Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). Innate conceptual primitives manifested in the languages of the world and in infant cognition. In Eric Margolis, & Stephen Laurence (Eds.), The conceptual mind: New directions in the study of concepts (pp. 379-412). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
(2015) Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). Natural semantic metalanguage. In Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, & Todd Sandel (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of language and social interaction (pp. 1076-1092). New York: John Wiley.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a minilanguage corresponding, evidence suggests, to the shared core of all languages. This minilanguage has as many versions as there are human languages. For example, there is an English NSM, a Russian NSM, and a Chinese NSM, with matching minilexicons and minigrammars. Each such minilexicon has a set of fewer than 100 words and a very simple grammar. For example, the lexicon of the English NSM includes the words good, bad, big, small, very, someone, and something, and the lexicon of the Russian NSM, the matching Russian words: xorošij, ploxoj, bol’šoj, malen’kij, očen, kto-to, and čto-to, with the same combinatorial possibilities (e.g., very good, očen’ xorošij). The grammar of the English NSM does not include any of the complex, language-specific machinery of full English,with its relative clauses, gerunds, participles, and so on, but it does include for example if clauses — which, evidence suggests, can be found in all languages. Thus, one can say in English (and in NSM English): “if you do this, something bad can happen to you”, and one can say in Russian (and in NSM Russian) the literal equivalent of that English sentence: “esli ty ėto sdelaeš, čto-to ploxoe možet slučit’sja s toboj”.
This encyclopedia entry introduces some of the machinery of NSM, including primes, NSM grammar, semantic molecules, and cultural scripts. It also discusses the role of “NSM English” or “minimal English” in the era of globalization.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2015) Semantic molecules – Kinship
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). New perspectives on kinship: Overcoming the Eurocentrism and scientism of kinship studies through lexical universals. In Nancy Bonvillain (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 62-79). New York: Routledge.
Given a measure of mental discipline, effort and experience, unfamiliar concepts embodied in kinship terminologies can be explained to outsiders through ordinary language. To grasp them, one does not require a tutorial in kinship studies or in arcane formalisms of any kind. One does need, however, an explanation. If this explanation is free of any technical terminology, if it is couched in words that one can understand, and if one is prepared to make an effort to get out of one’s accustomed ways of thinking, then with the help of such an explanation, authentic understanding can be reached.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2015) Various languages – Colour words
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). The meaning of color words in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Andrew J. Elliot, Mark D. Fairchild, & Anna Franklin (Eds.), The handbook of color psychology (pp. 295-316). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781107337930.015
No abstract available.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) English – Verbs of ‘doing and happening’
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214-256. DOI: 10.1075/fol.23.2.03god
This study proposes NSM semantic explications for a cross-section of the English verbal lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. The twenty-five verbs are drawn from about a dozen verb classes, including verbs for non-typical locomotion (crawl, swim, fly), other intransitive activities (play, sing), manipulation (hold), activities that affect material integrity (cut, grind, dig), creation/production (make, build, carve), actions that affect people or things (hit, kick, kill) or cause a change of location (pick up, put, throw, push), bodily reactions to feelings (laugh, cry), displacement (fall, sink) and weather phenomena (rain, snow).
