A resource base of publications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. 1,100+ detailed notices, and counting!
Tien, Adrian (1999). Early lexical exponents & ‘related’ lexical items as manifestations of conceptual / semantic primitives in child language. MA thesis, Australian National University.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2009). Semantic prime HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese: In search of a viable exponent. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17(2), 356-382. DOI: 10.1075/p&c.17.2.07tie
HAPPEN is part of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) inventory of primes. Its most appropriate exponent in Mandarin Chinese was previously thought to be fa1sheng1. This article argues that fa1sheng1 is not the correct exponent of HAPPEN as it is marked for ‘adversity’ as well as what I call ‘serious mention’ or ‘noteworthiness’ of the event, i.e., that an event is sufficiently serious or noteworthy to fare a mention. This article puts forward you3, lit. ‘have, exist, happen’, and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4, lit. ‘like how/like this’ instead, as allolexic exponents of HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese. Though highly polysemous each in its own way, the HAPPEN sense of you3 and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4 can, respectively, be shown to be semantically irreducible and pragmatically neutral. This article delineates some of the syntactic and contextual distributions attesting to the viability of you3 and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4 as the Mandarin Chinese exponents of HAPPEN.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2009). Singaporean culture as reflected by the shared Chinese-based lexicon of Singapore English and Singapore Chinese. In T. Shabanova (Ed.), Humanistic inheritance of great educators in culture and education (pp. 71-74). Ufa: BSPU.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2010). The semantics of human interaction in Chinese E-communication. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook of research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 437-467). Hershey: IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-773-2.ch028
The current study investigates typical, everyday Chinese interaction online and examined what linguistic meanings arise from this form of communication – not only semantic but also, importantly, pragmatic, discursive, contextual and lexical meanings etc. In particular, it sets out to ascertain whether at least some of the cultural values and norms etc. known to exist in Chinese culture, as selected in the Chinese language, are maintained or preserved in modern Chinese e-communication. To achieve his aims, the author collected a sample set of data from Chinese online resources found in Singapore, including a range of blog sites and MSN chat rooms where interactants have kept their identities anonymous. A radically semantic approach was adopted – namely, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) model – to analyse meanings that arose from the data. The analyses were presented and compiled in the way of “cultural cyberscripts” – based on an NSM analytical method called “cultural scripts”. Through these cyberscripts, findings indicate that, while this form of e-communication does exhibit some departure from conventional socio-cultural values and norms, something remains linguistically and culturally Chinese that is unique to Chinese interaction online.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2011). Lexical semantics of children’s Mandarin Chinese during the first four years. München: Lincom.
Revised version of the author’s PhD thesis, The semantics of children’s Mandarin Chinese: The first four years (University of New England, Armidale, 2005).
If children’s early words or word-like “phrasemes” have any meanings at all, then it should be possible to study and analyse their meanings. But how can early words and meanings be rigorously studied and analysed? In examining naturalistic production data from forty-seven subjects acquiring Mandarin during the first four years, this innovative study takes a radical, semantic approach to words and their meanings in child Mandarin through adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach.
Amongst our findings, lexical exponents of sixty-one or so semantic primes posited in NSM are present in child Mandarin before the end of the fourth year. Many of these are among the earliest and the most frequent words that children produce. In addition, combinatorial properties of these lexical exponents also support hypotheses advanced about universal syntax within the NSM framework, despite challenges posed by a few exponents.
Early vocabulary comprises a great many semantically complex, i.e. “non-prime”, words. Before an NSM prime acquires a lexical exponent, it may first be conceptually present as core semantic elements in the meanings of common non-prime words. This phenomenon is termed “latency”: a semantic prime is considered “latent” when it is first represented conceptually and expounded lexically only later in development.
