Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). La quête des primitifs sémantiques: 1965-1992 [The search for semantic primes: 1965-1992]. Langue française, 98, 9-23. DOI : 10.3406/lfr.1993.5831
Written in French.
This paper provides a state of the art report on the search for semantic primitives as carried out over the last 28 years. It is argued that the failure of the philosophical speculation triggered by the reflections of the great 17th century thinkers (Leibniz, Descartes, Pascal, Arnauld) is not irreversible: the challenge lies in replacing the speculation with a linguistic approach based on the observation of the most diverse languages in the world.
