NSM semantics

This study is aimed to look at the structure and meaning components of knowledge-type state verbs in Indonesian. The data analysed in this study are the pintar, pandai, cerdas, cermat, cakap, cerdik, mahir, dan terampil. These lexicons were chosen because in the The Great Indonesian Dictionary or Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) it was found that the eight lexicons had vague and rotating meanings, making them very interesting for further analysis. To analyse the data, the method of reading notes and reviewing the literature was used, which was then presented descriptively. The results found in this study are that pintar, pandai, cerdas, cermat, cakap, cerdik, mahir, dan terampil have almost the same structure and semantic components. The difference lies in the level of ability or knowledge contained in each of these lexicons.

The New Testament Greek expression ho huios tou theou 'the Son of God' is frequently used to refer to Jesus in the New Testament and is central to Christian understandings of Jesus' identity. It has a complex meaning, grounded in the different ways in which it is used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus. A crisis emerged in recent decades in Protestant Bible translation over how divine familial terms such as Son and Father are to be translated in Muslim contexts. A behaviourist, anti-cognitivist understanding of meaning was incorporated into Eugene Nida's influential concept of dynamic equivalence and this was one of the key factors that triggered this crisis. A defence is offered here of retaining divine familial terms in Bible translations, drawing upon on an explication of the meaning of ho huios tou theou using an nsm Minimal Languages approach.

This research paper aims to analyze the Swahili action verb "to cut" within the framework of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. The study also seeks to identify other Swahili verbs that share similar semantic correlations. No research has been conducted on the verb "to cut" using the NSM model in Swahili. Therefore, this research is crucial in bridging the gap in the existing literature. Swahili holds a significant position as one of the official languages in Kenya, alongside English, making it prevalent in the region. To achieve the research objectives, a qualitative-descriptive research design methodology was employed. Native Swahili speakers were involved in the study, and selected texts were utilized as data sources. Through self-examination and careful analysis, a total of 22 Swahili verbs were identified to have comparable semantic correlates to the verb "to cut." These verbs include kata, tahirisha, pogoa, tema, katisha, nyofoa, chuna, vunja, kuhasiwa, tenganisha, nyoa, keketa, chanja, punguza, fyeka, pasua, chana, chinja, katika, gawanya, chomoa, and ng'oa. The findings of this study reveal that the Swahili word for "cutting" is derived from the original meaning of "doing" or "happening." In this context, X represents the agent, Y represents the patient, and Z represents the instrument used in the action of cutting. By exploring the semantic relationships of the verb "to cut" and identifying other verbs that share similar patterns, this research sheds light on the versatility and richness of the Swahili language verbs.

This study is aimed to look at the structure and meaning components of knowledge-type state verbs in Indonesian. The data analysed in this study are the pintar, pandai, cerdas, cermat, cakap, cerdik, mahir, dan terampil. These lexicons were chosen because in the The Great Indonesian Dictionary or Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) it was found that the eight lexicons had vague and rotating meanings, making them very interesting for further analysis. To analyse the data, the method of reading notes and reviewing the literature was used, which was then presented descriptively. The results found in this study are that pintar, pandai, cerdas, cermat, cakap, cerdik, mahir, dan terampil have almost the same structure and semantic components. The difference lies in the level of ability or knowledge contained in each of these lexicons.

This thesis investigates a number of issues in the syntax and semantics of Pintupi-Luritja, a Western Desert (Pama-Nyungan) language spoken in Central Australia. Languages of the region have long been noted for their non-configurational character, whereby the role of syntax in determining or constraining grammatical phenomena is uncertain. However this research has largely been restricted to the determination of grammatical functions, and information structural notions. The role of scope for example as a semantic factor with a potential syntactic reflex has been comparatively much less investigated. Based on both original fieldwork and existing materials, in this thesis I investigate a range of topics in Pintupi-Luritja, and to what extent variations in meaning correlate with variations in word order. These topics include negation, focus sensitivity, and modality. These are investigated both as standalone phenomena, as well as how they interact with each other. This work suggests that to differing degrees in different domains, syntax does play an important role in determining how these phenomena interact semantically.
These studies therefore not only provide a deeper description of negation, focus sensitivity, and modality in Pintupi-Luritja, but also informs our understanding of these topics as phenomena of natural language. This in turn has theoretical significance, helping to map out the (limits of) variation in how languages do and don’t encode certain phenomena through syntactic means.

