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Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Universal semantic primitives as a basis for lexical semantics. Folia Linguistica, 29(1-2), 149-169.

Three hundred years later we have, I think, a much better idea than our seventeenth-century predecessors could have, of what the universal semantic primitives look like, and also, of how they combine with each other to produce larger semantic configurations — within a word and without a sentence. We now have, therefore, a much more solid foundation for lexical semantics, both descriptive and contrastive. Until, however, the search for universal semantic primitives is finalized and until the language-independent syntax of these primitives is well understood, the basis of lexical semantics must
continue to be regarded äs somewhat shaky, and all our definitions must continue to be regarded as more or less provisional. There is no reason, though, why this realization should discourage us in our efforts. The main thing is to be moving in the right direction.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). *Abortion, euthanasia and language. Quadrant, 40(7-8), 54-58.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). The semantics of logical concepts. The Moscow Linguistics Journal, 2, 104-129.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract:

Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory that Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal concepts, as they have emerged from large-scale investigations across a wide range of languages undertaken by the author and her colleagues. On the basis of empirical cross-linguistic studies it vindicates the old notion of the ‘psychic unity of mankind’, while at the same time offering a framework for the rigorous description of different languages and cultures.

Despite the promise held out by the cognitive revolution in the human sciences in general and by the ‘Chomskyan revolution’ in linguistics, meaning – not the meaning of the logician, but the meaning that underlies and informs human cognition, communication, and culture – remains for many linguists an intractable problem, and ‘the weak point of language study’ (Bloomfield). This book demonstrates clearly and conclusively that it does not have to be so.

Table of contents:

I. GENERAL ISSUES

1. Introduction
2. A survey of semantic primitives
3. Universal grammar: The syntax of universal semantic primitives
4. Prototypes and invariants
5. Semantic primitives and semantic fields
6. Semantics and “primitive thought”
7. Semantic complexity and the role of ostension in the acquisition of concepts

II. LEXICAL SEMANTICS

8. Against “Against definitions”
9. Semantics and lexicography
10. The meaning of colour terms and the universals of seeing
11. The semantics of natural kinds
12. Semantics and ethnobiology

III. THE SEMANTICS OF GRAMMAR

13. Semantic rules in grammar
14. A semantic basis for grammatical description and typology: Transitivity and reflexives
15. Comparing grammatical categories across languages: The semantics of evidentials

Translations:

Into Russian (Chapters 1 and 14 only):

Chapters 1 (pp. 3-43) and 2 (pp. 44-76) of Вежбицкая, Анна (1999), Семантические универсалии и описание языков [Semantic universals and the description of languages]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture]

Into Russian (Chapters 1, 4 and 14):

Chapters 1 (pp. 19-53), 3 (pp. 91-124) and 5 (pp. 135-170) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2011), Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

Into Polish:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Semantyka: Jednostki elementarne i uniwersalne. Lublin: UMCS.

Into Czech:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Sémantika: Elementární a univerzální sémantické jednotky. Praha: Karolinum.

More information:

Chapter 4 builds on: ‘Prototypes save’: On the uses and abuses of the notion of ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields (1990)
Chapter 5 builds on: Semantic primitives and semantic fields (1992)
Chapter 6 builds on: Semantic universals and primitive thought? The question of the psychic unity of humankind (1994)
Chapter 7 builds on: Semantic complexity: Conceptual primitives and the principle of substitutability (1991); Ostensive definitions and verbal definitions: Innate conceptual primitives and the acquisition of concepts (1991)
Chapter 8 builds on: Back to definitions: Cognition, semantics, and lexicography (1992)
Chapter 9 builds on: What are the uses of theoretical lexicography? (1992-3)
Chapter 10 builds on: The meaning of color terms: Semantics, culture, and cognition (1990)
Chapter 11 builds on: Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias: How to draw the line (1995)
Chapter 12 builds on: What is a life form? Conceptual issues in ethnobiology (1992)
Chapter 14 builds on: A semantic basis for grammatical typology (1995)
Chapter 15 builds on: Semantics and epistemology: The meaning of ‘evidentials’ in a cross-linguistic perspective (1994)

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Wierzbicka, Anna (1997). Conditionals and counterfactuals: Conceptual primitives and linguistic universals. In Angeliki Athanasiadou, & René Dirven (Eds.), On conditionals again (pp. 15-59). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/cilt.143.04wie

I claim that the concept of IF (as used in natural language) is a conceptual primitive, which cannot be defined in terms of any other concepts. I also claim that this concept is a lexicogrammatical universal, and that claims that, for example, some languages do not have lexicogrammatical resources to distinguish IF from WHEN, are incorrect.

Furthermore, I suggest that the category of “counterfactuals” is also a semantic primitive, which probably cannot be defined in terms of IF, KNOW, negation, and any other hypothetical semantic ingredients. I argue that the “hard core” of this category includes doubly negative sentences with a past reference and I try to explain (with reference to other known linguistic facts) why this should be the case. I question the view that there is some “continuum of hypotheticality”, differently cut in different languages, and I postulate the existence of two discrete semantic concepts, lexicalized in English most clearly as if and if…(pluperfect) would.

The difference between conditionals and counterfactuals can, in a sense, be described as follows: conditionals allow us to imagine that something happens that we think can happen, whereas counterfactuals allow us to imagine that something happens that we think cannot happen. But a description of this kind cannot be regarded as semantic decomposition, because it assumes I think incorrectly that the concept of “imagine” is more basic than either IF or the (counterfactual) IF…WOULD.

In earlier work I proposed that “imagine” was indeed a universal semantic primitive , and I assumed that
both conditionals and counterfactuals could be somehow analyzed via “imagine”. With time, however, it became apparent that this assumption was not consistent with crosslinguistic evidence: it emerged that many languages do not have a word corresponding to imagine, and so “imagine” had to be crossed out from the list of universal semantic primitives. Currently, the growing body of crosslinguistic evidence appears to suggest that while “imagine” was indeed an ill-chosen candidate for this status, “if” and the
counterfactual “if…would” may be true lexicogrammatical universals. If it continues to be confirmed by further evidence, this finding will add considerable support to the hypothesis that both “if” and the counterfactual “if…would” are conceptual primitives.