Peeters, Bert (2010). “Un X peut en cacher un autre”: étude ethnosyntaxique [“Un X peut en cacher un autre”: An ethnosyntactic investigation]. In F. Neveu, V. Muni Toke, T. Klingler, J. Durand, L. Mondada & S. Prévost (Eds.), CMLF 2010 – 2ème Congrès mondial de linguistique française (pp. 1753-1775). Paris: EDP Sciences. DOI: 10.1051/cmlf/2010056
(2010) Japanese – Evidentials
Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2010). Semantic analysis of evidential markers in Japanese: Rashii, yooda and sooda. Functions of Language, 17(2), 153-180. DOI: 10.1075/fol.17.2.01asa
This paper investigates the semantics of three Japanese evidential markers: らしい rashii, ようだ yooda and そうだ sooda. These three words are often used in similar situations and interpreted in English as ‘it seems’, ‘it appears’, or ‘it looks like’. The expressions are semantically closely related, but sometimes they are not interchangeable. Thus the question arises how to articulate the subtle differences between them. Previous studies have attempted to explicate the differences by using explanatory terms such as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ to describe the content of information, and ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’ to describe the attitude towards the information. While these terms are convenient to capture the meaning simplistically, they illustrate only part of the words’ usage, and the definitions apply equally well to other evidential markers.
This study is the first explication of the meanings of these markers using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory. By analysing the deficiencies of previously presented definitions, and examining actual usage examples drawn from modern Japanese literature, the article applies NSM methodology to explicate the meanings of らしい rashii, ようだ yooda and そうだ sooda. The meanings of each expression are illustrated by cognitive scenarios such as ‘I think I can say something like this about X’, or ‘I think this about X at the moment’. The resulting semantic formulas clarify the differences between the three expressions. They also have potential for assisting second language learners in decisions about how to use the three terms.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Kalam – ‘Eat’, ‘drink’
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Eating’ and ‘drinking’ in Kalam. In John Bowden, Nikolaus Himmelmann, & Malcolm Ross (Eds.), A journey through Austronesian and Papuan linguistic and cultural space: Papers in honour of Andrew Pawley (pp. 651-660). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
(2010) Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Peeters, Bert (2010). La métalangue sémantique naturelle: acquis et défis [Natural Semantic Metalanguage: achievements and challenges]. In Jacques François (Ed.), Grandes voies et chemins de traverse de la sémantique cognitive (pp. 75-101). Leuven: Peeters.
Written in French.
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, and of those who, on the basis of superficial readings, may have reached the hasty conclusion that the Wierzbickian approach had nothing to offer them, this article provides an overview that is as systematic as possible: it leaves out nothing that is essential, either with respect to what has already been achieved (the «achievements»), or with respect to what remains to be done (the «challenges»). In reality, the NSM approach provides all those who do not remain indifferent to the desire to be understood, as much by scholars as by untrained readers, with a way to overcome the «crossing the creek» syndrome referred to by Georges Kleiber (2001: 3): «This syndrome, noted for the first time in the Middle Ages among the Oelenberg monks (in Reiningue, near Mulhouse) is well-known: sufferers keep hopping from one rock onto another, without ever falling into the water, but they forget they need to cross the river!» The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is shown to be at once unique and multi-faceted, with the English and French versions being used to briefly present its lexicon and grammar. Before moving on to the challenges, the notions of «cultural script» and «culture» are briefly dealt with. We particularly insist on some of the most recent tasks NSM practitioners have embarked on. These include the formulation of a typology of pathways enabling one to deal more effectively with the issue of language and cultural values, the compilation of the list of semantic molecules to be used to increase the readability of semantic explications, and the elaboration of «semantic templates» for the explication of words belonging to specific semantic categories such as emotions, physical contact verbs, speech act verbs etc.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) NSM primes (WANT)
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.
(2010) Portuguese – Emotions
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2010). Przydatnosc eksplikacji metajezykowych w tworzeniu definicji leksykograficznych (na przykladzie definicji nazw uczuc w jezyku portugalskim) [On the usefulness of metalanguage explications for the creation of lexicographical definitions (exemplified through the definition of nouns of emotions in Portuguese)]. In Wojciech Chlebda (Ed.), Etnolingwistyka a leksykografia: Tom poswiecony Profesorowi Jerzemu Bartminskiemu (pp. 93-102). Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego.
