Goddard, Cliff (1976). (Book review) The Speculative Grammar by C. S. Peirce. International Review of Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 427-440.
(1979) English – Connective particles
Goddard, Cliff (1979). Particles and illocutionary semantics. Paper in Linguistics, 12(1-2), 185-229. DOI: 10.1080/08351817909370468
The aim of this paper is to come up with a semantic analysis of a number of English connective particles, including those usually referred to as “concessive” and “quasi-causal”. A semantic theory on the nature and representation of speech acts is argued to be a necessary preliminary to the semantic analysis of particles and other connectives. The paper seeks to discern the outlines of such an “illocutionary semantics”. The hypothesis that emerges is that particles are used as exponents of illocutionary force. Semantic representations for although, but, however, then and since are then developed on the basis of their role as exponents of illocutionary force.
(1986) English – TOO
Goddard, Cliff (1986). The natural semantics of too. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 635-643. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(86)90018-4
This paper proposes semantic explications in natural language for some half-dozen constructions employing the English particle of ‘emphatic conjunction’ too. It argues that a range of quite subtle meaning differences can be modelled by applying minor variations of a single basic meaning (roughly, ‘one more … the same’) to different levels of illocutionary structure.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1988) English – Metaphors of anger, pride and love
Goddard, Cliff (1988). Review of Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphors of anger, pride and love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts. Lingua, 77(1), 90-98. DOI: 10.1016/0024-3841(89)90041-7
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1989) NSM – Issues
Goddard, Cliff (1989). Issues in Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1), 51-64.
(1989) Semantic representation
Goddard, Cliff (1989). The goals and limits of semantic representation. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2), 297-308.
(1990) Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara – “Good feelings”
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
(1991) Translatability of NSM primes
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
(1991) Yankunytjatjara – ‘Anger’
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
(1992) Yankunytjatjara – Ways of speaking
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
(1994) Malay – LAH
Goddard, Cliff (1994). The meaning of lah: Understanding “emphasis” in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Oceanic Linguistics, 33(1), 145-165. DOI: 10.2307/3623004
The meaning of the illocutionary particle lah, a salient feature of Colloquial Malay, as well as of Malaysian and Singapore English, has proved notoriously difficult to pinpoint. For instance, with declaratives it may convey either “light-heartedness” or an “ill-tempered” effect, and it may either “soften” or “harden” a request. In this article, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach of Anna Wierzbicka is applied to the analysis of lah. This involves developing a translatable reductive paraphrase explication. According to the proposed explication, which is the length of a short paragraph, lah offers an explanation of the speaker’s illocutionary purpose, which is roughly to correct or preempt a misapprehension or misunderstanding of some kind. The explication is shown to be flexible enough to predict the diverse effects that lah itself may convey in combination with other elements of an utterance, once Malay cultural norms of verbal interaction are taken into account.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) NSM primes
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Introducing lexical primitives. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 31-54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.05god
The main part of this chapter surveys the proposed primitive inventory whose cross-linguistic validity is being put to the test in the entire volume. Before embarking on this exercise, we address some methodological issues.
(1994) Semantic and lexical universals [BOOK]
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (Eds.) (1994). Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25
This set of papers represents a unique collection; it is the first attempt ever to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. In fact the word ‘collection’ is not fully appropriate in this case, since the papers report research undertaken specifically for the present volume, and shaped by the same guidelines. They constitute parallel and strictly comparable answers to the same set of questions, coordinated effort with a common aim, and a common methodology. The goal of identifying the universal human concepts found in all languages, is of fundamental importance, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, since these concepts provide the basis of the “psychic unity of mankind”, underlying the clearly visible diversity of human cultures. They also allow us to better understand that diversity itself, because they provide a common measure, without which no precise and meaningful comparisons are possible at all. A set of truly universal (or even near-universal) concepts can provide us with an invaluable tool for interpreting, and explaining all the culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. It can also provide us with a tool for explaining meanings across cultures — in education, business, trade, international relations, and so on.
The book contains 13 chapters on individual languages including Japanese (by Masayuki Onishi), Chinese (by Hilary Chappell), Thai (by Anthony Diller), Ewe (Africa, by Felix Ameka), Miskitu languages of South America (by Kenneth Hale), Australian Aboriginal languages Aranda, Yankunytjatjara and Kayardild (by Jean Harkins & David Wilkins, Cliff Goddard, and Nicholas Evans), Austronesian languages Samoan, Longgu, Acehnese and Mangap-Mbula (by Ulrike Mosel, Deborah Hill, Mark Durie and Robert Bugenhagen), the Papuan language Kalam (by Andrew Pawley), and, last but not least, French (by Bert Peeters). In addition to the chapters on individual languages the book includes three theoretical chapters: “Semantic theory and semantic universals” (by Goddard), “Introducing lexical primitives” (by Goddard and Wierzbicka), and “Semantic primitives across languages: a critical review” (by Wierzbicka).