On the whole, in adopting a representational system (NSM) that is commensurable with the adult system, this study demonstrates that there is, in fact, developmental continuity between the young child’s semantic system and the adult’s system.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2012). Chinese intercultural communication in the global setting, as reflected through contemporary key words in the Chinese multimedia. In Birgit Breninger, & Thomas Kaltenbacher (Eds.), Creating cultural synergies: Multidisciplinary perspectives on interculturality and interreligiosity (pp. 169-184). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
The author casts a closer look on Chinese-speaking communities and cultural key words, which he claims play an important role in intercultural competence. Chinese cultural key words allow one to gain various cultural glimpses on different aspects of modern Chinese culture and society.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2012). Chinese Hokkien and its lexicon in Singapore: Evidence for an indigenised Singapore culture. In Rudolf Muhr (Ed.), Non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages: Getting the picture. In memory of Michael Clyne (pp. 453-472). Vienna: Peter Lang.
More surveys of languages of Singapore have concentrated on Chinese Mandarin – one of the official languages – than any other Chinese “dialects” that are also spoken by at least some of the Singaporeans, notably Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese. In focusing on Singapore Chinese Hokkien, this chapter shows that (1) this dialect is, essentially, a pluricentric language, and its Singaporean version reflects a local or indigenized variety of Hokkien that exhibits differences with varieties of Hokkien spoken elsewhere, e.g. Taiwan; (2) at least for now, the status of Hokkien has remained more or less secure and has, in fact, continued to play a prominent role in Singapore language and culture, despite it being non-official and non-dominant; and (3) in fact, Hokkien has assumed an influential role in other languages spoken in Singapore, official or not, e.g. Singapore English (“Singlish”) and Singapore Mandarin etc. A case study presented here, based on the semantic analysis of a Singapore Chinese Hokkien lexicon, demonstrates the uniqueness of this lexicon in usage and in culture.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2013). Bootstrapping and the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage perspective. In Dagmar Bittner, & Nadja Ruhlig (Eds.), Lexical bootstrapping: The role of lexis and semantics in child language development (pp. 39-72). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110308693.39
By means of a set of simple, indefinable concepts apparently existing in the heart of any language, and known as conceptual or semantic “primes”, Natural Semantic Metalanguage researchers explore certain hypotheses about the nature and identities of the innate concepts which may underpin language acquisition. Those hypotheses relate to the kind of conceptual/semantic knowledge/skill that may actually facilitate lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic acquisition, in a comparable way as conjectured by the Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis.
This chapter takes child Mandarin as the child language in question and examines evidence from naturalistic production data of ten young children acquiring Mandarin. Preliminary results indicate that the lexical exponents of all NSM primes are present in child Mandarin before the end of the fourth year. In addition, before a prime is lexically represented in production, it may first be conceptually present as core semantic elements in the meanings of common non-prime words. This phenomenon is termed “latency”. Our findings indicate that child Mandarin and adult Mandarin probably operate on lexico-semantically and lexico-syntactically commensurate systems, with the NSM accounting for their commensurability and, in turn, developmental continuity, though we have also taken various variables into consideration.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2014). Chinese-based lexicon in Singapore English, and Singapore-Chinese culture. In Maria Grozeva-Minkova, & Boris Naimushin (Eds.), Globalisierung, interkulturelle Kommunikation und Sprache (pp. 473-482). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Also published as:
Tien, Adrian (2014). Chinese-based lexicon in Singapore English, and Singapore-Chinese culture. In Ewa Zebrowska, Mariola Jaworska, & Dirk Steinhoff (Eds.), Materialität und Medialität der sprachlichen Kommunikation – Materiality and mediality of linguistic communication (pp. 411-422). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Singapore sits at the crossroads between the East and the West, and its “unofficial” national creole, Singapore English (or “Singlish”), attests to the diverse linguistic and cultural amalgam consisting of primarily English and Chinese and, secondarily, Malay and Tamil. While English grammar serves as the backbone of Singlish, its lexical composition is strongly represented by loanwords or calques which originated from Chinese – not only Standard Mandarin but also Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka dialects. These Chinese-based words in Singlish lexicon are worth studying because they demonstrate that the Singapore culture is both uniquely native and historically as well as culturally reflective of Chinese culture. To further substantiate the case, we examine a selection of cultural key words from Chinese-based Singlish lexicon using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) model as advanced by Wierzbicka and Goddard over the last 40 years. By using a set of 60 or so semantically unanalysable “primes”, this model allows us to decompose the complex meanings of cultural key words into configurations of semantic primes, thus making it possible to study, compare, and explain these words.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2015). The semantics of Chinese music: Analysing selected Chinese musical concepts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/clscc.5
