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(2014) Spanish (Latin America) – Emotions / Feelings

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2014). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 239-252.

DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.06bul

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to examine the Spanish counterpart of pain, that is, the lexeme dolor. It seems that dolor, different from both English pain and French douleur, has two clearly distinguishable meanings, dolor1 referring to physical (and emotional) sensation of pain, and dolor2, a quite frequent emotion term belonging to the domain of “sadness”. To support the above hypothesis, this article examines different lexical occurrences of the word dolor, coming inter alia from tango lyrics.

More information:

Reissued as:

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 109-122). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.06bul

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1989) Japanese – Verbs (love, dependence)

Hanrahan, Jo (1989). Verbs of love and dependence in the Japanese language. Master’s thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)

This thesis examines a group of Japanese words which express emotion, at the heart of which is the concept of ‘amae’ , the desire for love and attention from another person. The emotions expressed by the words discussed herein are common to all human beings and form the core of all cultures. It seems that human feelings of fondness vary, depending on the depth of the relationship existing between the people concerned. It is in the expression of these emotions that peoples differ. It is suggested that the differences are not in the way people feel, but in the way their culture conditions them to behave in communicating their feelings. Only the prototypical use of the verbs in which the concepts are expressed are defined in semantic primitives, although the peripheral uses are commented on separately.


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

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(2001) Verbs (‘say’)

Myhill, John (2001). Suppletion, lexical meaning, semantic primitives, and translation data. Linguistics, 39, 761-802. DOI: 10.1515/ling.2001.031

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory has taken SAY to be a semantic primitive without specifying exactly which semantic domains it covers. Empirical research shows, however, that the words that might intuitively be taken as the exponents of SAY in English (say), Hebrew (’amar), Japanese (iu), and Spanish (decir) very frequently do not translate as each other, so that we cannot simply say that
SAY=say=’amar=iu=decir. In order to reconcile the translation data with a theory of universal primitive meaning, it is necessary to posit a
number of cases of suppletion and polysemy, the former to account for automatic, non-meaning-based alternations between allolexes reflecting a single semantic primitive, the latter to account for meaning-based alternations between different lexemes. The resulting analysis is relatively straightforward and plausible, though some aspects of it may seem initially surprising, for example that tell has two distinct meanings (tell a story vs. tell me what you want), that tell in the latter meaning alternates allolexically with say, and that ask can serve as an exponent of SAY when the clause it introduces is formally a question but does not pragmatically function as a question.

Note: While some insights in this paper are worth considering, others are much more debatable and result from an incorrect understanding of the basic principles of the NSM approach.

(2017) Minimal Finnish

Vanhatalo, Ulla (2017). 65:lla alkusanalla kohti ymmärtämistä. In Sirpa Tarvainen, Soile Loukusa, Terhi Hautala, & Satu Saalasti (Eds.), Yhteinen ymmärrys – havainnoinnista tulkintaan: puheen ja kielen tutkimuksen päivät Helsingissä 30.-31.3.2017 (pp. …-…). Helsinki: Puheen ja kielen tutkimuksen yhdistys [Association of Speech and Language Research).

Written in Finnish.


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

(2009) Anna Wierzbicka and the common words of mankind

Vanhatalo, Ulla (2009). Anna Wierzbicka ja ihmiskunnan yhteiset sanat [Anna Wierzbicka and the common words of mankind]. In Anna Idström, & Sachiko Sosa (Eds.), Kielissä kulttuurien ääni [The voice of cultures is in the languages] (pp. 35-47). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Written in Finnish.


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

(2017) Japanese, Korean – Evidentiality

Asano-Cavagh, Yuko & Lee, Duck-Young (2017). NSM Approach による類義語の意味分析: 日韓の伝達表現を中心に [NSM-based approach to meanings of synonyms: Focusing on hearsay markers in Japanese and Korean]. 日本語學硏究 [Japanese Language Association of Korea], 54, 87-106.

