Asc Page 9 – nsm-approach.net

(2020) English, French – Laughing with others

Goddard, Cliff, & Kerry Mullan (2020). Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humor studies). Humor, 33(1), 55-77.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2017-0114

Abstract:

This study undertakes a contrastive lexical-semantic analysis of a set of related verbs in English and French (English to joke and to kid, French rigoler and plaisanter), using the NSM approach to semantic analysis. We show that the semantic and conceptual differences between French and English are greater than commonly assumed. These differences, we argue, have significant implications for humor studies: first, they shed light on different cultural orientations towards “laughter talk” in Anglo and French linguacultures; second, they highlight the danger of conceptual Anglocentrism in relying on English-specific words as a theoretical vocabulary for humor studies.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2020) English – Cultural key words

Goddard, Cliff (2020). ‘Country’, ‘land’, ‘nation’: Key Anglo English words for talking and thinking about people in places. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 1(2), 8-27.

Abstract:

This is a corpus-assisted, lexical-semantic study of the English words ‘country’, ‘land’ and ‘nation’, using the NSM technique of paraphrase in terms of simple, cross-translatable words. The importance of these words and their derivatives in Anglophone public and political discourses is obvious. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that without the support of words like these, discourses of nationalism, patriotism, immigration, international affairs, land rights, and post/anti-colonialism would be literally impossible.

The study builds on Anna Wierzbicka’s (1997) seminal study of “homeland” and related concepts in European languages, as well as more recent NSM work that has explored ways in which discursively powerful words encapsulate historically and culturally contingent assumptions about relationships between people and places. The primary focus is on conceptual analysis, lexical polysemy, phraseology and discursive formation in mainstream Anglo English, but the study also touches on one specifically Australian phenomenon, which is the use of country in a distinctive sense which originated in Aboriginal English, e.g. in expressions like my grandfather’s country and looking after country. This highlights how Anglo English words can be semantically “re-purposed” in postcolonial and anti-colonial discourses.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2019) English, Goemai – Direct and indirect speech

Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka (2019). Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In Alessandro Capone, Manuel García-Carpintero, & Alessandra Falzone (Eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics in the world languages (pp. 173-199). Cham: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9

Abstract:

The new interpretations of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ speech presented in this chapter are framed using simple and cross-translatable words and phrases, i.e. using a language that is transparent both to linguists and to the speakers whose ways of speaking the analyst is trying to understand.

In relation to ‘direct speech’, the authors present linguistic generalizations about two forms of quoted speech, which, they claim, are very likely to be found in all languages of the world. The semantics of logophoric constructions in West African languages are examined next, with particular reference to Goemai, which has been claimed to have no direct speech. It is argued instead that logophoric constructions in Goemai are forms of direct speech on any reasonable, semantically-based definition and that, until proof of the contrary, direct speech is a language universal.

The final part of the paper is about ‘indirect speech’, focusing on the English say that… construction.

An overall theme of the paper is that specialized and hybrid forms of reported speech, including logophoric speech, reflect cultural concerns and practices.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2019) Dene – NSM primes

Holden, Josh (2019). Semantic primes in Denesųłiné: In search of some lexical “universals”. International Journal of American Linguistics, 85(1), 75-121.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/700319

Abstract:

This study examines whether the semantic primes of NSM are attested in Denesųłiné (Athabaskan, Northern Canada; aka Dene). It argues that some of them are problematic, including (BE) SOMEWHERE, BAD, MOMENT, FEEL, KIND, and PART. Dene seems not to express partonymy and typonymy via abstract lexical items. This article suggests improvements to NSM in light of the Dene data and reflects on how semantic decomposition approaches like NSM can improve the documentation and analysis of this language.

Rating:


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

(2013) Balinese – Reduplicated verbs

Sudipa, I Nengah (2013). Full-reduplication Balinese verbs: A semantic view. Lingual: Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2). DOI: 10.24843/LJLC.2013.v01.i02.p04. PDF (open access)

Balinese full-reduplication verbs are common in everyday life, and therefore can be found in any text written in Balinese. This article aims at describing the meaning of reduplicated forms such as kituk-kituk and lier-lier. The data was taken from Balinese newspapers and analyzed according to the principles of the NSM approach. The results show that reduplicated forms can signal (a) increased emphasis, e.g. anggut-anggut; (b) repetition, e.g. kauk-kauk; (c) a new meaning (when the root or single form does not exist in Balinese), e.g. sidap-sidap. NSM manages to coherently and systematically account for each of these.

