Browsing results for GODDARD CLIFF
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2009). The conceptual semantics of numbers and counting: An NSM analysis. Functions of Language, 16(2), 193-224. DOI: 10.1075/fol.16.2.02god
This study explores the conceptual semantics of numbers and counting, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka (eds.) 2002). It first argues that the concept of a number in one of its senses (number-1, roughly, “number word”) and the meanings of low number words, such as one, two, and three, can be explicated directly in terms of semantic primes, without reference to any counting procedures or practices. It then argues, however, that the larger numbers, and the productivity of the number sequence, depend on the concept and practice of counting, in the intransitive sense of the verb. Both the intransitive and transitive senses of counting are explicated, and the semantic relationship between them is clarified. Finally, the study moves to the semantics of abstract numbers (number-2), roughly, numbers as represented by numerals, e.g. 5, 15, 27, 36, as opposed to number words. Though some reference is made to cross-linguistic data and cultural variation, the treatment is focused primarily on English.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association) 3, 105-119.
Cultural scripts provide a powerful new technique for articulating cultural norms, values and practices using simple, cross-translatable phrasing. The technique is based on many decades of research into cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. This paper illustrates the cultural scripts approach with three examples of pragmatics of Anglo English: request strategies, personal remarks, and phatic complimenting in American English. It argues that the cultural scripts approach can be readily adapted for use in teaching intercultural pragmatics and intercultural communication, and shows with concrete examples (so-called pedagogical scripts) how this can be done.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) compliments, (S) expressive positivity, (S) personal autonomy, (S) personal remarks, (S) pleasant interaction, (S) requests, (T) Chinese, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2010). A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In Francis Jeffry Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things and stuff: Mass terms and generics (pp. 132-165). New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195382891.003.0008
This chapter follows up earlier work of Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka in which they argued that there are numerous, subtly different, subclasses of mass nouns. These different subclasses presuppose, they claimed, different “conceptualizations” of the nature of a mass. The present chapter concentrates on concrete mass nouns in English, arguing that the formal linguistic properties of mass nouns are systematically correlated with their conceptual content and that this conceptual content can be clearly identified using the tools of Wierzbicka and Goddard’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage system. Some of the cognitive issues raised here involve the extent that there is unity to the notion of mass‐stuff and whether there is any necessary similarity in the relevant part of the mental lives of speakers of different languages, since clearly, languages differ in the types of words that they each treat as mass.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In Barbara C. Malt, & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72-92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311129.003.0005
Abstract:
The first two sections of this chapter provide an overview of NSM research and findings, with a particular focus on mental state concepts. The next two sections show how NSM techniques make it possible to reveal complex and culture-specific meanings in detail and in terms that are readily transposable across languages. Examples include emotion terms, epistemic verbs, and ethnopsychological constructs in English, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. The next section discusses the relationship between linguistic meanings (word meanings) and cognition and elucidates the theoretical and methodological implications for cognitive science. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that people’s subjective emotional experience can be shaped or coloured to some extent by the lexical categories of their language.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bēi 悲, (E) believe that, (E) chóu 愁, (E) heart, (E) maum 몸, (E) mind, (E) sad, (E) sčitat’ считать, (E) unhappy, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 22, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Semantic molecules and semantic complexity (with special reference to “environmental” molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 8(1), 123-155. DOI: 10.1075/ml.8.1.05god
