Tag: (E) surprise

(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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(1992) Various languages – Emotion concepts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16(4), 539-581. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1604_4

This article demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger or sadness – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as GOOD, BAD, DO, HAPPEN, KNOW, and WANT, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.

The definitions proposed here take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, wants, and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy”. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2015) English, Malay – Emotions

Goddard, Cliff (2015). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 291-313.

DOI: 10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god

Abstract:

This study has three main dimensions. It begins by turning the lens of NSM semantic analysis onto a set of words that are central to the “discourse of the unexpected” in English: surprised, amazed, astonished and shocked. By elucidating their precise meanings, we can gain an improved picture of the English folk model in this domain. A comparison with Malay (Bahasa Melayu) shows that the “surprise words” of English lack precise equivalents in other languages.

The second dimension involves grammatical semantics: it seeks to identify the semantic relationships between agnate word-sets such as: surprised, surprising, to surprise; amazed, amazing, to amaze.

The third dimension is a theoretical one and is concerned with the development of a typology of “surprise-like” concepts. It is argued that adopting English-­specific words, such as surprise or unexpected, as descriptive categories inevitably leads to conceptual Anglocentrism. The alternative, non-Anglocentric strategy relies on components phrased in terms of universal semantic primes, such as ‘something happened’ and ‘this someone didn’t know that it will happen’, and the like.

More information:

Reissued as:

Goddard, Cliff (2017). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In Agnès Celle, & Laure Lansari (Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27-49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.92.02god

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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