Browsing results for Main Authors

(2008) English, Swedish – ‘Think’

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.

Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2008). Re-thinking THINK in contrastive perspective: Swedish vs. English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 225-240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.14god

This chapter builds on:

Goddard, Cliff, & Karlsson, Susanna (2004). Re-thinking THINK: Contrastive semantics of Swedish and English. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html

Swedish and English differ in interesting ways in relation to how they express the semantic prime THINK and related concepts. At first, it is not even obvious that there is a good Swedish exponent of THINK, because many uses of English think correspond not with Swedish tänka ‘think’, but with either tro (roughly) ‘be of the opinion that’ or tycka (very roughly) ‘feel that’. It is shown that, in fact, English think and Swedish tänka are precise semantic equivalents in canonical NSM contexts, and that tro and tycka, termed “epistemic verbs”, can be explicated in terms of the semantic prime THINK (TÄNKA) and other elements. Similarly, English think has certain complex, i.e. non-primitive uses, namely the “opinion” frame (e.g. She thinks that – –) and the conversational formula I think, and these English-specific constructions can be explicated. All the explications are presented in parallel English and Swedish versions. The contrastive exercise makes it clear that in universal grammar THINK can take a propositional complement (i.e. ‘think that – –’) only when it depicts an “occurrent thought” anchored to a particular time.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) English, Warlpiri – Visual semantics

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 16, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 14, 407-425. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00509.x

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 80-101) of:

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Do all people live in a world full of colours? Perceptually, yes (unless they are visually impaired), but conceptually, no: there are many languages which have no word for ‘colour’ and in which the question What colour is it? cannot be asked and presumably does not arise. Yet the powerful and still immensely influential theory of Berlin and Kay assumes otherwise. While building on the author’s earlier work on colour semantics, this article brings new evidence against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and presents a fundamentally different approach. The new data on which the argument is based come from Australian languages. In particular, the article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no “colour talk” (and no “colour practices”), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices. It also offers a methodology for identifying indigenous meanings without the grid of the English concept ‘colour’, and for revealing “the native’s point of view”.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) English: Meaning and culture (Book review)

Published on July 3, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.

François, Jacques (2008). Book review of Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 103(2), 16-26.

Written in French.

(2008) Intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). A conceptual basis for intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding. In Martin Pütz, & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (Eds.), Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 3-46). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

In her programmatic article, Anna Wierzbicka confronts the reader with the question of whether the exclusive reliance on English as a source of conceptual tools is the best way in which intercultural pragmatics can serve the cause of world-wide understanding. Her paper argues that it is not, because English itself carries with it a great deal of cultural baggage, and so comparing communicative norms and cultural values through English leads inevitably to an Anglocentric bias. Wierzbicka offers an alternative to the use of English as a tertium comparationis by proposing her well-established NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) model which as an auxiliary language (i.e. mini-language) matches the lexical and grammatical core of all languages. NSM English can be used to explain norms and values to ordinary interactants and thus to advance the cause of intercultural communication and world-wide understanding.

(2008) Japanese – Tag questions

Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.

Asano, Yuko (2008). Semantic analysis of tag questions in Japanese: Deshoo and janai ka. In Timothy Jowan Curnow (Ed.), Selected papers from the 2007 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au. PDF (open access)

This paper presents a semantic analysis of two Japanese expressions used when the speaker requires confirmation: deshoo and janai ka. These words are often used in similar situations and interpreted as tag questions in English of the type don’t you think? or right? Although deshoo and janai ka are semantically closely related, they are not always interchangeable. The subtle differences between them are difficult to capture, especially for language learners. Numerous studies have been undertaken to clarify the meanings of deshoo and janai ka. However, many of these studies have attempted to define their meanings through the use of explanatory terms. But these same terms may also apply to different expressions and thus this approach fails to identify the unique meaning of each marker.

This study is the first explication of the meanings of deshoo and janai ka using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. Importantly, it proposes new explications in terms of semantic primitives. The proposed semantic formulas clarify the differences between the expressions, and serve as practical tools indicating criteria that can assist in choosing an appropriate word for a given situation.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) Koromu – ‘Inalienable possession’

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Priestley, Carol (2008). The semantics of “inalienable possession” in Koromu (PNG). In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 277-300). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.18pri

This chapter examines the semantics of “inalienable possession” constructions in Koromu, a Madang language of Papua New Guinea. Person and number suffixes or enclitics mark head nouns in possessive nominal constructions and indicate the person and number of the “possessor”. Inanimate, animate and
partially animate nominal constructions describe relationships between two inanimates, two animates, or an animate and an inanimate referent, respectively. The key relationship between the two entities varies across these subtypes but rather than “possession” in the sense of ownership, it commonly
involves the concept ‘part of’; for example, in ‘parts of things’, ‘parts of the same thing’ and things which are ‘like a part of something’. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is used to explicate the meaning of these constructions.

