A resource base of publications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. 1,100+ detailed notices, and counting!
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Metaphors linguists live by: Lakoff & Johnson contra Aristotle. Papers in Linguistics, 19(2), 287-313. DOI: 10.1080/08351818609389260
Review article of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). *The semantics of ‘internal dative’ in English. Quaderni di Semantica, 7(1), 121-135.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). *The semantics of the internal dative – A rejoinder. Quaderni di Semantica, 7(1), 155-165.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Does language reflect culture? Evidence from Australian English. Language in Society, 15, 349-374.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500011805
Abstract:
This paper attempts to demonstrate direct links between Australian language and other aspects of Australian culture. The existence of such links – intuitively obvious and yet notoriously hard to prove – is often rejected in the name of scientific rigour. Nonetheless, the problem continues to exercise fascination over scholars, as it does over the general public. The author proposes ways in which the linguist’s methodological tools can be sharpened so that the apparently untractable and yet fundamental issues of language as a ‘guide to social reality’ can be studied in ways that are both linguistically precise and culturally revealing. Linguistic phenomena such as expressive derivation, illocutionary devices and speech act verbs are related to the literature on the Australian society, national character, history and culture.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 11 (pp. 373-394) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Italian reduplication: Cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary semantics. Linguistics, 24(2), 287-315.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1986.24.2.287
Abstract:
This article (a study in ethnopragmatics avant la lettre) examines the use and function of syntactic reduplication in Italian. Syntactic reduplication belongs to a system of illocutionary devices that, jointly, reflect some characteristic features of the Italian style of social interaction. Subtle pragmatic meanings such as those conveyed in Italian reduplication can be identified and distinguished from other, related meanings if ad hoc impressionistic comments are replaced with rigorous semantic representations relying on a semantic metalanguage derived from natural language. Comparisons are made with some other intensification devices in Italian and in English, such as the absolute superlative.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 8 (pp. 270-299) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Into Russian:
Chapter 6 (pp. 224-259) of Вежбицкая, Анна (1999), Семантические универсалии и описание языков [Semantic universals and the description of languages]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 255-284) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). *The semantics of quantitative particles in Polish and in English. In Andrzej Bogusławski, & Božena Bojar (Eds.), Od kodu do kodu (pp. 175-189). Warsaw: PanÚstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 9 (pp. 341-389) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). A semantic metalanguage for the description and comparison of illocutionary meanings. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(1), 67-107. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(86)90100-1
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 197-254) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
In this paper, the author argues that the illocutionary force of an utterance constitutes an integral part of its meaning. She proposes a unified descriptive framework which makes it possible to integrate illocutionary analysis with the syntax and semantics in the narrower sense of these terms. A wide range of constructions are examined and their illocutionary force is fully spelled out. The analysis takes the form of decomposition of illocutionary forces into their components, which are formulated in a kind of simplified natural language based on a postulated system of universal semantic primitives. It is argued that decomposition of illocutionary forces offers a safe path between the Scylla of the orthodox performative hypothesis and the Charybdis of the ‘autonomous grammar’ approaches to speech acts which once again try to divorce the study of language structure from the study of language use.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?) Studies in Language, 10(2), 353-389.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.10.2.05wie
Abstract:
This discussion of the differences between adjectives and nouns lends further support to the new emphasis on the non-arbitrariness of grammar (including ‘surface grammar’), which is becoming one of the dominant features of linguistics at the beginning of the last quarter of the twentieth century. It is becoming increasingly clear that differences and similarities in grammatical behaviour provide remarkably reliable clues to differences and similarities in meaning. In particular, the subdivision of lexical items into nouns, verbs and adjectives is not a result of meaningless transformational developments. Rather, it is a reflection of, and a guide to, subtle aspects of meaning.
Translations:
Into Russian:
Chapter 3 (pp. 91-133) of Вежбицкая, Анна (1999), Семантические универсалии и описание языков [Semantic universals and the description of languages]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].
Chapter 6 (pp. 171-215) of Вежбицкая, Анна Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 9 (pp. 463-497) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (Ed.) (1986). Particles. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5) (Special issue).
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). The meaning of a case: A study of the Polish dative. In Richard D. Brecht, & James S. Levine (Eds.), Case in Slavic (pp. 386-426). Columbus: Slavica.
Abstract:
The basic assumption of this study is that cases have meaning and that this meaning can be stated in a precise and illuminating way. This is of course also the position advocated and brilliantly implemented by Roman Jakobson. Further assumptions are: (1) that a case has one core meaning, on the basis of which it can be identified cross-linguistically (as, say, ‘dative’ or ‘instrumental’), and a language-specific set of other, related meanings, which have to be specified in the grammatical description of a given language; and (2) that all the meanings of a case — like all other meanings — can be stated in intuitively understandable and intuitively verifiable paraphrases in a semantic metalanguage based on natural language.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 391-433) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). *Review of Igor Mel’čuk et al., Dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire du français contemporain; and Igor Mel’čuk and Aleksandr Zholkovskij, Tolkovo-kombinatornyj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazyka. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 6(1), 139-147.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). *Review of Igor Mel’čuk and Aleksandr Žolkovskij, Tolkovo-kombinatornyj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazyka. Language, 62(3), 684-687.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Two Russian speech act verbs: Lexicography as a key to conceptual and cultural analysis. Folia Slavica, 8(1), 134-159.
Abstract:
This article studies in some detail two characteristic Russian speech act verbs: donosit’ доносить and rugat’ ругать, comparing them with a number of related English verbs. The Russian verbs that were chosen are at once extremely interesting and extremely challenging, from a semantic as well as from a pragmatic point of view. The analysis reveals the precise semantic structure of both verbs and, at the same time, demonstrates the value of the semantic metalanguage on which it relies as a tool for a cross-cultural comparison of speech acts and speech genres.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). English speech act verbs: A semantic dictionary. Sydney: Academic Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). Predict, prophesy, forecast: Semantics and lexicography. In Roberto Crespo, Bill Dotson Smith, & Henk Schultink (Eds.), Aspects of language. Studies in honour of Mario Alinei: Vol. 2. Theoretical and applied semantics (pp. 509-523). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Abstract:
It is easy enough to say, as has become trendy in linguistics, that the concepts embodied in the three closely related verbs studied in this paper are linked by ‘family resemblance’, and that the boundaries between them are fuzzy. But where do we proceed from there? How do these words differ from one another? Dictionary users have the right to expect guidance and assistance. Their needs will not be met if a general slogan of ‘fuzziness of human concepts’ is all that the dictionaries of the future can add to the dictionaries of the past.
The present paper is predicated on different assumptions. It assumes that Plato’s golden dream of capturing the invariant, necessary and sufficient components of a given concept was realistic, not utopian. It offers a methodology with the help of which the dream can be fulfilled. That it really can be fulfilled is demonstrated not by abstract discussion but by actually doing what it has been alleged is impossible to do, i.e. by defining the three verbs in such a way that both the similarities and the differences between their meanings are explicitly shown. The tool required to carry out the task is a language-independent semantic metalanguage based on natural language; it makes rigorous comparison possible and at the same time ensures the elimination of the vicious circles that have plagued traditional dictionaries in general, and dictionaries of synonyms and related words in particular.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). Boys will be boys: ‘Radical semantics’ vs. ‘radical pragmatics’. Language, 63(1), 95-114.
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 10 (pp. 391-452) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Colloquial ‘tautologies’ such as War is war or A promise is a promise have often been adduced in support of a ‘Gricean’ account of language use. The present article shows, however, that ‘tautological constructions’ are partly conventional and language-specific, and that each such construction has a specific meaning which cannot be fully predicted in terms of any universal pragmatic maxims. It is argued that the attitudinal meanings conveyed by various tautological constructions and by similar linguistic devices should be stated in rigorous and yet self-explanatory semantic formulae. ‘Radical pragmatics’ is rejected as a blind alley, and an integrated approach to language structure and language use is proposed, based on a coherent semantic theory which is capable of representing ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects of meaning in a unified framework.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). Kinship semantics: Lexical universals as a key to psychological reality. Anthropological Linguistics, 29(2), 131-156.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/30027968
Abstract:
Is it possible to discover the psychologically real meaning of kinship terms? Some maintain that it is not, because of the non-uniqueness of possible semantic analyses. Others argue that any search for psychological reality is threatened by an almost unavoidable ethnocentrism, resulting from the use of ‘ethnographer’s English’, or any language other than that of the informants. The present paper argues that both these problems can be overcome if semantic analysis is carried out in terms of lexical universals.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 9 (pp. 329-354) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). The semantics of modality. Folia Linguistica, 21(1), 25-43. DOI: 10.1515/flin.1987.21.1.25
No abstract available.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). Emotions across culture: Similarities and differences. American Anthropologist, 90(4), 982-983. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1988.90.4.02a00260
A reply to Konstantin Kolenda’s rejoinder to the 1986 AA paper on human emotions (vol. 88, pp. 584-594). No abstract available.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). *Boys will be boys: A rejoinder to Bruce Fraser. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 221-224.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics and lexicography of ‘natural kinds’. In Karl Hyldgaard-Jensen, & Arne Zettersten (Eds.), Symposium on Lexicography III (pp. 155-182). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Abstract:
The views advanced in the present paper can be summarized as follows:
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 |