Browsing results for Main Authors
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 15, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1990-91). How discourse particles mean: The case of the Ewe “terminal” particles. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 12(2), 143-170. DOI: 10.1515_jall.1991.12.2.143
The main claims of this paper are that particles have meanings and that these meanings can be discovered and stated in a linguistically precise manner. Discourse particles, in particular, have meanings in addition to the syntactic, discourse and communicative functions in terms of which they are usually described. It is argued that the syntactic and discourse functional levels should be augmented by a semantic explication of the particles that would constitute a reliable guide to their usage.
The claims are tested and supported through an analysis of the Ewe particles lá and ɖé. These particles have been characterized as phrase and clause terminal particles because they occur at the end of preposed dependent phrases and clauses and at the end of embedded relative clauses. The author contends that the particles have a unitary function: they mark a piece of discourse as forming the conceptual background to the rest, or part of the rest, of an utterance or discourse. Semantic representations couched in a Natural Semantic Metalanguage of hypothetical universal primitives are proposed for the various senses of the particles, which can explain the similarities and differences in their range of use. The paper concludes with a discussion of some cross-linguistic analogues of the Ewe particles.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ɖé, (E) lá
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). The meaning of color terms: Semantics, culture, and cognition. Cognitive Linguistics, 1(1), 99-150.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1990.1.1.99
Abstract:
It has been claimed that the semantics of basic colour terms in all languages directly reflects the existence of pan-human neural response categories. But how can language be “directly” linked to neural responses? Language reflects conceptualizations, not the neural representation of colour in the pathways between the eye and brain. The link between the neural representation of colour and the linguistic representation of colour can only be indirect. The way leads via concepts. Sense data are “private” (even if they are rooted in pan-human neural responses), whereas concepts can be shared. To be able to talk with others about one’s private sense data, one must be able to translate them first into communicable concepts.
This paper argues against the current accounts of colour semantics and proposes a new interpretation of the evolutionary sequence discovered by Berlin and Kay. Although our colour sensations occur in our brains, not in the world outside, and their nature is probably determined to a large extent by our human biology (which links us, in some measure, with other primates), to be able to communicate about these sensations, we project them onto something in our shared environment. The author argues that colour concepts are anchored in certain “universals of human experience”, and that these universals can be identified, roughly speaking, as day and night, fire, the sun, vegetation, the sky, and the ground.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 11 (pp. 405-450) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 10 (pp. 287-334) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1996), Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). *Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 13(1), 43-76.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 11, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (Ed.) (1990). The semantics of emotions. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2) (Special issue).
Table of contents (NSM-based studies only):
The grammatical packaging of experiencers in Ewe: A study in the semantics of syntax (Felix Ameka)
Experiential constructions in Mangap‐Mbula (Robert D. Bugenhagen)
Shame/embarrassment in English and Danish (Anne Dineen)
The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara (Cliff Goddard)
Shame and shyness in the aboriginal classroom: A case for “practical semantics” (Jean Harkins)
The semantics of emotions: Fear and its relatives in English (Anna Wierzbicka)
Each paper has its own entry, where additional information is provided.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). *Emotivity in language structure. Semiotica, 80(1/2), 161-169.
Review of Bronislava Volek. Emotive signs in language and semantic functioning of derived nouns in Russian.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on October 19, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). The semantics of emotions: Fear and its relatives in English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 359-375. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599447
This paper demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger, sadness or fear – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘do’, ‘happen’, ‘know’ and ‘want’, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.
The definitions proposed here differ in various respects from so-called ‘classical definitions’; in particular, they do not adhere to the Aristotelian model based on a ‘genus proximum’ and ‘differentia specifica’. Rather, they take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, ‘wants’ and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions, and they do not support the idea that emotion concepts are ‘fuzzy’. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here allows us to show that even apparent synonyms such as afraid and scared embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures, and to reveal the remarkable precision with which boundaries between concepts are drawn – even between those concepts which at first sight appear to be identical or only “stylistically” different. Upon closer investigation, human conceptualization of emotions reveals itself as a system of unconscious distinctions of incredible delicacy, subtlety, and precision.