Written in Polish.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Russian cultural semantics [BOOK]
Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2010). Русская культурная семантика: эмоции ценности, жизненные установк [Russian cultural semantics: Emotions, values, attitudes]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянской культуры [Languages of Slavonic Cultures].
Written in Russian.
This book is devoted to the study of the relationship between the Russian language and Russian culture with the help of a detailed semantic analysis of a number of terms of emotions, values and attitudes. The main idea that unites this research is that the meanings of some words and expressions reflect cultural-significant representations, that is, the meanings of these words contain ways of thinking that are shared by the native speakers. The cultural significance of the words and expressions being examined is demonstrated by the discovery of a semantic connection between their meanings and the meanings of a number of key words and ideas of the Russian language. The linguistic and cultural specificity of the words being studied is established by comparing their values with the meanings of their translated and culturally significant equivalents in English.
The book offers semantic interpretations of the researched words and expressions using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It reports on first-time research aimed at determining the exponents of NSM semantic primes and their syntactic properties in Russian.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Semantic analysis
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
(2010) The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach
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
(2010) Thought without language
Besemeres, Mary, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Is there thought without language? In Marek Kuczyński (Ed.), Language, thought and consciousness: Vol. 2 (pp. 11-21). Zielona Góra: Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego.
We argue that the concept ‘think’ is universal, and that it has four universal frames: 1) we can say, someone thinks’, but not ‘something thinks’; 2) we can combine ‘think’ with a direct quote: ‘she thinks: “I’ll do it”‘; 3) we can say ‘someone thinks about someone or something’; 4) we can say ‘someone thinks that…’. It is not possible to use the word ‘think’ meaningfully without respecting the assumptions underlying these four frames. In ordinary speech, we are able to refer to someone thinking in images rather than words – as when someone is described as thinking ‘about’ another person. We also sometimes impute thought to animals which we perceive as in some ways similar to human beings, but only when their thinking doesn’t involve words (it is normally not possible to say: *The dog thinks: there is meat in the bag). However, apart from cases such as the above, much of our use of the term ‘think’ effectively refers to thinking with words.
On the basis of prior empirical research, our paper assumes that there exists in fact a whole set of universal human concepts, including words like ‘someone’, ‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘want’, which need no further explanation, and in terms of which more complex (often culture-specific) concepts can be explained. These universally shared concepts allow us to translate between different languages. At the same time, autobiographical writings by bilinguals affirm the presence of significant differences between languages, and suggest how individual languages help to create a distinct conceptual world. These autobiographical narratives argue, in other words, that language is closely connected with thought, and that we think in ways that are language- and culture-specific.
(2010) Triple articulation of language
Wong, Jock (2010). The “triple articulation” of language. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(11), 2932-2944. DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.013.
In this paper, I argue that a language has three ‘‘faces’’ – form, meaning, and culture – and hence pragmemes are best analysed with respect to a cultural context. Using examples of culturally embedded pragmemes from Singapore English, I demonstrate how their use is intimately associated with culture-specific ways of thinking, which in many instances go against widely accepted paradigms like Grice’s maxims and Brown & Levinson’s politeness principles. My data suggest that Singapore English routinely blurs the distinction between opinion and fact and that opinions are often presented as if they are facts, which goes against the maxim of quality, which requires people not to say that for which they lack evidence. I additionally show how some of these culture-specific ways of thinking may be articulated in ways that reflect an insider perspective. Finally, I propose that we go one step further to talk about the ‘‘triple articulation’’ of language, which views language as a three-tiered entity, comprising form, meaning, and culture. This idea of what language is about goes beyond lexicon and grammar to include non-formal features like conversational routines, frequency of use of certain expressions, the avoidance of certain ways of speaking, pragmemes, etc., which can only be satisfactorily explained with reference to culture. A person who is supposed to have learned a language without understanding its culture has at best mastered its lexicon and grammar. They have not mastered the ‘‘essence’’ of the language.
(2011, 2012) Polish – DOBROC, PRAWOSC, ODWAGA
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część I. Dobroć. Etnolingwistyka, 23, 45-66.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga. Etnolingwistyka, 24, 19-46.
