Browsing results for GODDARD CLIFF
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1996). Can linguists help judges know what they mean? Linguistic semantics in the court-room. Forensic Linguistics, 3(2), 250-272. DOI: 10.1558/ijsll.v3i2.250
This paper considers how linguistic semantics can assist judges in determining the ‘plain meaning’ of words for the purpose of statutory interpretation. It describes the main schools of contemporary semantics, showing that leading experts in the field differ enormously in their basic assumptions and methods. It gives a detailed critique of surveys as a research method in semantics, concentrating on a 1994 American study proposed as a model of how linguists can help judges. Although the author advocates Anna Wierzbicka’s reductive paraphrase approach and seeks to demonstrate its value for conceptual analysis in legal contexts, he argues that in view of the fragmented and under-developed state of lexical semantics it would be ill-advised for courts to recognize linguists as experts on word meanings.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) die, (E) enterprise, (E) lie, (E) reckless, (E) suddenly
Published on June 28, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1996). The “social emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Ethos, 24(3), 426-464. DOI: 10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00020
Studies of cultural variation in emotional meanings have played an important part in the development of the interdisciplinary field of cultural psychology. It is now widely accepted that the language of emotion can be an invaluable window into culture-specific conceptualizations of social life and human nature. Such studies inevitably involve explorations in cross-linguistic semantics. Despite their undoubted value, however, from the point of view of linguistic semantics these inquiries have been informal in the sense that they have not utilized any rigorous framework for semantic analysis. It is the premise of this article that a suitably rigorous method of cross-cultural semantic analysis is the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach developed primarily by Anna Wierzbicka. The present study applies the NSM approach to a subset of the emotion vocabulary of Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. The underlying theoretical question is the extent to which emotion concepts are culturally constituted. The related methodological problem is how to analyse and describe emotion terms in a way that does not take Western/English language emotion concepts as neutral or natural scientific categories.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bangga, (E) benci, (E) cemburu, (E) cinta, (E) dendam, (E) geram, (E) hampa, (E) kasih, (E) kasihan, (E) kecewa, (E) malu, (E) marah, (E) rindu, (E) sayang, (E) segan, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1996). Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145-151. DOI: 10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1
This paper takes issue with the assertion that there is no culture-neutral boundary between what is literal and what is metaphorical, and with the undercurrent of extreme relativism shown in a recent paper published in the same journal. It furthermore makes the point that, to study (and even to identify) the metaphoric systems of other languages, a coherent theory of semantic description is required. It is argued that, despite the enormous semantic differences between languages, there is solid evidence that they share a small set of ‘universal meanings’, which can provide a non-arbitrary and non-ethnocentric vocabulary for cross-linguistic semantics.
The claims contained in this paper are underpinned by discussion of the semantic primes THERE IS and FEEL in Yankunytjatjara.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Tong, Malindy, Yell, Michael, & Goddard, Cliff (1997). Semantic primitives of time and space in Hong Kong Cantonese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 245-261. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00063-0
This paper takes a subset of the semantic primitives currently proposed in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory and addresses two questions: Do these meanings have lexical equivalents in Cantonese? If so, does their combinatorial syntax conform to Wierzbicka’s hypotheses? The temporal primitives (WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME) are all found to have clear Cantonese exponents which can be combined as predicted with other metalanguage elements–but for two exceptions: the combinations A VERY SHORT TIME and BEFORE/AFTER NOW are apparently not possible in Cantonese. We also argue that the Cantonese evidence suggests that
‘when-time’ (as in the phrase AT THIS TIME) and ‘frequency time’ (as in IT HAPPENED TWO TIMES) may be distinct semantic primes. As for the spatial primitives (WHERE/PLACE, HERE, NEAR, FAR, INSIDE, SIDE, ABOVE, BELOW), they all appear to have Cantonese exponents with the predicted syntax, but the tentative proposal that ON may be a universal primitive is challenged by the apparent lack of an equivalent expression in Cantonese.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 3, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1997). Discourse and culture. In Teun A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 231-257). London: Sage.
As in all cross-cultural research, the overriding methodological problem is ethnocentric bias, that is, the danger that our understanding of the discourse practices of other cultures will be distorted if we view them through the prism of our own culture-specific practices and concepts. There is a need to find a universal, language-independent perspective on discourse structure and on cultural values.
In this chapter we first survey a variety of different approaches to culture and discourse studies, then take a close look at cultural aspects of discourse in five unrelated cultures (Japanese, Malay, Polish, Yankunytjatjara, Ewe). In this way, we can draw out some of the main dimensions of cross-cultural variation in discourse.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147-162. DOI: 10.1075/prag.7.2.02god
It is often assumed that the English motion verbs come and go can be glossed as motion towards-the-speaker and ‘motion not-towards-the-speaker’, respectively. This paper proposes alternative semantic analyses which are more complex, but also, it is argued, more descriptively adequate and more explanatory. The semantic framework is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach developed by Anna Wierzbicka, in which meanings are stated as explanatory paraphrases (explications) couched in a small, standardized and translatable metalanguage based on natural language. A single explication is advanced for come, and it is shown that this unitary meaning is compatible with the broad range of ‘appropriateness conditions’ on its use. The same applies to go. A novel feature of the proposed analysis for come is that it does not rely on the conventional notion that ‘deictic projection’ is a pragmatic phenomenon. Instead the potential for ‘deictic projection’ is analysed as flowing directly from the lexical semantics of come. This approach, it is argued, enables an improved account of semantic differences between near-equivalents for come and go in various languages.
Tags: (E) come, (E) go, (E) move away, (E) move from...to, (E) move towards, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English. Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153-181. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9700300204
This paper argues that psychology has yet to come fully to grips with the extent of semantic variation between languages, and that it can benefit, in this regard, from certain developments in linguistic semantics. It outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach to cross-cultural semantics, and demonstrates the approach through a contrastive study of ‘surprise-like’ words from two languages: Malay (terkejut, terperanjat, hairan) and English (surprised, amazed, shocked, startled). It is shown that there is no exact Malay equivalent to English surprise; and also that there is no semantic core shared by the various terms, only a loose set of cross-cutting and overlapping semantic correspondences. These results are at odds with the classic “basic emotions” position, which would have it that ‘surprise’ is a universal and discrete biological syndrome. The overriding contention of the paper is that Wierzbicka’s approach to linguistic semantics can furnish psychology with valuable new analytical and descriptive tools.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazed, (E) anger, (E) hairan, (E) marah, (E) shocked, (E) song, (E) startled, (E) surprised, (E) terkejut, (E) terperanjat, (T) Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). Semantic primes and grammatical categories. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17(1), 1-41. DOI: 10.1080/07268609708599543
This paper argues that all 55 of the semantic primes currently [1997] posited in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory are frequently found as components of grammatically encoded meanings. Examples are taken from a wide variety of the world’s languages, including Ewe, Kashaya, Polish, Quechua, Tibetan, and Wintu. They include phenomena such as pronoun systems, indefinites, classifiers, evidentials, locational deixis, tense systems, diminutives and augmentatives, and modality. Explications are proposed for absolute superlatives (-issimo), reflexive constructions, and constructions referred to as the active emotion construction, the emotional causer construction, the emotional stimulus construction, the impersonal emotion construction, and the object experiencer construction.
The study seeks to contribute to the development of a more rigorous semantic basis for grammatical typology, by demonstrating that the proposed semantic metalanguage is able to encompass and explicate a wide variety of grammaticalized meanings. Such a finding cuts across the commonly held view that, for the most part, grammatical semantics and lexical semantics call for rather different descriptive toolkits.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) evidentials, (E) move away, (E) move towards, (E) we, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Hill, Deborah, & Goddard, Cliff (1997). Spatial terms, polysemy and possession in Longgu (Solomon Islands). Language Sciences, 19(3), 263-275. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00064-2
Lexical exponents of the proposed semantic primitives ABOVE, UNDER, INSIDE and ON THE SIDE are identified in Longgu (Solomon Islands). It is argued that the first three of these exponents are polysemous between a semantically primitive relational sense and a secondary topological sense. A number of issues relating to the morphosyntax of the exponents are discussed, including their status as ‘local nouns’, the significance of the fact that their basic syntactic frame employs the same system of person-number agreement suffixes as the inalienable possession construction, and the difference between this basic frame and a rarer ‘associative construction’. There is also a brief discussion of the status of the hypothetical primitive ON in Longgu.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on June 28, 2017. Last updated on October 19, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of Pragmatics, 27(2), 183-201. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X
This paper documents some Malay ‘rules of speaking’ and articulates their connections with Malay cultural values, using the new theory of ‘cultural scripts’ developed by Anna Wierzbicka. Aspects of the preferred Malay discourse style, which is normally described as refined, restrained, and charming, are shown to be linked with the Malay social emotion of malu ‘shame, propriety’, with the personal qualities of maruah ‘dignity, self-respect, pride’ and harga diri ‘self-esteem’, and with the ideal of senang hati ‘a heart at ease; (lit.) easy heart’. It is argued that the cultural scripts approach enhances descriptive accuracy, helps reduce ethnocentricm, and facilitates the integration of pragmatics and cultural semantics.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) halus, (E) kasar, (E) malu, (E) maruah, (E) senang hati, (S) apologies, (S) expressing feelings, (S) expressing what one wants, (S) speaking
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). The universal syntax of semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3), 197-207. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00059-9
Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) theory has given rise to a new approach to investigating the fundamentals of syntax. The central idea is that all languages share an irreducible core which consists of a set of universal semantic primitives with certain universal combinatorial (i.e. syntactic) properties. This paper outlines a series of hypotheses about the universal syntax of semantic primitives – hypotheses which are tested in the individual language studies which comprise the rest of the volume. Topics include: the valency options and complementation possibilities of primitive predicates such as DO, HAPPEN, WANT, THINK, SAY and KNOW, the grammar of temporal and locative primitives (such as WHEN/TIME, BEFORE, AFTER, WHERE/PLACE, ABOVE, BELOW, NEAR, FAR), and of the conditional IF…) and counterfactual IF…WOULD) constructions.
