Tag: (E) mad

(1976) English

Wierzbicka, Anna (1976). Mind and body. In James McCawley (Ed.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 7. Notes from the linguistic underground (pp. 129-157). New York: Academic Press.

Abstract:

The underlying idea of this paper, the first draft of which was written five years before the publication of the author’s Semantic primitives, is that every natural language contains a subdomain that can be used as the language of semantic representation for the natural language in question. This subdomain reflects in an isomorphic way the universal and non-arbitrary lingua mentalis – the language of human thought. Sets of indefinable expressions, found in every natural language, correspond to universal ‘semantic primitives’ (1970s terminology for what is now known as semantic primes) that can be thought of as lexical items of the mental language, or ‘atoms of thought’. Proper semantic representation consists in paraphrase into these indefinable expressions drawn from natural language; no artificial symbols, features, markers, abstract elements, labels, or indices are acceptable.

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(1994) English – Emotions

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Cognitive domains and the structure of the lexicon: The case of emotions. In Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, & Susan A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 431-452). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In trying to discover how knowledge (or at least basic, “foundational” knowledge) is stored and organized in the human mind we can rely, in a considerable measure, on language. There may be concepts that are not lexicalized in natural language, but these are probably less common, less basic, and less salient in a given speech community than those that have achieved lexicalization; they are also less accessible to study. Words provide evidence for the existence of concepts. Lexical sets, sharing a similar semantic structure, provide evidence for the existence of cohesive conceptual wholes (or fields). If it is hypothesized that knowledge is organized in the mind in the form of “cognitive domains,” then conceptual fields detectable through semantic analysis of the lexicon can be regarded as a guide to those domains. These general assumptions are illustrated in this paper by reference to a specific semantic domain: that of emotion terms. For reasons of space, the discussion must remain brief, sketchy, and selective.

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(1999) English, Greek – ‘Anger’

Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (1999). The language of anger. MA thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

This dissertation offers an analysis of the hotly debated emotion concept of ‘anger’. For the purpose of this analysis, two influential models are put forward: the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (or NSM) as well as the cognitive processes of metaphor and metonymy introduced by Lakoff and Johnson. The results of the research are far from trivial. In terms of emotion analysis, the two models provide insight into the conceptualization of ‘anger’ and, specifically, comparative insight into the English concept of ‘anger’ and the Greek conceptual equivalent expressed in the word thymos. In terms of model evaluation, the two types of analysis yield results that can be readily contrasted and assessed on the basis of the kinds of insight they offer.

A revised version of Chapter 2 of this thesis – the one that specifically engages with the NSM model – has been published as:

Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (2004). Contrastive semantics of English “anger” and Modern Greek “θymos”. LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 582.


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

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(2004) English, Greek – ‘Anger’

Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (2004). Contrastive semantics of English “anger” and Modern Greek “θymos”. LAUD Working Papers, Series A, General and Theoretical Papers, 582. PDF (open access)

The emotion concept of ‘anger’ appears to acquire such enormous proportions in human emotionality that it has sparked off heated debate in relation to its purported universality or its language- and culture-specificity. To portray possible differences between anger-related concepts across languages and cultures, a nuanced and illuminating method of contrasting concepts is needed. The use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth NSM) is proposed to this end. The research also carries out the laborious task of testing the applicability of the NSM framework in the investigation of the language of emotions generally. Similar tests involving other emotions have already been conducted by several other scholars; for the purpose of this paper, the implementation of NSM will be attempted in the domain of anger in comparison and contrast to that of Modern Greek θυμός thymos. Both domains are conceptualized in terms of several emotion words. Explications are proposed for the predicative use of the English words angry, mad, furious, and irate, and for the Greek verbs θυμωνομαι thymonomai, νευριάζομαι nevriazomai, εκνευρίζομαι eknevrizomai, and οργιζομαι orgizomai.

This paper builds on Chapter 2 of the author’s MA thesis:

Bardzokas, Chrisovalandis (1999). The language of anger. MA thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.


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

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