Tag: (E) go

(1989) NSM primes

Wierzbicka, Anna (1989). Semantic primitives – The expanding set. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2), 309-332.

Abstract:

The set of hypothetical semantic prim(itiv)es proposed in earlier works is shown to be in need of considerable expansion. This outcome is due primarily to the work of Cliff Goddard. The present paper surveys a set of 28 elements, including – in addition to survivals from earlier sets – several elements proposed by Goddard, and some by Andrzej Bogusławski.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1997) English – COME, GO

Goddard, Cliff (1997). The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147-162. DOI: 10.1075/prag.7.2.02god

It is often assumed that the English motion verbs come and go can be glossed as motion towards-the-speaker and ‘motion not-towards-the-speaker’, respectively. This paper proposes alternative semantic analyses which are more complex, but also, it is argued, more descriptively adequate and more explanatory. The semantic framework is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach developed by Anna Wierzbicka, in which meanings are stated as explanatory paraphrases (explications) couched in a small, standardized and translatable metalanguage based on natural language. A single explication is advanced for come, and it is shown that this unitary meaning is compatible with the broad range of ‘appropriateness conditions’ on its use. The same applies to go. A novel feature of the proposed analysis for come is that it does not rely on the conventional notion that ‘deictic projection’ is a pragmatic phenomenon. Instead the potential for ‘deictic projection’ is analysed as flowing directly from the lexical semantics of come. This approach, it is argued, enables an improved account of semantic differences between near-equivalents for come and go in various languages.

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(2006) NSM and LFG

Andrews, Avery D. (2006). Semantic composition for NSM, using LFG + Glue. In Keith Allan (Ed.), Selected papers from the 2005 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au. PDF (open access)

The NSM program has a lot to say about the meanings of individual words, but virtually no work has been done on the problem of how to assemble these meanings to produce meanings for utterances, which is the problem of semantic composition that is the major focus of formal semantics. In this paper I begin to fill this gap by making some definite proposals for doing semantic composition in NSM using the ‘glue logic’ that has been proposed as a method of semantic assembly for the syntactic theory of LFG.

Although many different generative syntactic theories could provide a basis for semantic composition in NSM, LFG is a reasonable choice, because it combines to a relatively high degree the properties of being formally explicit, easy to learn, and applicable to a typologically diverse range of languages, and the architecture of LFG + Glue provides a clean separation between issues of semantic composition on the one hand, and syntactic realization on the other.

I will examine some issues that arise in composing explications for some of the valence options of the verbs warn and go, showing that naive substitution is insufficient, but that the typed lambda calculus can deal with the problems adduced. We will also see that the problem of composing explications should not be deferred indefinitely, since attempting to compose explications can expose deficiencies which aren’t evident when the explications are viewed in isolation. I will conclude with a brief discussion of some of the problems afforded by phenomena of quantifier scope.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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