Browsing results for GODDARD CLIFF
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2014). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 131-148.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.01god
Abstract:
This introduction to a special issue of the journal IJOLC argues that the cross-linguistic study of subjective experience as expressed, described and construed in language cannot be set on a sound footing without the aid of a systematic and non-Anglocentric approach to lexical semantic analysis. This conclusion follows from two facts, one theoretical and one empirical. The first is the crucial role of language in accessing and communicating about feelings. The second is the demonstrated existence of substantial, culture-related differences between the meanings of emotional expressions in the languages of the world.
The authors contend that the NSM approach to semantic and cultural analysis provides the necessary conceptual and analytical framework to come to grips with these facts. This is demonstrated in practice by the studies of happiness-related and pain-related expressions across eight languages, undertaken by the contributors to the special issue. At the same time as probing the precise meanings of these expressions, the authors provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing in some detail how the meanings they analyse are truly “cultural meanings”.
The project exemplified by the special issue can also be read as a linguistically-anchored contribution to cultural psychology, the quest to understand and appreciate the mental life of others in a full spirit of psychological pluralism.
More information:
Re-issued as:
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2016). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 1-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.01god
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). On “disgust”. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73-97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.06god
Abstract:
This study relies on the NSM approach to explore conceptualisations of “disgust” in English via semantic analysis of descriptive adjectives (disgusted and disgusting) and interjections (Ugh! and Yuck!). As well as drawing out some subtle meaning differences between these expressions, the exercise establishes that there is no one-to-one mapping between the meanings of descriptive emotion lexemes, on the one hand, and expressive interjections, on the other.
More broadly, the study seeks to advance the semantic study of “disgust-like” concepts in a cross-linguistic perspective, first, by highlighting aspects of meaning that differ between the English expressions and their near-equivalents in other languages, such as German, French and Polish, and second, by proposing a set of touchstone semantic components that can help facilitate cross-linguistic investigation.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) disgusted, (E) disgusting, (E) Fu!, (E) pleased, (E) sad, (E) Ugh!, (E) Yuck!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). Have to, have got to, and must: NSM analyses of English modal verbs of ‘necessity’. In Maite Taboada, & Radoslava Trnavac (Eds.), Nonveridicality and evaluation: Theoretical, computational and corpus approaches (pp. 50-75). Leiden: Brill. DOI: doi: 10.1163/9789004258174_004
The author develops a set of semantic explications of English modal verbs associated with necessity from the perspective of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. He argues that this set of semantic explications would be applicable to account for the semantic differences between English modals of necessity. In terms of evaluation, he points out that evaluative meanings can be realized by modal expressions, for example have to conveys confidence, have got to has the semantic connotation of urgency, and must has the connotative meaning of desideration.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). Jesus! vs. Christ! in Australian English: Semantics, secondary interjections and corpus analysis. In Jesús Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2014: New empirical and theoretical paradigms (pp. 55-77). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_4
Using corpus-assisted semantic analysis, conducted in the NSM framework, this chapter explores the meanings and uses of two closely related secondary interjections, namely, Jesus! and Christ!, in Australian English. The interjections Shit! and Fuck! are touched on briefly. From a methodological point of view, the chapter can be read as a study in how corpus techniques and semantic analysis can work in tandem; in particular, how interaction with a corpus can be used to develop, refine and test fine-grained semantic hypotheses. From a content point of view, this study seeks to demonstrate two key propositions: first, that it is possible to identify semantic invariants, i.e. stable meanings, even for highly context-bound items such as interjections; second, that it is possible to capture and model speakers’ awareness of the degree and nature of the “offensiveness” of secondary interjections, in a Metalexical Awareness component that attaches, so to speak, to particular words. Both these propositions challenge conventional assumptions about the nature and interfacing between semantics and pragmatics. A final question raised in the study is how linguists can come to terms with the fact that people use interjections not only orally but also mentally, in “inner speech”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Christ!, (E) Fuck!, (E) Jesus!, (E) Shit!, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63.
