Tag: (T) Russian

(2020) English, Russian – Cultural key words


Gladkova, Anna (2020). When value words cross cultural borders: English tolerant versus Russian tolerantnyj. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 73-93). Singapore: Springer.

DOI:

Abstract:

This chapter investigates the situation of language change in contemporary Russian with a particular focus on value words. Using data from the Russian National Corpus, it analyses the meaning of the word толерантный tolerantnyj, which has been borrowed from English. It compares its meaning with the English tolerant as a source of borrowing and the traditional Russian term tерпимый terpimyj. The chapter demonstrates a shift in meaning in the borrowed term, which allows it to accommodate to the Russian value system. The meanings of the terms in question are formulated using universal meanings employed in Minimal English, which makes the comparison transparent and explicit.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2002) Russian – Ethnopragmatics (avant la lettre)


Вежбицкая, Анна [Wierzbicka, Anna] (2002). Русские культурные скрипты и их отражение в языке [Russian cultural scripts and their reflection in the language]. Русский язык в научном освещении, 2(4), 6-34.

More information:

Reissued as:

Вежбицкая, Анна (2005). Русские культурные скрипты и их отражение в языке. In Анна А. Зализняк, И.Б. Левонтина, А.Д. Шмелев (Eds.), ключевые идеи русской языковой картины мира [Key ideas of the Russian linguistic worldview] (pp. 467-499). Москва (Moscow): Языки славянских культур [Languages of Slavic Culture].

Chapter 11 (pp. …-…) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2011). Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2009) English, Malay – Proverbs


Годдард, Клифф [Goddard, Cliff] (2009). “Следуй путем рисового поля”: семантика пословиц в английском и малайском языках [“Sleduy putem risovogo polya”: semantika poslovits v angliyskom i malayskom yazykakh / “Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)]. Жанры речи [Zhanry rechi / Speech genres], 6, 184-207.

Russian translation of a paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation Symposium on Ritual Communication, Portugal, 17-23 March 2007. Updated and published in English as chapter 8 of:

Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

No English abstract available. The proverbs explicated (in Russian) include: (English) A stitch in time saves nine, Make hay while the sun shines, Out of the frying pan into the fire, Practice makes perfect, All that glitters is not gold, Too many cooks spoil the broth, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Where there’s smoke there’s fire; (Malay) Ikut resmi padi ‘Follow the way of the rice plant’, Seperti ketam mangajar anak berjalan betul ‘Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’, Binasa badan kerana mulut ‘The body suffers because of the mouth’, ‘Ada gula, ada semut ‘Where there’s sugar, there’s ants’, Seperti katak di bawah tempurung ‘Like a frog under a coconut shell’, Keluar mulut harimau masuk mulut buaya ‘Out from the tiger’s mouth into the crocodile’s mouth’, Bila gajah dan gajah berlawan kancil juga yang mati tersepit ‘When elephant fights elephant it’s the mousedeer that’s squashed to death’.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2018) Anna Wierzbicka, words and the world


Gladkova, Anna & Larina, Tatiana (2018). Anna Wierzbicka, words and the world. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 499-520.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-3-499-520 / Open access

Abstract:

This introduction to a special issue of the Russian Journal of Linguistics summarizes Anna Wierzbicka’s contribution to the linguistic study of meaning. It presents the foundations of the NSM approach, discussing the current state of the approach with reference to the 65 semantic primes, universal grammar and the principle of reductive paraphrase in semantic explications. The article also traces the origin of Wierzbicka’s ideas to Leibniz. The NSM framework has been tested on about thirty languages of diverse origin. The applications of the approach are broad and encompass lexical areas of emotions, social categories, speech act verbs, mental states, artifacts and animals, verbs of motion, kinship terms (among others), as well as grammatical constructions.

More information:

Simultaneously published in English and Russian. The Russian version follows the English one.

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(1991) Japanese – Cultural key words


Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Japanese key words and core cultural values. Language in Society, 20(3), 333-385.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016535

Abstract:

Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. However, to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper explores and analyses six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more than any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – 甘え amae, 遠慮 enryo, 和 wa, 恩 on, 義理 giri, and 精神 seishin – and shows how the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage helps to make these concepts clear, affording better insight into Japanese culture and society.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is:

Chapter 6 (pp. 235-280) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2010) English, Russian – Cultural key words: FATE, SUD’BA


Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Cross-cultural communication and miscommunication: The role of cultural keywords. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1515/IPRG.2010.001

The experience of immigrants and other people who live transcultural lives confirms that different societies and lingua-cultures have different tacit norms for interpersonal communication and that such differences matter a great deal in many people’s lives. Every lingua-culture inherits and transmits historically and culturally shaped ways of thinking. This applies to English-speaking societies no less than to any other. Given the massive scale of past and ongoing immigration to English-speaking countries as well as the growing domination of English in the global world, it is particularly important to recognize that English, too, is saturated with historically transmitted cultural assumptions. But it is above all “Anglo English” – the common core of the ‘‘Englishes of the inner circle’’ – that tends to be mistaken for a culture-neutral medium of communication. As a result, “Anglo English”, which greatly facilitates cross-cultural communication in today’s world, is also a major source of miscommunication and cross-cultural failure.