Though the verbs explicated are specifically English verbs, they have been chosen with an eye to their relevance to lexical typology and cross-linguistic semantics (many are drawn from the Verb Meanings List of the Leipzig Valency Patterns project) and it is hoped that the analytical strategy and methodology exemplified in this study can be a useful model for research into other languages. The study demonstrates the application of the NSM concept of semantic templates, which provide a clear “skeletal” structure for explications of considerable internal complexity and which help account for shared semantic and grammatical properties of verbs of a given subclass.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) English, German – Human locomotion
Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Wong, Jock (2016). “Walking” and “running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2), 303–336. DOI: 10.1075/rcl.14.2.03god
This study examines the conceptual semantics of human locomotion verbs in two languages – English and German – using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Based on linguistic evidence, it proposes semantic explications for English walk and run, and their nearest counterparts in German, i.e. laufen (in two senses, roughly, ‘run’ and ‘go by walking’), rennen (roughly, ‘run quickly’), gehen (roughly, ‘go/walk’), and the expression zu Fuß gehen (roughly, ‘go on foot’). Somewhat surprisingly for such closely related languages, the conceptual semantics turns out to be significantly different in the two languages, particularly in relation to manner-of-motion. On the other hand, it is shown that the same four-part semantic template (with sections Lexicosyntactic Frame, Prototypical Scenario, Manner, and Potential Outcome) applies in both languages. We consider the implications for systematic contrastive semantics and for lexical typology.
contrastive semantics; conceptual semantics; lexical polysemy; manner; verbs of motion; semantic template; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
(2016) Ethnopsychology and personhood
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Two levels of verbal communication, universal and culture-specific. In Andrea Rocci, & Louis de Saussure (Eds.), Verbal communication (pp. 447-482). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110255478-024
Abstract:
Models of the human person embedded in everyday language differ a great deal across languages, cultures and epochs, and often lead us to the heart of the shared cultural values of the speech communities where they are found. Even within European languages, there is considerable diversity. Remarkably, though, all human cultures appear to agree that human beings have a body, which is visible, and ‘something else’, which is not. Models of the human person differ with respect to the construal of that ‘something else’. For speakers of modern English, it is usually interpreted as the ‘mind’; and in the era of global English, the model of a human being as composed of a body and a mind is often taken for granted by Anglophone humanities and social sciences (and even by cognitive and evolutionary science).
Yet the ‘mind’ is a conceptual artefact of modern English – an ethno-construct no more grounded in reality than the French esprit, the Danish sind, the Russian душа duša, the Latin anima, or the Yolngu birrimbirr. The reification of the English ‘mind’ and its elevation to the status of a ‘scientific’ prism through which all other languages, cultures, indigenous psychologies, and even stages in the evolution of primates can be legitimately interpreted is a striking illustration of the blind spot in contemporary social science that results from the ‘invisibility’ of English as a more and more globalized way of speaking and thinking.
This paper demonstrates that the meanings hidden in such language-specific cultural constructs can be revealed and compared, in a precise and illuminating way, through the use of NSM. It also shows how the understanding of such culturally central concepts can lead to better communication across languages and cultures.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) French – Terms of address
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Making sense of terms of address in European languages through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Intercultural Pragmatics, 13(4), 499-527. DOI 10.1515/ip-2016-0022
Building on the author’s earlier work on address practices and focusing on the French words monsieur and madame, this paper seeks to
demonstrate that generic titles used daily across Europe have relatively stable meanings, different in different languages, and that their semantic analysis can provide keys to the speakers’ cultural assumptions and attitudes. But to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills. The NSM approach, with its stock of primes and molecules and its mini-grammar for combining these into explications and cultural scripts, provides both the necessary tools and the necessary techniques. The unique feature of the NSM approach to both semantics and pragmatics is the reliance on a set of simple, cross-translatable words and phrases, in terms of which interactional meanings and norms can be articulated, compared, and explained to linguistic and cultural outsiders. Using this approach, this paper assigns intuitive, intelligible and cross-translatable meanings to several key terms of address in French and English, and it shows how these meanings can account for many aspects of these terms’ use. The paper offers a framework for studying the use of terms of address in Europe and elsewhere and has implications for language teaching, cross-cultural communication and education.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) German, Polish – Terms of address: HERR vs. PAN
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Terms of address as keys to culture and society: German Herr vs. Polish Pan. Acta Philologica [Uniwersytet Warszawski], 49, 29-44.
