Tag: (T) Chinese

(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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(2017) Cultural scripts, abstract concepts

Lantin, Robert G. (2017). Introducing prime reduction as a method for writing cultural scripts and defining abstract concepts. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 4(1), 9-15.

Abstract:

This article proposes a method for writing cultural scripts and defining abstract concepts called ‘prime reduction’. NSM theory is used as a starting point. The theory is sketched out, along with the key notions of ‘semantic primes’ and ‘cultural scripts’. Several examples are then provided to illustrate NSM. With the examples in place, the method of ‘prime reduction’ is introduced and applied to several abstract concepts and cultural values, with particular reference to Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and American English. The claim is that prime reduction helps not only with the task of writing cultural scripts, but can also be used to define abstract concepts in the broader context of EFL learning.

Rating:


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

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(2010) Cultural scripts, language teaching and intercultural communication

Goddard, Cliff (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association) 3, 105-119.

Cultural scripts provide a powerful new technique for articulating cultural norms, values and practices using simple, cross-translatable phrasing. The technique is based on many decades of research into cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. This paper illustrates the cultural scripts approach with three examples of pragmatics of Anglo English: request strategies, personal remarks, and phatic complimenting in American English. It argues that the cultural scripts approach can be readily adapted for use in teaching intercultural pragmatics and intercultural communication, and shows with concrete examples (so-called pedagogical scripts) how this can be done.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2001) Chinese – Emotions

Ye, Zhengdao (2001). An inquiry into “sadness” in Chinese. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 359-404). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110880168.359

This paper attempts to overcome the methodological problems that plague emotion studies by relying on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Through the explication of three so-called “sadness-like” Chinese emotion terms (悲 bēi, 哀 ai, and 愁 chóu), this paper will show how the NSM approach can provide a neutral comparative grid for further inquiries into the meaning of emotion concepts across languages and cultures.

The paper first provides a very general discussion of the Chinese emotion lexicon from a morphological point of view, followed by an in-depth semantic analysis of 悲 bēi, 哀 ai, and 愁 chóu in NSM. The discussion draws on linguistic evidence, including well-known textual examples, lexicalized items and conventionalized phrases and idioms that are familiar to the Chinese ear.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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