Tag: (T) Danish
Levisen, Carsten. (2021). The syntax of something: Evaluative affordances of noget in Danish construction grammar. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 44(1), 3-24.
DOI: 10.1017/S033258652000013X
Abstract
This paper explores ‘the evaluative noget construction’ in Danish. The construction consists of noget ‘something’ juxtaposed by a noun in an evaluative frame such as e.g. Det er noget pjat, ‘It’s nonsense’. With a starting point in cross-linguistic studies on SOMETHING, the paper moves on to explore core members of this evaluative class in Danish, providing a detailed semantic analysis of the construction’s core configurations. The affordance of noget ‘something’ to mean ‘something bad’ is a key to understanding the construction, and from this general premise the class of evaluatives take off in multiple negative direc- tions, providing a snapshot of the Danish linguaculture of evaluation. The paper argues for a Cultural Construction Grammar that can bring together the lexicogrammatical integrationism of construction grammar approaches with the linguacultural holism of the research in ethnosyntax. The goal is to provide high-definition analysis of complex, language-specific constructions in a simple, globally translatable metalanguage.
Tagged as: (E) noget bras, (E) noget juks, (E) noget lort, (E) noget pjat, (E) noget rod, (E) noget sjusk, (E) noget skidt, (E) noget svineri, (T) Danish, (T) English
Levisen, Carsten, Fernández, Susana S., and Hein, Jan (2022) Cognitive Cultural Semantics: A Nordic Guide to Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Scandinavian Studies in Language 13(1): 1–38. https://tidsskrift.dk/sss/article/view/135133.
No abstract available
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) sur, (E) vred, (S) against displays of negative feelings in public (Scandinavian), (S) the “kløpulver” prank in coastal Jutland, (T) Danish, (T) English, (T) Finnish, (T) Spanish, (T) Swedish
Levisen, Carsten. (2019). Laughter interjections: Contributions to a lexical anthropology of humour (with special reference to Danish). Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 110-130.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v10i1.114674
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it seeks to fill a gap in the literature on interjections by suggesting that ‘laughter interjections’ (words such English haha or hehe) make up an important type of interjections that has so far not been accounted for in cross-linguistic work on interjections. Secondly, it argues that laughter interjections are thick with cultural meaning, and that they can play an important role for an “emic turn” in humour studies. Third, it develops a case study on “Danish funniness” with a point of departure in the Danish paradigm of laughter interjections. The paper explores humourous discourse from the perspective of these culturally specific expressive words, and provides high definition analysis of two Danish laughter interjections tøhø and hæhæ, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage technique of explication. The general framework of the study is Lexical Anthropology, an approach to meaning analysis that combines insights from lexical semantics and linguistic anthropology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) hæhæ, (E) tøhø, (T) Danish, (T) English
Levisen, Carsten. (2019). The Cultural Semantics of Untranslatables: Linguistic Worldview and the Danish Language of Laughter. In A. Glaz (Ed.), Languages – Cultures – Worldviews: Focus on Translation (pp. 319-346). Palgrave Macmillan. Palgrave studies studies in translating and interpreting
Abstract
Through an in-depth case study of humour concepts in Danish, the chapter develops a cultural-semantic analysis of the untranslatables of laughter, and provides a new account of the worldview engendered by such words. The Danish language of laughter is particularly rich in synaesthetic humour metaphor; the chapter sets out to explicate key categories within this class: sort humor ‘black, murky humour,’ plat humor ‘flat, plain humour,’ fed humor ‘fat humour,’ and tør humor ‘dry humour.’ The analysis is undertaken within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of analysis and takes an explicitly translational approach to language, culture, and worldview. Providing a roadmap for how to navigate in the landscape of translatables and untranslables, the chapter contributes to both translational semantics and linguistic worldview studies.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) fed humor, (E) plat humor, (E) sort humor, (E) tør humor, (T) Danish, (T) English
Levisen, Carsten. (2021). Pæn, flot, dejlig, and lækker : A lexical anthropology of Danish folk aesthetics. International Journal of Language and Culture 8(1): 14–34
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00033.lev
Abstract:
This paper examines the Danish language of aesthetics from the perspective of four untranslatable adjectives: pæn, flot, dejlig, and lækker. These words are frequent and salient in everyday discourses, and as such they shed light on Danish “folk” conceptions. From the perspective of Lexical Anthropology and NSM Semantics, each of the words are explored and explicated in order to shed light on the ways in which Danish discourse organize positive aesthetic experiences. Sensitive to polysemy, and the variety of lexicogrammatical frames in which the words occur, the paper provides a high-resolution analyses of the “something ADJ frame” which enables discourses of design, food, and art. Based on lexical semantic evidence, the paper locates two themes in Danish discourse: “aesthetic normality” and “ordinary hedonism” which seem to act as cognitive axes around which discourses revolve. The paper argues that words hold the key to understanding the diversity of aesthetic cultures, and that untranslatables in particular, allow for a deep emic understanding of how local configurations of seeing, feeling, touching, and thinking are constituted.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) dejlig, (E) flot, (E) lækker, (E) pæn, (T) Danish, (T) English
Levisen, Carsten (2019). “Brightness” in color linguistics: New light from Danish visual semantics. In Ida Raffaelli, Daniela Katunar, & Barbara Kerovec (Eds.), Lexicalization patterns in color naming: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 83-108). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sfsl.78.05lev
Abstract:
This chapter scrutinizes the discourse of “brightness” in colour linguistics. Drawing on insights from visual semantics and linguistic anthropology, and challenging the universal applicability of “brightness”, the study provides new evidence from Danish. The chapter provides a new analysis of the lexicogrammar and linguaculture of lys ‘light, brightness’ in relation to color. The NSM approach is used to provide detailed semantic explications for three grammatical devices based on lys (lys, lys-, and lyse-), along with an analysis of three Danish lys + colour compounds lyserød ‘light red’, lysegrøn ‘light green’, and lyseblå ‘light blue’. Based on the evidence from Danish and other studies in visual semantics, the chapter calls for a renewed focus on the non-chromatic aspects of visual meanings, and for a metalinguistic reform in colour linguistics.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) blå, (E) bright, (E) grøn, (E) light, (E) lyseblå, (E) lysegrøn, (E) lyserød, (E) rød, (T) Danish
Levisen, Carsten (2018). The grammar of violence: Insights from Danish ethnosyntax and the Wierzbicka-Pinker debate. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 145-167. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.145. PDF (open access)
This paper explores the Danish key word vold ‘violence, abuse’ and scrutinizes its associated ethnosyntax, which is hidden in compound morphology. Focusing on the compounds hustruvold ‘wife vold’ and politivold ‘police vold’, it explores the conceptual syntax embedded in such coinages. Exploring more recent constructs, such as forældrevold ‘parent vold’, the author argues that Danish ethnosyntax embodies a view of the world in which traditional authority figures (men, police, parents) are coded as aggressors, whereas women, citizens and children are coded as victims.
In more general terms, the paper aims to open a new ethnolinguistic research agenda for the study of negative sociality constructs and the positive value system hidden in them. It does so by drawing attention to the differences and similarities of violence-related concepts in ethnolinguistic communities, and to the key role played by ethnosyntax in the elaboration of violence, vold, and similar concepts.
The paper also proposes an explication for the Bislama word faetem ‘punch, fight physically’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) faetem, (E) vold, (S) domestic violence against women, (S) police violence, (T) Danish
Levisen, Carsten (2018). Dark, but Danish: Ethnopragmatic perspectives on black humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 515-531. DOI: 10.1515/ip-2018-0018
This paper explores sort humor ‘black humour’, a key concept in Danish conversational humour. Sort forms part of a larger class of Danish
synesthetic humour metaphors that also includes other categories such as tør ‘dry’, syg ‘sick’, and fed ‘fat’. Taking an ethnopragmatic perspective on humour discourse, it is argued that such constructs function as a local catalogue for socially recognized laughing practices.
The aim of the paper is to provide a semantic explication for sort humor and explore the discursive practices associated with the concept. From a comparative perspective, it is demonstrated that the Danish conceptualization of ‘blackness’ differs from that of l’humour noir, a category of French surrealism, and English black humour with its off-limit topics such as death and handicap. In Danish discourse, sort humor has come to stand for a practice of collaborative jocular non-sense making. It is further argued that the main function of sort humor is to establish or enhance a feeling of ‘groupy togetherness’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) grine, (E) laugh, (E) sort humor, (E) tale sort, (T) Danish
Levisen, Carsten (2012). Cultural semantics and social cognition: A case study on the Danish universe of meaning. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110294651
Abstract:
This book contributes to the emerging discipline of cultural semantics, and to the ongoing debates of linguistic diversity, metalanguage, and the use of linguistic evidence in studies of culture and social cognition. Presenting original, detailed studies of key words of Danish, it breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values, offering new tools for comparative research into the diversity of semantic and cultural systems in contemporary Europe.
Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly ‘pleasant togetherness’), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. The author uses NSM to account for the meanings of highly culture-specific and untranslatable linguistic concepts. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish key words and lexical grids.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) co-cognition, (E) glad, (E) hygge, (E) hygger, (E) hygger sig, (E) janteloven, (E) lykkelig, (E) mener, (E) overskue, (E) security, (E) sind, (E) skråsikker, (E) stemning, (E) synes, (E) tilfreds, (E) tryg, (E) trygge rammer, (E) tryghed, (E) varm, (S) apprehension, (S) assertivity, (S) autonomous thinking, (S) categoricalness, (S) children, (S) cognitive relativism, (S) expectations, (S) humanism, (S) hygge, (S) imposing one's opinion, (S) living in the moment, (S) personal uniqueness, (S) self-worth, (S) strong group identity, (S) togetherness, (S) un-independence, (S) unreasonableness, (T) Danish