Tags: (E) afraid, (E) alarmed, (E) anger, (E) anguish, (E) anxiety, (E) apprehension, (E) concerned, (E) disappointed, (E) dread, (E) fear, (E) fright, (E) frightened, (E) horrified, (E) joy, (E) panic, (E) petrified, (E) relieved, (E) sad, (E) scared, (E) terrified, (E) worried
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). ‘Prototypes save’: On the uses and abuses of the notion of ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields. In Savas L. Tsohatzidis (Ed.), Meanings and prototypes: Studies in linguistic categorization (pp. 347-367). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 148-169) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The original paper has been anthologized as:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2004). ‘Prototypes save’. In Bas Aarts, David Denison, Evelien Keizer, & Gergana Popova (Eds.), Fuzzy grammar: A reader (pp. 461-478). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The original Tsohatzidis collection was reissued in 2013 by Routledge.
Prototypes are ‘in’. After years of self-doubt and inferiority complexes, it may seem that semantics has found the key to unlock – at last – the mysteries of meaning. This key resides in the concept of prototype. The role that the concept of prototype plays in current semantics is analogous to that which the concept of Gricean maxims has played in generative grammar. James McCawley has identified this role with the excellent slogan: “Grice saves”. In grammar, if there is a conflict between postulated rules and the actual usage, Grice rescues the grammarian: the usage can now be accounted for in terms of Gricean maxims.
Similarly in semantics. For example, the actual usage of individual words is too messy, too unpredictable, to be accounted for by definitions. But fortunately, semanticists do not have to worry about it any longer: they can now deploy the notion of ‘prototype’. And just as the failure of grammatical rules to work can now be proclaimed as evidence of progress in linguistics (because we have discovered the all-explaining role of Gricean maxims in language), the failure of semantic formulae to work can also be proclaimed as evidence of progress in semantics. ‘Semantic formulae SHOULD NOT “work”’; that’s one thing that ‘prototypes’ have taught us.
This paper discusses two sets of examples. The first set illustrates the tendency to abuse the concept of prototype (the ‘prototypes save’ attitude); the second set of examples illustrates the usefulness of this concept when it is used as a specific analytical tool and not as a universal thought-saving device.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1990). The grammatical packaging of experiencers in Ewe: A study in the semantics of syntax. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 139-181. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599440
It is now generally accepted that languages have different means of representing the same extra-linguistic or real world situation. It is furthermore assumed that these different means of representation reflect different conceptualizations of real-world situations. The purpose of this paper is to describe the different morpho-syntactic devices that are available in Ewe, a Kwa language of West Africa, for the presentation of the conceptualizations of an experiencer of an emotion or sensation.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dó, (E) ɖé, (E) ná, (E) nyá
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1990). The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 257-292. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599444
Recent work in cognitive anthropology has laid much stress on the role emotions in general play in regulating and organizing (or even, constituting) social life within a culture. At one level, we may see a system of interrelated emotion concepts as embodying shared understandings of human nature – as a model, or set of models, that people use to interpret each other’s actions and reactions. At another level, we can look to the way emotion words are invoked and deployed in social praxis; indeed, it can be fairly said that the ‘meaning’ (in the fullest sense) of emotion concepts and lexemes cannot be fully appreciated without an account of how they figure in the overall system of social action. This paper addresses the lexical semantics of three emotion verbs in the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara dialects of the Western Desert Language. They are the most salient words in what might broadly be termed the domain of valued or positive feelings – mukuringanyi, roughly ‘want, like, care for’, pukularinyi ‘feel glad, gratified’ and ngalturinganyi ‘feel sorry, concerned for’. The paper uses the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method of semantic description, which represents meanings as reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases, technically known as explications. The cultural significance of the specific P/Y concepts explicated in this paper should be obvious: they relate directly to the social category of walytja ‘kin, relations’, identified by Aboriginal people and anthropologists alike as pivotal to P/Y social life.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kuraringanyi, (E) mukuringanyi, (E) ngalturinganyi, (E) pukul(pa), (E) pukularinyi, (E) walytja
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). Antitotalitarian language in Poland: Some mechanisms of linguistic self-defense. Language in Society, 19, 1-59. DOI: 10.1017/S004740450001410X
This article explores the concept of political diglossia, a phenomenon arising in totalitarian or semitotalitarian countries, where the language of official propaganda gives rise to its opposite: the unofficial, underground language of antipropaganda. The author studies one semantic domain – the colloquial designations of the political police and security forces in contemporary Poland – and compares them with the official designations. The semantics of the relevant words and expressions is studied in great detail so that the social attitudes encoded in them can be revealed and rigorously compared. To achieve this, the author relies on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage that she has developed over the
last two decades, which has already been applied in the study of many other semantic domains, in many different languages. The social and political attitudes encoded in the Polish expressions referring to the security apparatus are discussed against the background of Poland’s history. The author shows that language is not only the best “mirror of mind” (Leibniz) and “mirror of culture” and “guide to social reality” (Sapir), but also a mirror of history and politics.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). Duša (soul), toska (yearning), sud’ba (fate): Three key concepts in Russian language and Russian culture. In Zygmunt Saloni (Ed.), Metody formalne w opisie języków słowiańskich (pp. 13-32). Bialystok: Bialystok University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) duša душа, (E) sud'ba судьба, (E) toska тоска
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Reissued, with a new preface, as:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI (2003): https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110220964
Abstract:
This book challenges approaches to human interaction that are based on supposedly universal maxims of conversation and principles of politeness, which fly in the face of reality as experienced by millions of people – refugees, immigrants, cross-cultural families, and so on. By contrast to such approaches, which are of no use in cross-cultural communication and education, this book is both theoretical and practical. It shows that in different societies, norms of human interaction are different and reflect different cultural attitudes and values. It offers a framework within which different cultural norms and different ways of speaking can be effectively explored, explained, and taught.
The book discusses data from a wide range of languages, including English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Walmatjari. It shows that the meanings expressed in human interaction and the different cultural rules (called ‘cultural scripts’ in more recent work) prevailing in different speech communities can be described and compared in a way that is clear, simple, rigorous, and free of ethnocentric bias. It relies on NSM to do so, and argues that the latter can be used as a basis for teaching successful cross-cultural communication and education, including the teaching of languages in a cultural context.
Table of contents:
- Introduction: Semantics and pragmatics
- Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts
- Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values
- Describing conversational routines
- Speech acts and speech genres across languages and cultures
- The semantics of illocutionary forces
- Italian reduplication: Its meaning and its cultural significance
- Interjections across cultures
- Particles and illocutionary meanings
- Boys will be boys: Even truisms are culture-specific
- Conclusion: Semantics as a key to cross-cultural pragmatics
More information:
Chapter 2 builds on: Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs. English (1985)
Chapter 5 builds on: A semantic metalanguage for a crosscultural comparison of speech acts and speech genres (1985); a more recent publication building on this chapter is chapter 5 (pp. 198-234) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 6 builds on: A semantic metalanguage for the description and comparison of illocutionary meanings (1986)
Chapter 7 builds on: Italian reduplication: Cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary semantics (1986)
Chapter 8 builds on: The semantics of interjections (1992)
Chapter 9 builds on: Precision in vagueness: The semantics of English ‘approximatives’ (1986); The semantics of quantitative particles in Polish and in English (1986)
Chapter 10 builds on: Boys will be boys: ‘Radical semantics’ vs. ‘radical pragmatics’ (1987)
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.
Tags: (E) already, (E) as much as, (E) at most, (E) chat, (E) chiack, (E) complain, (E) dob in, (E) dugri, (E) kansha suru かんしゃ する, (E) more or less, (E) nedaru ねだる, (E) shout, (E) still, (E) thank, (E) whinge, (E) yarn, (E) yet
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 13, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Ostensive definitions and verbal definitions: Innate conceptual primitives and the acquisition of concepts. In Maciej Grochowski, & Daniel Weiss (Eds.), Words are physicians for an ailing mind (pp. 467-480). Munich: Otto Sagner.
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 211-233) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Japanese key words and core cultural values. Language in Society, 20(3), 333-385.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016535
Abstract:
Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. However, to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper explores and analyses six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more than any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – 甘え amae, 遠慮 enryo, 和 wa, 恩 on, 義理 giri, and 精神 seishin – and shows how the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage helps to make these concepts clear, affording better insight into Japanese culture and society.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 6 (pp. 235-280) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amae 甘え, (E) enryo 遠慮, (E) giri 義理, (E) on 恩, (E) seishin 精神, (E) wa 和, (T) Japanese, (T) Latin, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Semantic complexity: Conceptual primitives and the principle of substitutability. Theoretical Linguistics, 17, 75-97. DOI: 10.1515/thli.1991.17.1-3.75
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 211-233) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This paper argues that the failures of modern semantics have been caused, largely, by an unrealistic idea of the nature of semantic complexity, reflected in popular analyses such as “to kill equals ‘to cause to die'”. In fact, the semantic structure of an ordinary human sentence may be about as simple as the structure of a galaxy or of an atom. If we don’t recognize this complexity and don’t accept the challenge of elucidating it, we will never be able to fulfil the central task of linguistics: that of discovering, and describing, how meanings are encoded in the languages of the world; and of doing so not on the level of programmatic declarations but on the level of empirical detail.
The author argues that to analyze meanings in their complexity we must be able to show how complex meanings are derived from simple ones; semantic analysis requires, therefore, a set of “ultimate simples”, that is, of universal conceptual primitives. In addition to such a set, however, we must also know how these primitives are combined into larger semantic units. The author explores both issues (the set of the ultimate simples and the nature of their “grammar”), and discusses the light they throw on the problem of semantic complexity.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). *Semantics vs. pragmatics. In V. Prakasam (Ed.), Encyclopaedic dictionary of linguistic terminology (pp. 204-209). Punjabi University.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Testing the translatability of semantic primitives into an Australian Aboriginal Language. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(1), 31-56. DOI: 10.2307/30028013
This study in the methodology of cross-linguistic semantics within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework posits the existence of universal lexico-semantic primitives. Among these are because and want, yet both present translation difficulties in relation to the Western Desert Language of Central Australia. Because apparently has no unambiguous equivalent, and the Western Desert verb closest to want (mukuringanyi) exhibits a range of rather different syntactic and semantic characteristics and is morphologically complex. However, by taking careful account of polysemy and differences in range of use due to non-semantic factors – factors that undermine any simplistic checklist approach to translatability – unique, precise translation equivalents for both terms can be established.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mukuringanyi, (T) English
Published on October 10, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (1991). Anger in the Western Desert: A case study in the cross-cultural semantics of emotion. Man, (N.S.) 26(2), 265-279. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803832
This article sets out to show that by adopting a method of semantic description based on reductive, cross-translatable paraphrases (the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach) it is possible to elucidate the meanings of emotion concepts, and their similarities and differences across cultures, within a principled, formal framework. Using this approach, it explores the semantic differences between pikaringanyi, mirpanarinyi and kuyaringanyi, three expressions in the Aboriginal language of the Western Desert of Australia, each of which corresponds to some extent to the English concept of anger.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) kuyaringanyi, (E) mirpanarinyi, (E) pikaringanyi, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on March 14, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992/93). What are the uses of theoretical lexicography? Dictionaries, 14, 44-78.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992/93). Replies to discussants. Dictionaries, 14, 139-159.
DOI (main article): 10.1353/dic.1992.0014
DOI (replies): 10.1353/dic.1992.0016
A more recent publication building on the above is chapter 9 (pp. 258-286) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abstract:
There is more to practical lexicography than getting the meanings right, but trying to get the meanings right is vitally important. If theoretical lexicography couldn’t help in this respect, by providing ideas, principles, criteria, models, and guidelines, one could really doubt its raison d’être. However, theoretical lexicography can indeed offer all these things. Most importantly, it can offer a tool that can by itself remedy a large proportion of the ills of traditional lexicography: a NATURAL LEXICOGRAPHIC METALANGUAGE, derived from the NATURAL SEMANTIC METALANGUAGE, and based on universal semantic primes.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) blunder, (E) bold, (E) building, (E) climb, (E) evil, (E) horses, (E) mistake, (E) punish, (E) revenge, (E) right, (E) sin, (E) tempt, (E) wish, (E) wrong, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Furniture and birds: A reply to Dwight Bolinger. Cognitive Linguistics, 3(1), 119-123. DOI: 10.1515/cogl.1992.3.1.111
No full-fledged explications are proposed in this short reply to Dwight Bolinger’s reaction following the publication of Wierzbicka’s paper “Prototypes save: On the uses and abuses of the notion ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields” (1990). The reply suggests, against Bolinger (for whom furniture and bird are comparable categories), that the explication of collective categories such as furniture, cutlery, kitchenware, clothing, or bedlinen should start as follows:
things of different kinds
they are in the same place
(because people want them to be in the same place)
In the case of taxonomic concepts such as bird, tree, flower, or fish, the beginning of the explications will be different and refer instead to “a kind of thing”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
