Tag: (E) re

(1994) Evidentials

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantics and epistemology: The meaning of ‘evidentials’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. Language Sciences, 16(1), 81-137. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(94)90018-3

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 15 (pp. 427-458) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meaning is encoded not only in words but also in grammatical categories. The meanings encoded in grammar (just like those encoded in the lexicon) are language-specific. Attempts to identify the meanings encoded in different languages by means of arbitrarily invented labels only conceals and obfuscates the language-specific character of the categories they are attached to. To be able to compare grammatical categories across language boundaries, we need constant points of reference, which slippery labels with shifting meanings cannot possibly provide. Universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives) can provide such constant and language-independent points of reference. They offer a secure basis for a semantic typology of both lexicons and grammars. At the same time, they offer us convenient and reliable tools for investigating the universal and the language-specific aspects of human cognition and human conceptualization of the world.

In this paper, the author illustrates and documents these claims by analysing one area of grammar in a number of different languages of the world: the area that is usually associated with the term evidentiality. As the goal of the paper is theoretical, not empirical, the data are drawn exclusively from one source: a volume entitled Evidentiality, edited by Chafe and Nichols (1986). The author reexamines the data presented in this volume by experts on a number of languages, and tries to show how these data can be reanalysed in terms of universal semantic primitives, and how in this way they can be made both more verifiable (that is, predictive) and more comparable across language boundaries.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1990) Mangap-Mbula – Experiential constructions

Bugenhagen, Robert D. (1990). Experiential constructions in Mangap-Mbula. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 183-215. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599441

A variety of constructions used to express experiential notions in the Austronesian language Mangap-Mbula are examined and their meanings explicated. By an “experiential situation” is meant a situation in which something “happens” to an animate entity – someone or something who is able to know that something is happening. Furthermore, the animate entity does not affect or produce any other entity, including himself/herself. Experiential situations are encoded in Mangap-Mbula by six overall construction types:

  1. uninflected experiential verbs with coreferential Experiencer Subjects and Objects
    This subclass contains just five items, two of which are explicated: menmeen ‘happy (about)’ and kaipa ‘selfishly rejoice (over)’.
    Since there are only a few verbs in the language which encode experiential notions, a number of other constructions are employed as well. They include:
  2. inflected experiential verbs with experiencer subjects
    This subclass includes verbs of knowledge; verbs of perception, including –re ‘see, look’ and –leŋ ‘hear, listen’; verbs encoding semi-controllable physical states; the verb –mbot ‘stay, be at, be alive’; verbs encoding emotional responses, including –morsop ‘be startled’, –murur ‘be surprised’, and –twer ‘worried about, longing for’); verbs encoding uncontrolled physical states; the verb –moto ‘fear’; the verb –mbel ‘be in trouble’
  3. inflected experiential verbs with experiencer objects
  4. a construction involving the verb –kam, a polysemous form which can be variously glossed as ‘do, cause, receive, get’
  5. a construction in which the forms le– and ka– are added immediately following the verb
  6. body image expressions
    More important than all of the above, however, are body image constructions, in which a body part plus a verb function together as a kind of composite predicate.

The final section of the paper is a study of the different encodings of the notion of ‘fear’.

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