Abstract
I explicate the characteristics of a metalanguage for semantics. Next, I review methods for identifying the semantic primes (primitives) which constitute the basic vocabulary of a metalanguage from the seventeenth century and the second half of the twentieth century as background to Anna Wierzbicka’s NSM. I offer a short critique of the ‘semantic primes’ of NSM and the more recent notion of those complexes of primes known as ‘semantic molecules’. However, I strongly endorse Wierzbicka’s favouring the anthropocentric cognitive approach to semantic analysis. I then turn to a detailed critique of Wierzbicka’s (1984) semantics for cup and make a lighter critique of Goddard’s (2011) version which, unlike Wierzbicka’s, holds closely to semantic primes and marks semantic molecules. I find both versions contain extraneous material and contrast them with versions from Labov (1973) and Katz (1977) as well as the OED before offering my own informal semantics of cup in Standard English.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Meaning, Life and Culture |
| Subtitle of host publication | In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka |
| Editors | Helen Bromhead, Zhengdao Ye |
| Place of Publication | Canberra ACT Australia |
| Publisher | The Australian National University |
| Chapter | 23 |
| Pages | 441-460 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781760463939 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781760463922 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- semantic metalanguage, semantic primes, cupped hands, oblate hemispheroid, the purpose of semantic analysis