English Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary

Politics & Social Sciences

Wierzbicka, Anna

Social Sciences

Academic Pr

English Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary by Anna Wierzbicka. 1987 paperback published by Academic Press.

Academic Press

Lingua The Semantics of Natural Language

Lingua Mentalis

Brill Academic Pub

Many people today, both Christians and non-Christians, are confused about or unaware of the essentials of Christian faith. In this book, Anna Wierzbicka takes a radically new approach to the task of communicating "what Christians believe" to the widest possible audience. The Story of God and People, the heart of the book, sets out the core tenets of Christian faith in narrative form using simple language that is accessible to anyone, even those with no familiarity with Christianity or Christian vocabulary. The Story is not only simple but also universal: though written in English, it is not phrased in full English -- English as we know it today, shaped by history, culture, and tradition -- but in "Minimal English". Minimal English contains only those 400 or so English words that can be translated into any other language; essentially, it corresponds to the shared core of all languages. In the introduction to the book, Wierzbicka explains Minimal English and minimal languages in general, and in The Story of God and People that follows, she demonstrates the effectiveness of Minimal English as a tool for global understanding. At the same time, the use of Minimal English allows her not only to retell the Christian story in a strikingly new way, but also to rethink its meaning, bringing into relief its internal cohesion, logic and beauty.

What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

Sociology

Oxford University Press

This study ranges across a wide variety of languages and cultures in an attempt to identify concepts which are truly universal and to explore whether certain words are culture-specific.

Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Not everything that can be said in one language can be said in another. The lexicons of different languages seem to suggest different conceptual universes. Investigating cultures from a universal, language-independent perspective, this book rejects analytical tools derived from the English language and Anglo culture and proposes instead a "natural semantic metalanguage" formulated in English words but based on lexical universals. The outcome of two and a half decades of research, the metalanguage is made up of universal semantic primitives in terms of which all meanings--including the most culture-specific ones--can be described and compared in a precise and illuminating way. Integrating insights from linguistics, cultural anthropology, and cognitive psychology, and written in simple, non-technical language, Semantics, Culture, and Cognition is accessible not only to scholars and students, but also to the general reader interested in semantics and the relationship between language and culture.

Business & Money

Economics

Seeks to demonstrate that cultural patterns can be studied in a verifiable and nonspeculative way on the basis of linguistic semantics, rooted in empirically established linguistic and conceptual universals, and explores the meanings of words in everyday discourse and cognition. Contains chapters on patterns of "friendship" across cultures;, "freedom" in Latin, English, Russian, and Polish; "homeland" and "fatherland" in German, Polish, and Russian; Australian key words and core cultural values; and Japanese key words and core cultural values. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)

Anthropology

This book develops the dual themes that languages can differ widely in their vocabularies, and are also sensitive indices to the cultures to which they belong. Wierzbicka seeks to demonstrate that every language has "key concepts," expressed in "key words," which reflect the core values of a given culture. She shows that cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key concepts, and that the analytical framework necessary for this purpose is provided by the "natural semantic metalanguage," based on lexical universals, that the author and colleagues have developed on the basis of wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. Appealing to anthropologists, psychologists, and philosophers as well as linguists, this book demonstrates that cultural patterns can be studied in a verifiable, rigorous, and non-speculative way, on the basis of empirical evidence and in a coherent theoretical framework.

Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)

Literature & Fiction

United States

What did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

In this highly interdisciplinary work, linguist Anna Wierzbicka casts new light on the words of Jesus by taking her well-known semantic theory of "universal human concepts"- concepts which are intuitively understandable and self-explanatory across languages-and bringing it to bear on Jesus' parables and the Sermon on the Mount. Her approach results in strikingly novel interpretations of the Gospels. Written in dialogue with other biblical commentators, What Did Jesus Mean? is both scholarly rigorous yet accessible.

What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

Words, Language & Grammar

In this highly interdisciplinary work, linguist Anna Wierzbicka casts new light on the words of Jesus by taking her well-known semantic theory of "universal human concepts"- concepts which are intuitively understandable and self-explanatory across languages-and bringing it to bear on Jesus' parables and the Sermon on the Mount. Her approach results in strikingly novel interpretations of the Gospels. Written in dialogue with other biblical commentators, What Did Jesus Mean? is both scholarly rigorous yet accessible.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wierzbicka, Anna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wierzbicka, Anna

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wierzbicka, Anna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

English Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary

English Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary

Lingua Mentalis

What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations

Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations

Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)

Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)

What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

What did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts