Heart- and Soul-Like Constructs across Languages, Cultures, and Epochs

by Bert Peeters (Editor)

Overview

All languages and cultures appear to have one or more "mind-like" constructs that supplement the human body. Linguistic evidence suggests they all have a word for someone, and another word for body, but that doesn’t mean that whatever else makes up a human being (i.e. someone) apart from the body is the same everywhere. Nonetheless, the (Anglo) mind is often reified and thought of in universal terms. This volume adds to the literature that denounces such reification. It looks at Japanese, Longgu (an Oceanic language), Thai, and Old Norse-Icelandic, spelling out, in a culturally neutral Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), how the "mind-like" constructs in these languages differ from the Anglo mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032093949
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2021
Series:	Routledge Studies in Linguistics
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bert Peeters is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra; an Adjunct Associate Professor at Griffith University, Brisbane; and editor of Semantic primes and universal grammar (2006) and Language and cultural values: adventures in applied ethnolinguistics (2015). His research interests are French linguistics and Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

Table of Contents

1. Delving into Heart- and Soul-Like Constructs: Describing EPCs in NSM
   Bert Peeters



2. Inochi and Tamashii: Incursions into Japanese Ethnopsychology
   Yuko Asano-Cavanagh



3. Longgu: Conceptualizing the Human Person from the Inside Out
   Deborah Hill



4. Tracing the Thai ‘Heart’: The Semantics of a Thai Ethnopsychological Construct
   Chavalin Svetanant



5. Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic Personhood Constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage
   Colin Mackenzie