NSM Semantics in Brief
THE MAIN PRINCIPLES OF NSM APPROACH
The basic idea is that we should try to describe complex meanings in terms of simpler ones. For example, to state the meaning of a semantically complex word we should try to give a paraphrase composed of words which are simpler and easier to understand than the original. This method of semantic description is called reductive paraphrase. It prevents us from getting tangled up in circular and obscure definitions, problems which bedevil conventional dictionaries and other approaches to linguistic semantics. No technical terms, neologisms, logical symbols, or abbreviations are allowed in a reductive paraphrase – only plain words from ordinary natural language.
Assuming that reductive paraphrase can be made to work as a method of analysing meanings, it follows that every language has an irreducible "semantic core" which would be left after all the complex expressions had been dealt with. This semantic core must have a language-like structure, with a lexicon of indefinable expressions ("semantic primes") and a grammar, i.e. some principles governing how the lexical elements can be combined. The semantic primes and their principles of combination constitute a kind of "mini-language" with the same expressive power as a full natural language.
If languages all have irreducible semantic cores, how do we find them? In a word, by experimentation; i.e. by an extensive program of trial and error attempts to explicate meanings of diverse types, aiming always to reduce the terms of the explications to the smallest and most versatile set. This is exactly what Anna Wierzbicka has done over a period of thirty years (and continues to do). The set of 60 or so semantic primes proposed in Meaning and Universal Grammar (Goddard and Wierzbicka Eds 2002) are the fruit of that program of research, which, it must be stressed, is not yet regarded as complete.
When Wierzbicka and colleagues claim that DO, BECAUSE, and GOOD, for example, are semantic primes, they are claiming that these words are essential for explicating the meanings of numerous other words and grammatical constructions, and that they cannot themselves be explicated in a non-circular fashion. The same applies to other examples of semantic primes such as: I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, THIS, HAPPEN, MOVE, KNOW, THINK, WANT, SAY, WHERE, WHEN, NOT, MAYBE, LIKE, KIND OF, PART OF. Notice that all these terms identify simple and intuitively intelligible meanings which are grounded in ordinary linguistic experience.
Although the primes are being expressed in English, NSM researchers believe and hope that all or most of them will turn out to be semantic fundamentals in all languages. A growing body of research, begun in Goddard and Wierzbicka (eds 1994) and continued in Goddard and Wierzbicka (eds 2002), and other publications suggests that this is indeed the case. NSM studies have been carried out in a wide range of a languages, including English, Russian, French, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Ewe, Malay, Japanese, East Cree, Chinese, Mbula, Yankunytjatjara, Arrernte, and Maori, among others.
Finally, a word about the conceptual status of semantic primes. In Anna Wierzbicka's writings the terms 'semantic' and 'conceptual' are used more or less interchangeably, the idea being that semantic primes represent elements of linguistic conceptualisation, i.e. elements out of which complex linguistic concepts are built. Some critics find this usage (i.e. semantic = conceptual) objectionable and insist that independent psycholinguistic evidence is required before one can make any conceptual deductions from purely semantic analysis. Wierzbicka's view (like that of Leibniz before her) is that semantic analysis is by its nature a conceptual inquiry, because meanings are not external or objective entities, but, so to speak, creatures of the mind. This is no mere terminological issue, but it would take too long to go into this issue in any depth here.
THE CURRENT MODEL
The NSM model has changed a lot since it was first advanced in the early 1970s. In Anna Wierzbicka's 1972 book Semantic Primitives, only 14 semantic primitives were proposed and in her 1980 book Lingua Mentalis, the inventory was not much bigger. Over the 1980s and 1990s, however, the number of proposed primes was expanded greatly, reaching a current total of 60 or so. The same period also saw the development of some important new ideas about the syntax of the semantic metalanguage. The current proposed primes can be presented, using their English exponents, in the Table below. Perhaps not surprisingly, the inventory of primes looks like a natural language in miniature.
Table: Proposed semantic primes (2007)
Substantives: | I, YOU, SOMEONE, PEOPLE, SOMETHING/THING, BODY |
Relational substantives: | KIND, PART |
Determiners: | THIS, THE SAME, OTHER/ELSE |
Quantifiers: | ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH/MANY |
Evaluators: | GOOD, BAD |
Descriptors: | BIG, SMALL |
Mental predicates: | THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR |
Speech: | SAY, WORDS, TRUE |
Actions, events, | DO, HAPPEN, |
Location, existence, possession, specification: | BE (SOMEWHERE),THERE IS, HAVE, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) |
Life and death: | LIVE, DIE |
Time: | WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT |
Space: | WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE |
"Logical" concepts: | NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF |
Intensifier, augmentor: | VERY, MORE |
Similarity: | LIKE |
Some important points about identifying semantic primes are:
A mere list is not sufficient, in itself, to identify the intended meanings, if only because many of these English words are polysemous (i.e. have several meanings), but only one sense of each is proposed as primitive. While it is claimed that the simplest sense of the exponent words can be matched across languages (i.e. that they are "lexical universals"), it is recognised that their secondary, polysemic meanings may differ widely from language to language.
A fuller characterisation will indicate, for each proposed prime, a set of "canonical contexts" in which it can occur; that is, a set of sentences or sentence fragments exemplifying grammatical (combinatorial) contexts for each prime.
When we say that a semantic prime ought to be a lexical universal, the term "lexical" is being used in a broad sense. A good exponent of a primitive meaning may be a phraseme or a bound morpheme, just so long as it expresses the requisite meaning. For example, in English the meaning A LONG TIME is expressed by a phraseme, though in many languages the same meaning is conveyed by single word. In many Australian languages the primitive BECAUSE is expressed by a suffix.
Even when semantic primes take the form of single words, there is no need for them to be morphologically simple. For example, in English the words SOMEONE and INSIDE are morphologically complex, but their meanings are not composed from the meanings of the morphological "bits" in question. That is, in meaning SOMEONE does not equal "some + one" and INSIDE does not equal "in + side". In meaning terms, SOMEONE and INSIDE are indivisible.
Semantic primes can also have variant forms (allolexes or allomorphs); for example, in English the word 'thing' functions as an allolex of SOMETHING when it is combined with a determiner or quantifier (i.e. this something = this thing, one something = one thing).
Exponents of semantic primes may have different morphosyntactic characteristics, and hence belong to different "parts of speech", in different languages, without this necessarily disturbing their essential combinatorial properties.
All these factors mean that testing the cross-linguistic viability of the proposed lexical primes is no straightforward matter. It requires rich and reliable data, and careful language-internal analysis of polysemy, allolexy, etc. Cross-linguistic testing of this kind is still in progress, and it is too early to be definitive about the outcome. But to date no convincing evidence has come to light which would disconfirm the universal status of any of the proposed semantic primitives. In general, therefore, the prospectus seems promising.
SOME KEY QUOTATIONS
"Leibniz not only conceived language and signs of all sorts as instruments through which human thought can reach achievements unthinkable without the help of signs, but also ventured the much more far-reaching idea that language or signs of some sort are constitutive of thought in its higher forms and, therefore, essential to it". (Dascal 1987: x)
"Whatever is thought of by us is either conceived through itself, or involves the concept of another. Whatever is involved in the concept of another is again either conceived through itself, or involves the concept of another; and so on. So one must either proceed to infinity, or all thoughts are resolved into those which are conceived through themselves. If nothing is conceived through itself, nothing could be conceived at all." (Leibniz 1973[1679]: 1)
"I say it would be impossible to define every word. For in order to define a word it is necessary to use other words designating the idea we want to connect to the idea being defined. And if we wished to define the words used to explain that word, we would need still others and so on to infinity. Consequently, we necessarily have to stop at primitive terms which are undefined." (Arnauld and Nicole, The Art of Thinking 1996[1662]: 64)
"[E]very language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyses nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness." (Whorf 1942: 252)
"...any formalism is parasitic upon the ordinary everyday use of language, in that it must be understood intuitively on the basis of ordinary language". (Lyons 1977: 12)
"In natural language, meaning consists in human interpretation of the world. It is subjective, it is anthropocentric, it reflects predominant cultural concerns and culture-specific modes of social interaction as much as any objective features of the world 'as such'". (Wierzbicka 1988: 2)
"[T]wo fundamental assumptions: every language has an irreducible core in terms of which the speakers can understand all complex thoughts and utterances, and that the irreducible cores of all natural languages match, so that we can speak, effectively, of the irreducible core of all languages, reflecting the irreducible core of human thought." (Wierzbicka 1998: 113)
Inye veshchi na inom jazyke ne mysljatsja 'there are some things which cannot be thought in another language', wrote the poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1972: 151). In a theoretical sense, this statement may be somewhat of an exaggeration, if, as the NSM theory contends, any culture-specific concept can be decomposed into a translatable configuration of semantic primes. ... But in an important sense, Tsvetaeva's statement remains true, because in practice it is impossible to formulate and manipulate thoughts of any sophistication without resort to the kind of conceptual 'chunking' enabled by the use of complex lexical items. Thoughts related to [Russian] dusha, for example, can be formulated in English only with great difficulty and at the cost of cognitive fluency, whereas in Russian they can be formulated more or less effortlessly. (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1995: 56-9)