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The NSM approach to the semantics of basic vocabulary items (with special reference to 'men', 'women' and 'children', 'eating' and 'drinking', and 'cats' and 'mice')| old_uid | 3212 |
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| title | The NSM approach to the semantics of basic vocabulary items (with special reference to 'men', 'women' and 'children', 'eating' and 'drinking', and 'cats' and 'mice') |
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| start_date | 2007/10/01 |
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| schedule | 11h-12h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | This presentation reviews and demonstrates the principles, methods and heuristics for semantic explication of basic vocabulary items, as developed over some twenty years by Anna Wierzbicka and others in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds, 2002; Goddard 1998, ed. in press). The key theoretical idea behind the NSM framework is that semantic analysis must be based ultimately on a set of universal semantic primes. Its key empirical claim is that a viable set of semantic primes (some 63 in number) has been identified, following a long program of cross-linguistic research.
NSM studies have shown that words from many semantic domains (e.g. speech acts, emotion, value terms) can be explicated directly into configurations of semantic primes. Explications for many words from the concrete lexicon, however, must include not only semantic primes but also certain so-called “semantic molecules”, i.e. non-primitive meanings which function as units in the semantic structure of more complex concepts (cf. Wierzbicka 1985, 2007). Semantic molecules include the verb ‘to make’, certain body-part meanings such as ‘hands’
and ‘mouth’, physical descriptors such as ‘long’, ‘hard’ and ‘sharp’, and natural environment terms such as ‘water’ and ‘fire’. Another important aspect of the NSM to semantic analysis is the concept of semantic templates, i.e. the idea that words of the same semantic class follow a similar structure of component types. These ideas are illustrated by reference to NSM analyses of some basic social categories (‘men’, ‘women’, ‘children’), simple bodily activities (‘eating’, ‘drinking’), and natural kind terms (‘cats’, ‘mice’). The presentation will include discussion of NSM approaches to identifying and describing polysemy, issues of cross-linguistic variation, and the extent to which cultural attitudes and cultural “general knowledge” can be embedded in meanings of basic vocabulary items. |
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| responsibles | Mettouchi |
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