SEMANTICS

Primes and Universals

ANNA WIERZBECKA

Oxford New York

iOlXFlOlRD U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS
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1. $emnnrfc.~. 2. Universa!~'s(Lingtais#ics]3. Grammar,
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Acknowledgements
This book owes a great deal to my friend and colleague Cliff Goddard of
the Universiky of New England, who read and ma& very detailed comments
on the first draft of it. I; have revised all the chapters, same of them quite
extensively, in response to Cliff's criticisms and suggestions. Over a number
af years, CliU ;has been my principal partner in the search for semantic
primes and semantic universals, and interminable tdephone Biscussions with
him have k n an unfailing souce of insight and inte1lectud pleasure.
1arnn also very grateful to my old friend Andrzej Bogustawski of Warsaw
TJmiversity, who three decades ago initiated the search for semantic primes,
who has mntinued this search thoughout this period, and who, despite dis-
tance, has remained an invaluable interlocutor and colleague.
I would like to thank the colleagues who read and mmemted on an ear-
lier draft of the Introduction to this book and thus enabled me to improve
it, in particular Sasha AikhenvaPd, Avery h h e w s , Jentcrnne Bmner, Bob
Dixont, Mark h r i e , Ian Green, Jean Harkins, Randy Allen Harris, Helen
WLoghlin, Andy Pawlley, and Jane Simpson.
I am particularly grateful to my extremely able Research Assistant, Helen
O'Loghlin, who went far beyond the call of duty in assisting me to prepare
this book for publication, chasing references, tracking down iineansistcneies
and errors, dis~ussingideas, and suggesting possible ways of improvement.
Her help was indispensable. I would like, too, to thank the Australian
Research Council for a grant for research assistanw, which made this pos-
sible. I would also like to thank Tim Curnow, who worked as my Research
Assistant at an earlier stage of the preparation of the book {also under an
ARC grant), and whose help was also invaluable.
It is also a pleasure to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to
Ellalene Seymour, for her expert, patient, and good-humowlred typing and
editing of the sruwessive drafts of this book.
Finally, I would like to thank my students at the Australian Nationaie
University, and in particular, the participants of my Seminar on Semantics,
who have contributed both valuable data and ideas to the project.
Some portions of this book first appeared, in different f o m , as articles
in journals or as chapters in colllective volumes. I thank the publishers
far permission to include revised and expanded versions of the following
publications or parts thereoE
'Prototypes Save? On the Uses and Abuses of the Notion of 'Prototype' in
Linguistics and Relaked Fields. In Savas L. Tsohactzidis (ed.). Meanings md
P~o~obypes: Studies in Li~gwisfkCafegorizatiem.London: Routfdge & Kegan Pau1.
19910. 347-3167.
Semantic Primitives and Semantic Fidds. In Adrienne Lekres and Eva F d e r Kittag
(eds,). Frames" Fie[&, a d Contrwfs: New Essays EjJ Semantic and LexScaE
Organization. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Esfbalum. 1992. 209-27.
Semantic Complexity: Conwptual Primitives and the Principle of Substitutability.
Theoretical ICimg~lis~ies,E 7 . 1991. 75-97, I. GENERAL ISSUES
Semantic Uniwzrsals and Trlmitlve Thought? The Question ofthe Psychk Unity of
Humankind. .?~u~aal ~JLi~~guEsfic A~nthropafogy.U1. 1994. 1-27, l667.
Ostensive Definitions and Verbal Definitions: Innate Conceptual Primitives tand the 1. Language and Meanring
Acquisition of Concepts, In Maciej Grochowski and Daniel Weiss (eds.]. Worth are 2. SemantL Primitives (or Primes)
Physieiamjor an AiEing Mhd Sagners Slavistische Sammlung, xvii. Munich: Otto 3. Lexical Universals
Sagner. 1991.46740. 4. Innate C o n a p t s and Language Acquisition
Back tra Definitions: tagnition, Semantics, and Lexicography. Lexfcograph[ca.8. 5. The Universal Syntax of Meaning
1992. 14W4. (Published in 1994.1 6. The iC\Baturrul Semantic Metalanguage m S M )
What we the Uses of Theorebid Lexicography? Didbnaries. 14. 1992-3. 44-7%. 7. Semantic Invariants
Replies to Discussmts. DLfimwries. 14, 1992-93. 139-59. 8. Metlhodologi@d Issues
9. Past, Present, and Future of NSM Semantic Theory
The Meaning of Conour Terms: Semantics, CnBture, and Cognition. Cognitive
Lingwtstics. l$1. 1990. 99-P-nTO. 2. A Smrvey af Semantic Prirnitivlt?~
Dictionaries versus Encyclopaedias: How to Draw the Line. In Philip Davis i(ed.1.
A. OLD PRPMITIVES
DescrQative wd Thearetical Modes in the Alternative LinisguLrics. Philadelphia!
Amsterdam: John B e n j d s . Forthcoming. 11. Introduction
2. Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING,
What is a Life Form? Conceptual Issues in Ebhnolbiologg. Journal of Linguistic
PEOPLE
AmrhropoIagp. 21. 1992. 3-21).
3. Determiners: THIS, T H E SAME, OTHER
Semantic Rules Know no Exoeptions. Studies in htagttage. 15B. 1991. 37 1-98. 4. Quantifiers: ONE, W Q , MANY (MUCH)l, A L L
The Semantics of Grammar: A Reply to Professor Palmer. Journal af Lingwhtics. 5 . Mental Predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL
27/2. 1991. 495-8. 6 . Speech: SAY
k Semantic Basis far Grammatical Typdogg. In Werner Abraham, Talmy Givon, 7, Actions and Events: D O and HAPPEN
aad Sandra Thompson (eds.). Discourse. G r a m n r and Typolagye Complementary 8. Evaluators: G O O D and S A D
Series of Studies in Language. Amsterdam: John Bemjamins. l79-209. 9. Descriptors: BIG and SMALL
Semamftics and Epistemology: The Meaning of 'Evidentials' in a Cross-linguistic 10. T i m : WHEN, BEFORE, AFTER
Perspective. Language Sciences. 16,'I. 1994. 8 1-137. 11. Space: WHERE, UNDER, ABOVE
12. Partonomy a n d Taxonomy: BART (OF) and KIND (OF)
13, Metapredicates: NOT, CAN, VERY
84. Zntercllawsal Linkers: IF,BECAUSE, LIKE
B. NEW PRPMJTWES
15. Introduction
16. Determiners and Quantifiers: SOME and M O R E
17. Mental Predicates: SEE and HEAR
18. M~~~vememt, Exisllenoe, Life: MOVE, T H E R E IS, LIVE
 19. Space: FAR and NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, HERE 89 2. Natural Kinds and Cultural Kinds
20. T h e : A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, NOW 97 3. Speech Act Verbs
21. Imagination and Possibility: IF . . . WOULD, CAN, 4. Emotion Concepts
MAYBE 101 5. Conclusion
22. WORD 107
23. General Discussion: Opposites and Converses 108 6. Semantics and 'Trimi~vea?.ougStW 184
24. Conclusion 110 1. Introduction
2. The Universality of BECAUSE
3. Universal Grammar: The Syntax mf Udxersal Semantic Primitives 112 3. The Universality of IF
1. Introduction 1112 4, The Universality of SOMEONE
2. Preliminary Discussion P 113 5. The Universality of ALL
3. Substantives: YOU, I; SOMEONE, PEOPLE; 6 . The Universality of KNOW and THINK
SOMETHING P 14 7, General Discussian
4. Mental Predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE,
HEAR 119 7. Semantic CompIexty and the Wob IcDf Ostemsian in the
5. Sglm3Al: SAY 120 Acquisitian of Cancepb 211
6. Actions, Events, and Movement: DO, HAFPEN, MOVE 122 1. Introduction 211 1
7. Existence and Life: BE (THERE ISARE) and LIVE 3 24 2. Complex Concepts as Configurations of Simple Ones 2112
8. Determiners and Qluanltifiers: THIS, THE SAME, 3. Abstract Concepts: Words For Emotions 2114
OTHER; ONE, TWO, hiZAW (MUCH], SOME, ALL 126 4. Relatively Simple Concrete Concepts: Body Parts and the
9. Augmentor: MORE 129 Natural Environment 2118
10. Evaluators: GOOD and DAD 130 5. Temperature Terms and the Conoept of 'Fire' 22 1
I I. Descriptors: BIG and SMALL 131 6. Cultural and Naturall Kinds: 'Breadknd Water' 225
12. Time: WHEN, AFTER, BEFORE, A LONG TIME, A 7. Plugging Concepts In 232
SNORT TIME, NOW 131 8. Conclusion 233
13. Space: WHERE; FAR, NEAR; UNDER, ABOVE; SIDE;
INSIDE; HERE 133 1l. LEXICAL SEMANTICS 235
14. 1ntercUausa;mlLinkers: BECAUSE, IF, IF . . . WOULD 137
15. Clause Operators: NOT and MAYBE 139
116. Metapredicate CAN 140 I. Linguistic Meaning
11 7. Intensifier: VERY 141 2. Definitions as a Tool far Cross-cuIturaQResearch
18. Taxonomy, Partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF 1141 3. The Conoept of a Semantic Invariant
14. Similarity: LIKE 143 4. Determinacy of Meaning
20. General Discussion 144 5. Problems of Polysemy
6. Lexical Mearming and Illocutionary Rhetorical Devices
4. Prototypes amd Invmiiants 3148 7. Family Resemblances
P . Intwducticrn 148 8. Dictionary Definitions
3 2 . Abuses of "'Prototypes'9n Semantics: Some Illustraitions 149 9. Fodor on Definitions
-b3. Uses of 'Tro~totypes"in Semantics: Some Illustrations 160 10. Clsnclusion
4. Conclusion 167
9. Semawtics and kxicogrspby
5. Semrrwdc RimiitiExes and Semantic Fields P. Introduction
1. Introduction 2. Scope versus Adequag and Truth
 3. Saying Something that is not True 3. Types of Linguistic Evidenm 355
4. Saying Something that is Superfluous 4. "Life F o m s Y 3 nEnglish Folk Zoology 358
5. Confusing Meaning with Knowledge 5. Are there Monogeneric ""LiEe Forms"? 360
6. Definition8 which are too Broad 6. "Life Foms'7n English Folk Botany 361
7. Capturing the Invariant 7. Polflypic Genera 365
8. Standing Firmly on the Cirollmd of Discreteness 8. "'Ciestalts" a d "Distinctive Features'" 366
9. Distinguishing Polysemy from Vagueness 9. "Hidden Namres" and ""Proper Names'" 367
10. Avoiding Circularity 101. Living Things and Artefacts: Similar or Radically Different? 370
11. Relying on Indefinables 11, Conrclwsion 374
12. Using Simple Language
13. Exploring New Models of Definition aP. THE S E W l C S OF GR-R 377
14. Conclusion
1113. Semntie Rules ie Grammar
I . Introduction
8, introduclion 2. Semantic Rules: The Past Practiw
2, Mcaniny and Scientific Kncawllcdgc 3. 'Wual Nouns" and Absolute Predictiveness
3, Meaning and Coilour Charts 4. Evidence for Different ConceptualFzaEions
4. Meaning and Psychological Reality 5. The Mystery of Scaks
5 . Colour Terms as Quotations 6 . Predictiveness and Different Languages
6. "Black" awd 'White'" 'Dark"' and "Lighlt" 7. Different Cultures, Different Conceptualizatims
7. Green, gwyrdd welsh), btuy (Hanunlliio) 8. The Semantics of Gender
8. Blue, rniebfaki (Polish), goSuboj and 8 h Q (Russian), aoi 9. The Unconscious Character of Semantic Rules
(Japanese), and f& flhsui) 10. Conclnasi~n
9. ""Red" and "Yell~w"
10. Macro-white and Macro-Mack 14. A Semantit Basis far Grannmattsl Deseriptiau and Typailagy:
11. Macro-red and Grue Tramsithity and Reflexives
12. Names of Mixed Coiours 1. Introduction 402
13. caBrown" 2. The Uniqueness d Grammatical and Semantic Systems 404
84. Names of Specific (Locally Salient) Referents 3. Typology and Semantics 4x017
15. Condusion: Chromatolrogy, Cognition, and Culture 4. Reflexive Constructions 409
5. Transitive Constructions 420
11. The Semantics of Nalhrral Kinds 6. Concliwsiosr 425
1. Iaatroduction
2, Abstract Comcepts and Concrete Concepts 15. CompEurimg Grammaticral Categories across Lmguag;es:
3. Scientific Knowledge versus Everyday Knowledge The Semantics loif Elridemtialls
4. An IPlwskration: Folk Mice versus Scientific Mice 1. 111tr~du~tion
5. The Evidenoe for the Folk Concept 2. Kashaya
6. General Discussion 3. Quechua
7. Concllusion 4. Wlntu
5. Maricopa
12. Semantics and Ethuobiloliagy 6. Bulgarian and Maoedonian
11. Introdunction 7. Conclusion
2. Ethnobiological AnaByds: Tools and Methods 8. A Summary of the FormuIae
I General Issues
 1 Introduction

1. Language andl Meaning

-- . - roranveying meaning. The structure of this

Language is an instrument * a ,-

t- reflects its function, and it ;an onlf be I;roperly understood in

items of its fmctionr. To study language without reference to meaning is
like studying road signs from the point of view of their physical properties
(haw much they weigh, what kind off paint are tOiey painted with, and so
on], or like studying the structure of the cye without any rcfercncc to see-
ing.
Curiously, however, this is precisely h w many linguists study language.
A scien~eof language in which meaning has at best a very marginal place
is an anomaly and an aberration (which in itself will present an absorbing
topic of study for the future historians of linguistics));and of course not all
present-day linguists approach the study of language in that spirit. Yet in
university curricula currently adopted in many linguistics departments
throughout the world, "formal syntax" still occupies a far more central
place than semantics (the study of meaning), and semantics is still often
treated as marginal.
Two twentieth-century American linguists have k e n particularly influ-
ential in shaping a '"nnguistics without meaning"Ae0nad BBoomfield and
Noam Gluomsky .
B1oomfield (unlike his great contemporary and co-founder of American
linguistics, Edward Sapir) was afraid of meaning, and was eager to relegate
the study of meaning to other disciplines such as sociology or psychology.
The reason he was afraid of it was that he wanted to estabiish linguistics
as a science and that he thought that meaning couldn't be studied with the
same rigour as linguistic sounds and Foms. BloomfieEd% bbeavioousism
made him find all references to ideas, concepts, thoughts, or mind unscien-
tific; "'mentalism" was used by him, and by mamy other influential linguists
of his generation, as ;a dirty word.' As Randy Allen Harris, the author of
The Lhg-uiCsrfcs Wars (1993: 27-81, put It: "Bllaomfreld" ideas defined the
temper of the Binguisltic times: that it [linguistics] was a descriptive and
I As a close oollabonatar of Sapir, Morris Saadesh (1941: 59), painted out, another eon-
finned behaviourist, Twaddell, "criticized Sapir as a mentallist dealing with an 'urnknown and
unknowable mind"".
 taxonomic science, like zoology, geology, m d astronomy; that mental spec-
ulations werle tantamount to mysticism, an abndonmenr of science; that
all the rebvant psyclluotogi~lquestions (learning, knowing, and using a Ian-
guage) would be answered by behaviorism; that meaning was outside the
scope of scientific inquiry."
It has often been said, in F3looirmfielld's defence, that it wasn't BloomfieOd
himself but the "Bloomfieldians" or "post-Bloomfieldians" [and especially
Chomsky" mentor Zeillig Harris) who sought to banish meaning from lin-
guistics. For exampb, Matthew (1943: 8 114) points out that even "in one
of his last general papers he [Bloomfield] continued to make dear that 'in
language, f o m s cannot [be separated from meanings"' (1943; In Hockett
11970: 401). But it is not unreasonable to say that what the Post-
Bloomlie1dians did was to take BEoodield's largely (though not consis-
tently) anti-semantic stand to its logical ccmclusion.
Matthews tries to explain why lBloodeldyssuccessors "came to believe
that forms couId and should be described without reference to meaning'"
and 'khy, in adoptiug a theory in which the separation af form and mean-
ing was axiomatic, they were so sure they were continuing his work". He
notes that the usual explanation given is '"hat however oentral meaning
may have been and however important its investigation, BBoodeldys
account of how it should be described effectively closed the door to scien-
tific studyy' (1993: 115). Matthews seeks to distance himself from this con-
clusion but in my view it is inescapable.
Bloomfield didn't '?ejectyheaning in the sense of avoiding any mention
of it In Pinguistic description but he did want to exclude semantic consider-
ations from linguistic analysis. For example, he ridiculed the idea that the
grammatical catelgolly of number [singular wrsas plural) has a semantic
basis and could be defined with reference to meaning: '"hod grammar
defines the class of plural nouns by its meaning "ore than one' (person,
place, or thing), but who could gather from this that o m is a plmal while
whe& is a singular? Class-meanings, like a1 other meanings, ellude the lin-
guist" power of definition." "933/1935: 26612
Bbofie11d himself denied that he had ever wanted to "undertake to
study language without meaning, simply as meaningless sound" (letter to
Fries; quoted in Hymes and Fought 1975: 1QO9); but the message of
Longwage was none the less 11oud and clear: there was no room for seman-
tics within tlne "linguistic science", at least not for the foreseeable future.
We have definued the meaning oF a linguistic form as the situation inu which the
speaker utters L and the response which it calls forth from the hearer. . . . The sit-
Curiously, Bloomfield didn? pay any attention to the Fact Ghat oafs is no1 a "plural" con-
trasting Gfih a singular (Uke, for example, dogs wntrasts with 6%) and that It dawsn'8 really
belong to the same " f ~ m class" as dogs does. The "Som cllass"io which oats belongs, and its
iruvariaol meaning, is discussed in Chapter 13. (See also Wierzbicka 1988.)
oations which prompt people to atter speech include every abject and happening in
their universe. IN order to give a scientifically accurafe definition of meaning for
every form of a language, we should have Lo have a scientificaily accurate knowl-
edge of everythimg in the speakers' world. The actual extent af human knowledge
is very small, compared to this. We can define the meaning of a speech-form accn-
rately when this meaning has to do with some matter of which 1 ~ possesse scientific
knowledge. We can define the names of minerals, for example, in terms oE chem-
istry and mineralogy, as when we say that the ordinary meaning of the English word
salt is csodium chloride CNaCl)', and we can define the names of plants or animals
by means o l the technical t e m s of botany or zoology, but we have no precise way
of defining words like lave or hate, which cancern situations that have not been
aaocurately classified-andl these latter are in the great majority. . . .
The statement of meaning is therefore the weak point in language study, and wi13 ,
remain so until human knowledge advances very far beyond its present state. Pn
practice, we d e h e the meaning of a linguistic. form, wherever we can, in t e m s of
some other scienoe. Where this is impossible, we resort to makeshift device^.^
(BloomfieBd 193331935: 159-40)
Thus, for IBloonnfUeld meaning codd be referred to, but not studied, and
given his "anti-mentalistic"', behaviouristic conception of rmeaninrg, it could
scarmly have been otherwise.
As Hymes and Fought (1975: BO1Q) put it, "'Boomfield included mean-
ing in his conoeption of language structure but not in his short-term lin-
guistic theory. . . . scepticism as to the practical pos;sibility of incorporating
meaoring explicitly in linguistic analysis led to shifts . . . to reliance ern dis-
tributional patterning . . . among the Bloomfieldians."
The ''cognitive revolution" of the late fifties and the sixties banished (or
so % 3ZE%
m
eEe ghost 6T6ehiviourisii1, and made mind, ariid meanfig; 5
~ e f i c n r bfn human scie-noes in general, and of linguistics in par6ci-i'-
&K:TQ icgaote one 02" the main actors of the 'tognithe revdu1ion"Jerome
G n e r (1990: 8)l: 'That revollution was intended to bring k i n d ' back into
l
& kh@-&an sciences after a long cold winter of objectivhsm."For Bruner,
B
"nimind"Vs dosely related to '%neaningW:"Now let me tell you first what I
and my friends thought the revolution was about back there in the Bate
1950s. It was, we thought, an all-out effort to establish meaning as the mn-
tral conoept of psychology-nd stimuli and responses, not overtly observ-
able behavior, not biological d k s and their transformation, but meaning"
(Ila. 2). But, in his own words, Bruner's is not '"he uswai account d progress
marching ever forware I@. 1); for in his view, "that revolution has now
been diverted into issues that are marginal to the impulse that brought it
Bloomfield's reference to "NaCl" as "the ardinary meaning of the English word sali3'
highlights his failure to dislinguish scientific knowledge From "ordinary meaning"',aas da also
Pvjs remarks on the names of plants. and animals.. For detailed discussion of these matters
see Chapters 11 and 12. As for the meaning of emotion terms (such az b v a and hotel, see
Chapter 5.
 into being. Indeed, it has been technicalized in a manner that even under-
mines the original irnpulsel"(p. 11. What has becn lost sigE~tor is meaaing.
Very early on, for example, emphasis began shifting from "meaning" to 'cinfoma-
tion," "om the cuvssrruclbn OF meaning to the processing raf information. These are
profaundlly different mattcrs. The key factor in the shift was the introduation of
computation as the ruling metaphor and of computability as a necessary criterion
of a good theoretical modell. lnformation is indimerent with respect to meaning.
(P.41
'Very soon, computing became the model of the mind, and in place of the concept
d meaning there emerged the concept of cornpuhBaWlity, i@. 6)
It was inevitable that with computation as the metaphor of the new cognitive sci-
ence and with computability as the necessary if not sufficient criterion of a work-
able theory withim the new science, the old malaise about mentallism wadd
=-emerge. @. 8)
Brumer decries the ""cgnitive revolution" for abandoning meaning as its
central cmcern and for "'opting far Ynfcvrmation processing' and computa-
tion instead" (1371; and he urges "'that psychology stop trying to be 'man-
ing-free' in its system of explanation" (20).
But if psychology has been betrayed by the "cognitive revolution", with
its escape from meaning, what is one to say of linguistics, in which the
promising early refeaences b "'mnd" (as in Chomsky's Language and
Mind), have led to a premmpation with formalisms, and in which "mean-
ing-freeJ' syntax has for decades usurped the place rightfully belonghg to
the study of meaning? Oliver Sacks (1993: 48) smmarizes the c'hijacking'y
of the "cognitive revolution" as follows: "Bauner describes how this orid-
nal impetus was subverted, and replaced by notions of computation, infor-
mation processing, eltc., and by the computational (and Chomskyanr) notion
that the syntax of a language could be separated from its semantics."Sacks
strongly endorses Bruner's position, and comments: "From Boole, with his
'Laws of Thought' in the 1850s, to tlne pioneers of Artificial Intelligence at
the present day, there has Zreen a persistent notion that one may have an
intelligence or a language based on pure logic, without anything so messy
as heaning9eing involved."
Unfortunately, as noted by Sacks, this persistent notion was shared by
the main spirifus mavens of the c'c~ga$Sive revolution" in Ilinguistics, Noarn
Chomsky, whose influgncc on the filcld can hardly bc ovcrestimaled.
is mentalist, anti-btoornfieldian stand, in his attitude to mean-
skr remained (and still remains) a Bloodeldian. Like
: Bfo@mmfield,~""h .., . had a deep mdhodologicail aversion t'o meaning, and
REWo*-rmPorccd onrey.Fthk key @lemm<ss f the BEEEoomfieldian policy
1 ToGar'iI'meiining: it had to be avoided in formal analysis" (R. A. Hamis
rl mT$9p. " -
1 agee with Harris (1993: 252) that while some "prefer to look at
Chomsky's impact on linguistics as Ilnc last gasp or U3loomficldianismu'~
such
a view is "far too narrow". But one also has to agree with Chomsky's crit-
ics that although he broke, in a way, Bloomfield's taboo on mind,
Chomsky's professed mentalism proved to be as inimical to the study of
meaning as was Bloom;fieldlysbehaviourism. To quote one critic (Edelman
11992: 243):
One of the most pervasive and inflwemtial approaches to these critical questions
[af how language and thought are connected] was pioneered by Chamsky. Inu his
formal systems approach, the principal assumption is that the rules of syntax are
independent or wmmtim. Language, in this view, Is independent cuf the rest ooF mg-
nition. I must take issue with this notiom.
The set of rules formulated under the idea that a grammar is a formal system are
essentially algorithmic. In such a system, no use i s made of meaning. Chomskyk sa-
.
called generative grammar . . assumes that syntax is independent of semantics anud
that the language faculty is independent of external cognitive capabilities. This def-
inition of grammar is impnriolrs to any attempt to d i s o o n h it by referring to
facts a b u t cognition in general, A language dehed as a set of strings of uninter-
pretd symbols gemcrated by praduction rules is like a computer language.
This brings us back to Brunar" remarks quoted earlier. As ha points out
(1990: I), "the new cognitive science, the child of the [cognitive] revolution,
has gained in technical wccessles at the price of dehumanizing the very con-
cept it had sougEEt to reestablish in psychology, and . . . has thereby
estranged much of psychology from the other human sciences and the
humanities"".The same can be said about linguistics.
In 'talking abut a "linguistics without meaning" I do not wish to under-
estimate the work done in linguistic semantics over the last several decades.
Nor would I question the significance of the other trends in linguistics that
sought to transcend the limitations imposed upon the discipline by genera-
tive grammar. Harris (1993) and others are right to rejoice in the "green-
ing of linguisticsn"ofthe last decade or two, with the dynamic development
of functional linguistics, icognitive linguistics, pragmatics, and so on. At the
same time, however, E think that the Bloodeldian and Chomskyan anti-
semantic bias is still hanging over linguistics like a dark shadow. The fact
that "formal syntax" still occupies ;a prominent place in the curricula of
many linguistic departments, at the expense of the study of language as
an instrument for conveying meaning, gives suflicient subslance to this
daim.
In the latest version of Chomskyan linguistics references to meaning are
apparently n a langer disallowed. But this does not change its basically anti-
semantic orientation, Chomsky no longer asserts that 'Yf It can be shown
that meaning and related notions do play a role in linguistic analysis, then
. . . a serious Mow is struck at the foundations af linguistic theory'' (1955:
 141). But he none the less r~emainswhat he has always been: "a deep and
%@SKY
abiding syntactic Lndamentalistw (R.A. Harris 1993: 139). Matthnvs
5 h _,. (1993: 245) sums up his commenls on tP~cplace of meaning in Chomskyss
$ y T Y c r ; ; ~ e e n t work as follows: "Where did that leave an aiclcounk of meaning?
~ a ~ f i F . ' ~ h o m s as ~ ,dways, is primarily a student of syntax, or of "ranmar' in
* a traditional sense. Therefore we can expect, as always, little more than pro-
grammatic statements and passing remarks.'"
Nor has; the semantic void created by the "syntadic fundamentallism" of
Chomskyan Igmmar been filled by the so-called 'Tomal semantics",
which also features prominently in the teaching p r o g a m e s of m y Iin-
gwistics departments.
Despite its name, "formal semanticsY"or "model-theoretical semantics"")
doesn't seek to reveal and describe the meanings encoded in natural Ian-
guage, or to compare meanings across languages and cultures. Rather, it
sees its god as that of translating certain carefully selected types of sen-
tences into a l o g i d calculus. 32 is interested not in meaning (in the sense
of conicleptual structures encoded in language] but in the logical progarties
of sentences such as entdment, contradiction, or logical equivalence or, as
Chierchia and McConnell-Gin (1490: 1 B] put it, in "infannational signif-
icance", not in "cognitive signlficmceJ'. (Cf- Bruner's (1990: 4) comments
on the shill from "meaning" to "information"', quoted earlier.)
To quote one noted formal semanticist (of the ""Wonta$ue grammar"
schiooPl), "the model theoretic intension of a word has. in principle xsothhg
wharsocver to do with what goes on h a person's head when he uses that
word" (Dowty 1978: 3751). Having explained that in modd-theoretical
semantics the meaning of a sentence is seen as "a set of possible worldsy',
Dowty acknowledges that "one may reasonably doubt whether sets of ws-
sible worlds have mything at all to do with the psychological process of
sentence comprehension'", and he admits that "there is no sense in which a
person mentally has access to 'all the possible worlds that there are"v1376).
Thus, Chornskyans like to tajk about "mind'" but do not wish to study
meaning, and "formal semanticists" like to talk about "meaning'3ut only
in the mnse of possible worlds ar truth conditions, not in the sense of con-
wpruaE structures. One thing that both schools share is the great emphasis
they place on being formal. This emphasis on formal models, at the expense
csf a search for meaning and understanding, brings tor mind, again, Bmner's
(11940: 65) remarks about psychology: ""Isimply will not do to reject the
theoretical centrality of meaning for psychology on the grounds that it is
"ague" Its vaggvenss was In the eye of yesterday's farmallistic logician. We
are beyond that now."
Despite all tine promises of the '"cognitive revolution" in h m a n scienoes
in general and of the "Chomkyan revo1ution'~n linguistics, now, at the
close of the cemtury, meaning (not the 1ogician"s"meaning" h t lthe mean-
ing which underlies human cognition, communication, and culture) is still
regarded by many linguislts as messy and as "the weak point of language
.studyY"(Blboomfield 193311935: 140). This book hopes to demonstrate tbat
it doesn't have to be so.
2. Semantic Primitives (or Primes)
To put it brinefly, in human speech, diKferent sounds have diflerent
mearrmingls. To study this co-ordination o f certain soumuds with certain
meanuings, is to study lamguage.
Leonard B;Laodield (193311935: 27)
How is it possible to admit that to study language is to study the oorrela-
tions between sound and meaning and, at the same time, to try to keep
linguistics maximally ''meaning-free"? Bloondield's own reason for this
contradictory position is quite clear: he wanted linguistics to be a serious
and rigorous discipline-"a science"; and it was not clear at the time how,
if at all, meaning could be studied in a rigorous and '%cientific"manner. In
fact, even today, many defenders of the central role of meaning in linguis-
tics don" sean to mind if meaning is spoken of in a loose, vague3~d hoc
way, without any coherent methodology. On this point, I must say that I
agree with Bloodeld: if we really want to study, in a ~ g o r o u sway, cor-
relations between sounds and meanings (or between f o m s and meanings),
our standards of rigour and coherence in talking about meaning shoulld Ire
just as hi& arid exacting as in talking about sounds and forms.
As I have tried to demonstrate for a quarter of a century, the key to a
rigorous and yet insightful talk about meaning lies in the notion of sman-
tic primitives (or semantic primes)~.
To take an exmple. Two prominent researchers into child language and
the authors of a very valuable study on the acquisition of meaning, Lwcia
French and Katherine Nelson (1985: 381, start their discussion of the
concept 'if' 'by saying: "it is dilrficult to provida a prccixc definition oS
the word $'" Then, after some discussion, they conclude: "The fundarnen-
ttal meaning of 6 in both logic and ordinary language, is one of implica-
tion.'"
Two common assumptions are reflected in these statements. First, that
it is possible to define all words-including +and second, that if a
word seems diKcw8t to define, one had better reach for a scientific-
sounding word of Latin origin [such as impSicatioion). In my view, these
assumptions are not only false, but jointly constitute a stumbling-block for
semantic analysis. One cannot define all words, because the very idea
of 'defining' implies that there is not only something to be defined [a
defmiendum) but also s o m e ~ n to
g define it with (a deffiniens, or rather, a
set of ""dlfinienses").
more than two millennia ago by Aristofle (1937: 1141"):
First of all, see if he [the anallyst] has failed to make the definition through terns
that are prior and more intelligible, For Rhe reason why the definition is rendered
is to make known the tern stated, al'd we make things known [by taking not any
random terms, ]but suclr as are prior and more inte1ligible . . . accordingly, it is dear
that a man who does not define through ,hems of this kind has not defirmed at all.
It could be argued that what is clear to one person may not be clear to
another, and that therefore no absolute order of semantic simplicity cam be
established. To this, however, Aristode had an answer: what matters is mot
what i mare intelligible to particular individuals, but what is semantically
more basic and thus inherently more intelligible:
For, as it happens, dinerent things are more intelligible to difFerent people, not llhe
same things to all . . . Moreover, to the same people different things am more i n d -
lligisble at different times . . . so chat those who hold that a definition ought to ha
rendered through what is more intelligible to particular individuals wouM not haw
to render the same definition at sllll ltimes evenu to the same person. It is clear, then,
that the night way to define is not through terns of that kind, [but through what is
absolutely moue intelligible: for only in this way could the definition come always
to be one and the same.
The "absolute order oF understanding" depends on semantic complexity.
For example, one cannot understand the concepts of ' p r o m i s e h r
'denounce%ithout f i s t understanding the concept of "say', for 'proenlse"
and Udenance' are buiEt upon %sayy.Similarly, one cannot understand the
concepts of 'deixis1%'demonstration', or 'ostenslon'wwithout first under-
standing the concept of "his" on which they are built; and one cannot
understand the concept of "mpllication' wilthout first understanding the
semantically mare basic concept of 'iP,
semantic practice, presented in this book: meaning cannot be described
without a set of semantic primitives; one can pmport to describe meaning
by translating unknowns into unknowns (as in Pascal's (l667!1954: 580)
mock-definition "'Light is the luminary movement of luminous bodies'"),
but nothing is really achieved thereby.
Without a set of primitives all descriptions of meaning are actually or
potentially circular (as when, for example, to demand is defined as 'to
request h l y " and to request as 'to demand gently" see Wierzbicka 1987~:
d out in my Semantic Primitives (Wierzbicka 1472 3), con-
students of artificial languages often glace great emphasis on
the arbitrariness of "primitive terns", For example, Nelson Goodman
(11951: 57) wrote: "It is not bscawe a term is indefinable that it is chosen as
primitive; rather, it is because ;a term has been chosen as primitive for a sys-
tem that it is indefinable . . . In general, the t e m s adopted as primitives of
a given system are readily definable in some other system. These is no
;absolute primitive, no one correct selection of primitives."
Bunt the idea that the same applies to the semantics of natural language
is a fallacy, and a recipe far stagnation in semantic research. There is of
course no reason why linguists shouldn? invent arbitrary sets of primitives
and "defineY%hatever they like in terms of such sets. Bunt it will do little to
advance our ulnderstanding of human cornm~mimtionand cognition. To
quote Leibniz:
If nothing could be comprehended in, Itsdf nothing at all muld ever be compre-
hended, k u s e what can only be comprehended via something else can be corn-
preheadedl only to the extelolt to which that other thing can be comprehended, and
sol on; acaordindy, we can say that we have understood something only when we
have broken it dowo into parts which can be understood In themselves. [Leibniz
1903/19611; 430; my translation)
Semantics crvn have an expIamratory value only if it manages to '3dene'"or
explicate) complex and obscure meanings in items of simple and self-
explanatory ones. If a human being can understand any uttesanoes at all
(someone else's or their own) it is only because these utteranices are built,
so to speak, out of simple elemenlts which can be understood by themselves.
This basic noint. which modern lin~uisticshas lost sight of. was made
Further 1declare that there are certain things which we render more obscure by tpy-
img to define them, because, since they are very simple and clear, we annot know
and perceive them better than by themselves. Nay, we must place in the number of
those chief errors that can be co&tted in the sciences, the mistakes committed by
those who would try to define what ought only to be conceived, and who cannot
distinguish the clear from the obscure, nor discriminate between what, in order to
be known, requires and deserves to be defined, from what a n be best known by
itself. (170111931: 3241
For Descartes, then, as for Leibniz, there was no question of "choosingy'
some arbitrary set of primitives. What mattered was to establish which con-
cepts am so clear that they cannot be understood better than by themselves;
and to explain everything else in terns of these.
This basic principle was applied first of all to lexical semantics, and was
phrased in terms of the definability of words. For example, Pascal wrote:
It is dear that there are words which cannot be defined; and if nature hadn't ppso-
vided far this by giving all people the same idea aH our expressions wauRd be
obscure; but in f a t we can use those words with the same confidence and certainty
as if they had been explained in the clearest possible way; because nature itself has
given us, without additional words, an understanding of them better than what our
art could give through our explanations, (1667iP9541: %Oi]
Similarly, Arnauld:
Our first observation is that no attempt should be made to define all words; such
an attempt would be useless, even impossible, to achieve. To define a word which
already expresses a distinct idea unambiguously would be useless; for the goal of
definition-to j~ointo a word one dear and distinct idea-has already been attained.
Words which express ideas of simple things are understad by all and require no
definition . . .
Further, it i s impossible b define all words. In defining we employ a definition
to express the idea which we want to join to the defined word; and IF we them wanted
to define "the definition,'%till other words would be needed-and so on to infinity.
Hence, it is necessary to stop at some primitive words, which are nat defined. To
define too much is just as great a failing as to define too little: Either way we would
fill into the confusion that we claim Lo avoid. (l6162/1964: 86-T; emphasis added)
Chomsky, despite his claims that generative grammar was a continuation
of "Cartesian linguistics" (see Chamsky 11966), has always omitted any
mention of this central thread in the Cartesian [as well as the Leibnizian]
theory of language and mind. (See also the references to the "Cartesian
conception" of language and cognition in Chomsky's s o r e recent writings,
e.g, in Chamsky 199113).
My o m interest in the pursuit of non-arbitrary semantic primitives was
triggered by a lecture on this subject given at Warsaw University by the
B"cPPish linguist Andrzej Bogusiawski in 1965. The 'gooldle dream" of the
seventeenth-century thhkers, which couldn't be realized wiltbin the frame-
work of philosophy and which was therefore genera-ally abandoned as a
utopia, could be realized, Boguslawski maintained, if it was approached
from a linguistic rather than from a purdy philosophical paint of view.
The experience and achievements of modern linguistics (both empirical
and theoretical] nude it possible to approach the problem of conceptual
primitives in a novel way; and to put it on the agenda of an empirical sci-
ence.
&elbnizYstheory of an "alphakt of human thoughts" (l903!1961: 435)
o d d be dismissed as a utopia laecause he never proposed anylthing like a
campfete list of hypotheticaf primitives (although in his unpublished work
he left several partial drafts, see kilbniz 11903). As one modern commenta-
tor wrote, having pointed out the difficulties involved in the proposed
swrck "h thew circumstanm it is understandable that bibnbniz should
consistently avdd the obvious question as to the number and type of fun-
mental concepts. The approach would be more convincing if" one could
at least gain same clue as to what the tabb of fimdamental concepts might
ok like" (Marltin 3964: 25).
The best clues as to what the table of fundameaatal concepts might ioak
like come from the study of languages. Pn this sense linguistics has a chance
of succeeding where philosophical speculation has failed. This book, which
is based on linguistic research undertaken (by lcolleagues and myself) over
three decades, does propose a complete (if hypothetical) table of fumda-
mental human concepts capable of generating all other concepts (see
Chapter 2). Crucially, this Pist purports ranso to be a table of laical univer-
sals--a point which will be discussed in the next section.
In tine: theory presented in this book it was hypothesized, from the start,
that conceptual primitives can be found through in-depth analysis of any
natural language; but also, that the sets of primitives identified in this way
would "makch"",nd that in fact each such set is just one language-specific
manifestation of a universal set of fumdamend human concepts.
For example, it was expected that the concepts 'someone', 'something',
and 'want', which are indefinable in English, would also prove to be inde-
 1 4 General 13sues
finable in other languages; m d that other lmguages, too, will have words [or
bound morphemes) to express these conoepts.
native speakers of different languages. Since the indefinable concepts-the
primitivew-are the fundament m which the semantic system of a language
is built, if this fundament were in each case dflerent, speakers of different
languages wodd be imprisoned in difierent and incommensurabie mncep-
tual systems, without any possibility of ever reaching anyone outside one's
awn prison. This is mntrary to human experience, which points, rather, to
We existence of both differences and similarities in the human conceptual-
-
Mu1
ization of the wodd; and which tells us that while cross-cultural communi-
cation is difficult, and has ilts limitations, it is not altogether impossible.
The assumption that all languages,
- - however different, are based on iso-
,/momplhic sets of semantiixJmitives is comiktent with that experience.
pm n u d l recently, this assumption was based largely ton theoreticdGnsid-
rQWGd.F'"'&atiorrs; ratheb than on e&pirical studies of &&rent languages of the
world. This situation, h~wever,has changed with the Gb6mtion of
Scmanrie and Lexical Universab (Goddard and Wierzbicka 19948ba cot-
leetian in which conceptual primitives posited initially on the basis of a
mere handful of languages were subjected to a systematic study across a
wide range of languages from diFEerenr fmilies and dilMjerent continents.
The languages investigated in this volume included: Ewe (of the
Niger-Congo family in West Africa), Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Japanese,
the Australian languages Uankunytjatjara, Arrernte (Aramda), and
Kayardild, three Misumalpan languages of Nicaragua, the Austronesian
languages Acehnese (of Indonesia], Longgu (of the Solomon Islands),
Samoan, and MangapMbulla (of New Guinea), the Papuan language
Kdam, and-the only European language beside English-French.
This first large-scale attempt tto test hypothetical conoeptuall primitives
cross-Pingunistically did not answer all the questions, but except ;for one or
two grey areas requiring further investigation, the studies induded in the
volume did strongly support the hypothesized set of primitives. In most
cases, words (or bound mophems] for the proposed primitives (e.8. 'Iy and
cyouy,'someone' and %somethingy,%herey and 'when', 'bigJ and 'small',
'good' and %a&, or 'do'and 'happen') could be readily identified.
1x1 his discussion of "'universalism'9n semantics, John Lyons (11977:
331-2) stated that as far as he could see, no one advocates the most extreme
f o m of "semantic universalism", that is, the position that ""there is a &xed
set of semantic components, which are umniversal in that they are lexicalized
in all languages'" But it is precisely this strongest universalist hypothesis
which was tested in Semamfic and Lexical E$niver$aissand which also under-
Iks the present book.
While h e theory presented in this book is radically universalist, two pro-
visos must be entered: fi
As all itpanslatom know to their cost, every language has words which
m a p a v e no semantic equivalents in other languages, and every language draws
-emantic distinctions which o t h e ~languages dlio not. For example, tramnsjak-
ing the dassk texts of the Hindu cultural tradition into European languages
one must face the fact that these languages do not b e words coming even
near in meaning to key Sanskrit terns such as nirvma, brahman, atman, or
kmma (see BoDe 1W7: 219-583. But even comparing languages which are
genetically, geogairphically, and culturally very dow, for example French
and Endish, one constantly encounters examples of profound lexical dif-
ferences. For example, the French word mathem- has no counterpart in
English, as pointed out by the English translator of Sirnone Neil" medita-
tions on this concept, who finally in desperation decided tan use, through-
out his translation, the totally inadequate English word c'a~iction"(Vie' il
1972: 1633.
In a sense, most words ian all languages are like the French maCheus, that
is, unrenderahle (without distortion) in some other languages. More than
that, every language has words which are intimately bound up with one
particular culture and which have no equivalents in any other languages.
(See e.g. Wierzbicka 1991b, 1992a). At the same time, a131 languages also
have words which-unlike msaJ'hesss-do appear to have semantic counter-
parts in all other languages. The hypothesis explored in this book (and in
the work which led to it) is that in every Ilanguage the set of such readily
'"anslatable" words coincides with the set of this l a = g l _ s & < ~ ~ ~ a ~ e s .
nt belongs to a unique netwoZ
x-----*-- -
"in a u6ijuFnelfurork-of -.
+
rtmguages we cannot expect to
--*
rela-
- ~ ----
-=
z E ~ x s ~ ~ % X " ~ W ~&- nW. i~5~i i z s i 'i$ ! &~
of indehables.
-.---- *--
marphism in the lexicon (and, as we shall see, also
in grammar) that gives substance to the motion of universal semantic prim-
itives.
For exmple, the English words big and d l correspond in meaning to
the Russian words boSr$oj and maien%g, even though in English, 3mali has
 also a special relationship with fibfie, and even though in Russian,
rna/enlkjk-fomally a diminutive-has a special relationship with diminu-
tive adjectives such as belenrkV ('white' + DD~M)or JElb~glen'kij('round' +
DIM). Whatever the diflerences in "resonance" (see Section 8.7) between
small and malenrkg are, these differences cannot be shown through defini-
tions; and so, from a definitional point of view, they constitute a "perfect"
match (in the systems of English and Russian indefinables, they omupy the
same slot). Similarly, regardless of any diflerences in, 'kesonance'~anduse),
the Japanese words ookii and fiigai oonstitute a perfect semantic match for
big and small,and the Japanese words di and wasui, for good and bad (See
Onishi 1994.)
Furthermore, it is only the postulated isomorphism of exponents of con-
ptual primitives which allows us to oompare different semantic systems
am. For any comparison requires a berfiurn compcrratfoni8, a common
maswe. The hypothesized set of wiversal semantic prlrniPives offers us
such a common measure and thus makes it possible to study the extent of
mantic differences between languages.
So the theory presented here combines. in a sense, radical universalism
4. Innate: Ccmoegrts and Language Acquisition
Acquiring language consists in large part of learning how to map or
translate fram one representatiomal system @he child's prelinguistic
conmpaual notitions).into another language).
(Bowerman 1976: IOi]
As mentioned earlier, the idea that fundamental human concepts (semen-
J
-
tic primes) a z universal is closely l i n k-__--
Ffiib 1 t h n o r i s J n p t s
are&ate. It is heartening to see, therefore, !thatover the last twenty years,
child language acquiition stirudies have not only increasingly viewed lan-
guage learning as, above all, a quest for meaning, but have also iancreas-
ingly assumed that the child embarks on this quest not as a passive tabula
4- rma but as an acno$oqujpped with some innate basic concepts.
y o quote Boweman (11976: 112-131, ""te%iPa is now commonly viewed
as coming to the language-learning task well equipped with a stock of basic
concepts that he has built up through his interactions with the world . . .
Some early concepts undoubtedly develop autonamously (Len indepen-
dently of language), particularlly those which are universal (e.g, obj~ectper-
manence)." Bowenman quotes with approval Macnamara" (1972: 5) sltate-
ment that "it is inconceivable that the hearing of a logicall term (by which
Ihe mums wards such as "ndl', 'or', 'morey, 'all', and 'same') should gener-
ate for tihe first time the appropriate logical operator in a child's mind,
Indeed the only possibility of his learning such a word would seem to 'tae if
he experienced the need for it in his o w thinking and looked far it in the
linguistic usage about him."
m a t is particularly interesting in Boweman's (1976) discussion of the
gsablem of innateness is her clear perception of the link between a child's
first concepts, language universals, and semantic primitives.
The view that a mntrall process in language acquisitlm is the child'g search for links
between cogariltive and linguistic;concepts and linguistic f o m amdl aperations has
been strengthend and encouraged by recent developments in linguistics. Many !in-
guists now argue, on pounds quite independent of child language, that the most
basic elements o l language are not abstracl syntactic comfiguratians like grammati-
~ arelations,
l but ralher a unilrersai set oF prime semantic concepts that combine
wording to general and language-speciti~camstraints to yield botb words and sen-
tences. [IOIZ]
The linguists to whom Bowerman refers at this point are generative seman-
ticists, that is, representatives of a school which flourished briefly in the late
sixties and early seventies but has now long oeased to exist (see e.g. It. A.
Harris 1993). But the idea of a universal set of semantic primes was neither
due to that school, nor linked in any way with its fate. (an the contrary: as
I argued at the time (e.g. Wierzbi~ka1967a,b, 1972, 1976b), it was a lack
of a strong commitment to that idea which made the positionr of the gem-
erative semantics school-suspended in mid-air between Chamskyam
"meaning-free" syntax and genuine semantics-mntenablee
Grammar) hypoth-
esis, Boweman (1985: 1284) writes: H argue that the BCG hypothesis does
contain a fundamental insight into early language development: that chil-
&en% starting semantic space is not a E ; Q ~ u S MSQ,
~ passively awaiting the
imprint of the language being learned before t a h g on structure, Rather,
children are conceptuallly prepared for language learning." At the same time,
Bowerman (1985) argues Chat ""the initial organization of semantic spa= is
not fixed but flexible", that the child's "semantic space" does not 'Veiime a
single, privileged set of semantic notions that strongly attracts the gram-
matical fmmis of the input", and that "one i r n p ~ ~ ~fackar
~ b n t that a n influ-
ence the meanings children adopt is the gemmfic strwfiwe of she input
J'r2ngu~ge"( 1284).
But there is no reason why the initial organization of the child's '%eman-
tic spaceY%houldnot be flexible in the way Bowerman describes it and yet
fixed in its minimum *ore of "absoludy essential concepts"', as stipulated
by Sapir. There is also no conflict between thc tenet (which 1will defend in
acquisition and the linguistically based search for innate and universal
semantic primitives is perhaps best expressed by Brucrer (1990: 72): " h e
case for how we "enter language' must rest upon a sePective set of prelim-
guistic 'readiness for meaning'. That is to say, there are certain classes of
meaning to which human beings are innately tuned and for which they
actively search. Prior to language, these exist in primitive fcmm as pro-
tolinguistic representations of the world whose full realization depends
upon the cultmal tool of language."
Given the attention that Chomsky" writings on language continue to
receive in the world market of ideas, it is perhaps worth mentioning here
@homskyYsmw theory on the acquisition of concepts, aocording to which
most ooncepts (including, for example, 'chase', "persuade" "murder', or
'liable', and perhaps even "ureaucralt' and 'carburettor') are innate.
Speaking asif the semantic complexity of most concecpts, Chomsky (1441b:
291 writes: '"arring miracles, this means that the ooncecpts must be essen-
tially available prior to experienoe, in something like their full intricacy.
Children anuse be basically acquiring labels far concepts they already have,
a view advanced mosit stron~lyby Jerw Fodor."
e meanings of most words are innate rather
than construed within a culture out of innate primitives, is used in
Clhomsky's writings (as weill as in Fodor's; see Chapter 73, as an argument
against Pexid semantics: w a d s are very difficult to define, but there is no
need for linguists Go try to define them, because they are simply labels for
lananalysable innate concepts. "'Ordinary dictionary definitions do not come
close to characterizing the meaning of words" "hornsky 1487: 21); none
the less, they '%an be sufficient for their purpose [because the basic princi-
ples of ward meaning (whatever they are) are known to the dictionary user,
as they am to the language learner, independently of any instruction or
experience" [ilrid.).
This effecrively absolves the leiinmist from the need to study the meaning
of words or to take an interest in lexicography. Even the general principles
of word meaning ("'whatever they areW")re clearly too hard to study. Here
ain, Chomsky's mentalism is as inimical to the study of meaning as was
Bomfielld's hhawiourism.
5 . The Unjlwlerssrl Syntax of Meaning
In what has been said sa far, the emphasis was very much on the elements:
the primitive concepts, the indefinable words. But to say anything mean-
ingful we need more than words: we need sentences in which words are
meaningfixlly put together. SimiQarly,to think something we need more
than "conoepts": we need meaningful wmbinations of conoepts. Despite its
abvious limitations, Leibniz's old metaphor off an "alphabet of human
thoughts" is stilll q ~ useful
k here: conceptuaf. primitives are components
which have to be mmbined in certain ways to be able to express meaning.
For example, the indefinable word w m t makes sense only if it is put in
a certain syntactic frame, such as ""Iant ta do this'" In positing the ele-
ments I, WANT, DO, and THIS as innate and universal conceptual prim-
itives, I am also positing certain innate and miversa! rules of syntax-not
in the sense of some intuitively unvepifirable formal syntax h IQ Ghomsky,
but in tbe sense of intuitively verifiable patterns determining possible com-
binations, of primitive concepts.
For example, the meaning of the sentence ""Iant to do this" is intu-
itively clear to any native speaker of English, and cannot be made any
 clearly cross-linguistic semantic investigation.Vreliminaq evidence sug-
gests, for example, that patterns such as "I want to do something", "I know
this", "'Where are you?", or "I can't mow'' are universal (that is, attestable
in all languages). Facts of this kind are as important for the study of the
innate conceptual system (or the "prelinguisfic readiness for meaning"';
Bruner 1990: 721) as the presenoe in all languages of words for TI','you',
'where" 'want', 'think', or 'know'.
ust as attempts to separate syntax from meaning, and to absolwtiu: syt-
have failed as a path to understanding how natural language wworks,
it is used, and how it is acquired, so too any attempts to separate
alaing from syntax and to absolutize the lexicon would lead nowhere, for
tax and meaning are inextricably bound. To quote Oliver Sacks (1993:
: "it is increasingb dear, from studying the natural acquisition of lan-
age in the child, and, equally, from the persistent failure of oomputers to
derstand' language . . . that syntax cannot be separated from semantics.
s precisely through the medium of beanhgs'that natmal language and
atmal intelligence are built up."
6 . The Naltwal Semantic Metalanguage @SM]
I believe that the strangest support for the hypothesis of a language-like
innate conceptual system corns from Its proven merits as a working tool
in the investigation of languages and cultures.
As pointed out earlier, any meaningful comparison requires a tertim
comparalionb, that is, a common measure. If by investigating as many
diverse languages as possible we can establish a hypothetical shared core of
all natural languages, we can them treat this shared core as a language-inde-
pendent metalanguage for the description and comparison of all languages
and cdtures. Without such a language-independent metalanguage, we
would be for ever condemned to dhnocentrism, for we could only describe
nother languages and cultures through the prism of our o m language
(whether colloquial or technical) (see e.g. Lutz 19851.
l _- _ _ shared c p ~ $*all
But if we can identify tlne e nratutalJanguagles and build
,
l)^r
;pn-tET%a~.i~a "natural m a n & metalanguage", we can &en des;hr%e*Th&
-25 : meanings conveyed in any language, as if from inside, while at t%e same *
t h e ushg sentences from our o m language, which-if at times unidio-
matic-are none the less directly intelligible to us. Ta put it differently, the
shared core of all languages can be seen as a set of isomorphic mimi-
In priociple, data from language aquisition studies are very important to m a n t i c the-
ony. The dilRiczahty is that to be directly relevant these stzai8ies should Ibe cuonducted within fhe
hrmework o f a coherent semantic theory, and should be so devised as to test specific sman-
tic hypotheses. lm thc past. this usuallly hasn't k e n ilmc case.
languages, which can be used as language-specific vers~
versal Natural Semantic Metalanguage CI'JSM).
If we try to explain the meaning of Russian or Japane,
ply providing them with ard hoe English glosses (using fi
we inevitably distort their meamring and impose on, the1
spctive inherent to the English language. On the other kn
full-blown Englbh glosses we were to provide a doss in th
that is, in the English version of the Natural Semantic ~m%Eiij~uage,
-,
no
-
such distortion would be necessary, for the English version of WSM can
matoh exactly the Russian or the Japanese versions. For enramplle, as
pointed out earlier, the Russian NSM formula ja xncloEu t ~ sdda"L
o matches
semantically the English NSM formula I want to $0 this.
The idea that all languages share an identifiable core is by no means new.
Wilhelrn HumboEdt; emphasized that in both lexicon and grammar, there is
a ""midpoint around which all languages revolve" "903-36, v. 4: 21). Nor
is it a novel idea that for semantic descriptions of different languages a spe-
cial "inltermediary language" is needed-and not just an artificial system of
abstract features (like the Markerewe of Katz and Fodor 8963) but a more
language-like semantic metalanguage. The notion of "jazyk posrednik"",
'language-intermediary', of tlne Moscow semantic school ((seeZokowskij
19641, is particularly relevant here.
What is new in the present theory is the assumption that an effective
metalanpage for the description and comparison of meanings can be
found in the common core d natural languages, and that it can be, so to
speak, oawed out of them. Incorporating this assumption, the NSM theory
oombines the phibsophical and logical tradition in the study of meaning
with a typologid approach to the study of language, and with broadly
based empirical crass-linguistic investigations.
Unlike various artificial languages used for the representation of mean-
ing, !the Natnrd Semantic Metalanguage, cawed out of natural language,
can be understood without fwther explanations (which would necessitate
the use of some other metalanguage, and so on, ad in#aifcm), and thus
offms a fim basis for a genuine elucidation of meaning.
AS h a Agud (1980: 457) put it in her Historia y tearia de Jos cmes,
"ninguna l e n w formal pntede ser, en filltima instancia, m h precisa que d
bnguaje natural que es su dtimo metailenguaje", i.e. ' k o formal language
can be, in the hst instance, more precise &an the natural language which
is its ultimate metalang~age".~
Sae also the following r m n t statement by Ham6 and GiPlet (1994:27-8): "Another impor-
tant wnsaqnuenoe of the w n d cognitive revolution is the priority that must be given to ordi-
nary languages In dekiog what am the phenomena for a scientific psychology. We will
endeavor as Tar as possible to prwnl and understand oognition in Items of the ordinary lan-
guages through which we think, rather than looking ror abstract represlentalions of them. That
 The need for a universally based metalanguage in human sciences has
been well ilUlnslraled by the recent interdisciplinary debates on the nature of
human emotions. (For detailed discussioa, see e.g. Wierzbkka 1992c,
1994h). For example, it has been repeatedly pointed out that if we try to
explain key emotion terns of other languages (such as the Ilongot Iigel, or
the IFaluk fago and s& by using English words and combinations of
words such as 'canger~passio~energy", "eQove/sadlnesdco~nparison"~ or "jus-
tified anger", we are imposing ;an Anglo cultural perspctive ocn o?her c d -
tmes. For from an Ifaluk p i n t of view, fago is a wniiied concept; not a
mixture of the concepts encoded in the Bngllisb words mger, hwe, sa&ess
(8ios which Ifaluk has no equivalents).
The uncritical use of culturally shaped English words (such as anger,
slsorme, depression, emotiom, miad, or selA as 'kdture-free'balytical tods,
and the reificalion of the concepts encoded in them, has bean strongly crit-
icized (in my view, with goad reason) in rmmt anthropologicd literature
(see e.g. Rosaldo 1980; Luh 1988; Komdo 1990; see also Wierzisicka 1993b).
But to move from "dlecomstmction" to constructive rebuilding d the mieta-
language of human sciences, we need to go beyond conceptual relativism
and reach for conceptual universals.
7. Semantic Invariants
In recent decades, semantics haw slnffered at the hands not only of its ene-
mies but also of some of its fkiends. As I wfi1 argue in detail later (see in
particular Chapter 41, especially h a d u l to its progress has been the d o e
trine of 'Tamuily resemblances" and the associated attacks on the noltion of
semantic invariant-a corner-stone of effective semantic analysis.
One of the main tenets of this book is that words do have meanings, ;and
that these meanrings can be articulated. If they haven" been successfuilly
articulated in the past, for example, by the proponents of semantic "fea-
tures" and "'markers"', it is not bemuse words do not have any constant
meanings but because the methodollogy was inappropriate.
Qf loanzrse, meanings can change, and bey may vary from one dialect,
sociolect, or "generatioIQect"toanother. But semantic change as suvch is not
gradual; only the spread of semantic change is. [One meaning may gradu-
ally disappear, another m y gadw1iy spread, but both meanings are deter-
minate, and the difference between them is discrete.) In any given speech
community, meanings are shared. These shared meanings constitute the
is rsrdIcaO because It resists the idea that a mew formal EallcuJus must Ibe devised Ilo represent
thought. Such calcbli Ue i:at the heart oS Uhe artificial iatellignnce project, the metludo0ogical
princides of Chomsky and the tramsfonnational grammarians, and the assumption of for-
magists af aB kikjods."
basis oEcnommwnication,and the mainstay of culture; to a large extent, they
are also the vehicles by which culture is transmitted. :
]It s h u l d go witbout saying that to be able to fully understand cultures
caiflerent from our own, we must be able to grasp the meaning of words
encoding culture-spedfic mnmpts. For example, to understand Japanese
cdtwre, andl to interpret it to wltusd autsiders, we nwd to grasp the mean-
ing of key Japanese words such as omae, on, or wa (see Wierzbicka 119916;
allso Chapter 8); and to be able to understand Malay culture, we need to be
able ta g a s p the meaning of key Malay words such as maim, hahs or Iah
(see Goddard 1994c, forthcoming c]. The use of the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage allows us to state such meanings in a pmcise and illurninat-
ing way. It allows us to go beyond the vicissitudes of language use and ta
capture, and reveal, the semantic invariant of a word.
Summarizing the results of the cross-linguistic investigations reported in
~emaaaerslficafld ~ e x i c a Uxsiwersah
l [Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994b1, 1 Wrote
(Wierzbicka 3994b: 445): '"unting for semantic and lexical universals is
not like pearl-fishing. Primitives do not present themselves glittering and
unmistakable. Identifying them is an empirical endeavwr but one that calls
for much interpretative effort." h this sectiom, I will briefly survey the main
methodological problems arising in the pmeess d identifying universal
semantic, prinnitjves and building a Natural Semantic Metalanguage. (For
more detailed discussion, see Goddard 1994sr; Goddard and! Wierzbicka
n 994a.31
8.1. Polysemy
Polysemy is extremely widespread in natural language, and c o r n o n every-
day words--including indefinables-are particularly Ilikdy to be involved in
it. A semantic primitive cannot be identified, therefore, simply by pointing
to an indefinable word. Rather, it must be identGed with reference to some
illustrative sentences. Far example, tine English word wanr has at least two
meanings, as illustrated below:
[A) I want y w to do something.
(TT] This house wants painting.
Of these two meanings only A is proposed as a semantic primitive.
The NSM theory does not dab that for every semantic primitive there
will be, in every language, a separate ward-as long as the absence of a
26 General lsssres
separate word For a given primnitive can R x convinrcingly explained [in a
principled and coherent way) En t e r n of polysemy. The notion of diflerent
grammatical frames plays a particularly important roie in this regard.
For example, If in the Australian language Yankunyltjatara (see
Goddard 1494b) both the conceplts THINK and HEAR, posited here as
primitives, are expressed by means af the same verb, kdini, this is mot seen
as a counter-example, because [as Goddard shows) tlhesc two nzcanimgs of
kuIini are associated v&h diKerent grammatical frames, and so this verb is
demonstrably polysemous. Of course polysemy must never Ire posltdated
lightly, but neither should its presence be denied on dogmatically a priori
grounds: each case has to be examined on its merits, with reference to some
generd methodologiml principles. (For detailed discussion, w Chapter 6;
also Goddard 11994-2, 199'lla).
If one word (or morpheme) can be associated with two diflerent meanings,
one meaning can often have two on. more different lexical exponents. By
analogy with ccd~omorphs)' and "allophones",such different exponents of
the same primitive are calkd in NSM theory "dlolexes".
To start with some relatively trivial examples, in EngIish, I and me are
allollexes of the same primitive concept (in Latin, EGO, in Russian, JA).
Often, the allolexes d a primitive are in cornpleaentary distribution; for
example, in Latin the three f o m s hic, koec, hoc are all exponents of the
same primitive THIS, and the choice between them depends on the gender
of the head noun.
Omen, the cornbinatican with anloither primitjve form5 the choice of one
of a set of allolexes. FOPexample, in English, a combination of the primi-
tives SOMEONE and ALL is realized as everyone or everybody3and a corn--\
bination of ALL with SOMETHING is realized as ewerytfirhg. In tlnesne
particular loontexts, -one and -body can be seen as allaiexes of SOMEONE,
on a par with someone; and -thing can 'be seen as an allolex of SOME-
THING, on a pas with somethhg.
The notion d ailolexy plays a particularly important role in the NSM
approach to inflexional categories (first articulated by Cliff Goddard at the
1992 Semantics Symposium held in Canberra). Consider, for example, the
following sentences:
(A) P am doing it now.
(B) I did it before now (earlier).
(C) T will do It after now (later).
By themse19ves, the forms am doing, did and will 40 oonvey different mean-
ings, but when combined with the temporal adjuncts now, befire nnow, and
aster now, they are in complemntary distribution andl can be seen as
allolexes of the same primitive, DO.
This is why NSM sentences can be said to match, semantically, across lan-
guages, even though the inflexional categories in these languages differ. Far
example, the Chinese NSM sentence adapted from Chappell i(E9a41: 138)
Chli-shl hdu, wES shllio-]la xiE shknme
happen after I say-pa;v cn. something
'After this happened, I said something.'
can be matched with the English NSM sentence:
After this happened, I said something.
even though the English word for HAPPEN, in contrast to the Chinese one,
is marked for past tense: when combined with after, the form happened can
be seen as an aUolex of HAPPEN, on a par with happen.
8.3. Obligatory or Semi-obligaltary Portmanteaus
The notion of alolexy is ciosely linked with that of semantic portmanteaus,
which I will illustrate with a simple example from Russian. The expression
like thiss c o r n o n En both everyday English and in English NSM sentenoes,
is normally rendered in Russian by means of the word tak, which expresses
n lcombination off the two primitives LIKE and THIS.
Ja sdelal &to tak
I did this like-this
Since, however, Russian does have separate exponents for both LIKE and
THIS (kt& and Or@), the use of an obligatory, or semi-obligatory, port-
manteau for their combination does not present a problem for the NSM
theory. It would present a problem if the postulated primitives did not have
their own expnents usable in other contexts.
8.4. Valenq Options
f i e notion of valency options (developed in Chapter 3) refers to different
combinability patterns available to the same primitive. For example, the
primitive DO can occur in the fol!owing combinations:
(A) X &dl samething*
(B) X did something to penon 3Y.
(C) X did something with thing 2.
Obviously, "doing something to someone", or "doing something with
something" implies ""doing something". None the less, sentences B and C
cannot be analysed in terms of A and something else. It has Lo be recog-
nized, therefore, tlval in each case the difference in meaning is due to the
sentence as a whole, not Ito the predicate as such, and that the three sen-
tences share in fact the m e predicate (DO), albeit they realize different
valency options of this predicate.
8.5. Non-compositianal Relationships
Semantic primitives are, by definition, indefinable: they are Leibniz" uulti-
mate "simplesy" histotle% ""piora", in terms of which all the mmplex
meanings can be articuliated, but which cannot be deoomposed themselves.
They can, of course, be represented as bundles of some artificial features,
such as "+ Speaker, - Hesrrer" far 'I" but this is not the kind of decompo-
sition which leads from complex to simple and from obscure to clear. As
pointed out earlier, the meaning of a sentenoe like "1 h o w this" cannot be
clarified by any further deccnmpositbn-not even by decomposition into
some other mamingful sentences; and "featlares"",hich have no syntax
and which are not part of n a h d language, have no meaning at all: they
have to be assigned meaning by sentences in natural languages, rather than
the other way around.
This m a n s that, from a compositional point of view, elements such as
'Hbnd "ouhre semantically simple and have no identifiable part in com-
man. At the same time, intuitively, these two elements are cleady related.
Their relationship, however, 3s non-compositiond.
A semantic system is not like a bag full of marbles, each of them per-
fectly round, self-contained, and independent of the others. Rather, it is
a sysltem 'khtout se tient", to invoke (in a new context) Saussure's
famous, phrase. IPP this system, there are elements which "be1lon;g
together" and which have the same combinatorial properties, such as 'I'
and 'you', or 'good' and 'bad" Elements of this kind are intuitively
related, but this doesn" mean, that one of them can be defined in terms
of the other.
En the universal semantic system there are many different kinds off mon-
compositimal relationsbips. For example, the elements I, YOU, THIS,
HERE, and NOW, are all muiluaily related, although they do not all have
the same combinatadall properties. We can acknowledge this relationship
by putting on them all one label, "&eicticic",but doing this-while udul-
has nothing Go do with semantic decomposition.
The primitive THE SAME has a non-compositional relationship with the
primitive LIKE, and also with the primitive ONE. The first is highlighted
in sentenoes such as the following one:
This fish is like that other fish, but it is not the same fish.
The second relationship is reflected in the colloquial phrase "one and the
same", and in the apparent paraphrase relation between sentences such as
A and B below:
(A) These two shoes belong to one pair. =
(B) Thewe two shoes Mow%to thr: same pair.
But dose as the elements within each pair may be, neither THE SAME and
LIKE nor THE SAME and ONE cam be identified or defined in terns of
each other. For example, in the sentence
I have one son and two daughters.
h e ' has clearly nothing to do with U e same" and in the sentence:
They came at the same time.
'the same' has nothing to do with 'like'.
Mon-compositional semantic relations of different kinds ante real and
hportamt, and they oEer an interesting geld for remarch (we Goddard and
Wiembicka 1994.01.But they must not be conhsed with composiltional rela-
tions, which mn be revealed by definiltions (such as, for example, that
between a8Ieep and awake, or between dead and alive].
8.6. Recurrent Polysemies
Non-compositionall semantic relations are often reflected in recurring poly-
wmic patterns involving two, or more, different primitives. Of course, an0
natural language will ever be found in which uhe word for 'I' will be the
same as the word for 'you', or the word For 'big" the same as the word far
'smalll': since tlhe combinatorial possibilities of both elements within each
pair are the m e , polysemy of their exponents woulld lead to intolerable
confusion. Other nom-compositional mlations, however, are often reflected
in recurring polysemic patterns.
For example, in some languages the word far THE SAME is lthe same as
the word for ONE, icar the word for THIS is the same as the word for HERE;
there are also languages in which the word for WANT is the same as the word
for SAY, or where the word for DO is the same as the word far HAPPEN.
This doesn? team, however, that in those languages people do not distinguish
the concept ONE from the concept THE SAME, or the concept WANT from
the concept SAY; or that they have no words to express some of these con-
cepts, They do have words for all of them, and if some of these words aane
polysemous (and mean, for exmple, f l) 'one" (21 'the same', or (1) 'want',
(2) 'say'), the different meanings of such polysemous words can be easily dis-
tinguished on the basis of distinct grammatical frames assodated with each
of them. (For examples and discussion, see Wierzbicka 19946).
8.7. Resonance
Since every language embodies a unique semantic system and reflects a
unique culture, the exponents of universal semantic primitives in different
languages often "feel" different (to both native speakers and to linguistic
experts on these languages). For example, it is easy to believe that in the
Papuan language Kalam, where the words for KNOW, THINK, SEE, and
HEAR all share the same verball formative ng (Pawley 19941, these words
"feel'9ornehow different in meaning from the corresponding English words
[which are formally mrelaited to each other). Or if the word for FEEL is
polysemous between 'feelhand %tlomach"as is the case with the word o'mi
in the Australian language Yankunytjatjara, see Goddard 1994b), it is easy
to believe that this ward "feelsYVifferentfrom the English word feel, or
from the Acehese word rasa (a borrowing from Sansktit; Durie et al.
1994).
Elifferenoes of this kind are real! and important, and they are acknowl-
edged in ]theNSM notion of "resonance" (first arhculated 'by Goddard at
the 1992 Semantics Symposium in Canberm). They must not be confused,
however, with semantic differences semsrr strictol.
8.8. Canonical Sentences
Most sentences uttered in any one language cannot be translated into other
languages without some loss, and/or addition, of meaning. The NSM the-
ory hypothesizes, however, that there are ako some kinds of sentence which
can be translated-without loss andfor addition of meaning-into any lan-
guage whatsoever. These are sentences fornulatied in "local representa-
tives'kf universal semantic primitives, according to the universal syntactic
rules (that is, rules for combining the primitives). Sentences of this kind
include, for example, the following ones:
You did something bad.
I know when it happened.
1 want to see this.
These people didn't say anything about this.
If yoru do this, P will do the same.
This person can" move.
Sentences of this kind are regarded in NSM research as "canonical sen-
tences", which can be used to test the validity of the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage (as developed until now), and to seek any weak points which
may need revision.
For practical reasons (Lo make the tlesting more effective in working with
native speakers) it is often useful to include in the set of canonical sentences
some which are not mmposed exclusively of pdmitives. For example, if we
want to check whether a language has words for the primitives QlNE and
TWO, it is practical to use sentences like the fchlIowing:
I have two sons and one daughter.
even though the conwpts of %onyand 'daughterhre not universal, and the
words glossed as 'sonhand 'daughterkay not match semantically across
language boundaries (for s m e languages may distinguish a man's son or
daughter from a woman's son or daughter).
The notion of a canonical sentence both in the strict sense Cppimitives
only) and in the broader sense (primitives with a controlled admixture of
non-primitives) has proved to be a valuable tool in cross-linguistic seman-
tic research (see Goddard and Wiembicka 19946131. In the future, this notion
may also prove useful in the cross-cultural study of language acquisition
and cognitive development; and may answer, in some measure, the call fre-
quently voiced by child language researchers "for a mare powerful cross-
linguistic methadology" (Johnston 1985: 496).
4. Past, Present, and Future cpf NSM Semantic Theory
Since its inception imn the mid-sixties, the basic assumptions and goals of the
NSM theory have remained unchanged: the search for universal! semantic
primitives, the avoidanoe of artificial "features" m d "markers'" the rejec-
tion of logical systems of representation, the reliance on anatural language
as the only self-exp1anatory system for the representation of meaning. At
the sarme time, the theory has not stood still; on the contrary, it has been
constantly developing. These devetopments could be said to have gone in
six main directions:
the proposed set of primitives has considerably increased;
the search for primitives came to be identified with a search far Ilexi-
call universals;
3. the search for l e x i d primitives came to be combined with a search
far universal syntactic patterns (that is, for universallly available com-
binations of primitilres);
4. the pursuit of, first, primitives and then their combinations grew into
a broader programme of building a ful-scde "natural semantic meta-
language";
5. the theoretical underpinnings of the whole enterprise became g r d u -
ally m r e and more clearly arlticulated (as discussed im Section 83;
and
6. the range of domains, languages, and cultures to which NSM theory
was applied, and against which it was tested, expanded substantially.
 These developments cannot be discussed here comprehensively; a few
brief comments on each of them, however, are in order.
1. NSM theory started as a search for lexically embodied indefinable
concepts, or semantic primes, identified as such by trial and error, within
one language [mylanguage)^. The fiat tentative Pist of primitives identified
in this search was published in my book Semamric P~imSfive.~ in 1972. It
included fourteen elements.
As the proposed primitives were tested against m increasing range of
semantic domains, most of them [on present count, deven of the fourteen)
proved themselves effwtive tools in semantic analysis. But at the same time
it k c m e increasingly clear that the minimal set of fourteen was insuffi-
cient. (See Wierzbicka 119846.)
A major impulse for their expansion was the Semantic Workshop held in
Adelaide in 19815, and organized by Cliff G o d b r d and David Wilkins,
where Goddard proposed a number of new primitives for further investi-
gation. (See Goddard 1986a, I989a.) As the consmtive expanded sets were
tested in semantic analysis, the process repeated itself, and expansion con-
timed. (For the current head count, see Chapter 2.)
The prowss of e x p s i o n greaitlly facilitated semantic analysis of numer-
ous semantic domains and made it possible to formulate semantic explica-
tions that were much more readable and intuitively intelligible than those
based on earlier, leaner sets. The theoretical "cost" of this expansion lay in
the need to abandon the kibnizian principle of mutual independence d
primitives. En the early versions of the NSM theory, if the dements
appeared to be semantically related (as, for example, 'good'and "ant', or
'the wme'and 'other?, it was assumed that at least one of them must be
semantically complex (on the grounds that if two elements share a common
part they must have parts, and therefore cannot be mantically simple).
This assumption was never strictly adhered to, however. For example, I,
YOU, and SOMEONE were regarded as primes from the outset, even
though they are intuitively related (for every "I", and every "you'" is a
"someone"pl. in h e , the assumption of mutual independence of primitives
was rejected altogether, and it was recognbed that primitives can be intu-
itively related (as " I s b a d ""smeon~e" are), without being composttkonallly
related and without being decomposable [that Is, definable).
2. The first proposed primitives were identified, by trial and error, on the
basis of a handful of European languages. With t h e , through the work of
experts on many diverse languages, the empirid basis grew consider;ab11y,
including, among others, languages as diverse as Chinese [see e.g. Chappel1
1985, 1986a,ib), Ewe [Ameka 19816, 11987, 1990, 19911, lapan~ese('Travis
1992; Hasada 1W4), N d a y [Goddard 1994~1,the Austronesian language
Mangap-Mbwla (Bugenhagen 199011, ar the Australian languages
Yankunytjatjara (Goddard 1990, 19920,b) and Arrernte (Wilkins 19815;
'
Harkhs 19921. This expansion culminated in Semantic and Lexfcal
UniversaJrs (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994b1, mentiocred earlier.
A priori, one might have expected that the process of testing a hypo-
thetical set of primitives across a wider range d languages would bad to a
redu~tianof the proposed set (as one proposed primitive after mother
would fail to show up in this or that language). On the whole, however, this
has not h a p p e d . On the contrary, the list of primitives has shown a ten-
dency towards gradual expansion.
3. For a long time, research into the syntax of the proposed primitives
lagged behind that into the primitives themsellves-a point commented on
by several reviewers I(e.g, McCawley 1983). This delay, though unfortunate,
was dictated by the nature of things: one can hardly investigate the patterns
of combination of primitives before one has some idea of what the primi-
tives are. The first articie devoted primarily to the syntax of the primitives
was my "'Lexical Universals and Universals of G r m a r " "ierzbicka
1991~).The Symposium on the Universal Syntax of Meaning held im
Canberra in July I994 (organized by Goddard and myself) launched a
major programme of research in this area across a number of languages.
4. The building of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage was, and contin-
ues to be, a gradual process. In contrast to more spculative semantic the-
ories, NSM constantly swks cmfirmation-or disconhation-in
large-scale descriptive projects. For example, in my E'ng/fsh Speech Act
Verbs ~(Wiereszbicka1987aS I attempted to analyse ithe meaning of more than
200 English verbs; and more recently, in a series .sf articles rn another con-
ceptual domain (see e.g. Wierzbicka 1990c, 199k, 39414~)I have similarly
sought to analyse at Ieaslt 1010: English emotion terns.
It is through descriptive projects of this kind that the inadequacies [as
well as the strengths) @If successive versions of NSM b e m e apparent, irnd
that future directions of development could be seen more clearly. Perhaps
the mast important direction had to do with the growing simplification and
standardization of the syntax of explications, linked directly with the search
for universal syntactic patterns.
5. The theoretical underpinnings of NSN research were gradually wtic
lulated more clearly, and its methodology fomulated more explicitly, as
important theoretical concepts like "polysemy", 'klEolexy", "valency
option", '%on-compositianal relationship", and 'kreonance"were gradu-
ally clarified and more rigorously articulatd (we Smtian 8; all= Goddard
19941; Goddard and Wiembicka 11994b). The Symposium on Semantic and
Lexi~alUniversals held in Canberra in February 1992 and organized by
CliB Goddard and myself played an important role in this regard.
6. Over the years, the range of domains to which NSM research
addressed itself has continued to expand, including mot only l e x i d seman-
tics (as in, for example, Goddard 1990, 199la; Travis 1992; Hasada 1994;
34 General issues