This paper takes as its starting point one of the most illuminating cross-cultural novels, Nabokov’s Pnin. The author surveys a number of ‘‘anomalies’’ in ‘‘Pninian English’’ that had an impact on Pnin’s life in America. Then the paper moves beyond Pnin, but stays with Nabokov, and explores one area of immigrant linguistic condition: the loss of cultural key words. The focus is in particular on the Russian key cultural concept of судьба sud’ba and on Nabokov’s continued reliance on this concept in his books created, through the English medium, by his post-Russian authorial self. The author’s overall purpose, however, is not to talk about Nabokov, but to illuminate the immigrant condition and the miscommunication inherent in cross-cultural communication. In her analysis, she relies on the ‘NSM’ methodology of semantic analysis, which allows us to analyse intercultural communication and miscommunication from a neutral, non-Anglocentric perspective.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) Leibniz


Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Common language of all people: The innate language of thought. Problems of information transmission, 47(4), 378-397. DOI: 10.1134/S0032946011040065

English translation of a Russian text (2011) published in Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 47(4), 84-103.

As is well known, Leibniz was interested in language throughout his life, and he saw in it a key to the understanding of the human mind. Many of his ideas about language were expressed in unpublished manuscripts, and what has come to us is not always clear. Nevertheless, some of his ideas — even if he did not always consistently adhere to them himself — seem to be both clear and extremely appealing.

I would summarize these ideas as follows:

1. All human thoughts can be decomposed into a relatively small number of elementary concepts;
2. All explanations depend on the existence of some concepts which are self-explanatory (otherwise, they would lead to an infinite regress);
3. The elementary concepts are common to all languages, and can be found by means of semantic analysis;
4. These concepts are the foundation of an innate language, “lingua naturae.” Just as mathematics is, as Galileo said, the language of the physical world, so the innate “lingua naturae” is the language of the inner world, the language of thoughts;
5. This language can be identified;
6. This language can serve as an auxiliary means of mutual understanding for speakers of different languages;
7. This language can help us to reach a greater clarity in our thinking;
8. This language can serve as a means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas.

These are also the main ideas which lie at the basis of the NSM program and from which this program has derived and continues to derive its inspiration.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) Emotions: happiness


Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Whatʼs wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück, and sčas’te. In Igor Boguslavsky, Leonid Iomdin, & Leonid Krysin (Eds.), Slovo i jazyk: Sbornik statej k vos’midesjatiletiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana (pp. 155-171). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

There is a huge industry of so-called “happiness studies” that relies on cross-national statistical comparisons, which challengers see as based on false and ethnocentric assumptions. ‘Happiness’ has become a big issue in politics and in economics, but here, too, a lack of attention to the meaning of words leads to unwarranted conclusions and causes confusion and miscommunication. The misunderstandings surrounding happiness, bonheur, and Glück illustrate the need for uncovering, and explaining, the differences between significant words that are wrongly assumed to be readily cross-translatable. In view of the place of ‘happiness’ at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines, a comparison of happiness and счастье sčast’e seems especially topical.

The assumption that all languages have a word like happiness, and that there can be a reliable “index of happiness” based on self-reports (given in different languages) is naïve and untenable. Progress in emotion research in general depends to a considerable extent on increased recognition that language goes deeper in us than many students of emotion (especially psychologists) are willing to admit. Genuine progress requires a greater linguistic and cross-cultural sophistication than that evident in much of the existing writings on the subject.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012) NSM primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates


Goddard, Cliff (2012). Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics, 50(3), 711-743.

DOI: 10.1515/ling-2012-0022

Abstract:

The NSM approach has a long track record in cross-linguistic lexical semantics. It is therefore not surprising that it has a clear theoretical position on key issues in lexical semantic typology and a well-developed set of analytical techniques.

From a theoretical point of view, the overriding issue concerns the tertium comparationis. What are the optimal concepts and categories to support the systematic investigation of lexicons and lexicological phenomena across the world’s languages? The NSM answer to this question is that the necessary concepts can – and must – be based on the shared lexical-conceptual core of all languages, which NSM researchers claim to have discovered over the course of a thirty-five year program of empirical cross-linguistic semantics. This shared lexical-conceptual core is the minilanguage of semantic primes and their associated grammar.

