Browsing results for Main Authors
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). A conceptual basis for cultural psychology. Ethos, 21(2), 205-231.
At the present stage of its development, cultural psychology is indeed still dependent on the English language – not just as a medium of expression but as a source of its conceptual tools. The hypothesis that I wish to put forward is this: In trying to identify conceptual universals and in trying to develop a language that can be used for comparing cultures without an ethnocentric bias, a crucial role can be given to the universals of language and, in particular, to lexical universals. Needless to say, in proposing a set of universal human concepts (arrived at on the basis of linguistic evidence) as a possible conceptual
basis for cultural psychology, I do not wish to engage in an act of linguistic imperialism. Obviously, there is room for many different approaches, many different models, and many different perspectives.
Nevertheless, linguistic evidence has quite unique value in trying to elucidate categories of thought. It is time for this evidence to be finally given the attention that it deserves.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Reading human faces: Emotion components and universal semantics. Pragmatics and Cognition, 1(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1075/pc.1.1.03wie
It is widely believed that there are some emotions (so-called “basic emotions “) which are universally associated with distinctive facial expressions and that one can recognize, universally, an angry face, a happy face, a sad face, and so on. The “basic emotions ” are believed to be part of the biological makeup of human species and to be therefore “hardwired”. In contrast to this view, it has been suggested that it is not emotions but some components of emotions which are universally linked with certain facial expressions, or rather with some components of facial expressions. The theory will be even more convincing – and indeed more verifiable – if the postulated “dissociable components of emotions”
are formulated in a rigorous, and culture-independent manner. This paper argues that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on universal semantic primitives and devised by the author and colleagues, provides a suitable culture-independent framework.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (Ed.) (1993). Les primitifs sémantiques. Langue française, 98 (Special issue).
Table of contents (NSM-based studies only):
Présentation (Bert Peeters & Anna Wierzbicka)
La quête des primitifs sémantiques: 1965-1992 (Anna Wierzbicka)
Commencer et se mettre à: une description axiologico-conceptuelle (Bert Peeters)
Les verba dicendi dans la presse d’information (Monique Monville-Burston)
La sémantique de la négation en français (Marie-Ève Ritz)
Les stratégies conversationnelles en français et en anglais: conventions ou reflet de divergences culturelles profondes? (Christine Béal)
Les universaux de la grammaire (Anna Wierzbicka)
Each of the above papers has its own entry.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Peeters, Bert, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Présentation. Langue française, 98, 3-8.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Peeters, Bert (1993). Commencer et se mettre à: une description axiologico-conceptuelle [Commencer and se mettre à: An axiologico-conceptual description]. Langue française, 98, 24-47. DOI: 10.3406/lfr.1993.5832. PDF (open access)
This paper examines in full detail all syntactic environments in which the Modern French aspectual verbs commencer and se mettre à are currently used. It also investigates the precise semantic differences between both verbs. Definitions are couched in semantic primitives. The author attempts to take a stand with respect to all observations made by others on these verbs over the last thirty years. Most examples are drawn from a corpus of weekly magazines and/or 20th century novels.
Tags: (E) commencer, (E) se mettre à
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Peeters, Bert, & Eiszele, Aileen (1993). Le verbe prendre pris au sérieux. Cahiers de lexicologie, 62, 169-184.
Published on May 15, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). La quête des primitifs sémantiques: 1965-1992 [The search for semantic primes: 1965-1992]. Langue française, 98, 9-23. DOI : 10.3406/lfr.1993.5831
Written in French.
This paper provides a state of the art report on the search for semantic primitives as carried out over the last 28 years. It is argued that the failure of the philosophical speculation triggered by the reflections of the great 17th century thinkers (Leibniz, Descartes, Pascal, Arnauld) is not irreversible: the challenge lies in replacing the speculation with a linguistic approach based on the observation of the most diverse languages in the world.
Published on May 15, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Les universaux de la grammaire [Universals of grammar]. Langue française, 98, 107-120. DOI : 10.3406/lfr.1993.5836
Written in French.
This paper explores the area of universal grammar, a concept which, in the context of natural semantics, is to be understood as the set of grammatical universels and other strategies allowed as part of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. It is very much a tentative paper with a large number of proposals and observations which await further exploration.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 19, 2019.
Ameka, Felix (1994). Areal conversational routines and cross-cultural communication in a multilingual society. In Heiner Pürschel, Elmar Bartsch, Peter Franklin, Ulrich Schmitz, & Sonja Vandermeeren (Eds.), Intercultural communication (pp. 441-469). Bern: Peter Lang.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). *The universality of taxonomic categorization and the indispensability of the concept ‘kind’. Rivista di Linguistica, 6(2), 347-364.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Cognitive domains and the structure of the lexicon: The case of emotions. In Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, & Susan A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 431-452). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In trying to discover how knowledge (or at least basic, “foundational” knowledge) is stored and organized in the human mind we can rely, in a considerable measure, on language. There may be concepts that are not lexicalized in natural language, but these are probably less common, less basic, and less salient in a given speech community than those that have achieved lexicalization; they are also less accessible to study. Words provide evidence for the existence of concepts. Lexical sets, sharing a similar semantic structure, provide evidence for the existence of cohesive conceptual wholes (or fields). If it is hypothesized that knowledge is organized in the mind in the form of “cognitive domains,” then conceptual fields detectable through semantic analysis of the lexicon can be regarded as a guide to those domains. These general assumptions are illustrated in this paper by reference to a specific semantic domain: that of emotion terms. For reasons of space, the discussion must remain brief, sketchy, and selective.
