Anna Wierzbicka
"According to Izard and Buechler (1980:168), the fundamental emotions are 1. interest 2 joy 3 surprise 4 sadness 5 anger 6 disgust 7 contempt 8 fear 9 shame/shyness and 10 guilt."
"English terms of emotion constitute a folk taxonomy, not an objective, culture-free analytical framework, so obviously we cannot assume that English words such as disgust, fear, or shame are clues to universal human concepts or to basic psychological realities. Yet words such as these are usually treated as if they were objective, culture-free 'natural kinds'."
Polish words tesknota and teskknic:
"X teskni do Y -->
X thinks something like this:
I am far away from Y
when I was with Y I felt something good
I want to be with Y now
if I were with Y now I would feel something good
I cannot be with Y now
because of this, X feels something bad.
"Several English words may come to mind as potential translation equivalents of the Polish word (homesick, long, miss, pine, nostalgia) but they all differ from another and from the Polish term as well."
"Both everyday speech and psychologically sensitive literature are full of attempts, often highly successful, to convey feelings for which there is no simple word."
"What is really important, I think, is that the feelings of lek and of tesknota are not sufficently salient in our American culture to have merited lexicalization...lexical differences between lek and guilt, or between tesknic and miss, may not only reflect but also encourage different, culture-specific, modes of hinking and feeling.
Are there any emotion concepts which have been lexically recognized as distinct and identifiable in all languages of the world?
The evidence available suggests that there are no such emotions."
Comparison of the English disgust and the French degout:
Izard (1969) reports that French and American children show very similar patterns of growth of recognition of individual emotions with age. He notes, however, that with respect to disgust there is an unexpected difference: the French slightly exceed the Americans at most age levels. Izard tries to explain this puzzling fact in terms of greater emphasis placed on the culinary art in French culture:"
"...the English word disgust encodes a feeling caused by 'bad and ugly' human actions (or their results), not by food as such. This is not to deny that the English concept 'disgust' contains a reference to 'something like bad taste and an impulse to get something out of one's mouth', but in 'disgust' this reference serves only as a simile."
"From an ENglish speaker's point of view, shame and fear are two different emotions. But form the point of view of speakers of Gidjingali, apparentky they are not, because both are seen in terms of the same impulse to retreat."
"Many languages of the world (for example, Korean, Ewe in West Africa, and JKuman in Papua) don't lexically distinguish shame and embarrassment. In fact, the same word also seems to be applied to situations in which English would use the word shy rather than either embarrassed or ashamed."
"...some tests showed that pre-literate subjects in New Guinea failed to distinguish between fear and surprise."
Showing posts with label lexical semantics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lexical semantics. Show all posts
Monday, May 25, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Bodies and their parts: an NSM approach to semantic typology
anna wierzbicka
She proposes that all languages have a word for "hands" and "head."
She's angry!
"To say that some far-away language has no word for 'hands' just because it uses the same word for 'hands' and (roughly) 'arms is like saying that Russian has no word for 'hands' becasue the Russian word ruki can mean eitehr 'hands' or (roughly) 'arms': or that English has no word for 'head' (as a body part) because the English word 'head' can also be used in some otehr senses."
"Ultimately, the only way to establish whether a wrd is polysemous or not is to show what the hypothetical 'gerneal' or 'vague' meaning might be."
"...while many concepts are language- and culture-sepcific, the concept of BODY is universal, just as the concepts of KNOW and THINK are universal."
"The hallmark of the NSM system is that meanings are represented in a tightly constrained, yet expressively flexible, "mini-language" of empirically established universal semantic primes along with ethir inherent universal grammar."
"It is or aspires to be a formal semantic metalanguage based on natural language."
"Crucially, an NSM explication is intended as a conceptual representation as well as a semantic one: what is of interest to NSM is not just formal elegance or ingenuity, but the psychological reality."
"The concept of ;mind'...is highly language specific...But 'body' as a conceptual universal has so far passed all rigorous semantic testing with flying colors."
"The words for KNOW and THINK are likely to be polysemous in many languages of the world, including Papua New Guinea and Australia, but this does not undermine their status as coneptual universals."
"...human hands mediate to a very large extent, between the world and the human mind."
"Hands are far too important in human cognition to be conceived of as two flaps at the end of people's arms: they are universally conceived of as two parts of the body...--they are not mediated via the conept of 'arm'."
"To say that some langauges do not have a word for hands may have a certain shock value, but there is a difference between shock value and truth value."
The concepts of head, arms, and legs are determined by their shape (round, long). The conept of hands is not determined by their shape.
allolexy: "two differentw ords (or morphemes) may function in different contexts as two lexical variants of the same ismple meaning."
She compares polish and english concepts of hands, feet, and fingers.
"...both the words for 'body' and the word for 'hands' can be polysemous (as can of course be the word for 'part') but this should not prevent us form recognizing the universality of these concepts as distinct word-meanings."
"The body is not just a "physical universal'...it is almost certainly a conceptual universal. It is a shared human yardstick for interpreting the world."
She proposes that all languages have a word for "hands" and "head."
She's angry!
"To say that some far-away language has no word for 'hands' just because it uses the same word for 'hands' and (roughly) 'arms is like saying that Russian has no word for 'hands' becasue the Russian word ruki can mean eitehr 'hands' or (roughly) 'arms': or that English has no word for 'head' (as a body part) because the English word 'head' can also be used in some otehr senses."
"Ultimately, the only way to establish whether a wrd is polysemous or not is to show what the hypothetical 'gerneal' or 'vague' meaning might be."
"...while many concepts are language- and culture-sepcific, the concept of BODY is universal, just as the concepts of KNOW and THINK are universal."
"The hallmark of the NSM system is that meanings are represented in a tightly constrained, yet expressively flexible, "mini-language" of empirically established universal semantic primes along with ethir inherent universal grammar."
"It is or aspires to be a formal semantic metalanguage based on natural language."
"Crucially, an NSM explication is intended as a conceptual representation as well as a semantic one: what is of interest to NSM is not just formal elegance or ingenuity, but the psychological reality."
"The concept of ;mind'...is highly language specific...But 'body' as a conceptual universal has so far passed all rigorous semantic testing with flying colors."
"The words for KNOW and THINK are likely to be polysemous in many languages of the world, including Papua New Guinea and Australia, but this does not undermine their status as coneptual universals."
"...human hands mediate to a very large extent, between the world and the human mind."
"Hands are far too important in human cognition to be conceived of as two flaps at the end of people's arms: they are universally conceived of as two parts of the body...--they are not mediated via the conept of 'arm'."
"To say that some langauges do not have a word for hands may have a certain shock value, but there is a difference between shock value and truth value."
The concepts of head, arms, and legs are determined by their shape (round, long). The conept of hands is not determined by their shape.
allolexy: "two differentw ords (or morphemes) may function in different contexts as two lexical variants of the same ismple meaning."
She compares polish and english concepts of hands, feet, and fingers.
"...both the words for 'body' and the word for 'hands' can be polysemous (as can of course be the word for 'part') but this should not prevent us form recognizing the universality of these concepts as distinct word-meanings."
"The body is not just a "physical universal'...it is almost certainly a conceptual universal. It is a shared human yardstick for interpreting the world."
body part categorization in punjabi
asifa majid
"..there may be key ways in whic languages differ in both the categorization of the body into parts, and in how these parts are related to one another."
"Is categorization the same between individuals, either as a result of innate concepts, or regularities in the perceptual array? Or, is human categorization arbitrary--a matter of cultural or linguistic convention?" Dr. Riddle said "it's obvious that it's some of both."
"Unlike many other objects, the body is the same around the world ... So, we might expect that categories for parts of the body would be the same everywhere. But PUnjabi speakers show some interesting differences in how parts of the body are categorized in comparison with other languages in this volume, suggesting that body part categorization is not universal."
In Punjabi, "there is a category of internal body part which has no anatomical correlate."
"The use of multiple terms is probably a function of the pervasive multidialectism of PUnjabi speakers (Bhatia, 1993) which is discussed more in the next section."
"There are 2 grammatical genders in Punjabi: masculine and feminine...Where a body part term freely occurs with either the masculine or the feminine form...[both terms are given]."
"masculine gender represents a bigger size (both actual and speaker's perception) than the feminine." (But leg is feminine and it's very large)
There are 5 different words for face. "The terms are extensionally equivalent covering the oval-shaped area on the fornt of the head not including the neck or the ears. But the term muu difefrs here in that it is ambiguous in reference between the whole 'face' and just the 'mouth'...Despite its ambiguity and the lack of ambiguity associated with other terms for face, muu is the common word used in everyday speech to refer to face."
"Buttha (masculine) and butthi (feminine) are used with negative connnotation...used to refer to someone sulking or in a bad mood." Can be used as a term of endearment.
"The use of masculine indicates that the face is even bigger, and correspondingly that the emotional state of the eprson is more intense."
"Marshellese, an Austronesian language, was the only example in Brown and Witkowski (1981) found in a sample of 118 languages which equates the pupil with astar. To this sole example, we can add PUnjabi, as well as Hindi and Urdu, as examples of languages which use the expression 'the star of the eye' to refer to the pupil."
"A distinction is made between the living body and the dead body, meiyet."
There are many Hindi-Urdu loanwords for body parts in Punjabi.
"There are 2 terms to refer to the shoulder--moDa and kenda. MoDa can refer to the side of the shoulder, whereas kenda cannot So, while it is possible to describe bumping into someone as MoDa marna (lit. 'shoulder hit')," you can't say kenda marna. "MoDa does not exclusively refer to the side of the shoulder, however as when things are carried on the shoulder they can be described as moDe te cuk (lit. shoulders on carry') or kende te cuk (lit. 'shoulders on carry'), suggesting that both terms can be used to refer to the shoulder as a whole." Asher says they refer to the same thing, but aee form different languages.
"There is large variation in the extension people give for the terms referring to the back."
"Both fingers are toes are referred to as Ungli, but its primary sense is 'finger' and not 'digit.' There is converging evidence to support this interpretation. First, consultants say that there 10 Unglia, not 20, as would be expected if the term denotes 'digit' and not the 'finger.'
"The clitoris is referred to as the phephondi danna. It is unclear what phephondi means, but danna is used to refer to a single grain of rice, or a single bean, or a single pea." Similar to French.
"The womb is the becce dani 'child pot.'"
folk taxonomy: "The most striking thing about the Punjabi body lexicon for internal parts, is that there is a term for a body part which does not exist taxonomically. The keddi is believed to be an organ which is located at the bottom of the sternum. It is said to be about the size of a small egg, and like an egg oval in shape."
"xiphoid process...folk theory...there is a collective 'delusion' about its new location that is not accompanied by any perceptual evidence....the keddi is believed to exist only in humans."
the splayed hand is a measuring unit
"The 2 emblematic gestures under discussion are "begging gestures"...The single cupped hand is used when there is a direct appeal being made to the person; whereas the dual cupped hands are used when the appeal is being made indirectly via God."
"The term for 'sou' is ru..."
"The ru is incorporeal, while the body is corporeal, so consultants claimed that the ru cannot be a part of teh body."
"Punjabi data suggest that both types of conceptualizations exist side by side: a small set of body parts are conceptualized as forming part-whole relations, namely the limbs; while most other body parts are conceptualized as being in a locative relation."
"..there may be key ways in whic languages differ in both the categorization of the body into parts, and in how these parts are related to one another."
"Is categorization the same between individuals, either as a result of innate concepts, or regularities in the perceptual array? Or, is human categorization arbitrary--a matter of cultural or linguistic convention?" Dr. Riddle said "it's obvious that it's some of both."
"Unlike many other objects, the body is the same around the world ... So, we might expect that categories for parts of the body would be the same everywhere. But PUnjabi speakers show some interesting differences in how parts of the body are categorized in comparison with other languages in this volume, suggesting that body part categorization is not universal."
In Punjabi, "there is a category of internal body part which has no anatomical correlate."
"The use of multiple terms is probably a function of the pervasive multidialectism of PUnjabi speakers (Bhatia, 1993) which is discussed more in the next section."
"There are 2 grammatical genders in Punjabi: masculine and feminine...Where a body part term freely occurs with either the masculine or the feminine form...[both terms are given]."
"masculine gender represents a bigger size (both actual and speaker's perception) than the feminine." (But leg is feminine and it's very large)
There are 5 different words for face. "The terms are extensionally equivalent covering the oval-shaped area on the fornt of the head not including the neck or the ears. But the term muu difefrs here in that it is ambiguous in reference between the whole 'face' and just the 'mouth'...Despite its ambiguity and the lack of ambiguity associated with other terms for face, muu is the common word used in everyday speech to refer to face."
"Buttha (masculine) and butthi (feminine) are used with negative connnotation...used to refer to someone sulking or in a bad mood." Can be used as a term of endearment.
"The use of masculine indicates that the face is even bigger, and correspondingly that the emotional state of the eprson is more intense."
"Marshellese, an Austronesian language, was the only example in Brown and Witkowski (1981) found in a sample of 118 languages which equates the pupil with astar. To this sole example, we can add PUnjabi, as well as Hindi and Urdu, as examples of languages which use the expression 'the star of the eye' to refer to the pupil."
"A distinction is made between the living body and the dead body, meiyet."
There are many Hindi-Urdu loanwords for body parts in Punjabi.
"There are 2 terms to refer to the shoulder--moDa and kenda. MoDa can refer to the side of the shoulder, whereas kenda cannot So, while it is possible to describe bumping into someone as MoDa marna (lit. 'shoulder hit')," you can't say kenda marna. "MoDa does not exclusively refer to the side of the shoulder, however as when things are carried on the shoulder they can be described as moDe te cuk (lit. shoulders on carry') or kende te cuk (lit. 'shoulders on carry'), suggesting that both terms can be used to refer to the shoulder as a whole." Asher says they refer to the same thing, but aee form different languages.
"There is large variation in the extension people give for the terms referring to the back."
"Both fingers are toes are referred to as Ungli, but its primary sense is 'finger' and not 'digit.' There is converging evidence to support this interpretation. First, consultants say that there 10 Unglia, not 20, as would be expected if the term denotes 'digit' and not the 'finger.'
"The clitoris is referred to as the phephondi danna. It is unclear what phephondi means, but danna is used to refer to a single grain of rice, or a single bean, or a single pea." Similar to French.
"The womb is the becce dani 'child pot.'"
folk taxonomy: "The most striking thing about the Punjabi body lexicon for internal parts, is that there is a term for a body part which does not exist taxonomically. The keddi is believed to be an organ which is located at the bottom of the sternum. It is said to be about the size of a small egg, and like an egg oval in shape."
"xiphoid process...folk theory...there is a collective 'delusion' about its new location that is not accompanied by any perceptual evidence....the keddi is believed to exist only in humans."
the splayed hand is a measuring unit
"The 2 emblematic gestures under discussion are "begging gestures"...The single cupped hand is used when there is a direct appeal being made to the person; whereas the dual cupped hands are used when the appeal is being made indirectly via God."
"The term for 'sou' is ru..."
"The ru is incorporeal, while the body is corporeal, so consultants claimed that the ru cannot be a part of teh body."
"Punjabi data suggest that both types of conceptualizations exist side by side: a small set of body parts are conceptualized as forming part-whole relations, namely the limbs; while most other body parts are conceptualized as being in a locative relation."
semanticategories of cutting and breaking: some final thoughts
john r. taylor
"The studies reported in this special issue exemplify two approaches to semantic typology and to the study of word meaning more generally...It is encouraging that these very different approaches partition the verbs of material seperation in roughly compatible ways...Attention is drawn to the fact that in general the cut and break verbs seem not to display much taxonomic depth, a finding which is in stark contrast to the often elaborate taxonomies exhibited by nominal concepts."
"MacLaury used the follwoing data elicitation procedures:
i. naming...
ii. focal reference...
iii.mapping...
These procedures deliver different kinds of data:
i. elicits the basic color terms of the langauge
ii. elicits the prototypical exemplar of each color term
iii. elicits the extensional range of each color term."
onomasiological: "(What do you call this?")
semasiological: ("What can this word refer to?")
'Appeal to mapping data also makes it possible to identify various kinds of semantic relation between words, such as taxonomic inclusion, synonymy, overlap (or partial synonymy), and contrast."
"The papers in this issue suggest that C&B verbs do not, in general, display any great degree of taxonomic depth, or indeed, in some cases, any kind of taxonomic structure at all."
"The studies reported in this special issue exemplify two approaches to semantic typology and to the study of word meaning more generally...It is encouraging that these very different approaches partition the verbs of material seperation in roughly compatible ways...Attention is drawn to the fact that in general the cut and break verbs seem not to display much taxonomic depth, a finding which is in stark contrast to the often elaborate taxonomies exhibited by nominal concepts."
"MacLaury used the follwoing data elicitation procedures:
i. naming...
ii. focal reference...
iii.mapping...
These procedures deliver different kinds of data:
i. elicits the basic color terms of the langauge
ii. elicits the prototypical exemplar of each color term
iii. elicits the extensional range of each color term."
onomasiological: "(What do you call this?")
semasiological: ("What can this word refer to?")
'Appeal to mapping data also makes it possible to identify various kinds of semantic relation between words, such as taxonomic inclusion, synonymy, overlap (or partial synonymy), and contrast."
"The papers in this issue suggest that C&B verbs do not, in general, display any great degree of taxonomic depth, or indeed, in some cases, any kind of taxonomic structure at all."
'He cut-break the rope': encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in mandarin
Jidong Chen
"Mandarin categorizes cutting and breaking events on the basis of fine semantic distinctions in the causal action and the caused result."
"3 semantically different types of predicates can be identified: verbs denoting the C&B action subevent, verbs encoding the C&B result subevent, and resultative verb compounds (RVC) that encode both the action and the result subevents."
qie1-duan4
cut.eith.single.blade-be.broken
"The 1st verb (V1) of the RVC, qie1, encodes only the sub-event of the cutting action while the second verb (V@), duan4, encodes the state change of being broken that results from the cutting action."
"I show that Mandarin supports the proposed universal distinction between C&B verbs . . ., but Mandarin C&B verbs differ crucially from the English cut and break in their semantics and argument structure, and the two-way distinction of C&B verbs should be broadened to include a third type of C&B verb, the RVC."
"C&B RVC verbs are semantically compositional. As a whole, they entail a state change, which is indefeasible..."
"...the verb expressing the causal act always precedes the verb expressing the state change . . . no NP can intervene between the constituent verbs..." ungrammatical: qie1 (rope) duan4
"So the state change that is entailed by a monomorphemic verb like cut or break in ENglish is defeasible for Mandarin C&B verbs, as in (5): I qie1 the rope, but rope not duan4 (canceling the action)
"Mandarin C&B verbs encode the causal sub-event and leave lexicalization of the resulting event to an additional verb."
"In contrast, ENglish monomorphemic C&B verbs lexicalize--hence, entail--the resulting event."
"Both English C&B verbs and Mandarin C&B RVCs are telic. But the former are compatible with the progressive aspect, the use of which switches the focus to the process leading up to the state change. In contrast, Mandarin C&B RVCs are incompatible with progressive aspect: they focus only on the endpoint of the event (Tai 1984) and they present the event as a non-decomposable whole (Li and SHirai 2000; Smith 1997)."
"Correspondence analysis revealed 5 distinct clusters of C&B causal events and the Mandarin verns used to describe them:
1. Cutting with scissor(-like) (2-bladed) instrument (e.g. nail clippers, pliers)...thsi distinction is not universal...
2. Cutting with single-blade(-like) instrument...
3. Breaking with hammer(-like) instrument...
4. Pulling on flexible 2-D object (e.g. cloth, paper) with hands or a hand(-like) instrument...'tear, rip'.
5. Bending or pulling on a linear (usually rigid) object (e.g. stick, carrot) with hands or a handlike instrument."
Mandarin C&B action verbs can be distinguished by the instrument and the manner.
"Mandarin does not have an overarching generic verb like cut that can be used across events like slicing, hacking, chopping, trimming, and sawing. Rather, a specific C&B verb must be selected on the basis of the manner or instrumet involved."
'These result verbs can be seen to differentiate C&B events along the following semantic distinctions:
-feature os the affected object (linear objects vs. others).
state or degree of being broken (e.g. sui4 'be in pieces' vs. po4 'be broken')
direction of seperation: cross wise vs. in some other direction (e.g., duan4 'be broken (of long objects broken crosswise').
7b apple qie1 le
The apple cut
"Sentences like 7b resemble the inchoative construction superficially, since the affected object appears in the subject position and the cause is left unexpressed. But such sentences are not real inchoatives."
"Result verbs resemble English breka verbs to some degree: both specify a state or state change but leave the causing subevent open; both can appear in the inchoative construction. But Mandarin result verbs differ crucially from English break verbs in that they cannot be directly used as causatives."
"Mandarin categorizes cutting and breaking events on the basis of fine semantic distinctions in the causal action and the caused result."
"3 semantically different types of predicates can be identified: verbs denoting the C&B action subevent, verbs encoding the C&B result subevent, and resultative verb compounds (RVC) that encode both the action and the result subevents."
qie1-duan4
cut.eith.single.blade-be.broken
"The 1st verb (V1) of the RVC, qie1, encodes only the sub-event of the cutting action while the second verb (V@), duan4, encodes the state change of being broken that results from the cutting action."
"I show that Mandarin supports the proposed universal distinction between C&B verbs . . ., but Mandarin C&B verbs differ crucially from the English cut and break in their semantics and argument structure, and the two-way distinction of C&B verbs should be broadened to include a third type of C&B verb, the RVC."
"C&B RVC verbs are semantically compositional. As a whole, they entail a state change, which is indefeasible..."
"...the verb expressing the causal act always precedes the verb expressing the state change . . . no NP can intervene between the constituent verbs..." ungrammatical: qie1 (rope) duan4
"So the state change that is entailed by a monomorphemic verb like cut or break in ENglish is defeasible for Mandarin C&B verbs, as in (5): I qie1 the rope, but rope not duan4 (canceling the action)
"Mandarin C&B verbs encode the causal sub-event and leave lexicalization of the resulting event to an additional verb."
"In contrast, ENglish monomorphemic C&B verbs lexicalize--hence, entail--the resulting event."
"Both English C&B verbs and Mandarin C&B RVCs are telic. But the former are compatible with the progressive aspect, the use of which switches the focus to the process leading up to the state change. In contrast, Mandarin C&B RVCs are incompatible with progressive aspect: they focus only on the endpoint of the event (Tai 1984) and they present the event as a non-decomposable whole (Li and SHirai 2000; Smith 1997)."
"Correspondence analysis revealed 5 distinct clusters of C&B causal events and the Mandarin verns used to describe them:
1. Cutting with scissor(-like) (2-bladed) instrument (e.g. nail clippers, pliers)...thsi distinction is not universal...
2. Cutting with single-blade(-like) instrument...
3. Breaking with hammer(-like) instrument...
4. Pulling on flexible 2-D object (e.g. cloth, paper) with hands or a hand(-like) instrument...'tear, rip'.
5. Bending or pulling on a linear (usually rigid) object (e.g. stick, carrot) with hands or a handlike instrument."
Mandarin C&B action verbs can be distinguished by the instrument and the manner.
"Mandarin does not have an overarching generic verb like cut that can be used across events like slicing, hacking, chopping, trimming, and sawing. Rather, a specific C&B verb must be selected on the basis of the manner or instrumet involved."
'These result verbs can be seen to differentiate C&B events along the following semantic distinctions:
-feature os the affected object (linear objects vs. others).
state or degree of being broken (e.g. sui4 'be in pieces' vs. po4 'be broken')
direction of seperation: cross wise vs. in some other direction (e.g., duan4 'be broken (of long objects broken crosswise').
7b apple qie1 le
The apple cut
"Sentences like 7b resemble the inchoative construction superficially, since the affected object appears in the subject position and the cause is left unexpressed. But such sentences are not real inchoatives."
"Result verbs resemble English breka verbs to some degree: both specify a state or state change but leave the causing subevent open; both can appear in the inchoative construction. But Mandarin result verbs differ crucially from English break verbs in that they cannot be directly used as causatives."
The Semantic Categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective
Asifa Majid, Melissa Bowerman, Miriam Van Staden and James S. Boster
"we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constructed semantic space."
2 views of "the categories associated with everyday words": they "are largley universal. This is because, by hypothesis, they originate in nonlinguistic cognition. . . acquiring basic vocabulary is a process of mapping words to concepts that have already been established on a nonlinguistic basis. The other view: "lexical categories do not reflect shared nonlinguistic cognition directly, but are to some extent linguistic conventions that are free to vary . . ."learning words, even for seemingly universal human experiences and activities, often involves working out language-specific principles of categorization."
"actions of C&B have been central to hominid cognition and culture for more than two million years . . ., which might plead for a degree of universality in the conceptualization of such events."
"On the other hand, preliminary crosslinguistic work ... shows that C&B verbs have intriguingly different extension patterns in different languages."
"...the necessary set of categories may not be obvious to first langauge learners purely on the basis of nonlinguistic experience, but must be learned through exposure to the input language. . . .Children make many errors in their spontaneous speech in referring to events of C&B..."
"There are, then, arguments both for and against the hypothesis that core categories of C&B events are cognitively obvious and universally shared."
"Our central question is how similar the semantic categories of C&B events are across languages."
"The extremes of Dimension 1 are distinguished in all the languages; that is, the events represented to the far left are systematically described with different verbs than those represented to the afr right. Clips at intermediate positions along the dimensiona re reated in different ways by different languages."
"chopping off branch with axe" and "breaking stick with karate chop" are distinguished in English "The common denominator of this categorixzation is the use of a blade (-like) instrument to effect the seperation, regardless of whether it is applied with precise placement or ballistic swing." But in "German: chopping events were routinely classed with events positioned toward the right end of the dimension . . . The common denomiator defining this category is the use of a sharp blow, whether by a bladed implement or a blunt one."
In Sranan, and English-based Carribbean Creole, "Sranan cares more about the nature of teh seperation than about the instrument."
"Events can be distinguished on the basis of how predicatable the location of seperation is in an object (Dimension 1), tearing events are very often honored with a verb of their own (Diemsnion 2), and snapping events are likely to be distinguished from smashing events (DImension 3.
Of course, non eof the langauges categorized C&B events in exactly the same way."
"we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constructed semantic space."