Ameka 1990; Wierzbicka 1985, f987a1, but aiso the semantics of grammar
(e.g. Pumeka 19910; Chappell 1986(r,b, 1991; Wieinbicka 1988) and pragmat-
ics [e.g. b e k a 1987; Coddad 1986b; Harkins 1986; Wierzbicka 199la;
2 A Survey of Semantic Primitives
Willkins 1986). Furthemore, this resear~hhas expmded into more dirmt
comparison of cultures, via their lexicon, grammar, conversational rou-
tines, and discourse structure ((PI.%.h e k a 1987; Goddard 19926, forth-
coming c; Harkins 1994; Wierzbicka B991a, 11492a; Wilkins 1992). Most
recently, NSM r e m c h has moved into yet another direction, leading to
the devePopmemt of a '"heory of cultural scripts:', which offers a framework
A . OLD PRIMITIVES
for comparing cultural moms operating in different. cultures, a framework
based on universal semantic primitives and universal syntactic patterns [e.g.
Wierzbicka 11993e, 1994Ez,d,e, forithcoming c; Goddard forthcoming b;
Goddud and Wierzbicka forthcoming).
The set of primitives presented and discussed in this chapter has evdved in
But while all these developments are (as it seems to those involved) sig- the course of nearly three decades of research by myself and collleagues-
nificant, NSM theory still1 has a long way to go. The pursuit of semantic and it is still evolving. Some of the primitives proposed here are better
primitives needs tca be fiIYa~kd,the study of the syntax of primitives, n d s established than orhen. Of the fourteen primitives posited in my Semmbic
to be more. fully developed, the smpe of cross-llinguistic testing of both Primitives (1972) ten have survived nearly a quarter of a, century of critical
primitives and thdr syntax needs to be substantially widened, language-spe- assaults [by myself and others), and (with one exception: PART] the posi-
cific versions of the Na,tuaal Sernmtic Metalanguage need to be buiit, the tion of these original members of the set can be regarded as particularly
NSM-based analysis of culture and cognition needs to be exltended to new strong. This old guard includes the "substantives" I, YOU, SOMEONE,
areas, h e theory of cultural scripts needs to be further fleshed out, and so and SOMETHING, tlne ""mental predicates" THINK, WANT, FEEL, and
on. This book therefore constitutes an open invitation. SAY, and the demonstrative THIS.
But the main divide mns between ~thohclse elements which were tested
across a wide range of languages in the project reported in Sem:mtic and
Lexkal UnsivermEs (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994b), and those which were
not included in that project, and which must, therefore, be regarded as less
well established. Accordingly, the present chapter, surveying the primitives,
is divided into two parts, called, for convenience' sake, "Old Primitivesy'
and "Mew Primitives". The set of old primitives includes the following ele-
ments:
ccsubstam~ve~~' I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING,
PEOPLE
crdete~~r~y' THIS, THE SANE, OTHER
cGq2tantifiersy' ONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH), ALL
ccmentalpredicatesy' THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL
SAY
"actiions and eventsp' DO, HAPPEN
6cevaI~atorsyy GOOD, BAD
6cdescriptors'y BIG, SMALL
4ct~e" WHEN, BEFORE, AFTER
4cspacepy WHERE, UNDER, ABOVE
"partonomy and taxonomy" PART (OF), KIND (On
ccmetapredicates" NOT, CAN, VERY
"interclausal linkers'" IF, BECAUSE, LIKE.
2. Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING,
PEOPLE:
2.1. I and YOU
Joseph Bradsky's (19941 poignant recent poem entitled "Infinitive" 'arts as
fo81ows:
D c a savages, though I've never mastered your tongue, Free of
pronouns and gerunds,
li've learned to bake mackerel wrapped in palm leaves aad Favor raw
turtle bgs,
wilh their flavor or sllovmess.
For talc poet, the factual inaccuracy of the image does not matter, but the
b~l! of the matiler is tbaE there. are no tongues in the world (no matter how
""svagem")hich would be 'Tree of pronouns and gerunds'" O.F gerunds, yes,
but of pronouns, no. En particular, there are no languaps in the world
which would be "Tree" of words for 'I or YOU (in the sense THOU). This
is not to say that claims have never been made-not only in poetry, but
alss in s~holarllylileraitme-that languages "free of personal pronoums" do
exist, but notions of this kind have never been substantiated and they must
'be regarded as fanciful. (See Wierzbicka 119941b.)1
It is true that many languages, especially South-east Asian languages,
have developed a nlwnlmber of ciaborate substitutes for " y o u ' b d ''1'"' and
tlhalt irta many circumstances it is more appropriate to use some such substi-
tute than the barest, the most basic, pronoun. For exampie, in a polite con-
versation in Thai, the use of the basic words for ""yom" and "I"' would
sound crude and inappropriate. Instead, variouls self-deprecating expms-
sions w u l d be used for ' T b d various deferential expressions for 6cyouyy.
Many of the expressions which stand for refer to the speaker" hair,
crown of the head, top of tlne head, and the Like, and many of the expres-
sions which stand for "you" refer to the addressee's feet, soles of the k t ,
or even to the dust underneath his feet, the idea being that the speaker is
putting the most valued m d mspcted part of his own body, the head, at
the same level as the lowest, the lmslt horuowable part of the addressee's
body (see Cook 1968). Hut this does not mean that Thai bas no personal
pronouns, no basic words for ""you" and "Iyy.
Maw& (1943) claim to have shown that the concept 'I' has no lexica2 exponents im Winlzn,
Kaei, and Japanese; far detailed aefuaeth d these claims see Goddaad (1995).
A Imgmge may not make a disthcttioa which would corr.-,spond to that
between the words "he" and "she", and in fact many languages, for exam-
ple Turkish, have just one word for '%heyhand "she"', undifferentiated for
sex. But no known language fails to make a distinction between the speaker
and the addressee, i.e. between "yaw" and '7I"'. This does not mean that the
range of use of the words for '""yo"arud '"I" is the s m e , in dl languages.
For example, in Thai, the word C ~ ~ Fwhich F , Thai-English dictionaries gloss
as "Iy'",has a range of use incomparably more narrow than antis English
equivaIent. When used by women, it is restricted to intimates, and it signals
a high degree of informality and closeness; when used by men, it signals
superiority, rudeness, disrespect (Treerat 1986; Cook 11968). But since there
ane no invariant semantic components which could be always attributed to
d 6 n , other than "E"" the heavy restrictions on its use must be attributed to
cultural rather than semanltic factors. In a society where references to one-
self are in many situations expecbd to be aocompanied by expressions of
h u d i l t y or inferiority, a bare ""I' becomes pragmatilcalBy marked, and it
must be interpreted as either very intimate or very rude. But this pragmatic
markedness should not be confused with demonstrable semantic complex-
ity (see Diller 1994).
The universality of I and YOU (brilliantly guessed by Wilhelm
HumboPdt, in the early days af typdlogical linguistic investigations, and
reasserted by Boas (1911; see also lngram 1978)) taillies well with the inde-
finable nature of these two concepts: while attempts to define them (e.g, in,
terns of "speaker" m d "addressee"'; see e.g. Reichenbach 1948: 81 13 have
often been undertaken, these attempts have never h e n successful. Words
such as "~peaker"and "addressee'hase neither universal nor semantically
simple. Roughrly speaking, '"he spcakcr (of some w o r d s ) ' ~ s""te person
who says these words"; and "the addressee (of some words)" is "the person
to whom these words are said".
Furthermore, If ""H"oesnYt mean '"he speaker", ""thespeaker" doesn't
mean "'I"". For example, if I whisper to the person nexk to me "1 don? like
the speaker", I mean neither that "The speaker doesn? like the speakery',
nor that ""n:onytlike myself"". Similarly, if someone asks me ""Who are you
speaking to?'hnd I reply "I'm speaking to you'" 1 can hardly m a n that
'cIymspeaking to the person to whom I am speaking'" or that "The speaker
is spaking to the person to whom the speaker is speaking" (see Setensen
1963: 961.
Finally* the idea of "I" is not necessarily tied to speech: we rely on the
concept of "'I" in our thoughts, as well as in our speech. For example, if I
think to myself '" want to do something ( X i ) today", I do not think of
myself as "the speaker""ut simply as 'TI"'.
F r m this point of view, Russell's attempted definitions of 'l'1["I-the
person experiencing this' (1964: 851, and 'I"-the biography to which this

belongs'l965: 107) ) axe perhaps more plausible than Reichenba~h's(since
they do not refer to speech), but on ittire whole they are hardly convincing
either: whether uttered aloud or thought silently, the sentence "I want to
go now" can hardly mean 'the peaon experiencing this wants to go now',
or 'the person to whose biography this belongs wants to go now" As
pointed out by Ssrensen (1963: 961," 'I' and "ouhre sigtvs in the first and
the second person respectively . . . Now, whatever the difference between
fist, second, and third person signs may be, there is a dineren%, a differ-
ence of meaning . . . Therefore, a sign in the third person cannot be seman-
tically identical with a sign in the first or second person". (See also
Castafieda 1988.)
Of course "Iyym sometimes be intended as referentially identical to a
"third person sign'" such as, for axamplc, "tire author o f ihese lines", ,or
as Ithe expression "this person" accompanied by a self-directed gesture; but
cllearly, neither '"he author of these lines" nor "this person" mean the
same as 'I,, and even &om a referentid paint d view, expressions such as
"the author of' these limes" or "this person" are not always equivatent to
'1'-
2.2. SOMEONE and SOMETHING
A11 languages have words for WHO and WHAT, and can distinguish lexi-
cally between the questions "What is this?" and "'Who is this?" The dis-
tinction beltween %ho'and "hat', 'soameone'and 'something', ' p r s o n k n d
'thingbrovides the most fundamental f o m d human categorization (for
while YOU and I are also fundamenltal to human thimking,,they do not a t -
egorize the contents of the worlld)~.
It is hpclssible to define 'someone' or 'something' in m y simpler terns.
In English, the apparent morphoiogical complexity of the wards sameone
and something may suggest the idea that these words are in fact demm-
posabHe (into 'some' + 'one" and kame' + '"Itinfl").But af mwse someone
doesn't mean the same as "ome on& and something doesn't mean the same
as %onrething'.
When the words who and what am used in questions, the mnoelpts 'some-
one' and 'somethinghare combined with an interrogative meaning (" wmt
to know something', 'I want yau to say something')),but this interrogative
meaning is not an inherent part of the words W ~ and Q what as such. For
example, when used in so-called "embedded questions",
I[know (don't h o w ) who did it.
I know (don't know) what you see.
who and who$ do not express an interrogative meaning at all. Rather, sen-
ternaces of this kind can be interpreted as folllows:
2. A Survey of Semrsnr tic Primitives 39
I know this about someone: this someone (this penon) did It.
I know this about something: you see this something (this thing).
Vhe expr~essimsthis someone and this s~mebhiq,which sound awkward in
English, will be discussed in Chapter 3.)
In linguistic literature, the distinction between SOMEONE and SOME-
THING, which plays an important role in the grammar af many languages,
is often represented in terms of binary features, such as + HUMAM, or
+ ANIMATE, or +- PERSONAL. But amaunts of this kind are a good
-
example of pseudo-analysis, since sthe features which are invented to
awount for the dinerence between SOMEONE and SOMETHING them-
selves need to be d e b e d (or explained) in tems of SOMEONE and
SOMETHING. For example, the sentences
I met someone nice.
I saw something interesting.
can hardly be paraphrased (except in jest) along the following lines:
I met a nice human [animate, personal), thing [entity).
I saw an interesting nun-human (inanimate, impersonal) entity.
As I argued in L h p a MemtrrIis fifteen years ago, to substitute ""ientityYVor
mrneone and something is to avoid the categorization embedded in all nat-
ural languages and to try to replace it with an artificial device alien to them.
The disltlncticcn Ihertween "persms" and ""non-personsyyis quite f u n h e n -
k;al to human conceptualization of the world. Natural languages diner in
this respect sharply from artificial languages relying on the abstract notion
of "referential indices"'. Linguists who have assumed that the language of
symbolic logic is a suitable tool for analysing naturas language have some-
rimes taken for granted that the notion of "semantic prime" c m be identi-
fied with the notion of "atomic predimte", because what logicians describe
as "arguments" can be simply thought of as indices. (This applies, in par-
ticular, to '"enerative semanticists"'; see e.g. McCawley 3973: 334.) But nat-
ural languages don't work like that. The distinction between SOMEONE
and SOMETHING is basic for them and cannat be reduced to any differ-
a c e between predicates.
To put it differenltily, the concept of SOMEONE (a 'person" is essential
to human conmptuaEization of the world, and despite aPP the differences in
d t u r a l context and cultural interpretation (see e.g. Shweder and Bourne
1984), it bas a s;tab;le, irredwible loore across all languages and ~uEtwe8(see
Spiro 1993;Wierzbicka 1993b); no language and no culture blurs the fun-
damental divide between SOMEONE and SOMETHING.
40 Geflerd Iswes

2.3. PEOPLE The status of PEOPLE as a fundamental element of human thought is

reflected in various ways in the grammar of innumerable lmguages. For
As the evidence reported in Semantic and Lexical Umi~ersa!s (GOadard and
example, in Palish normind declension, masculine nouns referring to p o -
Wierzbicka 1994b) illustrartres, all languages appear to distinguish, in one
pie have an accusative plural identical in form with the genitive, whereas
way or another, between a m r e general notion of SOMEONE, or BEING
nouns referring to things and animals have ;an accusative plural identical in
(hurnsm or non-human), and a notion of PEOPLE (necessarily human). For form with the nominative. QCf. also the so-called "hierarchy of agentivityz'
example, someone (and who) can refer to God: discussed, for exahnple, by Silverstein 1976, Dixon 1979, Comrie 1989,
Who created the world?--God. Mallinson and Blake 11981, and Wierzbicka 1981, in which the category
God is someone inhitely g o d and merciful. "human" plays a prominent role.)
The hypothesis that the ~onoeptof PEOPLE is a conceptual primitive is
But the word peapk (whi~his inherently "plura1"")amot refer to any
consistent with the results of reoent studies of language acquisition. For
group of beings other than human being (not even to the very human-like
example, as pointed out by McShane (1991: 197), Carey (1985) 'Tomnd t h t
gods of the Greek Olppus). children initially organize biological knowledge amund hulrnruns as a proto-
The well-known fact that in many languages, the word for cpeople',is also
type. Inferences about biological properties of other species are based both
used as a tribal name is (as pointed out by Greenberg 191616a:261 dearly a
on what children believe about humans and haw similar the other species is
case of polysemy, mnzlparable to the polysemy of the English ward man (I] to humans."JackendoK (1992) talks in this connection abauk "a faculty of
a male human being, (2) a human being, and not evidence that a word for social cognition"'. Referring to Kaitz, Baker, and Mamamara's (1974) h d -
'pipeople' may be missing.
ing that children as young as 17 months know that proper names can be
It is a striking fact that in many languages the word for people has a dif-
applied to people and people-like objects such as dolls but not to inmimate
ferent stem from the word for an individual human being, and doesn't look
objects such as boxes, he c o m m t s : "That is, ~ e seem
y predisposed to make
like an ordinary plural. The English word people is a good case in paint.
a cognitive distinction between persons and everything else-the distinction
Similarly, in Geman, French, and Russian the words Leufe, gens, and @udi,
1 anol claiming is pertinent to social cognition-and they are predisposed as
'people', are all different from the words for an individual human being
well to find a linguistic distinction that encodes this difference." The evidence
(Mensch, hornme, and Eelavek, respectively). By itself, this formal difference
from cross-linguistic semantic investigations points in the same direction.
doesn't prove anything about the semantic relationship, but it is certainly
Finally, the hypothesis that the concept of PEOPLE is, in all probabil-
highly suggestive, and it tallies well with the semantic fact that it is imps-
ity, a semantic universal and a conceptual primitive offers a solution to the
sible to define people in terns of someone and something else (or i n d d in
old and apparently insoPub1e problem of how the notion of % m a n beingv
any other way].
can be defined. Is a human being a 'featherless biped', as the cynics main-
On the other hand, if we aocept that both someone and peopk are irre-
tained in ancient Greece? Or is it a 'rational animal', as medieval philoso-
ducible semantic primitives, numerous other concepts can be explicated via
phers wed to daim? Or is it perhaps, as the French writer Vercors (1956)
these two.
once maintained, 'a being endowed with a religious sense" "rl these and
For example, every language Eras a large number of words referring to
other definitions are dearly deficient, and it is a relief to be able to go back
"cultural kindsya(see Lyons 1981), \that is, to human artefacts, such as, for
to Pascal's (1667/1963: 579) view that the notion is basic and that all
example, q , mtrg, bottle, boomerang, chair, and so on. A11 these words
attempts to define it must fail.
make references (in their semantic skmctureie)to people, because they desig-
Linguistic evidence suggests, however, that Pascal's view requires ;r cor-
nate objects " m d e by people"', 'bused by people'" and physically defined
rection. It is not the notion of an individual human being, l % a m e ,which
with reference to the human body. (For example, cups are made by people,
a p p r s to be universal and indefinable, but the notion of PEOPLE, a
for people to drink from; they are made in such a way tErat people can hold
social, rather than biological, category. Given the universal presence of the
them in one hand, and so on. For discussion, see Wierzbicka 1985.)
concepts PEOPLE, SOMECINE, and ONE, the notion of an individual
In addition to names of material artefacts, there are also numerous words
human being does not need to be regarded as grimiltive. But it is imposs-
referring to social life (e.g. society, tribe, fami!y, committee, and so on), to
ible to d e h e both 'hwman being'ami 'people" and cross-linguisticevidenoe
human emotions Qe.g. sh~me,embar~il~ssmnt', pride), to language (e.g. ha-
suggests that it is the latter, not the former, conoept which is indeed wi-
$wage, d i ~ k c lshag),
, and so on, which refer in their meaning to 'people'.
versal (see Goddani and Wierzbicka 1994l1)~
42 General Issues
If we think of universal semantic primitives as innalte concepts, the idea
that a social category of PEOPLE may be innate is unexpected, and it wr-
tainly gives food for thought. If we are "ational animals' (with the notions
of THINK and KNOW being part of our genetic endowment), we are also
'social animals', so much so that the idea of PEOPLE as a smiat category
is also a part of this endowment, In fact, of course, according to the innate
and universal folk model (see Bmner 1990),we are not 'animals'aat all: we
are PEOPLE, evcry single one of wlaulm is also SOMEONE and 7'-all
irreducible and apparently universal human conmplts.
3. Determilversr TWLS, THE SAME, OTHER
3.1. THIS
The word this and its counterparts in other languages provide a basic
means for identifying what we are talking about; and in any language, as
in English, one ozw point to an object or a person and say something that
means 'this" "this thing" or 'this person'*
It is impossible to define the concept of THIS in t e m s of any simpler
concepts; and while technical labels such as "deictic" or "demonstrative"
are sometimes mistaken for a statement of meaning, presumably nobody
vvould argue that, for example, #hisdog means Veictic d o g k r Yemonstra-
tive dog'.
What linguists do sometimes argue is that rhix means bear the speaker'.
But this is an iQPusion,too-first of all, because near ((innon-metaphorical
use) always refers to spatial relations, whereas utFS$ is not restricted to space
(compare e.g. fuFSi8 day, or 5h& song], and second, because if 1 point to one
of my own toeth m d say "'This tooth hurts", this can hardly be interpreted
as "itlire tooth near the speaker" (see Fillmore 1975a).
Despite occasional claims to the contrary, careful examination of the
available cross-linguistic evidence suggests that all1 languages have a clear
and unproblematic exponent for THIS. The other demonstrative pronouns
often do not match semantically across language boundaries [for example,
of the three Japanese demonstrative pronouns kl0~10,mna, and am, neither
sono nor a m corsesplclnds exactly to English that, but this can be matched
semantically with kona]. In particular, it is not the case that (as has some-
times been claimed] some languages lexidly distinguish "his, wwhh I cazr
see' from 'this, which I cannot see', without having a basic, unmarked term
for THIS.
For example, Cecil Brow's (1985: 287) suggestion that the Eidabal
dialect of the Australian language Bandjallang doesn't have an exact semam-
tic equivalent for the English word skis because the nearest Gidabal equiv-
alent implies 'vidbiEty'as well as Yhisness'is refuted by Crowley's (114778:
721 authoritative study of Bandjalang, which makes it clear that the so-
called '"isible" demonstrative gaya is in fact unmarked, and that the clos-
est Bandjaimg equivalent of this doesn't mean 'this, which I can see" but
simply 'this'.
What is controversial here is not the statement that the Eidabal word
gay0 has a range of use somewhat different from that of the English word
fJsSs, but llsc claim that this dillicrcncc in usr: is due to a sp~ifiabhc:semanr-
tic difference: "isyin English] versus 'this, whilch I can see"[in Gidaball).
Differenoes in the range of use can sometimes be explained in tems of
facton other than <thesemantic. But the presence of zu specijiabb semantic.
difference could not be reconciled with llnc claim that two lexical items have
the same meaning. Experience shows, however, that reports concerning
alleged semanltic differences cannot be accepted at face value.
3.2, THE SAME and OTHER
The 'Veteminers'THE SAME and OTHER appear to be used, univer-
sally, in sentences such as the following ones:
It happened in the same place, not in another place.
It happened at the same time, not at another time.
She did (saidr'thoughtlwanted] the s a m .
I saw it, and two other people saw it.
It was not the same fish, but it was the same kind of fish.
(English sentences such as 'Give me another beer!" illustrate a language-
specific, not a universal, use of the word other.)
The element THE SAME carresponds to a fundamenltal Pogicall relatian
of "identity", which occupies a prominent place in the philosophical and
logical literature on thought, knowledge, and logical relations in general.
OTHER may seem to be no more than a negated version of identity (as I
argued myself in Wierzbicka 1989c), but in fact a phrase such as "I and two
other people" cannot be reduced to 'the same9and negation.
Both concepts, THE SAME and OTHER, are lexical universals, and
they both play a considerable role in the lexicon and in grammar. For
examplel they are needed to account for the meaning of many wonj,unctions
and particles, such as also, loo, or otherwise (see Eoddard 1986b;
Wieazlbicka 1 9 8 6 ~1991~1,
~ as well as for that of grammatical 'keference-
WacKmg" "vices, such as, for example, "switch referen~e".
Exponents of both THE SAME and OTHER are often involved in com-
rnon polysemic patterns, in particular, one linking THE SAME with ONE,
and another, linking OTHER with SOMEONE (see Goddard and
Wierzbiicka 19946); in each case, however, the polysemic knots can be

disentangl~edand the distinctness of the two concepts in a given language
can be upheld.
4. Quantifiers: ONE,TWO,M A W (MUCH), ALL
4.1. ONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH)
Fantasizing about his "UP" (Universal People), Donatd Drown (1991: 139)
writes: "UP language wntains both proper nouns and pronouns. The 1st-
ter include at least three persons and two categories of number. Their lan-
guage contains numerals, though they may be as few as 'one, two, and
many'." Empirical evidenm surveyed in Semsrntic and Lexical Universals
(Goddard and Wierzbicka 19946) supparts the view that a11 languages have
words for at least these three quantifiers: ONE, TWO, and MANY (as well
as for ALL, and, probably, SOME OF; see Part 33 of this ~ h a p t e r ) . ~
The element ONE can appear, universally, in sentenoes such as the fol-
lawing oms:
They have two sons and one daughter.
They don" have two sons; they have one son.
In grammar, ONE plays am important role in the widespread (though of
course not universal) @ategory of "singular"'. In kct, the category of
"plural", too, is based semantically on the concept ONE Csinoe in its pro-
totypical uses it m e a s , usually, 'more than one".
The element 'TWO' is needed ta account for the meaning of body part
words such as eyes, ears, or hands, as we11 as for the meaning of numerals;
and it pilays a significant role in g r m a r in the widespread category of
dualis (see Humboldt 1827!1973).
Turning now to the thbd quantifier listed by Donald Brown, that is, to
MANY, I will note, first of all, that while all languages do appear to have
a word to translate the English word many, this word doasn" have to make
any overt distinction between 'many'and %ucEnY.Unlike the words for
ONE and TWO,the counterparts of mamy do not necessarily imply disc
creteness.
Aocording ta Popjes and Polqjes (1986;as reported io Diana Green 1993: 13, 'We Canela
language, a member of the JE: language family fin Brazil], bas no numerals auY all; it is limited
to poeral terns like "alone", "a couple", "few", and ""many"to express quanliities". 1 e x p f
however, lthat if the words in question are carefully tested for polysemy, it will tramspire that
the word glossed as '%lone'bc;unalso mean 'oone; and that gloss& as "a couple" can also mean
'two'. The words for ONE and TWO can of m r s e have many a0lolexes. For example, Diana
Green (1993: 1) notes dhar the Palikfir language of Brazil has "twnly two words to express
the concept of one", and that "'nineteen OF these words have dewln dimerent Fonns, making
at lead 209 ways lo say (be nwmber one, all spoken in everyday conversationu".
2. A Survey of5"enaantic Psimithe8 45
For example, in Polish, the word for both "any' and 'much' is du20, in
Russian, mogo, in French, beaucoup, and in Japanese, fakussm. It is true
that in those languages which have an obligatory category of nominal num-
ber, the distinction between 'muchkand hanykwjlll bc reflected in the num-
ber of Ithe head noun; for example, in Russian, in, the phrase mnogo vody,
'much water'@ lot of water), the word for water is used in the genitive sin-
gular, whereas in the phrase mnogo sob&, 'many dogs', the word far dogs
is used in the genitive plural. But in Japanese, which doesn't have an obllig-
atory category of number, there is no corresponding formal distimction, and
the word Eakman covers both 'mwchhnd "any'.
From the point of view of a speaker oh English, it may seem that a word
Pike sdasan must be polysemous m d have two distinct meanings ('muchy
and 'many'). But from the paint of view of a speaker of Japanese, such a
conclusion would seem counter-intwitive, and it would seem more natural
to say thaf the English words much and many are simply twa allolexes (i.e.
alternative exponents] of one primitive concept Cctakusan'), and all1 things
considered, this "Japanese" point of view appears to be more justified. It
is true that to a speaker of English the words much and many appear to
have different meanings, and that, ffor example, the phrase msrny chickems
means something different from much chickem, but this difference (to do
with discreteness) can be attributed to the head noun (with the assumption
that, for example, chicken is polysemous in English), and so it can be
argued that the two words (much and mmy) are in fact in complementary
distribution.
Leaving aside, then, the issue of the distinction between much and mamy,
Bet us turn to the qlvestion of the semantic simplicity (or otherwise) of the
conoept in question, Mere, the only plausible approach ta semantic decom-
position would presumably be to try to reduce m;r*rcMmmyto 'morey9along
the lines envisaged by Sapb (1949: 125):
It is very important to realize thaf psychologically all comparatives are primary in
rellaltion Go thein wrrespmdhg absolutes ("positives'~. Just as more men precedes
both some men and many men, so better precedes both good amd very good
Linguistic usage tends to start Biom the graded concept, e.g. good (= better &an
iradgferenr), bad I(=worse thm irad@eretlt], large I=larger &an o~overagesize), much
i(= more than ofair m ~ u n f )Jew
i , I[= Iess ban afair numbed.
Quoting this passage a quarter of a century ago Fierzbicka 19711, I argued
that Sapir's thesis that all comparatives are primary (more basic) in rela-
tion to their corresponding absdutes 3s correct with respect to size, num-
ber, m o u n t , and dimensions, though wrong with respect to good and bad9
as we111 as to other "qualitative" kkids of aldljectlves.
However, in the course of a quarter of a century of research into this and
other related mattem, 1 have come to the concllusionr that, attractive as
Sapit's thesis was, it was not partially wrong but altogether wrong. In par-
ticular, it no bnger seems plausible that muds and many are semantically
based on 'more', whether this relationship is conceived of as 'more than a
fair amowntlnuber', "ma than one expects', "ore thm the norm', or in
any other way. Intuitively, the idea of 'many people' seems more basic than
that of b o r e people" and the fact that 'm;;my(much~'is, apparently, a lex-
ical universal (see Goddard and Wierzbicka 19946) supports this intuition.
The idea that ' a m a u n t h r "umber' may be more basic concepts than
'mwclELEmany'is entirely implausible: words such as amount and ncrmber are:
not universal, they are of course acquired by children much later than much
or a lot, and they constitute abstractilolns built on the basis of simple ideas
such as cmuchy,'onev, and 'two', rather than offering a foundation for them.
(Far discussion of this question, see Sections b and 7; see also Sedons 16
and 23.)
Finally, is 'littler'few' (as in "little butter" or "few people"') also a con-
ceptual primitive and a kxical universal, on a par with MANYSMWCH?
Since 'fewfiittle~ppearsto be an opposite of 'many!much" jjut as 'small'
is an opposite of 'big" and since the latter two concepts have both been put
forward as primitive: a d universal (see Section 95, it may seem quite clear
that Yewflittle'shonitd also be proposed as such. But the matter.is not so
sinnpl~e,and preliminary investigations suggest that the claim of 'littlejrfew"
to the status of a conceptual primitive and lexical universal is weaker than
that of its apparent opposite 'mucbfmany" as well as that d the two related
opposites 'bighnd 'small" It is possible, in other words, that 'httldfew'
may prove to be reducible to a combination of 'mucWmamy"nd negation
('not mucb'not mamy'), whereas h a l l J m n o t be reduoed to 'nat big' (see
Section 9 besow).
Data from child language are certainly suggestive in this respect; while
(in English) both the adjactives big and little appear very early and are used
very frequently in child language (see e.g. Braine 1976; Section 8) and while
the words a bt and b t s also frequentlly occur in tranwripts of child lan-
guage (see e.g. French and Nelson 1985) the same does not seem to be true
ofthe wordsjfew and iftble (as an opposite of a lof]~.But the matter requires
further investigation.
4.2. ALL
ALL was proposed as a semantic primitive by Goddard (19898). En Lingua
Mentalis mierzbicka 1980) I had argued that this concept was not inde-
finable because it could be analysed along the following lines:
All dogs are faithful. =
one can't say thinking of a dog:
this (dog) is not faithfull
As pointed out by Godderd, however, this kind of analysis may seem con-
vincing from a purely logical point of view, but not from the point of view
of psychollolgical plausibility. The suggested analysis seems particularly
unconvincing when applied to volitive or expressive utterances, such as
"'Regards to all!" or "To hell with it all!"; it seems hardly plausible to para-
phrase them as follows:
Regards to all. =
one can" say thinking of someone:
I don't [send) regards to this person
To hell with it all. =
one can't say thingring of something:
I don't want this to go to hell
Similarly, the expression 'that's all", which frequently occurs in the tran-
scripts of YoUgr children's speech (see e.g. French and Nelson 19851, can
hardly be paraphrased along those lines,
The ffact that the ward a// (and, apparently, the concept ALL) appears
very early in children's speech [see e.g. Brdne 1976) also supports the view
that the analysi attempted in Lingwa Menrralb was psychologicaEly implam-
sible.
ALL plays an important rob in both lexicon and grammar. For example,
English particles and conjunctions such as as all, almost, altogether,
aithough, arll the same, ai.o, already, al/ sight by their very form hint at the
presence of the semantic oamponent 'all' in their meaning, as do also adver-
bial and pronominal expressions such as always, ail aver, ~ ~ e r a J every-
'l,
where, everyone, whatever, whenever, and so on; and i d a r examples could
be quoted ltiom other langua~es.(The evidence for ALL as a lexical mi-
versa1 will be: dis~ussedin Chapter 6; see aQsoGoddard and Wierzbicka
1994b.l
Like negation and existence, ALL is accepted as one of the fundamental
conmpts in logic (as the so-called ' k i v e n a i quantifier'", and from a logi-
cal point of view the need far ALL as a universal semmtic primitive will
no doubt seem olbvious and overdue rather than controversial. But seman-
t b has its o m point of view, and its o m internal logic, which is dinerent
from the logic dlogical systems. Above all, it requires an anchoring in lan-
guage universals, which have to be confirmed empirically and not only on
the basis of inteliwtual spelculation. For h i s reason (among others) the
concepts 'and' and 'or" indispensable to the logician, have: not been pro-
posed in the present system as semantic primitives. But ALL--like NOT-
is one of the points where logic and semantics shake hands.

