Words and Meanings. Lexical Semantics across Domains, Languages, and Cultures

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Cover Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains,Languages, and Cultures Copyright Contents Authorship note Acknowledgements Tables and figures 1:Words, meaning, and methodology 1.1 Why words matter 1.2 Words in 20th-century linguistics 1.3 Universal words and the NSM methodology of semantic analysis 1.4 Worlds of words 2: Men, women, and children:The semantics of basic social categories 2.1 The canonical example of lexical semantics? 2.2 Methodology and metalanguage: componential analysis vs. NSM 2.3 Semantic explications for basic social categories Men, women, and children Babies, boys, and girls Brief review 2.4 Categories, prototypes, and stereotypes Adjectives based on social category terms 2.5 Cross-linguistic differences Language-specific social categories 2.6 Concluding remarks 3:Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical-quality words in cross-linguistic perspective 3.1 ‘Kinds’, ‘parts’, and qualities 3.2 Qualities based on taste: salty, sweet, sour 3.3 “Temperature words”: hot, cold, and warm 3.4 Rough and smooth 3.5 Hard and soft 3.6 Heavy and light 3.7 Sharp 3.8 Metaphorical extensions: Polish vs. English 3.9 Concluding remarks 4: From “colour words” to visual semantics:English, Russian, Warlpiri 4.1 ‘Colour semantics’ vs. ‘visual semantics’ 4.2 ‘Blue’ and its two Russian counterparts 4.3 Languages without a “colour concept”: an illustration 4.4 The Warlpiri visual world The main features: an overview Visual conspicuousness Things shining somewhere at some time Visual patterns and contrasts within an object Visual semantics and visual discourse: getting closer to “the native’s point of view” 4.5 Deconstructing the ‘colour’ concept 4.6 Concluding remarks 5:Happiness and human valuesin cross-cultural and historicalperspective 5.1 Capturing a complex idea in simple and universal words 5.2 Can happiness be a global concern? 5.3 Can the Dalai Lama reconcile Buddhism with“a pursuit of happiness”? 5.4 “Civilization and its discontents”: English happinessvs. German Glück 5.5 The semantic history of “happiness” Part I (“happiness” in England) 5.6 The semantic history of “happiness” Part II (“happiness” in America) 5.7 “Happiness” as an emotion 5.8 “Happiness” and good fortune: English vs. French and Russian 5.9 Socrates on “happiness” and a good way to live 6: Pain: is it a human universal?The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics 6.1 The need for a multilingual and multicultural perspective on pain 6.2 Problems with the official definition of ‘pain’ 6.3 How can one ask questions about ‘pain’ helpfully and effectively? 6.4 Pain and related concepts (hurt, ache, sore) in English 6.5 No ‘pain’ concept in Australian Aboriginal languages? 6.6 English pain vs. French douleur 6.7 Comparing douleur with mal (avoir mal and faire mal) 6.8 Souffrir and suffer 6.9 English pain vs. Polish ból and Russian bol’ 6.10 Concluding remarks 7: Suggesting, apologizing,complimenting:English speech-act verbs 7.1 Speech acts and speech-act verbs 7.2 Approaching speech-act verbs, NSM style 7.3 Some English “directives”: order, tell, ask, suggest, recommend 7.4 “Commissives” and related speech acts: promise, offer,threaten, and warn 7.5 “Expressives”: apologize, thank, complain 7.6 Some English “evaluatives”: praise, criticize, compliment, insult 7.7 Other templates and speech-act types: greet and marry 7.8 Implications and conclusions 8: A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant:The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay 8.1 Paremiology meets cross-cultural semantics 8.2 Identifying and characterizing proverbs Identifying proverbs on linguistic evidence Understanding ethno-taxonomies of “proverbial ways of speaking” 8.3 Semantic explications for some English proverbs A semantic template for proverb meanings Semantic explications for some English proverbs 8.4 Malay peribahasa Background 8.5 Concluding remarks Appendix 8.1 Partial explications (message content only)for four additional English proverbs Appendix 8.2 Partial explications (message content only) for fouradditional Malay proverbs 9: The meaning of “abstract nouns”:Locke, Bentham, and contemporary semantics 9.1 “Abstract” and “concrete” in the linguistic and logical literature 9.2 Abstract nouns and mental ontologies 9.3 Example 1: illness and disease 9.4 Example 2: the post-Holocaust “trauma discourse”in English-speaking countries 9.5 Locke on the semantics of abstract nouns 9.6 Further explications and issues 9.7 “Fictitious entities”, vagueness, and translatability 9.8 Final remarks 10: Broader horizons:Beyond lexical semantics 10.1 Words and meanings in human life 10.2 Cultural scripts for culturally shaped “ways of speaking” 10.3 Semantics, psychology, and psycholinguistics 10.4 Clarifying thinking in the human sciences 10.5 Capturing endangered concepts 10.6 The way ahead for semantics References Index