Browsing results for Language families
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1990). The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 257-292. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599444
Recent work in cognitive anthropology has laid much stress on the role emotions in general play in regulating and organizing (or even, constituting) social life within a culture. At one level, we may see a system of interrelated emotion concepts as embodying shared understandings of human nature – as a model, or set of models, that people use to interpret each other’s actions and reactions. At another level, we can look to the way emotion words are invoked and deployed in social praxis; indeed, it can be fairly said that the ‘meaning’ (in the fullest sense) of emotion concepts and lexemes cannot be fully appreciated without an account of how they figure in the overall system of social action. This paper addresses the lexical semantics of three emotion verbs in the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara dialects of the Western Desert Language. They are the most salient words in what might broadly be termed the domain of valued or positive feelings – mukuringanyi, roughly ‘want, like, care for’, pukularinyi ‘feel glad, gratified’ and ngalturinganyi ‘feel sorry, concerned for’. The paper uses the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method of semantic description, which represents meanings as reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases, technically known as explications. The cultural significance of the specific P/Y concepts explicated in this paper should be obvious: they relate directly to the social category of walytja ‘kin, relations’, identified by Aboriginal people and anthropologists alike as pivotal to P/Y social life.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kuraringanyi, (E) mukuringanyi, (E) ngalturinganyi, (E) pukul(pa), (E) pukularinyi, (E) walytja
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). Antitotalitarian language in Poland: Some mechanisms of linguistic self-defense. Language in Society, 19, 1-59. DOI: 10.1017/S004740450001410X
This article explores the concept of political diglossia, a phenomenon arising in totalitarian or semitotalitarian countries, where the language of official propaganda gives rise to its opposite: the unofficial, underground language of antipropaganda. The author studies one semantic domain – the colloquial designations of the political police and security forces in contemporary Poland – and compares them with the official designations. The semantics of the relevant words and expressions is studied in great detail so that the social attitudes encoded in them can be revealed and rigorously compared. To achieve this, the author relies on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage that she has developed over the
last two decades, which has already been applied in the study of many other semantic domains, in many different languages. The social and political attitudes encoded in the Polish expressions referring to the security apparatus are discussed against the background of Poland’s history. The author shows that language is not only the best “mirror of mind” (Leibniz) and “mirror of culture” and “guide to social reality” (Sapir), but also a mirror of history and politics.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). Duša (soul), toska (yearning), sud’ba (fate): Three key concepts in Russian language and Russian culture. In Zygmunt Saloni (Ed.), Metody formalne w opisie języków słowiańskich (pp. 13-32). Bialystok: Bialystok University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) duša душа, (E) sud'ba судьба, (E) toska тоска
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Chappell, Hilary (1991). Strategies for the assertion of obviousness and disagreement in Mandarin Chinese: A semantic study of the modal particle me. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 11(1), 39-65. DOI: 10.1080/07268609108599451
This paper sets out to provide a semantic analysis of a little-researched modal particle in Mandarin Chinese – me, which occurs structurally in utterance-final position and belongs to a set of discourse markers facilitating both conversational interaction and the expression of a variety of different attitudes on the part of the speaker. The attitudinal value of these markers involves the coding of emotions as varied as surprise, exasperation, indignation and impatience. We provide a semantic analysis of the two distinct but related uses of me in utterance-final position. The two uses distinguished are shown to belong to different contexts and with different pragmatic purposes for the speaker.
The first use does not contain any component of feeling or emotion, but merely asserts a causal link between two propositions to the effect that one was the obvious consequence of the other. This is the modal particle me of an obvious logical connection found in explanatory contexts.
By contrast, the second use of me is shown to have the possibility of expressing a negative emotion such as indignation or impatience which is caused by what the speaker views to be a false opinion or misconception on the part of the addressee or a third party not present. The “true” nature of the matter is asserted by the speaker as self-evident through the use of me. This is the modal particle me of disagreement found in contexts where, for example, speaker and addressee hold opposite views.
