Wierzbicka, Anna (2001). Leibnizian linguistics. In István Kenesei, & Robert M. Harnish (Eds.), Perspectives on semantics, pragmatics, and discourse: A festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer (pp. 229-253). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.90.18wie
The “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” used currently in cross-linguistic investigations is of course not the same thing as Leibniz’s ideal and universal language. But it is an embodiment of the same basic idea. For the set of universal and presumably innate concepts postulated in current NSM work could only be arrived at by trial and error on the basis of intensive explorations of many diverse languages; and yet such explorations could only proceed in the first place on the basis of a hypothetical set of universal concepts postulated prior to any wide-ranging
cross-linguistic investigations.
The “NSM” project has proceeded all along according to the Leibnizian methodology of trial and error: first, a minimal set of hypothetical universal concepts was posited on the basis of speculation andt radition (going back to Aristotle’s Categories). Then it was continually expanded and modified as the empirical basis of the study broadened to include more and more languages, more and more conceptual domains, and more and more aspects of language structure and language use.
As a result of this process of continual revision, the number of postulated universal concepts has increased from fourteen (seeWierzbicka 1972) to sixty, and three elements from the original set (IMAGINE, WORLD, and DON’T WANT) have been definitely removed from the list. At the same time, the lexical focus of the search (that is, the focus on the “alphabet of human thoughts”) has been replaced by a more broadly-based search for a universal “language of human thoughts”, embracing both a universal lexicon and a universal grammar. Since the universal grammar is conceived in NSM work as a universal combinatorics of the lexically embodied universal concepts, the work on universal grammar constitutes a natural continuation of the work on the universal lexicon.