DOI: 10.14817/jlak.2017.54.87 / Open access

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to analyse the evidential markers そうだ souda, らしい rashii and って tte in Japanese and 대 tay and 니까 nikka in Korean from an NSM perspective. そうだ souda, らしい rashii and って tte are used in similar situations and are often translated in English as ‘he/she says’, or ‘I heard’. Although these hearsay markers are considered synonyms, they are not necessarily interchangeable. There are subtle differences that cannot be captured by a dictionary or conventional semantic analysis. The current study shows that the NSM approach is more beneficial than previous research in that it can describe the (dis)similarities of synonyms in a simple and accurate fashion. The study then analyses the Korean markers 대 tay and 니까 nikka, and compares the results with those obtained for the Japanese evidentials. It is demonstrated that the NSM approach is capable of dealing with the semantic properties of markers/expressions in different languages, and that definitions facilitate the understanding of each expression and enable the comparison of meanings cross-linguistically.

More information:

Written in Japanese. The first authors’ name is reported here as per the (incorrect) spelling used in the paper.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2016) Portuguese – LAR

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Descrever o lar português [Describing the Portuguese home]. In Barbara Hlibowicka-Węglarz, Justyna Wiśniewska, & Edyta Jabłonka (Eds.), Língua portuguesa: unidade na diversidade: Volume 1 (pp. 201-213). Lublin: Editora da Universidade Marie Curie-Skłodowska.

Written in Portuguese.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012 sqq) Portuguese – CASA (3 sequential papers)

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2012). Portugalski DOM – uma casa portuguesa [Portuguese HOME]. In Maciej Abramowicz, Jerzy Bartmiński, & Iwona Bielińska-Gardziel (Eds.), Wartości w językowo-kulturowym obrazie świata Słowian i ich sąsiadów: Volume 1 (pp. 123-135). Lublin: UMCS.

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2014). Portugalski DOM – badanie korpusowe [Portuguese HOME – corpus examination]. In Jerzy Bartmiński, Iwona Bielińska-Gardziel, & Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska (Eds.), Wartości w językowo-kulturowym obrazie świata Słowian i ich sąsiadów: Volume 2. Wokół europejskiej aksjosfery (41-52). Lublin: UMCS.

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2014). Jaki obraz DOMU mają młodzi Portugalczycy? Badanie ankietowe [How do young Portuguese picture their ‘home’? A survey]. In Iwona Bielińska-Gardziel, Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, & Joanna Szadura (Eds.), Wartości w językowo-kulturowym obrazie świata Słowian i ich sąsiadów: Volume 3. Problemy eksplikowania i profilowania pojęć (pp. 309-322). Lublin: UMCS.

Written in Polish. The first of the three papers is a virtual translation into Polish of a Portuguese original (2012), which has its own entry.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2000) English (Middle) – Emotions (joy)

Fabiszak, Małgorzata (2000). An application of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage to diachronic semantics. In Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, & Matti Rissanen (Eds.), Placing Middle English in context (pp. 293-312). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110869514.293

This paper is a methodological exercise in which Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), developed as a method of objective description in cross-cultural research, is applied to diachronic data concerning four Middle English emotion terms from the semantic field of ‘joy’. Wierzbicka’s framework provides the means for describing the data neatly, improves their processing, and contributes to the efficiency of their presentation. The application of her formal methodology has made the usage patterns characteristic of the analysed emotion terms more transparent and easier to generalise over.


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

 

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(2013) Iban – Emotions

Metom, Lilly (2013). Emotion concepts of the Ibans in Sarawak. Singapore: Trafford.

This book explains the emotion concepts of the Ibans, one of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak, Malaysia. It is an outcome of a research study that aims to analyse the Iban emotion concepts using Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). NSM enables emotion terminologies in Iban to be explicated and further defined along the concrete/abstract cultural continuum framework. The respondents of this study were the village community of Sbangki Panjai, a longhouse located in Lubok Antu, Sarawak. The findings reveal the core cultural values that underlie the people’’s behaviours in the ways they express their emotions. The complex ‘rules of logic’ called adat and the rules of speaking in this speech community that explain the Ibans’’ communicative behaviours are discussed in detail in this book. The semantic analysis of the emotion words is exhaustive and comprehensive, which is necessary to reveal the complete meaning of the emotions being examined without creating ethnocentric bias. Thus, this book essentially describes how the Ibans relate themselves to others in their interaction.


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

(2010) Swedish – Thanking and related concepts

Pedersen, Jan (2010). The different Swedish tack: An ethnopragmatic investigation of Swedish thanking and related concepts. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1258-1265. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.026

In Sweden, people thank each other a lot. The reasons for this are partly linguistic, as the Swedish tack is different from e.g. English thanks. It encompasses both the meaning of ‘thanks’, and that of ‘please’. More interestingly, there are cultural reasons for this. For ethnic Swedes, there are some higher-order cultural scripts, such as equality, self-sufficiency, consensus seeking and conflict avoidance, which make people say tack a lot to show that they agree, and not to be indebted to other people. For ethnic Swedes, it is culturally important to pay your way, to return favours (tjänster och gentjänster) to retain the equilibrium between individuals. If this practise is not observed, the equilibrium is disturbed, and you end up in a debt of gratitude (tacksamhetsskuld), which can be very unpleasant for an ethnic Swede. This means that s/he thinks that s/he loses her independence and the equilibrium between him/her and the other person. This may result in ethnic Swedes seeming inhospitable, as they are reluctant to make other people feel tacksamhetsskuld.

This study of the cultural key word tack and its related notions shows that there are peculiarities in the Swedish language that can be accessible to outsiders through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.


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

See also: , , , ,

(2010) Spanish, Polish – Exclamations

Wesoła, Justyna (2010). Hiszpańskie wykrzykniki w polskiej praktyce przekładowej [Spanish exclamations in Polish translation practice]. Łask: Oficyna Wydawnicz LEKSEM.

The nature of exclamations is still not fully explained, which means that their definition remains an issue for debate. The increased interest in these units observed in recent years has resulted in relatively numerous studies on exclamations and has contributed to a significant development of knowledge about their phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. However, there are very few works devoted either to the functioning of exclamations in text, or to problems associated with their translation.

This dissertation is the first attempt to analyse Spanish exclamations in the context of Polish translation practice. Its aim is twofold:

1. to characterize Spanish interjections in terms of: a) their frequency of occurrence (in diachronic perspective), b) their possible meanings (explicated in NSM), c) their mode of functioning in three different literary genres (drama, epic and lyric); and

2. to determine what methods are used in the translation of exclamations, and why, and to assign appropriate Polish translation equivalents to individual instances of exclamation.

In addition, an attempt is made to observe the individual preferences of authors and translators and to formulate some general conclusions about exclamations as a category.

(2017) English – AUTISM

Forbes, Alexander (2017). Contested understandings of ‘autism’: the view from NSM semantics. Master’s thesis, University of New England.

There are different understandings of Autism Spectrum Disorder in different groups of people, based on knowledge of ASD and individual experience. There exists space, therefore, for a contrastive analysis of different ‘identity group’ understandings. This study proposes to “sketch out” how four distinct identity groups think about a person and a situation upon hearing that this person has “autism”; in other words, what is the overall understanding of autism from the perspective of different identity clusters? While scientific research can provide a starting point in revealing how different “types” of people understand autism, mass media and relevant online discussion boards can provide further evidence to support an internally-driven, “whole-of-experience” perspective. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of texts in multiple modes is undertaken for the purpose of positing cognitive scenarios, formulated using Natural Semantic Metalanguage, that are hypothesized to be activated, either completely or in components, in four different identity groups upon hearing the phrase X has autism.


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

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(Forthcoming) English, German – Emotions

Goddard, Cliff (Forthcoming). Vocabulary of emotions and its development in English, German and other languages. In Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Jeanette Altarriba, & Bee Chin Ng (Eds.), Handbook of language and emotion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Abstract:

In broad agreement with many emotion theorists, the NSM approach sees emotion concepts as “blends” of feelings and thoughts, sometimes accompanied by potential bodily reactions. This chapter delineates the semantic fundamentals of emotion vocabulary, demonstrates a framework for fine-grained contrastive analysis, and emphasizes the greater-than-expected semantic variability across languages, epochs, and cultures.

Using examples from English and German, the chapter summarizes findings about semantic templates and semantic components of various kinds of emotion terms, including adjectives (e.g. afraid, angry, ashamed), verbs (e.g. miss, worry), and abstract nouns (e.g. happiness, depression). Minor categories and examples from other, non-European, languages are also briefly considered. It is shown that it is both possible and necessary to differentiate between similar-but-different emotion concepts in a single language, e.g. English happy, pleased, satisfied, and across different languages, e.g. English disgust vs. German Ekel. Likewise, using English happy and happiness as examples, the author shows that the same word can vary in meaning across time. Considerable weight is placed on linguistic evidence such as usage patterns, collocational data, and phraseology.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012) Balinese – ‘Tie up’

Sudipa, I Nengah (2012). Makna “mengikat” Bahasa Bali: Pendekatan Metabahasa Semantik Alami [Meanings related to ‘tying up’ in Balinese: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach]. Jurnal Kajian Bali, 2(2), 49-68. PDF (open access)

Written in Indonesian. All NSM explications are formulated in the language of the paper.