5 . Mental Pr~edicaltes:THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL
As argued elegantly by Bauner (11990: 351, 'k1E cultures have as one of their
..
most powerful constitutive instruments a folk psychology . We learn our
culture's folk psychology ear1y", as we learn language early, and the turo
processes are inextricably linked. A good illustration of Bruner's thesis
comes from the area of emotions: not only is the wry conapt of %moltion"
(and its counterparts in other languages) cdturally shaped and determined,
to some extent, by language, but every language includes its own taxonomy
of emotions, which offers "a set of more or less connected, more or less
normative descriptions about how human beings 'tick' " [B~unrer19910: 35).
But in addition to all hose culture-spific systems of folk psychobgy
there Is, Bruner suggests, a universal, Innate folk psychology which consti-
tutes a basis and a starting-pdnt of all furlther developments: "We come
into the world already equipped with a primitive form of folk psychologf'
(1990: 73).
Cross-linguistic investigations reported in Semmrlc and Lexical
Unirersais [Goddard and Wlerzbicka 1994Er) support and substantiate
Bmner's clims; in particular, they allow us to state that the innate and uni-
versal "thhary of mindl"%cludes the follbwing major r;onstituenlk: THINK,
KNOW, WANT, and E E E L a finding which converges with recent data
on language acquisition, as reported, for example, in Welhan 11990, and,
especially, 1911411.
The results of the research on lexical ulmnfwrsals and on child language
acquisition tally well with the results of purely philosophid reflection and
conceptual analysis. The iindefinabiiitg of THINK, of the basic 'cogito', was
proclaimed three centuries ago by the Cartesians, and nobody has ever h e n
able to refute their stand ion this point. In fact, THINK was for tbe
Cartesians iu prime example of an indefinable word (Arnauld 166331964:
36): "'Obviously, we conceive nothing more distinctly than we conceive o w
own I;Erought. Nor is there a clearer proposition than 'I think; therefore, 1
am'. We can be certain of this proposition only if we am conceive distinctly
what 'to be' and what 'to thin&;"mean. We require no explanation of these
words, since they are words so well understood that in explaining them we
only obscure them." A look at dictionary "definiltions"of think conlinns
the validity of this view. For example, The American Herifage Dictianary
of she EngItJS hngwage (AHDOTEjC 1973):
to think - to have a thought
thought - the act or prmss of thinking; cogitation
cogitation - 1, tlnolughtbl consideration; 2. a serious thought
The circularity of these definitions hardly requires a comment. Generally
speaking, "definitions'hhich try to analyse 'thinking' in terns of words
2 A Survey ox Sematic Primisiwes 49
and phrases such as "cogitation", "cognition", "cognitive processes"",'con-
aptions", and the like are almost caricatural examples of the old and per-
sistent practioe of "defining" something that is clear via something that is
obscure, and something that i simple via something that is complex. (For
further discussion of THINK,see Wierzbicka forthcoming$)
What holds for THINK holds allso for KNOW, WANT, and FEEL. For
example, Longman's Dictionary of h e EmgILDS Language (LD0TE.L P 984)
defines know via cognition, and cognition via know:
how - ta haw direct oognition
cognition - the aGt or process ob knowing that invoives the processing oC
sensory infomation and includes perception, awareness, and judge-
ment
Not only are these definitions circular, but also they offer a p o d example
of '"regress" "om simpb to complex and from clear to obscure. The same
applies to the definitions offeel and wan$ (in the same dictionary]:
reell - to have one's sensibilities markedly afFected
want - to have a desire
(with semibl being defined as "capable of being fejh or perceived'" desire
as 'Yo wish for, want", and w&h as "'to have as a desire").
The universality of "mental predicates" has sometimes been disputed.
For a m p l e , Hallpike (1979) has claimed that some languages lack expo-
nents of THINK and KNOW, and that their speakers, like children at the
'preoperational sfage", have no clear concepts of 'thinking' or 'knowing'.
As I argue in detail in Chapter 6, this claim is untenable (as is also the
notion that pre-school children don't have concepts of 'think' and 'Loow3;
siee Wellman 1494).
It has also been sometimes suggested that Borne languages don't have a
word for EEEL, or don't distinguish lexically between FEEL and THINK.
On closer inspection, however, these reports, too, turn out to be unfounded.
(See Wierzbicka 11994jb, 1994h.)
The fundamental status of B e concepts THINK, Kbl(EW, WANT, and
FEEL is manifested h the important role they play in grammar. For exam-
ple, KNOW plays an essential role in the systems ef mood-with the
'Veclaratives'Qbeig based on the semantic component 'I know', and the
""interrogariw" on the components 'I don? know-B want to know'.
Clearly, KNOW-as well as THINK-is also the basis of "evidentials" ('1
know bsause I see', 'I h o w bemuse I h w ' , 'I Link, I don't say: I know',
and so on; see Chapter IS, Section 8). F E U underlies exclamatory con-
stmctions, diminutives, "experienmr constructions" of different kinds, and
so on, whereas WANT f o r m the basis of the imperative.
 6. Speech: SAY
The universal concept of SAY can be illustrated with the following canon-
ical sentences:
I said something to you.
People say somlething bad a b u t you.
I want to say something now.
Like the indefinability of mental predicates (e.g. THINK), the indefin-
ability of SAY can best be appreciated by looking at contortions and
vicious circles in the attempted dictionary definitions of this word.
"
The conwpt d SAY plays an important role in speech as a basis of dif-
ferent il;lawcutionaryfarces (e.g. in questions which imply: want ym ta say
something'), in the thematic organization of utterances ['I want to say
something about this'), and in the basic "subjac~t-predicatey'structure of
sentences ('I'm thinking about JC I say: Y).In the lexicon, its most Impor-
tant function lies in the categorization of discourse, since the distin~tions
between diKerent "speech acts" and "speech genres" shape, to a consider-
able extent, our interpretation of human interaction. (Sae Wierzbicka
19870.1
7. Actions and Events: DO and HAPPEN
The concepts of 'action' and 'event" that is, Voing' and 'happening', play
an extremely important role in human discourse. Essentially, that's what all
sbries are about: what happened, and what this or that person did. To
quote Bruner (L9110: 77): "one of the most ubiquitous and powerful dis-
course f o m s in human communication is nrrrmrirve . . . Narrative requires
. . . a means for emphasizing human action or %gentivity'--action directed
toward goals controlled by agents." The future, too, is mostly talked about
in terms of future events and actions: what will happen to me (or to some
other people)? What will I (or somebody else] do? Indeed, it is hard to
imagine a language in which people couldn't ask questions of this kind, and
to my knowledge no such language has ever been reported.
In human reflections about lire the thought of "bador good) things hap-
pening to peopb" wcupies a central place [see e.g, the characteristic title
of a papular work When Bod Things Happefi to Good People, Kushner
1982); and t b notion of %someone doing something badyor, to a lesser
extent, 'something good" is at the heart of both ethics and the law.
In earlier work [Wlembicka 1972, 1980) I tried to define 'happeny in
terms of cbecoming',and Voing' in terms of a combination of 'happening'
and 'wanting', bur these attempts were not suc~essful,and I have come )to
remgnine that (as argued by Bogusiawski l99ll), both DO and HAPPEN
have to be aweped as irreducible semantic primitives. Paraphrases such as
You did something bad. = something bad happened bemuse you
wanted it
are clearly incomoct, and even if it is true that Voinrg'aalways implies some
'wanthg'and some 'happening" these implications cannot be stated satis-
factorily in tems of puaphrases, (It is also worth noting that in children's
speech, do appears very early, and is used very widely; set: e.g. Clark 1983:
$22.)
Both the concepts DO and HAPPEN play an important sole in the gram-
mar of many languages. For example, in so-called "a~ctive"languages, such
as Dakota, the case of the subject depends an whether the predicate refers
to Voiing' or to %appeningY.In fact, the tems "agent'hnd "patient" (is.
'the person who does somethingknd 'the person to whom something hap-
pens" are widely used in the description of most languages, and funda-
mental grammatical phenomena such as transitivity, passives, or reflexives
are defined if not in terns of 'doingband 'happening' then at least with ref-
erence to these eonoepb [sm Chapter 14).
8. Evaluators: GOOD and BAD
Over the centuries, there have been many attempts to d e h e away the con-
oepts cgoodyand 'bad'. In most cases, in these attempts "good' was linked
with %wantingy,and 'bd", with "not wanting': 'good' is what someme [I,
people, God . . .) wants, "ad', what someone doesn't want [see e.g. Schliek
1962 l@ll)e
With t h e , however, it has become increasingly dear that attempts of this
kind do not and cannot succeed, sinoe it is always possible to present "good'
and 'wanting"or 'bady and 'not wanting') in opposition to one another.
For example:
I know it is b d to do it, but I still want to do it.
4. know it would be good to do it, but I don? want to do it.
It is also possible to juxtapose 'good'and cwant" as in St Paul's famous
statement:
FOPI do not do the goad I want, but the evil I do not want is what 1do. [Romans
7: 19).
Both by contrasting and by juxtaposing 'goodknd "antbe show that we
conceive of them as two separate ccmcepts: if I can say that I can want !to
do what 1 think is good, and that I can also want to do what I think is bad,

then it would make no sense to try to reduce 'good20 %antJ, or %ada to
&notwanty.
The (non-compositional] relationship between %anthand "oodhan be
compared to that between 'think'and %now', in so far as both k a n l k n d
Yhink'imply a subjective, individual perspective* whereas "ood' and
%nowq imply an objective and inherently valid one. What someone wants
may be bad, and may be diffferent from what somebody else wants; sirni-
larly, what somoue. thinks may 1Pe wrong, and may be different from what
somebody else thinks. But what is " g a d " (or '"ad"') is good [or bad)
regardless of individual differences in the point of view, m d what is
%mwn"to anybody) most be true.
Of course people argue about what is 'good' and what is %add',but this
very k t indicates that by lasing these words they lay a claim to some objec-
tive validity. Inn other words, people regard EBiflerent things [and diuerent
actions) a5 good or bad, but they all agree that some things or actions (no
matter which ones) can be validly regarded as "oodd" or 'bad' (although
they may not agree which things or actions).
What applies to the speakers of English Cine.to the users of the English
words good and ha4 applies also to all other languages and cultures: every-
where in the world, people may disagree whether something is 'good" or
'bad', but in doing so, they rely on the mnwpts 'gooda and "ad', The fact
that-as far as we know-all languages have words for GOOD and BAD
(see Hill 1487; Goddard and Wierzbicka 19942) strongly supports tlne
hypothesis that these two mncepts are innate and fundamental elements of
human thought (experience can teach us to regard certain things as 'good'
or 'bad', but it cannot temh us the very concepts of 'good' and 'bad').
But while the fundamental nature of the concepts GOOD and BAD
appears to be well established and well supported by linguistic evidence,
one puzzle remains: why is it that (as pointed out by Greenberg 89660: 52)
in many languages the word for BAD looks, from a mnpholo@cd point
of view, like a combination of negation and the word for GOOD, whereas
the word for GOOD never looks like a combination of negatives and the
word h r BAD?
Donald Brown (1991: 131) writes this about his imaginary "'Universal
People" ('UP):
However much grammar varies from language to language, some things are always
present. For example, UP language includes a series of contrasting terms hat the-
oretically could be phrased in three different ways, but that are only p h r a d two
ways. To illustrate, they muld talk about the '"ood" and the "bad" [two contrast-
ing terms, neither with a marker d d e d to express negation); or they could talk
about the "goodY>nd the ""not good" &e., not having the ward ""baaa'kat a11 brut
expressing its meauing with a marked version of its opposite, the marking in this
case to negate), or they coluid talk about the "bad" and the "mat bad" (i.e., not hay-
2. A Survey ~~JSrej~lenrfc
'crif~itives 53
ing the word '"ooodl," etc.). Logically, these alternatives are identical: each arrange-
ment conveys the same inrannation. But . . . the third possibility never omrmrs as the
obligatory or common way of taEking.
But although, apparently, in some sense GOOD is "unmarked", whereas
BAD is (perhaps] perceived as rm absence, distortion, or perversion of
GOOD, it appears that all languages have a word for BAD,as welt as a
word for GOOD. The word for BAD may or may not look like a negated
version of the word for GOOD, but if the only "opposite'kf GOOD to be
found in a language looks like a negated vewion of the word for GOOD
then it seems that this word means 'bad'rather than 'not good'.
Where culltwres differ is in their willingness to contrast 6006) with
BAD: clearly, in some cultures people preffer, in many contexts, to contrast
'good%with 'not good-ather than with 'bad'i&resumably, to avoid giving
offence). If this is the case, then the word for HAD n a y seem to be some-
how 'cstronger" in meaning than the English word bad. For example,
Ghappell (1994: 142) unrites this about Mandarin Chinese:
GOOD and BAD are senantantically asylnmetricaP in Mandarin, hvdi 'bad' being
semantiaily narrower in its range of application. In this case, the use of simple
mgalicrn of the moupheme Sslio GOOD which gives bG hiio might, in fact, Bbe prefer-
able since Ssdi is more semanticaPly specialized at its end of the sale to mean
'immoral', 'nasty'or "ell' than hsjo is on the 'saintly'end of the scale.
I would suspect, however, that diRerences of this kind (interesting as they
are) are due to culltural rather than strictly semantic reasons, and that
BAD, like GOOD,is indeed a universal semantic primitive. (For further
discussion, see Wicmbicka 1994b: 4916-7.) The idea of a %ba deed", a %ad
person', or 'bad peoplebay play a greater role in some cultures than in
others; for example, it is no doubt more prominent in the Judaeo-Christian
culture than, say, in Japanese culture, but this doesn't mean that in
Japanese culture one cannot speak at ali about %ad actions' or 'bad peo-
p l e ' ( ~Qnishi
~ 1994).
T o say that %ad3means the same as 'not good' is a bit like saying that
"lalack' is the same as 'not white'. If not good may sometimes be used as a
euphemism f o bad, ~ it is precisely because the two do not mean the same,
and to say to a child "It is bad to lie" is not the same thing as to say "To
lie is not good".
To see this irreducible diflerence between "adhnd h o t gooda it is use-
f d to consider "stronger" words such as evil, v i c i w s (as applied to actions
or people) and words such as terrible or horr$c [as applied to events). It
mems hardly neoessary to argue at length that an "evil deed" or a "terrible
disaster" is not simply "something that is not good".
As for Sapir's idea that, psychologicaliy, %etter3 precedes 'good' (and
that, by implication, kwae"recxdes %ad"), it is inconsistent with both
I
54 General Issrses
moss-linguistic evidence and evidence from child language: it is 'good" and
'bad" not 'betterband 'worse', which emerge as lexical universals and which
commonly owur in transcripts in the data ofconversations with young chil-
dren. Thus, data from cross-linguistic investigations and fmm child lan-
guage research converge on this point wilth in-depth semantic analysis of
natural language, pointing to the fmdamental, irreducible character of the
twin concepts GOQD and BAD.
9. Descriptors: BIG and SMALL
The concepts %ig' and 'small'are particularly easy to identify cross-lin-
gu.istically: words for 'big' and 'small" are frequently used, easily acquired,
and easy to identify (see Goddard and Wierzbicka U1"394b),As frequently
noted in the literature, the lexical exponents of these concepts are nomally
not symmetricall, with the word far BIG being treated as, in some yay,
more basic. For example, the question "How big is it?"' does not imply that
the object in question is big, whereas 'Wow small is it?" does imply that it
is small. (See e.g. Greenberg 1966a: 52-3-31
It is quite tempting, therefore, to try to d e h e SMPILL via BIG as 'not
big" But 'not big-oes not mean the same as %mally,and one can easily
say off something (for example, a dog, or an apple) that Yt is neither big nor
small'.
Both B 1 0 and SMALL are of course ""relative" terns, in the sense that
a small elephant is still quite a big animal, whereas a big mouse is not. As
argued by Aristotle in his Categarim:
Things are net great or small absolutely, they are so cdled rather as the result of
an act of comparison. For instanoe, a mountain is called small, a grain large, in
virtue of the fact that the latm is greater than others of its kind, the former kss.
Thus there is a reference here lo an extcrnal standard, for iF the terms "greatknd
'small' were used absolutely, a mountain would never be called small or a grain
large. (1437: 5 3
Aristotb" argument is of course persuasive, and it was Et yh kind of rea-
soning which led me to posit in earlier work (Wiembicka 1971) an analysis
of 'bighand 'small' based on the comparative:
This dog is big. = this dog is bigger than one would expect
(See alsohkovskij 1964b.)B have now repudiated such analyses, however,
and for a number of reasons. First, there is the question about the mean-
ing of the comparative itselfi if we define 'big\vla 'biggerke couldn't define
'bigger' via 'big', and we would probably have to accept 'bigger'as a con-
ceptual puimiltive-a very dubious move, given the apparent universality of
words for 'bigkand 'sma11bnd a well-known non-universality of compara-
tives (see e.g. Longacre 11985: 243). Swond, it has become cllear that the
'kelati~e"character of \the conoepts %bigband " d l ' can be awoun"yjed for
without any comparatives, along the following lines:
This is a big dog. =
when I t h k of dogs, I think: this is a big dog
As mentioned earlier, the words big and little appear very early in chil-
dren" sspeech, and are used very frequently. For exarnpne, Braine (1976: 32)
draws attention to a productive pattern of two-word combinations with the
words big and littk in the speech of his son, Jonathan, before his second
birthday. Bnterestingly, Bratne points out that ''Jonathan often contrasted
two objects in consecutive utterances, for example, bfg stick followed i m e -
dhtely by little ~ f i c kindicating
, the relative sizes of the two s t i c k s ' k d he
comments: "This sort of behavior seems suflicient evidence for the produc-
tivity of these size-attribution fomu11ae."
But while the kind of behaviour exemplified by Jonathan shows that the
words big and 1ft;tsLare felt to be sernanticallly linked, and that their juxta-
position is indeed usled for oomparison, it does not mean that the conoepts
in question are semantically "relative'% the sense suggested by SSapir [as
discussed in Section 4). The idea that brge (or big) means 'larger than of
average s k yseems completely incompakible with the frequent and compe-
tent use of the words big and little by infants in the second year of life.s
The pattern d u s e dewribed by Braine supports the hypothesis that a com-
parison of size YX is bigger than Y3 ' is based on agiuxtaaposition of oppo-
sites [next to TT, Xis big; next to X, Y is little). It is also consistent with the
hypothesis that an: "abso~uta'~ssessment of size (as in ""This is a big dog")
refers molt only to '?his'~uulk also to "dogs" in general ["For a dog, this is
a big dog"].
St is paPliicularly interesting in this connection to compare Braine's com-
ments on little Jonathan's way of handling comparison and that described
by Longacre with respect Ito the languages of Papuw New Guinea:
Comparison in Papw New Guinea is not expressed within a single sentence, but by
a pair d sentences within a paragraph. It is, furthennore, really not comparison,
but contrast. In Safeyoka (a dialect of Waj~okeso),for example, we find pairs of sen-
tences such as 'The black man's bbots are small. The white man%boats are huge'.
There is no direct wag of saying *Theblack mm's boats are smaller ahan the white
man's boats'or 'The white mm's boats are bigger than the black man's'.
As Johnstom (1985: 98OJpoints out (from a child's point or view], "Haw can one small
sboe Be bigger than another small shoe, or a single ohjjlieca Be both bigger and sml!erY What
tiis observation shows is that the idea of a "small shoe" or a "big shoe" is bate Sapir) psy-
cluolagiwlcally simpler ahan that oTa '"smaller shoe" or e "bigger shoe".
 The fmdamental nature of the concepts %bigyand %mall?s reflected in
the rote that they play in the grammar of many languages, in particular in
the categories of so-called ""'diminutives"and ""rawgmentatives"".
la. Time: WHEN, BEFQRE, AFTER
As pointed out by Keesing (19941, time tends to be exoticized in Westem
aaounts of non-Western languages in cultures. The best example of this
exoticization is the account of the Hopi language given by Whorf, who
claimed that the Hopi conception of h e is radically different from that
reflected in European languages. "After long and carefd study and amaly-
sis, the Hopi language is seen to loonltain no words, grammatical forms, con-
structions or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time', or to
past, or future, or to enduring or lasting" 'horf 31956: 57).
But Whorf's ideas about Hopi have now been refuted in a careful study
of the Hopi language by Malotki (19831, whose overall conclusion is that
" W a d % claim about Hopi time conception being radically different from
a w s does . . . not hold" (5301.
In a similar %in, Keesing argues that the Kwaio language d the
Solemon Islands, which he has studied in detail, has the same basic tern-
poral categories as Western languages do, and that "Kwaio talk about
duration and temporality in everyday life much as we do" (1994: 5). In par-
ticular, Kwalo has a w o m a n word (ahfa) "referring either to points in
.
time ar periods in time. . . A ~ E isQ used as well as equivalent to English
%heny or French 'quandy, to introduce temporal clauses, as in: d a t a maim
migi i 'Aoke, W e n we gel to Azlku'." Keesing concPudes (6): ""A1 the evi-
dence available on everyday talk in non-Western languages would indicate:
that other 'exoricy peoples, like the Kwaio, situate events precisely in time
in complex ways, are wncemed with duration, and have intricate lhguis-
tic devices for wordhating plans and activities."
The cross-linguistic inwestigations reported in Slemmssleic and Lexfcal
ICPnIversaJlr;(Goddam-d and Wierzbicka 1994b) point in the same direction:
despite all the differences in the conmptualizatim of, and alititudew to, time,
discussed, for example, by Gees& (1966) or Hall (l983), and despite the
considerable diffierences in the ljnguistic encoding of temporal notions (see
e.g. Hopper 1982; Bybee and Dahl 19891, the fundamental temlpord con-
oepts encoded in languages of the wodd appear to be the same. They
indude: W E N , AFTER, and BEFORE. (Far dimssiora of durational
concepts, see Part LE of this chapter.)
Cross-linguistic investigations suggest that, for example, questions such
as the following ones are readily available and frequently used in all lan-
pages:
When did it (will it) happen?
When did you [will you) do it?
For example, Kwaio "abounds with terns . . . that mark times in the diur-
nal cycle. . . . Kwaio talk is sprinkled with these markers of the daily cycle,
based on angles of solar deviations diurnally (and such phenmena as dusk
and subsequent insect noises, such as kemlrS "rickets cry", which allow p e -
cise planning and looordination of work, rendezvous, and trave8'~K~esing
1994: 6).
Et would Iw: quite futile to try to reduoe such when-phrases to something
simpler; and it wodd be equally futile to try to reduce phrases of temporal
succession ('after' and 'before9) to something simpler.
If it has often been claimed that a sense of 'whenness3s lacking in "prim-
itive thought" "ncluding, for example, medieval European mentality; see
Le Pan 1989: 1133, even stronger claim have been made about the alleged
absence of the idea of 'temporaI suocession' in many languages and GUI-
tures, and a linear conception of time has often beem contrasted with a
cyclical one (see e.g. Le Pan 1989: 89). Cross-linguistic investigations sug-
gest, however, that whatever the differences in cdtural emphasis and elab-
oration might be, all languages have words for AFTER and BEFORE, and
that in any language one can easily make statements such as ""A was barn
after W a n d ""B was born before A", or " A died after B" and "'B died before
ASS.
What is particularly interesting about these findings is the apparent
redundancy of the exponents of temporary succession; for why should all
languages have words for both BEFORE and AETER, rather than for just
one d these concepts? Aren't they reducible to one another?
A o m a logical point of view, indeed, they might be reducible to one
another. But the fact that natural languages have lexical resources for
expressing both of them suggests that from the point dview d human con-
ceptualization of reality, '" happened after X'means something diflerent
from, and irreducible to, "X happened before I"" Clearly, what matters is
a different perspective on the events in questian, a different point of view,
and, as pointed out by Slobin (11985a: lE81), "the ability to view scenes
from different perspectives" is a salient feature of human cogmition, cllearly
reflected in all languages.
It is particularly interesting to see in this connection the early emergence
of both 'beabre"sometirrmes realized as and kfter'in child language.
For exarnpb (French and Nelson 1985: 110-11 11; see also Cami and French
1984):
AJter the birthday, they go home. [age: 3 years, 11 month]
Well, $rst I1 didn't t a w how to, but now, when P get dressed, 1 can put on m y
pants. [age: 4 years, 2 months]
And my daddy jlllst wants to eat them. L i b chocolate cookies. B had one befare we
came here. [age: 3 yeas, 10 manths]
In a narrative, AFTER is realized as a simple portmanteau ""Lenn""or
"and then" [i.e. Wa8r this'). As Bruner (1990: 79) notes, "Childmn early
start mastering grammatical and lexical f o m s for 'bincBing2he sequences
they remunt-by the use of temporals Eike "henhand 'later', and eventu-
ally by the use of causals."
11. Space: WHERE, UPIPDER, ABOVE
What applies to the temporal triad WHEN, A S E R , and BEFORE
appears to apply also to the spatial triad WHERE, ER, and ADQvE.
First of all, evidence suggests that all languages have a word for WHERE
[SOMEWHERE, PLACE) distinct from the word for WHEN. (See
Goddard and Wierzbicka, L994b.E This word lclan apply to both entities and
events; for example:
Where are y0u1 (Where is this thing?)
Where did it happen7
Since for entities in contrast to "happenings") 'whereys interpreted as
%being somewhere', in the system posited here 'being somewhere' I s
regarded as an alllolex of 'somewhere'.
As the universality of the words for WHERE confirms, WHERE Is a
fundamental human concept, incapable of being defined. In earlier work
(Wierzbicka 19721, I have tried to analyse WHERE via PART, but this
attempt lad Lo bizarre and intuitively unaaptable results; and to my
howledge no other, more successful attempts to analyse this concept lnave
ever k e n proposed.
As for ABOVE and UNDER, they present the same apparent redun-
dancy as AFTER and BEFlORE do, for if A is above B then B must be
under A. By itself, this redundancy would not be a reason for not positing
them both as primitives: since human minds are not disembodied wmput-
ers (see Jlohnson 1987; Edelmaru 19921, our conceptualization of the world
reflects our "embodiment", and also our position on the ground: since we
normally walk with the head up, the contrast between ABOVE and
UNDER may not be conceived of as reversible.
None the less, it must be admitted that the case for positing both 'under'
and 'above' as semantic primitives (as it was done jm Goddard and
Wierzbicka 1994b) is not nearly as strong as that for 'beforey and 'after'.
Intriguing data bearing on this question come from research into child lan-
guage. In particullar, this research shows that while both Ithe conuoepts
' b f o r e b d 'afterhamerge early [apparenltly before the end of the third
year; see Cami and French 11984), the spatial pair ~("under'and'above']
behaves in a curiously asymmetrical way, with "nder' apparently emerging
much earlier than ' a b ~ v e ~ mnot d only in English but also isn a number
of other languages [see Johnston and Slobin 1979).
Another relevant fact emerging from child language research is that the
mncepts linked in English with the words up and down appear very early
in children's speech, and are used very frequently [so much so that, for
example, in the speech of the 16-nnonth-o8d Allhon Bbom they were
among tlnr: seven most frequent one-word utterances; see Bloom and Lahey
1978: 114; also Clark 1985: 746). At first, these words apply predominantly
to the movememts of the child's body, as he or she is being Eifted or put
back down by the parrent (see Boweman 1976: l67]. By contrast, the ear-
liest uses of d~nder(and its equivalents in other languages) are no doubt sta-
tive, and presumably refer to manipulable objects located temporarily
under large objects with more or less fixed location, such as a table or a
bed. ('The idea d looking for things under the table or ulnder the bed is no
doubt more relevant to a small child than that of looking for things
"above" something-presumably, parlilly bemuse of the child's o m size and
partly because things fall down, rather than rise.)
It is interesting to note in this connection Clark's (11985: 7441 observation
about the prepositions sous, "udder', and s ~ r "on' , , being in contraslt in
French children's s p h . It makes a lot of sense to assume that from a
child" point of view the likely choice is between interesting objects being
under the table or OM the table, rather than under the table and hove the
table.
Considerations of this kind suggest that while 'under'can be seen as a
well-established semantic primitive, % b o w b n n o t ; and also that in future
research the motion of ban'(as in "the box is on the table"') should be scm-
tinized ~ Y Sa p s s i b b canwptual primitive ~(presumably,along with the
notions 'uphand Uown').
From a purely logical point of view, "bove'and ' u n d e r b a y seem to
be relahd in the same way as 'before' and %fterY,that is, as converses (see
e.g. Apresjan 1974, 8992; Cruse 1986). But since in human experience the
spontaneous movement of things is unidirectional (because they fall to the
ground, unless supported on some stable surface), the contrast between
'on' and "under' m q be psychologica1Py more real (as far as location of
things is concerned) than that between 'under' and "above'. On the other
hand, as far as human action is con~erned,the movement bpp"may indeed
seem to be directly related to the movement Vown', and at this stage it is
dinaicult to see how one of these concepts could be defined in k m s of'
the other. [For discussion of 'in' and 'inside', see Section B of this chap-
ter,)

12. Partanlomy and Taxonomy: PART (OF) and KIND [OF)
12.1. PART
PART is a controversial primitive, putty (no pun intended) because many
languages don't have a word with a range of use similar to that of the
English noun part, and partlly bemuse some languages don't seem to have
a word for part at all.
In propsing PART as a universal semantic primitive, th~erefore,it is
important, k s t of dl, to chrify what uses of the English part are meant to
illlustrate the paskuhted primitive; and second, to examine how the mean-
ing in question is expressed in a language which doesn" seem to have a
word corresponding to the English part at all.
Pn English, part cam be used in (at Least) three different ways. First of dl,
it can refer to "things" identifiable, SO to speak, within larger things, as in
the fallowing sentences:
The foot is a part of the leg.
A knife has two parts: a blade and a handle.
A petal is a part of a flower.
Second, pma can refer to a '"iece'kf something, that is, to something
which cannot be thought of as am identifiable thing before in gets detached
from a larger thing [see Cruse 19816: l 571. For example:
He ate part af the melon (not the whole melon).
Third, part a n be used to ~refferto a subset of a group of discrete enti-
ties, including people:
Part of them went to the right, and part went b the lek.
In the system of primitives proposed here, the semnd and third uses illus-
trated above, which can both be linked with the traditional label "parti-
live", exemplify the newly proposed primitive SOME (OF) (see Part 24 of
this chapter). It is only the first use, then, which is regarded as corre-
sponding to the primitive clement PART.
It is inconceivable how the word part, as used, Ifor example, with refer-
ence to body parts, couEd be defined in simpler concepts. It Is also incon-
ceivable that a language would fail to provide its speakers with some means
for referring to body parts and for saying that, for example, the head is a
part of the body, or that the foot is a part of the Peg. (See Andersen 19783;
C. Brown 1976; Chappell and McGregor 1995).
How does one express such thoughts in a language which does not have
a noun cclrresponding to the English noun part? Different languages
provide different solutions. For example, in the Australian language
Yankunytjatjara, PART is expressed by means of the so-callled %avinghuf-
fix -@t;rr (Goddard 19946: 254-6):
Yunpa mulya-tj~ara, tjaa-tjara, k u ~ ukutjara-tjara.
face nose-]WIVING mouth-HAVING eye two-HAVING
% face has a nose, mouth and two eyes (as parts).'
Puntu kutju, palu kutjupa-kutjupa tjuja-tjara.
body one but something many-HAVING
'(It is) one body, but with many parts.' (Romans P2:4)
As noted by Goddard, the swfix -tjara is polysemous, but in certain con-
texts it can only mean "art', In particular, Goddard points out that a sen-
tence whose '"word-for-word calque rendition . . . could be read as 'This
thing has two whats?'has a very clear meaning in Yankunytjatjara, and
refers unambiguously to the number of
Bmu nyangaltja nyaa kutjara-tj~ma?
thing this what two-HAVING
'What two parts does this thing have?'
It is undoubtedly true !that cultures differ in ihe ainount of interest they
show in the concept of "art3. As argued in Goddard 1989a, modern
Western culture places a great emphasis on viewing various aspects of real-
ity in terns of complexes analysable into 'parts" whereas, for example,
Australian Aboriginal culture does not. But cultural difierences of this kind
should not obscure the f a d that the conoept of PART cam also be expressed
in those languages whose speakers are less inclined to talk about '"arts" in
the abstract (in contrast to heads, feet, handles, and other s p i f i c kinds of
"parks") than are speakers of technologically complex modern societies.
(For further discussion, see Wierzbiclca 1994b: 488-92.)
The concept of PART plays am important role in the grammar of many
languages, mainlly because it underlies so-called "possessive constructions'"
of various kinds. The label "possessive", frequently used in grammatical
dm.criptions, has no constant semantic content, but it is usually u s d with
respect to constructions whose meaning involves the concept of' PART.
For example, the so-called '?nalienable possession" is usually based on
the notion of % part of a person'ar 'a part of a person's body' (often
extended to things which are seen as 'like a part of a person" see Chappall
and McGregor 1995). On the other hand, "alienabEe possessionY~s based
on a .combination af PART md, so to speak, Visponibillity'. The concep-
tual links between 'parthood" and 'ownership' can be represented along the
following lines (partial explications only):
my hand - a part of my body
if I want, I can do many things with it
62 General Issues
rmycar - a c a r
if I want, I can do many things with it
like I can do many things with a part of my body
other people can't do the same with it
It is not clear when the concept PART first appears in children's sspeiech,
although utteramax such as '%ommy hand" or "caw taily?re attested at
a very early stage (see Braine 1974: 15, 19). Interestingly, Braine (1976: 7)
includes also the combination 'bother part" in his record of one child's ear-
liest two-word combinations. Apparently, 3- or 3-and-a-half-year-olds can
already be quite compebnt in talking about "parts'" For exmp1e (French
and Nelson 1985: 1091:
Eat the paen part first. ['"green part" refers to icing on the cake.]
82.2. MIND
The concept of "inrd' is at the heart of the human mtegorization of the "con-
tents of the world", The lexicon of every language is fidl of taxonomic con-
cepts which rely crucially on this concept. For example, in English, a sol3.s is
'a kind of flower', an oak, 'a kind of tme', and a parrot, 'a kind of birdy.
The important role of taxonomic (l.e. %kiddi'-based)classification in all
languages and cultures has oftiten been denied in the past. Bn particular, it
has ofken been claimed that in traditional non-Western societies ethnobio-
logical classification is predominantly non-taxonomic-unlike the Western
scientific dassification, which is based on a hierarchy of kinds. In a cllassic
statement of Ithis position Uvy-Hruhl (1926: 176) wrote:
Iln spite of appearances, then, these minds, which evidently haw no idea of genera,
have none of species, families, or varieties either, although they are able to dellin-
eate them in their language.
To illustrate this claim, Uvy-Bruhl (1925: 170) repeated with approval
remarks made by a traveller about Australian Aboriginal languages:
He states that generic Items such as tree, fish, bird eihc. were lacking, although spe-
cific terns were applied to every variety of tree, fish or bird. . . . The Tasmanians
had no words to represent abstract ideas, and though they could denote every vari-
ety aE gum-tree or bush by name, they had no word for tree.
Similarly, of American Indians L6vy-Bmhl (1926: 1171) says the following
(again quoting, with approval, travellers' reports):
almost every species has its panticullar Indian name. But It would be in vak to seek
among them words for the abstract ideas of plant,animal, and the abstract notions
, . . . [n California, "there are ma genera, no species:
colour, tone, sex, s p ~ i e s etc.
every oak, pine, or grass has ils separate name.'"
2 A Swwey of Semantic Primitives 63
But while trustworthy recent investigations by anathropollogists and Bin-
gwists have shown that general terns such as 'tree', 'bird', or 'fish" not to
mention 'animal' m d 'plant', may indeed tPe scant in a language while more
specirfic words for creatures and plants may be present in abundanoe (see
e.g. C. Brown 1984; Berlin 1992), the idea that a hierarchy of kinds is either
absent from, or marginal to, hlk-biological classifications has not stood the
)test of time. (See in particular the evidence and discussion in Bedin 1992.)
First, the apparently universal presence of at least some hierarchical
categorization reflected in the iexicon (e.g. beeJ-'oak" or %bird"-kuckoo')
does support the view that taxonomies play an important role in the con-
ceptualization of living kinds, despite Hallpike's (19791: 202) and others'
unsupported assertion to the contrary. The semantic relation between h m s
such as 'tree'and 'oak' can be verified by a variety of llinguistic tests, and
wherever such tests have been aplpllied they support the view that class
inclusion is indeed involved. (See Chapters 11 and 12.)
Second, as pointed out by Bedin (1992: 52-31, in every known language
there is a set of words regarded as the "real names'bf certain classes of liv-
ing things. When asked "What is this called?'?nfonnants might reply with
a folk generic term, with a '%orizontal extension" of such a tern [e.g. "'Et
is like lilac"], or might say "1 don't knowM",but they will not say, for exam-
ple, "It is called a bird", or ''It is called a bush"'. The presence of such "rea1
names" establishes beyond any reasonable doubt the psychological reality
of the notion of biological species (or 'Tolk genera'".
Third, and most importantly [from the present point of view), linguistic
evidence suggests that the concept of 'kindyor 'kinds') is a lexical uniwr-
sal. Ellen (8986: 88) mocks the idea that informants may in the course of
their ordinary lives use senltences such as '"8 X a kind of I"?' or "'How
many kinds of Yare there?", but in fact senknces referring to "'kinds" of
living things are widely attested im traditional non-Western languages. (See
Goddad and Wierzbicka, B994b.J This applies, in particular, to the fol-
lowing types of sentence:
There are three kinds of bat @am, mango, etc.).
This is not the same fish, but it is the same kind of fish.
It is particularly important that cross-linguistic evidence supports the uni-
versality of the distinction between KIND and LIKE (or betweha categor-
ization and similarity), as illustrated in the following sentence:"
It seems natural to think Ithat t h i n g which arc ""afthe same kind" [e.g. cabs; or oaks; or
are also "'like each other'" Yet recent work i n cognitive psycluolagy as we61 as lin-
da@"a;@ldils]
guistics has kd to the growing mnvidion that hwman categorization cannot be reduced to
notions such as "'likeness" or "similarity'" [See e.g. Atcan 1990; Carey 1985; Gelman and
Coleg 1991; Keil 1986; Medin and Ootony i989;Rips 1989.)

This tree doesn't look llke that other tree, but they are the same kind
of tree.
But if the concept of KIND cannot be reduced b the concept of LIKE,
it can hardly be reduced to any other conoept or concepts, and, to my
knowledge, no viable decomposition of KIND has ever been proposed. Qn
present evidence, therefore, KIND must be regarded as a universal seman-
tic primitive. (See Wierzbicka forthcoming d)
Finally, it is worth noting that, in children" language, the question
""What kind of?" is attested as appearing relatively early, though after
'what" 'wherea, or 'who' [see e.g. Clancy 1985 on Japanese; SmiE 1975 on
Serbo-Croatian)
113. Metapredicataw: NOT, CANI VERY
13.1. Negation: NOT
The nos-relation is ane of the simplest and mast fundamental relations
knawn t o the human mind.
Wayce 1917: 265; quoted in Ham 11989: 1)
Negation is probably the least controversial of all the lexical universals
which have ever been proposed. Nobody has ever reported coming across
a language without negation, and exponents of negation-unlike those of
most other conceptual primitives posited here-are routinely reported in all
descriptive grammars.
But while the question of negation as a lexical universal is quite straight-
forward, the same m n o t be said about its status as a conceptual primitive.
In fact, to many readershurprise and even dismay, negation was missing
from the iist of primitives which I postulated in Semantic Primitives
(Wierzbicka 1972) and in Liaguca Mentalis mierzbicka 1980); instead, my
1972 and 1980 lists included the elements 'don't want' ("dliswant') or 'I don't
want' I('" Iswant"), .(Seealso Wierzbicka 1967.)
In postdating 'diswanting' rather than negation as a semantic primitive,
I was trying to come to grips with the fact that tlne semantic relation
between the phrases '" want" and "I don? tant" seems to be different fmm
that between, say, "I know" and "I don't t o w ' " or "I do" and "I don't
do"- "1 don't knowY"or '" don't do"] means, roughly speaking, that Tt is
not the case that I know (or do)" ''I don't want", however (on one readhg
at least), does nolt seem to mean that 'it is not the case that I wantJ [as h
""Ion'f particularly want"); rather, it seems to mean that I positively 'dis-
wanthomething. It is also true that the interjectim No! can be used to
express a strong 'di~want~~rejection"), rather than merely a denial of
wanting. By assuming that Uswantinghas sernanticakly simpler than
negation, I seemed to be able to explain such facts, What was more diffi-
c d t to explain in that approach was the use of negation in declarative sen-
tences-a point to which I will return be low.)^
But although my analysis of negation as "rejection'kas consistent with
a long phiBosopIniieta1 tradition of thinking about negation (see erg.Bergson
1911) and although them is considerable empirical evidence which appears
to support it, I have now came to doubt whether it is tenable.
Undoubtedly, acts of "rejection" ('I don't want this!') play an important
rob in human life, and it is not surprising that "rejection" should have spe-
cia8 lexical exponents in many languages (e.g. in Acehnese, Longgu,
Samoan, ;and Kayardild; see Goddard and Wierzbicka 1494b). But
althauglh these exponents of "rcjcction'~awoficlr identical with tkpc GXPO-
nents of negation, this does not necessarily mean that "rejection" is a sim-
ple semantic notion, which can be said to underlie all negation. After all,
many languages (e.g. Samoan) have also special negative imperatives
('donPt?"espib the fact that Uon't!' is not a simple con~eptbut a sernan-
tic molecule analysablle as 7 don%want you to do this'.
While accepting the old philosophical notion that all negation implies
"rejmticm", I experimented with a whole series of analyses of declarative
sentences, such as, foa example, A, By and C below (for "'This is not
black"):
(A): I don't want to say ""tis is black".
(B) I don't want someone to think: "his is black".
[C] I don't want to say: I can think: "this is Mack".
But none of these analyses seemed quite right, and the "details" seemed
always impossible to work out. In particular, it has always seemed dficullt
to see how mmplex sentences Qe.g. with negation embedded in an $-dause)
c o l d be pllausibly analysed via bolt wanting" What has finally convinoed
me that this whole approach to the semantics of negation was probably
misguided was a closer examination of data from child language aquisi-
tion. Since negation appears very early in children's speech (in tlne second
year of life; see e.g. Braine 19761, it is very hard to believe that spontaneous
utterances such as "no wetY"meaning 'I'm nat wet'; see Braine 1976: 7) can
be somehow based on the idea d k o t wanting someane to think or say
something'.
It is true that in early child utterances "0' frequently means 'I don't
want' (e.g. "no mama" is interpreted by Braine 1976: 7 as 'ldon't want to
go to mama'], but it seems mom plausible to analyse "'no mama" as 'I don't
want . . . mama' than "no wet" as '1 don? t a n t someone to sayithink that
I am wet'.
I have come to accept, then, that 'notYs simply 'not', and that it cannot
66 C;esreral Ssmes
be reduced to anything else-not even to the intuiltively appealing notion
af 'reje~tion'.
Hawing reached this conclusion, I would now interpret the three eadiest
uses of negation identified in child language as '"on-e~stence"",'rejection",
and "denial" (see Bloom 1991) along the following lines: (I) 'there isn't an
X (here)', (2) 'I don't want this', and (3) 'this is not an X', assuming that
aJl these uses involve the use of the same semantic primitive NOT. Far
example (Bloom 19911: 143):
c'n~(ln-exisfence"
(Kathryn not finding a packet in Mommy's shirt, which had no pocket:)
KATHRYN. no pmket [i.e. "here is atp pocket herell
c6rejecli~ny'
[Kathryn pushing away a sliver ofworn soap inu the [bathtub, wanttatg to be washed
with new pink soap:)
. di~hrsoap time.
K A T ~ I ~ E V Nto 3 don't want dirty soap']
"denhi"
(Kathryn, Mommy, and Lois looking for the truck:] Where's the truck?
(Mommy picking up the car,giving it Ito Kathryn:] Were it is. There's the truck.
KATHRYN, no truck [i.e. 'this is nab the truck']
Horn (1989: 863) comments on Bloom's 'krejection'btegory of negation
as foPlows:
Bloom" rejection category corresponds to what pK~losophers-at least since
Peirce-have long identified as the S I U B J E ~ l V Eor PRELOGICAL negative.
Heinemann (1944:1138) glasses this "rdagical use of negation"^ 'l da not wish
[will, desire, etc.1 thatkr 'It is not in my interests that" aellngside the 'Uogical' nega-
tion oE'It is not itrue that'. On this view, the rejection category should antedate both
nomuexistence and denial; that it does not (at least in Blam's data] may reflect the
diKerenoe between possessirng a concept amd expressing it syritacticaIlg.
From a "semantic primitives" "point of view, the question boils down to
choosing betmen two soiutions (A and B) to the problem of negation:
"
should the 'kejwtion" use of negation be seen as based on a simple mman-
tic element don" want' (in Latin, nolo) and the "non-existesrce" or
'cdmial" use be seen as based an a combination of T don't want' and 'say'
(solution A); or should rather the 'non-existence' and 'denialkse be seen
as based on a simple semantic element 'not', and the 'rejectionbse, as
based on a combination of three primitives: 'I + not + want' (solution
BIT
In earlier work wierzbiclca 1967, 1972, 1198€h) 1 opted for solution A
[despite strong opposition from my colleague Andrzej Boguslawski, who
for a long time has argued for negation as a semantic primitive against my
attempts to reduce it to a simpler notion of 'rejection"); but the language
acquisition data suggesting that Yejie@tionWoesnYt antedate 'non-existence"
and %eaial'bave b a l l y oanvinced me t h t solution B is more justified,
after all.
What remains to be explained (on the assumption that NOT is always
NOT) Is why the semantic relation between the phases "I don" twantY'and
"1 want" dodoes not seem to Be the same as that between "I don" know" and
"I knowD',or "I don't d o ' h n d '" do", and why "I don't want to do A'"
often appears to imply that I positively wmt 'boot to do P. At present, I
do not knave a fully satisfactory answer to this question; but the possibility
of an analysis in terns of invited inferences (perhaps along Gricean lines
e.g. Orice 11975) is no dnoublt worth exploring.
13.2. CAN
CAN is a relatively recent addition to the list of primitives. From a cross-
linguistic point of view, "an' is particularly difficult to identify, partlly
because It is often involved in complex patterns of polysemy, and partlly
RKncausr: its exponents oftemr appear to be bound morphemes rather tban dis-
tinct words. From the point of view of decomposition, there is allso a temp-
taliion to try to treat "an' as complex, because of its intuitively "fly'
character (discussed, for example, by Austin 1961). Yet all attempts to
define away 'can'(inc1uding my own) have proved unsatisfactory (for
general dscussian, referenaes, and for my earlier analysis of 'cm', see
Wierzbicka 11487b). The conclusion that 'can' is semantically elementary,
despite its apparent intuitive links with 'if', had a significant liberating
eKect on subsequent analyses across numerous semantic domains (as had
the earlier conclusion that 'because' was semanticaaly elementary, despite
its intuitive Pinks with "if" see Section 14). Because of' the close links
oetween CAN and the newly proposed primitive MAYBE, the two ele-
ments will be discussed jointly in Part B off this chapter.
'The concept of W R Y might be seen as dispensable in, a universal system
uf semantic primitives, as it is inherently subjective and "hg~recise". But
evidence suggests that all natural languages have a word colrresponding to
the English word wery and that despite (and perhaps because ofl this sub-
joctivemss and imprecision this concept is not dispensable at all.
The area where VERY seems most relevant is that of expressive evalua-
tions. For example, expressions such as wlanderfid, mrarveiiow, terr$c,
cfwfil, and horrible seem to rely crucially on the combinations of the ele-
ments GOOD and BAD with VERY ('very good" 'very bad')"
In earlier work (Wierzbicka 19721 I tried to d e h e %eq' away via 'morey,
along the following lines:
68 Genera/ Issues
This is very good (big). = this is more than good (big)
and later (Wierzlbicka 1980) I tried to link this interpretation to a perfor-
mative analysis, as follows:
This is very good (big]. = I say: this is good (big)
P want to say more than this
This anaiysis was questioned at the time by Dwight BoEinger (personal let-
ter), who argued that very good does not mean the same as more than good,
and that the expanded version 'Iwant to say mare than g a d does not
ensure the desired interpretation.
In chilldren%speech (in English), VERY is often realized as so, for ex-
ample (French m d Nelson 8985: 119):
Yeah, somaltimes ifyooruke sa hungry, go to a restaurant that gives yttl a lot of stuff.
,. . and then we go to the next door prking lot and it is so cold there and every-
thing.
Examples of this kind make it particularly clear that an analysis of 'very"
via 3nore"s intuitive/y unteaable ("sometimes if you're more khan hungry
.. ."). Since no othier, more plausible, analyses of %.veryyhave been pro-
posed, m d since awumdated cross-linguistic evidence points strongly to
the universality of this concept, it seem seasomable at this stage to accept
it as a universal semantic primitive.
114. Interclausal Linkers: IF, BECAUSE, LIKE
14.1. IF
In logic, c'condjltionds'"@sentenms) are defined in terns of truth condi-
ticams: "ifp then q" is taken to mean that either p md g are both Itrue, o r p
and q are both false, or p is false and g is true. It has often been pointed
out, however, that this definition does not corresponnd to the use of +sen-
tences in natural languages. As Comrie (1986: 80) notes, according to the
logical definition "the only relation that need hold between protasis and
apodosis is that expressed in the truth table, so that otherwise totally laare-
lated propositions may appear as protasis and apodosis, subject only to the
condition that they have appropriate truth values, as in
Pf Paris is the: capital of France, two is an even number."
According to Comrie, in natural language (inn contrast to the artificial lan-
guage of Logic) sentences of this kind are anamdous because In natural lan-
guage $-sentences require a causal connection between the two
propositions in question. Comrie" own definition proposed for condition-
als "combines material implication with the relevance of a causal relaltion
from the protasis to the apodosis" (1986: 96).
This amounts to an attempt to define $-sentenoes via a combination of
concepts such as 'or" 'and', 't~ue','false' ('not true"), and 'because" along
the following lines:
Ef it rains, I will stay at home. =
Either it will rain and bemuse of this I will slay at home
or it wilt not rain and because of this I will! not stay at home
or it will mot rain and I will stay at home (despite his?).
This analysis may seem like an improvement on a purely truth-functional
definition, but in my view, it Is not tenable either, If only because it is not
the case that "if always implies "because" It is true that 'if' implies some
sort of connection between two propositions, and also that a causal link is
often involved, too; 1 claim, hiowever, that the 'if" connection is sui generk,
and cannot be reduced to anything else; and that a link with 'becauser is
not always present. For example, the sentence
Pf he insults me, I will forgive him.
does not imply that I will forgive him bemuse he has insulted me: it is true
that I can forgive him only if he has done something bad to me (e.g. if he
has insulted me), but it is not true that the insult will be the "cause" of my
forgiveness. Similarly, the sentence
If he invites me to dinner I will1 not ga
does not mean that I will1 not go because he has invited me: if he doesn't
invite me I will not go either.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that a truth-functional analysis of $-
sentenoes is highly counter-intuitive, as well as inadequate from the point
ef -view of natural language (because of the lack of the requirement that the
two clauses should be somehow connected). Since attempts to make if less
inadequate by adding to it a causal component do not work, the conclu-
sion suggests itself that-&om the point of view of natural language-this
analysis is simply irrelevant and should be abandoned altogether. Insltead,
we must conclude that the PF-relation is fundamental, irreducible to any-
thing else; in other words, that it is a conceptual primitive.
It is worth noting in this connection that--contrary to what one might
expect-the concept of IF appears relatively early in child language,
although apparently later than BECAUSE. Here are some examples of $-
sentences from the speech of American 4-year-~Ids(French and Nelson
1985: 11&15):
What do you do if you wanina make oatmieal cookies?
. . . well, you see, aFter, if you eat your faad up, ya eat dessert.
70 General Ismes
(%%'bat do you do at a birthday party?)
you do a movie, and then if you have time, yau play, md then yon go.
(For a discussion of the universality of IF, see Chapter 6.)
14.2. BECAUSE
According to Kant, causation-with time and spac~onsltitrutesone of the
basic categories of human cognition; it is not a category that \ye learn from
experience but one af the categories which underlie our interpretation of
experience.
Data from language acquisition, as well as from cross-cultural semantics,
are consistent with Kant's view. The finding that apparently all languages
have a lexical exponent of causation (whether it is a conjunction Pike
because, a noun like causej or an "ablative" suffix) is particularly significant
in this regard, (For discussion, see Chapter 6; see also Wierzbicka 1934b.)
From the point of view of language acquisition, too, it is significant that
despite the highly abstract and "non-eapirical'kcharacter of the conoept of
causality, becawe-sentences appear quite early in children" speech. Mere
are a few characteristic emampbs from the speech of American Zyear-olds
[Bloom 1991):
1 was crying k a u s e I didn't want to wake up, because id. was dark, so dark.
(3753
Edny blue barrel is inside other barrels)
You can't see it cause it's way inside. C384]
(going towards disks]
Get them cause I want it. (2703
(telling and demonstrating haw she slmps on the sofa)
Cause 1 was tired but now I'm not tired. (271)
(regarding TY, which is on)
I left it open because I wamna watch it. (339)
Bloom (8991) oomments on the results of the study of causality in young
children's speech as follows:
The mncept of causality attributable to these children's thinking, from the evidenoe
of what they talked about, mphasbed the aetions, feelings, and perceptions of per-
sons im everyday causal events, or intentional causality. They discovered leausall con-
nsctions through their own and others' actions or heard thema in everyday discourse
about everyday events. Causality for them was neither the 'cement of the universe"
that provides the structure of reality nor an inmate quality of the mind that deter-
mines reaEity [as per the theories of Hume and Kant, respectively]. Rather, the con-
struction of a theory of causality begins in infancy with the emergence of an
understanding a l the regularities in the relation between change and Ithe actjams of
oriescll' amd others llnat briang about change.
But whib the results of studies such as Bloom (1991) do indeed appear
to support the view of Searle (1983) and others t h b "we discover causality
by experiencing it through our actions and perceptions" (Bloom 1991: 3781,
&is is fully consistent with Kamtysview that causality is an innate form of
h m a n perception of the world. In is also consistent with the view that
causality [or, more precisely, the notion af BECAUSE) is a simple concept,
rooted in our subjective experience of %antingy and Voing', and not in any
thleoreltical sp~culationsabout "might-have-beens'", along the limes pro-
posed in my Semnfic Primithe8 (Wierzbicka 1972: 17):
X happened because Y happened. =
if P hadn't happened X wouldn't tave happened
As I have pointed out elsewhere (Wierzbicka l989b: 3211, while it may be
tme that "']iff Mary hadn't met John, she wauldn" tave married him", it
doesn't tollow from that that "Mary married John because she had met
him",
All the evidence leads, then, to the conclusion that BECAUSE is indeed
a universal semantic primitive, an irlreducible category of human language
and cognition. (For a discussion of the universality of BECAUSE see
Cbystpter 6.1
114.3. EEKE
The coneept of LIKE can be illustrated with the fallowing sentenms:
I did it Iike this: . . .
I am not like these people.
I think af people Iike you.
The impartanlcie of the conwpt LIKE in the human conceptualization of
the world was justly emphasiaed by J. L.Austin in his Senm md Sensibilia
(19162b: 7.11, where he wrote:
Like is the great adjuster-word, or alltematively put, the maim flexibility-device, by
whose aid, in spite of the limited scope of our vocalbdary, we can allways avoid
being left completely speechless.
Conmenting a n Austin's s o d s , T a m r Sovran (1992: 342) writes:
The concepts of similarity and its operators seem to have the same function in Ban-
guage and in thought, in the process d acqining.new croncepts, and in the promss
d scientific growth. They help us to l a v e the sak ground of known, Uabeled, cab-
gorixd terms, and to expand our knowledge and language to newly discmered
areas.
E agree entirely with the spirit of these remarks (both Austin's and
Sowanqs). As for the phrasing, however, l would insist that it is Awskim's