(2008) NSM – Systematic table of semantic elements

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Goddard, Cliff (2008). Towards a systematic table of semantic elements. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 59-81. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.07god

Semantic primes can be seen to fall into natural groups according to their grammatical properties and functional affiliations. This chapter explores ways in which these groupings, properties and affiliations can be systematised and displayed in tabular form, by analogy with the Periodic Table of chemical elements. It begins by reviewing the current “thematic” grouping of primes, observing that some of the categories, e.g. “time”, “space”, “logical elements”, contain elements of syntactically heterogeneous kinds. It then works in turn through different sections of the prime inventory, exploring tabular layouts which better display alignments such as deictic character, similar valency and complementation properties, the possibility of scalar modification, and so on. Non-compositional semantic relationships, as evidenced by cross-linguistically recurrent patterns of polysemy, are also taken into account to some extent. While incomplete in some respects, the investigation brings to light a number of findings about the structure and internal dynamics of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

(2008) NSM — Emotions & bilingualism

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2008). A conceptual basis for research into emotions and bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11 (2), 193–195. doi:10.1017/S1366728908003362

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) NSM (State of the art)

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Goddard, Cliff (2008). Natural Semantic Metalanguage: The state of the art. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 1-34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.05god

(2008) NSM and the crossing-the-creek syndrome

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Peeters, Bert (2008). La métalangue sémantique naturelle et la lutte contre le syndrome du franchissement du gué. In Jacques Durand, Benoît Habert, & Bernard Laks (Eds.), CMLF 2008 – Congrès mondial de linguistique française (pp. 2235-2243). Paris: EDP Sciences. DOI: 10.1051/cmlf08311

(2008) NSM primes (“Specificational BE”, “abstract THIS/IT”)

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). New semantic primes and new syntactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35-57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.06god

In section 1, we propose a “new” semantic prime — specificational BE — and show how it can be used to analyse some classic problems in the semantics of naming and reference. In section 2, we explore a newly recognised syntactic option of the prime THIS, here termed “abstract THIS/IT”. Both the new possibilities are involved in the semantics of specificational and focus constructions of English. These are the topic of section 3.

(2008) Portuguese – AMOR

Published on May 10, 2008. Last updated on October 19, 2019.

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2008). Amor em português [Love in Portuguese]. In Anna Kalewska (Ed.), Diálogos com a Lusofonia: Colóquio comemorativo dos 30 anos da secção Portuguesa do Instituto de Estudos Ibéricos e Ibero-americanos da Universidade de Varsóvia (pp. 408-420). Warszawa: Universidade de Varsóvia, Instytut Studiów Iberoamerykanskich UW. PDF (pre-publication version with different page numbering)

Written in Portuguese.

Every culture has its own ways of speaking, thinking, acting and even feeling, which are reflected in language. In this paper, I analyse a lexical meaning of one Portuguese word, amor. Having as a base a corpus consisting of Lisbon fado songs, I try to look for a semantic invariant of the word amor in fado and to define it in terms of a Portuguese-based NSM.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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(2008) Portuguese – Key words in Lisbon ‘fado’ songs

Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2008). Fado – podejście semantyczne: Próba interpretacji słów kluczy [Fado – a semantic approach: An attempt at interpreting key words]. Wroclaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT.

Written in Polish.

This book interprets a dozen Portuguese-based lexical units, mainly from the domain of emotion, selected through a frequency-based survey of Lisbon fado songs. It is the published version of the author’s PhD thesis, University of Wrocław (2007).


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2008) Russian, English – Cultural values: frankness

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on December 9, 2020.

Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2008). Концепт ‘откровенность’ в русской и английской языковых картинах мира [The concept of ‘frankness’ in Russian and English linguistic world-views]. In Нина Арутюнова [Nina Arutjunova] (Ed.), Логический анализ языка: Между ложью и фантазией [Logical analysis of language: Between lie and fantasy] (pp. 502-514). Москва [Moscow]: Индрик [Indrik].

Written in Russian.

Abstract:

Исследования в области межкультурной прагматики показывают, что для русского языка и культуры характерно наличиел установки (или культурных скриптов) на прямое и открытое выражение своих мыслей и чувств [Вежбицка 2002; Гловинская 2003]. Похожие уста­ новки характерны и для других культур — например, испанской [Aznarez, Gonazalez 2006]. Однако в некоторых культурах (например, англосаксонской и малазийской) подобное правило менее значимо или отсутствует вообще [Goddard 1997; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Доминиро­ вание определенной культурной установки находит отражение в се­ мантике слов, которые по своему значению связаны с этой установ­ кой [Апресян 2006; Вежбицка 2002; Зализняк, Левонтина, Шмелев 2005; Wierzbicka 2006а]. Данную гипотезу интересно проверить при сравнительном семантическом анализе слов­переводных эквивален­ тов из языков с различными культурными правилами. В работе про­ водится семантический анализ наречия откровенно в значении харак­ теристики манеры речи, которое может быть связано с установкой на открытое и прямое выражение своих мыслей и чувств, характерное для русской культуры. Данное наречие сравнивается с его ближай­ шими переводными эквивалентами candidly иfrankly в английском языке, где доминируют другие культурные скрипты [Wierzbicka 2006а].

