Browsing results for Main Authors
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Philosophy and discourse: The rise of “really” and the fall of “truly”. Cahiers de praxématique, 38, 85-112. DOI: 10.4000/praxematique.574
Does it matter that speakers of English have started to use more and more the word really and less and less the word truly? Does it matter that the word really has become very widely used in English – much more so than truly ever was? And does it matter that the references to “truth” in conversation appear to have become much less common than they used to be?
This paper argues that these things are indeed highly significant, that really does not mean the same as truly, and that the phenomenal rise of really throws a great deal of light on Anglo culture – both in a historical and comparative perspective.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (tag question), (E) evidence, (E) fact, (E) real, (E) true, (E) truly, (S) really, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 27, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Right and wrong: From philosophy to everyday discourse. Discourse Studies, 4(2), 225-252. DOI: 10.1177/14614456020040020601
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 3 (pp. 61-102) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). English: Meaning and culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the English language is the remarkable rise of the word right, in its many interrelated senses and uses. This article tries to trace the changes in the meaning and use of this word, as well as the rise of new conversational routines based on right, and raises questions about the cultural underpinnings of these semantic and pragmatic developments. It explores the hypothesis that the “discourse of truth” declined in English over the centuries; that the use of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as parallel concepts (and opposites) increased; and it notes that the use of right as an adjective increased enormously in relation to the use of true.
Originally, right meant ‘straight’, as in a right line (straight line). Figuratively, perhaps, this right in the sense ‘straight’ was also used in an evaluative sense: ‘good’, with an additional component building on the geometrical image: ‘clearly good’. Spoken of somebody else’s words, right was linked (implicitly or explicitly) with ‘true’. However, in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, right appears to have begun to be used more and more with reference to thinking rather than speaking. The association of right with thinking seems to have spread in parallel with a contrastive use of right and wrong – a trend apparently encouraged by the influence of the Reformation, especially within its Calvinist wing. Another interesting development is that, over the last two centuries or so, the discourse of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ appears to have found a competitor in a discourse of ‘cooperation’ and mutual concessions. Judging by both the frequency and range of its use, the word right flourished in this atmosphere, whereas wrong was increasingly left behind.
This article traces the transition from the Shakespearean response “Right.”, described by the OED as ‘you are right; you speak well’, to the present-day “Right.” of non-committal acknowledgement and it links the developments in semantics and discourse patterns with historical phenomena such as Puritanism, British empiricism, the Enlightenment and the growth of democracy.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) right, (S) disagreement, (S) freedom of expression, (S) opinions, (S) truth and untruth, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 6, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). English causative constructions in an ethnosyntactic perspective: Focusing on LET. In Nick Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax (pp. 162-203). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266500.003.0008
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 171-203) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). English: Meaning and culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
This chapter focuses on one area of ‘cultural elaboration’ in grammar, namely, on the elaboration of causal relations in modern English. Topics discussed include causation and patterns of social interaction, Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a tool for studying ethnosyntax, the meaning of causatives in a cross-linguistic perspective, German lassen constructions, and English let constructions, and comparison of Russian and German.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) lassen, (E) let, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). On and on: Verbal explications for a polysemic network. Cognitive Linguistics, 13(3), 277-294. DOI: 10.1515/cogl.2002.019
The semantics of spatial prepositions has been much studied in cognitive linguistics, but not previously in terms in terms of verbal explication. This article analyzes prepositional on-constructions which concern the location of one physical object in relation to another (e.g., cup on the table, pendant on a chain, handle on the door, fins on its back), using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka. Four semantically discrete categories are identified and each is assigned a verbal paraphrase (explication) framed in the metalanguage of semantic primes. The semantic interrelationships between these meanings are briefly explored.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Australian cultural scripts – bloody revisited. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(9), 1167-1209. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00023-6
This paper focusses on ‘‘the great Australian adjective’’ bloody and it shows that far from being meaningless, the humble bloody is packed with meaning; and that by unpacking this meaning we can throw a good deal of light on traditional Australian attitudes and values. It argues that the use of bloody furnishes an important clue to both the changes and continuity in Australian culture, society, and speech and also offers us a vantage point from which to investigate a whole network of Australian attitudes and values. Furthermore, the paper shows that the Australian use of bloody also illuminates some important theoretical issues, it demonstrates that frequently used and apparently ‘‘bleached’’ discourse markers do in fact have their own precise meaning, and that this meaning can be revealed by means of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), based on empirically established universal human concepts. It also shows that once the precise meaning of such discourse markers is accurately portrayed, it can provide important clues to the values, attitudes, and modes of interaction characteristic of a given society or speech community.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) battler, (E) bloody, (E) Fuck!, (E) fucking, (E) sarcasm, (S) anti-whinging, (S) being like others, (S) defiance / rebelliousness / larrikinism, (S) importance of sticking to the facts, (S) not abandoning a mate, (S) not being better than others, (S) spirit of defiance and rejection of social conventions, (S) use of sarcasm, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). Overcoming terminological ethnocentrism. IIAS Newsletter, 27, 28. PDF (open access)
Terminological ethnocentrism is an insidious, and often unrecognized, problem in cultural description. It occurs when words of one language/culture, typically English, are uncritically used to describe deeply cultural meanings of another language/culture, with an inevitable distortion of meaning. Scholars often view the so-called “problem of translation” as intractable, but new research in linguistics suggests a way forward. A solution is offered by the programme of semantic research led by the distinguished linguist Anna Wierzbicka. The key idea is that there is a small set of simple, basic meanings (semantic primes) which can be expressed clearly and precisely in all languages. Semantic primes offer a way around terminological ethnocentrism while at the same time allowing culture-specific concepts to be explicated with great detail and clarity.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). Ethnosyntax, ethnopragmatics, sign-functions, and culture. In N. J. Enfield (Ed.) Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture (pp. 52-73). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266500.003.0003
This chapter articulates and discusses the concept of ethnosyntax from the standpoint of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues. It recognizes two senses of the term ‘ethnosyntax’: a narrow sense referring to culture-related semantic content encoded in morphosyntax, and a broad sense encompassing a much wider range of phenomena in which grammar and culture may be related. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.1 discusses ethnosyntax in the narrow sense, illustrating it with a slightly reinterpreted version of some of Wierzbicka’s classic work on ‘fatalism’ in Russian grammar. Section 3.2 discusses the relationship between ethnosyntax and ethnopragmatics, drawing on the NSM theory of cultural scripts. Section 3.3 argues for the importance of recognizing that language involves different kinds of sign-function — semantic (symbolic), iconic, indexical — and asks how we can deal with ethnosyntactic connections in the field of iconic-indexical meaning. Section 3.4 broadens the focus further in an effort to situate ethnosyntax in a large semiotic theory of culture, but argues that a semiotic concept of culture is not viable unless it adequately recognizes iconic and indexical, as well as semantic phenomena.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix K. (2002). Cultural scripting of body parts for emotions: On ‘jealousy’ and related emotions in Ewe. Pragmatics & Cognition, 10(1), 27-55. DOI: 10.1075/pc.10.12.03ame
Different languages present a variety of ways of talking about emotional experience. Very commonly, feelings are described through the use of ‘body image constructions’ in which they are associated with processes in, or states of, specific body parts. The emotions and the body parts that are thought to be their locus and the kind of activity associated with these body parts vary cross-culturally. This study focuses on the meaning of three ‘body image constructions’ used to describe feelings similar to, but also different from, English ‘jealousy’, ‘envy’, and ‘covetousness’ in the West African language Ewe. It is demonstrated that a ‘moving body’, a psychologised eye, and red eyes are scripted for these feelings. It is argued that the expressions are not figurative and that their semantics provide good clues to understanding the cultural construction of both in terms of the parts of the body that are scripted and of what they mean.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2002). Les constructions du type commencer un livre: état de la question et nouvelles perspectives [Constructions of the type commencer un livre: state of the art and new perspectives]. In Dominique Lagorgette, & Pierre Larrivée (Eds.), Représentations du sens linguistique (pp. 167-186). München: Lincom Europa.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Asano, Yuko (2002). How to be indirect in Japanese – A cultural script approach. RASK (International Journal of Language and Communication), 17. 23-51. PDF (open access)
Although Japanese and English have a large variety of indirect expressions, they often use them in different proportions, which leads to different communicative styles. This paper investigates certain indirectness phenomena observed in sentence-final forms in Japanese from the perspective of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. It combines NSM theory with Kamio’s theory of territory of information. Akio Kamio used this theory to specify the relationship between utterance forms and the notion of territory of information. As he points out, there are cases where the principles of the theory can be violated; it seems that such violations are more or less culturally determined. This paper particularly focuses on such cases and provides a cross-cultural analysis of Japanese and English, making use of contrastive data from both languages.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) directness, (S) indirectness
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Priestley, Carol (2002). Insides and emotion in Koromu. Pragmatics & Cognition, 10(1/2), 243-270. DOI: 10.1075/pc.10.12.11pri
This paper describes several emotion expressions in Koromu, a language of Papua New Guinea. As in other languages, emotions can be expressed by reference to body events and processes. Bodily images are used for common and pertinent emotion expressions in Koromu; the alternative grammatical constructions in which some of these expressions occur enable speakers to express varying emotions while still indicating that there are shared semantic components between the expressions. In addition, as the emotion expressions are examined and their meanings explicated, a number of universal concepts and components of meaning can be observed. A study of these language-specific expressions therefore contributes to a cross-linguistic understanding of the relationship between emotion and the body.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) oru mei hekeni wera, (E) oru mere, (E) oru mere mae, (E) oru mereri, (E) oru meresera
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). *Lexical decomposition II: Conceptual axiology. In D. Alan Cruse, Franz Hundsnurscher, Michael Job, & Peter Rolf Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexicology. An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies: Vol. 1 (pp. 256-268). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
