Heart- and Soul-like Constructs Across Languages, Cultures, and Epochs

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.

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.