"Pike' rather than Sovran's 'similarity' wl~ichis the great "asdjusbr-word'"
and the main 'YexibiQity-devicc'"in English, and which a n be matched with
other such w d s and devices in other languages. For lexample, a medieval
Latin hymn ("Regina coeli laetare") includes the following line:
ltcsurrcxit sicut dixil.
'14e has risarr as he said."'lile has risen like he said he would.')
I imagine that the word sicut represents here the universal semantic p r h i -
tive LIKE, and yet it could hardly be said to indicate 'sirnilarlty', either in
the logical or, for that matter, colloquial sense of the word.
Furthermore, I would claim that among "similarity operators" listed by
Sovran I(" 'like', 'the same', 'as', and others"), one-'the same'-is not an
exponent of the same conmpt "likekt d l , but an irreducible concreptud
primitive in its own right. LIKE does have a number of exponents
(aQ1olexes)in English, as it does in other languages, and as (in some of its
uses] is indeed s good example, but the same is not. In natural language, it
is essential for people to be able to make distinctions such as the following
one:
This fish is like that other fish, but it is not the same fish
and cross-linguistic evidence suggests that in all languages people have Bex-
ical resources for making such distinctions. (See Goddard and Wierzbicka
E 9946.)
The addition of 'like' to the list of primitives (proposed in Goddard
E989a) has simplified semantic analysis of numerous aspects d language.
In particular;, it has allowed explications couched in semantic primitives to
account, in a simple and natural way, fair the role of prototypes in human
language and cognition. In my work, I have tried to use tlne notion of pro-
totype from the start, and, for example, my 1972 analyses of emotion c w -
wpts or 1480 aaralyses of kinship and colom concrepts were based on this
notion (see e.g. McCawley's (1983: 656) comment: "Wierzbicka makes
extensive use of prototype analyses")~.But my early lists of primitives were
lacking an element which wodd allow me to phrase these anallyses in a
simple and natural way. The addition of Yike' to the list changed this. As
pointed out by Goddard, 'like' was "a semantically primitive hedge, built
into NSM [Natural Semantic Metalanguage], with obvious benefits In t e r n
of reducing the length of Lingb~amentali8 style explications, which lean
heavily on expressions such as 'can be thought of as'and 'in the same way
as' " (l989a: 53). Thus, the addiltion of 'like' facilitated a radical simplifi-
cation of the syntax of the explications, as we11 as making the semantic
account of prototypes, hedges, metaphors, and vagueness more accurate
and intuitively satisfying.
2. A Survey of S e m
B . NEW PRIMITIVES
15. Introduction
-"
In the last two years, the sysbern of semantic primitives h
expanded, from 37 to as many as 55. Despite this sapid expansion, the new
d
primitives offered here for the reader" consrideration: Rave not been pro-
posed lightly. Indirectly, they are the product of many years'tthnking,
searching, and experimenting. More directly, they have been born out of
careful reconsideration of the whole system and lengthy discussions, par-
ticularly those with my co-editor Cliff Goddard, foillowing our collective
work on the wdume testing the earlier, m r e restricted set of primitives
(Goddad and Wierzbicka 1994b).5:
As mentioned earlier, the new primitives haven't yet been extensively
tesbd, and cross-linguistic evidentx is vital for deciding their future fate.
Their present status must be regarded as qdk different from that of the
old primitives, which have already been subjated to extensive cross-lin-
guistic 'Itesting.
The order of presentation of the "new primitives" will follow, roughly,
that of the old primitives (except, of course, for the areas to which nothing
has been added). Thus, I will skut with determiners and quantiiiers, fol-
lowing an with mental predicates and with a section on movement, exis-
tence, and life, which can be seen as roughly corresponding to Section 7,
"ktions and Eventsm",n Part A. This will be followed by sections on space
and time (this t h e , first spaw, then time), and by a section entitled
"Imagination and Possibility", which corresponds to the final section of
Part A, "Interclausal lnkers"",inally, the most recent and the most ten-
tative of all, the concept of WORD will be briefly discussed-the least solid
(at this stage) of all the proposed primitives. The chapter will close with a
general discussion and a brief conclusion.
The new primitives tentatively posited in this part include the follcrwing:
The whole new set has been extensively discussd with Cliff Goddard, and has undergone
a wmber of ofisioms$Follomiing his suggestions. 14. large part of the new set has also been dis-
cussed ddPu Jean Waskina, and my understanding a€ some asgects of the new system has
greatly profited from these diacussiorus. Apart from Jean, I am also indebted lo a nlumber of
other collleagues in Canberra, in parthlar, Tim Curnow, lBob Dixon, Nick Enfield, David
NasSa, Helen O%oghlin, and Tim Shopen, f am also deeply indebted to my colleague Andmej
Boguslawski in Warsaw, despite the: distance, am unFailling critic, debater, and co-thinker. Last
but not least B would like to scknowledlge my indebtedness to my daughter Clare, who dis-
cussed most of the new primitives with me ;and who orered many helpful criticism and sug-
gmtioos.
"Mlleo~ual[jr~dicitt~s" SEE,1-1EAR nize that they couldn't b z fully cxpPicated with a set of primitives which
MOVE, THERE IS, (BE) ALIVE didn't include SOME.
'Won-mental predicates'"
FAR, NEAR; SlDE; INSIDE; HERE In works on languages and logic, the Englnska word some is frequently
"Space"
A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME; NOW linked with the so-called '%xistentiall quantifier"'. Far example, McCawley
"Time"
.
"'imagination and possibility'VF . . WOULD, MAYBE
(1981: 101-2) writes:
"Words" WORD The so-called ntniversai quantifier corresponds to several difFerent English words:
dl, every, my, each; the existential quantifier corresponds to certain uses of the
words scrrrre md dm... . The existential quantifier, henceforth represented by the
16. Determiners and Quantifiers: SOME and MORE symbol 3, is also the c o m o n element in a number of things that natural languages
often distinguish, h r example, various uses of ohma end some in English.
16.l. Determiner: SOME
McCawley goes on to point out that the English language distinguishes
The English word some is polysemous. The sense posited here as primitive obligatorily between singular and plural, but that the logi~alconcept of
is that of "inderteminate number"^^ illustrated in the fallowing passage existential quantifier is indifferent to this distinction:
from a itext in the Australian language Guugw-Yimidhirr (Haviland 1979:
1163;Havilland's numbers): The formula 0:man x)Xadmire x Hider) is supposed to be true if at last one man
admires Hitter and false if no man admires Mitler. It is non-committal on whether
(321 Dhana gada-y waguurt-nganh, exactly one man or more than one admires Hitier. However, English sentences snlust
3sg + MOM oome-PASToutside-AEL draw the distinction between one and more than one:
They m e from the outside [i.e. from inland];
(a] Some man admires Mitler.
(331 gurra buurraay-nganh dhalun-nganh gdmlna gade-y, (6) Same mcn admire KiUer.
and water-ABL See-ABL also come-FAST
and they also came from the water, from the sea; But the clonlsept SOME proposed here as a semantic primitive corre-
(34) mundal bubu-wi badi = badiimbarr gada-gr , sponds only &asentence [b)above, not to sentence [a]. What is meant codd
some + aes ground-~ocunder = underneath come-PAST perhaps be better expressed as SOME OF, as in the fol8owing sentenloes:
some came underneath the burface of] the earth;
Some of them admire Hitler.
(35) mundal wanggaar = nggarr bubu-wi gada-y, Some of tihem turned right, and some (of them) turned left.
some + ABS above = REDUP ground-~ocC#Jm&PAw
others came above the ground; In Polish, the ward cz@C 'part" can sometimes be used as an exponent of
(36) mundal birri wanggaar gada-y. this notion, far example:
some + AES river- above come-PAST Czgsh z nich paszla na prawo, a czg% na Bewo.
and others came up the rivers. Part of them turned right, and part turned left.
The primitive proposed here is realized in Guugu-Yimidhirr as rntrndal. As
Similarly, in many other European languages the exponent of the primitive
Havilamd's glosses show, in English this sense can sametimes be rendered
PART can be used as a quantifier, to express the primitive SOME.
as ~oscrmre,and sometimes as cotker~,Et is important to stress, however, that it
Curiously, as ClifE Goddard (pzrsosaal alommwnicatioan) notes, the same is
is a concept which functions as a quantifier, situated somewhere between true of ehc Australian Ilanguagc Yankunyljatjara. But in many other lan-
ONE and ALL.
guages lthere is no lexical lravedap between SOME and'PART. (Moreover,
The quantifier SOME was proposed as a utriverszlll semantic primitive by
even in English sentences SOME cannot always be paraphrased in terns of
Boguslawski (19165: 581, alongside two other quantifiers: ONE and ALL. B
the word part. For example, sometimes (of same times) cannot be defined
confess that it took me more than twenty years to come to believe in ONE as 'part of the lime'.)
and ALL [uvhicl~ wcrc also indcpeazdcr~klyposilcd by Goddaod s t ithe
Bt is important to note that while in works on language and logic some
Adelaide Woxkshop in 19186); and i t has taken me close to another decade
may be regarded as an equivalent o l the verb exist (or the expressiora there
to come to bclieve in SOME. But looking at scnlenccs such as those in the
is), from a semantic point of view SOME and THERE IS are two different
Guugu-Uimidhirr passage (which, as Jean Harkins, personal communica-
nations, which cannot be reduced to one (see Section 16.2 below). For
tion, points out, are very common in Aboriginal stories), one has to recog-
examp~e,it seems clear that the Gwugu-Yimidhirr passage adduced at the
outset cannot be paraphrascd in tern~sof exBf or rS?erejlr. One could of
course say (in English), "There were people among thlem who went under
the ground; there were people among them who went above the ground";
but a paraphrase of this kind relies on a relative clause-a stmcture which
is not universally available (as well1 as on the expwssion "among them",
which Imks swspiicious8y ILc another way of saying ""wmei"')).
Similarly, it is true that a sentence such as "Some people admire Nitler*
does seem to be paraphrasable (in English) as 'There are people who
admire Hitler'". ]But if we try to define away the complex and language-spe-
cific relativizer 'kho", on which this paraphrase depends, we have to hll
back on some (23orne people admire Hitler'":
Same peopUe admire Hitler. #
there are people
these peopie admire Hitler
Finally, it might be suggested that some @nthe relevant sense) can be
defined away as '"ot all", along the lines of "Some people dlnire Hitler =
Not all people admire Hitler". But a paraphrase of this kind is not vdid,
since "not all"-in contrast to some-impilks something like "most".
16.2. Augmentor: MORE
The element MORE, included in one of his tentative lists of indefinables by
Leibniz, appears on the Eist of semantic primitives not for the first time. 1
tentatively included it in one of the 1989 lists @Vieirzlbicka 1989b: 105), only
to replaoe it later with the element MUCH (EUPANQ, proposed at the time
and convincingly argued for by Goddard. To have both MUCH (MANY)
and MORE on the list seemed intolerably un~conolsnical~ given the close
semantic links between the two concepts, and so it seemed imperative to try
to define 'much' via 'morey or the other way round.
Given the intuitive closeness of the two concepts it is oertainly worth try-
ing no rcduncc tlrcun no om. In my judgcunct~t,hrawcwcr, none of thc aiLempLs
undertaken in the paslt were really convincing.
If we want to try to define 'mnucla'via "more' the obvious way to go is to
refer to some expectations, along the following lines:
much (many] = more than one couIdlmrowPd expect
But this approach, reasonable as it may seem at first, is not always con-
vincing. Far example, in the sentenoe
Many people came w(e.g.to see the Pope), but not as many as expected.
the word snmy can hardly mean h m o than expeckd'.
In the Moscow semantic tradition, the key word used in this and many
other similar contexts was ""norm" (see e.g. ~olkovskij1964h):
much (mamy) = more than the norm
But the word norm doesn't always make sense in sentenoes with much or
many. For example, the sentence
Many people are afraid of lightning.
could hardly be paraphrased in terms of the phrase ' k o r e than the norm1'.
Of wurse it could be argued that what. was meant was not the ordinary
Russian word norma @om') but an artificial word with a different rnean-
ing, but it is mot dear what exactly such a statement would mean or how
it could be verified.
On tlne other hand, if we try to define b o r e ' via 'rnucUmanyq we run
into other difficulties. At first sight, the approach which appears to work
with other comparatives seems to work here as well (see Section 9 above):6
A is bigger than B. =
if someone thinks of these two thing at the same time
this person can think: " A is big, B is not big"
But there are many situations when a paraphrase of this kind would not
work for "more''. For example, if I say that I want more to eat, a para-
phrase dong the lines proposed above doesn" seem to make sense.
Similarly, the sentences:
H want to say more,
I want to see more.
1 want to h o w more about this.
can hardly be paraphrased in the '"these two things" format.
It is not a comparative kore', then (a converse of "less')), which ]I am
positing here as a universal semantic primitive, but, so to speak, an "aaug-
mentative" one, illustrated in canonicaE sentenoes such as
E want mow.
Give me more.
I want to s~eknowhearmore.
An arnalysis along these lines, which was proposed by CBiflGaddard (personal c o m u n i -
cation), is simpler, and, I think,bdter, than the fo1lowing one, which I proposed in Wiembicka
(i971):
A is bigger than B. =
if peoplle can say about B "it is big"
they cam say the same about A
f can't say:
"if people can sag this ahoolpt A
they lcanu say the same about Bn'
When the presence of lexical exponents d MQRE is cross-linguistid1y
tested, it is probably worth including questions about "less' as well. At this
stage, however, 'less' seems to be a much less likely candidate for a lexical
universal than MORE. I would expect that many languages will be found
which have a word for MORE [in an augmentative sense) but not for 'less'.
The study of language acquisition strengthens this expectation (based on
internal semantic grounds], since first, children start using the word more,
in contrast to less, very early (see e.g. BSralne 197163, and second, those early
uses of more are augmentative, not relative. As, for example, Johnston
(1985: 9743 put it: 'caltihough we think of more as expressing judgments of
relative quantityiextent, the child's more is at first non-quantitative and
non-comparative"".As shown by Braie, a combination of more and a word
designating an objject of desire r(e.g. '"ore juice!"")is in fact among the most
common early two-word utterances in child language (Brahe 1976;
McShane 19911, whereas r'rt~sdoes not appear on the list of the early'two-
word patterns at all. Boweman (8976: 128) notes that her daughters
Christy and Eva initially used Ithe word more "'in connection with a
restricted set of objects at first-food and drink" and that '%loom's (11973)
daughter Allison likewise first p r o d u d . . . 5noreks a request for an addi-
tional serving of food or drink, although within only a few days she began
to use these words across a range of more varied contexts."
Reflecting on the apparent aspmeltry between the concepts 'more'and
Yessklooe is tempted to think that perhaps there is indeed some special psy-
chological link between the concepts MORE and WANT. AS we know
them, human beings are perhaps more indined to think, and to say:
I want (to have, to eat, to drink) more.
I want b see more.
I want Do know more.
I want to say more.
than to use tlze corresponding sentences with "less'. It is also worth noting
that VERY-another quasi-quantitative concept-luas no universal oppo-
site either.
Finally, I would Bike to suggest that the augmentative element MQRE
plays a crucial role in o w understanding of numbers. For what is 'Vhree'"
if not "one more than two"?
17. Mental Predicates: SEE and HEAR
See babyr'See prettyJSee train.
(from a 2-year-old's first word-combination list; Braine 19%: 70)
The concepts 'see'and 'hear-play a fundamental role in human communi-
ation.
As pointed out by Eoweman (1976: 1381, in transcriptions of two-word
chiid utterances from diverse languages one frequently finds sentences such
as "this (that] doggiey*,"here (there) ball", or "see man". Generally speak-
ing, the word see (alongside this, that, here, and there] appears to be one of
the basic cromwicatiw tools in early interaction between children and
adullts. At that stage, the word hear doesn't seem to be nearly as important
as see, but appasemtly, before long, it too begins to play a special role,
alongside bok, listen, and watch (see e.g. Bloom er at 1975).
The concepts 'look', "isten', anal! %watchy are complex, and involve 'want-
ing' as well as 'seeing' or 'hearing' (I"wantingto see' and "anting to hear";
but 'seie'and %ear9themselves cannot be similarly decomposed into simpler
concept^.^
Admittedly, in earlier work (see Wiembicka 1981011 B have argued that
SEE and HEAR (as well as 'rinmellknd 'taste'] can be defined via the cor-
responding body parts: eyes and ears, nose and mouth. To see and to hear,
E claimed, means to h o w something about something because of one" eyes
or one's ears.
But there are problems with this account. First of all, it presents the
motions of 'see' and 'hear' as very complex, and this is hard to a m p i in
view of tbe role these dements play in many areas of lexicon and grammar
of many languages (such as, in particular, "evidentials"; see Chapter 15).
Second, if we define 'see' and 'hear'via 'eyes' and "ears', we cannot define
'eyes' and 'ears' via 'see' and 'hear', and we have to adopt purely aamtom-
iml definitions, along the following lines:
eyes - two pasts of the face in the upper part of ltlw face
ears - two parts of the head, on both sides of the head
But although in the past 1 tried to justify such definitions mysclF
(Wienbi~ka19XO), my waders and listeners always Found them unsatisfac-
tory, because they felt that 'seeing' and 'hearing' was an integral part of
their meaning. I would mow propose, then, defining 'eyes' via SEE, and
'ears' via HEAR, as follows:
eyes - twa parts of the face
these parts are alike
because of these two parts a person can see
' At a Lhnguiskhc Forum held at #heANU in 198%4,Bob Dixon said that if he were to pro-
p= his own list of universal sernanlia: primitives, he would include in it "see" ';ad "hear'" 1
have now reached h e same conclwinm.
&O General Issues
ears - two parts of a person's head
these parts are alike
because of these two parts, a person can hear
Third, while "eebnd % e a r b a y seem to be notions derived from sen-
sory experience, and therefore unlikely to be either universal or innate
(because experienw is miable), in fact they do not have to be viewed in
that way. A person born blind may still "sae'homething (images or
colours) in his or her mind, and may therefore have an innate nation of
'seeing'. Similarly, people deaf from birth may still "hmr" something in
their heads. It is interesting to note, for example, frequent references to
"hearing' (sometimes with, and somethes without inverted w m s ) in the
autobiography of a man who describes himself as totally deaf (Wright 1943:
aiei 1):
I do not live rim a world of complete sitenm. There is no such thing as absolute deaf-
ness. Coming from one whose aural nerve is extinct, this statement may be taken
as authoritative. . . . If I stand on a wooden floor E a m 'hear' footsteps behind me,
but not when standing ow a floor made of some less resonant suhstanoe-for exam-
ple stone or concrete. I caw even partially 'hear' my own voicle. This is not sutpris-
ing, for people hear themsekes talk mainly by bone-conduction inside their heads
. .. Likewise, 1'bear' a piano if B place a finger om it while it is being played. . . . I
..
cannot hear wind-iwstnzhnnents (flute, bagpipes, oboe). . I itniave a passion for mil-
itary bands, thou& haring little except the drumtaps, a sad boom-thud from the
big dmm and a clattering exhilaration from the kettledrums.
Whether or not all1 languages have separate words for SEE and HEAR
is not always self-evident, bemuse in a number of languages both SEE and
HEAR share their lexical exponents with other concepts, notably wililh
KNOW and THl[NK. But (as argued in Chapter di), lexica! overlaps of this
kind can be shown to be due b polysemy, Apart from such common pat-
terns of polysemy, to my knowledge no language without words for SEE
and HEAR has ever been r e p ~ r t e d . ~
The common poiysemic patterns involving SEE or HEAW on the one
hand and KNOW on the other are of course not accidental. They point to
conceptual Pinks, but I would argue that these lli~ksare not compositional.
A particularly interesting case OF pdysem involving SEE and WEAR lhirs k e n repnted
by Sasha AikhenvaPd (personal urmnnunimtion). In the Tariana language (from the Arawak
family, spoken in Brazil), the same verb is us& for both SEE and HEAR, but in the HEAR
sense it requires an objacl which implies an 'kudikor)r'~Dlbjeck ('words', "sounds', 'l~armguage',
ekc.) In Lhis language, the sentence of the foron '1 Verb(se&eau] a bird' can mean either 'Is s
a bird' or '1 hear n bird*.But it is also possible to say, using the s a m verb, the eqalwivatent of
V hear a bird but I. don" see iinhor "Isee a bird but I don't hear it'. To do this, m e woukd use
sentences of the fallowing Som: 'I Verb[seeihear) Che voice of a bird, but I don't
Verb(seen7ear) it7,or 'I Veub(seefiear) a bird but 1don't Uerb[seerZleau) its voice'. Pn my view
this fact shoes that the verb in question is polysemous [unlike, for example, Che English verb
perceive].
Dehitions linking seeing and Rearing with knowledge, along the lines
of:
to see - to know something about something because of one's eyes
to hear - to know something about something because of one" sears
may seem plausible because they are consistent with a wide range of con-
texts Yr.here these words occur, but they cannot be said to capture their
semantic invariant.
For example, when one sees s mirage in the desert this could hardly be
interpreted in terns of gaining knowledge about something. Of course all
auditive and visual experiences [including ringing in one's ears and seeing
colourful dreams) can lead, indirectly, ito some knowledge i(e.g. about one's
health, or about omne's sconscious desires), but this is not what sentences
about such experiences mean. Furthemore, an analysis of a 2-year-old's
utterance "see pretty" as '1 want yodsomeone to know because of your
eyes \that there is something pretty here' is hardly convincing: apart from
its precocious complexity8the baby wants someone to k e y ,not to 'know'.
It is important to add that the approach to SEE and HEAW proposed
here does not extend to the other senses. The supposed symmetry between
the human "five senses" is spurious, and from a universal perspective there
is no such thing as the human '"ve senses". Beyond '%edng" and "hear-
ing", different languages draw their distinctions in different ways. As
Classen (1993;: 4-21 points out, '"n the West we sure aaocustomed to think-
ing of peroeption as a physicaj rather than cultural act. The five senses sim-
ply gather data about the world. Yet even our time-honoured notion of
here being dive senses is itself a cultural construction. Some cultures rec-
ognize more senses, and other cultures fewer.'"
Admittedly, Classen goes on to say that "the Wausa of Nigeria divide the
senses into two, with one term for sight and one for all the other senses"".
This doesn't mean, however, that the Hausa word which stands for 'hear"
as well as a l the other senses except %eevis not polysemous. PoQysemicpat-
terns of this kind we common. For example, in Russian the word sSy$otP
can stand both for 'bear' and >melll"see the Academy dictionary of
Russian: Akademija Nauk SSSR 11961, iv. 204). Whak matkrs, however, is
mot the term as such, but the term combined with a particular grammatical
frame.
The hypothesis that SEE is a universal semantic primitive is consistent
with the view widespread across cultures that there is a special relationship
between seeing and knowing, and that eyewitness evidence is more reliable
than any other kind of evidence, and the hypothesized status of HEAR as
a universal semantic primitive tallies wlP with thet special role of vocal
speclu in human communi~ation:while SAY applies to both vocal and
other signs, audible messages play a more important role in human
82 General Issues
societies than other kinds of messages; and spoken languages are not on a
par with other semiotic systems.
Tll~cfact ltliat 03.all tlrc scl~scsouly S83E :toad I-IEAR strc grsl~~mnaticaPiizcd
in the category of "evidentids" (see Chapter IS) is another reflation of
their
---..- suecia1 status in human cognition, as is also the fact h a t 'Lvisibility.yE'
-r
is often encoded in the systems of demonstratives.
One way to characterize illis dillerc~vzbclwecn Llm mnccpu 'see' and
'hear' on the one hand, and 'smell', 'taste" and 'touchhn the other, is to
say that 'see' and 'hear' are, essentially, mental predicates, referring to
events m d processes which do not rely crucially on the body, whereas
'smell', 'taste', and 'touch' are, essentially, "sensory" predicates, referring
to experiences which do rely, crucially, on the body. This difference is
reflected in the fact that it is perfectly natural b attribute 'seeing' rundl "ear-
ing'-but not smelling, tasting, or touching-to God. For example, it is
perfectly natural to say that God hears our prayen, or that he sees our
hearts and indeed o w actions; but it would sound ludicrous to say that he
"smetlsy'something.
Thus, we can conceive of 'seeing' and 'hearing' in a more abstract, less
physical way than we can mnccive of 'smelling' (or 'tasting' or 'touching').
This is consistent with the 'hypothesis that %seeQand 'bear', ,in contrast to
'smell', 'taste', or 'touch', are conceptual primitives.
18. Movement, Existence, Life: MOVE, THERE IS, LIVE
1%:
18.1. MOVE
The idea of 'movement' or 'motion' was put forward as indefinable by John,
Locke, who mocked attempts to reduce it to other concepts:
Nor have the madern philosophers, who have endeavoured b throw oB the jargon
of the schoolls, and speak intelligibly, much better succeeded in defining simple
ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any otherwise. Tk atomists, who
define motion to be 'a passage from one place to another,' what do they do mare
than put one synomymous word lor another? For what is pmsoge other than motion?
And if they were asked what passage was, how would they 'better define it than by
motion? For Is it not at least as proper and sipifiwnt to say, Passage is a moltion
from one plam ta another, as to say, Motion is a passage, kc.? This is to translate,
and not to define, when we change two words; of the same significallion one for
another; which, when one is better understood than the other, may serve Lo dis~ower
what idea the unknown stands for; but is very far From a definition, unless we will
say every English word in the dictionaw is the definition of the Latin word it
answers, and that motion Is a definition of molus. [Locke t64W1959:35)
In Lingua Menlalis wienbicka 1980: 51, 1 rejected Locke's claim and
argued (following Leibniz 11651198L: 297) that 'movement' was semanti-
caUy related to 'change of place', and therefore muld not be regarded as
elementary. If, however, we allow elementary concepts to be mutually
related (in non-mmpositional ways), then my argument can no longer be
regarded as valid: if both 'I' and 'someone' ('person') can be regarded as
elementary, despite beinl intuitively related, so earn 'movementa and 'place'.
Furthemore, the notiom MOVE, which I am now positing as a seman-
tic primitive, is not necessarily linked with a pssage of some object n per-
sm from one place to another. The prototypical examples of MOVE in the
intended sense can be found in sentences such as the following ones:
I see something is moving (in this place).
I can't move.
Samething moved inside me.
ntenccs of this kind, the idea of 'change of place' is not necessarily rel-
t at all (wen if it is true that whenwer something moues, something
anges place, if only momentarily). Similarly, if we wanted to say that
someone shivered, or that someone's lips trembled, it would seem rather
ludicrous to try to paraphrase such sentences in terms of a repeated change
of place. On L e other hand, mnccpts such as 'go' or 'walk' do imply a
change af place, but they also h p l y movement, and their explications
would have to include both PLACE (WHERE) and MOVE.
18.2. THERE IS
artesians regarded it as self-evident that 'existence' fin French IJexQ1ence)
as among those ideas which are so clear that no definitions could make
any dearer. h r many years, I have rejected this view, in the belief
'existence' could be defined in terms of, so to speak, "possible refer-
:' that is, along the following lines (see Wierzbicka 1972, 1980):
There are no unicorns (ghosts, Mack swans). =
ane can? say about something: "'this is a unicorn (ghost, black swanl"
ses of this kind never seemed to me quite right, but I bdieved that
e they could be amended in some minor way and thus be rendered
But after more than two decades of trying, and failing, to find the nec-
ary "minor amendments", 1now believe that the time has come to give
any attempts to define 'existenoe' away and to recognize that the
Lesians were right on this point as well (see e.g. Amauld 16631964: 66).
erhaps the only qualification which I would make is that both the noun
&fence (French exiFrenee) and the verb lo ex& ( F m c h exhter) belong to
sophical, not everyday, vocabulary, and that it is more justified to
nate the expression there idare (in French B y a)l as the basic lexical
$4 General &sues
exponent of the primitive in question. The point is not trivial, because the
difference is not merely stylistic. Apart from stylistic difkrenoes, in
contexts, exLt m d here islare may seem to be interchangeable, b
others they are not:
(1) "&ere are no unicorns. =
Unicorns don? exht.
(2) There are no cockroaches here. +
?Cockroaches don" exist here.
As sentence 2 illustrates, the verb exist does not co-occur with
phrase. It is a verb usled to make absolute statements, staiarements
world as a whole, or about whole classes of entities rather than a
viduals or groups. By contrast, the concept THERE IS (ARE) ca
both to the world as a whole and to specific individuals in spwific
(3) There are no ghosts (ghosts don't exist)^.
(4) There are no ghosts in this place
(?ghosts don't exist in this place).
In acoepting THERE BSIARE as a semantic primitive, and in
h e English expression there hiare (rather than be or exist) as it
exponent in English, I am folllowing an idea put f ~ r ~ aby ~ -Cliff
d rn language acquisition are highly relevant in this regad. Far
at the Adelaide Workshop in 19816 (Goddard 1986a). The
posed here corresponds to what Goddard called a "presentativ
~onstmction~'.
If the proposed primitive ALL approximates logicians"'"mnivers
tifierv'",he proposed primitive THERE ISiARE approxi
"existential quantifier"". As we will discuss in detail In C
have sometimes been expressed as to the availability of these
in all the languages of the wodd. While I will leave discussion of the
a p t ALL for Chapter 6, I would like to suggest here that
in fact have a lexical counterpart of the English fhere i8hre
counterpart may of course be homophonous with the expo
other meaning or meanings, but if so, then we can confid
basis for establishing polysemy (such as different g r a m
linked with the different meanings). For example, in Polis
other languages; see Verhaarr, 19166-73) the comept THERE ISI(kR
expressed by means of the same verb which (in a different grammatical c
stru@rtion)iserves also as a copula.
The hypothesis that a11 languages have a lexical exponent of the con
THERE IS should not be misconstrued as a claim that every language
a existential verb, or a verb phrase comparable to lthe English phase t
is. For example, in the Austronesian language Tolai CMlosel 1984:
iwas 85
xistence' is expressed by means of the definite article (in a verbless sen-
ena), as in the following examples (C stands far connective palrlticle):
A Mala-na-mulmulm,
ART season-c-hunger
'There was famine."
Pata taina, a tava parika.
no s d t ART water at1
"ere was no salt, only water."
Ma arrslana a vaden parika.
and Ebmerly ART women all
'In former times only women (existed).'
e fact that in other types of sentence the dement a means, roughly
' [&at is, 'I think you know which one I an;r talking about')
idate the observation that in verbless sentences of the kind
above it means 'there is'. Nor does the grammatical status of the ele-
tituent of the noun phrase) diisqualify it as a lexical expo-
imitive THERE IS: there is no reason to expect that this
tual element should always be lexically encoded as a verb or a verb
te devdopment, kxistence"in the sense postulated here as
fact one of the first concepts emerging in infants' speech.
st early realization of this conoegt comes in the f o m oF one-word
ining 'existenw' with negation, such as Walllgone" and, at a
stage, with two-word combinations such as "'milk alllgone" (Boweman
mom an adult point of view, it might seem that utterances such
are even more complex, and that they express ‘disappearan~e'
' rather than simply 'there isn"' (Boweman 1976: B2$], but
i("disappearance' and 'cessatioao"~could, arguably, be ideas implicit in
tuation as interpreted by the adult. But the meaning of 'non-existence"
't') is clearly there. In any case, whatever the meaning of dl-
infancy, coniextualized sentences such as "no pocket" (said by
ng a pocket in Mmmy's shirt, which had no pocket;
leave lilttle room far doubt.
arly emergence of cnno-existence' sentences in child laneage
matches, in an interesting way, clear marking of "negative exislnceYn
those languages which don't have a verb, or a verbal phrase, for 'there is'
as such (such as Tolai; cf. the "no salt" example cited learlier).
I am not suggesting that 'non-existence"IC"lilnere isn't') is expressed in
child language earlier than %xistence"I("there is')), but only that it is
expressed at a very early stage more cleady [because it is not open to
 pears, however, that this is not universal. Qn the other hand, the com-

month-old Julie Bates (Bates eE arl. 1988: 252): Turtles live for a Bong t h e .
There's a cleaning lady there.
k t an earlier stage, 'there isvis frequentjy expressed in infants' spe nd, there are conwpts relating to death, such as klie', 'kill', 'murder',
means of a two-word combination, with the words there or here inr t ny', 'l~eswrection~,'imartality', 'reincarnation', "corpse; 'stillborny,
so on, all referring in their meaning to 'living'. For example:
At this time he died. = at this time something happened to him
before this, he lived (was ative]
hypothesis that the pattern '%ere/there + X' was used to show or to d after this, he didn't live (wasn't alive)
alttention to things, indicating their presenoe or existence"'.
Thus, far from being the philosopher's brain-child, "existence' (t
'there is') is in fact something that "comes out of the mouths of bab
suekli~~g~"".

118.3. LIVE (ALIVE)

anvw. Do you think the fire w~wlldlisten?
CHILD. NN Fires aren" alive, silly.
C'anhals", in the al-inclusive sense) - living things
these things can fwl
(Kulczaj and Daly 1979: 575)
something
these things can do
something
- living things
an animal as "vvliens sentiens" ('a living thing, a feeling thing" they km these things can't feel
what they were doing: one cannot d e h e (in simpler terns) the concept anything
these things can" t o
anything
- thhgs, not living
To begin with, there are conmpts relating to buman age, such as '01
things
'young', or kbild':
people make these
These people are old. = 'Fhrese people have lived far a long time. thingsPr"
these things have many
In English, the word live takes also adjuncts which describe places and cam-
parts
titions of life; for example:
when people do some-
These people live in the desert. thing to these things,
When I was young, I lived alone. some of these parB can
For many yeays, t lived in poverty (in constant pain). move

RtececalP also McCawley's (1973: 1571 dehition '90 kill = to cause to become not alive". In In the present system of primitives, 'hake" is not regard4 as e primitive, and so it is
C i n g ~MenraSis
l~ (l980: 168-91 I argued, contra McCaaley, that 'dead' is semantically simpler k r e as a semantic molecule. The relationship between "make'hnd DO requires further
than 'alive', but 1 now think that he was closer to the truth, rm this point, than I.
$8
robots - things, not living things
these things are like
many things
these things can do
things as if they could
think
these things can't feel
Fourth, there is the mystery of people who are in a coma, o
or other arliiicial life-support systems, and so on. These peo
don't do anything, and, as h r as we know, don't think, don't feel,
know, and don't tvmt anything; and yet hey are considered "a
Clearly, from lay people's point of view there is a mystery here:
couldn? explain what they mean by "alive" in such cases, and yet the
that they sonnebow know what they mean. In hct, fmm a scientific
of view, too, a mystery is involved here, a mystery which has
minds d many scientists over centuries. The constantly changing
criteria of life and death point in the w e direction.
Last but not least, in many cultures people talk a great dea
the lives of individual people, and human life in general. Li
life-is one of the: main subjects of folk philosophy in a wide variety
tuses. It is d f i c d t to see how this important area of h u m n disc
be understood if we didn" t a
ll have a b a i c concept of 'living'. To qu
one example of such discourse [from Ewlesia~tes41: 3-5):
3. This is an evil among all things idhat are done under the
event unto dl: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is
ness is in their heart while they live, and after that they
4. For to hiun that is joined to all the living there is hope: For a living dog is be
ter than a dead lichn.
5. For the living know that they shalll die: but the dead know not any th
ther have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is fogotten.
The whole range of the universal concept LIVE (ALIW] as envisag
here can be illustrated with the examples adduoed in the r a n t dictionary
of the Australian language h r e m t e (Henderson and Dobson 1994], where
the word itethe is glossed as "1. alive, living'hd "2. lifeq".I will only q u ~ f
the English glosses of tbe Anemte sentences:
2. A Survey of Semmtic Primitive8 $9
1. The march fly is a big fly that sucks blood from people and from some other
living things.
The rainbow snake swallows men, women or children alive.
. PI green tree is one that is still alive.
. The life of a butterfly (a book title)^.
5. This is the story of my life.
6. That old man's heart stopped. Those women are thumping (his chest] to bring
him back to lire.
119. Space: FAR and NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, HERE
FAR and NEAR
mulct one try to define away tbe concept of NEAR?
e first temptation would probabiy be to try to reduce NEAR to FAR,
f "near (close) =not far". ]But this won't d o c i f only
ruse NEAR can combine with VERY, whereas "not h r Y ycannot: (very
wry close, "very not hrjr. (One can say, ofcourse, "not very far", but
oesn't mean the same as "very ciose".)~l
would be to try to represent both NEAR and EAR
etical primitive "distanceY"near = small distance, h r
~ " an abstract sense, covering both FAR
But ' L & ~ l t a n(in
irersal Iconcept. We emnot be sure, without serious
or not a11 languages have words for FAR and
te sure, however, that we d 1 not find in dl languages
ing to dklmce. In fact, even in English distance is a fairly
md, which is not found in the everyday speech d a 1
From the point d view of everyday Pangwage, distance
artificial creation, forgad (so to speak) on p u p w e to cover two
ay concepts: FAR and NEAR.
re, the word distance is probably chiefly necessary for talkkg
rs and measures, But the wordsfar and mear (or C ~ Q S Q are ] not
arily, with numbers and measures. They are fairly vague
wpression, not an accurate assessment. Consider, for
h g words from a Chistmu carol [Horrobin and
omre languages, the word far NEAR may look like a combination of negation and
for FAR Cwt as the wardl for BAD may look Bike a amhioation af megation and
for GCIOD). It is always possible, however, that mmbinabiPiry tests will show that
pathetical 'not-Far' word wjB1 mam NEAR, ratheher than NOT + FAR Qust as a "net-
rd may mean BAD rather than MOT + GOOD).
 Be near me, Lard Jesus;
I ask You to stay
Close by me for ever
kmd love me, I pray.
It seems unlikely that anyone would want to paraphrase phrases like '%e
near me" and "close by me" via "smaEl distance".
h rclarcd point is that botln FAR and NEAR appear io crnbody a mr-
tain point of view: normally, '"it is h r fram this place to that other placep'
rather than "between two places'" by contrast, the word distil~meeimplies
that the speaker is not mentally associated with one place more than with
the other, and so one speaks, normally, about the distance '%batween" two
places rather than ''from" one plaae "toY\nother.
Furthermore, FAR and NEAR appear to suggest a different perspective:
while both refer to two places it is far from A to B, it is close from A to
B), FAR seems to be more particularly "far fromm,mdNEAR, "near W"'.
Thus, while one m a say both:
L it far from A to IUP"P
?Is it close fmrn A to BT
one can only say:
She lives far from us
She lives near (to) us,
not
*She lives far to us.
%he lives near from us.
It seems, then, that in English at least, EAR has an inherently ''ablative"
perspective (FAR FROM), and NEAR, an inherently "a1Plative" m e
(NEAWCLOSE TO). Furhemore, it seems lihly that FAR is, k s t of dl,
"far from here'"cTar from this plaoe"") whereas NEAR is, fint of all, "near
toyE(see "be near me, Lord Jesus"). This differennoe in perspective i("albla-
tivealversus "alllativeYe'")
offers additional suprprort for the view that l?AR and
NEAR mnnrot be reduaed to some unitary concept of 'djlstanae'.
A third possible approach would be to try to reduce both FAR and
NEAR to their respective comparatives, along the following Iines:
far = further than one would expect
near = nearer than one would expect
But how would one then define the comparatives "further" and "nearer"?
lPresumabR4ly, in terns of ""greater or smaller distance"".But this would bring
us back to the solution which we have already considered, and rejected. Om.
the other hand, if we accept FAR and NEAR as semantic primitives, the
comparatives can be deffinad in the same way as ali the other comparatives
see Section 11 16.2).
Finally, why can't FAR be defined via "long'>ilher as "a long way"
or via "a long Lime"? h e n %tthe sentences A, B, and C below quite close in
meming?
(A) Ps it far from here to Tipywerary?
(($1 Is it a long way from here to Tipprary?
r[C) Would it take a long time to get from here to Tipperary?
But k s t , tlne expression "a long way9%as, so to speak, an "allalive" per-
spective, not an "ablative" one, as the phrase "a long way toq9hows:
It is a long way to Tipperary.
?It is far to Tipperary.
phrase "a long way to" reflects the point of view of someone who is
bout the destination, not about the point of departure.
zu. decomposition d f a r into 'lmg' and 'way' wouldn't take us
ecause it only generates two further questions: what is "long" and
at ns way"? Without independent definitions of "long" and way^', even
if we managed to convince ourselves thatJir means the same as a hng way,
this codd mean only that the expression a bmg woy is an urnanallysable
lexeme (an allolex offas).
An analysis cl?f Tar' via 'a long time'cannot be accepted either. Under
certain conditions, journeying-time may provide a satisfactory answer to
the question "how far?" but generally speaking, the two questions "how
far is ilt?"'aasd "how long would it take to get there?" do not mean the same.
For example, the sentence
. It would take a long time to get fmm A to B.
say really imply that it is far fmm A to B (e.g, paaces A and 5 codd be
arated by monnitains). Similarly, the sentence
How far w
i the sun from the earth?
doesn't mean the same as
How long wodd it take to get from the earth to the sun?
T conclude^ then, that both NEAR and FAR are, in all probability, mi-
emantic primitives. The fact that in many languages the conciept of
appears to play an important role in demonstrative systems provides
d~tionalevidence for the importance and ""bsicness"d this cclncept.
T would add, however, that by tentatively positing both these elements as
primitives I do not mean to suggest that they are hlly symmetrical, and, in
some sense, perfect "opposites"'.

In the literature on language acquisition it has often been mentioned that
the spatial notion of 'proxirnity'(see e.g. Johnston 1985: 969) or kontigu-
Ily"Slobin IgtJSa: I Iffa) emcrgcs very early in child lanyuagc; and the terms
"proximity" and 'kontiguity"', as well as "beside" (e.g. ibid.), are used inter-
changeably in those discussions. The generallimtion that the basic develop
ment order of "locative notions"is "in/onyyc <'under" <"beside"ibid.) is
based on research In which the label "beside" represents {for English] a
series of expmssims including beside, by, b ear, nexf toJ and the to
(Johnston and Slobin, 1979: 5341. For Italian, the label 'beside' represent8
the expression vicino q 'close to' (Clark 1485: 145). This means, however,
that what has been described as "the notion 'besidey" may in k t cam
sgond better to the proposed primitive NEAR. On the other hand, &en
the early emergem and the w e of the conoepili 'nearibeside9n child lan-
guage>the proposed primitive NEAR should perhaps be seen as referring,
primarily, ta a relatioar between people and thiags (Xis near tobext to I?)
rather than to a d i s b o e between places [Bike FAR).
Slabin's (19&5a: 1180) observation that "MI crosslingIlistie aoqaisition
'
data point to an initial salience of toplogical nations of containment, sup-
port amd contiguity" a n perhaps tre related to the semantic evidence
supporting the notions INSIDE Q"kontainment"")arrd NEAR TQ ("lcontigu-
ity"") and, perhaps, also to a possible primitive 'an' or 'touch' C%swpportJ
surfaoe"), not i n d d e d in the present system.
19.2. SIDE (ON WHAT SIDE)
The concept of SIDE [suggested as a possible primitive by Goddard, per-
A kun-
sonal co~lwnunication)is crucial for people's spatiat "@rI"iientatlonY"
damental frame of referenoe for spatial orientation is provided by the
human body, with its basic four sides, organized, conoeg~itudly,in the farm
of two pairs:
[l) on the right-hand side ("'on the right side"')
on the left-hand side ("'on the left side")
(2) "in front*'
"behind"
For the concepts of 'in front' and 'behind'ttwo alternative analyses (see PI
and IP1 below) can be proposed, both slnpporlled by widespread patterns of
pdysemy: one based on the concepts of 'faoe' and 'back'or 'khi~ld'(as
names of body pasts) and the other based on the concepts of %efosehnd
'after':
(A) in front of me = an the same side as my face
behind me = on the same side as my bacWbehind
2. A Survey 01Setnacr~ficPrirtsifivcrs 93
[B) in fmnt of me = on one side of me
1 can see things on this sick
behind ime = on one side of me
I can%see things on this side
The idea that the concepts 'front' and "behind' we based on the notion of
'seeingYis consistent with the finding (Johnston 11985) that '"he first uses of
behim! in English refer only to a smaller object totally hidden From view by
a lager object" (Slobin 19856: 11&I@ES.
Qf the two body-centric orientirtional pairs cfront" versus "on
the right" versus "on the Ieft"'), the first one, "frontY'versus" b a ~ k ' ~ ~ ~
appears to play an important role in ail languages and cultures, whereas the
second one, "on the rightJyversus "on the 1eRmJihs,more restricted as a frame
of orientation (see kvinson and Brown 1992].83If it is true, however, that
the "body-oentric"' ideas of 'frontband 'backbre universal, this fact by
itself supports b n t ' s (and Vice's) tenet that the human body provides an
important frame of reference for human interpretation of spae.14
Another important frame of reference is provided by the natural envir-
onment, and, in patrticuilar, by the sun. On analogy with the four sides of'
the body, the natural environment, too, appears to be almost universally
interpreted in terns of four sides. If in the human body the four sides are
distinguished with reference to the right hand and the face, in the natural
environment the basic reference-point is provided by the sun.15 Here, too,
a T o s p k d a person's front as a "side" may seem wunter-intuitive, even absurd, because
with mfenmoe to a pepson's body we normally speak of only two sides: the right side and Ithe
3eR side. But this is d m to the polysemy of nP1e ward side in English. For example, in Polish,
~ "a prson's body, that is, the right side and the left side, are called bok&
the two U ~ i d e of
whenas side as a semantic primitive is expwssecY by the word srrona [more precisely: ON SIDE
X = PO STRONlE X, where stroaa k used in the locative case, and pcp is a preposition). (For
a definition of 'face', see a a p t e r 3.)
l3 Levimam aad Brown [1991] question the importance of the conoepts 'in front of and
'behind' in the cai~eeptualizationof space, referring, in particular, to the Australian language
GUM&-Yimidhirr:"Instead of notions like 'in front of', 'behind", 'to the left of'%'opposite',
ek., which coocepts am uncoded in the language, Gwgu Ilirnidhirr speakms must specify
locations as lCjn rough English gloss) 'la the North of, 'to the South OF,'to the East o r , etc."
However, Mavilmd's (1979: 179) bask vocabulary List af this language d m include a ward
(in fact, two] glossed as 'in front'.
l4 For a different view, we Levinson and Brown (IW2).
" The importance d the four sides of the body dy a basis for spatial orientation was
m t l y disputed by Levinson and Brown (1992). who write: "Kant was wrong to think that
(he strc~ctwreaTspaaial regions Sounded on the human frame, and in particular the distinctions
based on left and right* are in some sense essential human intuitions." A ~ounter-exampleto
Kmt's theory is provided, a m d i n g to Levinson and Brown, by the Mayan language Tzeltal,
of which they say: "It is true that they [the Tenejapans, i.e. the speakers of Tselltal] have names
for the IeR hand and the right hand, and also a dean for handhrm in general. But they do not
generalize the dislinction to spatiat regions-there is no linguistic expression glossing as 'to
tb left' ar 'on the left-hand side' or the like" (1992: 3. If this statement was accurate then
SlDE couldn't be a universa0 semantic primitive; for if Tzelnal bas words For the right hand
and Klhe left hand [as Levinson and Brown tell IBS),and if it also had an expression meaning
44 General Iss~ex
the Four sides are divided, conoeptually, into two pairs. Thus, for "east" and
"west" explications along the following lines can be proposed: I G
the east side =every day people can see the sun on this sidic:
before they @an see it above them
the west side = every day people see the sun an this side
after they see it above them
Like the four sides of the body, the four sides of the world, too, are
widely used as a frame of reference for 'brientation"To illustrate (from
the Australian language Yir-Yorormt; Mphw 1991: 1.654):
An kawa nhilin.
"she is sitting just to the east here' Ejilnst off to your left]
This can bNe explicated along the following; lines (where A refers to the Yir-
Yoront sentence, and B, to the English gloss):
(4 every day people can see the sun on one side before they can see it
above them
she is sitting on the same side, very near [to here]
b n [this, one, etc.] side o f . . .'" them presuma"olg there would be no di%dty in putting the
two together and constructing expressions meaning 'on the side of the tjght hand' and 'no the
side of the bft hand'. 1awpnect that tlah indeed is the case, akthough, nlveedkss Lo say, tlne mat-
ter rquires verifficabion. I do not doubt the accuracy or the impontmm of Levinson and
Brown's findings that the mncepts of *uight'and 'left' play a relatively minor role in the Tzeltal
system of spatial orientation. But perhaps they go too hu when they say that in Tzeltal 'dght'
and "eft' don't have "'regional ex&nsions"at all, espiaIly since ithey themselves p r o d m two
Tm1taP sentences glm& as ' m e man is standing at the weman's uigY111hand'kand "The man
is standing at her IeR hand". The interpretation of such sentences su@atPd by lfurinson and
Brown along the lines of 'The man is standing NEAR the w ~ ~ m m].light ' s hand' (rather than
V OM I THE SIDE of the woman's right hand') seems lio me unwnvinning. One muld say L k l :
a b u t t d y was howdng near a woman's right hand but not that a man was standhg near her
sight hand (unless he was a Lilliputian standing on a chair). The twoTzeltal sentences in ques-
tion king to mind a Pine from the A~plDStks'C~eed:"et sedet ad dextecam Patris", 'and is
seated at the right hand of the Father'. Surely, the idea its not that Christ is sitting near the
right hand of Lhe Fallner, blun that h.c is sillinlg acnr thc Fnthca. on his right-l~ondside, One
can imagine a language in which the word for 'nose' is polysemous and means also 'front'. On
k t , Mary Laupllmren, personal comlrmication, informs me that Warlpiri is a case in paint.]
In a language like that, to say 'the man was standing In front of the woman' one wnuEd have
to aay somebPljng homophonous to 'the man was standing at the nme ofthe woman'. On this
basis, someone might argue t h ~ the t sentence in question really means 'the man was slanding
near kY~enose o l the woman'. But would a~vgibsldyever want Lo say a thing like that [speak-
ing of normal-siw people, both standing om the ground]? The same, I think, applies to the
righi hand. B concllude, then, that interesting as the TzsPtal examples mag be, theve isno ma-
son bo regard it as a counter-example no the hypolhesis that SkDE [ONSIDE X of Y) ts a le%-
iml and semantic universal.
16. P am not assuming that the words for the "four sidles of the world" mean exactly lbe
same in different languages. On the contrary, I expect that the details of the conceptualha-
tion---especially ror "north' and kouth'-may well differ from ane hrugulags, or one group of
languaga, to another.
2. A Survey of Semantic Primitives 95
(B) your left hand is on one side of you
she is sitting on the same side, very near [to you]
As this example iflwstrates, in Australian languages ((asin many other Ban-
guilges of the world; see e.g. Levinson and Brown 1991; Hadland 19911,
the natural environment [especiallly the sun) plays a more important role as
a f r m e of reference for spatial orientation than it does in English and other
European languages. At the same rim, the universal or near-universal divi-
sion of the world into 'Tour sides"(two lpairs of two sides) is undoubtedly
modelled on the "four sides" (two plus two) of the humm body.
19.3. INSIDE
YOUcan" t it cause it's say imside.
(from a 2-yam-old; Bloom 1991: 3841
The concept of INSIDE (like SIDE, put forward as a possible primitive by
Goddard, personal communication) is rdevaant to aPP natural and human-
made "containers". b o n g the natural "containers", the most sdient is
perhaps the mouth, presumably conceptualized a l over th~eworld as a part
of the body meant for, roughly speaking, "putting something in" @si well
as speaking; see Chapter 7'). But presumably the whole body can be seen,
ancrass cltures, as something INSIDE which there are various interesting
and important "things" (or "partsym).In the natural environment, the con-
cept of INSIDE is clearly relevant ta caves and also to armimd dweI1ings:
burrows, tree-holes, nests, and the like. Among the humman-made '"contain-
ers"",Ltihe most important ones are no doubt human dwellings (houses, huts,
and so on), and d s o wntainers for food and drink hots, cups, bowls, and
so on).
In English, Slue word isfde often appears to be interchangeable wiith ji~:
inside thk house = in the hause
inside the mve = in the cave
inside the jar = in the jar
But this is not always the case, either because a substitution of inside for in
changes the (A) or because the resulting phrase is unacceptable:
(A) in the garden ~t inside the garden
in ithe walls ;e inside the walls (of the city)
(El) in the milk # *inside the milk
in the d r ;f +inside the air
Clwly, the EngJish preposition in [like its closest translation equivalents
in many other languages) is polysemous; and this is not the place to try to
sort out its different meanings. Jnsidc, too, has more than one meaning:

(I) People don't know what happens inside a volcano.
(2) I was inside when it happened.
(3) I went inside.
(4) Outside China, people don" talk about it m c h , but inside the
country, people don't seem to be talking about anything else.
Jasii$@4(as in sentence 4) has a contrastive meanhg, built upon the notion
of 'outsidey (inside4 = mot outside]. Insit& is adverbial and refers spcifi-
cally to a Vwe1ling"umam or animal). d5asii$e3 is directional and refers to
a sequence of times (roughly: before I moved, I was not insidel the
dwelling; dter I moved, I was insidel it). l~&'el, however, appears to be
indefinable. rOutsidem is mot a candidate for a primitive, as it is clearly
composed of INSIDE and NOT: outside X = not insidel X.)
As mentioned earlier, the prepositions Sm, on, and under [and their dos-
es&equivalenlts in other ]languages) emerge particularly early in child lan-
guage, and in a particular order (in 4 on ~ s mder; s Johnston and Slobin
1979; Slobin h985a); end cognitive development has often been linked with
the order of acquisition of Iowtive prepositions, For example, Mills Q198.5:
237) writes: "'If prepositions are classified according to the complexity of
the conceptual reliatiotnships encoded iro them, the resulting order of @.om-
plexity coldd predict the order of acquisition . . . this cllassification will pre-
dict, for example, that h e preposition expmssing the notion ' i n w l be
leaned before that expressing 'between'."" But It is not cllear what exactly
is meant here by "the notion 'h3 ".As mentioned earlier, Eia is a pdysemous
word and if one simply counts the occurrence of in in child language, one
cannot be sure what concept or concepts are being expressed. For example,
in the phrase in the cup, in means 'inside', but in the phrase in fhi3 place, in
is only a part of the phrase ire a place (which as a whole means %ome-
where9.
It is possible that the data on the early use of the prepsition in in English
& 20.1. A LONG TIME and A SHORT TIME
cmflate the use d t w o different semantic primitives in child language, both
supported by independent evidence: the early emergence of where-questions
(see e-g. Ervin-Tripp 11970; Tyack and Ingram 1977) and \the early mmpre-
hension of the prepositbn ini~sid~ (see Bates el oL 1988: 190). For example,
in a sentence such as "1 no make duty in Ithe potty?" "loom 1991: 1198), in
presumably means 'inside'. On the other hand, if a child takes his guinea-
pig home from school "cause they don't belong in school"' [Bloom 1991:
3851, it is likely that k means 'where' rather than 'inside'.
1 presume thait Slobin's ((P985a: Pl8O)r observation (quoted earlier] about
the initial salience of "the notion of coatainrment"refers to the notion
INSIDE, not Go the notion PLACE.
2. A Survey of ,Yemantic Primitives 97
89.4. HERE
HERB is a spatid counterpart of NOW, more d which will be said later
[Section 20.2). Both these elements were put forward as possible primitives
by Cliff Goddard bersonal cornmication). On the hoe of it, 'here' is not
a semantic primitive, because it seems to be clearly decomposable into 'this'
and 'plaice', aloug the fallowing lines: "here = in this place". The fact tbat
in many languages (em$.in Samoan; see Mosel 1994: 339) the three concepts
%ere" '"now" and 'this' share the same lexical exponent appears to support
this analysis.
But if we identi$ 'here' with 'this place', then we cannot use the expres-
sion "this p1aw'in explications with reference to any other plaoe that we
may wish, to taEk about (for example, ''this other place"). On the other
hand, if we tried to link the concept of 'herehore tightly with the concept
of 'I'as ""the place where I am", this would solve some difficulties but it
would ereate others. For example, if I refer to two small objects lying in
my open hand, such as two rings, as "this one here" and '"his one", the
phrase ""this one here'km hardly m m 'the one which is in the place where
1 am'.
The problems which wim in the attempts to decompose HERE are sim-
ilar to those which arise in the case of NOW. In both cases, the condusion
suggests itsdf that in fact the attempts at decomposition are futile, and that
MERE and NOW are semantidlly simple, as the 'Veictic substmtives" 1
and YOU are simple. (For further discussion, see Section 20.2.)
26). Time: A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, NOW
Waving once tried to reduce a11 temporal concepts to non-temporal ones,
(Wierzbicka 1972, 19XO), to have three temporal primitives (WHEN,
AFTER, and BEFORE] seems a lot, and yet over the years it has become
inareasingly clew that even this set is not sufficient to deal with all the
aspects of time. In particular, it is not sufficient to deal with duration and,
more genemlly, "passage of time'" Simple sentences such as:
I did it for a long time.
It happened a long time ago.
could simply not be paraphrased in terms of the available temporal concepts;
and yet sentences of this kind appear to be very common in everyday dis-
mwse, in all languages. As Keesing (1994: 6) notes about the Kwaio, "'Talk
about the passage d time ([inreference to how long garden work will be
done, or when the pork will be cooked, or how long someone wijl be gone)
98 General I s s w
is, for the Kwaio as with us, a constant theme of quotidian experienm and
communication." So finally it became clear that, in addition to the three
basic "temporal" primitives WHEN, AFTER, and BEFORE, something else
was needed to account for the '"assage of time"; and the smswer came in the
h m of two "duration" primitives, A LONG TIME and A SHORT TIME,
analogous to the two "'dlstancel~rimitivesFAR and NEAR.
By introducing these two primitives, I am fdlowing, once more, in the
footsteps of the Cartesians, who regarded both 'Yime" @emp~, presumably,
in the sense of 'when" although they never bothered to make it clear) and
'duration" (darPe] as irreducible, clear ideas, which cannot be further
defined. (See e.g. Arnauld 316621964: 66, 86.1
Since we aim always at a minimal set of primitiws, ilt would be prefer-
able, of course, to introduce one 'Vwational" primitive rather tinan two,
and, at first sight, this does seem possible: why not posit a neutral primi-
tive, "some time", and then generate the meanings k long time' and 51 short
t h e ' by combiabp this neutral primitive with the available elements
MUCH and NOT MUCH?
But there are strong arguments a g b s t such a move. First of all, experi-
ence and preliminary inquiries suggest that languages are more likely to
haw words, or phrases, for the concepts A LONG TIME and A SHORT
TIME than for h e putative concept ''some timey'.
Having two "extreme"durationa1 primitives rather than a singlle one cov-
cri~lgL ~ whole
C ranga: Elsay sccrrn Lo crcatc .uarnccessarydillilicwPtics In the area
of measures. For example, how could omle analyse in these terms a question
sluch as "'How long was he there?''?
But the semantics ~f measures is notoriously wrnp8ex. In everyday dis-
course across cultures people are no doubt more likely to ask: "was he there
(for] a long tiine?'?han ""hw Bong was he tlinere?"~nandit wouId be wrong
to treat the latter question as semantically simpler than the former.
Can all "'durational" conoepts be explicated in terms of the primitives A
LONG TIME and A SHORT TIME? 1 do not claim t h t . It seems likely
that some concepts which might be called "duratianal" would call for a diE
ferent approach. For example, wry tentatively:
He did it from sunrise to sunset. =
(Cf. He did it alE day.)
he didn? do it before the sunrise
he didmy do it after the sunset
he did it at all times
after the sunrise before the sunset
But I do not think that w can explicate alll references ta time without s o m
explicitly durational primitives, such as the two primitives proposed here:
A LONG TIME and A SHORT TIME.
It should, however, be pointed out that of the two primitives proposed
here one (A LQMG TIME) is a strongex candidate than the other (A
SHORT TIME). Unlike in the case of NEAR and FAR, there are perhaps
no compelling arguments against an analysis of one primitive via the nega-
tion of the other fa short time = not a long time].
If we consider, for example, references to 'a short time' in transcripts af
children's speech, Uhey commonly take the form of the expression "for a lit-
tle while", or "a little bit"', and these could perhaps 'beparaphrased, with-
out a loss of meaning, via 'bat long'" Far example (French and Nelson
89185: 106-7):
First I wake up and wake my mom and dad up them slmp with them far a little
whb.
Andl we wait for a liltthe whiQe,but not too long, then we go back in the school and
CU~~Y.
. . . md we go m d wait for a little while and then the waibr comas and gives us the
little sltufif with the dimem on it, and then we wait for a little bit . . .
Oin the other hand, it is not clear how words such moment or expressions
such as ol once could be defined via negation and 'a Bong time'.
Hn a crass-cultural perspective, too, the evidence is mixed. Preliminary
investigations suggest that h d i n g matching equivalents far '% short time'"
is not as unproblematic as it is for "'a long tlirne"'. But the matter req~uites
further investigation.
Another temporal concept, NOW, first proposed as a semantic primitive by
Cliff Gaddard at the Adelaide Semantic Workshop (Cioddard 11986a3,
belongs to the 'deictic" subset of the primitives, which includes also the
"substantive" dements I and YOU, the "determiner" THIS, and the spa-
tial element HERE. For a long time, this element was not included in the
proposed set of primitives because it seemed to be decomposable into other
primitives. In fact, there seemed to be not ane but: two plausible ways
of decomposing bow" which for ease of reference I will designate as A
and B:
[A) now = at h i s time
[B) now = at the time when I say Ithis
The fact that, as mentioned earlier, in some languages (e.g. in Samoan; see
Mosel 8994:332) the same word is used not only far 'this' and %ere"ut
also for %owyappears to support this analysis.
As pointed out by Goddad, however, neither of these two analyses is
really satisfactow.