DOI: 10.1177/1754073913491843
Abstract:
All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings), and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how the NSM approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ai1 jaa3! 呢樽, (E) Fu!, (E) Gee!, (E) Gosh!, (E) Tfu!, (E) Ugh!, (E) waa3! 哇, (E) Yikes!, (E) Yuck!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Fabréga Jr, Horacio (2014). Evolutionary semantics: Using NSM to model stages in human cognitive evolution. Language Sciences, 42, 60-79. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2013.11.003
This study seeks to make a contribution to evolutionary science. It shows how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) system of semantic–conceptual representation, developed for modern humans, can be ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to produce a plausible model of cognitive evolution from the time of the Last Common Ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees. We posit six stages of cognitive development, each with its own distinct repertoire of conceptual primes. The progression between the stages is seen as driven by natural selection in the service of enhanced cognitive operations for biological problem solving under changing anatomical, behavioural, environmental and social conditions. The paper draws on a range of evidence and leading ideas from archaeology, paleoanthropology and primatology.
Comparative cognition; Human evolution; Evolutionary psychology; NSM; Language of Thought (LOT); Chimpanzee cognition
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 3, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1), 80-126. DOI: 10.1075/sl.38.1.03god
The main goal of paper is to show how NSM findings about lexical universals (semantic primes) can be applied to semantic analysis in little-described languages. It is argued that using lexical universals as a vocabulary for semantic analysis allows one to formulate meaning descriptions that are rigorous, cognitively authentic, maximally translatable, and free from Anglocentrism.
A second goal is to shed light on methodological issues in semantic fieldwork by interrogating some controversial claims about the Dalabon and Pirahã languages. We argue that reductive paraphrase into lexical universals provides a practical procedure for arriving at coherent interpretations of unfamiliar lexical meanings. Other indigenous/endangered languages discussed include East Cree, Arrernte, Kayardild, Karuk, and Maori.
We urge field linguists to take the NSM metalanguage, based on lexical universals, into the field with them, both as an aid to lexicogrammatical documentation and analysis and as a way to improve semantic communication with consultants.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bengdi, (E) bengkan, (T) English, (T) semantic molecules
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001
Abstract:
This book presents a series of systematic, empirically based studies of word meanings. Each chapter investigates key expressions drawn from different domains of the lexicon – concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The examples chosen are complex and culturally important; the languages represented include English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay. The authors ground their discussions in real examples and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama’s writings on happiness.
The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics and a discussion of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology, which is used in all chapters. The discussion includes a wide range of methodological and analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates.
Table of contents:
- Words, meaning, and methodology
- Men, women, and children: The semantics of basic social categories
- Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective
- From “colour words” to visual semantics: English, Russian, Warlpiri
- Happiness and human values in cross-cultural and historical perspective
- Pain: Is it a human universal? The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics
- Suggesting, apologising, complimenting: English speech act verbs
- A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay
- The meaning of abstract nouns: Locke, Bentham and contemporary semantics
- Broader perspectives: Beyond lexical semantics
More information:
Chapter 3 builds on: NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic perspective (2007)
Chapter 4 builds on: Why there are no “colour universals” in language and thought (2008)
Chapter 5 builds on: “Happiness” in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective (2004); The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research (2010); What’s wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück and sčas’te (2011)
Chapter 6 builds on: Is pain a human universal? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective on pain (2012)
Chapter 8 builds on an unpublished English original translated in Russian as: Следуй путем рисового поля”: семантика пословиц в английском и малайском языках [“Sleduy putem risovogo polya”: semantika poslovits v angliyskom i malayskom yazykakh / “Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)] (2009)
The proverbs explicated in Chapter 8 include: (English) A stitch in time saves nine, Make hay while the sun shines, Out of the frying pan into the fire, Practice makes perfect, All that glitters is not gold, Too many cooks spoil the broth, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Where there’s smoke there’s fire; (Malay) Ikut resmi padi ‘Follow the way of the rice plant’, Seperti ketam mangajar anak berjalan betul ‘Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’, Binasa badan kerana mulut ‘The body suffers because of the mouth’, ‘Ada gula, ada semut ‘Where there’s sugar, there’s ants’, Seperti katak di bawah tempurung ‘Like a frog under a coconut shell’, Keluar mulut harimau masuk mulut buaya ‘Out from the tiger’s mouth into the crocodile’s mouth’, Bila gajah dan gajah berlawan kancil juga yang mati tersepit ‘When elephant fights elephant it’s the mousedeer that’s squashed to death’.
Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) 'happiness' (Dalai Lama), (E) aching, (E) altruism, (E) apologize, (E) arnkelye, (E) ask, (E) babies, (E) blue, (E) ból, (E) boyish, (E) boys, (E) childish, (E) childlike, (E) children, (E) commit suicide, (E) complain, (E) compliment, (E) criticize, (E) death, (E) depressed, (E) depression, (E) devočki, (E) devuški, (E) disease, (E) douleur, (E) eu prattein, (E) female, (E) girls, (E) goluboj, (E) greet, (E) ill, (E) illness, (E) insult, (E) interpersonal warmth, (E) kill, (E) kill oneself, (E) life, (E) mal, (E) male, (E) mana, (E) marry, (E) men, (E) niebieski, (E) offer, (E) order, (E) parricide, (E) patricide, (E) praise, (E) problem, (E) promise, (E) proverb, (E) real, (E) recommend, (E) saying, (E) sinij, (E) size, (E) souffrir, (E) suffer, (E) suggest, (E) tell, (E) temperature, (E) thank, (E) threaten, (E) trauma, (E) typical, (E) violence, (E) vzaimopomoshch, (E) warn, (E) women, (S) expressiveness, (S) personal autonomy, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 11, 2022.
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’, ‘the Dreaming’) mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2015(1), 43-65.
This study proposes a detailed explication for the Australian Aboriginal Jukurrpa concept, phrased exclusively in simple cross-translatable words. The various components of the explication are justified. The authors do not claim to have necessarily arrived at a full, perfect or correct lexical-semantic analysis, although in principle this is the goal of semantic analysis. Rather, their purpose is to share a hermeneutic process and its results. The guiding framework for the process is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to meaning analysis.
Jukurrpa is the word used in Warlpiri for what is referred to in English as the Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’, or ‘the Dreaming’. The same concept is referred to in Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara as tjukurpa, in Arrernte as altyerre, etc. After a short introduction, the paper is organized around successive stages in the evolution of the current explication, which is partitioned into multiple sections and depicts a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. The authors present and discuss four semantic explications, each built on – and, hopefully, improving upon – its predecessor.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Jukurrpa
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to English physical activity verbs. In Andrej Malchukov & Bernard Comrie (Eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages, vol. 2 (pp. 1671-1701). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. DOI: 10.1515/9783110429343-020
This study examines five English physical activity verbs (eat, pour, dig, carry, cut) and, using a dedicated semantic template, proposes detailed semantic explications for the basic activity-in-progress meanings of these verbs. It then shows, with a different template, how these basic meanings can be transposed into perfective uses. The study examines and explicates 11 alternations (specialized constructions) involving the five verbs, showing in each case exactly how the alternations are related to the base semantics of the verb. In his demonstration, the author relies on the concept of derivational base, which is a new concept in NSM studies.