Tags: (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff (Ed.) (1997). Studies in the syntax of universal semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3) (Special issue).
All NSM-related work in this special issue is listed separately. Recommended search term: “Language Sciences, 19(3)”.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1998). Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In René Dirven, & Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics (pp. 137-159). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2nd ed.:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2004). Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In René Dirven, & Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics. Second revised edition (pp. 127-148). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This chapter looks into cross-linguistic semantic differences in a systematic way. We present a method for pinpointing semantic distinctions and for exploring their cultural relevance. A key question is whether differences in linguistic conceptualization play a central role in language and thought or whether they are rather marginal. Both positions have been advocated. The first is known as linguistic relativity, in its extreme form as linguistic determinism. The second is known as universalism and holds that all people all over the world basically think in the same way. This chapter proposes a compromise between the extremes: Most linguistic concepts are indeed language-specific, but there is also a small number of universal linguistic concepts which occur in all languages. These universal concepts can be used as a “neutral” basis for paraphrasing the huge variety of language-specific and culture-specific concepts in the languages of the world. This is illustrated firstly for lexical concepts, then for grammatical concepts, and finally for the cultural norms of behaviour which underlie people’s behaviour in different cultures.
Published on July 3, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Universal semantic primes of space – A lost cause? LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 434. PDF (open access)
Reissued in 2007 with divergent page numbering.
In recent years, a new wave of research on language and space has uncovered surprising variation in the linguistic coding of spatial relationships. It is now known that some languages, e.g. Tzeltal, exhibit remarkable lexico-grammatical elaboration of spatial relationships; that in many languages of Africa and Oceania apparently simple spatial relationships such as INSIDE and ABOVE are encoded by means of noun-like words, or by a combination of a preposition and a postposition, each of which may be independently meaningful. It has also been shown that children’s early acquisition of spatial terminology differs markedly between typologically different languages.
In almost all this recent work, the emphasis has been on cross-linguistic variation in spatial semantics. The question then arises whether there any semantic universals of space that are still viable in the light of the attested variation in formal realization and lexico-grammatical elaboration. In particular, what of the semantic primes of space proposed within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework, namely: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, INSIDE, ON (ONE) SIDE, NEAR, FAR?
After an introduction, the body of the paper has three sections. The first argues that three languages that exhibit markedly different spatial characteristics to English (Tzeltal, Longgu, Ewe) nevertheless still contain exponents of the NSM spatial primes. The second takes a fresh look at some of the new results on cross-linguistic variation in the acquisition of spatial semantics, with particular reference to Korean. The third surveys the grammaticalization of spatial meaning in a typological perspective, concluding that the items on the NSM inventory of spatial primes are all found as recurrent dimensions of grammaticalized meaning in a range of languages.
The overall conclusion is that NSM’s spatial primes are both viable and necessary for the description of spatial meanings within and across languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) move away, (E) move towards, (E) on
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 26, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129-156. DOI: 10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129
Semantic primitives have fallen on hard times. Though their existence was once widely accepted in linguistics, a variety of counter-arguments have since engendered widespread scepticism. This paper examines a selection of anti-primitives arguments with the aim of showing that they fail to apply to the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach.
The most serious of the faulty arguments invalidly link semantic primitives with ‘objectivism’, or with abstractness and non-verifiability, or with implausible views about language acquisition or language processing. Others rely on misanalysed linguistic ‘facts’, or simply fail to come to grips with the most credible pro-primitives position. The anti-primitives arguments are drawn from a broad range of sources, including the philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, language acquisition studies, and cognitive linguistics.
The paper includes explications of the English words break, happy, lie and on.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) break, (E) happy, (E) lie, (E) on
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (1999). Building a universal semantic metalanguage: The semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. RASK, 9-10, 3-35.
For some thirty years now, Anna Wierzbicka has been one of the most prolific, insightful, and lively scholars in the field of linguistic semantics. Her books and articles have ranged over diverse areas of lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, and pragmatics. At the level of theory, she is widely known for her insistence that universal semantic primitives exist as meanings of words in ordinary language. In recent years, her theory – now known as the ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach – has undergone considerable expansion and modification. This article presents an overview of current NSM theory, covering the expanded inventory of primitives, the novel concepts of allolexy and non-compositional polysemy, and new proposals about the syntax of the semantic metalanguage.
Tags: (T) English
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 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 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2001). *Cultural semantics and intercultural communication. In David Killick, Margaret Perry, & Alison Phipps (Eds.), Poetics and praxis of languages and intercultural communication (pp. 33-44). Glasgow: Glasgow University Press.
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