Analysis A makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to refer to more thaa
one time as 'this time', For example, if we say in a semantic fornufa:
this happened a long time ago
at this time . . .
it is not dear whether the expression "at this time"refms to the t h e of ref-
erence or It@l the time d speech, a d it seems impossible to difirentlate
between the two. Given that ago means 'before now', if now meant 'at this
time" ago would mew %before this h e ' , and one couldn't refer to a time
'before this time" 'this time9.
This particular difficulty is resolved in malysis B, where "'e time when
I saw this" can be clearly distinguished from "a time before the time when
I saw this". But as pointed out by Goddard, the word now can be used, and
is n o m l l y used, with reference to a period much longer than tihe moment
of speech (cf. e.g. the English expression nowadays). Furthemore, the three
tenses distinguished in many languages of the world, present, past, and
future, are normally used with reference to a period much more extensive,
or extendible, than the very moment of speech. For example, if I say:
I now live in Canberra, but before, I lived in Ballarat in Victoria.
I do not mean ta suggest that Z have moved to Canberra immediately
before the moment of speech.
The hypothesis that NOW is in fact a universal semantic primitive sim-
plifies enomwsly semantic analysis of the various tense systems and alllows
us to operate with very simple distinctions such as 'cnow9y,"before now",
'(after now", "a long time before now'" "before now, not a long timale before
now", and so on. At the same time, this hypothesis frees the expression
'"this tirne" from its links with the present time and allows us to use it freely
with reference to any time that we wish to spa& about.
What may =em objectionable about .the present analysis is that it m u l d
present the word new and the expression rhb time as semantically unrelated,
and would not allow us to account explicitly for the "decictic" nature of the
conoept 'now', But the same olbjwtion could be raised with respect to 3 and
YOU, both primitives of long-standing and apparently unshakeable status;
aria it would fdl on the same grounds: I and YOU, too, have often been
lcallled 'cdeicticconcepts" and they do have a semantic link with the expres-
sion "this person", but this link is not compositional. If neither I nor YOU
can be equated with "this penon", NOW cannot be equated witb "this
time"; and ifI and YOU cannot be equated with '"he person who says !hisn
and ""the person to whom I say this"', respectiveby, NOW cannot be equated
with "the time when E say this"'.
2. A Survey of Semanrk Primitives 101
21. Imagination and Possibility: IF . . . WOULD, CAN,
MAYBE
Iif yau would haw eated all that turkey, your tummy would have kcr-
sploded.
[a remark by a 4-year-old; Kuczaj and DaPy 8974:575)
e discontinuous expression if- . . wouMcan be used in English in two dif-
rent senses (and in two different grammatical frames): as a hypothetical
referring to a real possibility or as a counterfactual, as in the motto to this
It is this second, not the first, use which is posited here as a uni-
ernantic primitive. The hypothetical if. . . would can be defined in
terns of "f', as follows:
If X happened, I woulld do Y. =
if X happens, I will do Y
I don't say: I think: it will happen
the counterfactual ij" . . . woufd cannot be similarly defined; and pm-
. . would (in contrast
nnary evidence suggests that the counterfactual ifjT.
to the hypothetical i f . . . would) may well be a linguistic universal. (See
Wiembicka, forthcoming g.)
I n English, and in many other languages, the counterfactual ( i f . ..
overlaps formally with the conditionai (ii'. In many other lan-
however, the two elements in question do have distinct lexical
nts. For example, in Samoan the word for IF (the I F of real p ~ s -
sibnlity) is @fa& whereas the word for the counterFactuaB IF . . . WOULD
Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992: 654; GENR stands far general tense-
mood particle, DIR for directional particle and w s for ergative suf-
(1) "Ansa 'e le sau, seman'ii 'ou te alu atu.
if(irr.) 2 . s ~not come, probably l.so GENIE go DIR
"ad you not come, I was probably going to go and see you.'
(2) Afai ua lapoa se puaa, 0 !e a f m a = ina loa
if PERF large aa~(wspl.s~.) pig ELIT shoot = ES then
ma hatau atu 1 = o = na tino. . .
and sell DIR ART = POSS = 3 . ~ body 0
'If a pig gets fat, then it will be shot and its body will be sold . . .'
A lexical overlap analogous to the English one m u r s also in the
Australian language Yankunytjatjara (Goddard 19946: 2491, where the
word tjing~mby itself (used in a biclausal sentence) means IF, whereas
Sldarly, in English:
ADULT.What would happen if people were fish?
calm. Then if a wbde came, they would get eated. But if they hided, the
maybe couldln" find 'em. And, then tbey wouldn't get aated.
The fact that, despite lexical overlaps, the concept MAYBE Is r e a l k
both English and Polish as a particle, whereas the concept CAN is reslr
(62) Ma-pitja-ku-na?
away-come-~uP-1
'Cm T carnie in?'
(63) Punkal-ku-n.
fall-r;uT-you
'You could fall.'
In the list of primitives tested in Semrrsrtfc and Lexical Univ
(Goddard and Wiembicka 11994b1, the elements distinguished here as
as CAN. Further work in this area kLsrs shown, however, that it is neoes
(I) I can't do it now; maybe someone dse can.
(2) I can't do it here; maybe I can do it samewhere dse.
(3) You can" see. it now; maybe you wm see it later.
(411 I can't say it is far, I can't say it is near.
use of these ideas is in the context of movement:
I can't moveirH can move.
(perhaps an archetypal experience of a baby, tightly held, or wapped
a d then given the freedom 4.0 movie).
can't do itll can do dot.
mles dso remy on the notion of CAN:
ou can't do this.
You m y tsay this.
You can't do it like tKs.
You can't t o things like this.
Yaw can do it like this.
concept of GOOD and BAD, and social rules, which are based on
CAN at our disposal.
be suggested that CAN is linked in a special way with 'want-
so much SO that one may even be temptd to explicate one in terns
he other (as I did in Wierzbicka 1 9 8 9 ~318-19).
: For example:
God can do everything. =
If Cod wants to do something, he does it.
d m g these lines seems also to have the virtue of accounting for
ly fell: llnk &tween CAN and IF (as J. L.Austin (1961: 1531 put
iffy'", Hut neither of the above two pmaphsases is really satis-
rrs neither of them conveys the intended idea of "onmipotenw".
ider aim sentences such as the following ones:
Her stomach cannot ~ g e s fatty
t foods.
Ilfter we built a d m here, the water coddn't tow in this direction any
ich can hardy be paraphrased in terms of WANT:
When her stomach wants to digest fatty foods it does not do it.
When the water wmts to tow in this direction it doesn? t o it.
106 General lsmm
*I h o w she will1 come, but maybe she will not come.
E 2. A Survey
*E know she will not come, but maybe she will come.
Ncvertlietass, MAYBE cannot be reduced lo KNOW (or NOT KNOW
any more than CAN can be reduced to WANT. The sentence "'maybe h~e
did itY3mpliesthat '7 ddoqliknow whether he did it", but cannot be reducedl
to it.
In a sense, then, the notions CAN and MAY BE can be regarded as clear
and indispmrsabb. On the other hand, in many contexts the distinction
between these two concepts appears to be blurred. For example:
This can break.
Something bad could happen to them.
Bad things can happen to everybody.
They can" know about this.
In terns of the traditionail distinction between cpossibility' and 'ability' ithe
sentences above would no doubt be linked ~6th'possibility'; but it is di&-
cult to see how these sentences oouId be paraphrased (without a change d
meaning) with MAYBE and without CAN.
In e a r l b work Pierzbicka 19721, I tried to account for the semantic
links between CAN mntenlws with personal subjects (such as "H mn
moue~dolsedhearIsay"')m d those with inanimate subjects (e.g. "this ean
break", 4'somethinrg bad can happen"') in terns of a "hidden" personal
predicate, along the following lines:
This can break = I can think: this will break.
(A similar analysis was also proposed by Antinucci and Parisi 1976.) But I
no longer regard this analysis as valid. To begin with, one could equally
well1 tlry to 'reoaverPa hidden 'think9n all other CAN sentences:
I can't do it. = I can't think: I will do it.
I can'lt m u e . = I can't think: I will mow.
But this is counter-intuitive and unconvincing, and sometimes can bad to
a b w d results:
God can do everything. = I can think: God will do everything.
Undoubtedly, the distinction between CAN and MAYBE in sentences with
inanimate subjects requires further investigation. Rut in sentences with
human subjects the distinction between these two concepts seems well
established, despite the faclts that both CAN sentences and MAYBE sen-
tences can be paraphrased [approximately] in terns of 'possibility':
Maybe she will do it. = It is possibie that she will do it.
God can do cvesything. = Everything is possible for God.
ioJT Semaantic PrirnSti~~"~~
To amount for the fact that, on the face of it, two concepts posited as
107
distinct and irreducible semantic primitives can both be replaced with one
concept of 'possibility" 1 would suggest that the notion of 'possibility?~
more complex than either MAYBE or CAN, and, in a sense, spans over
lboth of them, rather like the abstract notion of 'distancebspans over both
FAR and NEAR, or the notion of 'sizey spans over both BIG and SMALL.
The analogy is not perfect because FAR and NEAR, or DIG and SMALL,
intuitively felt to be 'opposites', whereas CAN and MAYBE are related
ome other way. But maybe even this imperf~ctanalogy can help us to
pt that, related as t h y are, MAYBE and CAM may none the less be
distinct and irreducible semantic primitives.
should also be pointed out that while the concepts CAN and MAYBE
share their lexical exponents (in dinerent grammatical forms), this is
means universal, (See for example the cantrast between the verb
, %anz, and the p t i c l d a d ~ e r b~ieiieichs, haybe', in Geman).
%wring lexical overlap are a common feature of many primiltives (e.g.
EONE and OTHER, or MAYBE and IF), and while they are dearly
ccidentd, there is nno reason to assume that they must be due to com-
nand semantics. (For discussion, see Wierzbicka 1994b.)
22. WORD
RDI (or %wordsy>may seem redudant in the lexicon of
because it is intuitively relalied to the concept of SAW
that one does, a word is something that one says.
ween 'cword" and "deedYYs5nly partially valid: while
word, or some words, one can also say something "in"
e words or: in some other words. (In fact, this is what
BI about: ways of saying the same thing in other words.)
we can talk about speech [about "saying" things)
c'word~";in some cases, however, w reference to
e essential to the intended meaning, as the following
(A) You said something bad about this person.
@) You said some bad words to this person.
ce A can refer to a criticism, whereas sentence B is more likely to
to some swear-words.
e notion of "swear-words"is a good example or the apparent indis-
nsability of the concept 'words': one cannot "swear'hithout saying what
regarded in a given society as some ""bd woods" (for a hller discussion
'%wearin$;",see Wierzbicka 1987~).

Other categories of speech which appear to involve crucially the notiom
o l b a r d ' ~ L Y G nanlnes,
~ U J Cc~w~lt.io~g
pcrforinakive verbs [ne.g. pramiJi~~),
speech
fommlae @.g. Goodbye), and magical formulae (see Goddard forthcoming
a) . For example, a "name1?s a word (or words) generally used to identify
someone or something; "coonting"invo1ves saying a word that means;
'orre', aner that a word that means 'two', then a word that means Yhree',
and so on; magical speech involves saying certain words to cause certain
things to happen, and so on. ([These are of coulrse not Full definitiwns, but
only partial characterizations of tlne phenomena inr question.)
"In the beginning was the word" (John 1: 1). Distant ias this sentme is
from normal everyday life, Bible translators seem to find less difficulty in
translating it into numerous languages of the world khan many much more
prosaic and down-to-earth sentences (see e.g. Nida 1949. If the conmpts
BEFORE, ALL, SOMETHING, OTHER, HAPPEN, THERE IS, MOW,
SOMEONE, SAY, and WORD are aall universal human concepts, the rel-
atively easy cross-translatability of this sentence would be easy to under-
stand:
BEFORE NOW
BEFORE ALL THINGS HAFFENED
THERE WAS A WORD (or: SOMEONE SAID PI WORD)
23. General Dis~ussion:Opposites and Converses
The present system of senrantic primitives m y seem merconomical hso far
as it includes some pairs of "opposites". Tw begin with, there is the pair of
evaluators GOOD and BAD, the oldest and the best-established one.
AIthough these two elements have, intuitively, something in comtnm, I
have rejected ithe temptation to extract from them some semantic common
core ('%aiue"), and to distinguish the two as a "positive" and a "negative"
member of the pair. Rather, I have zussumd that concepts such as 'value',
'positive', and 'negative'aare more complex than the basic elements GOOD
and BAD, and that although these two elements do form a coherent a i o l l -
system apart from all the other dements, none the less none of them a m
be further d~composed.
Un addition to GOOD and BAD, the present system of primitives
includes now two (and possibly three) further pairs .sf "opposites": 816
and SMALL, and FAR and NEAR (and possibly also A LONG THME
and A SHORT TIME). Aiming at a minimall system of primitives one must
be tempted, of course, to reduce such elements further, extraclting for each
pair a common core, and positing for a!! pairs two "poles": + POL and - POL
(along the lines suggested by Bierwisch 1967). One cmld try, then, to
reduce BIG and SMALL to ""size", EAR and NEAR to "dlstance'~and A
B 019
E to cEduration'y,
with the addition of
the two recurring Watuces "b ry)e" and "-POL".
Following this line of analysis, we would be able to account, in cornpro-
sitional €ems, for the fact that within each pair the "+ me" m stand for
both members of the pair:
How big is it? -Very bidvery small.
HOWfar is it? --Very fadvery near.
How long? -A very jong timeja very short time.
But attractive as such an analysis may seem, it has to be rejected-if we
require that the basic units of semantic analysis are linked with "red (intej-
Iiigible] words"rather than with analyticall fictions, which have no meaning
unless and until they are defined in tems of intuitively intelligible real
words. En real (natural) languages there are simply no such words as
"+ pon."Qr "-POL"'. In real speech, therefore, we cannot paraphrase a sen-
tence such as "This dog is big" with sometlning like "The size of this dog is
+ WL".
It might be suggested, of oourse, that the artificial words "+ ~u>z'bnd
"-POL" could be replaced with the "rea8'bords big and $maSI, along the
foNowbg lines:
far - big distanae
near - small distance
But this would be analogous to saying that big reallly means %ig shey,and
lsmli, 'small size'. In fact, 'size' is not a simpler concept than 'big' or
%mall" bunt a more complex one, a d so it is %beywhich has to be defined
in t e m s of 'bighad 'small" not vice versa. Similarly, it is not 'far'which
should be ddened in tems of Vdistancnce', or 'good" in tems of "value', but
b e other way around.
In natural language we simply cannot go beyond words such asfar and
near, zus we cannot go beyond gaod and bad Replacing good and bad with
"positive value" and "negative value" we would engage in pseudo-analysis,
not in real semantic decampositim; and the same applies to attempts to
replace big and small with "'size", orfir and near with! "distance"".
In saying this, I am not denying the reallity of the structural relations
within the area of "opposites", On the contrary, T would like to add one
further observation highlighting the dose affinity between the two members
of each pair, namelly that within each pair of "opposites" both members
appear to have similar combinatorial possibilities. Since this is an obsewa-
tiom concerning all the pairs of "opposites", it provides also a further argu-
m n t for the reality of this group as a distinct subsystem within the whole
system of primitives.
In arguing that the relations between the "opposites" within each pair are
not compositional (that is, Ithat they cannot be accounted Tor in terms of
further definitions), I argue that these "opposites" are more deeply
ingrained in human cogmition than they would be if they were reducible to
some other elements. It is well known that "opposites" play an important
role in all known human languages (see e.g. Apresjan 1974, 1992; Cruse:
1986; John Lyons 1977; Lehret 11974). I am suggesting that this is mot a sur-
face phenomenon but something that is rooted in the underlying system of
primitives.
What applies to "opposites"aaplpes d s o to some extent to converses:
BEFORE and AFTER, and possibly to ABOVE and UNDER. The system
of primitives would be more economical if each pair of converses were
replaced with just one element, because from a logicall p i n t of view " A
happened before B"" is equivalent to "I3 happened after A"",nd "A is above
B" is equivalent to " B is under A".
But a natural language has its own natural") logic, and in this "natural
Iogicy'BEFORE and AFTER, or ABOVE and UNDER, are not multually
equivalent. In both pairs, each dement is linked with one particular point
of view, and in huumiaar comunication ai difference in point of view m y be
as important as a diEerence between two predicates. For example, while
both past tenses and future tenses situate events in time with reference ta
the present moment, past tenses do so in terns of the concept BEFORE,
whereas future tenses do so in terns of the concept AFTER:
(A) It happened before now.
(IB) It will happen after now.
The set of proposed universal semantic primitives has expanded from 14 (in
1972) and 13 (in 1977) to 37 In 11993, and ~owidlramatidly-to 55. The
question imposes itself: how many more primitives (or hypothetical p e -
tlives) are likely to emerge from future work?
For once, 31 Feel that humble agnosticism is in order. I would Bike b
recall, however, that when Bogustawski launched the search for semantic
primitives in 1965, he mentioned the figure 100 ("airnost certainly less than
a hundred", he said, as I recall). Although I still expect that the ultimate
figure will be doser to 50 than to 100, f now acknowledge that (as argued
by Goddard at the 1986 Adelaide Workshop), my original sets of 14 and
P 3 were quite mrealistid1y small.
As the set of primitives expands, and as their grammar takes shape, the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage grows in flexibility and in expressive
power. In principle, them, the expansion of the semantic system is a posi-
tive, not a negativ~e,development.
Looking at the expanded list of primitives and comparing it with the
older one, one is bound to notice that Ithe new list is less austere nor only
ir its size but also in its composition,
m
The new spatial elements, of which there are as many as five (ON PHIS]
SIDE, INSIDE, HERE, FAR, and NEAR), bring the set of primitives
down b earth (from its pwvious heights of abstraction). At the same time,
the element THERE IS links the system more closely to reality, as do also
the new "deictic" dements HERE and NOW.
Tine pabed opposites FAR-NEAR, and A LONG TIME-A SHORT
TIME, strengthen the element of subjectivity and add an anthropocentric,
experiential perspective (as do the old primitives BIG and SMALL)l.
SEE and HEAR bring colom and sounds to the system, and, if I may
venture to say so, MOVE brings movement, and ALIVE brings life.
MAYBE brings an dement of uncertainty, linked with a human, psycho-
logical perspective (quire different from the logical perspective of "goss-
ible"'), and I F . . . WOULD brings, or rather restores, the element of
h t a s y , which was once brought to the system by the ex-primitive "imag-
ine''.
W1 in all, then, the changes can be seen as being all for the better. It must
be remembered, however, that--quite apart from the obvious requirements
of Oo@mYsrazor-we are Iooking for the shared Eexical and grammatical
core of all languages; and that given the tremendous diversity of languages
as we know them, this shared core is bound to be small. It is imperative,
therefore, to continue to subje~tevery proposed primitive, and every pro-
posed ~ ~ a tframe, i ~to relentless
1 scrutiny, so that only those remain
which are truly indispensable and truly universal.

3 Universal Grammar: The Syntax of
Universal Semantic Primitives
Most gmmalllcal patterns In any language am language-specific, but there
may also be some patterns which are universal. In fact, if cross-cultural
undenltanding is possible at all, despite the colossal variation in language
structures, there muslt a common core of "human understanding" rely-
ing not only on some s h a r d or matching lexical items but also on some
shared or matching grammatical patterns in whi& shared lexical items can
be used. Arguably, this m m o n core defines a set of "basic sentences"
which can be said in my Smguage, and which can be matched across Inn-
p a g e boundaries, and the grammar of these basic sentences consists in the
possible distribution patterns of the "atomic elements" (that is, the lexical
jirrdefinables]. To dixover those patterns we have to look at the lexical inde-
finable~themselves, to see what their possibilities of co-occurnenoe are.
Therefore, in searching for universal g m m a t i d patterns, llse should not
be looking for universals of farm, but rather far universals of comlsinablil-
ity. This chapter is a tentative and preliminary attempt to do just that.
Trying to write a sketch grammar of the universai semantic primitives is
a daunting task.
First of all, such a grammar must make a large number of predictions
conoerning all the languages of the world. These predictions camp be empir-
ically tested, and it is high& likely, not to say inevitable, that upon further
testing some of them will turn out to be inmrrect.
Second, this grammar amounts to ai hypothesis about the innate gram-
mar of human cognition, As a hypothesis about human cognition, the sys-
tem developed here is not as readily testable as it is as a hypothesis about
linguistic u~niversds.ExpIoration of limguistic evidence may prove t o be, at
least for some time, the main avenue off access ta the grammar of human
cognition. But no matter how dificullt it may be ltcl verify-or to falsify-
This chapter owes a great deal to Bong discussions with Cliff Gddard, who has ~ontribukd
to it many important ideas. CBiYlFs cdtidsms and suggestions led to a substantid revision of
the eadkr draR
the hypothesis about human cognition advanced here, the questions raised
are disconoertingly heavyweight.
Third, this grammar has, to be wen as the '9eaP grammar of PIASM, the
hnguage of semantic description. It is proposed, therefore, as a set of con-
straints on NSM explicaiations and paraphrases. These constraints will not
always be adhered to in practice, but they will always have to be kept in
mind, so that any departures from the mles of combinatorial semantics out-
lined here will be allowed only as short-cuts and compromises Justified by
practical considerations such as increased brevity or readability.
It hardly needs to be added that the word "always" in the last paragraph
is not meant to predude future changes in the proposed system. Despite the
present attempt at coldlification, many areas of NSM grammar are still1 in a
state of flux. The grammar proposed here is nleither complete nor "hal".
It is put forward as a starting-point for testing and discussion.
2. Preliminary Discussion
the survey of primitives and their combinatoriat possiloil-
er of general points should be made.
rammar owitlined below assumes a radically expanded set of
instead of 37 as in Geddard and Wierzbiicka 1994b). Since
d some of the new primitives is still somewhat uncertain, so is,
course, the status of their grammatical characteristics.
Second, the meta-terminology of NSM grammar is still evolving. Terms
such as "valency", "linkers", "swbj~ect",'~objeet", "cle~mplement"~and
"aldjunct" are used in the present chapter on a somewhat provisional basis.
Nopefily, however, for the present purposes their intended meaning will
pter makes amp extensive use of a new theoretical concept:
"valency of semantic prhitives"".or exampnlle, it is assumed that the pred-
icate WOlD has two different valency options: it may combine with one
"substmtive"(which may be called a "sulbje~t"),as in sentence A kIow, or
with two c~sub~tantives'~
(a "subjectlYl and a "complement"), as in sentenoe
(A) This is good.
[BE This is good for rne/yodthese people.
Strict adherence to the rules of NSM syntax, as sketched in this chapter, is not a l w p
dlesisable, as bng as all the departures from the NSM mules can be regarded as convenient
abb~eviations,that is, as long as we have a clear idea of how the '%nggraanmaticaB"car "semi-
grmatica1'" segments of the: exp!ications could be replaced with fully "grammatical" ones.
114 General fssrres
Some: predicates-for example DO: m d THPNK-my even opema three
Lcsl~ts"
for ccsubstantives"(a first slot for a "subject",a second, for a "cam-
plement", and a third, for an "object")
someone (11 did something (2) to someone (3)
someone (I] thought something (2) about something (3)
But although both DO and THINK can be said to open three slots, heir
valency options are different: DO bas two vaalency options (A and B)l
whereas THINK has three (A, B, and @):
DO
(A) someone did something
(B) someone did something b someone
THINK
(A] someone thought something
(B) someone thought something about something
[C) someonre thought about something
Fourth, it should be pointed out that the grammar sketched in this chap-
ter allows for several types of complex sentences, and thus glees far beyond
simple clauses offered as examples of NSM semrtenoes in earlier work (kt.$.
irr my Liaguo MessSSSaiis (1980) or Semtmfics o j Grummar (1988)). A key rolle
_ YoulrI moved.
belongs in this respect to the primitives which function, or can function, as
'7nterclausal linkers'? BECAUSE, IF, I F . . . WOULD, LIKE, WHEN,
AFTER, and BEFORE. These linkers ]providea mechanism for combining
Wo or even three clauses into one complex sentence.
IFimaBly, the theoreticai concept of "ailolexy" (analogous to "ailomar-
phy") should 'Ix: mentioned here, too, h r allthough it is not a new concept
in MSM theory, it is one which raises important questions for NSM gram-
mar. For example, the account of the combiruatoriaP possibilities of the
primitives SQMEQNE and SOIMETWlNG proposed here depends on t k
assumptions that in English, person (in same of its uses] can be seen as an
alkolex of SOMEONE, and thing (in some of its uses), as an allolex of
SQMETHING.
3. Substaurtives: YOU,b; SOMEONE, PEOPLE;
SOMETHING
YOU and I have a wide range of wniversat syntactic roles. Perhaps the most
important one among them is the role of "psyclkologicd subject". What
I mean by this is )that YOU and I can universally owur in combination
with the mental predicates THINK, KNOW, W A W , FEEL, SEE, and
NEAR:
I thinmnowiwanUf~Useehear.
You t h i n M h o w / w a n ~ f e e l / s ~ e a r r
s is not to say that there are no restrictions on these combinations. In
dar, in some languages (e.g, in Japanese, see e.g. Inrowe 1979; or in
, see Haimim 19951, only 1can freely co-omur with mental predicates
eclarative sentences, whereas YOU normally combines with them only
rions [and third person subjects require the presenoe of spcial "mi-
"markers, highlighting the limited character of our kno7FFledge of
ther people's internal states).
YOU and I can also universally owm in combination with the action
predicate DO, in a role which may be conveniently labelIed as that of an
"agent'" for example:
YouA did something bad.
They can also owur in the rote of a 'cmover", in combination with the
edicate MOVE:
, YOU and II a n combine with the predicates of description and
ion, as in the foilowing sentences:
You are a goodhad person.
I am a badigood person.
U and I @an be used in the r d e of either of the arguments of a 'Yela-
in relationai sentences such as the following ones:
You are llike this other person/me.
I am like other peopleiyou.
They can also co-owur with spatial (though not with temporal] predimte
phrases:
I am in this @am;you are in another place.
I am under this thing; you are above this other person.
I am here; you are here.
I am far from you.
Furthermore, YOU and I occur as "patients" in combination with the
universal predicates HAPPEN and DO, for example:
Something bad happened to meiyou.
This person did something bad to me.
116 GeiteralI3mes
In combination with SAY, they can also occur in the role of an
eraddre~~ae":
This person said something to meirgrou.
Finally, YOU anldl I can be used in the role of a "psylclhoEogica1 object'"
in sentences swh as the following ones:
1thinlk about you.
This person knows everything about y o d m .
31.2. SOMEONE and PEOPLE
By and large, SOMEONE and PEOPLE have the same combinatariial pros-
sibilities as YOU and I:
This persodthese people think(s)Jknow(s)~want~s)iFeeIQs~,see(s>iElhmr(s)
something.
Someone did something (bad) to this persodthese people.
Something bad happened lto this persodthese people.
This persodthese people moved.
I said something to this persodthese people.
This person is a gooctll'bad person.
These people are goodhad people.
This person is (not] like other people.
These people are (not) like other peo@e.
This person is in another plaoe.
Them people are in this place.
I think about this persodthese people.
None the less, there are some systematic difTerences beltwen YOU a
on the one hand, and SOMEONE and PEOPLE on the
the restrictions on combinability with mental predicates
SOMEONE and PEOPLE, in contrast to YOU m d I, can co-o
wide range of ""dteenniuners", for example:
this persodthese people (*this I, "this you)
the same person, the same people (*the same Ilyou)
another person, other people ("another you.0)
one person ("one 1, lone you)
two persons, two people (*two I-s)
many perlaons, rnmy people (*many I-Q
d l (these) persons, all peoiple ("all I-s)
The reason why YOU m d I, on the whole, don%combine with "datenn
ers'bnll '~uaatifiers"whereas SOMEONE and PEOPLE do is af mu
clear, given the uniqueness of every "'I"' and every "thouu"(YOU-Sg), and
the non-uniqueness of "persons"and "people~'.2
It should be wted h a t in many languages the basic word for SOME-
ONE doesn't readilly wmbine with 'Veteminers" either. For example, irr
English ane doesn? tomalily speak of thb someone, one someone, or the
s m e someone; and in Russian the phrase Pdot kto-to ("s someone') is even
less aweptab8e than its English counterpart. Usually, however, SOMEONE
has alPoUexes which can readily caimbine with determiners 4e.g. peaan in
English); and of course words more complex than SOMEONE (but includ-
ing SOMEONE in their meaning) are widely used in combination with
determiners @.goSht man).
E Perhaps the main wason for the awkwardmess of expressians such as
"this someone" lies in the fact that their meaning is usudallly encoded in a
special portmanteau, that is, in the third person pronouns such as he m d
JAB in English. The fact that most languages have such portmanteaus
[sametimes with, and sometimes without, an added reference to gender]~
highlights the importance of the combination of THIS and SOMEONE in
human discourse.
Do both SOMEONE and PEOPLE combine with all the elements
included here in the list of '"determiners" and ""qantiffiew7? I would sug-
gest that while both these elements combine with THIS, THE SAME,
OTHER, TWO, SOME, MANY, and ALL, perhaps only SOMEONE
mbinew -with ONE (as in one person). In fact (as mentioned earlier),
English itsellf provides a good example of the asymmetuy between PEOPLE
(plural) and its non-existent singular equivalent (with the word person not
hieing as strictly restricted to humans as the word people is]. (See Chaplter
?t
What I am suggesting, then, is that perhaps the semantic element FEO-
PLE doesn't really combine with the ""dtermjlnerkquantiffier"" ONE, or
er, that it can onily combine with ONE in the '~artitilre""r "sdective"]
ency option ONE OF?
'one people (in the relevant sense of people)
one of these people
Finally, whille YOU and I, as well as SOMEONE and PEOPLE, can be
described as "good" or "'lbadY'(e.g."you are good"") only the latter pair can
comlbine with these evaluators as attributes:
someone goodsomeone bad (a good personfa bad person)
good peopldbad people
The range of quan~ltjerswith which YOU (that is, THOU')combines, mag be diEerent
from that of 1. The matter requires further investigation.
 But perhaps the most important, and unique, role of SOMETHING is that
3.3. SOMETHING of a complement, clovering the range lof a "'psychological ~;lomplement",a
SOMETHING (with am allolex ccthing'p)l has a wide, and, one might add, "speech complementy',am "action connplemenrt'~and am "event complment":
remarkably heterageneous, range of syntactic roles. There is a l a g over- I wanr%rncaw/&i&feePseekeari~omethiang~
lap with the roles of SOMEONE, but not d l the roles of SOMEONE asc: JI said somethhg.
equally applicable to SOMETHING, and some rdes of SOMETI-ILRrlG arc: E did something.
not applicable to SOMEONE at all. Nomtallly, SOMETHING doesn't Something happened to me.
occur in the roles of a psy&aPogiic;ll sub:je.ct:
?This thing wants (*thinks) something.
4. Mental Predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE,
HEAR
?This )thingdid something.
Mental predicates (THINK, KNOW* WANT, FEEL, SEE, and HEAR)
ombinle, first of all, with 'cpsycholagicd subjects" (I, YOU, SOMEONE,
?I said this to this thing. FEOPLE]:
but under certain circunrstanms it can appear [at least semi-felicitouslyjl in Uyou thinkjrptnowIwmtJfeek'se&ear somet thing)^.
an these robs. ('%is applies, itu particular, ta animals and hmm mllwtives.)l Someone thinksflnowdwantsIFeeBsJseesJlkears(something).
In addition, SOMETHING [thing) can occur in the role of a "patient" People thinkflrnowiwan~feeliseeirhear~(sornething).
or a cGmover'y:
Furthermore, they a11 take a "psychotlogical complernenliY~IISOME-
You did this ta this thing. THING, THIS), for example:
Something happened to this thing.
This thing mowed. You want something.
This person knows this.
It a n aho o m r as a ccsubjed''of evaluation, description, relation, or lwa- These people feel something bad.
tion: I seehear something.
This thing is gaodfbad. The range of possible "complements" is no doubt different in each case.
This thing is bigsmall. For THINK and KNOW* the complement slot is likely to be Mled by a
This thing is like this other thing. whole proposition [e.g. "'I think that. . . X".', know that . . .") Far
This thing is udedabove all these other things. THINK, it can also be fiIled by direct discourse (e.g. ''I thought: gee? how
This thing is an the other side. strange!").. Far WANT, the most Iikely complement probably takes the
This thing is fw (from this place]. form of an "quiclause" (e.g. "I wanted to goY3,and in any case, even if
Unlike YOU and I, but Like SOMEONE, SOMETHING can also be Ithe "com'plement" slot is dilled by a "substantive" (THIS or SOME-
combined with an attribute: THING), this "substantive" has to stand for a proposition (since sentences
such as "I want an apple'%ave to be interpreted as an abbreviated form of
something goolcllibad (a goodhad thing) solnbnms about having or getting an object, "1 want to havelget an applen).
something bighimdl (a bidsmall thing) SEE differs from the other mental predicates in its ability to take SOME-
Furthemore, SOMETHING-like SOMEONE-can combine with a ONE end PEOPLE in its "mmpleaent" slot, m d also to cembine with &
wide range of determiners (with the same d1Qlexicrestrictions as SOME- place adjunct:
ONE): I saw someone.
this thing; another thing (someone else); the same thing; one thing You saw many people.
two things; many things; few things; all things (everything] I sae someone in this place.
120 General Issues
(In Endish the verb hear, too, has these combinatorial possibilities, but this
is unlikely to be universal.)
Perhaps the least clear of all is the semantic syntax of FEEL. In many
languages [including English), sentences with FEEL and cccomplements'N
such as somethilgg or s ~ are
B not fully aweptable. In English, sentences such
as '" feel goad"",'E feel bad", and "'P Fecl like this" "sound of course better
than "Heel something like this". The syntax and semantics of FEEL sen-
hnces in other languages require careful investigation before m y firm
hypatheses concerning the cambinatorial possibilities of FEEL can be wn-
fidently put forward.
In addition to the '%complements", some mental predicates open a slat
for what we might call a "psychological topic"; for example: "to tthlnuk
about smething" and 'Yo know about something". These "psychobgid
topicsY"an co-occur with the "psychological ccmmplements" "to think
something about something", ""toknow something ahout somettuing"'. (It Is
by no means clear, however, that in all languages the exponents of THINK
and K;N.O'W have as many ;as throe dierent slots; the picture presented
here is at this stage only a matter of conjecture.)
In the explications of various emotion concepts, I have often used the
phrase "to feel something (good or bad) towards someonre", which seems
very useful in modelling similarities and diflerences between different m o -
tion terns (see e.g. Wierzbicka 1992ejl. One can doubt, however, whether
FEEL really has such a valency. It is m r e probable that both FEEL and
"
WANT have, universally, only two slots: "psychological subject" and
"psychob@call complement" (e.g. want someitlking" ""I don't feel ang-
thing'".
Finally, it must be noted that all mental predicates have also a time slot
vcat that time, I itlhough~knew~wante&f"elu'~awflneard . . ."),although the
exact rmge of possibilities may be in each case different.
5. Speech: SAY
The primitive SAT occupies, one might say, an intermediate place between
mental predicates and the action preldlicate DO. In a sense, "saying some-
thing" can bue seen as a form of "doing something"', and so the "subjmt"
of SAYING can be seen as an agent. Since, hawever, SAYING can allso 'i3e
done in one" head, the '%ubject'kf SATING can also be seen irs a "psy-'
chological subject", andogous to the "subjwt'kof THINK or WANT.
Like DO, SAY has also an obligatory slot for a "comp1ement"":ne "says
somethingyy,as one "does something"', (Mental predicates, too, have a slot
for a "mmplmenX'", but not necessarily an oMigatorqr"me; see e.g. "I
thought about pu"..) For example:
3. Universal Grammar 12 1
You said something.
1said this.
This person said the same.
If you say one word . . .
There is also an obligatory time slot (tlrougl~not a place slat). Pn fact, SAY-
ING,like DOING, requires a fairly specific location in time (whereas men-
tal predicates can Rave a more indefinite time span).
Importantly, SAY opens a slot for an addressee. I have often argued
gagaimst, for example, Ross 19711or MclCawley 19731 that SAY doesn't nec-
essarily presuppose an addressee [see e.g. Wierzbicka 19TQ, I980), and I
by this. But while there is no obligatory addressee slat, there is cer-
an optional one. Thus, while the sentence
ad Eiod said: let there be light! (Genesis 1: 33
not elliptical far 'mod said to someone: let there be light!'" the sentence
angel said )to her: "Don't t afraid, Mary''
m n o t be anallysed into a "manotransitive SAY" and something else, along
e angel said somethhg; the angel wanted Mary to hear this.
it may be true that "saying something TO someone" hpPks want-
person to hear what we are saying, this doesn" differentiate the
essee from lather people whom the speaker may also want to hem the
age. For example, one can say:
He said it to Mary, not to me, but I know that he wanted me to hear
means that just as DO has two irreducible valency options [DO and
TO), so has SAY [SAY and SAY TO).
fact, I would suggest that SAY has one extra valency option (a third
1, realized in English in the frame of SAY ABOUT, as in the sentence
I want to say something about these people.
f THINK and KNOW, realized
ABOUT, KNOW ABOUT), the
ould be called (for convenience)
slot, the "locutionary topic'"51ot
AS I have proposed in Wienbicka (151764.

6. Actions, Ewnts, and Movement: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
6.8. DO
Obviously, the action predicate [DO] opens, mniversalPy, an "agntY'slot:
I/yodsomone/5?aople did (something).
As the illustrative sentence above suggests, it opens also a slot for art
"action mmplementyq:
I did something (bad).
You did this.
I did the same.
Clearly, there is also am (obligatory) time slot:
k t t h t t h e , Vyou did this.
as well as an (optional) place slot:
I did it in the same place.
The difference between the time and place slots is that time is relevant to
all DO sentenms, whereas place is relevant only to some of them.
[Sentences with mental predicates do have a time slot, bat they don't have
ptaoe slots at all.]
What is perhaps less clear about the semantic syntax of DO is the pres-
ence of a ccpatient"slot. In earlier publications (see e.g. Wierzbicka 1981) I
attempted to analyse sentences such as '"Thlis person did something [bad)
to me" via "do" md 'chappen to", dong the following lines:
This person did something bad to me. =
this person did something @ad]
because of this, something bad happened to me (at the same time)
a Something bad h a p p e d in this place.
I have come to recognize, however, that (as argued in Boguslawski 19911
this kind of analysis is untenable, if only because "DO TOYhentencesvbw
the situation as a single event, whereas a 'WO + HAPPEN TO" sentenoe
views the situation as two causaily linked events.'
H m n o t accept, however, Bogustawski" furher suggestion that DO md
DO TO aw two different semantic primitives. Since the alleged two e1e-
rnents IiEO and DO TO appear to be realized, universally, by means of the
same lexical exponents, H think it is more justified to conclude that they rep-
resent a m diflerent valency options of the same primitive; and that
This is a point that Nick Enffield rightly insisted vpon during a seminar discwssicm at the
ANU, thus helping to clarify the difference between DO TO and DO + HAPPEN TO.
"patient" is an additional (optional) syntactic slot in the structure of D 0
sentences,
Finally, I foreshadowed in Chapter 1 the possibility of yet another
vsulency option for DO, namely, an "'instrumental optionYWOWITH
("someone did something with something'"), as in the folllowing sentences:
This person did this with one hand.
This person did this with somielthing of this kind (a knife, a hanunerr,
a boomerang, erc.).
At this stage, however, this valency option is proposed only very knta-
tively.
6.2. HAPPEN
Taming to the element HAPPEN, we m d a similar valency structure except
for the absence of an "agent" (and sw. "instawment") slot and far the cen-
bra1 position of the "patient" role. The ""patient slot'kf HAPPEN TO sen-
bnces 6e.g. "something bad happened to me'" corresponds to the optional
"patlent'hlot in DO senfences @.g. "'you did something bad to me"'). An
obligatory "evmt compRement" (e.g. somethingkttnidthe same happened to
me] corresponds to the 'kction complement" in H)Q sentences (e.g. "'I did
$omethin@this/the'same"). The time slot is inherent in both DO and
HAPPEN sentences [e.g. "at that rime, I did the same", "at that time, the
sane happened to me"). Both DO md HAPPEN sentences have allso place
slots [e.g. " I d i d it in this place", '*smething happened to me in this
place").
But in HAPPEN sentences, a place slot can also be an alternative to the
"patient'blot. In a ccpatientless"sentence such as
phrase "'in tiis place" is an alternative to a "patient phrase" (e.g. 'Yo
I)), rather than an ;adjunct (as in "something happened to me in this
"") This means that just as the element DO has two alternative pat-
,A and B:
(A) X did something
(36) X did something to Y
element HAPPEN, too, has two alternative patterns (C and D):

6.3. WOVE
MOVE occurs as a predicate: in combination with all the substantives:
moved.
Ilyoulsomeonefsomct[hin~this
These two people moved.
It is possible that MOVE can also occur, universally, in combination
with place (WHERE):
Something is moving over there.
Something moved here.
Possibly, this additional dot ( h e WHERE slot) is avalhble ody in sen-
tences with an "indehite'hubstantive, above all, with SOMETHING.
En an earlier draft of this chapte~(distributed to the participants of the
1994 Canberra Symposium on the Universal Syntax of Meaning) 1 have
suggested that MOVE can combine with "direction* (TOWARDS), as in
the following sentence:
The dog was running towards me.
They were going south,
She t m e d right.
She was walking away from me.
It is quite impossible to paraphrase such sentences in a way which would
dissociate "direction" "om "mc~vement".In fact, the two notions ("move-
ment" and "directioaa'" appear to be linked so dosely that I have even sug-
gested that MOVE and MOVE TOWARDS should perhaps be considered
as two valency options of the same Iconmpt (rather like DO and DO TO,
ar SAY and SAY TO).
But cross-linguistic evidence does not support this suggestion. In many
languages (including Pdish) the verb ~omspoodingto the proposed prim-
itive MOVE does not combine with directional elements like forvwrds,
although more compllex verbs of movemermt (such as 'goymd 'comeli) do.
Clearly, the matter requires further inlrestigatbm-as does also one fmther
possible valenq option of MOVE, discussed at the Semandcs Symposium
in Ga~~bcrra in 15515514: ""person X moved body-part Y"".
7. Existence and Life: BE (THERE ESjARE] and LIVE
7.1. BE
?"he predicate BE co-owurs with the "substantiwsY3SOMETPIING,
SOMEONE, and PEOlPLE, and with the "classifiers" KIND amd PART,
usually in combination with same further determiners and frequently with
a ilmalionall phrase. It is doublfui whether, for example, the Cartesian
"sum", 'I am', '1 exist' (in "'Cogito ergo sum'') couPd be satisfacroriJy ren-
&red, and make sense, in! all the languages of the wodd.
Existential sentences which can be expected in all cultures include prob-
ably the ifolIowing kinds:
There are three kinds af bat.
There is no such thing (as this).
There are many people 1Be that (of this kind).
There are no trees in this place.
There is a lot of water here.
There is no water here.
There is someone in the garden.
As mentilaanled in Chapter 2, sentences of this kind do not have to include
any "existential verWyand they may convey their existential meaning iq dif-
ferent ways, but it can be expected that some lexico-grammatical means for
conveying that meaning will always be avaiiabb.
Sometimes, existence may seem dificult to distinguish Dom locatio~(to
be SOMEWHERE), and aften BE and W E R E share their lexical expo-
ents (see e.g. I. Lyons 1977, ii. 723a; Clark i19709:
(44)There are two people in the garden.
[B) (Where is everyone?)
Two people are in the garden [and three in the house next door],
ut the very fact that existence and location can co-occur (as in the sen-
nce: "there is a lot of water here") %hawsthat they are not different
pects of the same notion, and I would hypothesize that, despite overlaps,
aU hnguages the two concepts ]in question can be overtly distinguished.
It should be noted, however, that (despite the abundant litmature on the
bject) the relationship between existence and location requires a great
al of further study.
7.2. LIVE (ALIVE]
VE is a wcry rcocfilt addition to the stet of primitives, and at this stage kit-
is known about its grammar. One could venture to say, however, that it
a predicate, and that it opens a slot or slots for temporal adjuncts:
These people l i d for a long time.
These two people Eved at the same time.
This person was alive at that time.
uPd appear that for the purposes of classification, LIVE cam also bz
thout any adjuncts:
 These things are living things (= Piwe?).
On the other hand, co-occurrenm of LIVE with spatial adjuncts is p r o k -
bly not universal, alithough two separate types of sentences need to be dis-
tinguished here: those referring to temporary residence (e.g. '2 live in
Canberra'" and those referring to permanent living conditions (e.g. "Fish
live in water"). The nee of the expomnts of LIVE in the first of them types
is mrtainly not universal; their use in the second type relqluires further inves-
tigation.
8. Determiners anid Quantifiers; THIS, THE SAME, OTHER;
ONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH], SOME, ALL
8.1. THIS
THIS has a wide range of roles, because it has, so to speak, a double claws
membership: it can function as both a "deteminer" and a c'substantive'y.
(Sometimes two different f o m s have to be used in these two different roles,
e.g, kore (substantive) and k o n ~(determiner) in Japanese, but as 1 have
argued in Wiembicka (19911b), these two f o m s can be regarded as two
allolexes of the same semantic primitive.)
As a "substantive"",THIS can occur in the role of a "subject'bf evalu-
ation, de~ription,relation, or lcmtion (that is, as an "evaluatum"',
"descrlpturn", "relatarnn", or 'ciocatum"):
This is goo&bad.
This is big~'smaP1.
This is like this other thing.
This is abavdunder this other thing.
This is not in the s m e place.
Like all the other "substantives", THIS can also oocur in the: '"atient" role:
Something bad happened to this.
Like one other "substantive", SOMETHING, it can also occur as a "corn-
pleanent'" with DO, HAPPEN, and SAY, and with at least four mental
predicates (KNOW, WANT, SEE, and NEAR):
I did thislthis happened to me.
I said thidI b o w thidI want t h i d see this/I hear this.
It can also occur in a "predicate nominal" role in relational sentences:
A1 these other things are under/abovnsde this.
All these things are like this.
At the m e time, THIS can owur in the r o b of a "'determiwer'Yia combi-
nation with other "substantiws": this thing, this person, these people, (in]
this plaoe, [alt) this time, this kind, this part.
Furthermore, THIS am comibinne with some of the other "determiners",
notably with OTHER, ONE, TWO, and ALL: this other person, this one
person, these two people, all these people. It can also combine with the ele-
ment LIKE, forming with it a quasi-determiner ""le this", e.g. someone
Pike this, something like this. ""Lke this" is is important semantic molecule,
often realized as a single portmanteau morpheme like so [or such) in
English. This molecule can combine with all the "opposites" in the semm-
tic system: so good, so bad; so big, so small; so far, so close; so long, such
a short time.
8.2. THE SAME
m e universal syntax of THE SAME is not clear at this stage. It appears,
however, that it can, mniversallly, function as a "determiner" and can com-
bine with the "substantivm" SOMETHING, SOMEONE, and PEOPLE
(though not with YOU or I):
the m e person; the same peopb; *the same you; *the same I
It can also combine with ""pace" and "time":
at the same t h e ; in the same place
and with the classifiers:
the same part; the same kind
It is also likely that THE SAME can, universally, play the role of a "corn-
plemenb"s and so function as a quasi-substantive, for example:
I did the sanrejEI said the same.
I though~wante~feQ.tiE(?)knew the same.
The same happened b me.
Like THIS, it can also occur in the role of a "psychological topic":
I thought about the same.
Last but not least, it should be said that presumably in all languages THE
SAME e m be used not only anafiorically but also cataphorically, and that
in the latter case it opens a syntactic slot for the second member of the
equation: THE SAME AS. For example:
I ~d the sarne as you.
This thing is of the sarne kind as this other thing.
130 General Issuers
Like the 'cdeteminers'WTHER and THE SAME, MORE may @haps)
open a dot for a complement of its o m , for exampler
more than two thhgs of the same kind
Apparently, MORE can also combine with several determiners:
much more, one more, two more
Perhaps the central role lof ithe evaluators GOOD and BAD is that of
ccattributes":
someone goodhad (a goodjibad person)
something goodhad (a goodjibad thing)
g o o a a d people
(Whether or not, or to what extent, such an attributive use can be extended
to times, places, parts, and kinds remains to be investigated.)
It is not entirely dear whether GOOD and BAD can be used (in non-
elliptical sentenoes) as predlicates, as in:
You are good.
This is good.
or whether such sentences shodd be regarded as non-elliptical versions of
sentences with attributive p h ~ a s e s : ~
You are a good person.
This k a good thhg.
It appears, however, that at least in some contexts GOOD and BAD c a ~
be used predicatively; in paticular, that they can be so used with respct
to 'kieElausal subjects":
1f someone does something like this, this is ba&good.
Perhaps the most interesting question which arises in connection with the
evaluators is that conwrning the relation batween GOOD and GOOD
FOR or between: BAD and BAD FOR. My suggestion is that GOOD and
G W D FOR repesent two different valency options of the same primitive
Ojust like DO and DO TO or SAY and SAY'TO do). Admittedly, one could
try to reduce GOOD FOR to G W D along the Falllowing lines:
This was good For m. =
bwatase of this, something good happened to me
* This mattes was 'brou~htto my attention by Nick Enfield (gewond communication).
But I don" think that this analysis is valid. From a moral point of view, it
may be imporaa~lltto distinguish something that is "good for a person"
from "something good that has h a m e n d to a person'". For example, for
many marall teachers it may be important to be able to say things such as:
When something bad happens to you, it may be good for you.
If good things always happen to a person it may be bad for that prson.
A language which wouldn't be capable of expressing such ideas could be
regarded as impaverished, and we can hypothesize that alh: ]languages are
capable of expressing them.
11. Descriptors: BIG and SMALL
The descriptors BEG and SMALL have, primarily, an "attributive" role:
(a] bi@small thing (see Jso: something big)
(a] bigismall person (see also: someone big)
bigkmall people
(a) biglsrnaS11 place
(a) bi@srnalI part
On the face of it, they cam also be used predicatively; far example:
These people are bi@small.
As in the case of GOOD and BAD, however, it is not dear whether
such a "predicative'bse shodd not be regarded as a csypto-attributive
use:
These people are b i ~ s m d pheopje.
l
. Sentences such as:
This is bi@small.
may or may not be universallly available, but even if they were, a case could
perhaps be made for regarding them as dlipticd, since the very notions of
BIG and SMALL imply a reference to s o w standard of cornparisom.
12. Time: WHEN, AFTER, BEFORE, A LONG TIME, A
SHORT TIME, NOW
WHEN [or AT A TIME) can be used, above all, as a 'kclause adjunct"". It
is obligatory in DO, HAPPEN, and MOVE sentences, and possibly m
i n SAY
sentences:
 At that time, you did something.
At the same time, something happened to me.
At s o w other time, this thing moved.
At that time, E said something to this person.
To same extent, temporal adjuncts can no doubt also combine with men-
tal predicates:
At that time, I thought that he was a good person.
At that time, I wanted to do it.
At that time, I felt something bad.
At h a t time, II didn't know ananything about i t
At that time, I sawheard something.
But the exact nature, and cxtcnt, of lhcse co-accurrcnccr;.lrcqunircs further
iinvestigationr.
In many languages, the exponent of WHEN can also be used in a
biclausal construction, in which it Ewnctlons as an interclausal linker (cf.
When E did these things, I felt something bad.
It can be argued, bowever (as suggested by Goddard, personal c o m r r l -
cation), that when used as an interclausal linker, the English word whm,
and its counterparts in other Ira~nguages,stand not just for the primitive
WHEN 0.e. AT A TIME] but for a semantic molecule combining WHEN
and THIS:
At some time before now, I did these things.
At this time, I feet something bad.
The element NOW cannot serve as an interclausal linker, and it cannot
take "deetdners" (compare, for example, at ski$ time versus *this now,
and a8 the same time versus *"the same now), but otherwise the syntax of
NOW appears to be similar to the s p t a of WHEN: NQW can combine
with the mental predicates, with DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, and LIVE, with
spatial predicates, and so on. For example:
P now thinWknowiwanltSfeeYseer'hearisay. . .
This penon is moving naw.
These people live now.
The elements BEFORE and AFTER can perhaps be regarded as spwial
modifiers (determiners) of time adjuncts, cormparable to the universal deter-
mher THE SAME
at the same time; before ebis time; after this time
In past and future tenses, the elements BEFORE and AFTER are COW-
Bined semantically witrith the element NOW ("before now', '"after now'). But
if the basic temporal element WHEN [AT A TIME) operates, primarily, as
a clause adjunct, the two time "modifiers" BEFORE and AFTER, which
serve to establish the temporall sequence of two events, are often used as
dause linkers (because the two events in question may well be referred to
in different clauses). For example:
You were born before P was born.
I was born after you were born.
Something bad happened after you did this.
This happened before H saw you.
Cross-iinguistic;allyl however, the most common use of thc ellcrncwt
ER is probably in a narrative, where phrases meaning Wter tRisTCand
') arc used to introduce a i~ewevent. It is likely that BEFHOIRE, too, is
primarily in comlsinaitiorn with THIS ybefsre this"") It is important to
however, that in phrases such as "after this'' and '"before this"' *'thisy'
o refer to the content of an entire clause.
urning now to the two dumdonal concepts A LONG TIME and A
TIME, un;e will note that they combine, first of alll, with the pred-
0,HAPPEN, MOVE, and LIVE, and also with all the menta!
I was doing it for a long tirne.
It happened a long time ago.
I felt something bad for a short time.
He lived for a long time.
13. Space: WHERE; EAR, NEAR; UNDER, ABOVE; SIDE;
INSIDE; HERE
3.1. WHERE and HERE
WHEN, WHERE (IN A PLACE), too, can be a clause adjunct, but
ange of predicates with which it GO-OGCUPS is of course difterent: essen-
y, it w-occurs only with HAPPEN and DO (and possibly MOVE and
l a happened in this place.
I did it in another place.
Something moved in this place.
s with mental predicates do not have a place slot, exapt perhaps
. Sentences such as:
 71 thoughtknewiwantd it in another place.
if aoceptabfe at d l , must be regarded as elliptical. As b r as FEEL is con-
cerned, the situation is unclear.
The relation between SEE and WHERE (IN Jar. PLACE), too, is at this
stage far from clear. Can sentences such as
I see something over there.
be reduced to a combination of sentences about seeing and senltences about
existence and location, along the lines of
I see something
this something is over there
(there is something over there)?
It could be argued that they cannot. For example, sun oasis that I can see
in, the distanoe may be simply a mirage (and so may not be there at all, in
the phce where I see it), and an apparition which someone can see in a
place may not be really there. (Recall Berkeley's CLJ13) point that the sen-
tence "1 see a silver speckin the sky" doesn" imply that "there is" a silver
s p k in the sky.)
Unlike WHEN phrases, however, WHERE phrases can also be predi-
cates in their own right [as BE IN A PLACE or BE SOMEWHERE). For
example:
This thing is in this place.
I know where it is.
I was somewhere else.
As predicates, WHERE phrases can be ~ombinedwith ail the Ccsu'bstaa-
tilres" (YOU, I, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE, and THIS].
Finally, the syntax of HERE appears to be similar to that of WHERE,
as the syntax of NOW is similar to the syntax of WHEN. Natiplrarllly, HERE
(like NOW) does not combine with "determiners" (in another place versus
*amother here). In contrast to the relatianship between NOW and WHEN,
however, the two spatial primitives can sometimes co-occur, as in the
phrase ""smewhere here". Like WHERE, HERE can allso be used pried-
icativeiy, as BE HERE. For example:
I am here.
13.2. FAR and NEAR
At first sight, the concept of "distance'~clhowfar?") appears to be parallel
to the temporall concept of "duration" ('for how long?'), In fact, it codd
even be argped that the twa represent two different faces of ltk same can-
cept: 'Wistance in space" and "distanoe in time"" I would reject such an
argument, however, because the notion of "distance" is, in my view, inher-
ently spatial, and phrases such as "distance in time" ';are metaphorical.
Furithemore, while it could be mgued that the idea of "'boundaries'"
w i f e s t e d in synrirctic frames such as 'Tram-to" is relevant to both 'Ws-
Itanwy3and 'cdurationy',
[PI) I did it for a long t h e (from 9 to 5).
CIE) It is very far (from this plaae to this other place).
it should be pointed out that the 'Tram-toYVrame plays a different role in,
wch mse. In fact, the notion of EAR is inseparable from that of c'from-toyQ;
but the notion of A LONG TIME does make sense even without any
explicit or implicit reference to "boundaries"":
I did it for a long time (never mind from when to when].
It is far away (?never mind from where to where).
E submit, then, that the idea of "distance" ((EAR and NEAR) makes sense
only with reference to two sped& places, whereas the idea of "duration"
[A LONGE'SHOWT TIME) does not have to refer to two specific times.
Conselquently,the "from-to" syntactic frame (or an alternative frame dis-
cussed below) is obligatory in (non-elliptical) sentenoes about distance, but
ornly optional in (non-elliptical] sentenoes about duration.
The alternative frame mentioned above takes in English the form of the
prepositionfiom, without an anocompamrying $0;for example:
This thing is too far from me-H can" teach it.
You me too far from mie-come closer.
hat I I[ suggesting, in effect, is that while the predicate FAR always
quires two referenoe-points, these refereme-points don't have to be
aces, but can d s o be people or things:
(A] (10 is far from place A to place B.
( 0 ) Thindperson A is far from thindperson B.
or example, I suggest that when we say af an object that it is long, what
mean is that (what is ~anoeptualizedas] the first part of this objcxt is
From (what is comnceptualized as) its Bast part. In other words, I suggest
t perhaps we conceptualize length in terns of a distance between things
a&) rather than between piams.
3.3. UNDER and ABOVE
Turning now to UNDER and ABOVE phrases we will note that at first
sight they may seem to be similar in their functioning to the temporal

modifiers BEFORE and AFTER. If the latter we to be interpreted as mod-
i h r s of the temporal notion AT A TIME the former can be sets
as modifiers of the spatial nation IN A PLACE WHERE):
ThL thing is wnderPabova this oll~crthing. =
this thing is in the place undedabove this other thing
This interpretation, however, is not without some problems. To begin with,
if we want ta say that, for example,
The sky is above everything.
do we mean that the sky is in a phm above everything? Or if we want to
say that
The head is above all the other parts of a person's body.
do we m a n that the head is in a gi8zloe [which is] above the places where all
the other parts of a person" baddy are? An interpretation abng these lines
seems counter-intuitive. It may be more j,ustified, therefore, to regard
UNDER and ABOVE as relational, rather than strictly locational, notions,
This approach would also sdve another probllem, namely that of the
metaphorical ;appLatiorz of the concept ABOVE (if not UNDER) to peo-
pie (with reference to their status, podtion, power, and so on). Ht is quirte
likely that the metaphorical use of the notion AB07JE with referenm b
people is universal and that, for example, the idea that God is "above all
people" can be rendered, and be wndewtoad, in a4 languages [sele
Wierzbicka forthcming b). But this meltaphar would make little sense if it
were to k interpreted in terms of places. It is true that "heaven" (166od"s
place) is, metnphoricalllg speaking, a place which is "aboveY'theearlth @ea-
ple's slam). But the metaphor of "heaven" is distinct from the metaphor of
"father'" and the Uatlter has dearly to do with the relatio~between Gad and
people, and not Ibetwtxn two plaoes.
13.4. SIDE @INWHAT SIDE)
The concept of SIDB is used to indicate location (WHERE) of people,
things, and even places:
This person (thing] is on this side now; before, it was on the other side.
In addition to the pewqn, thing, or place whose location is being descrilxd,
SIDE requires also a point of reference. Often, this poimt of reference need
not be mentioned explicitiy, being provided by the person of the speaker3
(PP the person spoken of.
The most important point about the grammar of SIDE is that it is not a
"substantive", and that its full frame is "on side X of l'"(where X stands,
3. CPFFa'xpessal G r a m a s 113 7
Ebr some ccdeterminer'L,for example, "this'" whereas Y stands for some
"substantive"-prototy~,ically# a person).
The concept of JMSIDE may seem to be related to thalt of SIDE CuON
WHAT SIDE), but H believe that the links between the two are not com-
itional: a sentence such as "A is inside iB'3oes not mean that '2is on
inner side of B'" h a u s e SIDE (ON nHIS) SIDE) implies an adjacent
oeation, and the notions of 'insideknd "djacencybre not mutually com-
The syntax of the two concepts CON WHAT SIDE and INSIDE) is not
identical either, since one of them opens three slots, and the other, two:
A is on side Xof B*
A is inside B.
s not clear at this stage how many predicates can combine with INSIDE.
ly, WHERE (be SOMEWHERE] an-so much so that we might be
to view HNSDB as a spiaE case of "being somewhad"' But things
"happen" ininside something (a house, a cave, a womb), and so we
ouPd allow, perhaps, that WSIDE can combine directly with HAPPEN.
14. Interclausal Linkers: BECAUSE, IF, IF . . . WOULD
terclausal Ilinken constitute a powerful device for building complex
antic structures out of simple propositions. One such linker, W E N ,
already k e n introduced in Section 12, on time. But the primary func-
of WHEN is, arguably, that af a temporal adjunct. By mntrast, the
e elements discussed in the present section are primarily, or even ex&-
iwly, interclausal linkers.
BECAUSE
ECAUSE @an function either as an interclausal linker or as a dause
unet. Arguably, its primary rale is that of a linker, as in the folbwing
tenoe:
The dog died because the man hit it con the head (not because of some-
thing else).
s a clause adjunct, BECAUSE commonly occurs in phrases such as
of this'" in dauses whicch present an event on. a state of affairs as
from that described in the preceding sentence; for example:

The man hit the dog on the head; because of this, the dog died.
Frorrv a logic01 point or vicw, onc would expect that BECAUSE always
links events, and therefore that it has to connect a clause with another
clause or with a clause substitute (a "substantive"-THIS or perhaps
SOMETHING-referring to the content of another clause). In natural lan-
gwg, however, the role of BECAUSE does not seem to be similarly
restricted, and phrases such as "because of me" or "because of you" may
in fact be uniwersalfy available. If they are, then there is perhaps no need
to regard them as elliptical or polysemous. (See Jackendoff 1983: 176-81.
IF is another iterc8ausd linker. Pm contrast to BECAUSE, however, it can
only combine with a clause (as a part of a complex sentence); it cannot
combine with a substantive THIS or SOMETHING substituting for a
clause:
If you do this, people will say something bad about you.
*If something, people will say something bad about you.
The phrase "if not" may seem to provide a munter-example to this claim,
but it is probably not universal. {It cannot be universal if it is true tbait in
some languages negation is realized only as a verbal suffix; and R. M.W
Dixon @ e r s o d communication) informs me that this is the w e in the
Amazonian language Jarawara,)
In English (and in m n y other languages) the IF-clause can follow the
ather ("main") clause of an IF-sentence, but this option doesm" t e r n to be
univelvalIy available. [For example, according to Tien (1994) it is not avail-
able in Chinese.)
14.3. I F .. .WOULD
The primitive PF . . . WOULD, too, is primarily an inlterclausal linker:
If you had been hese, sir, my brother would mot have died. (The New Englkh
Bib[@,John 11: 2131
Pf I w r e you E wouldn't do it.
In many languages it can also introduce a wish c1ause (e.g. "if only I were
there . . ."')I, but these can probably be regarded as elliptical, and, in any
case, they are not universaI (far example, they are not available in the
Austronesian ianguage Mangaaba-Mbula; see Bugenhagen forthcoming].
Unlike IF, PF . . . WOULD can also be used as part of a complex inter-
clausal linker "as iB*"that is, I F . . . WOULD plus LIKE]. For example:
3. Utriversal (C;F;CSJMII~EJT 139
He said it as if he didn" know anything.
We can hypothesize that in the unmarked order ofclauses connected by IF,
the IPc8ause comes first; but the IF . . . WOULD-clauses can come sec-
ond, notably when they occur in conjunction with LIKBAS. (See Section
211 in Chapter 2.) W y is it that a sentence combining the elements WANT
md NOT can be interpreted in two different ways? Far examplie, why can
the sentence "I don't want to go" be interpreted not only as denying that
"I want to go" but also as affirming that "']I want not to go"? And is this
phenmenon universal? The matter requires further investigation. Other
than raising this question, however, I wilI not dismss the semantic syntax
of negation amy further in the present context. (For a wealth of relevant
observations and ideas, see in particular Jesprsen 1917 and Horn 1989.)
15. Qause Operators: MOT and MAYBE
15.1. Negaltion: NOT
egation is, universally, a "clause operator"'. Remarkably, it seems to be
otally unrestricted: apparently any clause, of any kind, in any language#
am be negated. AS mentioned earlier, one difficult problem which arises in
ction with negation is its relationship with "'wanting'" The matter
es further investigation.
15.2. Possibility: MAYBE
sibility is commonly realized by means of a particle ear sentence adverb,
h can allso be regarded as a "clause operator":
Maybe it will1 rain tomorrow.
Maybe this person did something bad.
3, the same meaning can be realized by means of an aux-
verb, or by means of a bound grammatical morpheme, but its sernan-
ntax seems to be always the same (a "clause operator").
ere don't seem to be any restrictions on the combinabillity of MAYBE
different types of predicates. It combines with action, event, and
Maybe you will do it.
Maybe it happened.
Maybe someone else said it.
with mental predicates:
Maybe this person thimnkcsSknowsJwant~1/fee1dseesShea~s
tbe same.
1411 Geflcral13.rwes
and also with predicates of description, evaluation, relation, and Eomtiomt
Maybe this is gaodlbad.
Maybe this thing was a biglsnrall thing.
Maybe this thing was like time other things.
Maybe all these people were in the same plam at this time.
In this respect-its unconstrained combinabllity-MAYBE is like nega-
tion; for this reason, it may indeed be better to view it as a ""cause opera-
tor'9ather than; a "'dause adjunct".
None tEre lea, MAYBE is not quite as unconstrained as negation. In
"surface syntaxy' it doesn't combine with the imperative:
*Maybe don't do it!
and in the "semantic syntax'9t doesn? combine with "mental predicates"
In first parson (present tense) sentences, except in jocular or playful usage:
?Maybe I don't want to do it.
?Maybe I think about something else.
?Maybe I feel something bad.
Tlre reason is that MAYBE implies tbat I don't h o w sornlet21ing, and nor-
d l y lone is expected to know one's own current mental states.
16. Meitapredicate CAM
The mnnapredicate CAN mmbines, first of all, with the action predicate
DO, and perhaps, groltotypically, with "'I" as an agent. Sentences such as:
I cm't t o Id1 c a m do it.
I can't do it n w / I could do it before.
reflect w r experience of our own limitations, and also, of our freedom
(within certain limits). Next to action, movement is perhaps another pro-
totypical area within which CAN, and CANNBIT, is most salient:
I can" move.
But-phaps by extension fmm these experiential prototypes-other prd-
bicates, and other "substantives", too, can combine with CAN:
Yodsarneone/people can do it.
Hi'yod'khisperson can say the same.
I can" think about it for a long time.
But CAN can also occur in sentences with non-peaonail ""sbjats'" for
example:
This thing cam move.
When something bad happens to a person, it a n be good for this per-
son.
I know: something bad mn happen to me.
It is not clear at this stage whether there are predicates which cannot com-
binre with CAN at all.
17. Intensifier: VERY
The intensifier VERY combines, first of all, with the evaluators GOOD and
B A D and the descriptor BIG:
very goodivery badsvery big
Presumably, it also combines, universally, with the "'"determiners"
Elrl'OJCWAW*and also with the "distance primitive5TAR,and with the
durartional primitive A LONG TIME:
ve;ryr mucMvery manylvery faria very long time
Curiously, preliminary cross-linguistic bsting suggests that VERY does
not always combine as readily ;and as freely with the, so tca speak, "small"
primitives SMALL, NEAR, and A SHORT TIME as it does with their
opposites. Bath the scope and the nature of these restrictions need to be
investigated.
In many languages, W R Y (or some allonex such as very much in English]
combines also with the mental predicate WANT:
I want it very much
It is daubtfd, however, whether this is universal, if only bemuue in some
languages [e.g. in Kayardild, see N. Evans 1994; also Harkins 1994) 'WANT
is realized as a suffix, not as a full verib or adjective.
In most languages there are of course onher "intensifiers'" such as ar all,
redy, rear',proper, and trw in English, and their combinatorial possibili-
ties may go far beyond those Ested here far VERY, brat the meaning of
these 'ciintens&ers" may be different from the meaning of VERY.
18. Taxonomy, Partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF
The notion KIND co-occurs, as a rule, with a ccdeteminer'y:
this kind; mother kind; the same kind
one kind; two kinds; many kinds; all kinds
In English, and in many other languages, one can also use KIND in sen- with the concept of THERE I[XiARE; and also with ccdeteminers'a(e.g.
tences without a determiner, for example: TWO, MANY, SOME]:
An oak is a kind of tree. The elephant has a lomg nose. =
when people want to say sometlying about things of this kind
but this usage doesn" seem to be universal (see e.g. Dmie at al. 1994; or N. [ELEIPIIAJkITS]
Evans 1994). On the other hand, evidenlw suggests (see Goddad and they can say something like ttnis: this part lJ+JOSEIis long
Wierzitpicka 1994b) that in all languages one can say things such as the fol-
lowing:
There are two kinds of bat. 19. Similarity: LIKE
This is not the same fish, but it is the same kind d fish.
The combinatotial possibilities of LIKE are probably quite varied.
Presumably, it is also possible to say, in m y language, the structural To begin with, it can act as a predicative ""nnker",linkinng two "substan-
equivalent of the sentence tives":
This fish [bird, tree, eltc.1 is of the same kind as this other fish (bid, You are like me.
tree, etc.1. I am not like other people.
(Of course the concepts of 'fish", "irdl", or Yree' as such are far from mi- It can also act as an "attributive linker" of substantives:
versal. See e.g. C . Brown 1977, 1979.)
The notion of PART is at present more problematic than most of the someone like me; something like this; people like you
other oms, and little is known at this stage about its syntax. On the basis But Were are restrictions here:
of the data available, one wodd expect to find PART, universally, in met-
alingulistic sentences such as the foilowing ones: like you; *you like someone else
*Ijne
*someone like someone ellse; *people like someone else
A blade is a past of a knife.
A stump is a part of a tree. In some languages, combimatjons d this kind are realized in the f o m of
A foot is a part of someone" leg. obligatory or almost ohligaltory portmanteaus. For example, in Polish they
would normally be rendered as follows:
I w u l d also expect that. the concept of PART can be found, uniwrsally,
in sentences of the following kind: ktok taki jab: ja
someone such as I
An axe has a handle and a blade.
A knife has two parts: a handle and a blde. cot5 takiego
A Bower has many parts which look alike. something such-GEW.
ludzie tacy jakc ty
Needless to say, I am not suggesting that all languages have a verb cor- people such as you
responding to the English verb have. Rather, I am suggesting that the
English word hve, when combined with a noun including in its meaning But difirences of this kind can be regarded as superficial.
the concept of PART (such as blnde, handle, stump, or foot), can perhaps As an 'kttributive linkery'L1LIKEcan also apply to time and place:
be viewed as an allolex of the ""eistentid" predicate THERE ISIARE. The at a time like this; in a place like this
fact that in many languages this is precisely how the 'c"prt-~hole"relation
is expressed seems to support this idea: Pn attributive phrases, then, the "head" [the compared member] can be
one of the following ('5ndehite") set: SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOi-
PL knife has two parts. = PLE, TIME, PLACE; whereas the point of referenae appears )to be
'% knife, there are two parts (in iuto it]'' restricted to the fol10wing (''definite'? %set: THIS, ME, YOU, THIS PER-
I arm suggesting, then, that the concept of PART can combine, universally, SON,THESE PEOPLE.
144 General Iswas
But LIKE phrases can allso function as "clause adjuncts", at least in com-
bination with the predicates DO, HAPPEN, and SAY:
It happened Pike this: . . . Different predicates take different types of "'ciomplements" and "abjects"
I did it like this: . . .
He said it like this: . . .
It appears that as a dause adjunct, and also as a time and place linker,
LIKE is restricted to a combination with THIS.
It seems likely &at LIKE can also function, universalllg, as an inter-
clausal linker, as h the following sentences:
Forgive us as (like) we forgive other people.
You want to do good things for me, as (like] we want to do goad
things for our children.
20, &nerd Discussion
As c m be seen from the above survey, the syntax of the natural semantic
metalanguage can be characterized as andogous in some respects to, but
much simpler than, the syntax of natural languages.
The basic unit of the WSM syntax is a "clause", which is constituted by
a "ssulbstantive" and "a predicate"', and some additional elements deter-
mined by the nature of the predicate.
In addition to this major type of clause (to be discussed betow) here is
dso one minor type, which can be regarded as an analogue of ccsubj~Eess
sentences" of the traditional grammar, and which includes 'kxisbntial sen-
tencesn~entredion the predicate THERE ESI'PLRE [e.g. '"here are many
kinds of birds"; '?!here is p9ienty of water here").
The set of "sunbstantives" hcPudes the elements I, YOU, THIS, SOME-
ONE, SOMETHING, and PEOPLE. Some of these (the last three) can be
combined into a wnit with "determiners" (THIS, THE SAME, OTHER,
ONE, TWO, SOME, MUCHlMANY, LETTLWFBW, and PILL] and
"attributes" (G00131, BAD,BlG, md SMALL].
The list of possible predicates includes the following elements:
[mental predicates]: THINK, W A m , KNOW, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
[speech] SAY
[action and e~emrsjDO, HAPPEN, MOVE
[existence and life] BE, LIVE
[relation][w LIKE; be] a PART of
[spam] in a QLACR [ k ] UNDER, [kl ABOVE; [Ruej ON [this]
SIDE; [be] INSIDE; [he] FEAR; be] NEAR; [be] HERE
[evaluation] [be] GQQD, BAD
[description] [be] BIG, SMALL
Same d these predicates can combine into a unit with the "'metapedicate"
CAN.
[as discussed under individual! predicates). In addition to predicate com-
plements, some types of clauses (depending on the nature of the predicate)
@doeaQsoclause adjuncts: temporal, spatial, and causal (e.g. at this timeJim
this plaodbecause of this).
A11 types of clauses cam combine with the two universal "cPause opera-
tors": negation and possibility (MAYBE). These two operators can co-
oaur, with NOT being within the scope of MAYBE (but not the other way
rounrd):
Maybe they didn" do it.
"They didn't maybe do it.
Clauses can be combined into comp3iex sentences by means of 'c1"8ikem'*:
IF, IF . . . WOULD, BECAUSE, AFTER, BEFORE, WHEN, and
LIKE.
A clause can be turned into an adjiunct to another dause and thus 'Yncor-
porated" inin tot if It is replaced (imp discourse) with the ""sbstfilmliiveY"THIS
(accompanied by the clause Pinker): after thishfore thishemuse of thisflike
this. The only clause linkers which don't aHow "cdause incorporation" and
which are, universally, strictly inbrclausal, are IF and IF . . . WOULD.
En addition to )the use of linkers (IF, IF . . . WOULD, BECAUSE,
AFTER, BEFORE, LIKE) clauses can also be combined by 'hesting" (to
use Weinreich's (1963) term), in the sense that they can be used as comple-
ments of certain predicates. Thus, the predicates SAY and THINK can
take, universally, c'q~otative'~complements; for example:
You said: I didn't do it.
I thought: this will never happen to me.
The predicates KNOW and WANT, to^, can take '>ropositionaU complle-
nnents"";~ example:
I know: people sag something b d about me.
PeopEe know: you didn" do it.
I want you to do it (= I want: you do it].
T wmt to know it (= I want: I know it).
One element (THIS) has, universally, a double status and can fumction
either as a "substantive" or as a "determiner".
The evaluators and descriptors (GOOD and BAD, BIG and SMALL]
can fiunction, universally, as "attributes" (to the 'csubstantives" SOME-
THING, SOMEONE, and PEOPLE] as well as predicates.
146 Geflmal Issues
As can be gleaned from the above discussion, NSM has a rudimentary
parts-oCspeech system. Elements which cam occur only as predicates
(THINK, KNOW, SAT, WANT; SEE, HEAR, DO, HAPPEN, MOVE]
~ h a nbe regarded as analogues of verbs; and those which can be used either
as predicates or as attributes (CXIOD, BAD; BIG, SMALL) can be
regarded as analogues d adjectives. Elements which a n function as "sub-
jwts" and which can rake attributes (SOMEONE, PEOPLE, SOME-
THING] can be seen as analogues of nouns, and tihose which can function
as '%ubjecitsMwithout behg able to Lake attributes (I, YOU, THIS) can be
seen as malogues of pronouns.
The elements which can combine with "substantives" but which cannot
owur predicatively {THIS, OTHER, ONE, TWO, SOME; THE SAME)
can be regarded as an analope of determiners, and those which can only
owur in conjunction with substantives (PART and KIND) can be seen as
aun analogue of classifiers.
Elements which can link clauses (BECAUSE, IF, IF . . . WOULD,
LIKE, AFTER, BEFORE) can be regarded as analogues af conjunctions,
and those which can turn a substantive into a predicative phrase
(UNDER, ABOVE, ON (ONE) SIDE OF) can be seen as an analogue of
prepositions.
The universal intensifier VERY, which combines with the attributes
GOOD, BAD, BIG, and SMALL, with the "determiner" MUCWMAW
and with the spatial and temporal predicates FAR and NEAR, A LONG
TIME and A SHQWT TIME, can be seen as an analogue of one type of
adverb, whereas temporal and spatial clause adjuncts [WHEN, WHERE,
A LONGBHORT TIME] can be regarded as an analogue of another type
of adverb.
Finally, the "clause operators" negation (NOT) and possibility
(MAYBE) can be regarded as an analogue of sentence particles.
In addition, NSM has powerful iconic and indexical maehaniisms, extend-
ing its grammar far beyond the boundaries determined by the combhabil-
ity rules sketched above. Consider, for example, a typical NSM explication
such as the following one (see Chapter 5):
I feel sad. =
(a) sometimes a person thinks s o m e t b g Ilie this:
(b) sometl~ingbad happened
[c) if H didmy know that it happened I would say: P don't want it to
happen
Qd) I don't say this now
Ife) because H know: I can't do anything
(fl because of this, this person feels something bad
xCgS I fael samething like this
In a sense, the whole fornula could be seen as one complex unit [an ma-
logue of a '"entenm"") This "sentence" indudes as marry as seven clauses,
which jointly form an integrated whole. But the grammar off this whole goes
beyond the links established by the linkers BECAUSE and IF, and by the
complement structure of the verbs T H I M and WANT.
One important linker bindisng the clauses of this sentence imto a whole is
the element THIS, referring either anapholricalily [lines ( c ) ~{el, {A>or cat-
a p h o r i d y {line [EF)]to whole darmses.
In the written form of NSM, there are also other devices which play an
important auxiliary role. These include special spacing and indentation.
The fact tbat a part of an explication is placed in a separate line: indicates
that this part f m s a distinct semantic component, and a g o u p of such
components identically indented under a component including the dement
THIS (e.g. (b),{3,(4'and (e) in the explication above) form a larger unit.
In om1 speech, NSM formulae would no doubt be often difficult to fob
law, but in principle a system of pauses a d some rudimentary intonational
contrasts could perhaps achieve the same effect.
As mentioned earlier, since NSM is intended to be a model of the innate
and universal ditag~ametatok, the NSM grammar sketched here mn be seen
s a hypothesis a b u t the ccgraanmaaof human cognitionM".ut there is no
reason why one could not mmain sceptical about the status of NSM (both
in its lexicon and in its grammar) as a model d the language of human
cognitian and yet recognize its value as an eiffective universal system of
semantic-and cultural-notation,
And, to repeat: the sketch grammar of NSM proposed here is highly
tentative and is oflered o d y as a necessary starting-point for testing and
4 Prototypes and Invariants
The role that the concept af pratetype has played in contemporary seman.
tics is analogous to that which the mnlcnept of Gricem maxims has played
in generative grammar. A well-placed witness, James McCawley (1981:
2151, identified this role with the excellent slogan "Grice savesm".n gram-
mar, if them was a conflict beiween gosdilnlaled rules and mhc aetwdl usage,
it was assumed that "Grl.c&kowld rescue the grammarian: the usage could
be accaunted far in k m s of Gricean maxims. (See Bach and Warmish 1982;
for a critical discussion, see G . Green 11983;Wierzblcka 114191a.)
Similarly in semantics. Just as the failure of gramanalticaN rules to work
has often been presented as evidence of progress in linguistics (because It
onty illustrates the importance of G r i m maxims), the failure of semantic.
formulae t o work has often been presented as evidenloe d grogess in
semantics. Semantic f o m d a e should not "works'; t o expect them to work
means not to understand blire role of 'cprototypes" in langwage and oogni-
tion.
Freqnendy, appeals t o prototypes have been combined witb a claim that
t h r e are two approaches t o h u m categorization: the "classid" approach
(linked with Plristotle) and the "prototype" approach Oinked, in partiadzas
with Rasch and Witbgenstein). When these two approaches were con-
trasted, it was usually argued that the "classid approach" was wrong and
the "prototype approach" was right.
In this chapter I argue that the idea of contrasting these two approaches
in this way has proved unhelpful im semantic investigations, and that what
is needed is a synthesis of the two traditions, not a choice of one over the
other. There is a place for prototypes in semantic anagysis, but there is also
a place for imvariants: one does not exclude the other. kmorditngly, in what
folllows, I will discuss two sets of examples. The first set d l illustrate the
t m d e n q t o abuse the concept of poliotype (the "pratoiliypes save" atti-
tude); the secand set of examples will illlustrate the usefuhess of this con-
cept when it is used as a spedfic analytical tool and not as a universal
thought-saving device.
2. Abuses of ""Prototypes" in Semantics: Solme Illustrations
2.1. The Meaning of Boat
Discussing the meaning of the English word boat, Verschueren (1985: 4831
says:
In trying to determine the meaning of the word BOAT, one could come up with a
definition such as. a 'man-made object that can the u s 4 far taaveBPing en waier'. A
defender of the checklist approach, coming across a boat with a hole in it and decid-
ing that heishe stiilll wants to call it a BOAT (though it camot be used For travel-
ling on wabr mymore), would have to revise hisfher definition: 'a man-made object
that can normally be used ;far travelling on water, but in which there can aPso be a
hole'. Further, h&he would have to determine how big the h d e can be before the
object i m question is not a BOAT anymore, ibut simply a WRECK.The impracti-
cality of the checklist appl-oach is sucUn that nuol even iils praponents would want to
be guilty of the absurditties mentioned. A defender of the alternative theory could
simply stick to hisher definition and describe a boat with a hole in terns of devia-
tions from the prototypical boat.
But instead of appealing t o prototypes, cauldn't we simply rephrase the
fornula just a little? Coddn'li we say, in the first place, that boats are a
ind of thing ma& for 'travelling on water'rather than able ro, "travd on
"
"? TIt is quite true that a boat with a very big hole can? "travel on
but why phrase the definition in terns of abiifty rather than
dfunaioy3 anyway?
2.2. The Meaning of Bk~~chelFor
ExLaUing ' e f ~ i n e ~ sand
' ' "protatypes"in language, Lakcoff (1986: 43-4)
writes:
iness may also arim from non-graded concepts-comceplis defined by models
at ;have no scales ltruilt into them. Fillmore (19821 gives as an example the time-
red u s e d backelor. He ohwies that bachelor is defined relative to an ide-
model of the world, one in which there is a sclcial institution of marmilap,
p is monogamous, and between people of opposite sexes. . ..
idealized rnadel fits the classical theory of categories. Wilthim the madel,
r is a very cllearly defined &riskatelian category. But this idealived cognitive
odel, os ICM, does not fit the world as we know it very well. When this mlotlel h
placed within the context of the rest of our knowledge, fuzziness arises-not because
01 what is in the model but because of dliscrepancies between the background
assumptions of the modd and the rmt d o u r knowledge. Here are some cases where
the background conditions fail, amd as a result it is difficult to give clear, unequiv-
Is Tgrzan 'a bachelor?
]Is the P o p a bachelor? . ..
1 510 General Issues
The answers to such questions are not clearcut, and the reason is that the ided-
heed model with resplect to which bachelor is defined may not fit well with the rest
of our knowledge. The sourwe d fuzziness here is not within the model, but m i the
hteractiom of the model with olther models characterizing other aspects oF ow
knowledge. Fuzziness of the above sort leads to prototype leEects--~asesof better
and worse examples 0F hchelolrs.
Thus the perennial bacfrebr turns up again in a new role. Thirty years
ago, the most fashionable semantic theory of the time-Katz and Fodorys
C1963) "new semantic theoryyy-made its triumphant entry into linguisti~
perched prewriousEy on this same example; today, the theory of prototypes
finds the bachelor example equally serviceable. But if the fornula '%ache-
lor-an unmarried (adult) male personYVoesnn?work, couldn" we perhaps
revise it slightly, to make it work-muldnY we, to wit, replace It with Lhe
following definition: "bachelor-a man who has never married thought of
as a man who cam m r y if he wants to"? (Mone precisely: "people think of
Ithis man like this: this man can marry someone if he wants to'".)
What cases such as this make char Is that discussions off 'necessary andl
sufficienlt features' typically kcus on physical features and ignore mental
ones. Yet natural language concepts often constitute amalgams of both
kinds of component. Far 'bachebr" k i n g thought of as someone who can
marry is as necessary as being male and having never married.
2.3. The Meaning of Congratsr/ale
According to Yerschueren (1985: 4731, "a typical congratulation is an
expression of the speaker's being pleased about the hearer's sulocess in doing
or obtaining something important. The first a s p c t [in.!the speaker's plea-
sure] of this prototypical meaning is compllete~yabsent Bkom many formal
acts of congratulating. The second asped [i.e. the hearer's suaessj is beimg
tampered with in the fallowing huedline from the InternatiomaI Herd4
Tribwe: 'Begin congratulates Sadat on their Nobel prize]."""
But in fact, it is not true that the expression of pleasure 'is completely
absent from many formal acts of congratulating'. Apparently, the expres-
sion of pleasure (is. saying that one is pleased) is being confused here with
the experience of pleasure {is, with be@ pleased). Of course in many acts
of congratulating, the experience of pleasure is absent; but if one doesn't
say (or otherwise cmvey) that one is pleased, there is no act of congmtu-
Iating. Smely, an expression of pkasrnre is part of the invariant of the coo-
cept 'congratulate', not just part of its prototype?
2.4. The Meaning af B i d
In a number of publications, George kakoff has accused other linguists of
dealing in various 'convenient fictions', and castigated h e m for failing to
cognize that semantic caltegariies are TuzzyY-a point which in his view
s been established in Eleanor Reschys work. For example, he wrote
koff 8973: 458-9):
r Rosch Heider [I9731 took up the question of whether people perceive cat-
embership as e clear-cut issue or a matter of degree. For exampje, do p o -
embers of a given species as being simply birds or non-birds, as do
r them birds to a oertain degree? Heider" results mnsistenlily showed
asked subjects to rank birds as La tlrc dcgrcc 06 their bidimess, that
egree Lo which they matched the ideal of a bird. If category membership
ly a yes-or-no matter, one would have expected the sutrjects either to balk
or to produoe random results. Instead, a fairly well-defined hierarchy of
1 Birdiness hierarchy
robins
eagies
chickens, ducks, geese
penguins, pehans
bats
bins are typical oF birds. Eag,les, being predators, are less typical. Chickens,
ucks, and geese somewhat less still. Bats hardly at all. And cows not at all.
It is hard to see, however, how this reasoning can he reconciled with
speaken' ihm intuition that whereas a bat is definitely nor a bird at
ostrich is a bird-a 'Tunny" bird, an atypical bird, but a bird. This
ld seem to support a concUusion opposite to LAaff's: bats, which have
s and no beaks and don't lay eggs, are disqualified, because feath-
,and eggs are thought of as necessary (rather than merely proto-
components of the concept "bird" [see Wierzbicka 1985: 1180;for
er discussion of 'bird' see Section 3.5.
course, if informants are specifically instructed to rank a set of given
cmes terns on a "sale of birdiness", and if the set hey are given indudes
th bats and caws, one lcan understand why they might dedde to place
ove cows, but does this really establish that bats are thought of as
any degree of "birdiness", and that it is impssibie to draw a line
een words for birds and words for things other than birds?
speak d the conmpt %bird" mean the cencepl enwaled in the English word bird.
may OF course have no word for 'hkd', having Lexically w a d e d slightly dif-
example, the closeat counteupact of bird in the Australian La~guavge
: The closest equiv-
lude bats, as well as grasshoppers [Heath 1 9 7 8 ~ 41).
trdian language Warlpiri excludes baits, but it also excludes emus (Hale
prototype may well be the same in all these languages, but the bound-
kly. An adeguafle semantic analysis should reflect this.
152 General Issues
2.5. The Meaning of Lie
Amording to Coleman and Kay (C19&1), whether or not an u
is a matter or degaec, and tlicrc is oro set of necessary and sufficient
panents characterizing the concept 'lie', This conclusion, which h 3
been accepted and endorsed in wunllless linguistic articles and b
based partly on so-mlled saciai lies and white lies and galrtly on
deoeption by evasion. For example, ilvrzinrcere utterances such as "
lovely dress!" or 'Wow nice to see you!" or "Drop in any time!" are
to be partial lies, rather than either lies or non-lies. Sirnil
surances given to terminally ill patients are regarded as p
than either hes or non-lies. Findly, answers which are literally true b
which are intended to mislleed or deceive khe addressee Qe.g
going?" """1Jlle'reout of papsika""gre dso mtegoriued as partial lies.
It is very interesting to see that many informants are pr
c'sociaQ liesm,""chmitabb IiesW,andevasions as "partial lies'"
Howver, semanticists are not obliged to take inform ants"^
faoe value. Coleman and Kay's methodology-hke Roslch"s--te
durn results expected and desired by the researchers. Since the
were given a seven-paint s a l e from 1 C'very sure not-lie"') to
lie"), they acted as expected and arranged dl the instances offered
somewhere along the scale. In any mse, Coleman and Kay" aim
intend to challenge the very notion of the discrete semantic featwe"
hmdly be said to h u e been ahieved. The word lie can be given a pe
vdid definition in terms of '"discrete semantic features" [see W i e r ~
1985: 341-2):
X lied to F,=
X said something to P
X knew it was not true2
X said it because X wanted Y to think it was true
[people would say: iff someomre does this, it is bad]
ch wodd ensure f d predictive power), but it is not impossible ta do so.
@Ifcwrse there are similarities between lies a d insincere or evasi
ances, as there are similarities between birds and bats, and i
aware of that. But this does not demonstrate that the notion of h e disc
semantic feature is not valid (see Tsobatzidls 1990; Je
The fac~tthat infomantskrreponses are often graded is int
Amstrong, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1983: 284) put it, it
fact about something other than the structure of conceptsn-parti
view of the f a ~ that
t graded responses are also triggesod by
2 The conmpt of "rue' is neither simple nor universal, but it is simple
the present purposes, it doesn't need to ble decompsed further.
4. ;Prototypes an$Im~"arimts 153
bers'(some add numbers being rated by
thers, e.g. 3 behg rated as odder than 501;
strong et d 1983).
er (1987: 62) goes even further than
tion of "prototypical reductian", and claims
simply a false statement". She realizes, of course, that the use
be fully predicted from this simple definition, but, she claims
now from bitter experience how readily the compbxities of mean-
the redoctianist formal malysis"(91987: 63Flthat is, how dificult
ich would make the right predictions.
atotype theory can save us from the trouble
ing to do so. ]In the case of fie, it is enough
as a "'Tase sr;rtenreniln"he lack of fit between the definition and
then be explained in terns of our cultural models of wllevant
however, when one realizes that a Jan-
, words designating "false statements", and
d differently. For example, Russian Eras two words car-
r guide-lines concerning heir use should be
Btural model", how will they know how to
d On the other hand, carefully
e the uses of ~ r a ~ h n/gar"
hitions e m guide ithe students in their use, and in their inter-
ortant indeed, but they are not "another impor-
Cultural models are reflected in the
encoded in the meaning of vrat3s some-
loaded in the meaning of lgat'; and both of these
eL are somewhat different from that encoded in the meaning of It
be dificdt to articuiab these meanings adequately (that is, in a way
edictive definitions of speech act verbs see
ange (1982: 1551 ddeees vrm'a (a noun carrespondling to rrorl) as "creative 19011g
to m&e the liar appear interesting and important", and he calis it "a particular
154 General J.T,PE~~X
2.6. The Meaning of Mother
According lo George Eakoff (1986: 371, tlne concept of holber'cannot liYe
given an invariant definition, because it is an "expediential cluster" and
because no definition "will cover the full range of cases". The range of cases
conling under this concept is, according to Lakoff* very wide, and cannot
be reduced to any common core (such as, for instance, '% woman who hag
given birth to a child"") because the word mother refers not only to "'bio-
logical mothers" but also to adoptive mothers, "donor mothersY'(wPnopro-
vide eggs but nolt wombs), "surrogate mothers" (who provide wombs but
not eggs), and so on. LakofFs argument is so idiosyncratic that if one is not
to be swspected of misrepresenting it, it is best to quote it verbatim:
This phenomenon is beyond the scope of the dassical theory. The concept mother
is not cbarly defined, once and for all, in terms of common nlecessary and sufficiemt
ocmdiriions. There need be no necessary and sufficient conditions for motherhood
shared by normal biological mothers, donor mothers (who domabe an egg), surro-
gate mothers (who bear the child, but may not have donated t
mothers, unwed mothers who give their children up for doption,
T h y are nil mothers by virtue oh their relation to the ideal lcas
models converge. That ideal case is one of the many kinds of cas
prototype efrects. (Lakorff 1986: 39; see also Lslkoff 1987: 831
From a semamtic point d view, however, Lakcoff's claims carry little eon-
viction. The cmcial p i n t which W o f f overlooks is that foster mothers
adoptive mothers, ""genletic mothersy'%'""surrogate mothers", and so
not "mothers" on a par with 'biological mothers' (see Bogusiawski
Without a modifier, the ward mother ('X is Ys mother" refers cle
birth-givers, not to the donors of eggs, providers of wombs, caretakers,
fathers' spouses.
Lakoff points out that the expression real miorher may refer to a
taker as well as to a birth-giver ("She raised me and I called her mo
but she is not my real mmher'" "She gave birth to me, but she was
a real mother to me"), but he overlooks the syntactic-and hen
semantic-differenw between my real mother [either birth-giver or
taker) and a real mother to ma (careltaker only). Furthermore, he overl
the h c t that the test with real is nat semantically reliable. For example
tences such 8s "he is a real m a n y h r"she is a real woman" may refer t
speaker's views or prejudices about mcn and worncn which havc no bml
in the semantics of the words man and woman. He doesn't appreciat
implications of the fact that the expression biological molder would be
only in a contrastive context, and that normally (without a contrastive co
text] one would not say '%he is his biological mother"', whereas expressia
such as foster mother, adoprive ~norker, or S U T ~ O ~ Bmother ~P are nr
restricted to contrastive contexts.
4. Prsrrofypes ond f ~ v a r i a n f ~155
T e treat "biological mothers" as being on a par with "surrogate moth-
*@ ers" or 'Toster rnothersvVs a little like saying that ~lzcrcare two kinds of
hones: ibiological horses and rocking-horses [or that there are two diverg-
ing "models of horsehood": a biological model and an artefact model); and
that we cannot define home as 'a kind of animal . . .' because a racking-
horse is not a kind af animal at all.
I arm not saying that the meaning of the word mother can be wholly
reduced to that of 'birth-giver" arguably, a social and psychological cam-
ponent is also present:
X is Y's mother. =
(a) at one time, before mow, X was very small
(b) at that time, P was inside X
(c) at that time, IT was like a part of X
(4 because of this, people can think something like this about X:
"Xwants to do good things for Y
X doesn't want bad things to happen to I""
he social and psychological component (4 has to be formulated in
of expectations (thoughts], not in terms of actual events; by contrast,
iologiwi components (a), (b),and (c) have to be formulated as actual
Wierzbicka 1980: 46-91),
2.7. The Meaning of Furnitto-e
a paper entitlieid ''Cognitive Representations of Semantic Categoriesy',
h ( 1 9 7 5 ~193)
: wrote:
we hear a category word in a natural language such as furniture or bird and
stand its meaning, what sort ohcognitive repreentabion do we generate?A list
tures ne:essary a d sufficient for rn item to belong to the category? k con-
e Image which represents the category? A list of category members? An ability
se the category term with no attendant mental representation at all? Or some
r, less easily specified, form of representation?
This passage contains an implicit assumption that bird and furniture are
e same sort of '"ategory words". Following Rosch, many psychologists
d, m r e surprisingly, linguists, adopted this assumption as self-evidently
rrect. There are, however, clear grammatical indications (as well as
antic evidence] to show that LImc Lwo words embody cornplelely dilrer-
of concept. Bird is a taxonomic concept, standing for a ppartiw-
of creature'. But furniture is not a taxonomic concept at all: it is
we concept (see Wierzbicka 1984, 1985, 1988; Zubin and Kltipcke
which stands Bbr a heterogeneous collection el" things of difierent
One can't talk of '"three furnitures" as one can of "three birds'" and
an" imagine or draw an unspecified piece. ol" furniture, as one can
156 General h u e s
C 4. ProroIypes and Jn wrfmiry; 157
draw an unspecified bird. For birds, one crnn draw a line between birds and
no[-birds (bats being clearly In the latter cahegary)~,Forfurallure, one can-
not draw a line between kinds of things which are induded in this super-
category and things which are mot-because by virtue of its meaning, the
word jtdrraiture doesn't aim at identifying any particular kind of thing.
People may argue whether or not a radio is "fumiturey"(see Abelson 1981:
7251, but not whether or not a pelican is a bird (see Amstrong et al. 11983:
268). The concept 'furniture' may indeed be said to be "fuzzyyy---like those
encoded in all the other collective nouns designating heterogeneous collleo-
ltions of things (kitchenware, crockery, ckthing, and so on]. But it is hard
to see how the study of such collective nouns (mistaken for words of the
same kind as clluntables such as bir4 may constitute anytlnmg like "a refu-
tation of the psychological reality of an Aristotelian view of categories" in
general (posch 1975a: 225).
Bolinger (1992) has argued that both furniture and bird require 'Teatme
analysis" as well as '"rototypes", and 1agree with this. None the less, wi-
dence suggests that they are fundamentally different in some respects,
because a bird is, semantkally, "a kind of cmature"+whiereas furniture is
concegtualizled as "things af different kinds", not as "a kind of thingyy.The
fact that bird is a "count noun" (e.g. three bk&) whereas furniture is a
"mass noun" (e,gm*fhreefurnitures) is not accidental, but reflects and pro-
vides evidence for this difference in the conceptualization. (For further dis-
cussion, see Wierzbicka 1992EP)i."
2.8. The Meaning of Toy
According to George Lakoff (1973) (who bases his claims on Rosch's inves-
tigations), baa and doll are among the ''central members" of thc category
Bolinger says that f i ~ l r u r eis, in some respts, Uke sguoslh, and that one can say, Bbr
example, ''a crookneck Is a kind of squash". He also pints out that bird should be cornpad
not with fwmiture but with 0 piece off~rntrwe. But note Ithe following contr;lds:
a sparrow is a kind of bird
3 crookneck is a kind of sqn~asla
* a chair is a kilndl of fucailvlre
* a clnair is a kind of piece of furniture
Contrasts of this kind suggest that the conceptual structures involved are dimerent. These dl&
Ferences are quite systemtic:
a rose is a kind oS flower
an oak is a kind of tree
* a shirt is a kind OF clothing
* a fork is a kind ofcutBey
+ a shirt is a God of p i w of clothing
* a Fork is a End of piece of cutieuy
What applies tojuraifure, then, applies to a31 nouns which s t a d for heterogeneous collectiorr
of fihings ((clfasl~fng,
cutlery, Ritchenwore, and so on). What applies to bird applies to all n o m
which stand For par[icular kinds or things, or cvealures I(rrce,jowcr,$sh, and so on).
"toy', just as rob& and sparrow are among the ""r;ntraP rnembers'bf the cat-
egory bird. Swhg and skates are among the "'peripheral members" of the
category 'toy', just as chickera and duck are among the "peripheral mem-
bers'bf the category bird. Consequently, j~useas one cannot say whether
chickens a d ducks (and bats) are birds or not-birds, one cannot say
whether swings aad skates are toys or not-toys. All one can say is that they
are toys to a certain degree (Pess than balls or dolls).
But the analogy between bird and 60y is just as spurious as that between
bird andfurniture. W i l e bird is a taxonomic concept which stands for a
particular kind of thing, toy is no more a taxonomic concept thanfirnfture
is. It is a purely ffmbionall concept, which stands for things of any kind
made for children to play with, One cannot draw an unspeciiied toy, just
ae one cannot draw an unspecified piece of furniture. The category 'toy3s
"it~zzy'~-beeause, by virtue of its semantic structure (entirely different
fmm the semantic structure of 'bird" it does not aim at idenltifying any par-
liculm kind of thing. Words such as sparrow, chicken, and oxtrick can be
shown to contain in their meaning the component 'bird' (see Wierzbilicka
11985), and it is quite legitimate to start their definitions with the phrase a
kind of bCd But words such as ball or doll do not contain in their mean-
ing the component 'toy".They may be seen as "central mernbers'bf the cat-
egory Yay', but this is quite irrellevant from the point of view of their
s m m t i c structure. It would be completely unjustified to open the defini-
tions of the words bajl a d doll with the phrase a kind of toy. There are
many halls used in various sports (rugby, sower, cricket, etc.) which are not
thought of as 'toys' at all; and there are dolls (e.g. china dolls kept on the
mantelpiece) which are not thought of as toys. Whatever we discover about
the sitructurre of purely functional concepts such as %oy'(or 'vehicle', or
'weapony,or 'tooly),it cannot be transferred to taxonomic supercategories
such as 'birdy, Yower', or "tree" The semantic relation between sparrow and
bird is entirely different from! that between baU and toy. (See Wierzbicka
1984, 1985.)
2.9. The Meaning of Game
cept of ' g m e 3 a s no doubt been the most influential example of
ed "fuzziness" of human concepts which has been offered in the lit-
It was brought up by Ludwig Wittgenstein, in a famous passage of
Philosophic b~esligatbns.Wittgenstein didn't appeal to the concept
f prototype, but he appealed to-and indeed inti-occllumd-the related
otion of "family resemblance" between concepts. The underlying assump-
on was the same: conoepts cannot be given clear definitions in items of
te semantic components; it is impossible to capture the semantic
ant of a concept such as, for example, 'game'-because all that
different instanoes share is a vague "family resemblmce", not a specifiable
set off features.
Wittgenstein" idea of "hmi8y resernblanm'%as played a cobssal role in
the development of ""gototype semantics", and the popularity of this
school!of thought is no doubt due substantially to his intellectual charisma.
In my view, Wittgenstein's writings mntain some of the deepest and the
most insightful observations on semantic matters to Ise found anywhere.
But despite my gratitude to Wittgenstein I thinkc the time has come to me-
examine his doctrine of ''family resemblances", which has acquired the sta-
tus of unchallengeable dogma in much of the current literature on meaning
(see e.g. Jackendog 11983; Baker and Hacker 1980; Lakoff 11987).
Wittgenstein (1953: 3 1-2) wrote:
Consider for example the proceedings that we call 'games'. I mean board-;games,
card-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don%say:
'There must be something common, or they would not be called "games" '-but
look und see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them yaw
will not see something that is common, to at!, but similarities, relationships, and a
whole series of them at that. To repeat: don" think, but look! Look for example at
board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; hene
you find many correspondences with the h s t group, but many common features
drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, m u ~ hthat is com-
mon is retained, but much is lost. Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with
noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between
players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winnlnug and lasing; lbur when a
child throws his lball at the wall and catches it again, this Feature has disappeared.
Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference Between skill in
chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is &le
element of amusement, h t haw many other characteristic features have disap
peared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the saw
way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similari-
ties overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall1 similarities, sometimes shi-
larities of detail.
I can think of no thetter expressionu to clraractcsiac these similarities than 'EmiUg
resemblances'; for the various resemblawces between members of a family: build,
features, colowrr of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. eb. overflap awd criss-cross in the
same way. And I shall say: 'games' Form a family.
Passages like these have a hypnotic force, and it is not surprising that
they have exercised a great influenm on coontless philosophers, psychola-
gists, and linguists. But are Wittgenstein" claims really true? Is It indeed1
impossible to say what all games have in common, i.e. impossible to cap-
ture the invariant of the ooncept kame'?
The only valid ifom of challenge in a case like this is to try to do the
'7rnpossibIe", to try to define the concept of 'game" 1 would suggest that
the fdlowing components are essential to this concept: (I) human action
(animals can play, but they don" play games); (2) duration (a game can't
be momentary); (33 aim: pleasure; (4) 'csuspension of reaIityy"the partici-
pants imagine that they are in a world apart from the real world); (5) well-
defined goals (the participants know what they are trying to achieve); 46)
well-defined rules (the participants know what they can do and what they
cannot do); (7) the Gourse of events is unpredictable (nobody can know
what exactly is going to happen). Accordingly, It propose the fallowing def-
inition:
@] mmy kinds of things that people do
(b) for some time
(el "for pleasure" (is. because they want to feel somathing good)
(dl when people do these things' one cam say these things about these
people:
(.$ they want some things to happen
( f j ~ if they were not doing these things, they woddn" want these
things to happen
QgE they don" know what will happen
[A) they know what they can do
(9 they know what &ey cannot do
Component (a] indicates that "games'he human activities and that
there are many kinds of them, [B) that "games'be not instantaneous but
have duration, (c) that "games" are undertaken for pleasure, (dl that
"gamesyLhave oertain constant characteristics: (e) games have some goals,
these goals have no meaning or value outside the game, (g)i the course
of a game is unpredietable, (h) and (Ep games require certain rules, and the
participants know what these rules are.
I believe that this definition5 applies satisfactorily to board-games, card-
games, ball-games, and countless other kinds off activity called "games'" It
does not apply to a situation when a child idly throws his ball at the wall
and catches it again, but in English this activity would not be called a game.
En Geman the word Spiel has a wider range of use, corresponding soughlly
to the English playing. But this very fact contradicts Wittgenstein's (1953:
33) claim that ""we do not know the boundaries because none have been
drawn". Boundaries do exist, and they have been drawn differently in dif-
The definition of games propo~edhere is not meant to cover cases ~Fmetaphoricalexten-
sion, ironic or lnumorous use, and the like, as, for example, in the case OF the phrase "the
games people play'" or in the case of' "games" played by mathematicians, generative gram-
marians, or other scholars who enjoy solving dificwlt problems for their own sake. Here as
elsewhere in semantics, playrul extensions have to be distinguished from the ba& meaning
[which explains bo& the '%normal" use of the word and any extensions from that use].

ferent languages, and native speakers subconsciously know them and
respect them. One feature which separates the concept of 'game'lexically
encoded in English from the concept of 'SpielYexically encoded in Gemam
is the idea of rules: of knowing; beforehand what one can do and what one
cannot do. Another dimerence has to do with the idea of a well-dehed
god, which may or may not be attained. If features like these are not iden-
tified and clearly stated, cross-linguistic lexical research cannot succeed. It
is not snnrprisinag, therefore, that advocates of the theory of "family resem-
blancesYhswal!ydo not emgage in such research.
3. Uses of ""fototypes" iin Semantics: Some IUzustratians
So far, the discussion has k e n focused primarny on what I see as the
abuses and misuses of the notion of ""prototype"'. 1t is time to turn lo the
more positive aspects of the idea of "prrototype". "Prototypes" can" save
us, but thley mn help if they are treated with caution m d with care, and,
above all, if they are combinled with verbal definitions, instead of being
treated as an excuse for mot ever defining anything.
Lexicographic practice suggests tbat the notion of ""gototype" can Be
utilized in a number d diGerent ways. Below, 1 will il;lustrate this with a
bird's-eye survey of a number of different examples.
3.1. The Meaning of Coiolur Terms
As I have argued in Wierzlbicka (1980, 11985), the meaning of words such
as green or blue can be dafined along the &bllowituglines:
green - colour thought of as the colour of grass
blue - colour thought of as the colrour of the sky
Since this analysis was first proposed, a number of critics have questioned
the use of the phrase thaughr of a3 in these definitions, and one critic
(Goddard L989a3 has proposed the addition aT tlla concept 'likc'to my pro-
posed list of universal m a n t i c primitives. 'Faking this into a m u n t , one
could rephrase the explications of colo~rit e m s roughly speaking along the
following lines:
X is green - the colour of Xis like the lciolour of grass
Xis blue - the colour of X is like the colour of the sky
Whib simple formulae of this kind do not s ~ fully
m satisfactory either (see
Chapter LO), there is a wide range of evidenoe to suggest that, in principle,
the use of "prototypes" such as grass or sky in the explications of oolour
tems is well jusltified.
Jackendo@ 41983: 11 131, among others, has tried to use colour terns as
evidence that natural language concepts cannot be exhaustively defined into
primitives. He w o k : "onoe the marker cobr Is removed from the reading
of V d ' , what is left to decmpose further? How can one make sense of red-
ness minus coloration?" I hope that the f o m d a e adduced above provide
an answer to these questions (for fuller discussion, see also Chapter 10).
3.2. The Meaning of Words for Emotions
Inr a sense, one cannot convey to a blind penon what the word red stands
for (see Locke 11981: 38); or to someone who has never experienced envy
what the word enivy stands for. None the less, it is possible to define envy -
in terns of a prototypical situation, along the following lines (see
Wierzbicka 1972, 1980, 19866):
X feels envy. =
sometimes a person thinks something like his:
something good happened to this other person
it didn" happen to me
1want things like this to happen to me
because of this, this person feelis something bad
X feels something Eke this
Definitions of this kind demonstrate, I think, the spruriolwsness of the
dilemma of whether emotions are better thought of as prototypes or as
kelasically definable"(see Ortony, Clore, and Foss 1987: 344). It has often
been argued h a t emotion concepts cannot be defined because nobody has
managed to define them. But, as pointed out by Ortony ef ~l.,"theobser-
vation that philosophers and psychologists have so far failed to specify ade-
quate definitions of emodon(s) does not establish that the goal is
impossible"". Whether or not definitions of the kind proposed abave for
emy constitute a "classicall" account is a matter for discussion. They do
establish, however, that emotions are definable; and that they are definable
in tems of a prototypical situation, and a prototypical reaction to it.
Without definitions of this kind, it would be impossible to account for the
relationships between concepts such as knvy" ,ealousy', 'hatred', 'con-
tempt', "pity', 'admiration', and so on. It would also be impossible to com-
pare, and to interpret, emotion concepts cross-linguistically [see Wierzbicka
19864. If the study of emotion concepts encoded in different languages is
ever to get off the ground, it is crucial to understand that there is no con-
flict between prototypes and definitions. (For further discussion, see
Chapter 5, section 4.)