This article takes up a theme addressed many years ago by Andrzej Bogusławski: a semantic and cultural comparison of the Polish and German terms of address Pan and Herr. Focussing on these two words, the paper seeks to demonstrate that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions and attitudes and provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and social world. At the same time, the paper argues that to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills; and it tries to show that the NSM approach to semantics and pragmatics can help us develop such skills. The explications posited here possess, it is argued, predictive and explanatory power that is beyond the reach of traditional analyses operating with technical labels such as “formal”, ”polite”, “respectful”, “egalitarian” and so on. The paper has implications for language teaching and cross-cultural communication and education in Europe and beyond.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) NSM primes (possession)
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). ‘It’s mine!’ Re-thinking the conceptual semantics of “possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93-104. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.002
This study has two main parts. It begins with a conceptual and semantic analysis in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of what linguists term “true possession” or “ownership”. The requirements of the NSM framework force the analysis to be conducted using very simple expressions that are available not only in English, but (ideally) in all languages. The main proposal is that true possession is anchored in a semantic prime with an egocentric perspective that occurs in a predicative construction, i.e. (IS) MINE. It is argued that expressions like This is mine are semantically irreducible and (very likely) universally expressible across the diversity of the world’s languages.
In the second part of the study, three semantically and grammatically complex “possession verbs” are examined: steal, give, and own. Intricate (but coherent) explications for the English versions of these words are proposed, using (IS) MINE and a range of other semantic components. Though no claim is made that all languages possess precisely these meanings, this study hopes to help pave the way for a lexical semantic typology of “ownership-related” concepts in the languages of the world.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2016) Semantic molecules – Kinship
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Back to ‘mother’ and ‘father’: Overcoming the eurocentrism of kinship studies through eight lexical universals. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 408-429. DOI: 10.1086/687360
This paper addresses one of the most controversial issues in cultural anthropology: the conceptual foundations of kinship and the apparent inevitability of ethnocentrism in kinship studies. The field of kinship studies has been in turmoil over the past few decades, repeatedly pronounced dead and then again rising from the ashes and being declared central to human affairs. As this paper argues, the conceptual confusion surrounding kinship is to a large extent due to the lack of a clear and rigorous methodology for discovering how speakers of the world’s different languages actually navigate their kinship systems.
Building on the author’s earlier work on kinship but taking the analysis much further, this paper seeks to demonstrate that such a methodology can be found in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (developed by the author and colleagues), which relies on 65 universal semantic primes and on a small number of universal “semantic molecules” including ‘mother’ and ‘father’. The paper offers a new model for the interpretation of kinship terminologies and opens new perspectives for the investigation of kinship systems across languages and cultures.
Comments by a number of scholars, including Felix Ameka, follow the paper.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2017) Ethical speech
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). Trzy zasady etyki słowa [Three principles of ethical speech]. In Jerzy Bartmiński, Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, Marta Nowosad-Bakalarczyk, & Jadwiga Puzynina (Eds.), Etyka słowa: Wybór opracowań. Vol. 1 (pp. 67-76). Lublin: UMCS.
Written in Polish.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2017) Italian, French, German – Address pronouns
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). Terms of address in European languages: A study in cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics. In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone, & Istvan Kecskes (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use (pp. 209-238). Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_12
One of the deepest differences between English-based human interaction and the interaction based on the languages of continental Europe has to do with terms of address. For speakers of languages like French, Italian, or German it goes without saying that “polite” words such as vous, Lei and Sie are indispensable in daily exchanges with others. What do these words actually mean? To what extent do their meanings differ from one European language to another? Why can some of these terms, for example, vous, be applied to God (or to one’s spouse), whereas others, for example, Sie, cannot?
There has been an upsurge of interest in both nominal and pronominal terms of address in recent years, but most publications in this area focus on frequencies, forms, functions, and sociolinguistic variation, with virtually no mention of meaning. To uncover the secrets hidden in the meanings of such essential tools of daily communication and to bring to light their cultural significance, we need an appropriate methodology. As I hope to show in the present paper, NSM semantics provides the necessary tools and techniques.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2017) Kinship
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). The meaning of kinship terms: A developmental and cross-linguistic perspective. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 19-62). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0002
This chapter seeks to portray the meanings of some basic kin terms in English and some other European languages in a new way, holding on to two principles: that all the meanings one posits have to be open to intuitive verification by ordinary native speakers, and that the meanings posited for individual kin words should add up to a coherent overall picture. To achieve this, the chapter aims at an account that could make sense in a developmental as well as cross-linguistic perspective: there must be some imaginable developmental progression from the meanings of children’s kin words such as mummy and daddy to the meanings of kin terms hypothesized as operating in adult speech. The chapter shows that semantic components phrased in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) allow us to reconstruct such a progression in a way that is both rigorous and testable and that makes sense to ordinary speakers, including language learners.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2017) What Christians believe [BOOK]
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). W co wierzą chrześcijanie? Opowieść o Bogu i o ludziac [What Christians believe: The story of God and people]. Kraków: Znak.
Abstract:
What do Christians believe?
Does anyone who thinks of themselves as Christian know what they actually believe? – asks the author provocatively, and in an innovative way she presents the reader the most important truths of faith, as transmitted by the Holy Scriptures and the Apostolic writings.
Anna Wierzbicka’s book is a tale of Christian faith based on the results of extensive research on the languages of the world. In the forty chapters of The story of God and people, the author retells and re-thinks the basics of Christian faith using so-called minimal language, that is, using words and sentences understandable to everyone, having equivalents in all languages of the world. The book is a semantic and theological experiment, and at the same time, it is an experiment in cross-cultural communication: Minimal Polish and Minimal English match, word for word and phrase by phrase.
Preceded by an extensive introduction, The story of God and people does not use traditional religious or scientific language, and allows both Christians and non-Christians to look at faith in a fresh way.
More information:
Written in Polish. A more recent publication building on this one is:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2019). What Christians believe: The story of God and people in minimal English. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2018) English – ‘Entitlement’
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). A ‘sense of entitlement’ encoded in English grammar. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 133-143. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.133. PDF (open access)
This study claims that in English there is a grammatical construction, or even a family of constructions, that expresses the notion of a ‘sense of entitlement’. In sentences like Can I have my apple and cheese, please?, this notion is expressed with the pronoun my. To describe the meaning of this construction in a way that would be understandable not only to speakers of English but also to those whose languages do not contain a word for ‘entitlement’, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is used.
The ‘sense of entitlement’ is expressed when everyday rituals are violated, which disturbs the speaker, e.g. Would you leave me finish my breakfast?. The assumption here is that everyone has the right and wants to perform these regular, ritualistic activities. The range of potential obstacles has not been established at this stage of research but can be captured in the formula “I cannot do now what I always do at this time; this is bad; everybody can know this”.
The meaning of a ‘sense of entitlement’ is connected with such words and expressions as have the right to, be entitled to, personal space, privacy, violate/disturb/interfere, which express some of the major assumptions and concerns of contemporary Anglo-culture. Especially interesting is the connection between the ‘sense of entitlement’ and justice because both are grounded in the existence of voluntarily obeyed principles. It appears that English grammar contains an implicit understanding that everybody has the right to their personal routine that involves having breakfast (my breakfast) or dinner (my dinner) in a particular way, or e.g. reading (my newspaper). It is bad when the routine is disturbed by others.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2018) English – Understandings of the universe
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). Talking about the universe in Minimal English: Teaching science through words that children can understand. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 169-200). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_8
Science education faces many challenges, not least that of rendering the key propositions into language that children can readily understand. This chapter applies Minimal English to a canonical science education narrative about changing scientific and pre-scientific understandings of the universe. It attempts to capture the key beliefs and mindsets associated with the views of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Galileo, with a look ahead to the possibilities of further advances in scientific thinking about the cosmos.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2018) English, Warlpiri – Colours and vision
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). How much longer can the Berlin and Kay paradigm dominate visual semantics? English, Russian and Warlpiri seen ‘from the native’s point of view’. In Diana Young (Ed.), Rematerializing colour: From concept to substance (pp. 67-90). Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing.
