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(2021) Minimal Languages in Action [BOOK]

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

Goddard, Cliff (ed.). (2021). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan

DOI: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4 

This edited book explores the rising interest in minimal languages – radically simplified languages using cross-translatable words and grammar, fulfilling the widely-recognised need to use language which is clear, accessible and easy to translate. The authors draw on case studies from around the world to demonstrate how early adopters have been putting Minimal English, Minimal Finnish, and other minimal languages into action: in language teaching and learning, ‘easy language’ projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging. As well as reporting how minimal languages are being put into service, the contributors explore how minimal languages can be adapted, localised and implemented differently for different purposes. Like its predecessor Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), the book will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, language education and translation studies, as well as to professionals in any field where accessibility and translatability matter.

 

Contents

1. In Praise of Minimal Languages Cliff Goddard pp 1-26
Part I: Finding the Best Words
2. Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific Deborah Hill pp 29-51
3. The Hunt for the Simplest Possible Vocabulary: Minimal Finnish Meets Easy Finnish Leealaura Leskelä, Ulla Vanhatalo pp 53-82
4. Minimal English and Revitalisation Education: Assisting Linguists to Explain Grammar in Simple, Everyday Words Elita Machin pp 83-107
Part II: Language Learning and Intercultural Education
5. Using Minimal English (Minimal Spanish, Etc.) for Non-circular Learners’ Dictionaries David Bullock pp 111-137
6. Standard Translatable English: A Minimal English for Teaching and Learning Invisible Culture in Language Classrooms Lauren Sadow pp 139-169
7. From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French, and Russian Bert Peeters pp 171-193
8. Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics Jeong-Ae Lee pp 195-221
Part III: Health
9. Adapting the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) into Minimal English and Seven Other Minimal Languages Cliff Goddard, Ulla Vanhatalo, Amie A. Hane, Martha G. Welch pp 225-254
10. Ways of Thinking and Talking about Cancer Magdalena Juda pp 255-279
11. Minimal English for Health: Reader Accessibility in Public Health Communication About COVID-19 in Australia (with Contrastive Reference to Denmark) Ida Stevia Diget pp 281-318
12. Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus Anna Wierzbicka pp 319-345

(2021) Molecules — Body parts

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

Goddard, Cliff, and Wierzbicka, Anna. (2021). ‘HEAD’, ‘EYES’, ‘EARS’: Words and meanings as clues to common human thinking, « ‘TÊTE’, ‘YEUX’, ‘OREILLES’ : mots et sens comme indices de la pensée humaine commune », Cahiers de lexicologie, n° 119, 2021 – 2, Lexique et corps humain , p. 125-150

Written in English

Résumé

Y a-t-il une manière de penser le corps partagée par tous ? Nous proposons des explications sémantiques et conceptuelles basées sur la MSN pour trois mots de parties du corps qui pourraient être considérés comme universaux sémantiques en prenant en compte la polysémie et d’autres particularités. L’analyse montre que la compréhension conceptuelle du corps est plus riche qu’on ne le pense, impliquant des relations entre les parties, la position, la taille, les relations spatiales et la fonction

Abstract

Are there any ways of thinking about the body that are shared by people everywhere? We propose NSM semantic-conceptual explications for three body-part words and argue that they are plausible language universals, once polysemy and other complications are taken into account. The analysis shows that conceptual understanding of the body and its parts is much richer than often recognised, involving whole-part relations, position, size, spatial relationships, and functional affordances.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) Popular Geopolitics

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 18, 2022.

Levisen, Carsten, & Fernández, Susana S. (2021). Words, People and Place: Linguistics Meets Popular Geopolitics. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 5(2021), 1–11

(Open Access)

Abstract

The language of everyday life is thick with geopolitical meaning. Everyday words, grammars, and stories are full of significant postulates about what the world is like. Habitual thinking about the world, its people and places, is guided by conceptual categories, created through, and supported by linguistic patterns and practices.

The language of everyday life allows many specific ways of conceptualizing and imagining people in places, but linguistics, the main discipline concerned with the study of the world’s languages, has not always seen and envisioned this link to geopolitics clearly. Due to the hesitant role of linguistics, the role of language(s) in geopolitical knowledge production has often been left to be studied by scholars of other disciplines. Stepping up to the challenge, we have in this volume invited linguists who work in many different areas and through different approaches to contribute to the emerging interdiscipline called ‘Popular Geopolitics’ (Saunders & Strukov 2018). The core idea behind this interdiscipline is that “geopolitical knowledges”, i.e. what people know and think about places (territories, cities, countries, etc.), and about people in these places (belonging, power relations, social cognition, etc.), is not only determined by the conceptualizations of diplomats, pundits, politicians, and political scientists, but just as much by everyday discourses and popular culture.

(2021) Russian – Aesthetics

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

Gladkova, Anna. (2021). “What is beauty?”: Cultural semantics of the Russian folk aesthetics.  International Journal of Language and Culture 8(1): 84–105

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00036.gla

 

Abstract:

The paper studies the semantics of four Russian key terms of aesthetic evaluation: krasivyj ‘beautiful’, prekrasnyj ‘beautiful/fine’, nekrasivyj ’ugly/ plain’ and bezobraznyj ‘ugly/frightful’. It demonstrates different patterns of polysemy of the words and the nuances of meaning. Following the framework of folk aesthetics and cultural semantics, the meanings of the terms in question are represented using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and are shown to relate to Russian cultural themes. The analysis demonstrates cultural significance of aesthetic value in Russian and its intrinsic link with ethics, morality and politeness.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) Spanish, Danish – Language Teaching

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

Fernández, Susana S. (2021). The Conceptual Semantics of ‘Latin America’: Popular Geopolitics and Spanish Language Teaching in Denmark. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 5(2021), 31–54

(Open Access)

 

Abstract:

This article explores how the concept of ‘Latin America’ is constructed in connection with the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in Denmark, and how it is received and understood by Spanish learners in the country. The paper explores the concept of Latin America from different perspectives: Danish learners, young Latin Americans and through a historical overview, in order to embrace its complexity. The hypothesis is that the conceptualization of ‘Latin America’ in the context of language teaching in Denmark does not do justice to the diversity and richness of the geographical area and its peoples.

 


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

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(2022) English, molecules — Money

Published on January 31, 2022. Last updated on April 8, 2022.

Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna & Farese, Gian Marco. (2022). The conceptual semantics of “money” and “money verbs”. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26(1) 7–20. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-27193

Open Access

 

Abstract

The central purpose of this study is to apply the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method of semantic-conceptual analysis to the word ‘money’ and to related “economic transaction” verbs, such as ‘buy’, ‘sell’ and ‘pay’, as used in everyday English. It proposes semantic explications for these words on the basis of conceptual analysis and a range of linguistic evidence and taking account of lexical polysemy. Even in its basic meaning (in a sentence like ‘there was some money on the table’), ‘money-1’ is shown to be surprisingly complex, comprising about 35 lines of semantic text and drawing on a number of semantic molecules (such as ‘country’, ‘number’, and ‘hands’), as well as a rich assortment of semantic primes. This ‘money-1’ meaning turns out to be a crucial semantic molecule in the composition of the verbs ‘buy’, ‘sell’, ‘pay’, and ‘(it) costs’. Each of these is treated in some detail, thereby bringing to light the complex semantic relationships between them and clarifying how this bears on their grammatical properties, such as argument structure. The concluding section considers how NSM semantic-conceptual analysis can help illuminate everyday economic thinking and also how it connects with Humanonics, an interdisciplinary project which aims to “re-humanise” economics.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2022) Environmental Semantics

Published on August 21, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Bromhead, Helen., & Levisen, Carsten. (2022). Environmental Semantics. Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 78–87. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135073

 

No abstract available

 

This article forms part of the handbook section of the Scandinavian Studies in Language Special Issue on Cognitive Cultural Semantics – A Nordic Guide to Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)

(2022) Pedagogy

Published on August 21, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Sadow, Lauren., & Fernández, Susana. S. (2022) Pedagogical Pragmatics: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Applications to Language Learning and Teaching. Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 53-66. https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135071

(2022) Scandinavian languages, Danish – NSM

Published on August 21, 2023. Last updated on November 17, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten, Fernández, Susana S., and Hein, Jan (2022) Cognitive Cultural Semantics: A Nordic Guide to Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Scandinavian Studies in Language 13(1): 1–38. https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135133.

No abstract available

 

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(Forthcoming) English – Discourse particles and intonation

Published on February 9, 2020. Last updated on February 9, 2020.

Wakefield, John C. (Forthcoming). It’s not as bad as you think: An English tone for ‘downplaying’. In Wentao Gu (Ed.), Studies on tonal aspects of languages. Hong Kong: Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph.

More information:

A version of this paper is part of the final chapter of the author’s book Intonational morphology, Singapore, Springer, 2020.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(Forthcoming) English, German – Emotions

Published on August 8, 2018. Last updated on October 19, 2019.

Goddard, Cliff (Forthcoming). Vocabulary of emotions and its development in English, German and other languages. In Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Jeanette Altarriba, & Bee Chin Ng (Eds.), Handbook of language and emotion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Abstract:

In broad agreement with many emotion theorists, the NSM approach sees emotion concepts as “blends” of feelings and thoughts, sometimes accompanied by potential bodily reactions. This chapter delineates the semantic fundamentals of emotion vocabulary, demonstrates a framework for fine-grained contrastive analysis, and emphasizes the greater-than-expected semantic variability across languages, epochs, and cultures.

Using examples from English and German, the chapter summarizes findings about semantic templates and semantic components of various kinds of emotion terms, including adjectives (e.g. afraid, angry, ashamed), verbs (e.g. miss, worry), and abstract nouns (e.g. happiness, depression). Minor categories and examples from other, non-European, languages are also briefly considered. It is shown that it is both possible and necessary to differentiate between similar-but-different emotion concepts in a single language, e.g. English happy, pleased, satisfied, and across different languages, e.g. English disgust vs. German Ekel. Likewise, using English happy and happiness as examples, the author shows that the same word can vary in meaning across time. Considerable weight is placed on linguistic evidence such as usage patterns, collocational data, and phraseology.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(Forthcoming) Minimal English — Economics, extent of the market

Published on January 10, 2022. Last updated on January 10, 2022.

Wilson, Bart J. and Farese, Gian Marco (forthcoming) A Universally Translatable Explication of Adam Smith’s Famous Proposition on ‘The Extent of the Market’ (June 16, 2021). Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3682250 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3682250

 

Abstract:

Following Adam Smith’s line of argument, we examine the semantics of four economic principles in Chapter III of the Wealth of Nations that compose his famous proposition “that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market.” We apply the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework in linguistics to produce a series of explications that are clear and plain, cross‐translatable into any language, intelligible to twenty‐first century readers, and faithfully close to the original text. Our paper explicates Smith’s logical argument in Chapter III and demonstrates how his ideas can be shared among speakers with different linguacultural backgrounds in line with the truly global view of economics that, we argue, Adam Smith had in mind: economics intended as the science of all people living and doing things together with other people to live well and to feel good.

Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations”

Published on May 26, 2020. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

The Wealth of Nations in NSM (Gian Marco Farese & Bart J. Wilson, 2020)

This is a series of semantic illustrations capturing the Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory discussed by Adam Smith (1723-1790) in his opus magnum The Wealth of Nations (first published in 1776). It is the longest text ever produced in Natural Semantic Metalanguage and written strictly in pure NSM (not Minimal English) using only semantic primes and a small number of semantic molecules. The order of the illustrations follows the order in which Smith introduced his arguments in the original text. The paraphrased text is intended to function as a sort of explicative guide to the original phrased in simple and cross-translatable words. It is not meant to replace the original, but to be read together with it. We demonstrate that: (i) by reducing the principles of economics as conceived by Smith to their core meanings, it is possible to resolve a number of interpretive ambiguities that permeate discussions on economics, and (ii) by producing explications that are clear, cross-translatable, and free from terminological ethnocentrism, these principles become accessible and maximally intelligible to twenty-first century readers who are non-experts in economics and non-native speakers of English, too.

Bibliography:
Goddard, Cliff, Anna Wierzbicka, and Gian Marco Farese. 2019. The conceptual semantics of ‘money words’: money, buy, pay, (it) costs. Paper presented at the Australian Linguistics Society Conference, December 2019, Sydney, Australia.
Smith, Vernon L. and Bart J. Wilson. 2019. Humanomics. Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, Bart J. and Gian Marco Farese. (forthcoming). ‘What Did Adam Smith Mean? The Semantics of The Wealth of Nations’. In P. Sagar (ed.), Smith After 300 Years, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Seven essential messages for the time of the coronavirus

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

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2020). Seven essential messages for the time of the coronavirus. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24(2) 253—258. DOI: 10.22363/2687‐0088‐2020‐24‐2‐253‐258

 

Published version of this post, in English and in Russian