The general picture is that the specialized constructions are quasi-derivational in nature: the primary or semantically basic sense of the verb is embedded in a more elaborate configuration containing additional semantic material. Often much of this additional material is modeled on the semantics of verbs that belong to different semantic types (lexicosyntactic blending), but it can be partly idiosyncratic or non-predictable. Each specialized construction represents a kind of “word in construction” polysemy.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) carry, (E) cut, (E) dig, (E) eat, (E) pour
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). “Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English: At the crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(2), 189-218. DOI 10.1515/ip-2015-0010
This study seeks to show that Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) analytical techniques allow an integrated semantic-pragmatic approach to the use of “swear words” and “curse (cuss) words”. The paper begins with a semantic exegesis of the lexical items swear word and curse word. This is helpful to delimit and conceptualize the phenomena being studied, and it also hints at some interesting differences between the speech cultures of Australian English and American English. Subsequent sections propose semantic explications for a string of swear/curse words and expressions as used in Australian English, including: exclamations (Shit! Fuck! Damn! Christ! Jesus!), abuse formulas (Fuck you!, Damn you!), interrogative and imperative formulas (e.g. Who the fuck do you think you are?; Get the hell out of here!), and the free use of expressive adjectives, such as fucking and goddamn, in angry swearing. A novel aspect, with interesting implications for the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, is that the explications incorporate a metalexical awareness section, modelling speaker awareness of the ethnometapragmatic status of the word in the community of discourse. The study goes on to address so-called “social/conversational” swearing. Cultural scripts are proposed to capture some Anglo ethnopragmatic assumptions about how the use of swear/curse words can be affected by perceptions of familiarity, solidarity, and mutuality. Differences between Australian English and American English are discussed at various points.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Christ!, (E) curse words, (E) cuss words, (E) Dammit!, (E) Damn you!, (E) Damn!, (E) Fuck you!, (E) Fuck!, (E) fucking, (E) Get the hell out of here!, (E) goddamn, (E) Jesus!, (E) Shit!, (E) swear words, (E) Where (who/what...) the hell, (S) swear/curse words and children, (S) swear/curse words and gender, (S) swear/curse words in high solidarity situations, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 291-313.
DOI: 10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god
Abstract:
This study has three main dimensions. It begins by turning the lens of NSM semantic analysis onto a set of words that are central to the “discourse of the unexpected” in English: surprised, amazed, astonished and shocked. By elucidating their precise meanings, we can gain an improved picture of the English folk model in this domain. A comparison with Malay (Bahasa Melayu) shows that the “surprise words” of English lack precise equivalents in other languages.
The second dimension involves grammatical semantics: it seeks to identify the semantic relationships between agnate word-sets such as: surprised, surprising, to surprise; amazed, amazing, to amaze.
The third dimension is a theoretical one and is concerned with the development of a typology of “surprise-like” concepts. It is argued that adopting English-specific words, such as surprise or unexpected, as descriptive categories inevitably leads to conceptual Anglocentrism. The alternative, non-Anglocentric strategy relies on components phrased in terms of universal semantic primes, such as ‘something happened’ and ‘this someone didn’t know that it will happen’, and the like.
More information:
Reissued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2017). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In Agnès Celle, & Laure Lansari (Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27-49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.92.02god
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazed, (E) astonished, (E) hairan, (E) shocked, (E) shocking, (E) surprise, (E) surprised, (E) surprising, (E) terkejut, (E) terperanjat
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 29, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, with Zhengdao Ye (2015). Ethnopragmatics. In Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 66-83). London: Routledge.
Abstract:
Ethnopragmatics pursues emic (or culture-internal) perspectives on speech practices across languages and cultures. As such, it studies the links between language in use, on the one hand, and culture, on the other. The approach is based on the premise that there is an explanatory link between the cultural values/norms and the speech practices specific to a speech community. Ethnopragmatics relies on NSM to decompose cultural norms and notions in terms of simple meanings that are thought to be shared by all languages. Since it relies on linguistic evidence and ethnographic data from insiders to the culture, one of its central objectives is to explore ‘cultural key words’, or words that capture culturally constructed concepts that are pivotal to the ways of thinking, feeling, behaving, and speaking of a speech community.
