A resource base of publications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. 1,100+ detailed notices, and counting!
Goddard, Cliff (1994). Semantic theory and semantic universals. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 7-29). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.04god
This chapter lays out the semantic theory underlying the volume it is part of, reviews the literature on semantic and lexical universals, and explains the guidelines followed by contributors to the volume.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Key words, culture and cognition. Philosophica, 55(1), 37-67.
Abstract:
How much does language influence how we think? How far are the categories of our language contingent and culture-specific? Few questions are of greater significance to the social sciences. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that linguistic semantics can address these questions with rigour and precision. It analyses some examples of cultural key words in several languages. Two complementary positions are presented, and both are endorsed. On the one hand, it is argued there are enormous differences in the semantic structuring of different languages and these linguistic differences greatly influence how people think. On the other, it is argued all languages share a small set of universal concepts that can provide a solid basis for cross-cultural understanding and for the culture-independent formulation of philosophical problems.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Who are we? The natural semantics of pronouns. Language Sciences, 17(1), 99-121. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(95)00011-J
Working within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of Anna Wierzbicka, this study proposes reductive paraphrase explications for a range of first-person pronominal meanings. A general explicatory schema is first developed for English we. It is then shown how this can be elaborated to accommodate the inclusive/exclusive distinction, dual number and trial number, and how it can be applied to minimal-augmented systems. Data is taken from various languages of Australia and Asia. It is argued that NSM explications are preferable to conventional feature analyses for two reasons: they are less subject to charges of arbitrariness and obscurity; and they are located within a comprehensive theory of semantic representation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2), 289-298. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9512009
As suggested by its title, Wierzbicka’s 1995 paper ‘Emotion and facial expression: A semantic perspective’ is an attempt to apply a uniform framework for semantic analysis to two domains of emotional expression – words and facial expressions – and to advance some hypotheses about how they are related. Wierzbicka argues that linguistic research shows that no emotion word of English (or any other language) has a simple and undecomposable meaning; rather, the emotion words of different languages encode complex and largely culture-specific perspectives on ‘ways of feeling’, linking feelings with specific kinds of thoughts and wants (prototypical cognitive scenarios). Essentially, the claim is that the meanings of words like angry, proud, lonesome, etc., embody little ‘cultural stories’ about human nature and human interaction. To uncover and state such stories in non-ethnocentric terms, however, requires a framework of semantic universals. We need to go beyond the ‘either-or’ question and seek both the universal core of communication, as well as the precise role of culture. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is a new method that will assist us to reach that goal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (2009). Componential analysis. In Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 58-67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hoph.2.06god
Previously issued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2005). Componential analysis. In Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics 2003-2005 (12 pages). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.m.comm1
The 2005 text is a heavily revised version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1995). Componential analysis. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jan Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147-153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Abstract:
Componential analysis (CA) in the broadest sense, also known as ‘lexical decomposition’, is any attempt to formalize and standardize procedures for the analysis of word meanings. CA often aspires to represent the cognitive or psychological reality of the speakers, and to shed light on correlations between language and culture.
The idea that word meanings may be broken down into combinations of simpler components is an ancient one, supported by a range of facts. These include the efficacy of paraphrase, the intuitively felt relationships (such as antonymy, hyponymy, partonymy) between word meanings, the fact that sentences may be tautologous, contradictory or odd due to the interplay of the meanings of their constituent words. The assumption of decomposability underlies the definitional side of traditional lexicography. For expository purposes, methods in CA may be described under four headings: the structuralist tradition, linguistic anthropology, generative and typological studies, and paraphrase semantics (1995) / Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (2005/2009). Some other trends and problems are briefly discussed.
Explications included in the 1995 version relate to the emotion term indignant, the speech act verb suggest, the interjection Wow! and the kinship term mother.
Explications included in the 2005 and 2009 versions relate to the emotion term sad, the social category friend, the performative verbs threaten and warn, and the semantic molecule animal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1995). ‘Cognitive mapping’ or ‘verbal explication’? Understanding love on the Malay Archipelago. Semiotica, 106(3/4), 323-354.
This is a review article of Karl G. Heider’s 1991 book Landscapes of emotion: Mapping three cultures of emotion in Indonesia. It is argued that a failure to grasp the nettle on the issue of translation, the exclusive reliance on a narrow range of artificial questionnaire-generated data and the lack of depth in the ethnographic commentary prevent Heider from making substantial progress toward his goal of understanding how culture influences emotion. For the purpose of modeling linguistic and cultural meanings, there is no escape from language, and the problem of translation must be faced fairly and squarely. Much progress has been made within linguistic semantics, especially within the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach led by Anna Wierzbicka, toward developing a systematic and non-ethnocentric approach to verbal explication. An attempt is made to show how this approach can be fruitfully and revealingly applied to the semantic analysis of some Malay emotion words.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1996). Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145-151. DOI: 10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1
This paper takes issue with the assertion that there is no culture-neutral boundary between what is literal and what is metaphorical, and with the undercurrent of extreme relativism shown in a recent paper published in the same journal. It furthermore makes the point that, to study (and even to identify) the metaphoric systems of other languages, a coherent theory of semantic description is required. It is argued that, despite the enormous semantic differences between languages, there is solid evidence that they share a small set of ‘universal meanings’, which can provide a non-arbitrary and non-ethnocentric vocabulary for cross-linguistic semantics.
