Prace komisji nauk.pdf - Instytut Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu ...

guide to culture”, “vocabulary is a very sensitive index of the culture of a
people” and that “linguistics is of strategic importance for the methodology of
social science”. These three principles led to a vast investigation of the existence
of language universals, as well as of identifying key words specific for each
culture. By means of the set of semantic primes described above, Wierzbicka
and Goddard investigated the universality of concepts like friendship or
fatherland. Furthermore, they identified key words specific to various cultures,
such as Australian English, Yankuntjatjara, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Malay,
and defined them in terms of semantic primes. Thus, definitions for words as
omoiyari, on and wa in Japanese, or hati and sabar in Malay were made using
the NSM tools (Wierzbicka 1999, Goddard 2002).
Working hypotheses
Wierzbicka’s and Goddard’s experience in the area of semantic primes,
semantic universals and culturally-specific key words prompt us to put forth the
following hypotheses:
i. The Romanian language has specific key words, which are to
be found among the words known as “untranslatable”.
ii. As in the cases of the other languages and their key words,
the Romanian key words define the specific features of
Romanian society.
iii. The Romanian key words can be studied with the tools
provided by NSM and defined in terms of semantic primes.
Let us test these hypotheses against the above-mentioned material.
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