Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). Semantic primitives: A rejoinder to Murray and Button. American Anthropologist, 90, 686-689. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1988.90.3.02a00140
No abstract available.
(1988) Review (Jef Verschueren, What people say they do with words)
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). Review of Jef Verschueren, What people say they do with words. Language in Society, 17, 108-113. DOI: 10.1017/s004740450001263x
Includes some self-criticism of explications proposed in the earlier days (e.g. Semantic primitives, 1972).
(1988) Review (Nessa Wolfson, Joan Manes (Eds.), Language of inequality)
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). Review of Nessa Wolfson and Joan Manes (Eds.), Language of inequality. Language in Society, 17, 99-146.
(1988) The semantics of grammar [BOOK]
Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.18
Abstract:
This book presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology that makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither autonomous nor arbitrary, but that it follows from semantics. It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primes) and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language. She thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations.
Analysing data from a number of different languages, the author also explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She demonstrates that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.
Table of contents:
I. The semantics of syntax
1. The semantics of English complementation in a cross-linguistic perspective
2. Ethno-syntax and the philosophy of grammar
3. The semantics of causative constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective
4. The Japanese ‘adversative’ passive in a typological context (Are grammatical categories vague or multiply polysemous?)
5. Why can you have a drink when you can’t *have an eat?
6. The semantics of ‘internal dative’ in English
II. The semantics of morphology
7. The meaning of a case: a study of the Polish dative
8. The semantics of case marking
9. What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?)
10. Oats and wheat: mass nouns, iconicity, and human categorization
More information:
Chapter 2 builds on: Ethno-syntax and the philosophy of grammar (1979)
Chapter 4 builds on: Are grammatical categories vague or polysemous? The Japanese ‘adversative’ passive in a typological context (1979)
Chapter 5 builds on: Why can you have a drink when you can’t *have an eat? (1982)
Chapter 6 builds on: The semantics of ‘internal dative’ in English (1986)
Chapter 7 builds on: The meaning of a case: A study of the Polish dative (1986)
Chapter 8 builds on: The semantics of case marking (1983)
Chapter 9 builds on: What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?) (1986)
Chapter 10 builds on: Oats and wheat: The fallacy of arbitrariness (1985)
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.
(1989) Address forms and social cognition
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Prototypes in semantics and pragmatics: Explicating attitudinal meanings in terms of prototypes. Linguistics, 27(4), 731-769.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1989.27.4.731
Abstract:
This paper shows how pragmatic meanings encoded in different forms of address (such as titles, ‘polite’ pronouns, and personal names, including their expressive derivates) can be portrayed in a rigorous and illuminating way in NSM, and that such explications allow us to make the similarities and the differences between different pragmatic categories clear and explicit – both within a language and across language and culture boundaries.
It is argued that abstract features such as ‘solidarity’, ‘familiarity’, ‘(in)formality’, ‘distance’, ‘intimacy’, and so on do not provide adequate tools for the description and comparison of pragmatic meanings, because they are not self-explanatory and because they do not have any constant, language-independent value. (For example, the ‘distance’ implied by the English title Mr. is different from that implied by the French title Monsieur; and the ‘familiarity’ implied by Russian forms such as Misa or Vanja is quite different from that implied by English forms such as Mike or John.)
It is shown that many pragmatic meanings have a prototypical semantic structure: they present emotions and attitudes in terms of certain prototypical human relationships, rather than in terms of fully specified mental states and social relations. In particular, social and existential categories, such as children, women, and men, or people one knows well and people one does not know, provide important signposts in the universe of human relations encoded in language. The exact role such prototypes play in different pragmatic categories can be shown in a precise and illuminating way in verbal explications constructed in the proposed metalanguage.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 2 (pp. 49-81) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
More information:
More recent publications building on this one are:
Chapters 7 and 8 (pp. 225-307, 309-325) 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
(1989) Baudouin de Courtenay and linguistic relativity
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). *Baudouin de Courtenay and the theory of linguistic relativity. In Janusz Rieger, Mieczysław Szymczak, & Stanisław Urbańczyk (Eds.), Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay a lingwistyka światowa. Wroclaw: Ossolineum. 51-57.
(1989) English, Russian – ‘Soul’, ‘mind’
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Soul and mind: Linguistic evidence for ethnopsychology and cultural history. American Anthropologist, 91(1), 41-58.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1989.91.1.02a00030
Abstract:
The Russian word duša ‘soul’ has a much wider scope of use than the English word soul and embodies a different folk psychology (fully congruent with what has been described as the Russian “national character”). The English word mind stands for an Anglo-Saxon folk category that has been reified as an objective category of thought. The decline and fall of the concept soul and the ascendancy of mind in English are linked with changes in the cultural history and in the prevailing Western ethnophilosophy.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 14 (pp. 522-544) 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 1 (pp. 31-63) 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
(1989) NSM primes
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Semantic primitives and lexical universals. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1), 103-121.
Abstract:
Language is a tool for expressing meanings. The meanings we express constitute complex and culture-specific configurations of a restricted number of elementary concepts – conceptual building blocks. To be able to decode meanings with precision, to state them, to compare them across language boundaries, to study their growing complexity in child language, and so on, we must know what these elementary units are. To discover them, we must proceed by trial and error. A revealing semantic description is impossible without a well justified set of semantic prim(itiv)es. But a set of well justified prim(itiv)es cannot be found by mere theorizing. It can only be found on the basis of large scale lexicographic research.
More information:
This paper is best read in conjunction with the companion paper published by the same author in the same journal (Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Semantic primitives – The expanding set. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2), 309-332).
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1989) NSM primes
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Semantic primitives – The expanding set. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2), 309-332.
Abstract:
The set of hypothetical semantic prim(itiv)es proposed in earlier works is shown to be in need of considerable expansion. This outcome is due primarily to the work of Cliff Goddard. The present paper surveys a set of 28 elements, including – in addition to survivals from earlier sets – several elements proposed by Goddard, and some by Andrzej Bogusławski.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1989) Russian – Personal names
Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Russian personal names: The semantics of expressive derivation. Folia Slavica, 9, 314-354.
(1990) Colours and vision
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
(1990) Cultural values
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). *Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 13(1), 43-76.
(1990) Emotions [SPECIAL ISSUE]
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
(1990) Emotivity in language structure
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.
(1990) English – ‘Fear’
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.
(1990) English – Prototypes
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.
(1990) Polish – Antitotalitarian language
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.
(1990) Russian – Cultural key words
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
(1991) Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction [BOOK]
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.
(1991) Definitions
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.