It is furthermore shown that the effect of genre on the use of the modal marker me is relevant. The particle me proves to be much less frequent in narrative texts than in conversational ones, a consequence of diminished interaction between speaker and addressee in the narrative form, also affected by the more formal context of one of the narrative corpora. Finally, diachronic considerations are briefly outlined, and the semantic relationship of the interrogative to rhetorical questions and markers of modality such as me is described.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) me (particle)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Japanese key words and core cultural values. Language in Society, 20(3), 333-385.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016535
Abstract:
Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. However, to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper explores and analyses six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more than any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – 甘え amae, 遠慮 enryo, 和 wa, 恩 on, 義理 giri, and 精神 seishin – and shows how the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage helps to make these concepts clear, affording better insight into Japanese culture and society.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 6 (pp. 235-280) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amae 甘え, (E) enryo 遠慮, (E) giri 義理, (E) on 恩, (E) seishin 精神, (E) wa 和, (T) Japanese, (T) Latin, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Testing the translatability of semantic primitives into an Australian Aboriginal Language. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(1), 31-56. DOI: 10.2307/30028013
This study in the methodology of cross-linguistic semantics within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework posits the existence of universal lexico-semantic primitives. Among these are because and want, yet both present translation difficulties in relation to the Western Desert Language of Central Australia. Because apparently has no unambiguous equivalent, and the Western Desert verb closest to want (mukuringanyi) exhibits a range of rather different syntactic and semantic characteristics and is morphologically complex. However, by taking careful account of polysemy and differences in range of use due to non-semantic factors – factors that undermine any simplistic checklist approach to translatability – unique, precise translation equivalents for both terms can be established.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mukuringanyi, (T) English
Published on October 10, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Anger in the Western Desert: A case study in the cross-cultural semantics of emotion. Man, (N.S.) 26(2), 265-279. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803832
This article sets out to show that by adopting a method of semantic description based on reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases (the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach) it is possible to elucidate the meanings of emotion concepts, and their similarities and differences across cultures, within a principled, formal framework. Using this approach, it explores the semantic differences between pikaringanyi, mirpanarinyi and kuyaringanyi, three expressions in the Aboriginal language of the Western Desert of Australia, each of which corresponds to some extent to the English concept of anger.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) kuyaringanyi, (E) mirpanarinyi, (E) pikaringanyi, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1992). Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 119-158. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90049-H
Reissued in an abridged format as:
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The paper examines some of the semantic and pragmatic consequences of a form being both a lexeme (i.e. a simple sign) and a conventional utterance. The approach presented here has far-reaching consequences for the manner in which interjections are identified, analyzed, and subclassified. In particular it it suggested that interjections have all the features attributed to utterances, including the facts that they convey complete propositions and have an illocutionary purpose. Given that interjections are context-bound, it is possible to observe that the referential arguments in the propositions conveyed by interjections are provided by context. As lexemes, interjections have ‘real’ semantic (i.e. propositional/conceptual) content, and within the decomposition of all interjections are basic deictic elements. These ‘primitive’ deictic elements are not tied referentially to any entities until they are placed in context. In this sense both a pragmatic and a semantic approach are required to account for interjections. Interjections are, therefore, shifters (indexicals) by virtue of being built semantically out of basic deictic elements and so should be considered a reasonable topic within the study of deixis.
Definitions, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to lexical decomposition, are proposed for a varied range of interjections from English, Mparntwe Arrernte (Central Australia), American Sign Language, and Italian.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Furniture and birds: A reply to Dwight Bolinger. Cognitive Linguistics, 3(1), 119-123. DOI: 10.1515/cogl.1992.3.1.111
No full-fledged explications are proposed in this short reply to Dwight Bolinger’s reaction following the publication of Wierzbicka’s paper “Prototypes save: On the uses and abuses of the notion ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields” (1990). The reply suggests, against Bolinger (for whom furniture and bird are comparable categories), that the explication of collective categories such as furniture, cutlery, kitchenware, clothing, or bedlinen should start as follows:
things of different kinds
they are in the same place
(because people want them to be in the same place)
In the case of taxonomic concepts such as bird, tree, flower, or fish, the beginning of the explications will be different and refer instead to “a kind of thing”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 11, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Talking about emotions: Semantics, culture, and cognition. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3/4), 285-319. DOI: 10.1080/02699939208411073
Translated into Polish as chapter 4 of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liger, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) displeased, (E) displeasure, (E) glücklich, (E) grateful, (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) joy, (E) liget, (E) pleased, (E) remorse, (E) sad, (E) song, (E) tjituru-tjituru, (E) watjilpa, (E) złość
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Australian b-words (bloody, bastard, bugger, bullshit): An expression of Australian culture and national character. In André Clas (Ed.), Le mot, les mots, les bons mots/Word, words, witty words (pp. 21-38). Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Abstract:
The claim made in this paper is not that the Australian ‘b-words’ (bastard, bloody, bugger, and bullshit) are not used outside Australia. They are. But in Australia, they are part of everyday language and play a role that is truly unique. Elsewhere, they are more or less marginal. In Australia, they are central — in everyday life and even in public discourse (especially on the political scene). They are felt to be an important means of self-expression, self-identification, and effective communication with others.