3.3. The Meaning of Cupl
According to Hersch and C a r m w a (1976: 2741, " h b o v (31973) has shorn
that attempts to give well-defined characterizations in terns of traditional
componentid analysis of the semmlti@stmchre of a common concept such
as 'cup' are inadequate." "SXniGtly spaking, however, h b o v has only shown
that definitions of nrp ogered by conventional dictionaries, such as Webster's
Third, are inadequate. This is hardly surprising, but does it maUy lestabkh
.
that no "well-dehed chharrasferizationu; . . of a m m o n concept such as
"up' " arc. possible? Questions of this kind are best answered by simply doing
what allegedly cannot be done. For b p y land for a host of relabd concepts,
I believe I have done it in Wiembicka C1985). The dedinitions provided in that
work distinguish betwoen characteristic components which are not part of
the invarimt and components which are absolutely necessary.
For example, a Chinese cup, smaEl, thin, dainlt)r,haindbless and saue;erbss,can stall
be recognized as a cup--as long as it is clearly adequate for drinking hot tea from,
in a formal setlling (at a table), being able to raise it to the mouth with one hand.
This means that while a saucer and a handle am definitely included in the proto-
type of a cup @n 5dm8"cup mawr havc a kdndlc, and a saumli) they are not imclurlled
in what might be called the essential part of the concept, On the other Etaid, the
components 'made to drink hot liquids hamhand 'small enough far people to be
able to raise them easily to the mouth with one hand' have to be included im it.
(Wierzbickil 1985: 59)
In that sense, these definitions cannot be criticized ""for treating all com-
ponents as contributing equally to the definition of a term" (Hersch and
Caramazza 1976: 274). At the same time, they do contradict the assertion
that "no subset of these components Gzan conclusively be said to be awes-
sary and sufficient to define a term" "bid.); and they demonstrate that the
opposite is true.
3.4. The Meaning of Uncle
According to Chomsky ((11972:$51, it is obvious that expressions such as the
folllowing (Chomsky's numbers] ' b u s t have the same semantic representa-
tion''.
(33) b b ' s uncle
(34) the person who is the brother of John's mother or father or the Bpuslbaplld of
the sister of John's mother or father
(35) the person who is fie son of one of John's grandparents crs Uhe husband of
a daughter of one of John's grandparents, but is not his father
In my view, the meaning [and the resemanticrepresentation'" of expression
35; is vastly different from that of 34. What is more relevant in the present
context is that 34 is not semantically equivalent to 33 either, and that it
would be wrong to regard 34 as m explication of 33. Expression 34 treats
the mother's or father" brother in the same way as ar, mother's or father's
sister's husband, and therefore it distorts the meaning of 33. If a mother's
(or a mother" mother") sister's husband is categorized as 'uncle' at a11 it Is
done by analogy with the focal, prototypical uncle. A definition which
would exclude marginal uncles completely (such as "X's uncle = a brother
d X's mother or father"")ould be empirically inadequate, but a disjunc-
tion which makes no difference between focal and marginal members is also
inadequate. In my view, a satisfactory: definition should account for both,
the invariant and the prototype. For wncle, the invaiant consists in a cer-
tain type of human relationship; and the quality of this relationship is con-
veyed by the reference to the prototype. I propose (roughly) the following:
X i s Y's uncle. =
if someone were a brother of my mother or father
I codd say about this person: "this is my uncle"
P can think about X like I could think about this p e r s ~ n
This definililon leaves the denotational range of mcle vague, as I think it
should, pointing at the same time ctearly to the prototype, as I also think
it should. (See Wierzbicka 19%: 348-9.)
3.5. The Meaning of Bird
As I have argued earlier, bats, pace Rowh and EakoK' aan no more birds
than cows are, but ostriches and emus-which do not fly-are birds. Does
this mean that Wying is not am essential part of the concept %bird"? In my
view, flying & an essential part of this c o m q t , and the h l l definition of
bird, which P have proposed in Wierzbicka (1985: 1801, does mention flying
(or the ability to move in the air), alongside components referring to feath-
ers, beaks, eggs, and nests. But the definition of bCd (like ail the other def-
initicms of 'natural kinds') is phrased in such a way that it doesn"t ;imply
that a11 the essential features of the concept 'birdy are realized in all crea-
tures categorized as birds. The definition opens with the folllowing frame:
imagining creatures of this kind people would say these things about them
...
Since the c o n q t 'imagine' is no longer included in the set of primitives,
and since in the present version of the NSM grammar 'wodd' requires a
.
complex sentence ("if . . wouPdY),I would now rephase this apening
f r m e as follows:
peopb &ink things like this about creatures of this kind
B 64 General Jxsues
Accorclingly, properties such as flying, feathers, and so on are presented as
essential parts of the prototype, not as necessary features of every bird. In
addition, however, h e full explication of bird includes the following pro-
viso: 'some creatures of this kind cannot move in the air, but when people
want lto say something about creatures of this kind they say something like
this; "they can move in tihe airv'."
What applies to birds applies also, murcrri$ mulandis, to frsrit (and of
course to countless other concepts]. Thus, Geeraerts (1993) questions so~lne
components of my (Wierzbicka 1985) definition of fruit on the grounds that
they don't apply to all fruit, even though the definition itself presents these
features as part of the prototype, not a necessary kaltwre of aU denotata.
This applies, in particular, to the component "wanting to imagine such
things, peopb would imagine them as gowing on trees', Geraertsplsdts
out, quite rightly, that raspberries are fruiri and yet they don't grow on
trees. In my view, however, this indisputable fact doles not disprove the exis-
tenoe of a conceptual link bellween Trwil' and Yrees"ust as the fact that
ostriches don't fly does not disprove the existence of ar conceptud link
bclwccor %in?dshnd 'flying".
Gccraerts (1992%:266) obscrves thar "wc probably wouYd not claim that
other people Lend to think of raspbcrries as growing on trees". But neither
would we claim thar other people think of ostriches as flying. From the fact
that people think of ostriches as birds, m d of birds as flying, it doesn't fol-
low that they think of ostriches as flying.
11 has Lo be stressed, however, that llhc two cases (birds aandfiwis) are not
exactly parallel, bemuse bird is a taxonomic category ('a kind of creature'),
wbereas Jmir-, !ike f~rniE[cdre,is a collective heterogeneous one Cdifferent
kinds of things'). The heterogeneity of the conceptual categoryfr~ruifmakes
typical (but not necessary) features offrwib such as 'growing on ereesbnavch
less salient than typical (but not necessary) features of B i d such as 'flying'.
3.6. The Meaning of ,fernaft?,Cflibb~ge,and Apples
It has often been claimed that the names of biological species and other
"natural kinds" cannot be fully defined. [See Putnam 1975; Kripke 1872.
For an excellent discussion, see Duprk 1981.) In Wierzbicka (1972, 19&101]1B
advocated Ithis theory myself. Since t h , however, 1have found-through
extensive lexicographic research-that this is a fallacy, and that figem or
lemons are no more indefinable than other concrete concepts (such as cup3
or mugs] or than abstract conoepts (such as freedom, love, or prerni8e)"see
Chapter 55.
For a definihon of hve, see Wierxbicka, (1986bS; offreedom (fortlwoming 9; oF promb
/1987a]. For defioltims of cay, mug, and many other similar concepts, see: Wienbicka (1915).
4. Protofype$ and Invarianls 165
Hut to define either natural kind3 or cultural khds, we do need the con-
cept of prototype. For example, for cups we have to predict both the fact
that a prototypical cup has a handle and the h c t that some cups (e.g.
Chinese teacups and Turkish couee-cups) don't have handles. Similarly, in
the case of tomabes we have to account both for the k t that prototypical
tomatoes are red and for the fact t b t there are also yeBPow tamatws, which
are also called tomatoes, or at least ye!low Eomolees. For cabbage, we have
to predict both the fact that mbbage without modifier is greenish (except in
elliptical sentences) and the fact that there is also the so-called red cabbage.
For a p p h , we have to predict the fact that they can be red, green, or ye!-
lion; but also the fact that wanting to imagine (or paint) 'good apples', peo-
ple are m r e likely to imagine thlem red than either yeillow or green.
To account for facts of this kind, it is justified, I think, to have recourse
to analytical etcvices similar Lo that which has lbecrr used te account for
flightless birds. For example, in tlzc dcfirrition of mbbagc P t l a ~ cincluded
the hllowing components:
the Peaflike parts are greenish or whitish-greenish
in some things of this kind the Ieadlike parts are reddish
wanting to imagine things of this kind people would imagine them as
greenish
In the gresenlt version of NSM, I would rephrase the last component as fol-
lows:
when people want to say what things of this kind look like
they say they are greenish
3,7, The Meaning of O;"lhb
Alongside bachelor, the verb cd&nb has played an important role in seman-
tic theory as a key example of a word which-aUegedly-+annot be defined
in terns of auty newessary m d sufficient components and which can only be
analysed in terms of a prototype. For example, Vesschueren (1985: 46)
wrote:
To show that a similar analysis is feasible for verbs, 1 adopt an example given by
Fillmore (1978); the verb TO CLIMB typically describes an mcendhg motion in
a cfamberi.,g fashion. ]I quote: 'A monkey climbing up a flagpole satisfies both of
these conditions. The monkey climbing down the flagpale satisfies the clambering
Icomponent only, but is nevesthelless engagled in an action thar carnu be properly
called cilimbing. A snail1 climbing up the flagpole satisfies the asclending condition
and cam stiPll be said to be climbing. But the snail is not privileged to c h b
down the flagpole, since that activity would involve neither clambering nor
ascending.'
 However, this analysis fails to explain why a sentence such as "the mon-
key dimbed the flagpole" cannot be interpreted as meaning that the mon-
key climbed dawn the flagpole. If the direction upward was part of the
prototype but not part of the invariant, how could we be so sure that the
monkey who "climbed the flagpole" was climbing upwards?
Difficulties of this kind have prompted Jackendoff (1985') to devote Lo
the verb cEimlG a whole study, and to use it as evidenoe for his o m version
of groltotype semantics, developed in Jackendoff (1983). In essence, how-
ever, .Ia&endoWs analysis is not very different from EiPlmore's: he, tcmcr,
posits for climb components such a3 ~ p w a r dand
' 'clambering fashion', and
he, too, claims that either of these components can be "suppressed" though
they cannot both be suppressed at the same time. For example, in the sen-
tence "the train climbed the mouniain'Ythe 'clambering manner' eompcm-
nent is suppressed, and the component 'upwards9s present, whereas in the
sentence "'Bill climbed down the ladder" it is the other way round. The
semantic formulae proposed for these sentences are as follows (Jackendoff
1985: 288-9):
The Lrairm dimbed the mountain. =
TO TOP OF WOPINTAILN],
GO {TRAIN, [place ON [ ~ h i nMOUNTAIN
~ 1
Event mlh UJ?W&RD
Bill climbed down the ladder. =
GO [BILE, DOWN THE LADDER])
Event 1[~annea@LAMBERING1
But this analysis is unsatisfactory, too, because it fails to predict, far
example, that if a train w n t quickly up a hill it couldn't be described as
cciimbi~g'.There is a difference in meaning between the two variants in the
following paiw of sentences:
(I) The train climbed the mountain.
(2) The train shot up the mountain.
(3) The temperature climbed to 102 degrees.
(4) The temperature shot to 102 degrees.
Despite his rich anend of descriptive devices, including multiple brackeb
and '"referential featwes"",ackendoffs analysis camat account far facts
of this kind. In my view, what is really needed to account for such facts is
a more careful, and more imaginative, phrasing of the necessary and suf&
cient components of the concept Uimrir". I would propose the following (GF.
Taylor 1989: 108):
X climbed . . .=
X moved like people move iin places where they have to use their a m
and legs to rnove upwards
d a Eitltle more precisely:
X climbed . . .=
sometimes in some places
if people want to rnove upwards
they have to move both their Pegs and their a m s
X moved like people move at those times in such pjaoes
temperature, the similarity in question can hardly be interpreted as
rring to anything other than slowness. For trains, it can be interpreted
referring to slowness and apparent difficulty. For people, too, it can be
p t e d as referring to slowness and apparent dificulty; but it can also
r to a quick and apparently enartless movement upwards in pilaces
ere normally people wcruld have Lo use their arms and Begs to move
srds at ail [see "Watching him climb the cliff quickly and effortlessly P
filled with pride and admiration"').
bus, a proltoltype is indeed relevant to the concept %limbJ.But this pro-
is not '%suppressed" in less typical uses of the verb. It is part of the
tic invariant' itself,
4. Conclusion
ere was a time when almost any problem in linguistic analysis could be
appealing to the distinction between "competen~e"and "per-
(For discussion, see e.g. R.A. Harris 1993.) These days, this
olution to linguistic problems is, usually viewed with! suspicion.
sire to find simple solutions to a range of linguistic problem has
d. "'Grice saves" m d a facile resort to prototypes are two charac-
osner (1986: 5B) wrote: "As impressed as I am with the insights
ned from Wosch's work, It is rather hard fbr me ta get very excited
t the great Aristotle versus Rosch debate." R~~osch's work indeed con-
s interesting insights, but it would be difficult to maintain that they
e contributed a great deal to semantic description. Sn too many cases,
ideas have been treated as an excuse for intellectual Iminess and
, In my view, the nolion of prototype has to prove its usefulness
rnantic description, not through semantic theorizing (see
11985). But if it is treated as a magical key to open all doors
rt, the chances are that it will cause more h a m than goad.
encoded in natural language are, In a sense, vague (see Black
The chaIleng consists in portraying the vagueness inherent in nat-
nglnage with precision. I agree entirely with Hemch and Caramma
. 272) when they say that "'natural language concepts are inherently
vague". ~ u I tcannot agree with them they go on to say that
meaning of a tern could be spwified as a f u z z ~set ofmew% cQImPon $0 iKah and Eodor (31963) and llatz (1972). But, with all! due
Natural langmge concepts are characterized by referential kkternin hese writers, they are, essentially, semantic theorists, not practi-
the sense that while "there are t11inrgs of which the desc~ption"
clearly true and things of which the dcscriplion 'bee' is clearly fa1
there: are a host of borderline cases" ((Pwnam 8975: 1331. This
mean, however, that the meaning of the word free @anonly be 83: 268) point out, 'We only good answer [to the
a fuzzy set of meaning components. 1 have tried to ckm~nstratet doubt the validity of the dcfinitioruaPview?'] is
by providing precise, main-fuzzy definitions of tree, and c~uinera is difficult KO work out En the reglllired detaii.
concepts in Wiealbickra (1985). 1 hiwe allso attempted to showsth ding the supposed simplest categories (the fea-
"fmxiest" caconcepts of ;all-"hed@~" W C as ~ ll$?$?r~~imPrrnQfe!y~
QrQ
least, or ra&+-can be given precise, non-fuzzy definitions, emanticists have tried a0 do that? It is true: that
of fully discrete components (see Wierzbickm hers and psychologists, but also '"enerations
IF people argue whelther or not a radio is "fu~-nitur g eb a/. 1983: 301) have hiled to pro&ce sue-
amount for this by saying that r @ &possesses ~ the meanin ms of everqrday concepts. But lexicography has
c f ~ t u r e " o a certain degree, less than table or desk- There sis. Theoretical semanttics has flourished in am
Oinpisticl reasons for not including the feature 'furnitwe' i
of either radio or tiable at all, as them are sufficient masons ework (see Wierzbicka 1985). Given this
ing features such as %kitchenware" 'tableware', of 'cracker , it is the Bexicographers"achievements,
ing of ctp. It is not a matter of degree whether concepts markable (see Chapters 8 and 9).
o&, or rase contain in their meaning components such as '
'flower'; they simply do contain them. Nor is it a matter 0 gun (see e.g. Mel'Eub and iolkovskij
concepts such as table, radio, re$igerllf0r9 Or CUP contain ; kpresjan 1991). The s ~ m e s sof this
components such as 'furniture', 'kitchenware', 'tool', 'devise', or ' h ~ l e ity to absorb and to develop insights
menty;hey simply don't. (For justification of this claim, andl for detailed ical inquiry into fie role of proto-
semantic analyses, see Wierzbicka 1985.1 however, it will also depend on the
vagueness may reside In the semantic WmPQn fy, the basic stock of human con-
C o q o n e n t s such as 'like the colow of gars' (in "reen? are ~n~~ "JWW
this vagueness is mirrored inr the referential indeteAnai@~ of the cQF son and Smith l9$J: 55; also
responding words. Components such as [r~u&ly slpeaki
a man who can rnamykre perhaps not v a ~ but e are su itive conceptual repertoire cananof
tiye; they refer not to the "reality out thete", but to th
conceptualizing reality. But neither vagueness nor 9810: 52) is being validated in the
~omlponentsshould be iconfused with any " ~ e s e n c eto based on clear and rigorous the-
the Aristotelian notion of necessary and sufficient Ife peg cannot relieve us from the
&orubiein semantic analysis; it is the tacit bahaviowrist as~umptlon work. Prototypes cannot '"aye
necessary andl sufficient features should c~rrlespondit n the other hand, they can cer-
tivelly ascertainable aspects of external rediltr. Us mnstruct the best, the most revealing, definitions, a b e d
Many psychologists and philosophers Qve embraced the PrototYPe once~tualbatiompd reality refiected and embodied in Banguage.
aP?r'on the assnu;nption that most concepts have resisted all dtemPQ
define them and that "enon~~ous efforts have gone ink
a featural substrate" (Amstrong et ial. 1983: 29
sion. 1n fact, rea;itlfive]ylittle effort by profi?ssional
5 semantic Primitives and Semantic # we couldn't really investigate this possibility in a systematic and methodi-
cal way. If we do? h m v e r , have a list of hypothetical indefinables, and if
learn how to discover configurations of indefinables encapsulated in
Filelds vidua! words, we can reveal the hidden structure of these words and
turd relations linking diffe~entwords
, if we establish that the meaning of one word is abc,
other, bcd, and of a third, bcf, we will know that their common Gore
nsrbitrary semantic fields, and we can
. Thus, semantic primitives offer us a tool for inves-
I. Introductiiora semantic groupings or fields. In particular, they can
itrary semantic groupings from arbi-
It has oken k e n said that the meaning of a word "dependsg~nthe mean stinguish discrete, self-contained groupings from

I do not believe that this is the case: shoe the meaning of a follows, E illustrate the preceding tends with a number of exam-
ning to different areas of the lexicon. Before doing so, however,
notion of "mnfiguration",which was just illustrated (per-
meanings of any "'neighbouring" w r d s in the lexicon. The meanin ly] with combinations of letters such as abc or
ferent words can overlap (as abc overlaps with bc4, but both the cornpiex structures, built not directly from
ty, or 'this', but ehom stru~ctured
has been identified. 'this is good' or 'you did some-
Furthemore, what applies to semantic synchrony applies also to onents of this kind are ordered, and because h e y often
e temporal element 'after', or the causal component 'because',
of such companemts can often be regarded as "scripts" or ""s-
mn 19811; Schank and Plbelson 1977). This applies, for
to words designating emotions or to words designating speech
if we are able to describe both the original meaning (arbc) and the s point later.) "Concrete" nouns (is. names of natural
qwenlt meaning (4x4.To do this, we must be able to analyse each mea 1 usually exhibit a more static semantic structure, but,
usually invoived, and these com-
features of the referents, but also
es"-such as habitat, behaviour or typical interaction
people in the case of animals, or the typical situatim of use in the case
tefacts (see Fillmore 19756, 1977). Here too, the components have to
ee Wierzbicka 1985). The general assumptions stated
this, we @an compare them again, this Ithe more precisely, be w illustrated with three sections devoted to specific
identify the elements that are &Efferent. Proceeding in this way, w atural kinds'bnd "cultural kinds",
discover remarkable symmetries and regularities in the semanti n concepts. Since the first "to domains
red in considerable detail elsewhere (see Wierzbicka
he present discussion of these domains will be brief,
and the section on emotions wiH be disproportion-

least some of hese groupings are non-arbitrary, is intuitively

even irresistible. But if we cowldn7 decompose meanings inlto co

2. Natural Kinds and Cultural Kinds
Names of animals (in the everyday sense of the word, not in the scientik
sense), of birds, fishes, Rowers, or trees embody, 1believe, taxonomic con-
cepts, that is, concepts based on the idea of 'kind". It is reasonable, there-
fore, that they are usually rdernd to as "natural kind" words. For
example, dog or lion can be defined as "a kind of animal"--plus, in each
case, a long sequence of components, specifying the habitat, appearan*
hehauiour. relation to people, and so on (for illusbations, s a Wierzbicka
1985; see &so Chapters 11 and 12).
Words such as dog, lion, tiger, squirrel, and so on can be said to form a
well-defined, discrete semantic field be- they all have definitiom
headed, so to speak, by the s m e component, 'a kind of animal'. Similarly,
words such as swnllos, eagle, penguin, or e m can be said to form a well-
defined, discrete semantic field became they all have definilions headed by
the same component, 'a Lind of bird'; and words such as ook,willow, b i d ,
or p?lm can alro be said to form a well-dehned, discrete semantic field
because they all have definitions headed by the svne mmponent, 'a kind of
tree'.
Furthermore, Lhe conceptual supercategories on which the names of
"natural kinds" are based have also a taxonomic character. For example,
animal, bird, or @h can all be justifiably defined as "a kind of creature"
(plus of course a number of additional components), whereas tree orpower
can be justifiably defined as, mughly, "a kind of thing growing out of the
groun8' (plus, again, a number of additional components).
On the 0 t h hand, it i an illusion to think that words such as doll, b&
nicycie, rattle, swing, and teddy bear can be similariy defined in terms of
one non-arbitrary supercategory such as toy. As 1have uied to show in my
Le*icogmplry and Conceptual Analysis (Wierzbicka 1985), words such as
toy, vehicle, container, or weapon embody functional concepts, not taxo
nomic concepts; and they are not related to c'cuItumlkind" words (such as
rricycle, battje, ctq. or kni/e) in the same way in which taxonomic super-
categories (animal, bird, fish, flower, or tree) are related lo their subordi-
nates (such as dog, camnary, fruit, rose, or oak). For example, toy doesn't
stand for any particular, describable, and recognizable kind of thing; rather,
i l svands for things of uny kirtd made by people for children to play with.
Therefore "toys", "weapons", and so on are not taxonomic supercalegories,
in the sense that "animaUs", "birds", or " t m " are, Consequently, one can-
not speak of "semantic Gelds" of "toys", "vehicles", or "weapons" in the
same sense in which one cao speak of semantic fields of "aoimals", "birds",
"treesy', and so on.
If one wishes to, one can of course group words such as doll, ball, bi-
5. Semantic Primi1ives, Semantic Fields 173
cycle, and mrtie together, and for certain purposes this may be useful Ifbr
example, as a list of various kinds of objects that can be bought in a toy
department of a department store). But a grouping of this kind would not
have a semantic basis.
This is not to imply that words such as doll, bag, tricycle, and so l e ~ nare
not all "headed"(in their semantic structure) by the same semantic wm-
ponent. They are. But the component in question is not "a kind of toy1';
uaitlker, it is a much more general one, subsuming a vast number of names
of human artefacts: roughly "a kind of thing made by people'" There is no
reason, of course, why one should not speak of all the words headed by this
component as forming one discrete, non-arbitrary semantic field. But it is
is not hierarchicallly structured: it is not divided,
caking, into "toys", ccvehicles"/'weapons'~ and so on,
ausle these are functional categories, not taxonomic ones. Of course if
want to, we can classify cultural kinds into toys, weapons, instruments,
henware, and so on, but this classification would be arbitrary from the
nit of view of semantic strruetum. From the point of view of folk wte-
ization reflected in the semantic structure, cups are not "a kind d
cles are not "a kind of vehicley',balls are inot 'k kind of
toy'" and knives are not "a kind of weapon".
I suggest, therefore, that names of cultural kinds do not form non-
arbitrary, discrete fields, whereas names of natural kinds do. In my view, it
wdd be misleading to speak, for example, of "the field of containers'' (see
khrer 1974) as if there were a non-arbitrary, self-eontarined field of"names
of containers". QOf course, words such as cup, mug, botth, jar, jrrg,bucket,
and barrel are nnutmally closely related, and in fact their full explications
reveal a degree of symmetry even grater than one might have expected (see
the explications of these words in Wierzbicka 1385). But bucket is also felt
to be rePatad to bowl or tub, bottle is related to carafe, carafe is related to
to pan, and so on; and tubs, vases, and pans wodd not
described as 'kontdners'" As argued in Chapter 4, birds do
similarly into bab, ffishes into animals (in Ithe everyday sense
, or flowcrs inlo trees (for example, magnolias are thought of
ereas roses are thonght of as a kind of flower; emus
thought of as a kind of bird, whereas bats are not; and so on). Thus,
mantically, pcra and pans, buckers or bowl$ are not "a kind of container",
''a kind of birdM,androses, "a kind of BBower"'.
of words and meanings cannot be established by
e questions, or giving them simple sorting tasks. It
stawished by methodical semantic analysis. En the absence of
is, different schemes of "semantic'bnd "conceptual" cate-
cent literature, particularly in psychological Piter-
ect the pre-theoretical ideas of the researchers rather than

results of valid, well-conceived empirical investigations. (For further dis-
cussion, see Chapters 18 and 12.) To illustrate:
parrot
a kind of bird
if people wanted to say many things about them,
h e y could say these things: . . .
SpdTrrQW
a kind of bird
if people wanted to say many things about them,
they could say these things: . . .
bird
a kind of creature
if people wanted to say many things about them,
they codd say these things: . . .
bucket
a kind of thing
if people wanted to say many things about them,
they could say these thing: . . .
barrel
a kind of thing
if people wanted to say many things about them,
they could say these things: . . .
3. Speech Act Verbs
In English, and in other European languages, there are hundreds af wrbs
that can be said to form, together, one coherent, self-contained field; these
are verbs referring to "'different things that one can do with wordsn",hat
is, to different types of speech acts. 1 have invesltigated some 250 such
words in my Engllish Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dicfionary
(Wierzbicka 1987a), and I have found a very high degree of patterning.
What gives ccrherence to the field of ''speech act verbs" is the presence of
some well-defined semantic components. These components underlie
whet is usually called the "ilpQocutionaryforoe" (see Austin 1962a; Searle
1976) of the speech act described by a given speech act verb. This illmu-
tionary form comprises components that spell out the speaker" inten.
tlons, assumptions, or emotions, expressed in speech. For example, the
verbs ask and order describe an attitude that lnciluldes the falllowing corn-
ponant:
(1 say:) I want you to do it
5;. S e m t i c Primitives. Semantic Fie!& 175
In addition, order indndes the component:
(I think:) you have to do it because of this
whereas ask contains the opposite assumption:
[I think:) you don" have to do it because of this
Forbfd is in some ways symmetricdl with respect to order, and it includes
the component:
[I say:) I don't want you to do it
as well as a similarly confident assumption:
(3 think:) you cam? t o it because of this
Compiain includes the components:
(I say:) something bad is happening to me
I fw1 sometlning bad because of this
ReproaLTSI, rebke, scold, and reprf~laa~d
include the component:
(I say:) you did something bad
Thank and apologize include, respectively, the components:
@ say:) yyo did something good for me
@ say:) I did something bad to you
so on. It is not my purpose to provide here exhaustive explications of
speech act verbs. (The interested reader can find such explications in
W~erzbicka1987a.) Rather, I am trying to show here how the "field'hf
speech act verbs can be delimited in a non-arbitrary way.
The class of verbs that I am talking about does not coincide with the class
of '"IPemrmafive'v verbs. h r example, whereas ask, order, firbid, oor apob-
gsie can all be used performatively, reproach, ~hreaben,and boast cannot:
I asWorderIforbid you to do it.
I apologize for what I have done.
*I reproach you shouldn't have done it.
*I threaten you I will do something bad to you if you do it.
*I boast I am the best.
one the less, all these verbs exhibit the same kind of semantic structure.
They aittrribute to the speaker a certain attitude that can be portrayed in
terns of first-person illoc-utionary components such as
10say:) you did something bad [repriman4
(I say:) I will do something bad to you [threar]
(I say:) I am good (other people are not like me) [bocrst]
176 Geneml Issues
order, commaaf isssrarcr, urge, ask, and beg, all of which can be said to
I believe that components of this kind, all framed, explicitly or implicitly, imply the semantic component
by "I say:" do allow US Lo identify a dass of words in a non-arbitrary way;
and that this class does constitute a "real", relatively self-contained part d I want you to do this
the English lexicon. and all of which can occur in the syntactic frame
It is particularly interesting to note tlut the phrasing of components of
this kind can be supported not only with semantic h t also with syntactic
evidenlc3e, as different speech act verbs that share certain semantic compca- Some of these wrbs, however, have an additional frame:
nents (or oambmations of components) om be shown also to share certain
syntactic frames or combinations of frames. (See Lehnr 1988; Pinker 1989.) X V-ed Y for Z
Consider, for exmple, the component (6.g. X askedhegged Y for Z)
you did something badr'good which the others don't have
which is associated with tbe folbwhiarg frame: * X ordeaedEcommandecllurged Y for Z
X V-ed Y for doing Z. This additional syntactic frame links ask: (for) and beg [for) with verbs such
as piead (for], appiy (f06,or wish (for]--alll verbs ahat imply tbat the
For example, the following verbs share this mmpouent and this frame: speaker cannot expect to have control over the outcome, that is to say,
mproach, rebuke, reprove, repimmd, admonish, scold. Utterances such as verbs that attribute to the speaker the intention to convey [among others)
X reproacb&reb&edJreprimandedlscoIda&thanked Y for Z the fallowing combination off components:
imply that X said to Y something that included the semantic cornponeat I say: I want you to do Z
"you did something bad (good)" (cf, * X rebukedmproache&scolded Y , 9. I don't think you lyliJ1 do it because of this
The frame "X V-ed Y for Z"" is also uscd with verbs such as criticize or
he other hand, verbs such as order, commafid,or urge, which take the
praise, which describe acts that can be performed, so to speak, behind the
e 'A? X-led Y to do Z ' 3 u t not "X X-ed Yfor Z", imply, as mentioned
back of the target person: one cannot reprimand or rebuke people behind
r, a more confident attitude on the part of the speaker:
their backs, but one can criticize nor prate them to a third person. However,
the two groups of verbs can be distinguished in terms of another syntactic 1 say: I want you to do Z
frame: "X V-ed P% 2': I think you wiE1 do it because of this
X criticlm&praisd P for Z The interested reader is likely to raise at this point some objections point-
X criticidpraised Y % Z g to apparent aspmetries and idiosyncrasies. For example, why can't
*X rebuke&reprimamded F s Z andI which should be similar to ordm and commandsoeciur in the frame
Thus, speech act verbs that imply the component d P to do Z"? ?r why can plead and appily occur with FOR (like ask
but (unlike mk or beg) cannot occur in the frame "X F-ed F to do
person P did something baagood
allow both of the syntactic frames in question: W demanded Y to do Z
(1) X V-ed Y h r doing Z X allow&forbade Y to do Z
(2) X V-ed P's Z " X pleaded for Z
X applied for Z
whereas speech act verbs that imply the component *X pleaded Y to do Z
you did samething bad *X pleaded f" for Z
*Xapplied Y to do Z
allow only the first of these two frames. *Xapplied Y for Z
As a second example, compare the syntactic possibilities of verbs such as
 5. Semantic Prjmifives, Semantic FieE& 174

At first sight, diflerenms of this kind may seem idiosyncratic and seman- sometimes a person thinks something Pike this:
tically arbitrary. But if one studies them more closely, one discovers that B want to do something
far from k i n g arbitrary, they, too, point to very red semantic differences I can do it
and ~ t h confirm
s the reliakdity of syntactic clues in semantic analysis. For after this, this person thinks something like this:
iexample, onepIea& WITH a person, as one argues or remons WITH a per- I can't do it
son, bec;ausep!ed, like argue or reman, involves an exchange of agurnents this pason f ~ l something
s bad because of this
rather than a direct appeal to the addressee's will. One demaurh SOMB- X feels like this
THING, not SOMEONE, because what the person wiho demands some- Refief &.g. X feds relieved)
thing wants is, above all, a certain outcome (which may be brought about X feels something
by somebody's actiom], not a specific action by a particular addressee. Far sometimes a penon thinks something like this:
the same reason, one appiies for SOMETHING, and one doesn't apply something bad will happen
SOMEONE, because what the applyixsg person wants is, above d l , a par- I don" want this
ticular outcome, not a specific action of a particular addressee. At the same after this, this person thinks something like this:
time, the attitude of a person who appiex for something is less cclnfident I know now: this bad thing will not happen
than that of a person who demsmrrd something; and this is why one appiies because of this, this person feels something good
FOR something, as one hopes or mks FOR something, whereas one X feels something like this
demands SOMETHING, not FOR SOMETHING (for evidence and justi-
fication, see Wierzbicka 1987a)i. Qimppimtment
Certainly, this method of verification cannot be applied to aIB areas of X feels something
the lexicon, (Generally speaking, it is more applicable to verbs than to sometimes a person thinks something like this:
nouns.) Tt can, however, be reliably applied to speech act verbs; and for this something good will happen
reason alone, speah act verbs consdkwte a parlirclularly fruitful domain for I want this
semantic experimentation. In particular, they offer a golden opportunity Ita after this, this person thinks something like this:
investigate the structure of a large and highly patterned "semantic field"; P h o w now: this good thing will not happen
and to explore, on an empirical basis, the very notion of a "semantic field1*. because of this, this person feels something bad
X feels something like this
Surprhe
X feels something
Emotion concept8 encoded in the English lexicon constitute a coherent and sometimes a person thinks something like this:
reasonably self-contained (though not shauply delimited) cognitive domain, something is happening now
with a characteristic and specifiaibEe type of semantic structure. All the I didn't think before now: this will happen
words belonging to this domain can be d e h e d in Items of cognitive s t m - I want to know more about it
awes b a t are typically associated with the emotions in question. In this sw- because of this, this person feels something
tlon, I will try to substantiate this claim by andysing a reasonably Barge X feels something like this
group of emotion concepts, drawn from two separate areas: roughly speak- Amazement
ing, emotions linked with-"events contrary to expectations", and emotions X feels someithjlng
linked with '"misfortunes". ((For a discussion of a third group of emotion mmetimes a person thinks samething like this:
concepts, including 'terrified', 'petrified" and 'horrified" see Chapter 7.) something is happening now
The first group includes fwbratiofz, relie& dkapp~hsrnend~ surprise, and I didn't know before now: this can happen
amazement: I want to know more about it
Frustration I[e.g. X feels frustrated) became of this, this person feek something
X feels something X feells something like this
180 General I s m
As these exmples show, the d~efinitionof an emotion concept takes the
form of a prototypical scenario describing not so much an external situa-
tion as a highly abstract cognitive structure: roughly, to feel a certain enno-
tion means to Feel like a person does who has cerltain (specifiable) thou&&
charancteristic of that particular situation (and to undergo some internal
proass because of this]. TypicaIly, though not necessarily, these thoughts
involve referenas to 'doing' or 'happening', to something " o d ' or 'bad",
and to 'wanting' or b o t wanting'. (See e.g. Wierzbicka 1990c, 199&,
1994c.)
Thew examples show also how by analysing individual concepts we can
$sicrfacto show Plow they are mutually related. Thus the definitions of relief
and disappointmeat (differing only in the choice of "oodkr 'bad" are sym-
metrical and in a way support one another. Similarly, the definitions o f s ~ r -
prise and amazement are almost Identical, and differing only in one point
Vwillr versus 4cangJ;and hese two, loo, support one anollner. On the other
hand, fimmrsmriicrxj does not have a symmetrical counterpart; and yet its
meaning, too, cam be established with precision and clarity. On lthe whole,
the rclations between emotion concjcpts can be quite diverse (as the exam-
plas given above and those which I;ollow illlustrake); at the same time, a large
nubier of such concepts can be shown to follow the same overall seman-
tic pattern.
Turninn- now to the socond group, we will note that in English, as in
many other languages, many emotion terms refer to 'bad things' happen-
ing to people. They include (among others) sad, unhappy, distressed, upset,
and depressed, which E will now define one by one, using the format illus-
trated above.
Snd (e.g. X feels ad)
X feels something
sometimes a person thinks something like this:
something bad happened
if I didn? know that it happened
I would say: I don't want it to happen
I don't say this now
because I know: I. can't do anything
because of this, this person feels something bad
X fmls something like this
In a prototypical scenario, the "bad event'Vs in the past G"something
happened"; for example, somebody died).
Unhappy (e.g. X feels unhappy)
X foeis something
sometimes a person thinks something like this:
5. Seemanric Primitives:, Semntic Fields 18 1
someltking bad happened to me
I don't want this
if I could, 1 would want to do something because of this
b e a u s of this, this person feels something h d
X feds something like this
The maim difference between unhappy and sa$ consists in the personal
character of the f o m r : if my neighboor's close friend dies I maq, be sad
but not unhappy, bur if my own dose friend dies I may well feel unhappy.
Furthermore, unhappy suggests rr less resigned frame of mind than sad.
For example, if one says "'H am unhappy about it" o m may wli intend to
try to "'do something about it", but one daesn" say "I am sad about it"".
This differenoe is accounted for by the unaccepting component '1 don't
want this', and by the absence of the resigned component 'I can't do any-
thingyin the explication of ut~happy.
The combination of a past event ('something bad HAPPENED') with a
current rejection ('I don't want this1)may seem illogical, but in natural lan-
guage "ilillogicalities" oof this kind are very common. (One characteristic
example was provided by the sign "119410 Annexation NO!", displayed by
Lithuanian demonstrators in Villnius in January 1990.1
Distressed
X feels something
sometimes a person thinks something like this:
something bad is happening to me now
I don" want this
because of this, I want to do something
I don't know what I can do
I want someone to do something
because of this, this person feels something
X feels something like this
The common phrase distress signah, used with reference to ships, points
in Ule same dirstion. The ship's crew may well wish to signal a message
dong the following lines: 'something bad is happening to us" 'we don't
want his', "because of this, we want to do something', '"we don't tknw what
we can do', 'we want someone (else) to do something'. But there would be
no point in any ship sending out "signals of sadness'" or, fear that mtter,
"signals of unrhappiness"".
T b word now in the explication of distressed proposed above may seem
redundant, given the present tense of the verb in 'something bad is hap-
pening to me" none the less it may be justified, as it helps to aoxoua~tfor
the short span of distress. Joy, too, has a present orientation Csomeltking
p o d is happening'), and so does worry ('something is happening')^, but Uley
182 General Lsues 5. Semantic Primitives, Semantic Fields 183

ban both refer to the '"resent time"in a broad sense; by contrast, distress 5. Ciclnclusion
always refers to the '"'resent time" in a more narrow, more specific sense.
For example, if I know that somebody that I Ilwe '3s coming" next month, we want to establish what the meaning of a word is, and if we want to
this may fill me wilth joy for many days; and if I worry about my child's monstrate the validity of our analysis, comparisons with other words are
poor progress at school, I may be tlninking about months rather than days lly necessary. But the rnemings of individual words do not have to be
or hours- But distress swms to involve an immediate reaction to what is
happening now (""lday" rather than "in the present period").
Upel
"
ndent on "whatever other lexical items may be available in the inveru-
and, ultimately, a definition, too, has to stand on its o m . A defini-
expresses a hypothesis about the meaning of a particular word, and it
X feels something d if it accounts correctly for the range of use of this particular m r d .
sometimes a person thinks something like this: undaries of this range may be "fuzzy'" but even this fuzxiness.can
something bad happened to me now Id be predicted by a well-phrased and well-researched definition.
if P couild, E would want to do something baause of this s can be rilgorowslly described and compared if they are recognized
1 don't know if I can do anything they are: unique and culture-specific cornfigurations of universal
1 can" think now nhc primitives. When the cofigmations of primitives conceptualized
k a u s e of this, thls person feels something bad ividual words are revealed, the relations between different words also
X feds something Iike this 1 themselves. 1 think, therefore, that the semaartic primitives approach
mantic analysis also offers a necessary firm ground for the study of
A person is ~gse6by something that has happened to him 'before now',
not by something that is happening to him 'now'. But the event in question
is very recent; so much so h a t the experiencer ham%had the time to regain,
his balance (as he is expected to do shortly].
The combination of the past knse with the word now in the explication
Is meant to capture both the pastness of the event and its immediate char-
acter (see the same combination in the sentence "lt happened to me just
now"]. At the moment, the experienmr is off 'balance and cannot think as
uswl. His attitude is not passive, or resigned, as in sadness ('I can't do any-
thing'); rather, he is mnfwed and temporarily cannot cope ['I dooin't know
if I can do anything'). But unlike a person who is d&fresse$, someone who
is upset is not crying for help or otherwise drawing attention to himself.
The semantic structure of most emotion concepts, then, can be repre-
sented as follows:
X feels something
soanetimes a person thinks something like this:

. . . .
because of this, this person feds something
X feels something lih this
This structure can be said to define a large and coherent semantic field. The
size of this field difkrs from language to language, but most, if not all, laa-
wages do appear to have a reasonably self-contained "held" of this k i d .
 6. Semantics and "Primitive Thought " "5

6 Semantics and "Primitive Thought"

a1 question addressed in Hallpike's
banned on a priori ideological
ds: Are there essential qualitative d i k e a c e s in the cognition of dif-
pseopbs? The view that there are such differences is not fashionable
days, and Hallpike deserves some credit for the courage he shows in
"t'lllc fuauctlonls of Plie humon ~nind arc coonmorn lo lllrc wvlioBc 06 ing it, as do its other rmenl proponents [see e.g, Hain 1992; Bain and
humanity.
QFrannz Boas 1938~:135)

I. Intrloductiic~n
The question of universal semantic primitives is closely linked with t
the "psychic unity of mankind"(CBoas 1938~).Just over two decades
leading American psychologist, George Miller, wrote: stabrlish whether a word has one or more meanings. In my dis-
will focus on several crucial1 concepts which have been alleged to
Every culture has its myths. One of our most persistent is that nonliterate people i ng in this or that language (notably, 'if ', 'Llwecause', %sameowe', '"all',
less developed countries possess something we like to call a "prkmitlve mentality" and 'think'));I will1 start, however, with an exampk from a language
that is both differemkt From and inferior to our owm. . . . No one would ca usually identsed with '"primitive thought".
ithat tiifferenoes exist. Any denial would be tantamount to saying that
expriemce that result from Bvimg, in widely dfiermt cultures and tmh eakers have n0 concept of
no important psychological consequences. Rather, the argument conmnms that both the English
nature of those differences, and their soums. (1971a, p. vii] ref and girl are translated into French as pile. Would such a
pted? Presumably not. Rather, it would be pointed out that
In linguistics and anthropollogy such t e r n as '"riwnitive th
discredited ralther more than two decades ago (although ow
still creep into print-witness the title of Hallpike's (19791
Eoumdatioms of Primitive TAowght, described in a serious recent such as ie garcon el
(kPan 1989: 3) as "monumental"). But the precise nature of awghter'), and Se jib
ferenlcies beltween diflerent societies-in particular, Western s the girnl). One could
non-Western tribal societies-aemains an open question (see , 'daughter', have diffewnt grammatical
Discussions of this question have d r a y s relied to a consi tte can only mem 'little girl', ,not 'little
on language. Rightly so, since language is "'e best iEerent syntactic frames (e.8. b$Ek de
thoughtY'(ILeitbnix1765S11918U : 334) and evidence from 1
determining the fundamental thought patterns of d
but evidence from language can be misinterpreted, and
field-workers require serious semantic analysis before they ca
a source of information about mnceptud systems.
Discussing the alleged absemce of abstract thinking in ddl. (For further disclnssion of pdy-
societies, Ndlpike writes: "It is . . . necessary to do some prel
semantic ground-work before we can usediPlly discuss the extent to
primitive thought is or is not abstract" "979: 171).
18B Ge1;aerall8.~ues
2. The Universality olif BECAUSE
In English, the idea of causality is expressed in an ahsolute1
way in the simple everyday word becaruse. Un many other l
ever, there is no word which means %mausehnd nothing ellse.
ample, In Italian the basic word for 'because"as well as
perch&-a word which literally means Tor what" In French, the wor
'w$y"s pourg~oi(again, nitewIly Tor what'), and the
' k a u s e ' i s pasce que [literally 'through this that"*
Presmably nobody would claim, however, that speakers of French o
Italian don" have, or cannot express, the conoepl; of 'be
parfly became languages have other words which e
unambiguously [e.g. the nouns Ecr muse, 'ause', in F
Italian), and partly because nobody has any doubts t
garm que or perch&do mew 'because" despite their far~llalanalrsab
inlo morphemes with other meanings.
m e n it comes to 'exotic' languages (such as Austral
guages], hawever, doubts conoerning the availability of
have sometimes been expressed. As Goddard (11991a)ip
commonplace of an oEder generation of ethnogra
sometimes encountered, e.g. Sayers and Bain (898
guages a b u t the expression of causality, or even
indifferent to it.''
Along similar lines (though more cautiously than Sa
(19816) armed in his paper entitbd ""On the Unimportanlca:
Kayardild" that the Australian language Kayardild has no st
exponent of 'because" and that expression, of ~ausalityis co
languaage with a purely temporal notion of sequenm.
the concepts 'because' and 'after'are rendered in Kayardil
the same "consequential suffhY%gasrba, how can we know that the s
ers of this language distinguish lthe two concepts in question? IS it pa
to establish that ngarrba is polysemous ( (1) after, r(21) because), rather
having only one meaning, with different interpretations being due to
ferent context?
The most iranportant thing to do in a case like this is to formu
hypotheses and to test them. One hypothesis is that the word
always means "fter', with any causal overtones Ireing conk
text. On this hypothesis, any senltencje with the word in,
m k e sense on the 'after' interpretation. If we b d , however, that
contexts the "fier'interpretation doesn't make sense whereas a '
interpretation does, then we have to postulate polysemy.
6. S"enaanlit,-8arfd "'PrBnifive Thought "I 187
English the word md is often linked with a causal inter-
ion, but we don't have to posit a separate, causal meaning lPDs and to
s ~ s of
c all atad sentences. For inslance, in tfve sente~cje
He fell down and cried.
;a causal
interpretation is implied but it is not absolutely neoessary, and the
sentence makes sense even if we assume that alrd means here co-occurrence
After her husband died, she fell ill.
is (contextually) implied, but ithere no need to
usal waning for the word afler (because a sequential
tion still makes sense).
other hand, in the Australian language Yankunytjatjara the
i(-ng~~il~], which can Ire interpreted in different contexts as 'from',
rYy Or "because" can be used in sentences in which a temporal (sequen-
i n t e v e t a t i ~ nwodd make no sense (Goddard 1994l~).For example:
-Why are you crying?
-I have a toothache. That-ABLI am crying. '
sequen~alH("dterY] interpretation wound not allow us to make sense of
sentenms, and, as Goddard argues, a separate 'because"e;aning has
postulated. [See Goddard P9911a.)
usively, Goddard (1991~)devised a test in the form of
n: How, if at all, can one say in that language things
"swe, 'I happened after X, but not because of p? For
test shows conciusively that -ngu~u,which 1s fdly
and clause, does indeed have a separate meaning
fie meaning "after' can also be expressed by the m~nosemous
pie of the polysemy of an ablative suffix in an
You should go visit your mother [because] she is very sick.
e Amrnte counilepart of this scsltence the morptrerne glossed here as
can in other contexts m a n 'from' or 'after', but in this context the
rpretation is causal. The speaker is clearly urging the son to
is mother at the time of her illness, not after ilt or away from it. If we
kers themselves sentences of ]thiskind do make sense
de that the morpheme in question is polysemous between
'because' (as argued in Harkins and Wilkins 1994).

It is important to add that different meanings of a polysemous word or
morpheme are often associated with distinct syntactic frames, and that dif-
ferences of this kind can provide crucial evidence for the polysemy of lexi-
a 1 items. For example, in the Australian language Ngaanyaltjarra the s u f i
-tjanu can mean dther %ecause' or kfter' (Amee Glass, personal c o m u -
nication; see also Glass and Hackett 1470). When one asks, however,
the sentence m m a only 'Why did he pun away?, not 'WWh did he imn
away?' On the other hand, -0amrr m mean Wter' when it is used in an
answer to a question about time:
Wmpjawara Lukurrarnu?
when run-PAST
When did he run away?'
Tur&utjana.
corroboree-TJANU
'After the corroboree.'
What applies to Yankunytjatj~ara,Arrernte, and Ngaanyatjarra applies
also to Kayardild; and it is interesting to note that in a more recent paper
on Kayardild, Evans (19941 also reached the view that the so-callled "con-
sequential" suffix -ngarrba is polysemous between 'after' arrd %ecauseY.
A word (or molrfieme'j which can bt: glossed as either %ecausekr 'after"
cannot have some unitary meaning "more abstract than either 'becauseh~
'after' ": there is no identifiable meaning mom abstract than 'kalnse' aslid
'after' and contained in them both. If someone claimed that there was some
such meaning but that we had no word for it and couldn't articulate it, therr
I would say with Wittgenstein that what one can't say one should be dlent
about. Semantic hypotheses based on "ghost meanings'' which cannot be
articulated are not falsifiable and therefore have no glace in semantic analy-
sis.
It would be wrong, therefore, to think that by allowing polysemy we are
rendering our hypotheses immune to empirical disconfirmation. Polysemy
hais to be established; it can never be posited without justification. For
example, as pointed out earlier, the hypothesis that the English word rlllfier
is poIysemous between a "sequential" sense and a "causal" ssen is disctm-
firmed by the fact that, in any context, after can be shown to 'be compat-
ibb with a sequential interpretation.
6. SernanSia md "Prilxsifive Thought" 189
3. The Universality of IF
According: to Bain (1992: 871, 'The hypothetical conditional sentenoe is not
found in Bitjlantjatjara. In Pitjantjatjara one cannot put forward a pure1y
hypothetical condition, something that is merely possible, or a supposition.
In practiuce, when Westerners attempt to do so, the Aboriginal person
receives the idea as a fact."
The claim is disturbing. Is it true that in some Australian languages "one
cannot put forward a purely hypothetical condition, a supposition"? To plat
forward a supposition one needs a word for 'if" Bain says that in
Pitjantjatjajal-athe concept 'ifVoes have a lexical exponent, but that, none
the less, when a Westerner wishes to advance a mere hypothesis "hidher
listeners treat the statement as fact. Accordingly, what is intended as, for
instance, 'if you were to get the money . . .' is received as either "hen you
get the money . . . h r "dsince you are getting the money . . .""1992:
90).
Et is easy to believe that sentences such as "if you (I) were to . . ." may
lead to miscommunication in enmunters between white people and
Aborigines in Australia, but it doesn't follow from this that a purely hypo-
thetical supposition cannot be expressed in Pitjantjatjara or any other
Aboriginal language; or that one cannot forestall misunderstandings in this
area when addressing Aboriginal persons in English. All one needs to do is
to state explicitly [whether in English or in Pitj~amtjaitjara)that one is not
asserting the condition:
1 don? know whether X will happen
X it happens, then Y
a language doesn't have a word [or morpheme) for 'if', as it
n alleged to be the case in some Australian languages? What if
does not distinguish between 'ifhand "hen', or ' i f ' a n d
t hcrc as elscwhcre allegations oF this kind oftcnr stem from
dare to recognize lexical polysemy. As h4cConvel1 notes:"Yack of a for-
distinction betwesa $and when in Aboriginal languages, in contrast to
nglish, is supposedly linked to absence of hypothetical conditional
n Aboriginal discourse" (199 1: 15). Rejecting such claims
vePl argues that Aboriginal languages do haw lexical and gram-
rces to mark conditionanity, and he points out that even if the
and 'whenkre identical, they may appear in diflerent frames.
McConvell doesn't draw a distinction between conditional (IF) and counter-factual
[IF.. . WOULD) sentences, and it is no@always clicar which typc I P ~has in mind when he
talks of "hypothetical conditional statements"'.

For example, "In the Ngarinmn language the concept of q i s distinguished
from daen by the use of the doubt sufix ngu following the subordinate
clause marker nyamss and the pronoun clitic complex" (16). McConvell
points out that devices of this kind are frequently utilized in certain genres
of spontaneous discourse, and that older people without Western education
frequently describe "imaginary and hypothetical smnarios, including md-
tiple chaining3 and embeddings of hypothetical statements within otber
hypothetical statements" (15).
The polysemy of the primary exponent of the concept 7iF can be illus-
trated with data from the Australian language Arrernrte (Markins and
Wilkins 1994: 298). En a simple clause, the word peke means 'perhaps', but
if a dependent clause is present then it means 'if'.
Inpenthe peke kwatye umte-me.
tomorrow may& water fall-NPP
'Et could rain tomorrow.' ['Perhaps it will rain tomomow.']
Kwatye peke urnte-me ayenge petye-tyekenhe.
water maybe f a l l - ~ e ~1 ~ ~ come-VERB
: s MEG
"If it rains 1 won't come.'
{If the dependent clause is affirmative rather than negative as above then
the verb carries a special "subsequent" marker-tyershenge.)
En another Australian language, Yankunytjatjara (Goddard BW4b], the
same word tjfmgng, shows an even more complex pattern of polysemy:
when it is used in a simple clause, or by itself (as an exclamation}, it means
'maybe" bult In a subordinate sentence it has either a conditional or a
counter-factual meaning, depending on the altpsenoe or presence of an ''iisse-
alis" inflexion on the verb of the main clause (see Chapter 2):
(I} Tjitugum.
Maybe!
(2) Ka nywntirmtjinguxu kjuklarpa irititjatjara
and you if story long.ago:~ssw:HAVING
nyakwla kulinitjikiltja rnukuringkula,nyiri
S ~ : S E R I A L think:a~T~ntTwant:saRrar, paper
pala palunya nyawa.
that Z]BF:ACC s e e : n ~ ~
'So if you want to read Old Testment stories, look at that book."
(3) Tjingu~ungayulu waringka, puQkapalyanma.
if 1 co1d:~oc big make:^^
'If I was jin cold (weather], I'd make a bigger (amount).'
('The speaker was explaining that shle had not made a very large
amount of spinifex gum because the weather was too hot to do thk
easily" (Goddard 19946: 248.)
6. Semantics and *'Primitive Thoughf " 191
Data of this kind provide strong evidence for the presence of a tinpisti-
eally encoded concept of IF (even if this encoding involves a polEysemous
illustration of this point, consider some data from Geman,
it has also been sometimes asserted (incorrectly) that it doesn't
he conoepts of IF and WHEN.
d all, German does have some quite unequivocal exponents of
W E N , warm (used in questions and in relative clauses) and ab (used in
past tense temporal clauses), which can never be used in the sense or IF; so
clearly, C a m a n dms distinguish WHEN from IF. Ear example:
Wann warst du dart?
W e n were you th~ere?
Plls du dort wmt, war ich him.
M e n you were there, 1was here.
Second, German does have a word for IF, namely wenn, and although in
subordinate sentences referring to future events wenn can stand for either
IF or WHEN, this doesn" mean that it is somehow vague and always cov-
ers both senses at the same time.
It is more justified to conclude that in future tense sentences wenn is
lysemous, and means either IF or WHEN. For example (from Die B&cl
hew figm iCeeul$ch),
. . . aler Mens~heasohnw i d kommen, wenn ihr es nicht emartet. (Matt. 24:
41.
'The Son of Man will mnae when [not "whewllP'1 you do not expect itY.
Wenn ihr nur Vcrtteuen hiabt, werdet ihs alPe6 kkommen, wotum ihr Gott bib
tet.
'if [not "iflwhen'" you have faith, you will receive all that you ask C d for."
The fact that in certain grammaticai frames (e.g. in the frame wenn n k h f
"if not" or in combinations with the past tense) weptn can only mean ""if"',
nd nat either "if" or "when", supports the view that it is polysemous, not
ape.
This conclusion is also supported By the fact that if one wants to con-
trast the two concepts I F md WHEN (e.g. "when, you come-if you came
. . ."I, this is possible, too:
Wenn du komst-WENN du kommst-wirst du es sehen.
WWn you come-if you come-you will see itY.
Whalt all these facts show is that Geman does distinguish, iexically,
ktween the concepts IF and WHEN, even though in one type of sentence
(compl~allexsentences referring to the future) the exponents of these concepts
overllap.
192 General P m e s
4. The Universality of SOMEONE
In her recent book similar in its general orientation to Hallpike's, Bain
(19912) develops the thesis that Australian Aborigines use only "first degree:
abstraction and concrete logid', whereas Westerners use "second degree
abstraction and formal logic"". In support of this thesis, Bain argues (9431
that, for examp1e1 in Piitjantjatjara "there are no terns for the indefinite
pronouns such as *someone', 'anyone', 'whoever' and that to refer )to an
I'
unspecified person the speaker would have to use the word ku$q~a,'other',
According to Bain, "linguistic features of this kind are antithetical to the
formulation d purely pneral sktements1'@bid.).
Couldn't one argue, however, ttnnt in Pitjantjatj~arathe word kugupa is
in fact polysemus and has two distinct meanings, 'other' and 'someone3?
Bain rejeds this possibility. Cementing on the sentence
Kugupa ngurakutm anu.
another camp to went
'Another @erson) went to camp.'P/"Someonewent to camp."
she writes:
With the last of these translations there is a mom from the adjective 'another' 10
the more abstract pronoun 'solmeonue'. That shift is ameptakrle in English but its
appropriateness must be questioned Tor Pitjanltjatjara. While to some extent the
translation used may be ;a matter ol pmonal preference, if wa are la stay as dose
as possible to the Aboriginal thought, then the link with the real should be retained.
(1992:94)
But semantic analysis is not a matter of personal preference, and the
hypothesis that kugwpa is poUysernous can be tested. The simplest thing to
do would be to conj~weup a situation where 'other'would not make sense
but %omeomebwodd, and to check if the word k3stjapa could still be used.
The fact that one can use Jcus;Ewpa in such situations (Cliff Goddard, per-
sonal comrnrnntcaaion) shows that this word cannot always mean 'othery.
On the o h e r hand, one cam make sense of a11 uses of kwtjupa in t e r n of
two hypothetical meanings: btheryand 'someone'. For example, if one mn
say, using kwfjwpa, '7 saw someone Qkucjiupa] there, it was the s a m person"l
then it is clear that kntjupa cannoit mean 6another'in this context (?'I saw
another pewon there, it was the same person').
In addition to semantic tests of this kind, one can allso examine the envir-
o m e n t s in which the two senses occur and see if there are any dierenms
between them. For example, Harkins and Wllkins (19134) show that in a
related Australian lampage, Arremtey the word arxpenhe can also be used
in the same two senses cother'and 'someone'), depending on whether or
not a speciifc antecedent is present. The same applies to kuGupa (Cliff
Goddard, personal comunimtion]: if a specific antecedent is present (e.g.
this man went k s t ; \then another [ku$wpa)r went), then it cleuly means
'other" but in the absenae of a specific antecedent it can only mean 'some-
one'.
5. The Universality of ALL
Hallpike [19?9> argues that what kne calls "primitive socjletiesl%ave no con-
cept of Wl', adducing linguistic evidence from several languages. The i w l i -
cations of this d& are so serious that they deserve to be examined ira some
detail. Me writes:
Y30;me~d'all' are thus fundamental notions of logic and bask to propositions of
inclusion which relate parts to wholes. "All' denotes the hotaJity of a set A, while
'some' denotes 'A - xi{where x is greater than 0). Im primitive usage, however, it is
possible that while words are used that ethnographers translate as 'some'and 'atuPY",
"a111' does nab denote "all possible members of set A" but $14 those Irm awr axpri-
enoeks simply %I lot'. In so far as primitive thought is not usluarlly concerned with
working out the theoretidy ma?&uum number d items im a set, it will tend to use
'akl' in the sense of 'very many" while if dl possible members of a set ahe physicdy
presemt, the primitive may indeed say Will", but in the seause of 'full' or 'compIete',
which is derived from a spatial canception, as of ar container that has been Elled up.
Dr Neil Warren, for example, tells me (private colmmunication) that the Kamano
of the New Guinea Highlands use thein w r d for 'mamy' to do duty for what we
would translate as "a'. In the same way, amang the Taude I laund that the word
that I was inridally indined to translate as 'all', k~parfmrs,was more a ~ u r a t d yren-
dered as "my'". Kuparitri is the word For 'two' or 'pair', -oi king the dual suffix,
md -ma is one of tihe plural suffixes;thus kuparhrs seems to have the literal mem-
ing of "airsp, i.e. 'many', and is certainly sol used in conversation. It should also be
not4 that kupcrrima is not a;n adjective, but a noun, and refers to a state of affairs,
'multipPicity', rather than being a property ofa dass. (HaIlpike 1979: 181-2)
I believe Hallpike% cconclusions are fundamentally wrong. It is true that
In many languages ithe word glossed by ethnographers as 'all' is in fact a
nominal rather than a determiner (that is, grammatically more Pike the
expression the bs in EngPish than the determiner every), and that sentences
including a word whose basic meaning is kmanykan sometimes better be
Wanslatad with the English word a0 than m m y .
But does this mean that these languages make no clear distinction
between the concepts 'ail' and 'manyy? I think not. To begin with,
HalPpikds remarks on the Tauade data are far from convincing. JRf the stem
kupari combined with the dual suffk is the m r d for Ywo'or "air" then by
itself it is much more likely to mean 'all' than hamy' (cf. French tous lex
deux, Pit. "an the two", that is, "0th'). A stem meaning 'manykould hardly
be combined with a dual suffix, sinoe the language clearly has a contrast
194 General .&sues 6. Semantics and 'Frimilrs've Thought " 195

between a plural q"manyq)and a dud ('two"; the combination 'manyy+ 1. Punu means 'many':
'two'would be incoherent, whereas the combination of %a1and "WOYQ~ (117) (Q.) Nyajangu-O-0-ngku karli gu-ngu nyuntu-ku?
a pair has parallelis in many other languages. boomerang give-rs.r you-Dst
NhlkJ!%3?1EU-~~~&-2s
Furthemore, though E haven't been able to check Ha1lpike's assertions 'HOW MANY boomeramgs did he give you?'
about Tauade (or about Karnano), his remarb on h e apparent canflation (A,) Paau a-Qc-ju yu-ngu karli.
of the concepts 'all" and hany'also apply, for example, to Australian lam PANU PRF-3%-1s pjve-~s~
boomlerang
guages, with respect to which they have been studied in reliable linguistic We gave me MANY boomerangs.'
literature. (The index of Hallpike's book shows clearly that next to the 2. Jinlakumarrarni means "11':
peoples of New Guinea it is Australian Aborigines who epitomize For him (10) Yuml-jarri ka-lu jhtakumaraarni=1ki
the notion of a ""primitiw society".)~~ ripe-lbecome-t?.~~s~ PRS-3palll=then
For example, Bittner and Hale's (1995) amalysis of the Australian language Then they get rip, all (parts) of them.'
Warlpiri shows h a t in this language, too, there is a word, also a nominal (1 11) Slntakumrm~-jiki-jaIaka-llu wapa kankarlu-mipa
@mu), which is sometimes best translated into English as 'many' and some- dl-A=oFcourse PRS-3p~ O ~ Y ~ - N Pabove-only
ST
times as "11" and Harkins (1991) shows that the same applies b another paarrpardi-mj~a-rlapinkirrpa-kurlu-lrZI
Australian language, Luriqa, But this does not mean that Warlpiri a d fly-INF-anox father-ones.with-A
Luritja do not have a concept of 'all'distinct from the concept of 'manyy. 'AH of them of course live ody up in the air flying [the feathered ones]."
First, while the Warlpiri word panu can be translated into English as 3. Panu can be used in the sense of 'the many', 'the lot', "he groupy,and,
either 'alt'or 'many"i/depending on context), there is another word, by implication, bsl1"Ci.e. 'the whole group'):
jiatdumarsarai, which can never be translated as 'many', but only as %H'
(193 Panu ka-ma-jana nya-nyi.
(or "1 of them" see blow]. Se~osld,as Eittner and Hale" smlysis shows, many PRS- 1s-3p see-NPST
pamu can be translated as "In" only in those contexts which imply definite- ti] T see a laage group (af them).'
ness, that is, where it can be interpreted as 'the many', "the lot', 'the group (ii) '1 see the large goup [of them)^.'
(composed of many]" by implication "he whole groupy. (iii) 'I see hem, who are a large group.'
In a case like this, the word which means, essentially, b a n f may appear (3.51 Yapa ka-1n nyina panu nyampu-rla ngurrj~u?
to mean 'all'. From this, it is only one step to the conclusion that the person-ABSPRS-3pbe-WSTmany this-am well
Warlpiri people do not distinguish 'manyYrorn 'all". But such a conduiort 'Are all the many people here wePI?"
would be fallacious. Equally well one could argue that English speakers do
nat distinguish the two notions in question because a lFor means 'many', This is not to say that the Warlpiri wordj;inr[j~kurnarrarmi
has exacltly the
whereas she jot means (roughly) 'all', The fact that Warlpiri has a separate m e range of use as the English word "1' (a point to which I[ will return
word for 'alll', jiatmkumarsarni, just as English does CaIEp, shows illhat in fact later), but it does mean that Wadpiri distinguishes between the concepts
the two concepts in question are distinguished, despite differen= in use 'arll\ad hmanys,and has separate lexical exponents for each of them.
linked with other differenoes between the two languages, such as the pres- Furthemme, although Bittner and Wale (1995) glass jinrakrrmarrarna' as
ence versus the absence of articles. 'all of hem' rather &an 'alll', P see no evidence that this ward mems any-
These points can be illustrated with the following data (Bittner and Hale thing other than simply 'all'. In actual speech, it will usually reffer, no
1995, their mnumbers, and their doubt, to some previously mentioned group, and thus will be consistent
with an interpretation along the lines of 'all of them" But this is not nec-
Austualian Aborigines (along with Papiuans) have often k n used in the literallnnre as an essary: when needed, the same word can also be used to make open-ended
example olc$rhnitive mentality"-by Uy-Bmhl, by Hallpike, and by many others. The title gen~eralizations,of the kind that Hallpike claims are impossible in "primi-
of W&ek (1872) paper, "The Mental Characteristics of Primitive Nan as 1ExempliEed by the
Australian Aborigines", is very characteristic in this respect. For discussionu, see Chase and tive languages". Bittner and Hale's sentence 11 ('"all of !them of course Iive
yon Stumer (1973). only up in the air flyhg [the feathered ones]'"), which comes fram an "oral
Bittner and Hale use &e following abbreviations irn their interlinear glosses: PIBS- essrryl'about living kinds recorded by Bale, and which doesn't refer to any
Plbsalutive, Lac--locative, H,2,3,-kt, Znd, 3rd person, p-plural, s--singular, INF-imfini.
tius, PRClX-pronimate, PRF-perCectiw, PRS-pueserat, P S T p a s t , NPST--~~onn-past. particular group of birds but to birds in genera!, provides a good illustra-
Ward internal morpheme boundaries are indicated by '-', clitic boundaries by k'. tion of this.