Written in Polish.
Part I deals with the Polish word dobroć in comparative perspective. An assumption is made that an especially precious source of insight into the values of a given society are the key words used in that society. One of such words in Polish society is dobroć. By analysing the word’s semantics, the author shows the differences between that word and its closest equivalents in a few European languages: the English goodness, the French bonté or the Russian dobrotá. In the Polish hierarchy of values, dobroć ranks high as a positive human feature, manifested in people’s feelings, will and actions. The English goodness (derived from the adjective good) differs from the Polish dobroć in that it does not imply good feelings towards other people. The French bonté, in turn, although used in reference to people who want to do and actually do good things for others, does not, in contrast to dobroć, imply emotional overtones. On the other hand, the Russian dobrotá differs from dobroć in that it is primarily used in reference to someone’s emotional attitude towards others (expressed in one’s facial appearance or the tone of voice) but not actions. The author hypothesizes that bonté does not contain the emotional component (present in dobroć), and that dobrotá does not contain the element of action (present in dobroć and bonté). Neither does dobrotá occupy a central position among Russian values: that place is reserved for žalost’, an axiological category without a Polish equivalent. Similarly, in contemporary English-speaking cultures, greater importance is attached to kindness than to goodness.
Having discussed the semantics of dobroć, the author inquires into the historical and cultural origin of the associated concept and attempts to explain its uniqueness. A hypothesis is put forward that in Polish culture the attitude of the heart and will, reflected in the concept of ‘goodness’, finds its prototype in the figure of the Virgin Mary.
In Part II, the author analyses the concepts prawość ‘righteousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’.
Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in the contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connotations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality.
Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo.
The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness (“being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Bilingualism and cognition
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Bilingualism and cognition: The perspective from semantics. In Vivian Cook, & Benedetta Bassetti (Eds.) Language and bilingual cognition (pp. 191-218). London: Routledge.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Chinese (Cantonese) – Discourse particles
Wakefield, John C. (2011). Disentangling the meanings of two Cantonese evidential particles. Chinese Language & Discourse, 2(2), 250-293.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.2.2.05wak
Abstract:
Some linguists have argued that sentence-final particles (SFPs) are only meaningful in relation to discourse content. Adopting as a working hypothesis the idea that SFPs have core meanings independent of the discourse context, this paper proposes definitions for two evidential SFPs in Cantonese with related meanings: 咯 lo1 and 吖吗 aa1maa3.
Corpus-based examples and constructed minimal-pair dialogues are used to demonstrate that the definitions succeed at accounting for all the contexts that allow one, the other, both, or neither of the SFPs to be used based on acceptability judgments from native speakers of Cantonese. In addition to furthering our understanding of the two SFPs under discussion, this paper provides empirical evidence in support of the idea that discourse particles have context-independent meanings.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Cultural scripts
Gladkova, Anna (2011). Cultural variation in language use. In Gisle Andersen, & Karin Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society (pp. 571-592). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214420.571
Abstract:
The methodology known as the cultural scripts approach is based on principles that meet the requirements formulated by Clifford Geertz. Section 1 of this paper is a description of this approach. It is followed by an analysis of different culture-specific linguistic practices carried out with the help of this methodology. Section 3 discusses how cultural values are embedded in language- and culture-specific ways of speaking. In this section, examples are drawn from Anglo English and Singapore English in relation to the value of ‘personal autonomy’, from Russian in relation to the values of pravda ‘truth’ and iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’, and from Yiddish in relation to the cultural practice of cursing. Section 4 illustrates how social categories affect ways of interaction on the basis of Korean, Chinese and Russian cultures. Section 5 demonstrates how a communicative practice of ‘gratitude’ can have different cultural interpretations. Examples are drawn from Anglo English, Indian, Korean, Yiddish and West African cultures. Section 6 concludes.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Emotions: happiness
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Whatʼs wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück, and sčas’te. In Igor Boguslavsky, Leonid Iomdin, & Leonid Krysin (Eds.), Slovo i jazyk: Sbornik statej k vos’midesjatiletiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana (pp. 155-171). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
There is a huge industry of so-called “happiness studies” that relies on cross-national statistical comparisons, which challengers see as based on false and ethnocentric assumptions. ‘Happiness’ has become a big issue in politics and in economics, but here, too, a lack of attention to the meaning of words leads to unwarranted conclusions and causes confusion and miscommunication. The misunderstandings surrounding happiness, bonheur, and Glück illustrate the need for uncovering, and explaining, the differences between significant words that are wrongly assumed to be readily cross-translatable. In view of the place of ‘happiness’ at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines, a comparison of happiness and счастье sčast’e seems especially topical.
