Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Semantic primes and universal grammar. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar – Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 41-85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.60.08god
The thirty-year program of semantic research inaugurated in Wierzbicka (1972) has reached the point where it has become possible to articulate a detailed and concrete account of exactly what the unity of all grammars consists in; that is, to delineate where the line runs between what is constant and what is variable, what is essential and what is “accidental”, what is universal and what is language-specific.
The main purpose of this chapter is to describe the proposed model of universal grammar; i.e. the inherent syntactic properties of universal semantic primes. We also establish some basic metalinguistic terminology, building on the firm conceptual foundation of semantic primes.
