This article demonstrates that emotion concepts—including the so‐called basic ones, such as anger or sadness—can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as “good”, “bad”, “do”, “happen”, “know”, and “want”, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.The definitions proposed here take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, wants, and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of (...) necessary and sufficient conditions (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy.” On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different—and fully specifiable—conceptual structures. (shrink)

Since English is not a neutral scientific language for the description of emotions (or anything else), then the key question is what (meta)language other than English can be used instead. I draw a distinction between “experiential meaning” which can only be acquired through lived experience, and “compositional meaning” which can be adequately portrayed in the mini-language of universal human concepts (NSM) developed through wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. The article rejects both the anglocentrism of emotion studies which take English concepts for granted (...) and the “zoocentrism” which seeks to reduce human emotions to “mammalian responses,” behavioral patterns or neuro-physiological states. It argues that any discourse on emotions not anchored in universal human concepts is inherently ethnocentric (more often than not, anglocentric). (shrink)

Several intrinsic/extrinsic distinctions amongst properties, current in the literature, are discussed and contrasted. The proponents of such distinctions tend to present them as competing, but it is suggested here that at least three of the relevant distinctions (including here that between non-relational and relational properties) arise out of separate perfectly legitimate intuitive considerations: though of course different proposed explications of the informal distinctions involved in any one case may well conflict. Special attention is paid to the question of whether a (...) single notion of property is capable of supporting the various distinctions. (shrink)

This article explores some fundamental issues of definition-based lexical semantic research through a critique of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of semantic and grammatical description (Wierzbicka 1996, Semantics. Primes and Universals, Oxford University Press, Oxford). NSM is criticized for attaching excessive importance to explanatory definition, for its adoption of the reductive requirement that a definiens be simpler than a definiendum, and for its use of ‘canonical contexts’ to disambiguate meaning. The principle of substitutability, according to which a definition of (...) a term is accepted if it can be substituted for the term itself, is also critically examined, and the theory’s use of syntactic phenomena as evidence for polysemy is shown to be inconsistent. Finally, suggestions that NSM may be a valid analytical method for only a subpart of the lexicon are rejected. (shrink)

W niniejszym tekście, poświęconym definiowaniu m. in. słów i zwrotów frazeologicznych podczas nauczania języków, autorka opisuje lingwistyczną teorię Anny Wierzbickiej, dotyczącą Natural Semantic Metalanguage i w adaptacyjnej formie przenosi ją na płaszczyznę zajęć z języka obcego, gdzie przynosi ona namacalne wyniki. Podczas zajęć językowych wymaga się od uczących się poprawnego definiowania ogólnego, które jednak rzadko przekazywane jest w podręcznikach i na wykładach, mimo iż zdolność ta nie jest wcale oczywista, samo definiowanie zaś nie jest łatwym zadaniem. Przeciwnie - od studentek (...) i studentów języków obcych oczekuje się mentalnego uzdolnienia w tym kierunku, nie uwzględniając faktu, że wiele osób ma trudności z definiowaniem nawet w języku ojczystym. W artykule autorka chce pokazać, że po części zignorowana teoria Anny Wierzbickiej ze swoim punktem wyjściowym, jakim są primes, pozwala uświadomić uczącym się języka obcego, że istotę słowa, wyrażenia czy frazy można wyjaśnić w oparciu o sposób określenia znaczenia, przyjęty w NSM. Nie jest przy tym konieczne, ażeby znaczenia opisywać i określać poprzez primes. Ważne jest, aby w celu uniknięcia błędnego koła podczas objaśnień definicji nie koncentrować się na synonimach i antonimach. Jak takie i podobne objaśnienia mogą wyglądać, pokazane jest na przykładach kilku definicji, które wyjaśnione zostały w oparciu o sposób określenia znaczenia przyjęty w NSM. Autorka dyskutuje również opisy i warunki działania takiej metody. Na zakończenie przedstawione są propozycje w zakresie metodologii nauczania umiejętności definiowania podczas zajęć języka obcego. (shrink)

: This article presents a new approach to considering the categories and concepts necessary for praxeology based on the theoretical framework proposed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. Natural semantic metalanguage theory can be a comprehensive method for defining the conceptual foundations of human action and of rational discussion in general. Behind the very premise of ….

The combinatory restriction known in linguistics as ‘selection restrictions’ are generally assumed to be a kind of linguistic structures, either syntactic or semantic, or at best cognitive structures. The idea discussed in this paper is that selection restrictions, although relevant for the description of complex meanings of linguistic expressions, do not belong to the structure of either language or cognition in any reasonable sense. Instead, they are criteria for conceptual consistency. They form a layer of shared presuppositions that lie at (...) the grounds of consistent human behaviour and therefore of consistent thought and expression and belong to a natural ontology shared far beyond the boundaries of a given linguistic community. (shrink)

There is no need to introduce Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a great philosopher, theologian, diplomat, creator of the infinitesimal calculus and founder of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He also planned the development of the so-called Lingua characteristica. Literally taken, the name of the language means a language of letters, a graphic language, also called a characteristica universalis. It was meant to be a way of expressing meanings, as modeled after methods used in arithmetic and geometry and having unusual properties.