Tags: (E) angry, (E) annoyed, (E) disappointed, (E) discontent, (E) displeased, (E) distress, (E) emotion, (E) guilty, (E) irritated, (E) joyful, (E) mad, (E) resent, (E) sad
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 7, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). What is prayer? In search of a definition. In Laurence Binet Brown (Ed.). The human side of prayer: The psychology of praying (pp. 25-46). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) pray
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Wong, Jock (1994). A Wierzbickan approach to Singlish particles. MA thesis, National University of Singapore.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In Shinobu Kitayama, & Hazel Rose Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 133-196). Washington: American Psychological Association.
Abstract:
This chapter explores the relationship between emotion and culture, and between emotion and cognition. It examines the concept of emotion, and argues that it is culture-specific and rooted in the semantics of the English language, as are also the names of specific emotions, such as sadness, joy, anger, or fear. It shows that both the concept of emotion and the language-specific names of particular emotions can be explicated and elucidated in universal semantic primes (NSM).
NSM provides a necessary counterbalance to the uncritical use of English words as conceptual tools in the psychology, philosophy, and sociology of emotions. It offers a suitable basis for description and comparison of not only emotions and emotion concepts but also of cultural attitudes to emotions. Different cultures do indeed encourage different attitudes toward emotions, and these different attitudes are reflected in both the lexicon and the grammar of the languages associated with these cultures.
The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the language-specific character of emotion concepts and grammatical categories; the need for lexical universals as conceptual and descriptive tools; the doctrine of basic emotions and the issue of the discreteness of emotions; and the relationships among emotions, sensations, and feelings. The second part, on cultural scripts (with special reference to the Anglo and Polish cultures), explores attitudes toward emotions characteristic of different cultures (in particular, the Anglo and Polish cultures) and shows how these attitudes can be expressed in the form of cultural scripts formulated by means of universal semantic primes.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 5 (pp. 163-189) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (endearments), (E) emotion, (E) enjoy, (E) Gefühl, (E) Gefühle, (E) sensation, (E) sentiment, (E) sentimento, (E) sentimiento, (S) bad things happen to people, (S) compliments, (S) consideration, (S) emotions, (S) feelings, (S) good things can happen to people, (S) I don't think this, (S) I say what I think, (S) I think this, (S) saying what one thinks, (S) self-analysis, (S) self-control, (S) spontaneity, (S) tact, (S) verbal and non-verbal communication, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural communication. In Martin Pütz (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict (pp. 69-87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.71.04wei [sic]
According to Edward Hall, writing in 1983, one element lacking in the cross-cultural field was the existence of adequate models that enable us to gain more insight into the processes going on inside people while they are thinking and communicating. It is the purpose of the present paper to develop and validate a model of the kind that Hall is calling for. The model developed here, which can be called the “cultural script model”, offers a framework within which both the differences in the ways of communicating and the underlying differences in the ways of thinking can be fruitfully and rigorously explored. It is shown how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified; this is done with particular reference to Anglo, Japanese, and Polish cultural norms.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [tag questions], (E) ne ね, (S) affective common ground, (S) agreement, (S) disagreement, (S) frankness, (S) free speech, (S) hurtful truth, (S) I don't think the same, (S) I don't think this, (S) I think this, (S) I want to say something bad about you, (S) impulsiveness, (S) it is bad to think this, (S) positive thinking, (S) saying exactly what one thinks, (S) self-expression, (S) sincerity, (S) spontaneity, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 26, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantics and epistemology: The meaning of ‘evidentials’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. Language Sciences, 16(1), 81-137. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(94)90018-3
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 15 (pp. 427-458) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meaning is encoded not only in words but also in grammatical categories. The meanings encoded in grammar (just like those encoded in the lexicon) are language-specific. Attempts to identify the meanings encoded in different languages by means of arbitrarily invented labels only conceals and obfuscates the language-specific character of the categories they are attached to. To be able to compare grammatical categories across language boundaries, we need constant points of reference, which slippery labels with shifting meanings cannot possibly provide. Universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives) can provide such constant and language-independent points of reference. They offer a secure basis for a semantic typology of both lexicons and grammars. At the same time, they offer us convenient and reliable tools for investigating the universal and the language-specific aspects of human cognition and human conceptualization of the world.
