Tag: (E) face

(2021) Molecules — Body parts

Goddard, Cliff, and Wierzbicka, Anna. (2021). ‘HEAD’, ‘EYES’, ‘EARS’: Words and meanings as clues to common human thinking, « ‘TÊTE’, ‘YEUX’, ‘OREILLES’ : mots et sens comme indices de la pensée humaine commune », Cahiers de lexicologie, n° 119, 2021 – 2, Lexique et corps humain , p. 125-150

Written in English

Résumé

Y a-t-il une manière de penser le corps partagée par tous ? Nous proposons des explications sémantiques et conceptuelles basées sur la MSN pour trois mots de parties du corps qui pourraient être considérés comme universaux sémantiques en prenant en compte la polysémie et d’autres particularités. L’analyse montre que la compréhension conceptuelle du corps est plus riche qu’on ne le pense, impliquant des relations entre les parties, la position, la taille, les relations spatiales et la fonction

Abstract

Are there any ways of thinking about the body that are shared by people everywhere? We propose NSM semantic-conceptual explications for three body-part words and argue that they are plausible language universals, once polysemy and other complications are taken into account. The analysis shows that conceptual understanding of the body and its parts is much richer than often recognised, involving whole-part relations, position, size, spatial relationships, and functional affordances.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2016) Semantic molecules

Goddard, Cliff (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 13-34. DOI: 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is well known for its use of reductive paraphrase as a mode of lexical definition (conceptual analysis) and for its claim to have discovered an inventory of irreducible lexical meanings — semantic primes — that are apparently universal in the world’s languages. It is less well known that many NSM definitions rely crucially on semantic molecules, i.e. certain non-primitive meanings that function alongside semantic primes as building blocks in the composition of yet more complex lexical meanings.

This paper considers aspects of the NSM theory of semantic molecules, including: first, the notion of molecules within molecules (e.g. ‘mouth → ‘water’ → ‘drink’); second, the distribution of semantic molecules in the world’s languages: some are universal or near-universal, e.g. ‘hands,’ ‘children,’ ‘water’, others are widespread but not universal, e.g. ‘money’, and still others are specific to particular languages or linguistic/cultural areas; third, the emerging notions of “small molecules” and lexicosyntactic molecules. The paper includes explications for about twenty-five semantic molecules that are posited to be universal or near-universal.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1995) Chinese (Mandarin) – Emotions / Ethnopsychology and personhood

Kornacki, Paweł (1995). Heart & face: Semantics of Chinese emotion concepts. PhD thesis, Australian National University.

Open access

Abstract:

This thesis uses NSM to explore the conceptual organization of a subset of the emotion vocabulary of Modern Standard Chinese. Chapter One (Introduction) provides background information on the analytic perspective adopted in the thesis, the sources of data, and a preliminary discussion of some of the issues in the early Chinese ethnotheory of “emotion”. Chapter Two explicates the key concept of 心 xin ‘heart/mind’, which is the cognitive, moral, and emotional ‘centre’ of a person. Chapter Three discusses two related notions, 面子 miànzi and 脸 liăn, usually glossed in English by means of the word face; both notions speak to the culturally perceived relevance to the self of other people’s judgements. Chapter Four develops this theme further, dealing with the ‘social feelings’ of Chinese, i.e. reactions to the things people say and think about us. Chapter Five focuses on the semantic field of Chinese ‘anger’-like expressions. Chapter Six analyses the lexical data pertinent to the conceptualization of different kinds of subjectively ‘bad’ feelings, whereas Chapter Seven discusses the emotional reactions to various types of good situations and events.

Wherever possible, the thesis seeks to probe into the culturally based aspects of the conceptual structure of emotion words by drawing on a variety of anthropological, psychological and sociological studies of the Chinese society. On the methodological level, the thesis attempts to demonstrate that the bias inherent in conducting the cultural analysis with complex, language-specific notions (e.g., ‘anger’, ‘shame’, ‘happiness’) can be subverted through a recourse to universally shared simple meanings.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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