In the NSM approach to semantic analysis, semantic molecules are a well-defined set of non-primitive lexical meanings in a given language that function as intermediate-level units in the structure of complex meanings in that language. After reviewing existing work on the molecules concept (including the notion of levels of nesting), the paper advances a provisional list of about 180 productive semantic molecules for English, suggesting that a small minority of these (about 25) may be universal. It then turns close attention to a set of potentially universal level-one molecules from the “environmental” domain (‘sky’, ‘ground’, ‘sun’, ‘day’, ‘night’ ‘water’ and ‘fire’), proposing a set of original semantic explications for them. Finally, the paper considers the theoretical implications of the molecule theory for our understanding of semantic complexity, cross-linguistic variation in the structure of the lexicon, and the translatability of semantic explications.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) children, (E) day, (E) ends, (E) fire, (E) ground, (E) hands, (E) head, (E) hot, (E) legs, (E) long, (E) moon, (E) night, (E) podłużny, (E) round, (E) sky, (E) sun, (E) sweet, (E) tapu, (E) water, (E) women, (T) English, (T) Japanese, (T) semantic molecules, (T) Spanish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Want’ is a lexical and conceptual universal: Reply to Khanina. Studies in Language, 34(1), 108-123. DOI: 10.1075/sl.34.1.04god
The question of whether or not all languages have a word for ‘want’ (as in ‘I know what you want, I want the same’) is far more important than many linguists appear to realize. Having studied and debated this question for many years, we welcome Olesya Khanina’s (2008) paper “How universal is ‘wanting’?”, which, we believe, addresses a question of fundamental importance. Our own view — which we have sought to substantiate in a large number of publications, over many years (cf. Wierzbicka 1972, 1996; Goddard 1991, 2001; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds. 1994, 2002; Peeters ed. 2006) — is that WANT is a universal semantic prime, i.e. an indivisible unit of meaning with a lexical exponent in all languages. In the present article, we argue that although Khanina has produced valuable results about cross-linguistic patterns in the polysemy of exponents of WANT, she has failed to demonstrate her concluding point, namely, “that ‘want’ is not a universal semantic prime in the sense of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage … [and] that the inclusion of WANT in this list [of semantic primes] is indeed false” (p. 848). Briefly, we will argue that Khanina’s conclusion depends, first, on an a priori decision not to recognise the existence of polysemy; and
second, on a misunderstanding of the NSM position on what it means to be a lexical exponent of a semantic prime. We will also argue that ‘wanting’ constitutes an indispensable conceptual building block in human communication and cognition, and in linguistic and psychological theorizing about communication and cognition.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff, & Andrea C. Schalley (2010). Semantic analysis. In Nitin Indurkhya, & Fred J. Damerau (Eds.), Handbook of natural language processing: Second edition (pp. 93-120). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
Two important themes form the grounding for the discussion in this chapter. First, there is great value in conducting semantic analysis, as far as possible, in such a way as to reflect the cognitive reality of ordinary speakers. This makes it easier to model the intuitions of native speakers and to simulate their inferencing processes, and it facilitates human–computer interactions via querying processes, and the like. Second, there is concern over to what extent it will be possible to achieve comparability, and, more ambitiously, interoperability, between different systems of semantic description. For both reasons, it is highly desirable if semantic analyses can be conducted in terms of intuitive representations, be it in simple ordinary language or by way of other intuitively accessible representations.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 4, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2010). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In Bernd Heine, & Heikko Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459-484). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2nd ed.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In Bernd Heine, & Heikko Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 817-841). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199677078.013.0018
The basic conviction behind the NSM approach – bolstered by scores of empirical studies – is that meaning is the key to insightful and explanatory descriptions of most linguistic phenomena, phonetics and phonology excepted. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a decompositional system of meaning representation based on empirically established universal semantic primes, i.e., simple indefinable meanings that appear to be present as word meanings in all languages. The NSM approach offers a comprehensive and versatile approach to meaning analysis: highly constrained and systematic, non-ethnocentric, and capable of producing representations with high cognitive plausibility. Given the pervasiveness of meaning-based and meaning-related phenomena in languages (in lexicon, morphology, syntax, prosody, and pragmatics), the approach surely has a tremendous amount to offer linguistics at large. Of course, NSM is not a complete theory or methodology of linguistic analysis. If languages can be thought of as systems for correlating meanings with forms, NSM’s strengths lie on the meaning side of the equation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2011). The lexical semantics of language (with special reference to words). Language Sciences, 33(1), 40-57.
DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003
Abstract:
Language can be regarded as one of the cultural key words of English, as well as the foundational term of the discourse of linguistics. It is well to remember, however, that the concept of a language lacks precise semantic equivalents in many languages. This study presents a semantic-lexicographic analysis of several meanings of the word language in contemporary English, using the NSM method of semantic description. The study is similar in scope and approach to an earlier study of the word culture, which resembles language in several important respects. One distinctive aspect of the explications for language is their reliance on the proposed semantic prime WORDS, which is discussed at some length. Though primarily focused on English, the study makes reference to Yankunytjatjara, Chinese, and Russian, among other languages.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic primitives (primes). In Patrick Colm Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 740-742). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Revised and expanded version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The summary below reflects the contents of the second edition.
This lively textbook introduces students and scholars to practical and precise methods for articulating the meanings of words and sentences, and for revealing connections between language and culture. Topics range over emotions (Chapter 4), speech acts (Chapter 5), discourse particles and interjections (Chapter 6), words for animals and artefacts (Chapter 7), motion verbs (Chapter 8), physical activity verbs (Chapter 9), causatives (Chapter 10), and nonverbal communication. Alongside English, it features a wide range of other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Australian Aboriginal languages. Undergraduates, graduate students and professional linguists alike will benefit from Goddard’s wide-ranging summaries, clear explanations and analytical depth. Meaning is fundamental to language and linguistics. This book shows that the study of meaning can be rigorous, insightful and exciting.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Semantics and cognition. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: Cognitive science, 2(2), 125-135. DOI: 10.1002/wcs.101
The words and grammar of any language encode a vast array of complex prepackaged concepts, most of them language-specific and culture-related. These concepts are manipulated routinely in almost every waking hour of most people’s lives. They are largely acquired in infancy and they are intersubjectively shared among members of the speech community. It is hard to imagine such elaborate and variable representation systems not having a substantial role to play in ordinary cognition, and yet the language-and-thought question continues to be a contested one across the various disciplines and sub-disciplines of cognitive science. This article provides an overview from the vantage point of linguistic semantics.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2012). Cultural scripts and communication style differences in three Anglo Englishes (English English, American English and Australian English). In Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 101-120). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI: 10.3726/978-3-653-01353-5
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 29, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2012). ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1038-1050.
DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010
Abstract:
Different communicative styles pertaining to initial self-presentation have implications for mutual misperception, negative evaluation and stereotyping. This study applies the techniques of contrastive ethnopragmatics to communicative style in initial conversational interactions in three varieties of Anglo English: Australian English, American English, and English English. It proposes for each variety a distinctive suite of cultural scripts concerning matters such as presumed stance in relation to sameness and difference, degree of attention to accent and speech style, expected degree of interest in personal information about the interlocutor, expressions of accomplishments and ambitions, and ‘phatic complimenting’. Evidence is drawn from personal testimonies about cultural cross-talk, sociological and cultural studies, and contrastive corpus data.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 23, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2012). Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics, 50(3), 711-743.
DOI: 10.1515/ling-2012-0022
Abstract:
The NSM approach has a long track record in cross-linguistic lexical semantics. It is therefore not surprising that it has a clear theoretical position on key issues in lexical semantic typology and a well-developed set of analytical techniques.
From a theoretical point of view, the overriding issue concerns the tertium comparationis. What are the optimal concepts and categories to support the systematic investigation of lexicons and lexicological phenomena across the world’s languages? The NSM answer to this question is that the necessary concepts can – and must – be based on the shared lexical-conceptual core of all languages, which NSM researchers claim to have discovered over the course of a thirty-five year program of empirical cross-linguistic semantics. This shared lexical-conceptual core is the minilanguage of semantic primes and their associated grammar.
In addition, NSM researchers have developed certain original analytical constructs that promise to enhance the power and systematicity of the approach: in particular, the notions of semantic molecules and semantic templates. This paper sets out to explain and illustrate these notions, to report some key analytical findings (updated, in many cases, from previously published accounts), and to extrapolate their implications for the further development of lexical typology.
