Tag: (E) tęsknić

(2018) Ten lectures on NSM

Goddard, Cliff (2018). Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004357723

These lively lectures introduce the theory, practice, and application of a versatile, rigorous, and non-Anglocentic approach to cross-linguistic semantics.

Table of contents:

  1. Preliminary material
  2. From Leibniz to Wierzbicka: The history and philosophy of NSM
  3. Semantic primes and their grammar
  4. Explicating emotion concepts across languages and cultures
  5. Wonderful, terrific, fabulous: English evaluational adjectives
  6. Semantic molecules and semantic complexity
  7. Words as carriers of cultural meaning
  8. English verb semantics: Verbs of doing and saying
  9. English verb alternations and constructions
  10. Applications of NSM: Minimal English, cultural scripts and language teaching
  11. Retrospect: NSM compared with other approaches to semantic analysis

Chapter 3 discusses selected exponents of primes in Farsi (Persian). Chapter 4 provides an explication of a North-Spanish homesickness word (morriña). Chapter 7 provides an explication of Chinese 孝 xiào ‘filial piety’.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1986) Emotions

Wierzbicka, Anna (1986). Human emotions: Universal or culture-specific? American Anthropologist, 88(3), 584-594.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1986.88.3.02a00030

Abstract:

The search for ‘fundamental human emotions’ has been seriously impeded by the absence of a culture-independent semantic metalanguage. The author proposes a metalanguage based on a postulated set of universal semantic primitives, and shows how language-specific meanings of emotion terms can be captured and how rigorous cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms can be achieved.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is:

Chapter 3 (pp. 119-134) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1992), Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2012) Translatability

Afrashi, Azita & Taheri Ardali, Mortaza (2012). A look at universal concepts and the possibility of translatability. Translation Studies Quarterly [http://journal.translationstudies.ir], 10(37), 73-85.

Abstract:

After introducing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, the authors investigate the use of this approach in translation theory, focusing on the possibility of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic translatability. They conclude that universal human concepts ensure translatability of our thoughts from one language into another since they constitute a basis for genuine human understanding.

More information:

Written in Persian.

This paper contains explications of the Persian words شرم sharm ‘shame’, قهر qahr ‘not on speaking terms’, and غیرت qeyrat ‘zeal in defense of honour‘. It also proposes a shorter explication of the Polish verb tęsknić ‘feel the pain of distance’ than the one in Goddard’s Semantic Analysis (2nd edition, 2011).

Rating:


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

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