Bolin, Mary (2018). Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Primes, universals, and syntax with data from the semantic field Grace in the Old Testaments of the King James Bible and Martin Luther’s German Bible. University of Nebraska, Lincoln: Faculty Publications. PDF (open access)
This study looks at semantic analysis through the lens of NSM as described by Wierzbicka and others, showing how primes combine syntactically to make culture. The focus is on the semantic field Grace in the Bible’s Old Testament, both in German and English, and on how this field can be analysed using NSM. The explications are preliminary and could be extensively overhauled and edited to make them clearer, more exhaustive, and more contrastive. NSM analysis both confirms things about this data that were already shown by previous analyses, and provides further insights. The optimism, tenaciousness, and forthrightness of this approach make it intriguing and promising and the staunch empiricism of NSM researchers provides a lot of evidence that can be evaluated and used.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