The claims contained in this paper are underpinned by discussion of the semantic primes THERE IS and FEEL in Yankunytjatjara.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1996). Can linguists help judges know what they mean? Linguistic semantics in the court-room. Forensic Linguistics, 3(2), 250-272. DOI: 10.1558/ijsll.v3i2.250
This paper considers how linguistic semantics can assist judges in determining the ‘plain meaning’ of words for the purpose of statutory interpretation. It describes the main schools of contemporary semantics, showing that leading experts in the field differ enormously in their basic assumptions and methods. It gives a detailed critique of surveys as a research method in semantics, concentrating on a 1994 American study proposed as a model of how linguists can help judges. Although the author advocates Anna Wierzbicka’s reductive paraphrase approach and seeks to demonstrate its value for conceptual analysis in legal contexts, he argues that in view of the fragmented and under-developed state of lexical semantics it would be ill-advised for courts to recognize linguists as experts on word meanings.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1997). Discourse and culture. In Teun A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 231-257). London: Sage.
As in all cross-cultural research, the overriding methodological problem is ethnocentric bias, that is, the danger that our understanding of the discourse practices of other cultures will be distorted if we view them through the prism of our own culture-specific practices and concepts. There is a need to find a universal, language-independent perspective on discourse structure and on cultural values.
In this chapter we first survey a variety of different approaches to culture and discourse studies, then take a close look at cultural aspects of discourse in five unrelated cultures (Japanese, Malay, Polish, Yankunytjatjara, Ewe). In this way, we can draw out some of the main dimensions of cross-cultural variation in discourse.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147-162. DOI: 10.1075/prag.7.2.02god
It is often assumed that the English motion verbs come and go can be glossed as motion towards-the-speaker and ‘motion not-towards-the-speaker’, respectively. This paper proposes alternative semantic analyses which are more complex, but also, it is argued, more descriptively adequate and more explanatory. The semantic framework is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach developed by Anna Wierzbicka, in which meanings are stated as explanatory paraphrases (explications) couched in a small, standardized and translatable metalanguage based on natural language. A single explication is advanced for come, and it is shown that this unitary meaning is compatible with the broad range of ‘appropriateness conditions’ on its use. The same applies to go. A novel feature of the proposed analysis for come is that it does not rely on the conventional notion that ‘deictic projection’ is a pragmatic phenomenon. Instead the potential for ‘deictic projection’ is analysed as flowing directly from the lexical semantics of come. This approach, it is argued, enables an improved account of semantic differences between near-equivalents for come and go in various languages.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). Semantic primes and grammatical categories. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17(1), 1-41. DOI: 10.1080/07268609708599543
This paper argues that all 55 of the semantic primes currently [1997] posited in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory are frequently found as components of grammatically encoded meanings. Examples are taken from a wide variety of the world’s languages, including Ewe, Kashaya, Polish, Quechua, Tibetan, and Wintu. They include phenomena such as pronoun systems, indefinites, classifiers, evidentials, locational deixis, tense systems, diminutives and augmentatives, and modality. Explications are proposed for absolute superlatives (-issimo), reflexive constructions, and constructions referred to as the active emotion construction, the emotional causer construction, the emotional stimulus construction, the impersonal emotion construction, and the object experiencer construction.
The study seeks to contribute to the development of a more rigorous semantic basis for grammatical typology, by demonstrating that the proposed semantic metalanguage is able to encompass and explicate a wide variety of grammaticalized meanings. Such a finding cuts across the commonly held view that, for the most part, grammatical semantics and lexical semantics call for rather different descriptive toolkits.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (1997). The universal syntax of semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3), 197-207. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00059-9
Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) theory has given rise to a new approach to investigating the fundamentals of syntax. The central idea is that all languages share an irreducible core which consists of a set of universal semantic primitives with certain universal combinatorial (i.e. syntactic) properties. This paper outlines a series of hypotheses about the universal syntax of semantic primitives – hypotheses which are tested in the individual language studies which comprise the rest of the volume. Topics include: the valency options and complementation possibilities of primitive predicates such as DO, HAPPEN, WANT, THINK, SAY and KNOW, the grammar of temporal and locative primitives (such as WHEN/TIME, BEFORE, AFTER, WHERE/PLACE, ABOVE, BELOW, NEAR, FAR), and of the conditional IF…) and counterfactual IF…WOULD) constructions.
Goddard, Cliff (1997). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English. Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153-181. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9700300204
This paper argues that psychology has yet to come fully to grips with the extent of semantic variation between languages, and that it can benefit, in this regard, from certain developments in linguistic semantics. It outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach to cross-cultural semantics, and demonstrates the approach through a contrastive study of ‘surprise-like’ words from two languages: Malay (terkejut, terperanjat, hairan) and English (surprised, amazed, shocked, startled). It is shown that there is no exact Malay equivalent to English surprise; and also that there is no semantic core shared by the various terms, only a loose set of cross-cutting and overlapping semantic correspondences. These results are at odds with the classic “basic emotions” position, which would have it that ‘surprise’ is a universal and discrete biological syndrome. The overriding contention of the paper is that Wierzbicka’s approach to linguistic semantics can furnish psychology with valuable new analytical and descriptive tools.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (Ed.) (1997). Studies in the syntax of universal semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3) (Special issue).
All NSM-related work in this special issue is listed separately. Recommended search term: “Language Sciences, 19(3)”.
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1998). Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In René Dirven, & Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics (pp. 137-159). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2nd ed.:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2004). Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In René Dirven, & Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics. Second revised edition (pp. 127-148). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This chapter looks into cross-linguistic semantic differences in a systematic way. We present a method for pinpointing semantic distinctions and for exploring their cultural relevance. A key question is whether differences in linguistic conceptualization play a central role in language and thought or whether they are rather marginal. Both positions have been advocated. The first is known as linguistic relativity, in its extreme form as linguistic determinism. The second is known as universalism and holds that all people all over the world basically think in the same way. This chapter proposes a compromise between the extremes: Most linguistic concepts are indeed language-specific, but there is also a small number of universal linguistic concepts which occur in all languages. These universal concepts can be used as a “neutral” basis for paraphrasing the huge variety of language-specific and culture-specific concepts in the languages of the world. This is illustrated firstly for lexical concepts, then for grammatical concepts, and finally for the cultural norms of behaviour which underlie people’s behaviour in different cultures.
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129-156. DOI: 10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129
Semantic primitives have fallen on hard times. Though their existence was once widely accepted in linguistics, a variety of counter-arguments have since engendered widespread scepticism. This paper examines a selection of anti-primitives arguments with the aim of showing that they fail to apply to the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach.
The most serious of the faulty arguments invalidly link semantic primitives with ‘objectivism’, or with abstractness and non-verifiability, or with implausible views about language acquisition or language processing. Others rely on misanalysed linguistic ‘facts’, or simply fail to come to grips with the most credible pro-primitives position. The anti-primitives arguments are drawn from a broad range of sources, including the philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, language acquisition studies, and cognitive linguistics.
The paper includes explications of the English words break, happy, lie and on.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Revised and expanded version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The summary below reflects the contents of the second edition.
This lively textbook introduces students and scholars to practical and precise methods for articulating the meanings of words and sentences, and for revealing connections between language and culture. Topics range over emotions (Chapter 4), speech acts (Chapter 5), discourse particles and interjections (Chapter 6), words for animals and artefacts (Chapter 7), motion verbs (Chapter 8), physical activity verbs (Chapter 9), causatives (Chapter 10), and nonverbal communication. Alongside English, it features a wide range of other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Australian Aboriginal languages. Undergraduates, graduate students and professional linguists alike will benefit from Goddard’s wide-ranging summaries, clear explanations and analytical depth. Meaning is fundamental to language and linguistics. This book shows that the study of meaning can be rigorous, insightful and exciting.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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Goddard, Cliff (1999). Building a universal semantic metalanguage: The semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. RASK, 9-10, 3-35.
For some thirty years now, Anna Wierzbicka has been one of the most prolific, insightful, and lively scholars in the field of linguistic semantics. Her books and articles have ranged over diverse areas of lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, and pragmatics. At the level of theory, she is widely known for her insistence that universal semantic primitives exist as meanings of words in ordinary language. In recent years, her theory – now known as the ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach – has undergone considerable expansion and modification. This article presents an overview of current NSM theory, covering the expanded inventory of primitives, the novel concepts of allolexy and non-compositional polysemy, and new proposals about the syntax of the semantic metalanguage.
Goddard, Cliff (2000). “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81-106. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028746
The “cultural scripts” approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. The author uses this technique to describe and make sense of aspects of Malay communicative style. The proposed Malay cultural scripts are linked with the importance placed on appropriate (patut, sesuai) behavior and on nasihat ‘advice’, and on the need to balas budi (roughly) ‘return good treatment’, to jaga hati orang ‘look after people’s feelings’, and to menghormati ‘show respect, deference’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (2000). Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Yael Ravin & Claudia Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 129-151). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This paper outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) method of semantic analysis and seeks to show that this method enables the traditional ‘definitional’ concept of polysemy to be applied both to individual lexical items and to lexico-grammatical constructions. There is also a discussion of how aspects of figurative language can be handled within the same framework. Naturally, given the space available, the treatment must be incomplete in many respects. The underlying contention is that many of the difficulties experienced by current treatments of polysemy do not spring from the nature of polysemy itself, but from more general problems of semantic and lexicographic methodology, in particular the lack of a clear, practical and verifiable technique for framing lexical definitions.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners |