Haiku and Flamenco. A Paradigmatic Case of Conceptual Abstraction and Formal Minimalism with Special Focus on Notional and Procedural Meaning

Abstract

The present work deals with the formal and semantic similarities between haiku and flamenco in a first study of this phenomenon, which is new. We study the notional and procedural meaning in haiku, and then in flamenco in order to explore the various minimalist mechanisms that govern the progression ofthought in the two languages. The research is based on the four basic semantic categories proposed by Eugene Nida and Charles R. Taber: Object (None),Event (Verb), Abstract (Adjective) and Relation (Preposition). These are universal categories which encompass all the semantic subcategories extant in any language. The Object category corresponds to the Entity in a thought chronology and the Event and Abstract categories correspond to behaviour, and allof them correspond to notional or conceptual meaning. On the other hand, theRelation category is associated with procedural or instrumental meaning, becauseit expresses a connection between terms of other kinds, such as discourse markers, the order of elements in the phrase when it is relevant for the communication of inference, verbs like to be or to have, when they only express relationships. The kireji have a special interest because they are Japanese textstructure markers.