This article explains and demonstrates the theory of lexical decomposition originated by Anna Wierzbicka (1972, 1980, 1992, 1996, among other works); cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka (1994, In press), Goddard (1998). Wierzbicka and colleagues refer to their approach as the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” (NSM) theory. It is sometimes referred to as a version of “conceptual axiology”. An earlier designation is the “semantic primitives” approach. The foundational assumption of the NSM theory is that the meanings expressible in any language can be adequately described by means of language-internal reductive paraphrase. That is, the theory assumes, first, that any natural language is adequate as its own semantic metalanguage, and, second, that any semantically complex expression can be explicated by means of an exact paraphrase composed on simpler, more intelligible terms. By relying on reductive paraphrase the NSM approach is safeguarded against the twin pitfalls of circularity and obscurity which dog other “definitional” approaches to semantic analysis. No technical terms, neologisms, logical symbols, or abbreviations are allowed in NSW explications – only plain words from ordinary natural language.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). Semantic primes and universal grammar in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar – Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 87-172). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.60.10god
My primary goal is to test whether the currently proposed NSM semantic primes have lexical exponents in Malay and whether they can be combined according to the current hypotheses about NSM syntax. Generally speaking the results are positive though I will propose several revisions to our picture of NSM syntax on the basis of the Malay data, at appropriate points in the chapter. Throughout the chapter, I will also try to note alternative polysemic meanings of the various lexical exponents and, where appropriate, the existence of language-specific constructions conveying the kinds of meaning combinations we are interested in. In this way I want to convey a better sense of the individual character of Malay as a language.
Overall, however, the majority of the current NSM proposals do hold up well so far as Malay is concerned. It is now clear that the syntax of the NSM metalanguage has a very rich – and in some ways very complex – texture. It therefore seems particularly intriguing that this rich and detailed texture appears to be shared by languages which are otherwise so different in their structure.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). Directive speech acts in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): An ethnopragmatic perspective. Cahiers de praxématique, 38, 113-143.
The focus of the present study is the semantics and ethnopragmatics of a set of Malay speech act verbs. I hope to demonstrate that the lexical-semantic and cultural-pragmatic aspects of the analysis are mutually reinforcing and mutually informative. On the basis of cultural-pragmatic facts, I will discount polysemy for ajak ‘encourage, urge’ and pujuk ‘coax, comfort’, while lexical-semantic analysis of suruh ‘tell to do’ and minta ‘ask for’ will highlight the Malay cultural constraints against explicitly expressing the message ‘I want you to do this’. The conceptual structure and presuppositions of nasihat ‘advice, counsel’ will be shown to be strongly congruent with its characteristic forms of expression. In these and other ways, I hope to show not only that lexical semantics and cultural pragmatics are tightly intertwined in Malay, but also to illustrate the value of an ethnopragmatic approach to speech acts in general.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ajak, (E) ask, (E) minta, (E) nasihat, (E) order, (E) pesan, (E) pujuk, (E) suggest, (E) suruh, (S) inhibiting people from expressing explicit directive messages, (T) English + Malay
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings. In Youngsoon Park (Ed.), Current trends and prospects of Korean linguistics in the 21st century (pp. 343-378). Seoul: Hankookmunhwasa.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (Eds.) (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings. 2 volumes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.60 (vol. 1), 10.1075/slcs.61 (vol. 2)
This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors (Robert D. Bugenhagen, Hilary Chappell, N.J. Enfield, Cliff Goddard, Catherine Travis, and Anna Wierzbicka, respectively) identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.
All chapters in this volume are also listed separately. For more details on individual chapters, see the relevant entry.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 4, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2002). La métalangue sémantique naturelle au service de l’étude du transculturel [Natural Semantic Metalanguage at the service of cross-cultural research]. Travaux de linguistique, 45, 83-101. DOI: 10.3917/tl.045.083. PDF (open access)
Written in French.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2002). The on-going development of the NSM research program. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar – Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 2 (pp. 301-321). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.61.11god
The NSM model of universal grammar is still evolving. The goal of this closing chapter to the two Meaning and universal grammar volumes is to give a sense of the character of ongoing research work in the NSM program, especially the interplay between theory and practice.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Semantic primes and linguistic typology. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 2 (pp. 257-300). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Semantic primes and universal grammar. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar – Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 41-85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.60.08god
The thirty-year program of semantic research inaugurated in Wierzbicka (1972) has reached the point where it has become possible to articulate a detailed and concrete account of exactly what the unity of all grammars consists in; that is, to delineate where the line runs between what is constant and what is variable, what is essential and what is “accidental”, what is universal and what is language-specific.
The main purpose of this chapter is to describe the proposed model of universal grammar; i.e. the inherent syntactic properties of universal semantic primes. We also establish some basic metalinguistic terminology, building on the firm conceptual foundation of semantic primes.
