Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar PDF full book. Access full book title Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar by Bert Peeters. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Bert Peeters
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027293279
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Get Book
Book Description
This volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka’s groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).
Author: Bert Peeters
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027293279
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Get Book
Book Description
This volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka’s groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
ISBN: 0191588598
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 518
Get Book
Book Description
This book provides a synthesis of Wierzbicka's theory of meaning, which is based on conceptual primitives and semantic universals, using empirical findings from a wide range of languages. While addressed primarily to linguists, the book deals with highly topical and controversial issues of central importance to several disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. - ;Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory which Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and Universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal concepts, as they have emerged from large-scale investigations across a wide range of languages undertaken by the author and her colleagues. On the basis of empirical cross-linguistic studies it vindicates the old notion of the 'psychic unity of mankind', while at the same time offering a framework for the rigorous description of different languages and cultures. - ;A major synthesis of Anna Wierzbicka's work -
Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Get Book
Book Description
Volume one of a set of studies that is founded on the idea that universal grammar is based on - indeed, inseparable from - meaning. The theoretical framework is the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka and developed in collaboration with Cliff Goddard.
Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281866
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Get Book
Book Description
This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.
Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281874
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Get Book
Book Description
This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.
Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004357726
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 373
Get Book
Book Description
These lively lectures introduce the theory, practice and application of a versatile, rigorous and non Anglocentic approach to cross-linguistic semantics. Topics include semantic primes and molecules, emotions, evaluation, verbs and event structure, cultural key words and scripts, language teaching.
Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027291373
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Get Book
Book Description
Cross-linguistic semantics – investigating how languages package and express meanings differently – is central to the linguistic quest to understand the nature of human language. This set of studies explores and demonstrates cross-linguistic semantics as practised in the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework, originated by Anna Wierzbicka. The opening chapters give a state-of-the-art overview of the NSM model, propose several theoretical innovations and advance a number of original analyses in connection with names and naming, clefts and other specificational sentences, and discourse anaphora. Subsequent chapters describe and analyse diverse phenomena in ten languages from multiple families, geographical locations, and cultural settings around the globe. Three substantial studies document how the metalanguage of NSM semantic primes can be realised in languages of widely differing types: Amharic (Ethiopia), Korean, and East Cree. Each constitutes a lexicogrammatical portrait in miniature of the language concerned. Other chapters probe topics such as inalienable possession in Koromu (Papua New Guinea), epistemic verbs in Swedish, hyperpolysemy in Bunuba (Australia), the expression of "momentariness" in Berber, ethnogeometry in Makasai (East Timor), value concepts in Russian, and “virtuous emotions” in Japanese. This book will be valuable for linguists working on language description, lexical semantics, or the semantics of grammar, for advanced students of linguistics, and for others interested in language universals and language diversity.
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286124
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 629
Get Book
Book Description
“The semantics of grammar” presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither “autonomous” nor “arbitrary”, but that it follows from “semantics”. It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.
Author: Bert Peeters
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230919
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book
Book Description
This volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka's groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230196
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 632
Get Book
Book Description
"The semantics of grammar" presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither "autonomous" nor "arbitrary," but that it follows from "semantics." It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.
