Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). The theory of the mental lexicon. In Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger, & Karl Gutschmidt (Eds.), Die slavischen Sprachen/The Slavic languages: Eine internationales Handbuch zu ihrer Struktur, ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Erforsching/An international handbook of their structure, their history and their investigation: Volume 1 (pp. 848-863). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214475.1.11.848
The main thesis of this article is that (contrary to what, for example, Chomsky claims) a great deal is by now known about the mental lexicon. First of all, there is currently a great deal of evidence that at the heart of this lexicon lies a set of sixty or so universal semantic primes, each with its own set of combinatory characteristics. Second, cross-linguistic evidence suggests that large sections of the mental lexicon have a hierarchical structure, with several levels of semantic molecules operating and thus allowing for great conceptual complexity to be combined with relatively simple semantic structures. Third, it is now clear that many sections of the mental lexicon are organized according to a certain pattern, or template, shared by a large number of words. Fourth, a large body of research has shown that the mental lexicon of the speakers of any given language includes many words whose meanings are unique to that particular language, and that such words – a language’s cultural key words – help bind the speakers of a language into a cohesive cultural community.
The chapter focuses in particular on the relatively new areas of semantic molecules and semantic templates. The illustrative material analysed is drawn from Polish and relates to emotions (including but not limited to emotions reminiscent of envy and compassion in English), speech acts (reminiscent of to order and to ask (someone about something) in English), names of animals (mice), and motion verbs.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