This research paper aims to analyze the Swahili action verb "to cut" within the framework of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. The study also seeks to identify other Swahili verbs that share similar semantic correlations. No research has been conducted on the verb "to cut" using the NSM model in Swahili. Therefore, this research is crucial in bridging the gap in the existing literature. Swahili holds a significant position as one of the official languages in Kenya, alongside English, making it prevalent in the region. To achieve the research objectives, a qualitative-descriptive research design methodology was employed. Native Swahili speakers were involved in the study, and selected texts were utilized as data sources. Through self-examination and careful analysis, a total of 22 Swahili verbs were identified to have comparable semantic correlates to the verb "to cut." These verbs include kata, tahirisha, pogoa, tema, katisha, nyofoa, chuna, vunja, kuhasiwa, tenganisha, nyoa, keketa, chanja, punguza, fyeka, pasua, chana, chinja, katika, gawanya, chomoa, and ng'oa. The findings of this study reveal that the Swahili word for "cutting" is derived from the original meaning of "doing" or "happening." In this context, X represents the agent, Y represents the patient, and Z represents the instrument used in the action of cutting. By exploring the semantic relationships of the verb "to cut" and identifying other verbs that share similar patterns, this research sheds light on the versatility and richness of the Swahili language verbs.

Questo elaborato tratta dell'applicazione del metalinguaggio ideato da Wierzbicka e dal suo team allo studio dell'identità e al suo confronto con l'alterità in un contesto cross-culturale. La questione, da cui questa tesi trae spunto, è essenzialmente lo studio della prospettiva ...

The paper is an attempt to reflect on various aspects of the reversible binomial form of address, a Georgian equivalent of the English formula for addressing an audience Ladies and Gentlemen. The discussions of its constituent terms within the system of Georgian forms of address, of their etymology and semantic development, of some aspects related to its combinability with other terms lay a foundation for establishing explications of both its individual constituent terms and the reversible binomial form of address (including its both feminine-first and masculine-first variants, the ordering principles of which hardly pertaining to a speaker's gender preferences) based on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. All of these aspects of the investigation facilitate identification of various, normally both language-and culture-specific peculiarities of the form and terms in point.

This paper presents a semantic analysis of two epistemic markers in Japanese-chigainai and hazuda. These are often translated as I am sure, must, or should in English, and they indicate the speaker's certainty about the truth or falsehood of a proposition. While chigainai and hazuda are semantically similar, they are not always interchangeable. Thus questions arise about the level of certainty implied by the terms and also about how to articulate their differences. Although certainty is a convenient vehicle for capturing the meaning, it is problematic in explaining the differences between these synonyms since the level of certainty cannot be accurately articulated. Previous studies have attempted to explicate the differences between the two expressions by the use of qualifying terms such as 'firm faith', 'reliable and firm grounds', or 'absolute basis for assertion'. These attempts are also problematic because the definitions they propose are not necessarily consistent with the actual usage of each expression. Alternatively, this paper adopts the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) Theory. It addresses the issue of how to explain the speaker's certainty by using semantic primes. The findings of the study indicate that the semantic differences between chigainai and hazuda are not concerned with the degree of the speaker's certainty. Instead, the meanings of the expressions are illustrated by cognitive scenarios such as 'I can't think not like this', or 'I think that it can't be not like this'. The definitions proposed by this approach clarify the differences between chigainai and hazuda, and more generally serve as a practical guide to the understanding of the epistemic markers in Japanese.

This paper traces the history of 'caring for country' tropes in writing about indigenous Australian land and land management. While 'caring for country' initially referred to dynamic land use and ownership practices, it progressively became a less historical, more primordial, conception of indigenous land ownership, use, and management. In reviewing constructions of 'land' in scholarly literatures and policy debates, I seek to explain how they interact with local indigenous practices and idioms. Drawing on examples from the cultural and linguistic fields of Aṉangu, speakers of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, I examine a variety of concurrent uses of 'country', 'caring', or 'nurturance' and 'caring for country'. A cross-linguistic perspective on these objectificationsin English, Aboriginal English, and central Australian indigenous languagesshows how they may attend selectively to the historical specificity of indigenous experience. But this, I argue, may be the key to their efficacy in intercultural projects. Coded messages in bilingual documents reflect a kind of agency whereby Aṉangu choose to leave equivocal histories unstated and thereby reconstitute government projects in terms that work for them. The referential flexibility around idioms of land and nurturance is a kind of alchemy in language and social life that is the condition of the success of actual land management activities. Terms including 'country' and 'caring for country' elide the socio-political dynamics that otherwise complicate actual rights and uses of land. That is why they can form the social basis of common activities, the production of 'congeniality' both within Aṉangu social life and at the interface with outsiders, in land management and other fields.

