当前位置: X-MOL 学术Language Sciences › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
“We”: conceptual semantics, linguistic typology and social cognition
Language Sciences ( IF 0.816 ) Pub Date : 2020-10-19 , DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101327
Cliff Goddard , Anna Wierzbicka

This paper explores “we-words” in the languages of the world, using the NSM method of semantic analysis. A simply phrased, cross-translatable explication for English ‘we’ [1pl] is proposed, suitable also for other languages with a single we-word. At the same time, it is argued that English ‘we’ co-lexicalises a second distinct meaning “we two” [1du], and that the same goes for other languages with a single we-word. The two explications are identical, except for being based on ALL and TWO, respectively. Both explications involve components of “I-inclusion” (roughly, ‘I am one of them’) and “subjective identification” (roughly, ‘I'm thinking about them all in the same way’). It is argued, furthermore, that both meanings (“we-all” and “we-two”) are likely to be found in all languages. To establish this, one has to take account of languages which manifest the “inclusive/exclusive” distinction. For such languages, evidence suggests that one of the two we-words contains a semantic component of “you-inclusion”, while the other is semantically unmarked. Languages whose “we words” encode kinship relations are also briefly considered. The analysis has implications for the typology of pronoun systems, for theorising about human social cognition, and for the lexical semantics of key social concepts.



中文翻译:

“我们”:概念语义,语言类型学和社会认知

本文使用NSM语义分析方法探索世界上各种语言中的“ we-words”。提出了针对英语“ we” [1pl]的简单措辞,可互译的解释,也适用于带有单个we-word的其他语言。同时,有人认为英语中的“我们”将第二个不同的含义“我们两个” [1du]词汇化,对于其他带有单个我们词的语言也是如此。这两个说明是相同的,除了分别基于ALL和TWO。这两个说明都涉及“包含我”(大致上,“我是其中的一个”)和“主观认同”(大致上,“我以相同的方式思考它们”)的组成部分。此外,有人认为两种含义(“我们所有人”和“我们两个”)可能在所有语言中都可以找到。为此,必须考虑体现“包容性/排他性”区别的语言。对于此类语言,有证据表明,两个we词之一包含“ you-inclusion”的语义成分,而另一个在语义上未标记。还简要考虑了用“我们说”来编码亲属关系的语言。该分析对代词系统的类型学,对人类社会认知的理论化以及对关键社会概念的词汇语义的影响。

更新日期:2020-12-23
down
wechat
bug