Abstract:
How does the outsider linguist find out if speakers of another language have colour terms? Using the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri as a starting point, the author argues that interpretation of the patterns of names produced in response to stimuli (such as Munsell colour chips) is difficult, and one has to take care not to assign English terms to those patterns. That is, in trying to interpret what a word means, we cannot assume that kardirri means ‘white’, because speakers produced this word when looking at chips with colours that English speakers might call ‘white’. The focus here is on determining the senses (intensions) of words – that is, on finding language-specific categories. The Warlpiri lack a word approximating the English word ‘colour’. It is claimed that, if speakers do not have a word for a category such as colour, it is hard to say that in their minds they see the world in terms of a cognitive category ‘colour’ (which is not to deny that they have colour vision).
Examination of dictionary entries in the Warlpiri-English Dictionary establishes the importance of the properties ‘visual conspicuousness’ (the startling pink prunus trees), ‘things shining somewhere’ (sunlight gleaming on the white cockatoos), ‘visual contrasts within an object’ (the dappled pink and green of the japonica hedge), and creating colour reference by comparison with things in the world around (kunjuru ‘smoke’, kunjuru-kunjuru ‘like smoke’, a term conventionally applied to smoke-coloured things). However, even though the Dictionary is a good starting-place for raising such hypotheses, it cannot help us test them, since it is a collection of all words, with little comment on whether they are used frequently or not, and since the words come from several dialects.
The author argues against using the word ‘colour’ in the English definitions and translations in the dictionary, because this creates or reinforces a belief that the Warlpiri have a linguistic category of ‘colour’.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2018) Ethics – A global charter
Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). Charter of global ethic in Minimal English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 113-141). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_6
Abstract:
Taking UNESCO’s Earth charter as its point of departure, this chapter argues that the globalizing world needs a global ethics. At the same time, the chapter builds on the Declaration toward a global ethic (1993) endorsed by the Parliament of the World’s Religions (and inspired by the Dalai Lama) whose Principle 6 reads: “This must be a Declaration translatable into other languages”. A charter of 24 ethical norms phrased in Minimal English is proposed as a platform for a global discourse on ethics.
More information:
Revised translation of a Polish original published in 2015 and again in 2017 as:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). Karta etyki globalnej w słowach uniwersalnych [A charter of global ethics in universal words]. Teksty Drugie, 2015(4), 257-279.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). Karta etyki globalnej w słowach uniwersalnych [A charter of global ethics in universal words]. In Jerzy Bartmiński, Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, Marta Nowosad-Bakalarczyk, & Jadwiga Puzynina (Eds.), Etyka słowa: Wybór opracowań. Vol. 1 (pp. 523-538). Lublin: UMCS.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2018) Minimal English
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to Global English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5-27). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_2
The concept of Minimal English was first proposed by Anna Wierzbicka in 2014 as a radically reduced ‘mini English’ that can provide a common auxiliary interlanguage for speakers of different languages, and as a global means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas. This idea is taken up by Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka in this chapter. Aside from arguing for the benefits of using cross-translatable words, they stress that Minimal English is intended not to replace or supplant ordinary English, but to add to its effectiveness as a global tool for communication and discourse. The chapter outlines the origins, purpose and composition of Minimal English and explains its value as a supplement to English in its role as a global lingua franca. It argues for the great importance of cross-translatability in many contexts and shows with examples that many taken-for-granted words and concepts of Anglo English are heavily culture-laden and hence untranslatable. The chapter also clarifies how Minimal English is different from Ogden’s ‘Basic English’ and from Plain English.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
