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Father/Motherland

From:Ed Heil <edh@...>
Date:Monday, May 22, 2000, 6:19
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 06:54:23PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Raymond Brown scripsit: > > > (1) while in English we can speak about one's native country as > > "fatherland" _or_ "mother-land", > > I always thought it would be interesting to construct a table of > "fatherland" languages (e.g. German), "motherland" languages (e.g. > Russian), and either-or languages (e.g. English).
Russian and Polish "motherland" vs. German "fatherland" are some of the terms that Anna Wierzbicka examines in her book on "cultural keywords." I don't buy her theory of semantic primes being psycho- logically real, but she has used them to great effect to examine subtle cross-cultural differences in apparently 'equivalent' words in this book. I wish I could remember the title so I could recommend it highly. :) Ed