Asc Page 40 – nsm-approach.net

(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

See also: , , , , , , ,

(2010) English, Chinese, Korean, Russian – Ethnopsychology and personhood / Mental states

Goddard, Cliff (2010). Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In Barbara C. Malt, & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72-92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311129.003.0005

Abstract:

The first two sections of this chapter provide an overview of NSM research and findings, with a particular focus on mental state concepts. The next two sections show how NSM techniques make it possible to reveal complex and culture-specific meanings in detail and in terms that are readily transposable across languages. Examples include emotion terms, epistemic verbs, and ethnopsychological constructs in English, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. The next section discusses the relationship between linguistic meanings (word meanings) and cognition and elucidates the theoretical and methodological implications for cognitive science. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that people’s subjective emotional experience can be shaped or coloured to some extent by the lexical categories of their language.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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

(2010) English – Mass nouns, unitizers

Goddard, Cliff (2010). A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In Francis Jeffry Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things and stuff: Mass terms and generics (pp. 132-165). New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195382891.003.0008

This chapter follows up earlier work of Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka in which they argued that there are numerous, subtly different, subclasses of mass nouns. These different subclasses presuppose, they claimed, different “conceptualizations” of the nature of a mass. The present chapter concentrates on concrete mass nouns in English, arguing that the formal linguistic properties of mass nouns are systematically correlated with their conceptual content and that this conceptual content can be clearly identified using the tools of Wierzbicka and Goddard’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage system. Some of the cognitive issues raised here involve the extent that there is unity to the notion of mass‐stuff and whether there is any necessary similarity in the relevant part of the mental lives of speakers of different languages, since clearly, languages differ in the types of words that they each treat as mass.

 

(2010) The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach

Goddard, Cliff (2010). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In Bernd Heine, & Heikko Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459-484). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2nd ed.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In Bernd Heine, & Heikko Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 817-841). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199677078.013.0018

The basic conviction behind the NSM approach – bolstered by scores of empirical studies – is that meaning is the key to insightful and explanatory descriptions of most linguistic phenomena, phonetics and phonology excepted. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a decompositional system of meaning representation based on empirically established universal semantic primes, i.e., simple indefinable meanings that appear to be present as word meanings in all languages. The NSM approach offers a comprehensive and versatile approach to meaning analysis: highly constrained and systematic, non-ethnocentric, and capable of producing representations with high cognitive plausibility. Given the pervasiveness of meaning-based and meaning-related phenomena in languages (in lexicon, morphology, syntax, prosody, and pragmatics), the approach surely has a tremendous amount to offer linguistics at large. Of course, NSM is not a complete theory or methodology of linguistic analysis. If languages can be thought of as systems for correlating meanings with forms, NSM’s strengths lie on the meaning side of the equation.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) Semantics and cognition

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Semantics and cognition. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: Cognitive science, 2(2), 125-135. DOI: 10.1002/wcs.101

The words and grammar of any language encode a vast array of complex prepackaged concepts, most of them language-specific and culture-related. These concepts are manipulated routinely in almost every waking hour of most people’s lives. They are largely acquired in infancy and they are intersubjectively shared among members of the speech community. It is hard to imagine such elaborate and variable representation systems not having a substantial role to play in ordinary cognition, and yet the language-and-thought question continues to be a contested one across the various disciplines and sub-disciplines of cognitive science. This article provides an overview from the vantage point of linguistic semantics.

(2011) English – Cultural key words

Goddard, Cliff (2011). The lexical semantics of language (with special reference to words). Language Sciences, 33(1), 40-57.

DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003

Abstract:

Language can be regarded as one of the cultural key words of English, as well as the foundational term of the discourse of linguistics. It is well to remember, however, that the concept of a language lacks precise semantic equivalents in many languages. This study presents a semantic-lexicographic analysis of several meanings of the word language in contemporary English, using the NSM method of semantic description. The study is similar in scope and approach to an earlier study of the word culture, which resembles language in several important respects. One distinctive aspect of the explications for language is their reliance on the proposed semantic prime WORDS, which is discussed at some length. Though primarily focused on English, the study makes reference to Yankunytjatjara, Chinese, and Russian, among other languages.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) NSM primes

Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic primitives (primes). In Patrick Colm Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 740-742). New York: Cambridge University Press.

(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.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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

(2012) English (Australia, USA, UK) – Ethnopragmatics

Goddard, Cliff (2012). ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1038-1050.

DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010

Abstract:

Different communicative styles pertaining to initial self-presentation have implications for mutual misperception, negative evaluation and stereotyping. This study applies the techniques of contrastive ethnopragmatics to communicative style in initial conversational interactions in three varieties of Anglo English: Australian English, American English, and English English. It proposes for each variety a distinctive suite of cultural scripts concerning matters such as presumed stance in relation to sameness and difference, degree of attention to accent and speech style, expected degree of interest in personal information about the interlocutor, expressions of accomplishments and ambitions, and ‘phatic complimenting’. Evidence is drawn from personal testimonies about cultural cross-talk, sociological and cultural studies, and contrastive corpus data.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2012) English (Australia, USA, UK) – Communication styles

Goddard, Cliff (2012). Cultural scripts and communication style differences in three Anglo Englishes (English English, American English and Australian English). In Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 101-120). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI: 10.3726/978-3-653-01353-5


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) English – ON-constructions involving laterality

Goddard, Cliff (2013). On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions involving “laterality”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics [China], 3(2), 153-167.

This study analyses a set of highly English-specific on-constructions of the form [on + NP-PLACE], such as: on the bank of the river, (a house) on the beach, on an island, on the plains, on the street, on a farm. The analysis is conducted in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework originated by Anna Wierzbicka. Six semantically discrete construction types are identified and each is assigned a semantic schema framed in the metalanguage of semantic primes. All of them, it is argued, include a semantic component involving “laterality” (semantic prime SIDE), often in combination with a component involving visibility (SEE). These constructions, along with others, constitute a complex network of grammatical polysemy in English.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2013) Social cognition

Goddard, Cliff (2013). The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 245-256. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846454

Social cognition (roughly, how people think about other people) is profoundly shaped by culture. It cannot be insightfully studied except by methods that are able to tap into the perspectives of cultural insiders, while avoiding the pitfalls of conceptual and terminological Anglocentrism. This paper shows how the analytical concepts and techniques developed by the NSM approach to language description, such as semantic explications and cultural scripts, can meet these requirements. It argues that the metalanguage of semantic primes, the outcome of a decades-long programme of research, is well adapted to modelling local culturally grounded modes of social cognition in fine detail.

Semantics; Social Cognition; Sociality Concepts; Cultural Scripts; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM); Cultural Key Words

(2013) English – Comparatives

Goddard, Cliff (2013). Comparatives without scales: An NSM analysis of English comparative constructions. In John Henderson, Marie-Eve Ritz, & Celeste Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/proceedings. PDF (open access)

This study outlines an analysis of the English comparative construction, framed in the NSM approach to semantics (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds. 2002; Goddard ed. 2008). The analysis differs markedly from conventional accounts in that it does not rely on notions of scales, degrees, or standards of comparison. As required, the analysis successfully models the way in which adjectives with equipollent antonyms behave differently from others with respect to their compatibility with comparative statements (Sapir 1944), e.g. why one can say about two cold items ‘This one is colder than that one’, but not ‘This one is hotter than that one’. Likewise, it can explain asymmetries with respect to evaluative comparisons of “inherently bad” referents (Cruse 1986), e.g. why ‘This year’s famine is worse than last year’s’ is acceptable but ‘Last year’s famine was better than this year’s’ is odd. A similar account appears viable for the English superlative construction. The analysis can be termed an “external” one, in the sense that it takes the meaning of the positive term for granted and embeds it into a configuration of semantic primes that explicates the comparative aspect of the meaning.

See also: ,

(2013) Social cognition

Goddard, Cliff (Ed.) (2013). Semantics and/in social cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3) (Special issue).

All NSM-related work in this special issue is listed separately. Recommended search term: “Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3)”.

(2014) Emotions / Feelings

Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2014). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 131-148.

DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.01god

Abstract:

This introduction to a special issue of the journal IJOLC argues that the cross-linguistic study of subjective experience as expressed, described and construed in language cannot be set on a sound footing without the aid of a systematic and non-Anglocentric approach to lexical semantic analysis. This conclusion follows from two facts, one theoretical and one empirical. The first is the crucial role of language in accessing and communicating about feelings. The second is the demonstrated existence of substantial, culture-related differences between the meanings of emotional expressions in the languages of the world.

The authors contend that the NSM approach to semantic and cultural analysis provides the necessary conceptual and analytical framework to come to grips with these facts. This is demonstrated in practice by the studies of happiness-related and pain-related expressions across eight languages, undertaken by the contributors to the special issue. At the same time as probing the precise meanings of these expressions, the authors provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing in some detail how the meanings they analyse are truly “cultural meanings”.

The project exemplified by the special issue can also be read as a linguistically-anchored contribution to cultural psychology, the quest to understand and appreciate the mental life of others in a full spirit of psychological pluralism.

More information:

Re-issued as:

Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2016). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 1-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.01god

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2016) “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures [BOOK]

Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (Eds.) (2016). “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/bct.84

Abstract:

In the fast-growing fields of happiness studies and pain research, which have attracted scholars from diverse disciplines including psychology, philosophy, medicine, and economics, this volume provides a much needed cross-linguistic perspective. It centres on the question of how much ways of talking and thinking about happiness and pain vary across cultures, and seeks to answer this question by empirically examining the core vocabulary pertaining to happiness and pain in many languages and in different religious and cultural traditions. The authors not only probe the precise meanings of the expressions in question, but also provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing how these meanings are truly cultural. Methodologically, while in full agreement with the view of many social scientists and economists that self-reports are the bedrock of happiness research, the volume presents a body of evidence highlighting the problem of translation and showing how local concepts of happiness and pain can be understood without an Anglo bias.

Table of contents:

  1. Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye)
  2. “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective (Anna Wierzbicka)
  3. The story of “Danish happiness” (Carsten Levisen)
  4. The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese (Zhengdao Ye)
  5. Japanese interpretations of “pain” and the use of psychomimes (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh)
  6. Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish (Zuzanna Bułat-Silva)
  7. The semantics and morphosyntax of tare “hurt/pain” in Koromu (PNG) (Carol Priestley)

Each chapter has a separate entry, where more information is provided.

More information:

Previously published as:

Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (Eds.) (2014). “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2) (Special issue). DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) NSM and human cognitive development

Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Fabréga Jr, Horacio (2014). Evolutionary semantics: Using NSM to model stages in human cognitive evolution. Language Sciences, 42, 60-79. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2013.11.003

This study seeks to make a contribution to evolutionary science. It shows how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) system of semantic–conceptual representation, developed for modern humans, can be ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to produce a plausible model of cognitive evolution from the time of the Last Common Ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees. We posit six stages of cognitive development, each with its own distinct repertoire of conceptual primes. The progression between the stages is seen as driven by natural selection in the service of enhanced cognitive operations for biological problem solving under changing anatomical, behavioural, environmental and social conditions. The paper draws on a range of evidence and leading ideas from archaeology, paleoanthropology and primatology.

Comparative cognition; Human evolution; Evolutionary psychology; NSM; Language of Thought (LOT); Chimpanzee cognition

(2014) Various languages – Semantic fieldwork

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1), 80-126. DOI: 10.1075/sl.38.1.03god

The main goal of paper is to show how NSM findings about lexical universals (semantic primes) can be applied to semantic analysis in little-described languages. It is argued that using lexical universals as a vocabulary for semantic analysis allows one to formulate meaning descriptions that are rigorous, cognitively authentic, maximally translatable, and free from Anglocentrism.

A second goal is to shed light on methodological issues in semantic fieldwork by interrogating some controversial claims about the Dalabon and Pirahã languages. We argue that reductive paraphrase into lexical universals provides a practical procedure for arriving at coherent interpretations of unfamiliar lexical meanings. Other indigenous/endangered languages discussed include East Cree, Arrernte, Kayardild, Karuk, and Maori.

We urge field linguists to take the NSM metalanguage, based on lexical universals, into the field with them, both as an aid to lexicogrammatical documentation and analysis and as a way to improve semantic communication with consultants.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , , ,

(2014) Words and meanings [BOOK]

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

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001

Abstract:

This book presents a series of systematic, empirically based studies of word meanings. Each chapter investigates key expressions drawn from different domains of the lexicon – concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The examples chosen are complex and culturally important; the languages represented include English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay. The authors ground their discussions in real examples and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama’s writings on happiness.

The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics and a discussion of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology, which is used in all chapters. The discussion includes a wide range of methodological and analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates.

Table of contents:

  1. Words, meaning, and methodology
  2. Men, women, and children: The semantics of basic social categories
  3. Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective
  4. From “colour words” to visual semantics: English, Russian, Warlpiri
  5. Happiness and human values in cross-cultural and historical perspective
  6. Pain: Is it a human universal? The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics
  7. Suggesting, apologising, complimenting: English speech act verbs
  8. A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay
  9. The meaning of abstract nouns: Locke, Bentham and contemporary semantics
  10. Broader perspectives: Beyond lexical semantics

More information:

Chapter 3 builds on: NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic perspective (2007)
Chapter 4 builds on: Why there are no “colour universals” in language and thought (2008)
Chapter 5 builds on: “Happiness” in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective (2004); The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research (2010); What’s wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück and sčas’te (2011)
Chapter 6 builds on: Is pain a human universal? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective on pain (2012)
Chapter 8 builds on an unpublished English original translated in Russian as: 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)] (2009)

The proverbs explicated in Chapter 8 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’.

Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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

(2014) English, Cantonese, Polish – Interjections

Goddard, Cliff (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63.

DOI: 10.1177/1754073913491843

Abstract:

All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings), and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how the NSM approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , , , , , , , ,