Cliff Goddard

This lively lecture series by a leading expert introduces the theory, practice and application of a versatile, rigorous and well-developed approach to cross-linguistic semantics: the NSM approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka. Topics include: history and philosophy of the study of meaning, semantic primes and molecules, emotions, evaluation, verbs and event structure, cultural key words and scripts. Case studies come from English, Chinese, Danish, and other languages. Applications in language teaching and intercultural education are also covered, along with comparisons between NSM and other leading approaches to linguistic semantics. The book will appeal to students and scholars of linguistics at all levels, communication and translation scholars, and anyone interested in a systematic and non Anglocentric approach to meaning, culture and cognition.

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay. Some are basic like men, women, and children or abstract nouns like trauma and violence; others describe qualities such as hot, hard, and rough, emotions like happiness and sadness, or feelings like pain. They ground their discussions in real examples from different cultures and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama on happiness. The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics. The authors consider a range of analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates. Their fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words.

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay. Some are basic like men, women, and children or abstract nouns like trauma and violence; others describe qualities such as hot, hard, and rough, emotions like happiness and sadness, or feelings like pain. This fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words. They ground their discussions in real examples from different cultures and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama on happiness. The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics. The authors consider a range of analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates. Their fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words.

This lively textbook introduces students and scholars to practical and precise methods for articulating the meanings of words and sentences, and for revealing connections between language and culture. Topics range over emotions, speech acts, words for animals and artefacts, motion, activity verbs, causatives, discourse particles, and nonverbal communication. Alongside English, it features a wide range of other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Australian Aboriginal languages. Undergraduates, graduate students and professional linguists alike will benefit from Goddard's wide-ranging summaries, clear explanations and analytical depth. Meaning is fundamental to language and linguistics. This book shows that the study of meaning can be rigorous, insightful and exciting.

This book introduces readers to the remarkable linguistic diversity of East and Southeast Asia. It contains wide-ranging and accessible discussions of every important aspect of the languages of the region, including word origins, cultural key words, tones and sounds, language families and typology, key syntactic structures, writing systems, and communicative styles. Students of linguistics will welcome the book's treatments of celebrated East Asian features such as classifiers, serial verb constructions, tones, topic-prominence, and honorifics. It shows students of particular Asian languages how their language fits structurally and culturally into the regional language mosaic. With its exercises, solutions, glossary, and many fascinating cases and insights, the book is an ideal introduction to descriptive and field linguistics. Cliff Goddard writes with great clarity and an eye for interesting examples. His book will appeal to all those with a serious interest in the languages and cultures of the region.

"This book introduces the linguistic diversity of East and Southeast Asia. It contains treatments of diverse areas including: word origins, cultural key words, tones and sounds, language families and typology, key syntactic structures, writing systems and communicative style" --Provided by publisher.