Vol 22, No 4 (2018): Studies in cultural semantics and pragmatics: for Anna Wierzbicka’s anniversary

The author recalls the close ties linking Professor Anna Wierzbicka with the community of linguists centered around the journal “Etnolingwistyka”/“Etnolinguistics” published in Lublin (vols. 1-30, 1988-2018) and with Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, where in 2004 she received the title of doctor honoris causa for her research into universals in different world languages and her service as a morally sensitive humanist. The complementary character between the frameworks advocated by Wierzbicka and Lublin ethnolinguists consists in the opposition to taxonomic approaches to word meaning and the adoption of the subjective reconstruction principle, which derives from Wilhelm Humboldt’s philosophy of language; in the apprecia- tion of the role of colloquial language and the intuition of the average language user; in the use of both systemic and textual data, taking into account all relevant communication features that can be supported with “linguistic evidence”; in the use of simple sentences for definitions, which are arranged in coherent, facetted sequences. Anna Wierzbicka, similarly to Lublin ethnolinguists, postulates to capture the meaning of words in the context of social life, history and national culture. In particular, the author focuses on the concept of the so-called cognitive definition. The article discusses its genesis, construction principles and the most important inspirations for its emergence; although the concept itself was created autonomously as an extension of studies on the language of folklore, independently of Anna Wierzbicka’s works, it nevertheless exhibits clear parallels to the way of thinking of the scholar from Canberra. The author of this article shows the similarities (convergences) between the cognitive definition and the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method developed by Anna Wierzbicka on the examples of mother and gold , but it also highlights some differences, which in the case of the cognitive definition are related to the use of colloquial definientia that do not have the status of semantic “primitives” ( primes ). Finally, on the example of the concept HOME/HOUSE, the author considers new perspectives for applying the cognitive definition in comparative works undertaken within the framework of the EUROJOS seminar.

The notion of lexical polysemy is considered under very different angles depending on the context in which it is called on, e.g. in theoretical lexicology, practical lexicography or so-called cognitive approaches to the lexicon. We adopt an approach where polysemy is defined as a property of vocables (roughly, entries in dictionary word lists): the property to regroup several word senses, monosemy being the opposite property. Polysemy is the consequence of a more basic fact: the relation that holds between lexical units grouped within the same vocable. This relation we term copolysemy . The notion of copolysemy is required to not only account for such a well-known phenomenon as regular polysemy, but also to model the polysemy structures of vocables and the incidence these structures may have on lexical dynamics, vocabulary acquisition, analogical reasoning based on lexical information, etc. As for many other aspects of lexicology, the study of copolysemy has to be anchored in a thorough analysis of lexical data. In this paper, we present the current results of an exploration of copolysemy in French, which allowed us to systematically retrieve patterns of copolysemy (on which we believe regular polysemy is built) and achieve formal description of the polysemy structure of several thousand French vocables. The descriptive work is embedded in a large-scale lexicographic project, namely the construction of the French Lexical Network (fr-LN). Though based on the study of the French lexicon, the approach to the modeling of polysemy presented here is expected to be applicable to natural languages in general.

The article deals with the evaluative characteristics of lexis which are reflected in Russian grammar. The idea of semantic basis of grammar, created and developed by Anna Wierzbicka, has a continuation in the study of role and place of evaluative senses in productive grammar of the Russian language. The activity approach to the description of the language, adopted in this paper, involves studying the role of a subjective factor in Russian grammar. The article demonstrates the results of research aimed at the analysis of semantic space of Russian verbs. The aim of the work is to identify evaluative senses that are important for grammar and to demonstrate how the subjective component of the verb meaning influences the way of expressing its actant positions. The research has been conducted using the methods and operational procedures of component analysis, equivalent substitutions and context transformations, modeling and a linguistic experiment. The work has been carried out on the material of Russian dictionaries with the use of data from the National Corpus of the Russian language. As a result, the connection between intellectual and emotional evaluative characteristics of verb having an output in the grammatical space of the language has been established. It was demonstrated that evaluation (positive or negative), which verbal semantics contains, affects the syntagmatic behavior of the verb selectively and requires additional efforts in solving the problem of establishing those semantic zones where the role of evaluation component in the grammatical formulation of actant positions is the most significant. One of such semantic spheres is verbal lexicon which denotes the subject’s attitude to his/her own actions. Positive or negative evaluation in this case is significant for making the verb actant frame. The obtained results let raise the question of identifying the vector of estimation orientation in Russian grammar. The study of verbal semantics in its projection on syntagmatic properties makes it possible to find a new perspective for the disclosure of national-specific worldview. The continuation of the research in chosen direction could contribute to the development of comparative axiology.

The paper deals with semiotic characteristics of comic texts construction. It is aimed at analyzing semantic, pragmatic and syntactic properties of jokes so as to find out models of comic texts comprehension. The material for the analysis comprises ca. 1000 jokes of various kinds including funny short narratives (in Russian these are named ‘anecdotes’), humorous aphorisms and demotivators as a new genre of internet communication. Semantic and pragmatic mechanisms of comic texts differ, though methodologically they make inseparable unity, according to A. Wierzbicka. Semantically, comic texts represent caricature pictures of the reality concerning objects, time and space dimension of events and positions of agents. They may be described in terms of denotative and significative incongruences. Pragmatically, such mechanisms form evaluative and argumentative divergence between usual and given states of affairs which manifest themselves as collisions of interpretation scripts. Syntactically, comic texts may be interpreted in terms of their narrative, or descriptive or argumentative correlation with corresponding non-comic texts. Two models of such texts interpretation are discussed. The first one is dictal in its essence and is based on disagreement between the planes of reality as shown in the text, whereas the second one is modal and it reflects an incongruity between reality and the view of it. The dictal model includes such techniques as repetition, juxtaposition and reversing of agents positions, the modal model can be traced in jocular periphrasis, precedent text parodies, and comic allusions. The dictal model is oriented towards semantic disagreement between various aspects of reality, the modal model concerns mostly pragmatic and syntactic aspects of a comic world view. Modern communicative practice as represented in the Internet network communities is focused on self-representation and various jokes are inherent part of this objective. The jokes are often based on incongruity between theme and rheme in the message content and disagreement between image and text in its form.

The research is focused on the current state of interaction between language and religion in contemporary linguistics in the post-secular environment, when religious discourse becomes an integral part of the discursive polyphony inherent in the open space of communication. The review is centered around three main pillars: the “language of religion” from a sociolinguistic perspective; theolinguistics as a new integrative discipline; linguopersonology and lexicography. Each section contains an overview of works by modern linguists and outlines further research prospects.