To illustrate the approach, the chapter includes two ethnographic sketches from Anglo English and Chinese culture, respectively.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) freedom, (E) hé 和, (E) I think [epistemic reserve], (E) in my opinion, (E) It's rude to VP, (E) rĕn 忍, (E) That's not fair, (S) display of emotions, (S) distance and closeness, (S) epistemic reserve and openness, (S) freedom of expression, (S) personal autonomy, (S) restraint
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 3, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). Words as carriers of cultural meaning. In John R. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word (pp. 380-398). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.027
Though most approaches to lexical semantics have shown little interest in cultural aspects of meaning, the subject holds intense interest for adjacent disciplines such as anthropology, cultural history, literary studies, and translation studies, as well for the general public. This chapter reviews different ways in which word meanings can be ‘culturally laden’, starting with cultural key words, i.e. intense focal points of cultural meaning, typically untranslatable, by normal means, into other languages. Words can also be culturally important in less dramatic fashion. The chapter reviews examples from various abstract and concrete domains, stressing that cultural themes are often conveyed by a suite of related, mutually reinforcing words. The chief methodological challenges in this arena are how to capture subtleties of meaning with precision, while avoiding the danger of conceptual Anglocentrism creeping into the description. The chapter demonstrates how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach deals with this challenge.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 23, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (Eds.) (2016). “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/bct.84
Abstract:
In the fast-growing fields of happiness studies and pain research, which have attracted scholars from diverse disciplines including psychology, philosophy, medicine, and economics, this volume provides a much needed cross-linguistic perspective. It centres on the question of how much ways of talking and thinking about happiness and pain vary across cultures, and seeks to answer this question by empirically examining the core vocabulary pertaining to happiness and pain in many languages and in different religious and cultural traditions. The authors not only probe the precise meanings of the expressions in question, but also provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing how these meanings are truly cultural. Methodologically, while in full agreement with the view of many social scientists and economists that self-reports are the bedrock of happiness research, the volume presents a body of evidence highlighting the problem of translation and showing how local concepts of happiness and pain can be understood without an Anglo bias.
Table of contents:
- Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye)
- “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective (Anna Wierzbicka)
- The story of “Danish happiness” (Carsten Levisen)
- The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese (Zhengdao Ye)
- Japanese interpretations of “pain” and the use of psychomimes (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh)
- Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish (Zuzanna Bułat-Silva)
- The semantics and morphosyntax of tare “hurt/pain” in Koromu (PNG) (Carol Priestley)
Each chapter has a separate entry, where more information is provided.
More information:
Previously published as:
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (Eds.) (2014). “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2) (Special issue). DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 20, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, Taboada, Maite, & Trnavac, Radoslava (2016). Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis (Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science. PDF (open access)
This technical report applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to the lexical-semantic analysis of English evaluational adjectives and compares the results with the picture developed in Martin & White’s Appraisal Framework. The analysis is corpus-assisted, with examples mainly drawn from film and book reviews, and supported by collocational and statistical information from WordBanks Online. NSM explications are proposed for 24 evaluational adjectives, and it is argued that they fall into five groups, each of which corresponds to a distinct semantic template. The groups can be sketched as follows: “First-person thought-plus-affect”, e.g. wonderful; “Experiential”, e.g. entertaining; “Experiential with bodily reaction”, e.g. gripping; “Lasting impact”, e.g. memorable; “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent. These groupings and semantic templates are compared with the classifications in the Appraisal Framework’s system of Appreciation. The report concludes with discussion of the relevance of the two frameworks for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) awesome, (E) awful, (E) boring, (E) clever, (E) compelling, (E) depressing, (E) disappointing, (E) disgusting, (E) dismal, (E) disturbing, (E) dreadful, (E) fabulous, (E) fascinating, (E) haunting, (E) inspiring, (E) interesting, (E) original, (E) predictable, (E) sickening, (E) stunning, (E) suspenseful, (E) tense, (E) terrible, (E) touching, (E) woeful
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Gladkova, Anna; Vanhatalo, Ulla; & Goddard, Cliff (2016). The semantics of interjections: An experimental study with Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(4), 841-865.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716415000260
Abstract:
This paper reports the results of a pilot experimental study aimed at evaluating NSM explications of English interjections. It proposes a novel online survey technique to test NSM explications with language speakers. The survey tested recently developed semantic explications of selected English interjections used to mark either ‘surprise’ (wow, gosh, gee, yikes) or ‘disgust’ (yuck, ugh). The results provide overall support for the proposed explications and indicate directions for their further development. It is interesting that respondents’ preexisting knowledge of NSM and other background variables (age, gender, being a native speaker, or studying linguistics) were shown to have little influence on the test results.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Gee!, (E) Gosh!, (E) Ugh!, (E) Wow!, (E) Yikes!, (E) Yuck!, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 5, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214-256. DOI: 10.1075/fol.23.2.03god
This study proposes NSM semantic explications for a cross-section of the English verbal lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. The twenty-five verbs are drawn from about a dozen verb classes, including verbs for non-typical locomotion (crawl, swim, fly), other intransitive activities (play, sing), manipulation (hold), activities that affect material integrity (cut, grind, dig), creation/production (make, build, carve), actions that affect people or things (hit, kick, kill) or cause a change of location (pick up, put, throw, push), bodily reactions to feelings (laugh, cry), displacement (fall, sink) and weather phenomena (rain, snow).
Though the verbs explicated are specifically English verbs, they have been chosen with an eye to their relevance to lexical typology and cross-linguistic semantics (many are drawn from the Verb Meanings List of the Leipzig Valency Patterns project) and it is hoped that the analytical strategy and methodology exemplified in this study can be a useful model for research into other languages. The study demonstrates the application of the NSM concept of semantic templates, which provide a clear “skeletal” structure for explications of considerable internal complexity and which help account for shared semantic and grammatical properties of verbs of a given subclass.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) build, (E) carve, (E) crawl, (E) cry, (E) cut, (E) dig, (E) fall, (E) fly, (E) grind, (E) hit, (E) hold, (E) kick, (E) kill, (E) laugh, (E) make, (E) pick up, (E) play, (E) push, (E) put, (E) rain, (E) sing, (E) sink, (E) snow, (E) swim, (E) throw, (T) English, (T) semantic molecules
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 11, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Cramer, Rahel (2016). “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication. In Donal Carbaugh (Ed.), The handbook of communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89-103). New York: Routledge.
Abstract:
What cultural logic is at play whereby Australians can be friendly and humorous, and yet at the same time derisive, disdainful, and scornful? One of the goals of this study is to explain this paradox by providing a detailed insider perspectives on certain canonical Anglo-Australian (“Aussie”) cultural values and orientations to communication, both at the interpersonal level and in the public sphere. Words and expressions are treated as entry points through which to access cultural meaning.
The focus is on two clusters of words. In the first cluster are the words laid back and easy going, which are high-frequency descriptors of the preferred Australian interactional style and an indisputable part of the national self-stereotype. The second cluster consists of the twin expressions not taking yourself/anything too seriously and the word irreverence. These expressions, it is argued, are Australian cultural key words and, consequently, deeply implicated in canonical Anglo-Australian conceptions of personhood, social interaction, and humour.
Though the paper includes occasional contrastive remarks about other cultural orientations, its focus is not on cross-cultural communication but on Australian cultural conceptualizations of communication and how these play out in communicational practices.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) easy going, (E) irreverence, (E) laid back, (E) take [...] too seriously, (S) jocular abuse, (S) other people's admiration, (S) social equality, (S) social similarity
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Wong, Jock (2016). “Walking” and “running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2), 303–336. DOI: 10.1075/rcl.14.2.03god
This study examines the conceptual semantics of human locomotion verbs in two languages – English and German – using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Based on linguistic evidence, it proposes semantic explications for English walk and run, and their nearest counterparts in German, i.e. laufen (in two senses, roughly, ‘run’ and ‘go by walking’), rennen (roughly, ‘run quickly’), gehen (roughly, ‘go/walk’), and the expression zu Fuß gehen (roughly, ‘go on foot’). Somewhat surprisingly for such closely related languages, the conceptual semantics turns out to be significantly different in the two languages, particularly in relation to manner-of-motion. On the other hand, it is shown that the same four-part semantic template (with sections Lexicosyntactic Frame, Prototypical Scenario, Manner, and Potential Outcome) applies in both languages. We consider the implications for systematic contrastive semantics and for lexical typology.
contrastive semantics; conceptual semantics; lexical polysemy; manner; verbs of motion; semantic template; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