Although the frequency of b-words in Australian speech is undoubtedly unique, and although it has often been commented on by visitors from other parts of the English-speaking world, it is, above all, in the meaning of these words, as they are used in Australia, that the Australians have managed to express something of their own cultural identity. Strictly speaking, then, it is not the b-words themselves but the meanings encapsulated in them that are characteristically Australian.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 5 (pp. 198-234) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bastard, (E) bloody, (E) bugger, (E) bullshit
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 27, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1992). The meaning of phatic and conative interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 245-271. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90054-F
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the meanings of the members of two subclasses of interjections in Ewe: the conative/volitive which are directed at an auditor, and the phatic which are used in the maintenance of social and communicative contact. It is demonstrated that interjections like other linguistic signs have meanings which can be rigorously stated. In addition, the paper explores the differences and similarities between the semantic structures of interjections on one hand and formulaic words on the other. This is done through a comparison of the semantics and pragmatics of an interjection and a formulaic word which are used for welcoming people in Ewe. It is contended that formulaic words are speech acts qua speech acts while interjections are not fully fledged speech acts because they lack an illocutionary dictum in their semantic structure.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (k)ss...!, (E) (particles for chasing animals), (E) à, (E) atúù!, (E) búbúbúi!, (E) dzáà!, (E) he!, (E) ú:ru!, (E) u:wúi!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). The semantics of interjection. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 159-192. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90050-L
Translated into Russian as:
Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna] (1999). Семантика междометия. In Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna], Семантические универсалии и описание языков, под ред. Татьяна В. Булыгиной [Semantic universals and the description of languages, ed. Tatyana V. Bulygina] (pp. 611-649). Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].
An expanded version of this paper was published earlier as chapter 8 (pp. 285-339) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This paper argues that interjections – like any other linguistic elements – have their meaning, and that this meaning can be identified and captured in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage developed by the author and her colleagues. A number of interjections from English, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish are discussed, and rigorous semantic formulae are proposed which can explain both the similarities and the differences in their range of use. For example, the English interjection yuk! is compared and contrasted with its nearest Polish and Russian counterparts fu!, fe!, rfu!. The author shows that while the meaning of interjections cannot be adequately captured in terms of emotion words such as disgust, it can be captured in terms of more fine-grained components, closer to the level of universal semantic primitives. The role of sound symbolism in the functioning of interjections is discussed, and the possibility of reflecting this symbolism in the semantic formulae is explored.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1992). Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 101-118. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90048-G
It is perhaps true that apart from nouns and verbs, interjections – those little words, or ‘non-words’, which can constitute utterances by themselves – are a word class found in all languages. But it is also true that this class of items has eluded description and has, for the most part, been ignored in theoretical linguistics discourse. In this introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics dedicated to interjections and similar items, I want to attempt to draw out and suggest solutions to the confusion that has beset these important items.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) thank you, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Evans, Nicholas (1992). ‘Wanjh! Bonj! Nja!’: Sequential organization and social deixis in Mayali interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 225-244. DOI:10.1016/0378-2166(92)90053-E
This paper examines the semantics and pragmatics of a number of interjections in Mayali, a language of Arnhem Land, Australia. Definitions using Natural Semantic Metalanguage are used to make explicit the complex relations between the lexical meanings of interjections and their
interpretation in context. One class of interjections, which I call organizing interjections, play an important role in structuring discourse and in many cases constitute complete turns in conversational (and also in basically non-verbal) sequences. Their behaviour is explained by making explicit the presuppositions about discourse context, or ‘discourse placedness conditions’, that are part of their lexical meaning. Another two sets of interjections, the ‘Gesundheit set’ and the ‘sorry-for-the-swearing set’, exhibit highly specific presuppositions about social context, or ‘social placedness conditions’. Other interjections have a substantial degree of indirection, making inference necessary for their interpretation. To illustrate this, the interjection mah ‘time to do something!‘, whose agent is not semantically specified, is compared with others like nja ‘you take this now!’, whose agent is made explicit in the semantic representation. To cover cases like mah, it is useful to introduce a distinction between overt indirection, the lack of formally explicit coding of some aspect of meaning (e.g. argument or complement ellipsis), and covert indirection, the absence of some aspect of meaning from the semantic representation itself. All interjections, on this definition, are overtly indirect, but only some (such as mah) are in addition covertly indirect.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) balmarded, (E) bebba, (E) bonj, (E) mah, (E) med, (E) nadjalaminj, (E) ngoi, (E) nja
Published on January 10, 2022. Last updated on January 10, 2022.
Wierzbicka, Anna. (1992). Wschodnioeuropejska kultura żydowska w świetle żydowskiej „etnografii mowy” [Eastern European Jewish Culture in the Light of Jewish “Ethnography of Speaking”]. Teksty Drugie 5(17) pp 5–25.
In Polish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16(4), 539-581. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1604_4
This article demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger or sadness – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as GOOD, BAD, DO, HAPPEN, KNOW, and WANT, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.
The definitions proposed here take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, wants, and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy”. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazement, (E) anger, (E) appalled, (E) ashamed, (E) contented, (E) delighted, (E) depressed, (E) despair, (E) disappointment, (E) distressed, (E) embarrassed, (E) excited, (E) frightened, (E) frustration, (E) glücklich, (E) grief, (E) guilt, (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) humiliated, (E) hurt, (E) indignant, (E) indignation, (E) pleased, (E) pride, (E) relief, (E) remorse, (E) sad, (E) sčastliv, (E) shocked, (E) sorrow, (E) sorry, (E) surprise, (E) triumph, (E) unhappy, (E) upset, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1992). Traditional Yankunytjatjara ways of speaking – A semantic perspective. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 12(1), 93-122. DOI: 10.1080/07268609208599472
Yankunytjatjara is a minority dialect of the Western Desert Language, spoken by several hundred people, primarily in the north-west of South Australia. This paper sets out to describe some of the dimensions of communicative competence in the traditional Yankunytjatjara lifestyle. Part One gives a brief outline of the walytja ‘kin, relationship’ system, essential social background for what follows. Parts Two and Three consider, respectively, the elaborately oblique speech style tjalpawangkanyi, and various kinds of boisterous banter and joking, concentrating on characterizing the linguistic devices and rhetorical strategies of these speech styles. In discussion sections at the end of Parts Two and Three, Anna Wierzbicka’s semantically inspired approach to cross-cultural pragmatics is applied to the data.
Note: The tag below identifies the rules for use of the speech styles explicated in this paper as cultural scripts, a term that was not yet current in the NSM framework at the time.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) speech styles
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Why do we say IN April, ON Thursday, AT 10 o’clock? In search of an explanation. Studies in Language, 17(2), 437-454. DOI: 10.1075/sl.17.2.07wie
Why do we say ON Thursday but AT 10 o’clock? Or why do we say AT night but IN the morning? One common answer to such questions is to dismiss the problem: this is the way we speak because this is the way to speak; it is all arbitrary, conventional, idiosyncratic.
It is argued that such answers are unilluminating and unsatisfactory. Prepositions such as ON, AT, or IN have their meanings, and the choice between them is motivated by these meanings. There are also certain conventions of use based on cultural expectations; the meanings and the cultural expectations interact and their interaction produces results whose “logic” may be difficult to detect — especially if one looks in the wrong direction, that is, that of “truth conditions” regarding external situations. In fact,
however, the problem is not insoluble, and if it is approached with the understanding that meaning is all in the mind and that it is a matter of conceptualizations rather than “truth conditions”, the hidden “logic ” behind the choice of prepositions for temporal adverbials can be explained.
The paper argues, and tries to demonstrate, that the prepositions AT, IN, and ON mean different things, and that the patterns of their use in different types of temporal phrases are determined by their meanings.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). *Intercultural communication in Australia. In G. Schulz (Ed.), The languages of Australia (pp. 83-103). Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities.
