Gladkova, Anna (2007). Universal and language-specific aspects of “propositional attitudes”: Russian vs. English. In Andrea C. Schalley & Drew Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 61-83). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.93.06gla
In linguistic literature inspired by philosophical tradition, it is often assumed that the key distinction in the area of “propositional attitude” is that between “know” and “believe”. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory of language and thought argues that while know is a universal conceptual prime (KNOW), believe is not. It posits THINK, not believe, as a universal counterpart of KNOW. The Moscow Semantic School posits primitives ЗНАТЬ ZNAT’ (KNOW) and СЧИТАТЬ SČITAT’ (which has no exact English equivalent). This chapter argues that the use of считать sčitat’ and believe as putative primes is unjustified. It supports думать dumat’ as the Russian exponent of the universal conceptual prime THINK and it shows that the use of думать dumat’ as a prime leads to much better results than the use of считать sčitat’.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