The Balinese verb ngiket ‘to tie up’, quoted here in its agentive voice usage (base form: iket), is only one of a number of different verbs having similar meanings: the list includes ngiket/negul, nalinin, mesel, ngimpus, nyangkling, ngeju, nyamok, nyeet, medbed/maste, nyangcang, ngantus, ngancét, and nyepingin (all forms quoted in the agentive voice). Adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, the author reveals that the first three words are slightly different in meaning, even though they belong to the same semantic field; the remainder, however, display overt semantic differences. Ngiket/negul, nalinin and mesel seem to apply to similar objects and involve the same tool used to carry out the activity, that is tali ‘string, rope, thread, etc’. The other verbs apply to specific objects: ngimpus, for instance, relates to the legs of an animal or a human being to be tied up, while nyangkling relates to the hands.


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

See also: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(2006) Madurese – Curse words

Indrawati, Dianita (2006). Makian dalam Bahasa Madura: Kajian Metabahasa Semantik Alami [Cursing in Madurese: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage study]. Linguistik Indonesia, 24(2), 145-155.

Open access

Abstract:

While the concept of cursing is found in all languages, its verbal expression is unique to each. The verbal expressions of cursing used by a community grow and develop based on the culture of that community. This paper describes the literal meaning and the semantic structure of a number of curse words in Madurese.

More information:

Written in Indonesian.

Rating:


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

See also: , , , , , , , , ,

(2010) Malay – Emotions

Mulyadi (2010). Verba emosi statif dalam Bahasa Melayu Asahan [Stative verbs of emotion in Asahan Malay]. Linguistika [Universitas Udayana], 17(33), 168-176. PDF (open access)

Written in Indonesian.

This research proposes a new perspective on the analysis of stative emotion verbs, moving from meaning to form. It relies on evidence from Asahan Malay. The data was collected by using questionnaire, observation, interview, and intuition methods. The analysis concerns the mapping of semantic components of stative emotion verbs, which is used to determine their subcategory. For the analysis, the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory are used.

The study shows that stative emotion verbs in Asahan Malay are characterized by the component ‘X felt something not because X wanted this’. In accordance with the types of events, stative emotion verbs are divided into four subcategories: (1) ‘something bad has happened’ (“sodih-like”), (2) ‘something bad can/will happen’ (“takut-like”), (3) ‘people can know something bad about me’ (“malu-like”), and (4) ‘I don’t think that things like this can/will happen’ (“heran-like”).

No attempt is made at explicating individual verbs.


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

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(2016) Acehnese – Senses: seeing

Fitrisia, Dohra, & Mulyadi (2016). Verb eu ‘see’ in the Acehnese language. Proceedings of English Education International Conference, 1(2), 232-238. PDF (open access)

This study uses NSM to describe the meaning and semantic structure of verbs involving the semantic prime SEE in Acehnese. The Acehnese exponent of the prime is eu. The data were collected by interviewing native speakers. All verbs described appear to be built around combinations of the prime SEE with each of the primes FEEL, THINK, KNOW, and SAY, resulting in four partly overlapping groups of verbs.


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

See also: , , , , , , , , , ,

(2015) Dengka – Emotions

Umiyati, Mirsa (2015). Verba emosi Bahasa Rote Dialek Dengka: Suatu Tinjauan MSA [Verbs of emotion in the Dengka dialect of the Rote language: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage analysis]. Jurnal Linguistik Terapan, 5(2), 47-55.

Open access

Abstract:

This paper applies the NSM approach to the Dengka dialect of the Rote language, a Central Malayo-Polynesian language spoken on Roti Island, off Timor, to explicate one positive and one negative emotion verb. The exponent for FEEL in this dialect is lasa, which will be used in the Dengka versions of the explications formulated here in Indonesian for the positive emotion verb umuho-o ‘be happy’ and the negative emotion verb nggahisa ‘be not-happy’.

More information:

Written in Indonesian.

Rating:


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

See also: ,