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Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). The alphabet of human thoughts. In Richard A. Geiger, & Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn (Eds.), Conceptualizations and mental processing in language (pp. 23-51). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

As human beings, we cannot place ourselves outside all cultures. This does not mean, however, that if we want to study cultures other than our own, all we can do is describe them through the prism of our own culture, and therefore to distort them. We can find a point of view which is universal and culture-independent; but we must look for such a point of view not outside all human cultures (because we cannot place ourselves outside them), but within our own culture, or within any other culture that we are intimately familiar with. To achieve this, we must learn to separate within a culture its idiosyncratic aspects from its universal aspects. We must learn to find “human nature” within every particular culture. This is necessary not only for the purpose of studying “human nature” but also for the purpose of studying the idiosyncratic aspects of any culture that we may be interested in. To study different cultures in their culture-specific features we need a universal perspective; and we need a culture-independent analytical framework. We can find such a framework in universal human concepts, that is in concepts which are inherent in any human language.

If we proceed in this way, we can study any human culture without the danger of distorting it by applying to it a framework alien to it; and we can aim both at describing it “truthfully” and at understanding it.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Reading human faces: Emotion components and universal semantics. Pragmatics and Cognition, 1(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1075/pc.1.1.03wie

It is widely believed that there are some emotions (so-called “basic emotions “) which are universally associated with distinctive facial expressions and that one can recognize, universally, an angry face, a happy face, a sad face, and so on. The “basic emotions ” are believed to be part of the biological makeup of human species and to be therefore “hardwired”. In contrast to this view, it has been suggested that it is not emotions but some components of emotions which are universally linked with certain facial expressions, or rather with some components of facial expressions. The theory will be even more convincing – and indeed more verifiable – if the postulated “dissociable components of emotions”
are formulated in a rigorous, and culture-independent manner. This paper argues that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on universal semantic primitives and devised by the author and colleagues, provides a suitable culture-independent framework.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). *The universality of taxonomic categorization and the indispensability of the concept ‘kind’. Rivista di Linguistica, 6(2), 347-364.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantic universals and primitive thought: The question of the psychic unity of humankind. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 4(1), 23-49.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1994.4.1.23

Abstract:

This article argues that the belief in the “psychic unity of humankind,” which the author shares, can degenerate into an empty rhetorical posture if it is not linked with an empirical search for a shared conceptual basis linking different cultures and languages. The author argues that the reasoning of believers in “primitive thought” is fallacious, and she tries to show where exactly it goes wrong. In particular, she argues that the proponents of the primitive-thought doctrine do not understand the phenomenon of polysemy and have no methodology that would allow them to establish whether a word has one or more meanings. More generally, she tries to show how the claims of the proponents of the primitive-thought doctrine can be refuted on the basis of solid evidence, sound analysis, and rigorous methodology.

Translations:

Into Russian:

Chapter 2 (pp. 54-90) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2011), Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 184-210) of:

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

Rating:

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantic primitives across languages: A critical review. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 445-500). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hunting for semantic and lexical universals is not like pearl-fishing. Primitives do not present themselves glittering and unmistakable. Identifying them is an empirical endeavour but one that calls for much interpretative effort.

Although the overwhelming conclusion emerging from the 1994 Semantic and lexical universals survey of languages is that there is indeed a universal “alphabet of human thoughts”, this by no means implies that no problems have arisen in testing our hypothetical set of conceptual and lexical universals. This closing chapter is devoted mainly to a survey of these problems.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). A semantic basis for grammatical typology. In Werner Abraham, Talmy Givón, & Sandra Thompson (Eds.), Discourse, grammar and typology: Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar (pp. 179-209). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.27.15wie

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 14 (pp. 402-426) of:

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

Translated into Russian as:

Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna] (1999). Семантическая основа грамматического описания и типология: переходность и возвратность. In Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna], Семантические универсалии и описание языков, под ред. Татьяна В. Булыгиной [Semantic universals and the description of languages, ed. Tatyana V. Bulygina] (pp. 44-76). Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].

(Modified) excerpt:

To compare languages (or anything else) we need a tertium comparationis (that is, a common measure). By using as its tools meaning-based categories such as “noun”, “numeral”, “plural”, “past”, “imperative”, “conditional”, or “reflexive”, linguistic typology has also recognized that in the case of language the necessary tertium comparationis is provided by meaning. However, categories of this kind were usually not defined, or if they were defined, their definitions were not adhered to, and in fact, whatever the definitions, the actual analysis was carried out on the basis of intuition and common sense. The treatment of the category of “reflexives” illustrated in the present paper is a case in point.

Among the meanings which linguistic investigations show to be grammaticalised most widely in the languages of the world , we can recognise
certain scenarios such as the “transitive” scenario or the “reflexive” scenario; and we can see that large parts of grammars are organised around such scenarios, and can be described with reference to them. Other widely grammaticalised meanings are of a different nature. All types of meanings, however, can be rigorously described and insightfully compared in terms of the same set of universal semantic primitives and of the metalanguage based on them. I believe that without such a metalanguage, grammatical typology has no firm basis and no precise tools with which it could fully achieve its objectives.

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.