Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). The meaning of kinship terms: A developmental and cross-linguistic perspective. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 19-62). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0002
This chapter seeks to portray the meanings of some basic kin terms in English and some other European languages in a new way, holding on to two principles: that all the meanings one posits have to be open to intuitive verification by ordinary native speakers, and that the meanings posited for individual kin words should add up to a coherent overall picture. To achieve this, the chapter aims at an account that could make sense in a developmental as well as cross-linguistic perspective: there must be some imaginable developmental progression from the meanings of children’s kin words such as mummy and daddy to the meanings of kin terms hypothesized as operating in adult speech. The chapter shows that semantic components phrased in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) allow us to reconstruct such a progression in a way that is both rigorous and testable and that makes sense to ordinary speakers, including language learners.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