(2015) Indonesian – Emotion verbs

Mulyadi (2015). Categorization of emotion verbs in Bahasa Indonesia. Proceedings of the International Seminar “Language Maintenance and Shift” V (pp. 95-99).

(2014) Indonesian, Asahan Malay – Emotion verbs

Mulyadi (2014). Semantics of emotion verbs in Bahasa Indonesia and Asahan Malay language. Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on “Empowering Local Wisdom in Support of National Identity” (pp. 225-232).

(2013) Asahan Malay – Emotions (fear)

Mulyadi (2013). Verba “mirip takut” dalam Bahasa Melayu Asahan [Fear-like verbs in Asahan Malay]. International Seminar “Language Maintenance and Shift III”. 331-335.

(2009) Indonesian – Verbs

Mulyadi (2009). Kategori dan peran semantis verba dalam Bahasa Indonesia [Semantic categories and roles of verbs in Indonesian]. Logat: Jurnal Ilmiah Bahasa dan Sastra, 5(1), 56-65.

(2000) Indonesian – Verbs

Mulyadi (2000). Struktur semantis verba Bahasa Indonesia [The semantic structure of verbs in Indonesian]. Linguistika, 13, 40-52.

(1998) Indonesian – Verbs

Mulyadi (1998). Struktur semantis verba Bahasa Indonesia [The semantic structure of verbs in Indonesian]. Master’s thesis, Universitas Udayana, Denpasar.

 

(2006) Indonesian – Introduction to NSM

Mulyadi & Siregar, Rumnasari K. (2006). Aplikasi teori Metabahasa Makna Alami dalam kajian makna [Application of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to the study of meaning]. Logat: Jurnal Ilmiah Bahasa dan Sastra 2(2), 69-75. PDF (open access)

This article describes the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach and provides illustrations involving Indonesian verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The aim is to explain some of the basic concepts of the theory and some of its research procedures. Semantic properties of a word are explored by means of syntactic and semantic evidence. The illustrations show that the approach can unpack the complex meanings of words that are related semantically to understand their similarities and differences.

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

(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

See also:

(1998) Indonesian – Emotions (shame)

Mulyadi (1998). Makna malu dalam Bahasa Indonesia (Kajian “wacana kebudayaan”) [Shame-related meanings in Bahasa Indonesia (A study in “cultural discourse”)]. Linguistika, 6, 46-57.

Written in Indonesian.

This article discusses the meaning of malu in Indonesian. The two problems the author focuses on are the semantic description of malu and
its socio-cultural aspects. The analysis is based on the “cultural scripts” approach. The results show that the semantic explication of malu in prototypical scripts involves components such as ‘thinking, ‘feeling’, ‘wanting’, and ‘seeing’, while the sociocultural aspects include the norm of politeness in speaking as well as social relationships like intimacy and non-intimacy.


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

See also: , ,

(2005) Emotions: happiness

Chruszczewski, Piotr P. & Sip, Kamila (2005). Happy, happy people, czyli o gramatyce komunikacyjnej skryptów kulturowojęzykowych współczesnego Europejczyka [Happy, happy people, or the communicative grammar of contemporary European cultural and linguistic scripts]. In Anna Duszak & Nina Pawlak (Eds.), Anatomia szczęścia: Emocje pozytywne w językach i kulturach świata (pp. 207-216). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.

(1994) Semantics [ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY]

Goddard, Cliff (1994). Semantics. In Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior: Vol. 4 (pp. 109-120). New York: Academic Press.

(2018) English – Cultural scripts, pedagogical scripts

Sadow, Lauren (2018). Can cultural scripts be used for teaching interactional norms? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 91-116. DOI: 10.1075/aral.17030.sad

Although improving the teaching of invisible culture is a recognized need in the TESOL sector, no systematic approach has been developed yet for this purpose, in spite of scholarly calls for a more nuanced focus in classrooms and evidence that teachers are willing to apply such an approach. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between theory and pedagogical need by suggesting that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a useful tool in ELT through which resources for teachers and learners can be developed. In particular, it discusses the results of a pilot study into using cultural scripts to teach cultural norms, demonstrating how they can be applied to classroom teaching situations, and discussing how materials can be developed from the theories.


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

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