What can languages tell us about how people think and feel differently, around the world, about the unexpected? The conviction behind my presentation today is that before we take up this question we would do well to look carefully into a language close to home, namely, English. My main focus is on English "surprise words", such as surprised, amazed, and shocked, with some contrastive reference to Malay. There is a long tradition of NSM studies into emotional meaning and mental states generally. The single most significant work is Anna Wierzbicka's (1999) book Emotions Across Languages and Cultures-itself the culmination of a decade's previous work. I would also like to mention Wierzbicka's (2014) latest book Imprisoned in Englishpertinent to today's Symposium because of its focus on the need to avoid Anglocentrism in the human sciences. In addition to Wierzbicka's work on emotion semantics, which has mainly been on English, Russian, and Polish, a variety of other NSM researchers have undertaken similar studies into a diversity of languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Lao, French, German, Portuguese, Danish, Ewe, Arrernte, Mbula (PNG) and Koromu (PNG). Many of these studies are included in edited collections such as Harkins and Wierzbicka (eds., 2001), Enfield and Wierzbicka (eds., 2002) and Goddard and Ye (eds., in press).

Formal semantics and Natural Semantic Metalanguage are widely held to be radically incompatible as ways to study meaning in naural language. Here I will show that they can to some extent be reconciled. In particular, for linguists working with NSM, formal semantics can be viewed as providing mathematical accounts of some of the same phenomena that NSM studies, such as entailment, and for the formal semanticist, NSM offers a small target in the form of mini-languages that exhibit the essential logico-semantic features of full natural languages, such as extensionality, intensionality and hyperintensionality, and algebraic principles such as transitivity, symmetry etc. or various of the primes. Therefore, although these two approaches are likely to remain distinct enterprises for the foreseeable future, some intercommunication is possible and indeed desirable.

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is the dynamic social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council.  Tjanpi (meaning locally harvested wild grasses) began in 1995 as a series of basket-making workshops facilitated by NPY Women’s Council in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of Western Australia. Women wanted meaningful and culturally appropriate employment on their homelands to better provide for their families. Building upon a long history of using natural fibres to make objects for ceremonial and daily use, women took quickly to coiled basketry and were soon sharing their newly found skills with relatives and friends on neighbouring communities.

Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM), and ‘Formal Semantics’ as pioneered by Richard Montague, becoming the majority approach to semantics in generative grammar, are usually seen as mutually exclusive research programs. Here, I will argue that they can and should be regarded as complementary to at least some extent, although this might require some rethinking of foundational assumptions. There are at least two major foundational issues, one being the role of mathematical formulation, the other the adoption of a ‘realist’ as opposed to ‘antirealist’ view of meaning. Mathematical formulation is fundamental to formal semantics, but traditionally avoided in NSM. So one of the goals of this paper is to show how one can begin to apply some of the mathematical methods of formal semantics to NSM (emphasis on ‘begin’). This enterprise should be of some interest to formal semanticists for at least two reasons, one ‘good news’, the other, ‘bad news’. The bad news reason is t...

What can languages tell us about how people think and feel differently, around the world, about the unexpected? The conviction behind my presentation today is that before we take up this question we would do well to look carefully into a language close to home, namely, English. My main focus is on English "surprise words", such as surprised, amazed, and shocked, with some contrastive reference to Malay. There is a long tradition of NSM studies into emotional meaning and mental states generally. The single most significant work is Anna Wierzbicka's (1999) book Emotions Across Languages and Cultures-itself the culmination of a decade's previous work. I would also like to mention Wierzbicka's (2014) latest book Imprisoned in Englishpertinent to today's Symposium because of its focus on the need to avoid Anglocentrism in the human sciences. In addition to Wierzbicka's work on emotion semantics, which has mainly been on English, Russian, and Polish, a variety of other NSM researchers have undertaken similar studies into a diversity of languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Lao, French, German, Portuguese, Danish, Ewe, Arrernte, Mbula (PNG) and Koromu (PNG). Many of these studies are included in edited collections such as Harkins and Wierzbicka (eds., 2001), Enfield and Wierzbicka (eds., 2002) and Goddard and Ye (eds., in press).

Formal semantics and Natural Semantic Metalanguage are widely held to be radically incompatible as ways to study meaning in naural language. Here I will show that they can to some extent be reconciled. In particular, for linguists working with NSM, formal semantics can be viewed as providing mathematical accounts of some of the same phenomena that NSM studies, such as entailment, and for the formal semanticist, NSM offers a small target in the form of mini-languages that exhibit the essential logico-semantic features of full natural languages, such as extensionality, intensionality and hyperintensionality, and algebraic principles such as transitivity, symmetry etc. or various of the primes. Therefore, although these two approaches are likely to remain distinct enterprises for the foreseeable future, some intercommunication is possible and indeed desirable.

Following the seminal work of , this paper proposes and discusses a set of semantic analyses of words from three different levels of the English ethnozoological taxonomic hierarchy (Berlin 1992): creature (unique beginner), bird, fish, snake, and animal (life-form level), dog and kangaroo (generic level). The analytical framework is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach . Though ultimately resting on the foundational elements of the NSM system, i.e. 65 semantic primes and their inherent grammar of combination, the analysis relies on the analytical concepts of semantic molecules and semantic templates . These provide mechanisms for encapsulating semantic complexity and for modelling relations between successive layers of the hierarchy. Other issues considered include the extent to which cultural components feature in the semantics of ethnozoological categories, and the extent to which semantic knowledge may vary across different speech communities.

This study presents and justifies a detailed explication for the Australian Aboriginal Jukurrpa concept ('Dreamtime', 'the Dreaming'), phrased exclusively in simple cross-translatable words. The explication, which is partitioned into multiple sections, depicts a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. After a short introduction, our paper is organised about successive stages in the evolution of the current explication. We present and discuss four semantic explications, each built on-and, hopefully, improving uponits predecessor as our understanding of the Jukurrpa concept expanded and came into sharper definition. We focus primarily on Central Australian languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte and the Western Desert Language (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra etc.). We do not claim to have necessarily arrived at a full, perfect or correct lexical-semantic analysis, although in principle this is the goal of semantic analysis. Rather our purpose is to share a hermeneutic process and its results. The guiding framework for our process is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to meaning analysis. 1. The challenge: how could one explain the concept of Jukurrpa ('the Dreaming', 'Dreamtime') to non-Indigenous Australians? Anthropologist WEH Stanner opened his seminal 1953 essay 'The Dreaming' 1 by emphasising the central role of this concept in Indigenous Australia: 'The Australian Aborigines' outlook on the universe and man is shaped by a remark able conception, which Spencer and Gillen immortalised as "the dream time" or alcheringa of the Arunta or Aranda tribe' (Stanner 2003:57). 2 Anthropologists and Aboriginal people alike agree that the concept of the 'Dreamtime' or 'Dreaming' lies at the heart of Aboriginal culture (or cultures). But how can this concept be best explained to non-Aboriginal Australians? On this point, there is no consensus among scholars. Rather, as Jennifer Green (2012:158) observes, 'The Arandic term ALTYERRE and related words have been described as "possibly the most contested words in modern Australian ethnography" (Austin-Broos 2010).' Stanner (2003:58) offered the following characterisation, among others: 'The Dreaming is many things in one. Among them, a kind of narrative of AAS15_1_CS6.indd 43 7/07/15 8:24 AM Australian Aboriginal Studies 2015/1 What does Jukurrpa ('Dreamtime', 'the Dreaming') mean? Goddard and Wierzbicka

This study discusses the semantic structures of the verbs “touch” in Indonesian and Batak Toba Language. This study applied the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory by Wierzbicka. The data were collected through observation and interview methods. The findings are four parts of the verbs “touch” found in Indonesian and Batak Toba Language, they are: a) touch – feel; b) touch – press; c) touch – beat; d) touch – rub. The semantic structures of the verbs “touch” in Indonesian and BTL are mostly similar. However, there are three verbs which are different in the semantic structures, they are: meremas (mamisat) ‘squeeze’, menepuk (manompuk) ‘pat’ and mencubit (manggotil) ‘pinch’. The semantic structure differences in Indonesian and BTL occur because the two societies are distinctive and the different use of the language is diverse.

This research focuses in analyzing morphological processes and the semantic structure of deadjectival verb suffixation –m(u) in Japanese.  Suffix -m(u) is one of the verb-forming suffixes in Japanese. The data was collected from newspaper article from website asahi.com and corpus data from website http://corpora.uni-leipzig.de. The data was collected by observation method and note-taking techniques. The data was analyzed using distribution method.  The theory for analyzing the morphological processes is based on semantic class adjective developed by Morita (2010) and affixation theory developed by Sugioka and Ito (2002).  Then, the theory for analyzing semantic structure deadjectival verb is Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory developed by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014).  The results shows that not all adjectives in Japanese can be affected by the suffix –m(u). Deadjectival verb suffixation –m(u) in Japanese are formed by semantics prime FEEL.  The semantic prime of FEEL can b...

This study focused on the semantic field for the categorization of meaning, kind of meaning and semantic structure of verbs touch in Indonesian (verba sentuh). The reason of this research is the discovery of ambiguous meaning of a word when we refer to the monolingual dictionary that exists today. The method used is descriptive method with a form of qualitative research. The data in this study is verbs touch and source of research was obtained from the dictionary of Indonesian language (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia) in 2008. The theory used in this analysis is the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Data were analyzed using three stages, data reduction, data presentation and conclusion/verification. The analysis result obtained was four original meaning which holds a stake in touch verb formation, namely: [FEEL], [BEAT], [PRESSING] and [RUB]. The other components that make up the touch verb is 'someone' and 'something'. This study is only a fraction of the...

Resumen En este trabajo se analizan 19 fórmulas rutinarias del español peninsular que comparten un mismo esquema sintáctico (Vete a+sintagma nominal o Vete a+sintagma verbal) y que se describen en los diccionarios como expresiones “de rechazo” hacia el interlocutor. Con base en las clasificaciones existentes, estas expresiones podrían considerarse fórmulas “subjetivas”, “afectivas” o “expresivas actitudinales”, ya que sirven para mostrar la actitud y las emociones del hablante. Sin embargo, conceptos complejos como “expresión afectiva”, “actitudinal” o “de rechazo” no resultan muy esclarecedores a la hora de explicar el significado de este tipo de expresiones a hablantes de otras lenguas o de otras variedades del español. Por otro lado, dado que el español peninsular cuenta con al menos 19 expresiones de este tipo, es razonable pensar que entre ellas puedan existir algunas diferencias de significado. El presente estudio pretende dar respuesta a estas dos cuestiones mediante la aplic...

This article purposes to analyze the causative construction of Mandailing language as a typology in morphosyntaxis. This study provides an overview of the Mandailing contstruction forms that were often used by people in their daily lives as natural language in South Tapanuli District. The Methode used qualitative descriftive method. The data was obtained through proficient methods, record by analyzing in a conversation. Intuitive data were analyzed through morphemes and causative verbs of the Mandailing Batak language. The results of the analysis of the data on this study present an informal method in the form of exposure to three parts morphosyntactically causative construction including analytic, morphological, and lexical which the verb mambaen 'make' part of the causative verb. The Mandailing causative affixes of the Batak Mandailing to the results of the analysis are (ma-ko), (tar), (pa-kon), (pa-on), and (pa) in the causative morphology. Semantic parameters also have the same verb but have different meanings.

This study is focusing on the mapping of word shoot meanings. The collected data was qualitatively analyzed, it was starting by reading some sources, finding a word to be analyzed, reading carefully the source text and the target text, taking note, analyzed the text by NSM approach by Wierzbicka (1999). The data in this writing was taken from Colour Magazine Garuda Indonesia and used one of the prevalent comic series of Tintin entitled The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in America and Tintin the shooting star. The technique of this study were three steps, they are finding the word which want to analyzed, read the text carefully, finding the word with its translation which want to discuss, directly noted the word which was according to the topic. The result of this study showed that the findings of three meanings of one word shoot. Some of the translation could convey the meaning therefore the reader in target language is easily read and understood.

This paper focuses on identifying meaning components in the translation of English medical terms into Indonesian. The data used in this study are the English medical term disorder and its Indonesian equivalent penyakit (disease). The two terms are purposively chosen as the data of the present study, which is a comparative research on the lexical meaning investigation in two different languages. The investigation involving a particular term in one language and its equivalent in the other language is worth doing since the lexicons in every language have their own specific concepts that may be synonymous, yet they are not always interchangeable in all contexts. The analysis into meaning components is called decomposition by means of several semantic theories to analyse the meaning of a lexical item (Löbner 2013). Here, the meaning components of the two compared terms are demonstrated through a semantic approach, particularly Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) supported by the investigation on their synonyms and how the terms are used in different contexts. The results show that the meaning components of a particular term in one language like the English term disorder are not always found in the Indonesian term penyakit, or, conversely, some of the meaning components of the Indonesian term do not always exist in the English term.

This paper focuses on identifying meaning components in the translation of English medical terms into Indonesian. The data used in this study are the English medical term disorder and its Indonesian equivalent penyakit (disease). The two terms are purposively chosen as the data of the present study, which is a comparative research on the lexical meaning investigation in two different languages. The investigation involving a particular term in one language and its equivalent in the other language is worth doing since the lexicons in every language have their own specific concepts that may be synonymous, yet they are not always interchangeable in all contexts. The analysis into meaning components is called decomposition by means of several semantic theories to analyse the meaning of a lexical item (Löbner 2013). Here, the meaning components of the two compared terms are demonstrated through a semantic approach, particularly Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) supported by the investigation on their synonyms and how the terms are used in different contexts. The results show that the meaning components of a particular term in one language like the English term disorder are not always found in the Indonesian term penyakit, or, conversely, some of the meaning components of the Indonesian term do not always exist in the English term.

This paper describes categories for landscape elements in the language of the Yindjibarndi people, a community of Indigenous Australians. Yindjibarndi terms for topographic features were obtained from dictionaries, and augmented and refined through discussions with local language experts in the Yindjibarndi community. In this paper, the Yindjibarndi terms for convex landforms and for water bodies are compared to English-language terms used to describe the Australian landscape, both in general terms and in the AUSLIG Gazetteer. The investigation found fundamental differences between the two conceptual systems at the basic level, supporting the notion that people from different places and cultures may use different categories for geographic features.

Using Bengali texts and their English translations done by a set of English speaking native Bengali translators and another set of native English translators, we analyze how two specific Bengali emotion words (obhiman and lajja) have mapped onto English. In translating lajja translators use only three English words while for obhiman they choose an array of words with no consistency. This indicates that no English word represents a concept that is close to obhiman's meaning suggesting that the concept represented by a particular emotion word in one language may not be totally captured in another language. Additionally, the findings indicate emotion words represent concepts with fuzzy borders (as suggested in scripts hypothesis) instead of dots in affect grids as envisioned in evaluation-potency-activity measurements. Such concepts vary in the spectrum of events they denote and in the degree to which they overlap. Subsequently, we, drawing from skopos theory, argue that cultural contexts in translation studies need to be considered rather than looking for exact equivalence of these emotion words.

Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM), and ‘Formal Semantics’ as pioneered by Richard Montague, becoming the majority approach to semantics in generative grammar, are usually seen as mutually exclusive research programs. Here, I will argue that they can and should be regarded as complementary to at least some extent, although this might require some rethinking of foundational assumptions. There are at least two major foundational issues, one being the role of mathematical formulation, the other the adoption of a ‘realist’ as opposed to ‘antirealist’ view of meaning. Mathematical formulation is fundamental to formal semantics, but traditionally avoided in NSM. So one of the goals of this paper is to show how one can begin to apply some of the mathematical methods of formal semantics to NSM (emphasis on ‘begin’). This enterprise should be of some interest to formal semanticists for at least two reasons, one ‘good news’, the other, ‘bad news’. The bad news reason is t...

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not ...

Filsafat merupakan kajian kritis terkait berbagai hakikat realitas dalam hidup
manusia. Perkembangan filsafat tidak dapat dipisahkan dari bahasa. Bahasa
digunakan untuk pengungkapan pemikiran filosofis dan dijadikan sebagai
sarana analisis konsep dan masalah dalam filsafat. Demikianpun, bahasa sebagai
obyek (materi) kajian filsafat telah mengalami perkembangan dan berkontribusi
terhadap bidang kajian linguistik. Thomas Hobbes dengan aliran filsafat
empirisme dan materialisme berpengaruh terhadap pemaknaan kebenaran
makna bahasa dengan munculnya teori “verification of linguistic meaning”.

This paper argues that few words have caused so many misunderstandings and have done so much harm as the English word “hell”. Jesus’ teaching was focussed on “the kingdom of God” — a phrase which occurs in the New Testament 120 time (with the variant “the kingdom of heaven”). The word “Gehenna” — a symbol of the possibility of excluding oneself from that kingdom — occurs only 12 times. A word like “hell”, with its current English sense, does not occur in the New Testament at all.
Building on many years of research in cross-cultural semantics and pragmatics, the paper seeks to grasp what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God” and “Gehenna”. It articulates this by means of very simple words which, as linguistic evidence shows, have counterparts in all languages of the world and which often allow a more fine-grained conceptual analysis than complex or technical concepts of theology.
The use of this approach for re-thinking Christian faith, pioneered in the author’s books What Did Jesus Mean? (OUP 2001) and What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English (OUP 2019) allows her to achieve a clarity and transparency in her presentation of Jesus’ teaching which cannot be attained through more complex and English-specific words typically used in this field (Cf. Durie 2021; Bauerlein 2021).
The paper also builds on the author’s earlier work on “Jewish Cultural Scripts and the Interpretation of the Bible” (2004), which identifies the widespread lack of cross-cultural awareness in modern Anglophone writings on Christianity as a major source of misunderstandings around Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God.

This paper reviews progress on the Ethnophysiography study of the Yindjibarndi language from the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Concentrating on terms for water-related features, it concludes that there are significant differences to the way such features are conceptualized and spoken of in English. Brief comments regarding a similar project with the Diné (Navajo) people of Southwestern USA are provided, together with conclusions regarding Ethnophysiography.

This introduction to the Special Issue summarises Anna Wierzbicka's contribution to the linguistic study of meaning. It presents the foundations of the approach known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) developed by Wierzbicka. The current state of the approach is discussed in the article with the ideas of 65 semantic primitives, universal grammar and the principle of reductive paraphrase in semantic explications. It traces the origin of Wierzbicka's ideas to Leibniz. The framework has been tested on about thirty languages of diverse origin. The applications of the approach are broad and encompass lexical areas of emotions, social categories, speech act verbs, mental states, artefacts and animals, verbs of motion, kinship terms (among others), as well as grammatical constructions.

Natural disasters, such as what are known in English as 'floods' and 'wildfires', are increasingly a topic of concern due to the climate emergency, and their vocabulary and public discourses hold much to be explored through linguistics. This article inaugurates the examination of public discourse about extreme weather events through semanticallyenhanced discourse studies, an approach which is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and developed herein. Taking the example of floods in the particular geographic, cultural and historical environment of the Australian state of Queensland in 2011, this transtextual study draws on a public inquiry into the event and English as spoken in Australia, more broadly, along with media reports, and literature from humanities and social sciences. Five case studies of vocabulary and discourse patterns are presented to cast cultural and semantic spotlights on the public discourses. It is demonstrated that this approach can provide high resolution analysis of discourse and bring out cultural and historical factors at play in extreme weather language thereby contributing to disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies.

Natural semantic metalanguage, inspired by Leibnitz's alphabet of human thoughts, is a semantic approach which introduces universal semantic concepts. Empirical crosslinguistic investigations have now established that there are nearly sixty concepts which occur as words or wordlike elements in all languages, and which are presumably innate. These universal concepts cannot be defined or explained, but other more complex concepts can be defined and explained through them. Moreover, these concepts are simply translatable across all languages. Thus, after the introduction of the abovementioned approach, the current paper investigates the use of this approach in translation theory focusing on the possibility of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic translatability. In conclusion, universal human concepts ensure translatability of our thoughts from one language into another since they constitute a basis for genuine human understanding.

This study focused on the semantic field for the categorization of meaning, kind of meaning and semantic structure of verbs touch in Indonesian (verba sentuh). The reason of this research is the discovery of ambiguous meaning of a word when we refer to the monolingual dictionary that exists today. The method used is descriptive method with a form of qualitative research. The data in this study is verbs touch and source of research was obtained from the dictionary of Indonesian language (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia) in 2008. The theory used in this analysis is the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Data were analyzed using three stages, data reduction, data presentation and conclusion/verification. The analysis result obtained was four original meaning which holds a stake in touch verb formation, namely: [FEEL], [BEAT], [PRESSING] and [RUB]. The other components that make up the touch verb is 'someone' and 'something'. This study is only a fraction of the...

The present paper describes a software system that performs bidirectional machine translation between two constructed languages. These languages are made by one or more persons, for various purposes. Such an important purpose is the development of easy and almost natural communication interfaces with robots. Despite the linguistic simplicity of the constructed languages, the automated translation from one to the other confronts some of the fundamental algorithmic challenges that are also encountered in the machine translation of natural languages. Hence, the usage of constructed languages can be an easier way both to train linguistic engineers in developing machine translation software and to study the linking of different robotic interfaces, as a novel field of research.