In this paper, the author illustrates and documents these claims by analysing one area of grammar in a number of different languages of the world: the area that is usually associated with the term evidentiality. As the goal of the paper is theoretical, not empirical, the data are drawn exclusively from one source: a volume entitled Evidentiality, edited by Chafe and Nichols (1986). The author reexamines the data presented in this volume by experts on a number of languages, and tries to show how these data can be reanalysed in terms of universal semantic primitives, and how in this way they can be made both more verifiable (that is, predictive) and more comparable across language boundaries.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ?el, (E) 'dug, (E) 'yuu, (E) a, (E) bes, (E) beti, (E) biw, (E) bos, (E) boti, (E) chi, (E) dó, (E) in, (E) ishi, (E) ja, (E) jilli, (E) ke‧, (E) mâ, (E) mela, (E) mi, (E) miyă, (E) mte, (E) mtʰer, (E) mu?a, (E) mute, (E) mutʰer, (E) nnă, (E) nok, (E) ntʰEr, (E) pacha, (E) pi, (E) psa, (E) psilli, (E) qă, (E) qilli, (E) re, (E) red, (E) shi, (E) sk''amna, (E) sk''apsa, (E) sun, (E) ŵă, (E) ŵela, (E) wi, (E) xa, (E) yă, (E) yin, (E) yod, (E) yowă
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1994). Ewe. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 57-86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.07ame
In general, Ewe seems to have lexical exponents for all of the proposed primitives. In several cases, the items correspond in a straightforward manner with the primitives and their combinatorial frames. In other cases, it is easy to identify a lexical exponent for a primitive, but the item is restricted in its range of use (i.e., it is not easy to use it in all of the proposed canonical context sentences). At the same time, it is shown that certain methodological issues need to be addressed. The first issue concerns allolexy; there is a need for clarification of this notion and of the situations in which it can be legitimately invoked. A second methodological issue relates to the translational approach in identifying the primitives across languages. A third and final problem concerns the conceptual status of the semantic primitives.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (1994). Semantic and lexical universals in French. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 423-442). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). “Cultural scripts”: A semantic approach to cultural analysis and cross-cultural communication. Pragmatics and Language Learning [Monograph Series], 5, 1-24. PDF (open access)
This paper argues that the ways of speaking characteristic of a given speech community cannot be satisfactorily described (let alone explained) in purely behavioral terms. They constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of “cultural rules” or “cultural scripts”. To understand a society’s ways of speaking, we have to identify and articulate its implicit “cultural scripts”. Furthermore, it is argued that to be able to do this without ethnocentric bias we need a universal, language-independent perspective; this can be attained if the”rules” in question are stated in terms of lexical universals, that is, universal human concepts lexicalized in all languages of the world.
To illustrate these general propositions, the author shows how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified. This is done with particular reference to Japanese, (White) Anglo-American, and Black American cultural norms.
The cultural scripts advanced in this paper are formulated in a highly constrained Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on a small set of lexical universals (or near-universals) and a small set of universal (or near-universal) syntactic patterns. It is argued that the use of this metalanguage allows us to portray and compare culture-specific attitudes, assumptions, and norms from a neutral, culture-independent point of view and to do so in terms of simple formulae that are intuitively self-explanatory while at the same time being rigorous and empirically verifiable.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) enryo 遠慮, (S) advocate stance, (S) agreement, (S) apologies, (S) attitudes to emotion, (S) criticism of others, (S) freedom of expression, (S) imposition of opinions, (S) likes and dislikes, (S) non-advocate stance, (S) open-mindedness, (S) opinions of others, (S) resilience, (S) self-assertive behaviour, (S) speech, (S) spokesman stance, (S) toughness, (S) verbal restraint, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Hill, Deborah (1994). Longgu. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 311-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.16hil
In general it has not been difficult to find lexical exponents of all of the proposed semantic primitives in Longgu. Indeed, in most cases (e.g. TWO, ALL, KNOW, WANT) there is a lexical representation which clearly corresponds to the primitive. However, making the link between the existence of an exponent (and, if present cross-linguistically, a lexical universal) and a primitive is clearly not as simple as finding the exponent. In the case of THINK, the evidence suggests that the meaning of the lexical exponent (una) is not centred around ‘think’ but around ‘thusly’. This somehow seems unsatisfactory and it raises the question of the expected relationship between a primitive and its exponent.
The ease with which lexical exponents of other primitives (IF, HAPPEN) are being replaced with other lexemes also seems unsatisfactory, even if it can be argued that this merely indicates the existence of two exponents of the same primitive.
The other points that have arisen from looking for these lexical exponents in Longgu have been ones of methodology and, in the case of PART OF, questioning whether the primitive is targeting a range of functions that are not captured by one lexical exponent in the language. The methodological problem was most evident in the case of OTHER. Despite the use of canonical sentences it remained difficult to separate the meaning conveyed by the English lexeme from the primitive.
These problems may not be insurmountable to deal with but the idea of finding lexical universals which correspond to semantic primitives would be all the more convincing if they could be adequately dealt with.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