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) Russian, English – Cultural values: tolerance

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.

Gladkova, Anna (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.19gla

An earlier version of this paper was published as:

Gladkova, Anna (2005). New and traditional values in contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in cross-cultural semantics. In Ilana Mushin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93.

This chapter examines the recent trend in contemporary Russian towards increased lexical borrowing from English. In particular, it compares and contrasts the meanings of a recently borrowed value term tolerantnyj with its English equivalent tolerant and the traditionally closest Russian equivalent терпимый terpimyj ‘tolerant/indulgent/forbearing’. A detailed contrastive semantic analysis demonstrates that, although tolerant and терпимый terpimyj are translational equivalents, their meanings do differ and reflect different cultural attitudes across the two societies involved.

The work also shows that the meaning of the new Russian term tolerantnyj does not fully coincide with the meaning of the English tolerant, as it reflects the Russian value system. The analysis is conducted using NSM as its main analytical tool.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) Universal human concepts

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.

Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka (2008). Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, & Elsa M. González Álvarez (Eds.), Current trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional and cognitive  perspectives (pp. 205-226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/sfsl.60.13god

This study sets out to demonstrate that the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes provides a stable language-neutral medium for fine-grained contrastive semantic analysis, in both the lexical and grammatical domains. The lexical examples are drawn from “yearning-missing” words in English, Polish, Russian and Spanish, while the grammatical examples contrast the Spanish diminutive with the hypocoristic “diminutive” of Australian English. We show that the technique of explication (reductive paraphrase) into semantic primes makes it possible to pin down subtle meaning differences which cannot be captured using normal translation or grammatical labels. Explications for the Polish, Russian and Spanish examples are presented both in English and in the language concerned, thus establishing that the metalanguage being used is transposable across languages.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2009) ‘Reciprocity’

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). “Reciprocity”: An NSM approach to linguistic typology and social universals. Studies in language 33(1). 103-174. DOI: 10.1075/sl.33.1.05wie

This paper develops a semantic approach to the study of “reciprocity” — an area increasingly seen as central to linguistic typology. “Reciprocal” and “reflexive-reciprocal” constructions from five languages — English, Russian, Polish, French and Japanese — are analyzed in considerable detail. The different, though interrelated, meanings of these constructions are explicated, and the proposed explications are supported with linguistic evidence. The paper challenges current approaches which tend to lump formally and semantically distinct constructions under one arbitrary label such as “RECIP”, and it seeks to show how linguistic typology can be transformed by joining forces with rigorous cross-linguistic
semantics. It also challenges the Nijmegen School approach, which privileges extensionalist “video-clipping” over conceptual analysis. The analysis presented in the paper demonstrates the descriptive and explanatory power of the NSM methodology. The results achieved through semantic analysis are shown to be convergent with hypotheses about “shared intentionality” put forward by Michael Tomasello and colleagues in the context of evolutionary psychology, and to throw new light on social universals (“human sociality”).

(2009) Anna Wierzbicka and the common words of mankind

Published on August 15, 2018. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Vanhatalo, Ulla (2009). Anna Wierzbicka ja ihmiskunnan yhteiset sanat [Anna Wierzbicka and the common words of mankind]. In Anna Idström, & Sachiko Sosa (Eds.), Kielissä kulttuurien ääni [The voice of cultures is in the languages] (pp. 35-47). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Written in Finnish.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2009) Componential analysis

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 13, 2019.

Goddard, Cliff (2009). Componential analysis. In Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 58-67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hoph.2.06god

Previously issued as:

Goddard, Cliff (2005). Componential analysis. In Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics 2003-2005 (12 pages). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.m.comm1

The 2005 text is a heavily revised version of:

Goddard, Cliff (1995). Componential analysis. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jan Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147-153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Abstract:

Componential analysis (CA) in the broadest sense, also known as ‘lexical decomposition’, is any attempt to formalize and standardize procedures for the analysis of word meanings. CA often aspires to represent the cognitive or psychological reality of the speakers, and to shed light on correlations between language and culture.

The idea that word meanings may be broken down into combinations of simpler components is an ancient one, supported by a range of facts. These include the efficacy of paraphrase, the intuitively felt relationships (such as antonymy, hyponymy, partonymy) between word meanings, the fact that sentences may be tautologous, contradictory or odd due to the interplay of the meanings of their constituent words. The assumption of decomposability underlies the definitional side of traditional lexicography. For expository purposes, methods in CA may be described under four headings: the structuralist tradition, linguistic anthropology, generative and typological studies, and paraphrase semantics (1995) / Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (2005/2009). Some other trends and problems are briefly discussed.

Explications included in the 1995 version relate to the emotion term indignant, the speech act verb suggest, the interjection Wow! and the kinship term mother.

Explications included in the 2005 and 2009 versions relate to the emotion term sad, the social category friend, the performative verbs threaten and warn, and the semantic molecule animal.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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