Abstract
In the linguistic literature inspired by the philosophical tradition, the key concepts of analysing ‘propositional attitudes’ are ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’, ‘know’, among others. Yet, this distinction ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualisation of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. Moreover, this approach overlooks the fact that categorisation of mental states in general and ‘propositional attitudes’ in particular is aligned with cultural attitudes and understandings. This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of selected terms of ‘propositional attitudes’ in English and Russian (to believe vs. sčitat’ and belief vs. mnenie) in terms of universal meanings as they are identified in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). The concepts central to the analysis are know and think which have been shown to have exact semantic equivalents in Russian and English as well as other languages. The chapter demonstrates that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles which can be formulated as cultural scripts. The chapter demonstrates that the supremacy of logical concepts does not correlate to the architecture of mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. It argues that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
A representative NSM bibliography is available from the NSM Homepage http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-languages-linguistics/research/natural-semantic-metalanguage-homepage
- 2.
Goddard (2011, p. 375) puts forward a hypothesis about the existence of the 64th prime LITTLE~FEW. Its universal status is yet to be tested.
- 3.
Whimperative (or wh-imperative) is a command or request which is worded as a question (e.g. Would you mind washing it out?, Could you just turn it down a bit?). The term comprises of wh-, which stands for an interrogative word and imperative.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
In the square brackets, a more accurate variant of translation is given.
References
Apresjan, Jurij. 1992. Lexical semantics: User’s guide to contemporary Russian vocabulary. Ann Arbor: Karoma. (Translation of Apresjan, J. 1974. Leksičeskaja semantika: sinonimičeskie sredstva jazyka).
Apresjan, Jurij. 2000. Systematic lexicography. Trans: Kevin Windle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Apresjan, Jurij. 2004. Sčitat’, dumat’, polagat’, naxodit’, rassmatrivat’, smotret’, usmatrivat’, videt’. In Novyj ob’’jasnitel’nyj slovar’ sinonimov russkogo jazyka. 2nd ed., ed. Jurij. Apresjan, 1128-1137. Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury/Wiener Slawistischer Almanach.
Boym, Svetlana. 1994. Common places: Mythologies of everyday life in Russia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Capone, Alessandro. 2000. Dilemmas and excogitations: An essay on modality, clitics and discourse. Messina: Armando Siciliano Editore.
Collins Wordbanks Online. http://www.collins.co.uk/page/Wordbanks+Online. Accessed July-Aug 2011.
D’Andrade, Roy. 1987. A folk model of the mind. In Cultural models in language and thought, ed. Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn, 112–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fortescue, Michael. 2001. Thoughts about thought. Cognitive Linguistics 12 (1): 15–45.
Fox, Kate. 2004. Watching the English: The hidden rules of English behaviour. London: Hodder.
Garfield, J. 2003. Propositional attitudes. In Encyclopedia of cognitive science. vol. 3., ed. L. Nadel, 754-761. London: Nature.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. Selected essays by Clifford Geertz. London: Hutchinson.
Gladkova, Anna. 2007. Universal and language-specific aspects of “propositional attitudes”: Russian vs. English. In Mental states. Vol. 2: Language and cognitive structure, ed. Andrea Schalley and Drew Khlentzos, 61–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gladkova, Anna. 2010. Russkaja kul’turnaja semantika: ėmocii, cennosti, žiznennye ustanovki. (Russian cultural semantics: emotions, values and attitudes). Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Cultures.
Goddard, Cliff. 2001. Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology 5:1–65.
Goddard, Cliff. 2003. Thinking across languages and cultures: Six dimensions of variation. Cognitive Linguistics 14 (2/3): 109–140.
Goddard, Cliff. 2007. A culture-neutral metalanguage for mental state concepts. In Mental States. Vol. 2: Language and cognitive structure, ed. Andrea Schalley and Drew Khlentzos, 11–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, Cliff, ed. 2008. Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, Cliff. 2011. Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka, eds. 1994. Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2002. Semantic primes and universal grammar. In Meaning and universal grammar: theory and empirical findings. Vol I, ed. C. Goddard and A. Wierzbicka, 41–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka, eds. 2002. Meaning and universal grammar: theory and empirical findings, vols. I, II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2004. Cultural scripts: What are they and what are they good for? Intercultural Pragmatics 1–2:153–166.
Goddard, Cliff, and Susanna Karlsson. 2008. Re-thinking THINK in a contrastive perspective: Swedish vs. English. In Cross-linguistic semantics, ed. Cliff Goddard, 225–240. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hymes, D. 1961/1993. On typology of cognitive styles in language (with examples from Chinookan). Anthropological Linguistics 3 (1): 22–54. (Reprinted in Anthropological Linguistics 35, 440–475).
Jaszczolt, Kasia. 2006. Propositional attitudes. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Vol. 10, 2nd ed., ed. K. Brown, 158–162. Oxford: Elsevier.
Jaszczolt, Kasia. 2010. Propositional attitudes. In The Routledge pragmatics encyclopedia, ed. L. Cummings, 388–389. London: Routledge.
Larina, Tatiana. 2009. Kategorija vežlivosti i stil’ kommunikacii. (The category of politeness and style of communication). Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur.
Leibniz, G. W. 1956. Preface to an edition of Nizolius. In Philosophical papers and letters: A selection. vol. 1, ed. G. W. Leibniz, 186–202. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Translated and edited, with Introduction by L. E. Loemker).
Leibniz, G. W. 1987/1678. The analysis of languages. In Leibniz, language, signs and thought: A collection of essays, ed. M. Dascal, 161–165. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Levisen, Carsten. 2010. The Danish universe of meaning: Semantics, cognition and cultural values. PhD thesis, Armidale, University of New England.
Makeeva, I. 2003. Istoričeskie izmenenija v semantike nekotoryx russkix mental’nyx glagolov. (Historical changes in the semantics of several Russian mental verbs). In Logičeskij analiz jazyka. Izbrannoe. (Logical analysis of a language. Selected papers), ed. N. Arutjunova and N. Spiridonova, 461–467. Moskva: Indrik.
Mel’čuk, I. 1988. Semantic description of lexical units in an explanatory combinatorial dictionary: Basic principles and heuristic criteria. International Journal of Lexicography 1:165–188.
Melčuk, Igor, and Alexander Žolkovskij. 1984. Tolkovo-kombinatornyj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazyka. (Explanatory-combinatorial Dictionary of the Contemporary Russian language). Vienna: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach.
Nacional’nyj korpus russkogo jazyka (National Corpus of the Russian Language). http://www.ruscorpora.ru. Accessed July-Aug 2011.
Paxman, Jeremy. 1998. The English: A portrait of a people. London: Michael Joseph.
Peeters, Bert, ed. 2006. Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Proxorov, Urij, and Iosif Sternin. 2002. Russkoe kommunikativnoe povedenie. (Russian Communicative Behavior). Moskva: Flinta/Nauka.
Richmond, Yale. 2003. From nyet to da: Understanding the Russians. 3rd ed. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press.
Stanwood, Ryo. 1997. The primitive syntax of mental predicates in Hawai’i Creole English: A text-based study. Language Sciences 19 (3): 209–217.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Homepage. http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-languages-linguistics/research/natural-semantic-metalanguage-homepage. Accessed Jan. 2015.
Visson, Lynn. 1998. Wedded strangers: The challenges of Russian-American marriages. New York: Hippocrene.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1972. Semantic primitives. Trans: A. Wierzbicka and J. Besemeres. Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1992. Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2002. Russian cultural scripts: The theory of cultural scripts and its applications. Ethos 30 (4): 401–432.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006a. English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006b. Anglo scripts against “putting pressure” on other people and their linguistic manifestations. In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context, ed. Cliff Goddard, 31–63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Zaliznjak, Anna. 1991. Sčitat’ i dumat’: dva vida mnenija. (Sčitat’ and dumat’: two types of opinion). In Logičeskij analiz jazyka. Kul’turnye koncepty (Logical analysis of language. Cultural concepts), ed. N. Arutjunova, V. Petrov, N. Rjabtseva, and V. Smirnov, 187–194. Moskva: Nauka.
Zaliznjak, Anna. 2005. Glagol sčitat’: k tipologii semantičeskoj derivacii (The verb sčitat’: towards typology of semantic derivation). In Logičeskij analiz jazyka. Kvantifikativnyj aspect. (Logical analysis of the language. Quantitative aspect), ed. N. Arutjunova, 280–294. Moskva: Indrik.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Conclusion
Conclusion
The linguistic study of propositional attitudes reports as a window into human cognition cannot ignore the issue of their linguistic and cultural variation. Verbs expressing propositional attitudes are cultural constructs aligned with important cultural assumptions relating to ways of speaking and thinking. By accepting the English verbs like to believe as minimal semantic units in the analysis of propositional attitudes, scholars are introducing an Anglo bias into the analysis. This approach also disregards the issue of semantic complexity of the verb to believe and its equivalents in other languages. Consequently, treating to believe as a final atom of meaning in the analysis of propositional attitude reports distorts the results.
The research paradigm of the NSM offers an inventory of empirically established semantic universals which can be successfully employed in semantic and pragmatic analysis. The NSM primes in the domain of mental states, those of THINK, KNOW, and WANT, can serve as a language-neutral foundation in the analysis of propositional attitudes. NSM can be used to reveal ‘mental architecture’ of conceptualisation of mental states. It can also be further applied in cognitive cross-disciplinary research.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gladkova, A. (2016). Propositional Attitudes and Cultural Scripts. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12615-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12616-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)