Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics

Title
Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics
Publication Date
2008
Author(s)
Goddard, Cliff
Wierzbicka, Anna
Editor
Editor(s): María de los Ángeles Gómez González, J Lachlan Mackenzie, Elsa M. González Álvarez
Type of document
Book Chapter
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Place of publication
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Edition
1
Series
Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics
UNE publication id
une:5973
Abstract
This study sets out to demonstrate that the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes provides a stable language-neutral medium for fine-grained contrastive semantic analysis, in both the lexical and grammatical domains. The lexical examples are drawn from "yearning-missing" words in English, Polish, Russian and Spanish, while the grammatical examples contrast the Spanish diminutive with the hypocoristic "diminutive" of Australian English. We show that the technique of explication (reductive paraphrase) into semantic primes makes it possible to pin down subtle meaning differences which cannot be captured using normal translation or grammatical labels. Explications for the Polish, Russian and Spanish examples are presented both in English and in the language concerned, thus establishing that the metalanguage being used is transposable across languages.
Link
Citation
Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives, p. 205-226
ISBN
9027215715
9789027215710
Start page
205
End page
226

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