Tag: (E) bengkan

(2014) Various languages – Semantic fieldwork

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1), 80-126. DOI: 10.1075/sl.38.1.03god

The main goal of paper is to show how NSM findings about lexical universals (semantic primes) can be applied to semantic analysis in little-described languages. It is argued that using lexical universals as a vocabulary for semantic analysis allows one to formulate meaning descriptions that are rigorous, cognitively authentic, maximally translatable, and free from Anglocentrism.

A second goal is to shed light on methodological issues in semantic fieldwork by interrogating some controversial claims about the Dalabon and Pirahã languages. We argue that reductive paraphrase into lexical universals provides a practical procedure for arriving at coherent interpretations of unfamiliar lexical meanings. Other indigenous/endangered languages discussed include East Cree, Arrernte, Kayardild, Karuk, and Maori.

We urge field linguists to take the NSM metalanguage, based on lexical universals, into the field with them, both as an aid to lexicogrammatical documentation and analysis and as a way to improve semantic communication with consultants.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2007) Dalabon – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Evans, Nicholas (2007). Standing up your mind: Remembering in Dalabon. In Mengistu Amberber (Ed.), The language of memory in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 67-95). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.21.06eva

Abstract:

This paper explores the vocabulary of mental states, knowing, thinking and remembering in Dalabon, an Australian Aboriginal language. Though Dalabon has a rich vocabulary for the overall semantic domain of attention, thought, memory and forgetting, there are no expressions specifically dedicated to remembering. Rather, the ontology of cognitive states and processes is categorized into short-term versus long-term mental states and events. Aspectual choices are used to express transitions into mental states and events (‘remembering’ is ‘coming to have in mind’, and ‘forgetting’ is ‘coming to not have in mind’), without the entailments found in English, which distinguishes previously experienced mental states (remember, remind) or mental states experienced for the first time (get the idea that, realize).

The only section of the paper to include NSM-inspired explications is the appendix. One of the explications relates to two bound morphemes of Dalabon that refer to something akin to the English ‘mind’, viz. beng and kanûm. The latter also denotes the ear. Other NSM-inspired explications relate to the verbs bengdi ‘have in mind’ and bengkan ‘keep in mind’.

Rating:


Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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