This paper contains detailed explications of the English verb drink and its closest Kalam counterpart ñb ‘eat/drink’, as well as of the English verb cut and its Japanese counterpart 切る kiru.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) children, (E) cut, (E) drink, (E) hands, (E) head, (E) kiru 切る, (E) legs, (E) long, (E) ñb, (E) women, (T) Japanese, (T) Russian, (T) semantic molecules, (T) Spanish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2013). Comparatives without scales: An NSM analysis of English comparative constructions. In John Henderson, Marie-Eve Ritz, & Celeste Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/proceedings. PDF (open access)
This study outlines an analysis of the English comparative construction, framed in the NSM approach to semantics (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds. 2002; Goddard ed. 2008). The analysis differs markedly from conventional accounts in that it does not rely on notions of scales, degrees, or standards of comparison. As required, the analysis successfully models the way in which adjectives with equipollent antonyms behave differently from others with respect to their compatibility with comparative statements (Sapir 1944), e.g. why one can say about two cold items ‘This one is colder than that one’, but not ‘This one is hotter than that one’. Likewise, it can explain asymmetries with respect to evaluative comparisons of “inherently bad” referents (Cruse 1986), e.g. why ‘This year’s famine is worse than last year’s’ is acceptable but ‘Last year’s famine was better than this year’s’ is odd. A similar account appears viable for the English superlative construction. The analysis can be termed an “external” one, in the sense that it takes the meaning of the positive term for granted and embeds it into a configuration of semantic primes that explicates the comparative aspect of the meaning.
Tags: (E) (comparatives), (E) (superlatives)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2013). On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions involving “laterality”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics [China], 3(2), 153-167.
This study analyses a set of highly English-specific on-constructions of the form [on + NP-PLACE], such as: on the bank of the river, (a house) on the beach, on an island, on the plains, on the street, on a farm. The analysis is conducted in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka. Six semantically discrete construction types are identified and each is assigned a semantic schema framed in the metalanguage of semantic primes. All of them, it is argued, include a semantic component involving “laterality” (semantic prime SIDE), often in combination with a component involving visibility (SEE). These constructions, along with others, constitute a complex network of grammatical polysemy in English.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (Ed.) (2013). Semantics and/in social cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3) (Special issue).
All NSM-related work in this special issue is listed separately. Recommended search term: “Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3)”.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2013). The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 245-256. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846454
Social cognition (roughly, how people think about other people) is profoundly shaped by culture. It cannot be insightfully studied except by methods that are able to tap into the perspectives of cultural insiders, while avoiding the pitfalls of conceptual and terminological Anglocentrism. This paper shows how the analytical concepts and techniques developed by the NSM approach to language description, such as semantic explications and cultural scripts, can meet these requirements. It argues that the metalanguage of semantic primes, the outcome of a decades-long programme of research, is well adapted to modelling local culturally grounded modes of social cognition in fine detail.
Semantics; Social Cognition; Sociality Concepts; Cultural Scripts; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM); Cultural Key Words
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora, & Goddard, Cliff (2013). ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis. Functions of Language, 20(2), 219-249. DOI: 10.1075/fol.20.2.04bar
The Lexical Function Degrad is a device used in Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) to select the appropriate verb for expressing ‘to become permanently worse or bad’ in combination with different nouns. For example, in English one says that fruit rots, milk goes off, shoes wear out, flowers wilt, and iron rusts; thus, the verbs rot, go off, wear out, etc. can all be considered “values” of Degrad. Comparing these verbs with their translation equivalents in Spanish shows that verbs in the two languages have somewhat different collocational possibilities. Are such collocational differences arbitrary or do they result from subtle meaning differences between the translation equivalents? In this study we undertake a contrastive semantic analysis of a selection of words in the Degrad domain, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method of semantic explication. We conclude that collocational preferences are indeed semantically motivated, but at the same time we recognize that Degrad is a valuable lexicological tool for verb classification, as well as for coordinating translation equivalents across languages at an approximate level. The paper aims to encourage productive engagement between two well developed approaches to lexical semantics, while at the same time demonstrating the explanatory power of the detailed “micro-semantic” analysis enabled by the NSM methodology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) agostarse, (E) desgastarse, (E) estropearse, (E) gastarse, (E) go off, (E) marchitarse, (E) pasarse, (E) pudrirse, (E) rot, (E) wear out, (E) wilt, (E) wither, (T) Spanish