Music is a widely enjoyed human experience. It is, therefore, natural that we have wanted to describe, document, analyse and, somehow, grasp it in language. This book surveys a representative selection of musical concepts in Chinese language, i.e. words that describe, or refer to, aspects of Chinese music. Important as these musical concepts are in the language, they have been in wide circulation since ancient times without being subjected to any serious semantic analysis. The current study is the first known attempt at analysing these Chinese musical concepts linguistically, adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to formulate semantically and cognitively rigorous explications. Readers will be able to better understand not only these musical concepts but also significant aspects of the Chinese culture that many of these musical concepts represent. This volume contributes to the fields of cognitive linguistics, semantics, music, musicology and Chinese studies, offering readers a fresh account of Chinese ways of thinking, not least Chinese ways of viewing or appreciating music. Ultimately, this study represents trailblazing research on the relationship between language, culture and cognition.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2015). Offensive language and sociocultural homogeneity in Singapore: An ethnolinguistic perspective. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 142-168. DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.2.2.01tie
Offensive language use in Singapore’s languacultures appears to be underpinned by cultural norms and values embraced by most if not all Singaporeans. Interviews with local informants and perusal of Singapore’s linguistic and cultural resources led to the identification of eight offensive words and phrases deemed representative of Singaporean coarseness. This set was narrowed down to a smaller set of common words and phrases, all Chinese Hokkien, all culturally laden. The finding that, although originally Hokkien, all of them are accessible not only to the Chinese-speaking population but also to speakers of Singapore Malay, Singapore Tamil, and Singapore English is compelling. The words and phrases studied in this paper are full-fledged members of the lexicon of these local non-Chinese languages, without loss or distortion of meaning. They are accepted as part of the local linguistic scene and of local cultural knowledge. At least in certain situations, people of different ethnic backgrounds who live and work together can rely on them as a testament of common identity which, in a curious way, gives voice to the sociocultural homogeneity this society unrelentingly pursues.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2016). What does it mean to “commemorate”? Linguistic and cultural evidence from Chinese. The Irish Journal of Asian Studies, 2, 1-11.
What does it mean to “commemorate”? Is commemorate or its derivations in English understood and accordingly practiced in other languages and cultures? This article demonstrates, through the case of Chinese language and culture, that people do not all share the same understanding about “commemoration” or practice it as it is in the Anglo context. Even though commemorate is translated into Chinese as jì niàn and these words show certain linguistic similarities, jì niàn is not an exact translational equivalent of the English word. Furthermore, evidence is presented to show that jì niàn is likely a recent word in Chinese, based on contemporary Chinese notions of something like to “commemorate” that reflect possible influences from the West. In drawing evidence from conventional Chinese linguistic and cultural practices, this article illustrates how Chinese “commemorate” in ways that are indigenous to them. As part of this, semantic analyses using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) are performed on the Chinese words jì niàn and zhuī yuǎn, lit. ‘to recollect the distant past’. These are then compared with the semantic analysis for commemorate in English, for an in-depth appreciation of what makes Chinese understanding of something like “commemorate” unique.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2016). Not so fast: Speed-related concepts in Chinese music and beyond. Global Chinese, 2(2), 189-211. DOI: 10.1515/glochi-2016-0008
While speed as a sonic and musical experience may be a universal phenomenon, concepts referring to kinds of speed are language-specific and culture-dependent. This paper focuses on the notion of speed in Chinese and concepts associated with speed in Chinese, especially in relation to music. Five speed-related concepts in Chinese are subjected to scrutiny: kuai, ji, su, man and huan. These concepts are scrutinized in traditional musical, contemporary musical and general contemporary contexts. The musical genres in which these concepts present themselves are the music of guqin (a seven-stringed zither) and Peking Opera. Semantic analyses adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach are utilized in order to explicate these concepts. Preliminary findings demonstrate that, unlike in some other musical traditions in which one might expect the capacity to play at markedly contrastive speeds in a musical performance to be aesthetically desirable or even essential, as the meanings of the speed-related concepts in Chinese reveal, the ability to play fast is not necessarily aesthetically praiseworthy in at least traditional Chinese music, nor is speed necessarily a major consideration as one executes speed in a Chinese musical interpretation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2016). Compositionality of Chinese idioms: The issues, the semantic approach and a case study. Applied Linguistics Review, 7(2), 149-180. DOI: 10.1515/applirev-2016-0007
Idioms – or something like idioms – occupy a special place as a speech genre in languages. It is compelling that the issue of what idioms are (or are not) and how they distinguish themselves from other related, though different, linguistic and phraseological categories, are of concern to all. This paper first examines various linguistic issues concerning the idiom genre before going into a detailed discussion about the chengyu in Chinese, which is an approximate yet by no means identical counterpart of the idiom as it is understood in English. It is argued that, as phrasal structures, Chinese chengyus are not all lexically fixed, neither are they all semantically non-compositional. By virtue of the example of the sememe zhong, lit. ‘(bronze) bell’, and its incorporation into certain chengyus, it is demonstrated that the sememic constituents of a chengyu can be only not compositionally significant semantically speaking but also, they may well hold the key to the reason why the literal meaning of a chengyu should be closely integrated into its intended, idiomatic (figurative) meaning. Chengyus that incorporate the sememe zhong comprise an idiomatic analogy and, in fact, zhong as a lexical item is represented in the content of this analogy as a cognitively real element. This paper adopts the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework as the basis for semantic analyses of such chengyus.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrian (2017). To be headed for the West, riding a crane: Chinese pragmemes in the wake of someone’s passing. In Vahid Parvaresh, & Alessandro Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 183-202). Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_11
Abstract
Jia he xi gui ‘to be headed for the West, riding a crane’ is among those words and phrases that Chinese employ in mentioning someone’s passing. Words and phrases such as this not only represent culturally and socially appropriate expressions featured in the wake of someone’s passing but, pragmatically speaking, they also form part of a tactful set of situation- and context-bound pragmatic acts that should be used around the event of death. This chapter presents an overview of the range of pragmatic acts that Chinese typically exploit to express the pragmeme in connection with the event of death. Important extralinguistic pragmatic acts besides speech that are integral to Chinese interactions surrounding this unfortunate event are also taken into consideration.
To articulate the pragmemes as represented by the pragmatic acts, this chapter adopts the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), as advanced by Anna Wierzbicka, as its theoretical framework. NSM is, essentially, a set of semantically basic and universally identifiable primitive concepts or primes that can be used to reduce culturally complex meanings – including meanings of pragmemes – into semantically simple elucidations. Preliminary findings indicate that Chinese socio-cultural conventions encourage an emotionally expressive yet indirect style of interactions in the wake of someone’s passing, in a way that is consistent with the hierarchical relationship between the deceased and the living.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tien, Adrien, Carson, Lorna, & Jiang, Ning. (2021). An Anatomy of Chinese Offensive Words: A Lexical and Semantic Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Abstract
This book offers a precise and rigorous analysis of the meanings of offensive words in Chinese. Adopting a semantic and cultural approach, the authors demonstrate how offensive words can and should be systematically researched, documented and accounted for as a valid aspect of any language. The book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and students of sociolinguistics, language and culture, linguistic taboo, Chinese studies and Chinese linguistics.
From the Foreward
This book began life as an individual project undertaken by Professor Adrian Tien. After living in Australia and Singapore, Adrian moved to Ireland in 2015 to take up a new post at Trinity College Dublin, where he was recruited to direct the growing Chinese Studies programme in the university. Within three years of his arrival, Adrian tragically passed away following a short illness. Aware of the progress of this book project, we— Adrian’s colleague Professor Lorna Carson, and his former PhD student and research assistant Dr Ning Jiang—undertook to complete the manu- script as a way of honouring Adrian’s memory, our friendship and his academic legacy. The vision for this book belongs to Adrian, and any errors or shortcomings which follow remain the responsibility of his co-authors.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner |
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Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner |
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Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner |
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners |
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners |