SEMANTIC PRIMES

Conspectus

1. The definition of semantic primes: Semantic primes or semantic primitives are semantic concepts that are innately understood, but cannot be expressed in simpler terms. They represent words or phrases that are learned through practice, but cannot be defined concretely. For example, although the meaning of "touching" is readily understood, a dictionary might define "touch" as "to make contact" and "contact" as "touching", providing no information if neither of these words are understood. The concept of innate semantic primes was largely introduced by Anna Wierzbicka's book, Semantics: Primes and Universals.

Children learn the implicit meanings of the words in that set from the ways they are used by other speakers in every day conversation. Consider the semantic prime, HEAR. As a child’s elders use the word HEAR repeated in a large variety of ordinary conversational situations, the child comes to associate the word with what it means in the context of situation. The word HEAR can subsequently be used in the description of many other words (e.g., audible, whisper, oration), but no words simpler or more basic than HEAR can be used to describe the meaning of HEAR. The dictionary’s definition of HEAR used words whose meanings ultimately depend on knowing the meaning of HEAR.

1. List of semantic primes

1. I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING~THING, PEOPLE, BODY substantives

2. KIND, PART relational substantives

3. THIS, THE SAME, OTHER~ELSE determiners

4. ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH~MANY quantifiers

5. GOOD, BAD evaluators

6. BIG, SMALL descriptors

7. KNOW, THINK, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR mental predicates

8. SAY, WORDS, TRUE speech

9. DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, TOUCH actions, events, movement, contact

10. BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, HAVE, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) location, existence, possession, specification

11. LIVE, DIE life and death

12. WHEN~TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT time

13. WHERE~PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE space

14. NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF logical concepts

15. VERY, MORE intensifier, augmentor

16. LIKE~WAY similarity

1. Professor Anna Wierzbicka: she was born in Poland, in 1938. She is a linguist at the Australian National University, but she also lectures at the university in Warsaw and in Lublin. In 1972 she launched a book, Semantic Primitives, with a theory now known under the acronym “NSM” (Natural Semantic Metalanguage), which is now internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading theories of language and meaning. She has published over twenty books and edited or co-edited several others. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies as well as linguistics, and has been published in many journals across all these disciplines (e.g., Language, American Anthropologist, Man, Anthropological Linguistics, Cognition and Emotion, Culture and Psychology, Ethos, Philosophica, Brain and Behaviourial Sciences, The Journal of Cognition and Culture etc). Professor Wierzbicka is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; she has been awarded the Humboldt Research Prize for Foreign Scholars in Humanities.

2. List of some common polysemies of exponents of semantic primes

Semantic prime	Additional meaning(s)	Language and relevant lexical item
DO	‘make’	Italian(fare), Malay(buat), Spanish(hacer),German(machen)
FEEL	‘taste and/or smell’ ‘hear’ ‘feel by touch’	Italian(sentire), Malay(rasa), Spanish(sentir),German(fühlen)
BEFORE	‘first’ ‘ahead of and/or in front of’	Italian(prima),Spanish(ante), German(vor), French(avant)

1. The Syntax of Universal Semantic Primitives

Most grammatical patterns in any language are language-specific, but there may also be some patterns which are universal. In fact, if cross-cultural understanding is possible at all, despite the colossal variation in language structures, there must be a common core of ‘’human understanding’’ relying not only on some shared or matching lexical items but also on some shared or matching grammatical patterns in which shared lexical items can be used. There is something like an extensive use of a new theoretical concept: ‘’valency of semantic primitives’’. E.g., it is assumed that the predicate ‘’GOOD’’ has two different valency options: it may combine with one ‘’substantive’’ (which may be called a ‘subject’), as in sentence A below, or with two ‘’substantives’’ (a ‘subject’ and a ‘compliment’) as in sentence B:

1. This is good.

2. This is good for me/you/these people.

Some predicates- for example DO and THINK- may even open three ‘’slots’’ for ‘’substantives’’ ( a first ‘’slot’’ for a ‘subject’, a second, for a ‘compliment’, and a third, for an ‘object’)

Someone (1) did something (2) to someone (3)

Someone (1) thought something (2) about something (3)

But although both DO and THINK can be said to open three slots, their valency options are different: DO has two valency options (A and B) whereas THINK has three (A, B and C):

DO

1. Someone did something

2. Someone did something to someone

THINK

1. Someone thought something

2. Someone thought something about something

3. Someone thought about something

The grammar sketched allows for several types of complex sentence and thus goes far beyond simple clauses offered of NSM sentence. A key role belongs in this respect to the primitives which function, or can function, as ‘’interclausal linkers’’: BECAUSE, IF, IF… WOULD, LIKE, WHEN, AFTER and BEFORE. These linkers provide a mechanism for combining two or even three clauses into one complex sentence.

Bibliography:

1. Wierzbicka's page at Australian National University

2. Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Cliff Goddard, University of New England, Australia

3. www.en.citizendium.org semantic primes

4. Wierzbicka A. (1996) Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford University Press