In addition, NSM researchers have developed certain original analytical constructs that promise to enhance the power and systematicity of the approach: in particular, the notions of semantic molecules and semantic templates. This paper sets out to explain and illustrate these notions, to report some key analytical findings (updated, in many cases, from previously published accounts), and to extrapolate their implications for the further development of lexical typology.

This paper contains detailed explications of the English verb drink and its closest Kalam counterpart ñb ‘eat/drink’, as well as of the English verb cut and its Japanese counterpart 切る kiru.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2005) Russian, English – Feelings: empathy


Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2005). Чем русское сопереживание отличается от английского empathy? Опыт применения естественного семантического метаязыка в контрастивной семантике. In what ways the Russian sopereživanie is different from the English empathy? The Natural Semantic Metalanguage in contrastive semantics (pp. 102-108). In И. М. Кобозева, А. С. Нариньяни & В. П. Селегей (ред.) [I. Kobozeva, A. Narin’jani & V. Selegej (Eds.)], Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии: Труды международной конференции «Диалог 2005» [Computational linguistics and intellectual technologies: Proceedings of the International Conference “Dialogue 2005”]. Москва [Moscow]: Nauka. PDF (open access)

Written in Russian. No English abstract available.


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

The (E) tags listed below are added on the basis of information in the title of this paper, which also proposes other explications.

(2006) Russian – Praise: MOLODEC, UMNICA


Gladkova, Anna (2006). Russian praise words molodec and umnica: A semantic and cultural analysis. In Keith Allan (Ed.), Selected papers from the 2005 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society (18 pp.). http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2005.html. PDF (open access)

This paper investigates the semantics of two very commonly used Russian language-specific praise words, molodec and umnica. The meanings of these nouns combine the evaluation of an action of another person with the evaluation of the person him- or herself. For this reason, they can be regarded as words with a culture-specific meaning. The study applies the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. The meanings of molodec and umnica are related to several important cultural themes of Russian culture.


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

(2007-06) Russian, English – Feelings: empathy


Gladkova, Anna (2006-07). New and traditional emotion terms in Russian: Semantics and culture. Transcultural Studies, 2-3, 123-137. DOI: 10.1163/23751606-00201007

This article focuses on borrowings as a reflection of the influence of other cultures and languages on Russian. New words that enter Russian from other languages signify changes in way of life, thought and behaviour. The most revealing in this respect are emotion and value terms because their meanings are reflective of cultural beliefs, assumptions and understandings. Therefore, the approach implemented in this article is that language, and its lexicon in particular, can be considered a gateway into a people’s culture. Moreover, changes in a language are indicative of cultural changes.

The focus of the paper is on a term from the domain of emotions – емпатииа ėmpatiia (empathy). This word has been used in translated psychology literature for the last two to three decades, but it is gradually entering other spheres of Russian discourse. Against the claim that the content of the term емпатииа ėmpatiia is fully conveyed by the Russian word сопереживание sopereživanie, it is argued that English empathy and Russian сопереживание soperezhivanie are words with significantly different meanings that are largely related to the cultural assumptions of the societies they belong to. For this purpose, the author carries out a detailed comparative semantic analysis of the English word empathy and its closest Russian equivalent сопереживание sopereživanie.


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

(2009) Russian – Propositional attitudes: SCITAT’


Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2009). К вопросу о семантическом статусе глагола считать [About the semantic status of the Russian verb scitat’]. Русский язык в научном освещении [Russian language in scientific coverage], 17(1), 201-227.

Written in Russian. No English abstract available.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

The (E) tag listed below is added on the basis of information in the title of this paper, which also proposes other explications.

(2008) Russian, English – Cultural values: tolerance


Gladkova, Anna (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301-329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.102.19gla

An earlier version of this paper was published as:

Gladkova, Anna (2005). New and traditional values in contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in cross-cultural semantics. In Ilana Mushin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93.

This chapter examines the recent trend in contemporary Russian towards increased lexical borrowing from English. In particular, it compares and contrasts the meanings of a recently borrowed value term tolerantnyj with its English equivalent tolerant and the traditionally closest Russian equivalent терпимый terpimyj ‘tolerant/indulgent/forbearing’. A detailed contrastive semantic analysis demonstrates that, although tolerant and терпимый terpimyj are translational equivalents, their meanings do differ and reflect different cultural attitudes across the two societies involved.

The work also shows that the meaning of the new Russian term tolerantnyj does not fully coincide with the meaning of the English tolerant, as it reflects the Russian value system. The analysis is conducted using NSM as its main analytical tool.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) Russian – Address forms and social cognition / Cultural key words / Ethnopragmatics


Gladkova, Anna (2013). The Russian social category svoj: A study in ethnopragmatics. In Istvan Kecskes, & Jesús Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 219-238). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513735.219

Abstract:

Terms for social categories provide a window into understanding culture. They conceptualize relationships and also relate to a culture’s communicative practices. The term for the Russian social category свой svoj possesses the status of a cultural key word. It is associated with important cultural rules of behaviour specific to people of this kind. It also exists at the intersection of other cultural rules, namely искренность iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost meanings’. The cultural scripts approach and NSM constitute reliable tools for describing these rules in terms that are universal, accessible and easily translatable into other languages.

The results of the study support the idea of a textual character of culture. Culture is best represented as a collection of rules or texts (Geertz), rather than by means of over-riding universalist concepts. The cultural scripts approach as it is implemented in ethnopragmatics is arguably the most adequate way to describe this variety of texts from a linguistic point of view.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012) Russian – NSM primes


Gladkova, Anna (2012). Universals and specifics of ‘time’ in Russian. In Luna Filipović, & Kasia M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), Space and time across languages and cultures: Vol. II. Language, culture and cognition (pp. 167-188). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.37.13gla

Abstract:

This chapter addresses the question of universal as well as language- and culture-­specific traits in the conceptualization of ‘time’. It tests the NSM hypothesis that the semantic primes WHEN~TIME and NOW should also be found in Russian. It demonstrates that когда~время kogda~vremja and сейчас sejčas are Russian exponents of these primes, while the related terms пора pora, теперь teper’, and нынче nynče are semantically complex. The chapter formulates culturally salient attitudes to time in Russian, such as ‘change’, ‘persistence’, ‘things being outside people’s control’, on the basis of the analysed words. It argues that, because of its universal character, NSM can be regarded as an effective tool in time-related linguistic research.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) English, Russian, Spanish – Ethnopragmatics


Gladkova, Anna, & Romero-Trillo, Jesús (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 140-159.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.005

Abstract:

This study addresses the question of the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of ‘beautiful’ in three European languages – English, Russian and Spanish. Specifically, it investigates the polysemy and the spheres of application of English beautiful, Russian красивый krasivyj, and Spanish bonito/a. Through corpus analysis methodology, the authors investigate the most common collocations and the pragmatic and contextual uses of these terms. On the basis of the analysis, the study then adopts NSM to propose semantic explications of the three words in universal human concepts. In particular, it investigates the presence of the perception universals SEE, HEAR, and FEEL, which in the data are central to the analysis of the aesthetics vocabulary, along with the primes GOOD, SOMEONE, SOMETHING and THINK.

The data for the study comes from three online corpora: the Russian National Corpus (Russian), Cobuild’s Wordbanks Online (English) and the Corpus de referencia del español actual (Spanish).

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) English, Russian – NSM primes


Gladkova, Anna (2014). HERE, NEAR, FAR: Spatial conceptualisation and cognition in a cross-linguistic perspective (English vs. Russian). In Luna Filipović, & Martin Pütz (Eds.), Multilingual cognition and language use: Processing and typological perspectives (pp. 121-150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.44.05gla

Abstract:

This chapter explores variation and similarities in the conceptualization of space in Russian and English on the basis of selected terms of ‘location’ and ‘proximity/distance’. It adopts the NSM approach, which identifies eight semantic universals of space, three of which, HERE, NEAR, FAR, were tested for their realization in both languages. A semantic analysis of terms denoting ‘here’, ‘near’, ‘not far’, and ‘far’ confirms the presence of the three universal primes in English and Russian, though they differ in how they conceptually carve up the notion of space.

The study has implications for research into bilingualism and language acquisition and demonstrates that the NSM formulae can be used experimentally to test spatial conceptualization and cognition cross-linguistically.

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(2016) English, Russian – Cultural scripts / Mental states


Gladkova, Anna (2016). Propositional attitudes and cultural scripts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 329-352). Berlin: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12

Abstract:

In linguistic literature inspired by work in philosophy, the key concepts for the analysis of ‘propositional attitudes’ include mental states such as ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’ and ‘know’, among others. This literature, and the work on which it is based, ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualization of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. It also overlooks the fact that categorization of mental states, in general, and ‘propositional attitudes’, in particular, is aligned with cultural attitudes and understandings.

This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of selected words reflecting propositional attitudes in English and Russian. The focus is on to believe vs. считать sčitat’ and on belief vs. мнение mnenie, and the analysis is undertaken in terms of universal meanings, using NSM. It is demonstrated that the supremacy of logical concepts in current scientific thinking is not reflected in the architecture of the mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. Instead, it is argued that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.

The concepts central to the analysis are KNOW and THINK, which have been shown to have exact semantic equivalents in Russian and English as well as other languages. The chapter shows that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles that can be formulated as cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners