Tag: (E) head

(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.

 


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(2007) Semantic molecules

Goddard, Cliff (2007). Semantic molecules. In Ilana Mushin, & Mary Laughren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. PDF (open access)

This paper explains and explores the concept of semantic molecules in the NSM methodology of semantic analysis. A semantic molecule is a complex lexical meaning that functions as an intermediate unit in the structure of other, more complex concepts. The paper undertakes an overview of different kinds of semantic molecule, showing how they enter into more complex meanings and how they themselves can be explicated. It shows that four levels of “nesting” of molecules within molecules are attested, and it argues that while some molecules, such as ‘hands’ and ‘make’, may well be language-universal, many others are language-specific.


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(2008) English, Malay – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Goddard, Cliff (2008). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, & Susanne Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75-102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75

Abstract:

This is a contrastive NSM analysis of two ethnopsychological constructs (English heart, Malay hati). Rejecting the use of English-specific metaterminology, such as mind, cognition, affect, etc., as both ethnocentric and inaccurate, the study seeks to articulate the conceptual content of the words under investigation in terms of simple universal concepts such as FEEL, THINK, WANT, KNOW, PEOPLE, SOMEONE, PART, BODY, HAPPEN, GOOD and BAD.

For both words, the physical body-part meaning is first explicated, and then the ethnopsychological sense or senses (it is claimed that English heart has two distinct ethnopsychological senses). The chapter also reviews the phraseology associated with each word, and in the case of English heart, proposes explications for a number of prominent collocations: a broken heart, listening to your heart, losing heart and having your heart in it.

The concluding discussion makes some suggestions about experiential/semantic principles whereby body parts can come to be associated with cultural models of feeling, thinking, wanting and knowing. At a theoretical level, the study seeks to draw links between culturally informed cognitive semantics, on the one hand, and the field of cultural psychology, on the other.

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(2010) Environmental semantic molecules

Goddard, Cliff (2010). Semantic molecules and semantic complexity (with special reference to “environmental” molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 8(1), 123-155. DOI: 10.1075/ml.8.1.05god

In the NSM approach to semantic analysis, semantic molecules are a well-defined set of non-primitive lexical meanings in a given language that function as intermediate-level units in the structure of complex meanings in that language. After reviewing existing work on the molecules concept (including the notion of levels of nesting), the paper advances a provisional list of about 180 productive semantic molecules for English, suggesting that a small minority of these (about 25) may be universal. It then turns close attention to a set of potentially universal level-one molecules from the “environmental” domain (‘sky’, ‘ground’, ‘sun’, ‘day’, ‘night’ ‘water’ and ‘fire’), proposing a set of original semantic explications for them. Finally, the paper considers the theoretical implications of the molecule theory for our understanding of semantic complexity, cross-linguistic variation in the structure of the lexicon, and the translatability of semantic  explications.


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(2012) NSM primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates

Goddard, Cliff (2012). Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics, 50(3), 711-743.

DOI: 10.1515/ling-2012-0022

Abstract:

The NSM approach has a long track record in cross-linguistic lexical semantics. It is therefore not surprising that it has a clear theoretical position on key issues in lexical semantic typology and a well-developed set of analytical techniques.

From a theoretical point of view, the overriding issue concerns the tertium comparationis. What are the optimal concepts and categories to support the systematic investigation of lexicons and lexicological phenomena across the world’s languages? The NSM answer to this question is that the necessary concepts can – and must – be based on the shared lexical-conceptual core of all languages, which NSM researchers claim to have discovered over the course of a thirty-five year program of empirical cross-linguistic semantics. This shared lexical-conceptual core is the minilanguage of semantic primes and their associated grammar.

In addition, NSM researchers have developed certain original analytical constructs that promise to enhance the power and systematicity of the approach: in particular, the notions of semantic molecules and semantic templates. This paper sets out to explain and illustrate these notions, to report some key analytical findings (updated, in many cases, from previously published accounts), and to extrapolate their implications for the further development of lexical typology.

This paper contains detailed explications of the English verb drink and its closest Kalam counterpart ñb ‘eat/drink’, as well as of the English verb cut and its Japanese counterpart 切る kiru.

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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.


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