
Culture is one of the… cultural key words of the English language, in popular as well as scholarly discourse. It is flourishing in popular usage, with a proliferation of extended uses (police culture, Barbie culture, argument culture, culture of complaint, etc.), while being endlessly debated in intellectual circles. Though it is sometimes observed that the meaning of the English word culture is highly language-specific, its precise lexical semantics has received surprisingly little attention. The main task undertaken in this paper is to develop and justify semantic explications for the common ordinary meanings of this polysemous word. The analytical framework is the NSM approach, within which a set of semantic explications will be proposed that is framed in terms of empirically established universal semantic primes such as PEOPLE, THINK, DO, LIVE, NOT, LIKE, THE SAME, and OTHER.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2005) English (Singapore)
Wong, Jock (2005). Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
(2005) English (Singapore) – Particles (ONE)
Wong, Jock (2005). “Why you so Singlish one?” A semantic and cultural interpretation of the Singapore English particle one. Language in Society, 34, 239-275. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404505050104
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 180-229) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
The particle one of Singapore English is widely used in Singapore culture, but it is little mentioned and its invariant meaning has not been described, so that not much is known about its meaning and the cultural norms it reflects. This article provides a detailed semantic analysis of this particle, articulates its meaning in the form of a reductive paraphrase using Natural Semantic Metalanguage, and argues that its use reflects Singapore English speakers’ tendency to speak definitively and exaggeratedly. The discussion of Singaporean speech norms reflected by this particle includes reference to relevant Anglo English speech norms for comparison and contrast.
(2005) Finnish – Emotions
Tuovila, Seija (2005). Kun on tunteet: Suomen kielen tunnesanojen semantiikkaa [Such emotions: The semantics of emotion words in the Finnish language]. Oulu: Oulu University Press.
Abstract:
This study focuses on the semantics of Finnish emotion words (i.e. words comparable to English terms such as joy and anger). Male and female conceptual frameworks for emotions are compared, as well as those of different age groups. Both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis are carried out; the data consist of the written responses of a hundred Finns to a questionnaire item that asked them to name various emotions.
The cognitively most important emotion words for Finns are found to be: viha, ilo, rakkaus, suru, pelko, onnellisuus, kateus, ahdistus, väsymys, masennus, tuska, ihastus, tyytyväisyys, inho, jännitys, pettymys, kaipaus, rauhallisuus, ikävä, and toivo. According to the study, the emotions with the highest frequency of expression in the Finnish language are hatred, joy, love and sorrow. Women are found to have more words for emotions than men. The emotion vocabulary includes more negative words than positive ones. The findings suggest that the Finns think more often good of other people than bad, and more often bad of themselves than good.
The explications given for the 51 most commonly used emotion words are based on principles developed within the NSM approach. The main semantic categories for emotion words are as follows: “Something good happened or will happen”, “Something bad happened or will happen”, “I want”, “I don’t want”, “I think something about myself”, “I think something about others”, “I know / don’t know”. The precise semantic contents of emotion words is explained in terms of prototypical scenarios.
More information:
Written in Finnish.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
(2005) French – Verbs (COMMENCER)
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.
(2005) French, Polish – Emotions (shame)
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
(2005) Portuguese – Emotions
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
(2005) Russian – Cultural values
Gladkova, Anna (2005). New and traditional values in contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in cross-cultural semantics. In Ilana Mushin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society (16 pp.). http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93. PDF (open access)
Revised and expanded as:
Gladkova, Anna (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Work in contrastive semantics can tell us a great deal about differences between cultures in which the words that are being contrasted are used. Linguists can contribute to the social sciences and to the investigation of values prevailing in different cultures and different societies by detailed semantic analysis, which in turn can be successful if the appropriate methodology is used. NSM is able to reveal subtle differences in the meaning of value words and proves to be an adequate tool for this kind of task.
A detailed semantic analysis allows us to show differences between the concepts терпимы terpimyj and tolerant. Tolerant has a more “social” character since it is an attitude towards something seen as different from social norms. Tерпимы terpimyj is more “personal” in its attitude as it is a reaction towards personal offence. Tolerant is related to the recognition of personal autonomy of thinking and behaviour as well as the idea of social harmony as an opportunity for people to behave and think in the way they want. Tерпимы terpimyj is linked to the value of смиренеи smirenie; it is about not developing bad feelings and negative reactions to those seen as doing bad things and about maintaining the social harmony of positive feeling among people. Thus, tolerant is more “rational” and “liberal” and терпимы terpimyj is more “emotional” and “moral”. The proposed definition of tolerant, formulated in simple universal concepts, also allows us to gauge the possible difference between the new Russian word tolerantnyj and the English tolerant.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2005) Russian – Feelings: sympathy
Gladkova, Anna (2005). Sočuvstvie and sostradanie: A semantic study of two Russian emotions. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Lidil, 32. 35-47. PDF (open access)
Semantic analysis of the word сочувствие sočuvstvie (usually translated into English as ‘sympathy’) shows that it is a complex feeling caused by the awareness of a negative emotional state of another person associated with some misfortunate event and resulting in the sharing of this negative emotional state. When experiencing сочувствие sočuvstvie, a person develops a positive attitude towards another person who is in trouble due to the desire to stop the negative emotional experience of that person and to do something good for that person. Cочувствие sočuvstvie is characterized by the desire to reveal this attitude to the suffering person.
Cострадание sostradanie (usually translated into English as ‘compassion’) has the same semantic structure as сочувствие sočuvstvie, but it is characterized by a stronger character of emotional experience of another person and a consequent stronger negative feeling of the one who feels cострадание sostradanie. The component of showing one’s attitude and feeling is absent in cострадание sostradanie.
Cочувствие sočuvstvie and cострадание sostradanie are important cultural words that support the idea of the significant role of emotional expressions in Russian language and culture. They also extend the value ascribed to communal actions and states to the importance of sharing the negative emotional experiences of others.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2005) Russian, English – Feelings: empathy
Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2005). Чем русское сопереживание отличается от английского empathy? Опыт применения естественного семантического метаязыка в контрастивной семантике. In what ways the Russian sopereživanie is different from the English empathy? The Natural Semantic Metalanguage in contrastive semantics (pp. 102-108). In И. М. Кобозева, А. С. Нариньяни & В. П. Селегей (ред.) [I. Kobozeva, A. Narin’jani & V. Selegej (Eds.)], Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии: Труды международной конференции «Диалог 2005» [Computational linguistics and intellectual technologies: Proceedings of the International Conference “Dialogue 2005”]. Москва [Moscow]: Nauka. PDF (open access)
Written in Russian. No English abstract available.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
The (E) tags listed below are added on the basis of information in the title of this paper, which also proposes other explications.
(2005) Spanish (Colombia) – Discourse particles: BUENO, PUES, O SEA, ENTONCES
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