The assumption that all languages have a word like happiness, and that there can be a reliable “index of happiness” based on self-reports (given in different languages) is naïve and untenable. Progress in emotion research in general depends to a considerable extent on increased recognition that language goes deeper in us than many students of emotion (especially psychologists) are willing to admit. Genuine progress requires a greater linguistic and cross-cultural sophistication than that evident in much of the existing writings on the subject.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Empirically grounded universals
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Uniwersalia ugruntowane empirycznie [Empirically grounded universals]. Teksty Drugie, 2011(1/2), 13-30. PDF (open access)
Written in Polish.
One of the central debates in human sciences concerns the relation between human universals and human diversity. Some scholars – for example the cognitivist Stephen Pinker – emphasize the unity of human nature and treat the diversity as more or less superficial. Others – for example the anthropologist Clifford Geertz – emphasize the diversity and are sceptical of any proposed universals. The NSM theory of language, culture and cognition developed by linguists Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard rejects the “either-or” approaches to universality and diversity and explores cultural diversity with analytical techniques based on empirically grounded universals. Through decades of cross-linguistic investigations, NSM researchers have identified a set of universal human concepts, lexically embodied, as evidence suggests, in all languages, together with their inherent grammar. In hundreds of descriptive studies, they have applied this approach to the investigation of culturally-shaped systems of meaning, using as their common measure the set of “universal words”, that is, lexically embodied concepts found in the intersection of all sampled languages.
This article argues that the NSM approach can bring a resolution of the stalemate between universalists such as Pinker and relativists (or “anti-antirelativists”) such as Geertz: NSM provides a conceptual basis on which human sciences can build, without ethnocentrism, even in the era of a global domination of English and its use, in scholarship and in education, can facilitate genuine cross-cultural understanding.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) English – Cultural key words
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
(2011) English – HUMANITIES
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Defining ‘the humanities’. Culture & Psychology, 17(1), 31-46. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X10388841
The division of knowledge into ‘science,’ ‘social science,’ and ‘the humanities’ is deeply entrenched in ways of thinking prevailing in the English-speaking world and is reflected in many institutional structures. The English word science, which excludes not only ‘the humanities’ but also logic and mathematics, does not have exact equivalents in other European languages. It is a conceptual artefact of modern English and is saturated, so to speak, with British empiricism. There is a pressure on speakers of English to regard ‘natural sciences’ as a paradigm of all knowledge, or at least all knowledge that modern
societies should value and pursue. The semantic changes that the English word science has undergone in the last two centuries or so make empirically-based knowledge of the external world seem central to all human knowledge. This paper shows why ‘the humanities’ constitute a field of inquiry that is fundamentally different from ‘science’ (and from ‘social sciences’ modelled on ‘science’) and yet essential to human knowledge and ‘human understanding.’ In doing so, the paper draws on the thought of the
18th-century Italian philosopher Giambatista Vico and on the methodology of linguistic semantics, and in particular on the ‘NSM’ theory of language and thought.
(2011) English – Supernatural beings
Habib, Sandy (2011). Ghosts, fairies, elves, and nymphs: Towards a semantic template for non-human being concepts. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(4), 411-443.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2012.625599
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to devise a semantic template for non-human being terms. To achieve this objective, four non-human being concepts were analysed, and an explication for each concept was built. Comparing the explications yielded a nine-part semantic template. The usefulness of this semantic template is threefold. First, it eases the task of explicating non-human being concepts because the parts of the template can serve as guidelines to be followed while constructing the explications. Second, it eases the comparison between related non-human being concepts from different languages. Third, it reveals the devices that are embodied in the structure of non-human being concepts and that enable people to use these complex concepts without difficulty.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