2 views of "the categories associated with everyday words": they "are largley universal. This is because, by hypothesis, they originate in nonlinguistic cognition. . . acquiring basic vocabulary is a process of mapping words to concepts that have already been established on a nonlinguistic basis. The other view: "lexical categories do not reflect shared nonlinguistic cognition directly, but are to some extent linguistic conventions that are free to vary . . ."learning words, even for seemingly universal human experiences and activities, often involves working out language-specific principles of categorization."
"actions of C&B have been central to hominid cognition and culture for more than two million years . . ., which might plead for a degree of universality in the conceptualization of such events."
"On the other hand, preliminary crosslinguistic work ... shows that C&B verbs have intriguingly different extension patterns in different languages."
"...the necessary set of categories may not be obvious to first langauge learners purely on the basis of nonlinguistic experience, but must be learned through exposure to the input language. . . .Children make many errors in their spontaneous speech in referring to events of C&B..."
"There are, then, arguments both for and against the hypothesis that core categories of C&B events are cognitively obvious and universally shared."
"Our central question is how similar the semantic categories of C&B events are across languages."
"The extremes of Dimension 1 are distinguished in all the languages; that is, the events represented to the far left are systematically described with different verbs than those represented to the afr right. Clips at intermediate positions along the dimensiona re reated in different ways by different languages."
"chopping off branch with axe" and "breaking stick with karate chop" are distinguished in English "The common denominator of this categorixzation is the use of a blade (-like) instrument to effect the seperation, regardless of whether it is applied with precise placement or ballistic swing." But in "German: chopping events were routinely classed with events positioned toward the right end of the dimension . . . The common denomiator defining this category is the use of a sharp blow, whether by a bladed implement or a blunt one."
In Sranan, and English-based Carribbean Creole, "Sranan cares more about the nature of teh seperation than about the instrument."
"Events can be distinguished on the basis of how predicatable the location of seperation is in an object (Dimension 1), tearing events are very often honored with a verb of their own (Diemsnion 2), and snapping events are likely to be distinguished from smashing events (DImension 3.
Of course, non eof the langauges categorized C&B events in exactly the same way."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
False friends: their origins and semantics in some selected languages
Pedro J. Chamizo Dominguez, Brigitte Nerlich
False friends come about through semantic change. A word can become specialized, so that its meaning becomes reserved for a smaller domain than the original loanword.
The word camel, when used literally is not a false friend; when used metaphorically, it can be a full false friend. The reasons for this are historical and geographic.
The histories of words such as bano and baigne are quite interesting: Turks used to imprison people in public bathhouses.
Euphemisms can replace earlier literal meanings of words, leading to false friends.
"One could argue that all semantic false friends are cases of (figurative) borrowing (say from Latin and Greek onwards)."-p. 1845
Generally, it seems like languages take words (loanwords) and use them for their specific purposes; as the ways these words are used is different from one language to another, false friends arise. It is similar to the evolutionary phenomenon by which separated animal populations evolve into distinct species over time.
French words chef, maitre, madame.
The study of false friends can illuminate the different ways in which speakers of languages "conceptualize reality."
False friends come about through semantic change. A word can become specialized, so that its meaning becomes reserved for a smaller domain than the original loanword.
The word camel, when used literally is not a false friend; when used metaphorically, it can be a full false friend. The reasons for this are historical and geographic.
The histories of words such as bano and baigne are quite interesting: Turks used to imprison people in public bathhouses.
Euphemisms can replace earlier literal meanings of words, leading to false friends.
"One could argue that all semantic false friends are cases of (figurative) borrowing (say from Latin and Greek onwards)."-p. 1845
Generally, it seems like languages take words (loanwords) and use them for their specific purposes; as the ways these words are used is different from one language to another, false friends arise. It is similar to the evolutionary phenomenon by which separated animal populations evolve into distinct species over time.
French words chef, maitre, madame.
The study of false friends can illuminate the different ways in which speakers of languages "conceptualize reality."
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