Scholars working in ethno-epistemology need to tread carefully in how they formulate their discussions in order to circumvent or minimise several dangers, such as conceptual imposition from English or other home languages, relying too heavily on some semantic subtlety peculiar to their own language, and misinterpreting unfamiliar patterns of polysemy or metaphor in another language.
  The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning, originated by Anna Wierzbicka, offers a well developed framework for overcoming these dangers. Based on a decades-long program of conceptual analysis and cross-linguistic empirical research, NSM is the only comprehensive approach to meaning that confronts the challenges of Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism head on, by seeking to base its representations on simple cross-translatable words. It offers the prospect of authentically modelling the thoughts and meanings of ordinary native speakers, insofar as it uses non-technical words that are accessible to speakers in their own language. It also provides procedures for dealing with ambiguity and vagueness of words, including how to distinguish lexical polysemy (distinct-yet-related meanings) from semantic generality.
  This chapter overviews the NSM program, summarising the research base behind it and exemplifying its key concepts and methods with examples relevant to ethno-epistemology. The chapter seeks to demonstrate that the NSM program can provide a suitable metalanguage for ethno-epistemology.
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Keywords: epistemology, semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), Anglocentrism, translatability, knowledge

This chapter explains the concept of minimal languages and argues for their importance as new tool for achieving clearer, more accessible and more translatable communication. It describes the core vocabulary and grammar of minimal languages, and discusses how this may be expanded for particular purposes. Using examples, it shows important differences between Minimal English, on the one hand, and an older system of so-called Basic English, on the other. Finally, the chapter introduces and contextualises the studies in this volume.

Keywords: Accessible communication, translatability, Minimal English, NSM, semantic primes, semantic molecules

This study proposes Natural Semantic Metalanguage semantic explications for the English words 'virus' (in two senses), 'bacteria', 'germs', and for the related words 'sick', 'ill', and 'disease'. We concentrate on their "naïve" or "folk" meanings (Apresjan, Ju1992) in everyday English, as opposed to scientific or semi-scientific meanings. In this way, the paper makes a start on uncovering the folk epidemiology embedded in the English lexicon. The semantics of words like 'virus', 'bacteria' and 'germs' is not, however, a purely academic matter. It is also a matter of effective health education and health communication. To reach people at a time of an epidemic, explanations need to connect with "ordinary people's" ways of thinking and speaking. This paper argues that the simple and cross-translatable words of NSM, and minimal languages based on it, can be effective tools not only for linguistic semantics but also for education and communication everywhere-at the local school and in the world at large.

In a book entitled The Sermon on the Mount: The modern Quest for its meaning, theologian Clarence Bauman (1985) discusses, inter alia, Jesus' teaching on "anger". The book opens with a chapter on Tolstoy: "Leo Tolstoy: The moral challenges of literal interpretation": "Christ's first commandment is "Do not be angry" (Matthew 5: 22-25). Tolstoy noted that the text had been tampered with by redactors. By the fifth century the word εικη, meaning "needlessly" or "without cause," had been inserted into the initial unconditional statement: "Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause...". But what did Jesus really teach about "anger"? The term used in Matthew's Gospel (5:22) is of course not the English word anger but the Greek word orgizomai-and the two don't mean the same. The term used by Tolstoy-the Russian word gnevat'sja-is different in meaning from both anger and orgizomai. But the word used by Jesus was neither English, nor Greek, nor Russian, but Aramaic. So what did that Aramaic word mean-and what did Jesus intend to say with it? Tolstoy's impulse to look for the "literal interpretation" is understandable, but as this chapter shows, the idea that we can pinpoint what Jesus meant with one word, from a particular language (be it Russian, English, Greek or Aramaic) is simplistic. The paper argues that in order to fully understand Jesus' teaching about "anger" in a precise and unbiased way, we need to go beyond single words of this or that language, and to try to articulate it through simple sentences couched in universal (i.e. universally-contestable) words. Furthermore, the paper shows that what applies to Jesus' teaching about emotions applies also to Jesus' "emotional practice". What did he feel when he saw someone doing something very bad, or someone to whom something very bad was happening? As the paper demonstrates, the "Natural Semantic Metalanguage" (NSM) developed by the author and colleagues allows us to replace crude formulations such as "Did Jesus feel angry?" or "What did Jesus teach about anger?" with questions which are far more fine-grained, and which enable us to reach far more fine-grained, and more meaningful answers.

David Chalmers appears to assume that we can meaningfully discuss what goes on in human heads without paying any attention to the words in which we couch our statements. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that the initial problem is that of metalanguage: if we want to say something clear and valid about us humans, we must think about ourselves outside conceptual English created by one particular history and culture and try to think from a global, panhuman point of view. This means that instead of relying on untranslatable English words such as 'consciousness' and 'experi-ence' we must try to rely on panhuman concepts expressed in cross-translatable words such as THINK, KNOW, and FEEL (Wierzbicka, 2018). The paper argues that after 'a hundred years of consciousness studies' it is time to try to say something about us (humans), about how we think and how we differ from cats and bats, in words that are clear, stable, and human rather than parochially English.