nsm-approach.net

Wierzbicka, Anna (1982). Why can you have a drink when you can’t *have an eat? Language, 58(4), 753-799.

This paper argues that sentences in the have a V frame are not a jungle of idiosyncrasies, but exhibit orderly and systematic behavior, governed by strict semantic rules. These rules can be stated in precise formulae with full predictive power. Ten subtypes are singled out: each has a slightly different semantic formula, but all have a common core, which is a semantic invariant of the have a V frame. These semantic formulae, which account for differences both in acceptability (have a drink and *have an eat) and in meaning (drink and have a drink), are stated not in terms of ad-hoc features or labels, but in an independently justified semantic metalanguage based on natural language.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1984). Apples are not a “kind of fruit”: The semantics of human categorization. American Ethnologist, 11(2), 313-328.

Translated into Polish as chapter 3 of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

This paper examines the semantic structure of English classificatory terms in the area of concrete lexicon, linking differences in semantic structure with differences in grammatical characteristics of different classes of nouns. I argue that in recent literature on human categorization the strictly taxonomic categories (i.e., categories based on hierarchies of kinds) have not been distinguished from
other types of categories. I discuss four types of supercategory that do not stand for “a kind of thing”: two different types of collective supercategories that stand for heterogeneous collections of things, a supercategory that stands for heterogeneous classes of materials, and a supercategory of purely functional concepts.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1985). Oats and wheat: The fallacy of arbitrariness. In John Haiman (Ed.), Iconicity in syntax (pp. 311-342). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/tsl.6.16wie

It is the purpose of the present paper to challenge a Bloomfieldian dogma and to explore the opposite view: that form classes are semantically motivated, and that differences in grammatical behavior reflect iconically differences in meaning. As my test case I will take the very area which apparently gives the tenet of arbitrariness the strongest possible support: mass nouns. I investigate the very restricted grammatical category singular/plural, the arbitrariness of which is a standard topos in all the linguistic textbooks. I undertake to show that seemingly arbitrary distinctions like the one between wheat and oats are in fact motivated by a set of principles with predictive power.

It emerges from the present study that the syntax of mass nouns in English is iconic to a degree previously undreamt of either by linguists or by philosophers who have written on the subject. Grammatical behavior which has previously been regarded as idiosyncratic has been shown to be semantically motivated. The grammar of mass nouns reflects iconically the way in which different classes of things and ‘stuffs’ are conceptualized. The apparent idiosyncrasies, far from being arbitrary, are revealing of subtle distinctions in the underlying conceptualizations. The relationship is iconic in the sense that the system of formal distinctions and the system of conceptual distinctions are mutually isomorphic.