The Wealth of Nations in NSM (Gian Marco Farese & Bart J. Wilson, 2020)
This is a series of semantic illustrations capturing the Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory discussed by Adam Smith (1723-1790) in his opus magnum The Wealth of Nations (first published in 1776). It is the longest text ever produced in Natural Semantic Metalanguage and written strictly in pure NSM (not Minimal English) using only semantic primes and a small number of semantic molecules. The order of the illustrations follows the order in which Smith introduced his arguments in the original text. The paraphrased text is intended to function as a sort of explicative guide to the original phrased in simple and cross-translatable words. It is not meant to replace the original, but to be read together with it. We demonstrate that: (i) by reducing the principles of economics as conceived by Smith to their core meanings, it is possible to resolve a number of interpretive ambiguities that permeate discussions on economics, and (ii) by producing explications that are clear, cross-translatable, and free from terminological ethnocentrism, these principles become accessible and maximally intelligible to twenty-first century readers who are non-experts in economics and non-native speakers of English, too.
Bibliography:
Goddard, Cliff, Anna Wierzbicka, and Gian Marco Farese. 2019. The conceptual semantics of ‘money words’: money, buy, pay, (it) costs. Paper presented at the Australian Linguistics Society Conference, December 2019, Sydney, Australia.
Smith, Vernon L. and Bart J. Wilson. 2019. Humanomics. Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, Bart J. and Gian Marco Farese. (forthcoming). ‘What Did Adam Smith Mean? The Semantics of The Wealth of Nations’. In P. Sagar (ed.), Smith After 300 Years, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