Each chapter has a separate entry, where more information is provided.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) Semantic universals
Goddard, Cliff (1994). Semantic theory and semantic universals. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 7-29). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.04god
This chapter lays out the semantic theory underlying the volume it is part of, reviews the literature on semantic and lexical universals, and explains the guidelines followed by contributors to the volume.
(1994) Semantics [ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY]
Goddard, Cliff (1994). Semantics. In Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior: Vol. 4 (pp. 109-120). New York: Academic Press.
(1994) Yankunytjatjara – NSM primes
Goddard, Cliff (1994). Lexical primitives in Yankunytjatjara. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 229-262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.13god
All the posited lexical primitives find good candidates in Yankunytjatjara, once polysemy and allolexy are taken into account. In general, the posited exponents are formally simple (monomorphemic) words or clitics; but sometimes they are affixes, and occasionally they are formally complex (i.e. apparently polymorphemic) expressions. There are still some uncertainties about allolexic variants of some primitives, and about how to express certain collocations that the theory predicts are possible. We are not yet in full possession of a Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on Yankunytjatjara. What has been done, however, is to establish its basic lexicon. There would seem to be no serious barrier to the construction of a full NSM based on Yankunytjatjara and mutually translatable with expressively equivalent NSMs of other languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Cultural key words
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Key words, culture and cognition. Philosophica, 55(1), 37-67.
Abstract:
How much does language influence how we think? How far are the categories of our language contingent and culture-specific? Few questions are of greater significance to the social sciences. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that linguistic semantics can address these questions with rigour and precision. It analyses some examples of cultural key words in several languages. Two complementary positions are presented, and both are endorsed. On the one hand, it is argued there are enormous differences in the semantic structuring of different languages and these linguistic differences greatly influence how people think. On the other, it is argued all languages share a small set of universal concepts that can provide a solid basis for cross-cultural understanding and for the culture-independent formulation of philosophical problems.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Japanese, Malay, Polish – Emotion words
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2), 289-298. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9512009
As suggested by its title, Wierzbicka’s 1995 paper ‘Emotion and facial expression: A semantic perspective’ is an attempt to apply a uniform framework for semantic analysis to two domains of emotional expression – words and facial expressions – and to advance some hypotheses about how they are related. Wierzbicka argues that linguistic research shows that no emotion word of English (or any other language) has a simple and undecomposable meaning; rather, the emotion words of different languages encode complex and largely culture-specific perspectives on ‘ways of feeling’, linking feelings with specific kinds of thoughts and wants (prototypical cognitive scenarios). Essentially, the claim is that the meanings of words like angry, proud, lonesome, etc., embody little ‘cultural stories’ about human nature and human interaction. To uncover and state such stories in non-ethnocentric terms, however, requires a framework of semantic universals. We need to go beyond the ‘either-or’ question and seek both the universal core of communication, as well as the precise role of culture. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is a new method that will assist us to reach that goal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Malay – ‘Love’
Goddard, Cliff (1995). ‘Cognitive mapping’ or ‘verbal explication’? Understanding love on the Malay Archipelago. Semiotica, 106(3/4), 323-354.
This is a review article of Karl G. Heider’s 1991 book Landscapes of emotion: Mapping three cultures of emotion in Indonesia. It is argued that a failure to grasp the nettle on the issue of translation, the exclusive reliance on a narrow range of artificial questionnaire-generated data and the lack of depth in the ethnographic commentary prevent Heider from making substantial progress toward his goal of understanding how culture influences emotion. For the purpose of modeling linguistic and cultural meanings, there is no escape from language, and the problem of translation must be faced fairly and squarely. Much progress has been made within linguistic semantics, especially within the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach led by Anna Wierzbicka, toward developing a systematic and non-ethnocentric approach to verbal explication. An attempt is made to show how this approach can be fruitfully and revealingly applied to the semantic analysis of some Malay emotion words.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Various languages – ‘We’
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Who are we? The natural semantics of pronouns. Language Sciences, 17(1), 99-121. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(95)00011-J
Working within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of Anna Wierzbicka, this study proposes reductive paraphrase explications for a range of first-person pronominal meanings. A general explicatory schema is first developed for English we. It is then shown how this can be elaborated to accommodate the inclusive/exclusive distinction, dual number and trial number, and how it can be applied to minimal-augmented systems. Data is taken from various languages of Australia and Asia. It is argued that NSM explications are preferable to conventional feature analyses for two reasons: they are less subject to charges of arbitrariness and obscurity; and they are located within a comprehensive theory of semantic representation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
