A Semantic Analysis of Snow-related Words in Danish and Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic)
This paper emerges from the vexed question whether the allegedly many “Eskimo” terms for snow document a linkage between language, culture, and cognition. Using the semantic explication technique of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, the emic logics embedded in the Kalaallisut snow-re...
| Published in: | Scandinavian Studies in Language |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
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Royal Danish Library
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10072/432200 https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v13i1.135079 |
| Summary: | This paper emerges from the vexed question whether the allegedly many “Eskimo” terms for snow document a linkage between language, culture, and cognition. Using the semantic explication technique of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, the emic logics embedded in the Kalaallisut snow-related words aputit and nittaappoq and the Danish snow-related words sne and det sner are unfolded. Through a comparison of the findings, the paper discusses how the physical world is conceptualized in both culture-specific and transcultural ways. The explications are based on evidence from semantic consultations and text examples. |
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