Two further examples oh such open-ended generalizations from andher
Australian language, Kayardild, are quoted in Evms (1985) (DTstands for
deitpansitivimd):
(16-279)Maarra diya-a-n-kuru.
all at-DT-FUT
(Speaking, of yams:) 'Q%ey) are a11 edible."
(6-28 1) Maarra maku-karran-d.
all woman-cEm-Mow
[On lioe as food: ) 'Qdy women eat Mice.' (Lit. "all lice are w\nmenYs")
No doubt everyday life in a tribal community doesn't generate much
need for generalizations of this kind, but if they are not made frequently it
is not for lack of conceptual or linguistic resources (cf. Section 7). I con-
clude that as far as we know Lhcre is no human language which doesn't
haw some lexical means for expressing lthe conceglt of 'all'-n~t something
roughly comparable to 'all' but exactly Lhe same conoept.
I think Hallpike is right in assuming that without a word (or s o m other
lexical component) for 'all'a language wouldn't be able to express oertain
thoughts---more than that, that in a language without callknewouldn't be
able to think certain thoughts-and that thoughts crucially dependent 011
the concept %ll' have fundmental importance in European culture. But I
Mieve Hallpike's conviction that such languages exist is not supported by
the evidence.
This is certainly not to say that the range of use of words or morphemes
which embody the concept 'all' is the s m e in all languages. In some lan-
guages, the range of use of the word or morpheme meaning ~ I l restricted
~ s
to a relatively narrow range of semantic andfor syntactic environments.
This is true, in particular, of the Auslirralian language Marrithiyel (Green
1992) and of the Papuan language Yimas (Foiey 1991). But the range of
use is one thing and the existence of a lexicallized concept is another.
To siee this, consider briefly the Marsithiye1 facts. According to Pan Green
(1992) the only word in Marrithiyel which could possibly be regarded as am
exponent of the concept 'all' is the adverbiinterji~~tion wakay. Leaving aside
the use of this word as an interjection, it appears that wakay (as an adverb)
can only combine with "semantic unadergoers" (that is, it can only apply to
someone to whom something happened, not to someone who did some-
thing); and that, moreover, it can convey the idea of "completeness"' as web
as "'totality"".For example (Green's n ~ m b e r s ) : ~
(1 1) Eiyi winjsjeni gani -ya (wakay).
3sSR "go" "ST finished
head bad
'He went [completelly) silly.'
Green uses the oliow wing abbreviations in interlinear glosses: Pst-pat,
auxiliary, +singular; SR-Subject RcaLs.
6. Semantics and "PrhitSw T h a w g h t J 7 9 7
(12) ma -meri ma-Merranunggu gusringgi -wanggaQ
human ns man human ns Merranunggn 3nsSR "RR" finish
-@ -a wakay
pl Pst finished
T h e Meraaounggu people all "finished up" (="didw).'
[The Merraaunggu people died campletely.)
What wouEd it mean for a group of people to die '~ompleteiy"? Smely,
in a sentence like 12 w&ay means simply 'alP"ust as Green's gloss says).
The fact that w a k ~ cany twe used with noon-gradable predicates such as "die'
suggests that this word doesn't encode same hybrid notion of 'corn-
pBetelyjrtotdlyjraln" but has two distinct meanings: (1) cornpktely, 42) all.
O t k r examples cited by Green [personal comnmunication) support this con-
n. For example, if wcrkay is added to a sentence which means We gave
hters in marriage', the sentence can only mean 'He gave away
hmers', not 'Me gave away his daughters COMPLETELY'.
of this kind, vve have to concludle, I think, that Marsithiyen
s have a lexical exponent for the primitive concept 'all" even though this
onent's range d use is more restricted than that of the English word all.
r an interesting discussion of the concept of %liYiin Australian languages
m a dmerent perspective, see also N. Evans [forthcoming); h r a discus-
sion of the concept 'some'see Chapter 2.)
- 6. The PJniiversalilty of K M W and THINK
ng to Mallpike (8979) there are languages which cannot express the
of 'knowhnd 'think" People who speak such languages are,
ke children at the "pre-operatony'\tage of development
gnitively incapable of distinguishing clearly between
recognizing the operation of his own mental prl~cesses
ord like 'think", he does not grasp its cagniliue bplica-
kconcentrating" '"making a mental eflort', e.g. when try-
. . . At the first stage . . . (Cat about six) he supposes
when we speak, and by assonciatian also identiiies
nd smoke, or else equates thinking with hearing, and
g we do with our ears. (Hallpike 1979: 38563
According to Hallpike, ""pPimitire"pnseptes, too, confuse thinking with
eakhg and hearing, and they, too, have no woncegt of purely cognitive
ses and states such as those linked in English with the words think
now. He writes (1979: 3934):
ility to ana1yse private experience, as opposed to social ffiehvionr, the
"'RR'"hmds
OF the knowable, is well illustrated by ethnographic evidence from the
198 General hme3 6. Semantics and "Primsirive ;TSEoughf" 199

iOmmura, of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua Hew Guinea, Like many
primitive peoples in New Culmea and elsewhere, the O m u r a use the same verb
[sera) for 'understanbgkor %comprehendingy,amd the 'bearhgkfa sound eltc. D ~ p i
corresponds fairly closely to 'clear', 'distinct', as opposed to bobscure' ar 'anfud',
and thus the expressiom &pi ienrcs means 'that sound which we can hear clmearlybd
also, when wed in the sense of understanding, the notion of 'hearing' imptied in.
such contexts relates the souwd of the name, nrutu, of the object being spoken.
Similarly, Hallpike (1979: 406) quotes with approval Read's statement
about the Papuan people Gahuku-Cama:
The Gahoku-Gama do not ascribe any importance to the brain, nor have t h y my
Hallpike overlooks the crucial distinction bemeen polysermqr and vague-
ss (and so does Bain)~.Ify for example, in the Australian lamwage
ankunytjatjara the same word k u h i can mean either 'hear' or ?hinlc'(see
oddlard 8992a), it is (as Goddard argues) a case of polysemy, not of
aguemess. For example, in the sentenGe ((Goddard 1994b)
Ngayulu alatji W i , "tjiingu~_rulia. . ."
I t h k (abonlt it) like this, "maybe we . . ."
arly means 'think', not some hybrid between "think' and 'hear' (for
the "hink' sense can take a quasi-quotationall complement). On the
r hand, in a sentence such as

"
hearing. To 'knowko b Wnk' is to %earsEgekn6ir~e)l; Pomw"C"
conception of its function. Cogniltive processes are associated with the organ of
know' or '1 don't
understand' is Po not bear' or Ti have nolt heard' @eSemu~e].[Read 1955:
Ngayulu wan@-n&u wangkenytjala kullinu
I person-ERG talk NOML.LOC near PAST
265 n.) 'Iheard peopPe talking'
[for only the "ear' sense can take
Bn a similar vein, Bain states:
There is no way to diEerenitiate the concepts of thiotkbg, listening and heeding in inlkV6lhear' polysemy in Yankunytjatjera (or
Pitjantjatjaoa. The same verb kulki does duty for aH. . . . This feature suggests that ra] is exactly paralIel to the %ee'r'bdarstand' polysemy in
the psychicd and physical, the self and the environment, are not fuYly distiaguism both cases, the semantic difference c~rrelateswith a difference in
from one another, a characteristicnoted by Piaget in oonnection with pre-operatory by . . ." can only mean 'I under-
thought. (119912: 8161 and ajatji kuiini can only mean '[I)l
Xt is true that many non-Western societies use the same word for 'think' even if there were no syntactic dif-
and 'hear' or for 'knowy and "ear'. But what exactly does that prove? In mantic interpretations, rtwo meanings wouild still
English one can use the word see to mean %ndewtand'('" see what you y semantic grounds: for example, I ~ e whate YOU
mean . . ."I, but tlis does not prove that the speakers of English do not my eyes what you mean'.
distinguish ths concept of 'understanding' and the concept of 'seeing'. semy involving basic concepts sucb as 'think'
(Similirrlly, in French entendre can mean either 'hearhr 'understand'; but ith a possibility of different frames. In the case
ustralian Western Desert Language (of which Yankunytjatjjawra is a
this does not prove that the speakers of French do not disltinguish the con-
particularly telling evidence is provided by Glass (1983: 40). This
cepts of ' h e a r i n g k d ndunderstanding'.)
Admittedly, in English there is also a separate word, underssand (and h elves the use of a sl;lffivr (-kuk~n$a)and an enclitic (=tkmyu) ,
French, ccomprersdre], which has only a cognitive meaning. This doesdt w as "mt") Clearly, bath these
change the fact, however, that see is polysemous in English, and that in a k'sense d the polysemous. verb
sentence such as "I see what you mean" it hhas a purely cognitive meaning.
But if see can be polysernclus between %ee (with one's eeys)' and 'under- (601 Tjilku pirni-lu=ya tjiimya kuli-ra palya-palya=lkanyu
stand', why can't the O m u r a word iero be polysemous between 'hear cmd many-ma m they you know think-PRfun=mt
(with one's ears)' and 'understand' or 'knowv ~Cj~us'as t the French woad pituE-pa nganri-rranfljakukantja-llw. kapi-kukaatja-lu
en tendre is)? W~TQI-ABSI ~ ~ - T P F . M T - ~ G water-m(i-~m
In Polish (and a number of other Slavic languages) the word For 'know- The children, you know, mistakenly think that petrol is lying about for
fun, they mistakenly tMmk it is (as harmless as] water.
ing" wwiedztet, is cognate with the word for 'seeing', widziet (see Bdllncknlet
1970). Both! derive from the same proto-lndo-Europeam root veid- ightly the English gbss of this example. Glass uses the following abbre-
%now/see' [see also video, '1 see', in Latin and vdda, 'I know9, in Sanskrit; a glosses: abe-abscolutive, erg--ergatiwe, ipf-imperfective, mt-nris-
Ernout and Mcillet 1963: 734). t, ps-present, pt-participle.
200 General hmes

(61) Klruli-mutjarrpa-ngu=lktunyap kapi-ngka palunya-kukantja.

think-~.menter-P.PF=~~ water-in that-mt The traditional! gloss 'perwive' has an obvious value for describing facts of
'(They) thought that they had gone into the water, that's what Khey this kind, but it cannot be regarded as an accurate representation of the
mistakenly thought.' word" meaning, since quite clearly three diflerent meanings are involved,
not one. For example, scntencc I can mean only Y think', not '1 hear', and
Examples such as these make it crystal-clear that even if the concepts sentence 5 can mean only 'God knows everything', not G o d hears every-
'think' and 'hearbhare the same lexical exponent, this doesn't mean that thing'. The fact that "ear-perceive" means in this langunage 'think' and not
the concept of 'thinking' in a purely cognitive sense is missing. It is no less 'hear' is particularly telling, since in many other languages (e.g. in Kalam,
present in the Western Desert Language than in languages where Yhinking" see below) 'cear-perceive" means 'hear" not %ink'; this shows that in
has a unique l e x i d exponent, for example the Australian language Ngandi Gahuku-Gama "ear-perceive" is in fact lexidized in the sense 'thinkJ.
(Heath 1978ib:1147). Words for body parts often provide a convenient idiom for talking about
What applies to 'thinkkpplies also to 'know'. A word which is used for inner states. One language which illustrates this particularly well is Hua
both "ear' and "noow" amd which can be used in a sentence incompatible (another Papuan language, geographically very close to Gahlaku-Gama,
with a 'hear' interpretation, must be interpreted as pollysemous; and when and described authoritatively by Haiman 1980b, 19911). Pru Hua one feels,
one looks for syntactic diflerences linked with the diflerenoe in meaning one so to speak, with one's guts, one thinks with one's ears, and one knows with
can us;llallly h d them. one's eyes. What this reaHy means, however, is ahat Hua exhibits a certain
For examplle, in the Papuam language Gahuku-Gma [now called pattern af polysemy (Haiman 1991 and personall comwnication):
Mekanopl, whkh Hallpike uses as one of his prime examples, the word for
both "think' and 'knowys indeed the sane as the word for %ear" yet ( beta 1. ear, 2, opinion
according to one of the best experts on this language, Chris Deibler @er- havi- 1. hear, 2. understand
sonall oramunication), the three senses of this word ('think', 'know', and ( 1geX;ahavi- think @it.hear one's ear)
'hear" can always be distinguished by the frame in which this word is usedJ il ) a i P 1. guts, 2. feel
so that ambiguity does not arise. Isrr English one can refer to one" thoughts as one's "view", and in Hua, as
If the word in question is glossed as "eroeive', as is usually done, then one's "ear"; but it would be absurd to conclude from this that the speak-
the sense 'heaskan be associated with phrases such as "talk perceive" or ers of either English or Hua lack the concept of 'thoughit'.
"say permive", the sense 'think" with the phrase "one's ear perceive", and Lexical evidence is vital for establishing a culture" concepts, but without
the sense 'how', with phrases such as "thing perceive"". For exa~llrpie in-depth semantic analysis lerricall evidence can be easily misinterpreted. For
(Dei'bler, personal letter): example, when one hears that in the Papuan language Kalam the same
(1) na-gal guluumb word (rap)can translate both know and hear* one might conclude that the
my-ear I-perceived language makes no distinction between the two. In fact, hawever, Andrew
'I thought4 think" Pawley's data and comments (Pawlley 19166, 1975, 1986, personal conmu-
(2) das~mogak6 mukii geleneive. arication) show that Kalam does distinguish between 'know' and 'heary:ng
God talk all he-has-perceived means essentially 'know', whereas tmwd ng (lit. "ear known")eans 'hear'.
'God has heard everything.' In sentences referring Ito sounds (such as thunder) m w d nsg can be abhevi-
(3) l&tu lako Rim6 nene dasim geleake . . . ated to ng* but in this context the bare farm ng can be regarded as ellipti-
thus saving he-said Gad having-perceived cal for ~ m w dng.
'God hearing that he said thus . . ." This analysis is supported by the fact that Kalam has many other lexical
iC4) dasimo net& rnuki gdeneive. wilts including the s k m no, and that several of those other lexical units,
God things dl he-has-perceived too, can be abbreviated to a bare ng. For example:
'God haws everythiag."
wdn niy 'see" ((lit."eye know")
( 5 ) diasimo net& muki-kumu geleneive. 'feel [by touching)' (lit. "touch know")
dl ng
God things all-about he-has-perceived fib ng 'taste' (lit. "eat know")
God knows about everything."
gas ng 'think' (lit. ""thoghthind know")
202 General ISZU~S 6. a T ~ ~ r ~ msd
~ ~ ~"SrS~~s{tivc
f f c . ~ Thor~gh~ 203 "

pk ng kudge" (lit. "'hit know") 'knowheadsee" is strengthened by data from related and surrounding lan-
bwk ng 'read, study' (lit. "book know") Etimres. Thus, if among geographically close and genetically
mepn n;(~ Tcel nWTecction for' (lit. "liver know") ly related languages oFAusLrialia scr~mnchaw separate words for 'think"
sb ng 'feel sorry for' Uit. "gut know"] m'know7e.g. Arrernte;
s others (e.g. Yankunytjatjara) 1993;
see Wilkins use theHarkins and for
same word Willkikins
both 199411,
'Rear'
In e sentence such as d "think', it would be bizarre to infer that the Aarernte people do have a
b byn nq-k concept of 'think'whereas the culturally and liingwisrtically closely related
men woman know-he-past (punctual) Yankunyltgiatjara people don't. The evidence available to date suggests that
'The man saw the woman" all languages do in fact have words for 'know' and %hink'. These words
or may not be poEysernoms, but this is irrelevant from the point of view
the bare stem ng can be used in \the senwe 'seeyand in fact only in that language" conceptual resources.
sense], but this doesn't mean that in Kalam h e same verb [ng]~ maem some allpike (1979: 391) writes: "Even when we encounter among the prim-
d k g " f w y E 'a r intermediate between a word we are disposed to translaite as Yhink" it commonly has the
'think', 'taste', ' r e d , Yeel sorry', and so meaning of kbvious mental effort', as it does among Fiaget's pre-
that Kalm distinguishes lexically between b o w ' , 'hear', 'see', and 's Tmgu word ngek'ngeki, 'to think, ponder, cogitate,
as foBows: n g know; ( w h ) ng see; [tmwdl ssg hear; Q ~ ~ nfjr,Y ]smell- dge 18969: 176) ]." HaJPpike is probably right: it is
Although the bare stem ng c m associated with different senses Qkno age will have a separate word for 'think'
see, hieirr, taste), in actual speech these senses are clearly distinguiskdr aving a separate word for 'thinking' in the more
the object refers to a sound, ng has to be interpreted as %ear" if it refers k that . . .'.The Australian language Kayardild studied
an odour, it has to be interpreted as 'smell; and so on; and if the oibj, by Evans (1985) is a good case in point. In Kayardild the word
refers to a concrete entity (e.g. a person or even a bell), Ithen the only P ha flit. '"head-put") means "Xhinlk of*recall, come up with some-
sible interpretation of ng is 'see" and never %earyor 'smell'. rough thinking', for example k a k ~ j cnalmarufh~lc~ nithi, cuncPe will

"
It is also important to emphasize that in wrtain frames the only possibb
reading is 'H know', not perceive"~see, hear, or whatever]. For exam
(Pawley, personal communicaltion):
yad LJlnike fin akag OW-a-k ngb-yn.
I iLJllliLe day when come-Tsc-Past know-Pres-lsa
'P know ["lpemlve] when Ulrike cane."
yad Ulrike md-p- nuglb-yn
P UXke stay-Fres-3s~ know-Pres-1.w
'I know (*grerc.eive] wbew Ulsike is.'6
n e case far positing distinct senses For verbs such as 'knowhear' (
that ng has a meaning COP which there is no word in
ward perceive as a label for this inexpressible s m e t
a bit like saying that ng means 'X' [the hypothesis
hypothesis h a ng by itserf means 'know', and ~ o nu s ords for 'think'aarud %now' may be present but may "bear
will emP1 the name' (Evans 1994: 21 1); and there is no
word which would mean specifically 'think that' and nothing else (although
the word rnarralmaru~ka,lit. "ear-p1at", can be used in the swse 'think thatY,
as well as in the sense 'recall').
But Hailpike's argument rests on his assumption that if a word means
%ear' it cannot also mean "Bhnk'. Inr fact, if a language has two words, one
peaking, 'think w i h effortq,and the other is pollqi-
r h n d 'think (that)', the argument fails. Referring to
of ~oncieptssuch as "a', 'some" 'number'%and 'time',
(1979: 390) mites:
ame wag, when we are considering wards that relate to cognitive prouesses,
aernembler that this word, together with those
r', 'stupid', and 'understand', can bear simpler inter-
itive, and that It is possiible for primitives and the
in relation to behaviowr, facial expressions, bod-
ch, while leaving out of account their distinctively cogni-
spects. We wauEd not expect to find discussions in primitive society about the
emce between knowing and believing, for wampl, or appearance and reality.
at issue here is molt the use that different societies make of
as Yhink' and %now', but the availability of such concepts.
Descartes (1701/1931), among many others, has pointed out, nothin 7, General Discussilora
be 'ksimpler" than "hink'ar 'know' (see Boguslawski 19719, 8989).
claim that in some languages words for "think' and 'know'are not

sense.
Referring with approval to Gilbert RyBe's view that "at the c o m a i n who share this belief, d l distinctions between ''them" and "us" in
level our assessments of mental processes are in fact assessments of Be
iour" "979: 31841, Hallpike goes on to say:
But Needham also lists trmslatiolns of some other Nuer words and
which mem to refer mom up11embigauously and explicitly to inner states

Hallpike" Faundcztiom of Primitive Thought;Shwedes 19821,

Iber', 'forget', 'devec', 'stupid', 'understand",and so on. But the point is that all th pollogists continue to be ~quikepious about the 'principle ail'
aspects of cognition have behavionral memi~estations,too . . .
In shark, it is the external manifestadionns d irrmner states n
in which primitives
interested, and inn these external mranifestaliions the body has a crucial rolIe.
The statement that a given word means "think', or ' b n ~ w or' ~ 'hear" c
be tested by the usual semantic methods; if the application of semantic t a If a shared basis of universal concepts did not exist, the M e r e n t con-
shows that a word means 'think', or is polysemous b e t w ~ n' universes associated Gith dflerent languages would be mltudly

in the psychic unity af humankind and in the primiple that what-

results of semantic analysis. an say in one language one can also say (more or less easily] in
The semantic relevance of behaviourai manifesta'Y.ionscan be tested. one cannot at the same time reject the hypothesis of a set of
example, in English the words merry and gbamy refer in their very m

do not:
'He was mrryilgloorny, but he didn? show it,
He was happyisad, but he didn't show it.
same concepts ~EIE ~ o ~ n m a n demphasis
" added]. The question of
To my knowledge, no similar evidence far the relcvance of behaviourlrl native speakers of different languages bave the same basic concepts
manifestations ta the meaning of the words for 'think'ar "knowVin
Australian, Papuan, or m y other languages has ever been produced (by estipted., and a ttheoretiml framework was lacking within which it could
Hainpike or by anyone else). seriously and rigorously investigated.
1conclude that while Hallpike's claim that in many nlan-Western cultures Cole, Gay, Glick, and Sharp 01971: 2151 wrote: 'The allmost universal
"the realm of purely private experience receives very little elaboration or
analysis at the level af public disc.aurse9' is uundchubtedly correct (see e.g.
Howell 11981; Lutz 19881, his assertions concerning the alleged absence of
wards for 'think'and 'knolllr'(and the concornnitant absence of the corre-
sponding concepts) are unfounded.
cancQusionthat "cultraral differences in cognition reside more in the
206 Geneml h u e s
situations to which particular cognitive ppacxesses are applied than in the
existence of a proms in one cultural group and in absence in another"".
A4wsali.v mcd~wdi~, the same concEusions emerge fmm research into cross-
cultural semantics. On the one hand, the almost universal oubome of the
semantic study of culture and cognition has been the demonstration of
large differences among cuPturaB groups with respect to their patterns of Ilex-
Icalimtion, in particular, their key words and key concepts (see Wiembicka
1991b). On the other Inand, it emerges that in addition to the vast m s s of
culture-specific wnmpits, there are certain fundamental concepts which
appear to be lexicalized in all languages of the wodd; so that cultural dif-
ferences b e t w ~ nhuman groups reside in ways in which these basic con-
cepts are utillhd rather t h in the existence of some ooncepts in one
cultural group and thejr absence in another. It might be added that there
are also considerable differences between cultures in the extent to whi&
certain basic concepts are called upon. For example, the concepts d
'bewuse', "if and 'aal may indeed be utilized much less in the cdture of
hstralian Aborigines than in Western culture (see N. Evans 1994 on
'because'; Bittner and Hale 1995 and Harkias 1991 on 'dl'; also Goddard
19189c3). But this doesn't mean that these concepts are absent, or that they
are not lexicallly embodied.
It should also be mentioned that (as argued by Goddard 1991a) the low
frequency of some indefinabte wards in some languages may be comperrm-
sated for by high frequency of more inclusive "semantic moledesyJ,
Goddard argues that this is the case with the notion of cb'because' in
Australian languages, which is often included in "semantic molecu~es"
encoded in various purposive constrlactions. Goddard (1Wla: 44) writes:
Prime facie, I submit, the meaning oE these constmcllions involves the notion of
became, in combination with the complex notion o r m ~ ~ wanting n e somes"hifig $0
happe~. . . The purposive constructions, in other words, provide a compact means
for arliicwllating causal connections within a particular broad domain-that having
to do with people" motives or reasons for doinug things. In PN society, I wouEd
argue, people lend to be more interested in each others' reasons for doing &in@
than in other kinds of causal Ilinks, Most talk about reasons for actions takes plaoe
in the idiom of the purposive, which sesvices the main needs in respect of the expres-
sion of causality.
Eeibniz (176UI981: 3261, who Bmdy believed in the psychic unity of
humankind, recommended comparative study of different languages of the
world as a way to discover the "inner essence of man" and, in particular,
the universal basis of human cognition. Nleedham (1972: 2201 commentled
on Leibniz's ""grand propasa!" as follows:
This b d d suggestion . . . was based on the tacit premise that the human mind was
everywhere the same. . . . Methodologically, LeLeibniz was thus proposing a com-
6. Semml[ic~crmd "Primitive Thaught " 207'
anakysts of the kind that Uvy-Bmhl was to put into eflecb, almosb exactly
uries later, and even in tenns that find ready agreement today; but it is not
, not the type of reseauch that he recommended, that have since been called
o renewed question. Underlying his proposal was the conviction that human
ure was uniform a d fixed, and it is pr~wielythis idea that more hecent concrep-
Dual analyses have made difficult to accept.
Hallpike (19791, who quotes Needham extensively, drew logical wmrclusions
m these relativist statements [although one may doubt whether
edhaam himself would have endorsed HaIlpike's theories of ''primitive
In a sense, however, serdi~~m
nom dcrtur (there is no third possibility): either
Leibniz was right, and these is, behind the variability of cdtures, a univer-
sal, "fixed and uniform" set of underlying human conciepts, or Needham
was right, and there is no '%xed and unifam" conceptual basis of differ-
ent language-and-culture systems.
Linguistic evidence suggests that the truth is on Leibniz's side, as do con-
p h a l analyses more recent than those referred to by Needham.
Language-and-culture systems differ enormously from one another, but
there are also semantic and lexical universals, which point to a shared con-
apturil basis underlying all human language, cognition, and culture.
But in order to establish what is and what is not universal in human lin-
guistic and conceptual resaurces we need a rigorou~methodology. In par-
ticular, we need a methodology which would allow us to recognize
polysemy where it is really present without positing it in cases where it is
This point must be emphasized, because many scholars have deep-seated
fears of ever positing polysemy for another language and imagine that by
doing so one will inevitably fall prey to ethnooentrism. For examplie, one
the anonymous reviewers of an ueadier version of this chapter
ieszbicka 1994g) cautioned against "the assumption that if a term in lan-
age X requires more than one distinct translation to cover a range of
es that the translatodanalyst devises, then it must be polysemous . . .
, if w can imagine a distinction, as for example, between 'hear' and
ink', for which a single term is used ia X (but f a r which multiple terns
are available in our Ilanguage), this (putatively universal) conceptual dis-
tinction must be polysemously fabeled in X",and illustrated this point as
follows:
This is as if to say that if a tern, e.g. ainiwa (Sahaptin] is used to refer to a ''bee"
at one time and a "wasp'ht another, that it must have these two distinct senses.
Why reject out of hand the possilbility that the distinction is simply of no corrse-
qulenw: to the spneahrs d A? "IPerps, if it is ru distinction we find dificull to imag-
im doing without, as between '"1" and '"ome", we would want to argue
strenwlously for a polysemous interpretation.
 6
2
But the question is not whether it is easy or difi6icult to imagine doing
without a particular distinction, but whether the necessity of a particular
distinction can be established by reductive paraphrases with full predictive
pwer. For example, ' ' ~and " "wasp" can no doubt be r4uw.d to mma
thing along the following lines: 'k small flying creature (small enough far
a person to be able to hold it between a finger and a thumb); it has a shnp
thin long part; it can sting peaple with that part; when this happens to
someone it hurts"". If this c o r n o n core fits all the contexts in which h e
Sahaptin word ~tni'wacan be used (a point which can be tested), then posit-
ing polysemy for this word would be totally unjustified.
But the relationship between 'think'and 'hear' is quite different f m
that htwm 'bee' and 'wasp' (m from that between "rl" and 'daughta')I.
If a loomon core [substitutable in context) can be articulated for Ehe
Sahaptin word atnfwa, no c o r n o n core (substitutable in context) can be
articulated for, say, the Pitjmtjatjara word M i n i (or for the French word
prle).
One could of course suggest that 'thimk' m d 'hear3ave re a m a m care
which simply Itaannot be articulatied, but this hypothesis is utestable
(because ta hypothetical meaning which hasn't been articllllated cannot Ire
tested in context), and therefore them is little point in entertaining it. The
status of such an antestable hypothesis must be seen as quite diRerent from
the sutttus of the testable hypothesis that, lfor example, the Sahaptin word
atniwa has a unitary meaning.
If one takes into account that RuJhi occurs in two difTerent grammatical
frames, each of them assodated with a different sense Ctlrink" in one frame
and %earJ in anotlner), whereas a m h a o~ocwrs[presumably) in exactUy Ehe
same grammatical frames whether it is used with referenw to bees or to
wasps, one can see that the analogy between the two cases is more appar-
ent t h m real.
Similarly unjustified (though understandable) is the fear oil'ethahwentrisrn
expressed in the following comments (by the same reviewer):
Perhaps it is better to attack the mswpUion that every distb~ti!onwe judge rde-
want md nwsessary for coherent abst~actionmust be basic to 'kdult" ratiocination.
For exampie, re. the alleged "fai8ureqQo distinguish 'tarusal re1ations"from rela-
dons of simple spatio-temporal contiguity: owr philosophers argue interminably
about the validity of causal inferems €ram observations of spatlo-temporal conti-
guity. Why should ;dm cultures make the same logical errors we are prone to?
But concepts such as "because" '"if",
'think" 'knncrw', and 'ail' are not just
"ours": they are well attested in numerous languages of Asia, Afsi@a,
America, Australia, New Guinea, and Oceania, and their exponents are by
no means always polysemous [for evidence on this point, see Goddard and
Wierzbicka b 944b).
6. Semantics and "Prhiffve nought "2209
Certainly, some of the universal concepts discussed here may be used
more frequently in some cultures than in others. For example, it may well
that in some Australian languages, in which the concepts 'tlninkhanrd
arbbane the same lexical exponent, this exponent is u d much mare fre-
nfly with the meaning 'Ineas'tthan with the meaning 'thinEr"; and also,
t references to 'thinkjing'are much more common in English discousse
n in, say, Pitjantjatjara discourse. But the question of the extent of use
certain conncepts must be distinguished from the question of their avail-
More generally, the availability of cognitive resources should not be con-
fused with the habitual use of these resources in different societies.
Differences in the latter are particularly clearly illustrated by Luria's (1976:
I l l ) interviews with Uzbek and Kirghiz peasants. For example:
[Q.] Inthe Far North, where there is snow, all beam are white. Novaya Zedya is
in the Far North and there is always snow there. m a t wlou are the Bears there?
the beaus there are,I never saw them.
a.] Once I saw a hear In a nruwm, but that's all.
Luria comments that "the most typical responses of the subjects . . . were
;a complete denial of the possibility of drawing conclusions from proposi-
tions about things they had no personal experience of, and suspicion about
any logicail operation of a purely theoretical nature" '1976: 108). At the
s m e time, however, Curia" interviews clearly show that his interviewees
, did have concepts such as 'allymd 'if', and that when pressed they could
draw the desired inferences. For example (1 11):
.I] But on the basis raf what I said, what color do you think the ibears there tare?
.] Either one-colored or two-cdored . . . Iponders for a long time]. To judge from
~e place, they should be white. You say that there is a Pot of snow there, but we
have never been there?
And another example (1093:
I Brut what kind of bears are there in Nolvaya Xedya?
] We always speak only d what we see; we don't talk about what we haven't seen.
...
Brut what do my urords imply? . . .
Well, it's like this: o w tsar isn't Pike yours, and yours isn't like ours. Your words
lcan be answered onEy by someone who was there, and if a person wasn't there he
can't say anything on the basis of your words . . .
But on the basis of my wards-in the North, where there is always snow, the
ears are white, can you gather what kind of bears there are in Novaya ZemPya?
If a man was sixty or eighty and had seen a white bear and had told about it,
e could be believed, but I've never seen one and hence 1 can't say. That's my
last word. Those who saw can tell, and those who didn't t e can't say anflhilag!
2 10 General Ismes

(At this point a young Wzbek volunteered, "From Jrourwords it mems that beam
there are whifie."]
7 Semantic Complexity and the Role
[Q.]Weill, which d you is right?
[A,] m a t the cock knows how to do, he dots. What I know, E say, and nothing
of Ostension in the Acquisition of
beyond that! Concepts
The availability of canmpts such as 'all' and W'is crucial to deductive r a -
sonimg; all the rest can be learnt (as Luria" data show, quickly learnt, given
sufficient cultural exposure]^. Different modes of thought do not make
human cultures mutually impenetrable if the basic conwptuaI resouroes are
the same. As Franz Boas wrote (19380: 1411-2):
Irm primitive culture people speak only about actual exprienoes. They do mat dis- 1. Introduction
cuss what is virtue, good, evil, beauty; the demands of their daily life, like hose of
our uneducated classes, do not extend beprnd the virtues shown on definite m- have been impeded, more than any-
sions by definite people, good or evil deeds of their fellow tribesmen, and the k w t y tatabions. Familiar analyses of meaning along
d a man, a woman, or d an object. They do not talk about abstract ideas. The se to die' or bachelor equals 'unmarried
question is rather whether their language makes impossible the expression of
abstract ideas . . . Devices to develop generalized ideas em probably dwsuys p ~ - n regarded as satisfactory, Itrut they have helped to
mnt and they are u d m soon as the cultural needs campel the natives, to farm twate the illusion that If the meaning of a word cannot be stated sst-
them. mula of three or four words, then what is needed
plex one, of five or six words.
Discussions of cm~eptualand lewiml resources in non-Western Ian- who tried to go beyond formulae like ts kii! =
guages such as those contained in HalUpikeYsbook tend to be based on se to die' found that trying to go just a little further didn't seem to
anecdotal information [see Lave 198P) and often lack linguistic sophistica- histicakd semantic formulae were
tion. But if dalmw like Hallpike" are to be suocessfullly refuted, they have as ttne cruder and simpler ones. in
to be refuted on the basis of sdid evidence and sound andysis. meaning of wards the more elusive this
The task of determining the hll set of universal concepts which underlie rying to catch it in verbal formulae was like try-
the "psychic unity of humankind" is viitall and urgent. Empirical Ilinpistic
investigations reported in Semantic and Lexical Univer8ab (Coddard and ce, many scholars previously interested
Wiemlbkka 1994M suggest that in all prolbillib11ity the rnetapredliwtes 'ifax earch altogether and turned to other,
'because', and 'dli', the mental predicates 'think'and %now7,and the basic ing to justify their abandonment of semantic
"~ubstantives"%omeoneharrd'sometluingkar among their number. iption in terns of new ideas about the nature of meaning. Meaning,
defined-not bemuse we haven" yet
cause it is, by its very nature, indefinable (see
1981; Chomsky 1987; Lakoff and Johnson

usion was frequently accompanied by attacks on Plato

and Leibniz], by almost ritualistic references
stein, and by assurances that meaning cannot be
described hawse it is "fmya""Ofteny'Tuzziness" came to be oelebrated as
almasd the ultimate truth about h m a n language and cognition. One could
h o s t hear a collective sigh of relierf: meaning is "fwy'" so we don't need
to try to describe it.
But in linguistics there is no escape from meaning. Meaning is what
language is all about, and the study of meanhg
whet linguistics is, ultimately, all about. Ohiousl
to make the study of meaning his or her primary concern: t
important tasks in linguistics. But Binguistics as a whole m
its responsibility for the study of meaning; and this means
avoid the problem of semantic c~mplexity.
can be reasonably regarded as the simple ones we have to experiment with
2. Complex Concepts as Configurations of Simple Ones
The complexity of a concept can be viewed as t
From the level of indefinables. Some meanings
guages can be regarded as ""sirtrpleY~inthe sense that t
decomprased (without circularity) into any otber meaningsmFor exa
as argued earlier, one cannot decompose (or define) concepts s u ~ as h s mentioned earlier (Chapter 11, data from child language are relevant
Gsomeonel,or 'know', and any attempt to do so must lea
and obscurity [as when one tries to define this in terms of dehb, osfiensiol
definiteness, refirentiality, and lsiol on; or k m w in terms of in~ursrratian,fa
tiuliby, wesa$co~ion, and the Pike). One could of course say that concep
such as 'this', "someone', or 'know' are c~omplexw in som
senses of the tern "complex"; I maintain, h
plex in the sense of being cdwmpo~bubEeinto
sirnlpbr than themselves. in this sense (and only
be regarded as the "ultimate simples" of any valid @once
natural language.
By contrast, most concepts e n d e d in any human language ere "IC~CP
plexY9nthe sense that they EM be decomposed in terms of simpler col
cepts. To stalte the meaning of a word is to reveal the configuration
simple concepts encoded in it-just as Locke said nearly
a definitions is nothing else but the showing the meaning of one word by
other not synonymous bnns. The meaning of words
made to stand for by him that uses them, the meaning of any
or the ward is defined, when, by other words, the idea it is made tlhe s i ~ no
annexed to, ins the mind o l the speaker,
view of ansother; md thus its sigdicatio
of definitionus; and therefore the only m
tian. (Locke 11690il959: 33-43
But to 'tae able to present comp1ex meanings @r ooncepts) as
tions of simple ones we must know in advance what the simp1
are, just as to analyse chemical compounds into th
we must know irm advance what the chemical elements are. Semantic
ds requires a list of semantic dements, just as
list of chemical elements. This crucial fact (Ithat
r w e d we need a list of semantic simples) was pointed out not by Locke
Leibniz also saw clearly the dilemma stemming from the mutual depen-
ur knowledge of simple concepts and our understanding of
plex ones: lea understand complex concepts we have to decompose them
what we assume are simple concepts; but to discover which concepts
their power to ccgenerateJy complex
d error that we can discover the ulltimate sim-
overed them, all our semantic analyses must
ional and to a greater or lesser degree incorrect.
s, H shall look briefly at a few diSfercnt types of concept,
to assess their complexity (relative to the postulated set of "sim-
ve to be handled with care, since to study conceptual
herent semantic theory is needed in the first place.
ists sometimes argue about such matters in a some-
. For example, Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (19901:
on the issue of lexical decomposition.
ut empirical findings on chilid language demonstrate that the concept of
usation (not in the fonn of the verb lo carrse but in the form of clausall
nkers such as 'cause and because) is quite common in the speech of 2-year-
. Whether the words kill and die are learned ear-
w: the authors probably don't know either but
simply guessing. Furthermore, they take for granted that when children
they link them wikh the same concepts
to the relevant literature. Finally, the
composition of the adult concept 'kill' should
n the verbs E;O cause and to become (as suggested twenty-five years ago
s that the authors'view of semantic
. Wierzbicka 1980rs.)
The same applies to Fodor" (1987: 161) comments on the meaning of

2 14 General Issues
farher: "Children know about fathers long before they know about males
and parents. So either they don't have the concept FATHER when they
seem to, or you can have the concept MALE PARENT without having
aocess b internal structure; viz., by having the concept FATHER. Of these
alternatives, the last seems best." 1would certainly agree that the analysis
offafher as "male parent7Ysmisguided (see Wierzbicka B972], and that the
child's concept of 'father' is not that of 'male parent'. But what does it
prove? For adults, the knowledge of, roughly speaking, 'begetting' is a park
of tlveir concept of 'father'; it is necessarily true, then, that when children
acquire the adult concept of 'father" they m s t also acquire this knowledge.
Obviously, when small children use the word DatEdy they don? teed to have
that knowledge; so it is not true that small chilldren necessarily "haow
about fathers"(just lsecause they use the word Daddy).
Words such as M o m y and Daddy are among the very first wrds
learned by children (see Anglin 8977), but they are first learned as names
far particular people, and the road from there to the adult concept of
bother' and 'father' is a subject for serious study. Fodor's comments on
the subject suggest limited familiarity with the work done thus far. His con-
clusion that children have an unanalysablle concept of FATHER, which i8
the same as that of addts, denies the whole idea of conceptual development
and overlooks the vast body of empirical research on child language and
on the aquisillion of meaning. And yet Fodor's musings on "hthar'hnd
other similar passages are ofkn adduced in books on "'dbrmal semantics'"
as evidence that the whole "deoompositional approach'" to meaning is
untenable (see e.g. Chierchia and McConndl-Ginet 1990: 363).
3, Abstract Corroeplts: Words far Emotions
Generally speaking, abstract concepts appear to be less complex than con-
crete ones; but even so, they are usually much more complex than simple d i ~
tionary definitions or illustrative semantic formulae offered in scholaaly
literature would lead us to believe. But very simple definitions of this k i d
@.g,e"o tie-'to say something untrue') do not have any predictive power, md
they cannot m u n t for the differences in the range of use of related con-
cepts. For example, as pointed out earlier (Chapter 4), a definition of "ie'
which says that "0 lie' is to say something untrue cannot account for the dif-
ferences in use betwmn lie and its dosest Russian counterparts wrat' and
[gar', both of which also mean, roughly speaking, Yo say something untrue'.
To my mind, if we want to assess a concept's real complexilty we must
seek to reveal its structure in a formula whose validity could be verified
against its actual range of use. Otherwise, the formulae we devise willl reflect
nothing but our own preconceptions.
7. Osrensionamd Concept Acquisition 215
%'@
er, for example, the English word happy and the Polish word given
tionairjles as its equivalent: szczg?$liwy. As Barahczak (1990: 12-13]
out, the range of use of the two words is not the same.
t b word '%appyY",rPuerps one of the mast frequently used wards in Basic
ican. It's easy ta open an English-Polisb or EngllshRussian dictionary and
an equivalent adjective. In fact, however, it will not be equivalent. The Polish
d for '%splpyW"nd I biebiavc tlluis ;ulso Bralds foe otJ~crSlavic languages) has B
uch more restricted meaming; it is generally reserved for rare states of profound
, or tala1 xatishction with serious things such as love, Iramily, the meaning of
and so on. Accordingly, it is not used as often. ns "happy" is m i u American com-
It is not only the Polish word szcsg.t/iwy or its counterparts in the other
avic languages which differs from the English word happy in fie ways
ibed: the Geman word gMcklich and the French word heuirem diner
happy in much the same way (see Wierzbicka 1992~).To amount for
ase diflerenms, [I have postulated for these words he following two expli-
[A) X feels happy. =
X feds something
sometimes a person thinks something Bike this:
something good happened to me
I wanted this
E don? want anything more now
because of this, this person feels something good
X feels. like this
(B) X feels 8zczgStlry &lUcklfcEEca, heureu, etc.). =
X feels something
sometimes a person thinks something like this:
something very good happened to naa:
I wanted this
everything Is good now
P can't want anything more now
because of this, this person feels somethitg very good
f X feels like this
two explications differ in three respects: First, B has one additional
ponent, "everything is good now' (by implication, "wrything that is
pening to me'); second, 'good' in A contrasts with %err good' in B; and
d, 'I don't want anything more nowqn A contrasts with 'I can't want
thing more now' in B. These three diflerenms account, I think, for
'caabsollmte" ~oonotationsof szczgs"[iwy and the more limited, more
pragmatic character of happy, discussed by Baraniczak and confirmed by

numerous linguistic facts such as, for example, that one can say quite h p p y
but not *ca&iema szcz~dEiwgror * g m z gIr;r'ck/ich,or that one can my I m
S I P ~ r $egosrkfadu or *Lk
happy witk this arrmgement but not * ~ ~ SszczgBiiwy
bin gIf4ncrfrls'chmit dieser Anordnmg,
A few further examples from the area of emotion concepts [sex also
Chapter 5):
Terrd@ed
'A feels something
sometimes a person thinks something Pike this:
something very bad is happening I
because of this, something very bad can happen to me now
I don't wmt this
because of this I would want to do something if I could
I can't do anything
bemuse of this, this person feels something very b d
X feels something like this
If one is ferr$edr what one is tcrr@ed of is seen not simply as 4sometln;i;ng
bad'buk as something 'very bad'. What one is tesr$ed of Is very reseal-
something that is already there. Amnd yet the target of iterror is also p d y
in the future' because the present 'bad evenlt9s seen here as a source of a
tuture threat ('. . . can happen NOW). This future threat is necessarily
personal ('sometkning very bad can happen TO ME now'). The exp~enmr's
attitude is one of an intense non-ancrceptance ('I don't want it']; at the same
time, it is one of totd helpkssness ('1 can%do anything').
,Petr$ed
X feeis something
sometimes a person thinks something like his:
something very bad is happening
something very bad will happen to me now
I don't want this
because of this, I would want to do something if I could
I can't do anything
because of this, this person feels something very bad
bemuse of this, this person can't move
X feels something like this
iPetr@ed appears to be a more spec& version of terrged: it is a ferrEpr
which beads to a kind of paralysis: 'this person can't move".mote, how-
ever, the difference between 'can h*rppm'in rerrijied mdl 'will happen' in
petr@cd,)
Horrged
W feels something
7. CJ'sserrsbn and Concept Acqaisits'on 21 7
sometimes a perlaon thinks something like this:
something very bad is happening to someone
I didn't think that something like this could happen
1 don't w n t this
because of this I would want to do something if I could
I can" do anything
because of this, this person fecls something vcry bad
X feels something like this
main difference between horror and terror concerns the relationship
the exrperiencer and the victim: in the m e of terror, the two are
, whereas in the case of horror they have to be different. One is
omeone else, as one is appalied to see
A second differemnm between horror
to the first one] has to do with the pre-
he farmer: since horror is, essentially, the feeling of a
primady what is happening kow'(Cin a b r a d sense),
than what can or ~lrsi81happen after now.
is kind are very different from so-called
sad on a set of necessary and sufficient conditions,
to concepts but to denotata (so that one can say of any extralimn-
is a fairly precise and flexible tool of conoeptual analysis, and
itae and elusive aspects of meaning far beyond the
ation which was aimed at in earlier analyses of
ortantly, definitions of the kind proposed here
Iy verifiable; they canan,
therefore, be dis-
tested against native speakers'intuitions, and
ended .on the basis of such discussions. Though not perfect,
all concepts encoded in natural language are reducible to
le, univensal, and inherently "c1ear"concepts such as
NE and SIOMETBIING, SAY and KNOW, or GOOD and ]BAD,
9 always be so reduced, so to speak, in one go, that is in a single
complex. Often, they can only be reduced to the level
conceptual simples step by step. In saying this, I am relaxing a pinciplle
semantic analysis which H have defended for two decades, and which was
stulated by Leibniz as a necessary empirical check on semantic analysis,
to some words (notably, particles):
oper explanation of the particllcs it i s mot sufficiemli to make an abstract
. . but we must proceed lo a paraphrase which may be substituted in
its place, as the definition may be put in the place of the thing defined. When wle often, when a person feels something,
hnvc elo'ivcn In ~ c c kstlcl tn dclierfiami~ie
tlucse ,f:t~itnble
pnrnp~nansc~il~
nil lhc pnrtidcs snm~ethinghappens in this p:nrt
so far as they are susceptibic or Llmem, we sUaall Ylusuxe rcgnrlekcd tllclr sigmilicatlons. otlrer peoplc cam see this
(Leibniz 1765/11981: 333). because af this, when a person feels something,
other geaplle can often know something about it
I still believe that this principle is vitally important, bwlt P no longer think
that it can be applied as blroadly as 1suggested in a number of earlier pub- eyes
lications (see in particular Wierzbicka 1972, 1980). In many cases, I now two parts of a person's face
recognize, it can only be applied step by step. 1 will illustrate this with a these parts are alike
number of examples of concrete concepts, beginning with relatively simplie one is on one side of the face
ones, and tihen turning to more complex ones. the other is on the other side of the face
because of these two parts, a person can see
ears
4. Relatively Simple Concrete Concepts: Body Parts and tbe two parts of a person's head
Natural Environment these parts are alike
one is on one i d e of the head
Among the simplest concrete concepts are some spatial concepts such as the other is on the other side of the head
ctopyand 'boffomy: they are not parts of a person's face
because of these two parts, a person can hear
a part of something nose
this part is above all1 the other parts of this something a part of a permn's faoe
one can think of this part like this:
bot~om
there ;are two parts above this part
a part of something
one on one side of the face
this part is under a 1 the other parts of this something
one on the other side of the face
A somewhat larger cxtegory of (relatively speaking) simpb concept8 there is one part under this part
imncludes those referring to body parts.' For example: because of this part, when a person is in a place, this person can feel
something
head
because of this, a person can think something l i h this about a place:
a part of a person's body
there is something bad in this place
this part is abow a11 the other parts of the body
there is something good in this place
when a person thinks, something happens in this part
mouth
Despite their relatively simple semantics, many body part ooncepits a part of a person's faoe
appear to involve a hierarchical (transitive) structure, with, far example, the this part has two parts, one above the other
'eyes', 'ears', c n ~ ~ and
e y , 'mouth' being defined via 'face'* and "ace', via these parts are alike
'head' (see Cruse 11986; WiPkins 8981; Apresjan 1974, 1992; Mel'Cuk 11974): because of this part, a person can say things to other people
,&ice other people can hear these things
a part of a person's hcnd often, there: are some things inside this part
it is on one side of the head because this person wants to do something to these things with this
ilt has parts part
people can think like this about this part:
if there is nothing inside this part for a very long dime a person can-
I For an earlier allilemgt at analysilug the meaning of body part lenns, see Wierzhicka (i980:
77-97). not live

What applies to body part concepts applies also to environmental con-
cepts such as "sky'or " u n k r 'cloud" for which 1 would propose expllia-
tions rowg01ly along the following lines:
3 b
something very big
people can see it
people cain think like this about this something:
it is a place
it is above all other plaoes
it is far from people
8UH
something
people can often see this something in the sky
when this something is In the sky
people can see other things bmause of this
when h i s something is In the sky
people often fzel something be~auseof this
cio~d
something
people can often see many things of this kind in the sky
sometimes people cannot see the sun bemuse of these things
these things can move
Explicated in this way, a set such as 'eyes-face-head' or %loud-sw-sky"
reminds one of a set of Russian wooden dolls. A111 this may seem mot only
very complicated but mneeessarily so: wouldn't it be better to admit, quite
simply, that eyes are eyes, a face is a face, and a head is a head, and that's
the end of the story?
Of course it would be simpler to do this. Brat consider what words such
as these [e.g. eyes) can mean to a blind person like Helen Keller (1956), who
could use them in ways mlnat make pcrfect sense to sighled people. It seems
to me that seen from the point o[ view of someone like Hellen Keller the
explications proposed here sound psychologicaUy quite pbusihle. The
words eyes, Jace, and head could have to Helen Kdler an ostensive inter-
pretation, because she could know their designeta by touching. But surely,
she knew not only which parts of her own face crri of other people's faces
wem called eyes, but aIso that these parts-which she coulld b w ~ h - c a u l d
give people some special, otherwise inaccessible, knowledge albout places.
She also knew that people" faces can reveal something about their thoughts
and feelings, and that their heads are not only above other parts of the
body but also have sometlhinp, to do with thinking.
In the case of 'cloud', 'sun', or " k g h n ostensive definition is even less
7. Qstension and Concept Acquisition 221
plausible, bemuse Helen Keller could neither see nor touch their designata;
and yet she clearly did understand the concepts.
I do not think, therefore, that the explications proposed here are unnec-
essarily connp8ex. k~tthe same time I acknowledge tbat they are complex-
too complex for gIobal, d-embracing, one-level paraphrases couched
exclusively in terms of semantic primitives to be fully intelligibb. It is desir-
able, therefore, and perhaps necessary, that our definitions of concrete con-
cepb such as names of body parts or names. of diiTerent parts or aspeds of
the natural ersvironment should include semantic "molecules" as weBE as
semantic atom^".
It slniould be emphasized, however, that a semantic analysis conducted in
k m s of semantic 'koleculesY>ather than directly in t e m s of semantic
'%toms'hakes no claim about the order of acquisition. Thus, if we define
'eyes' in tems off 'face', or "slm'in terms of 'sky', this does not mean that
we expect children to learn the wordface before the word qes, or the word
sky hefare the word mn,because the acquisition of concepts is none thing,
m d the acquisition of words, another.
Though we m y know that a child has started to use the word eyes, or
the word sun, this does not mean that we h o w what concepts the chiid is
associating with these words. Since a young child's use of words does not
correspond to that of an adult (see e.g. knglin 1970; Clark and Clark 1977;
Clark 1983; Carey 191851), we m n o t a s m e that the chill85 meanings car-
respond to those of the adult; on the contrary, we m s t assume that they
may be different.
It seems reasonable to conjecture that children absorb the semantic uni-
verse of their native language gradually, moving, on the whole, from s h -
pler concepts to more complex ones. It goes without saying that the
acquisition, of concepts by children requires much further study (across a
wide range of langvages) before any fim conclusions about the nature of
this process can be: reached. It is important to remember, blowever, that the
task is exceedingly difficult, precisely because the acquisition of concepts
cannot be equated with the acquisition of words. la would seem obvious
that systematic and methodologically informed analysis of adult concepts
is a conditbn sine qua nora for the study of the grdual acquisition of these
concelpts by children.
5 . Temperature Terns and the Colrvciept of Tire'
It s m s very likely that 'Ye~mperatureItems" are first learnt ostensively-
far example, hot in connection with an oven or a heater, and cold in con-
nection with cold water or drinh, or ice, or cold weather. At that stage of
language acquisition, hot and coidrnay not even be thought of as opposites.
Buk the full adult meanings of these words are definitely thought of as
opposites (although cold is also thought of as an opposite of warm]. We can
amounrt for this if we try to reveal the conceptual point of referen~econ-
tained in these concepts. I believe that such a paint of reference for all these
three mncepts (hot, cold, and warm) is provided by the concept oE$re, and
that slightly different concepts are embodied in the temperature words
referring to the ambient air and in those referring <toobjiexlts. (It is interest-
ing to note in this connection that in Russian two different words are used
for "hotyheather and for "hot" things, e.g. water.) As a first approxima-
tion, I: would propose the following explications:
It is hot now- =
if someone is very near fire - if someone touches this thing this person can feel something
this person can feel something bad because of this
people can feel something like this now
Pt is cold now. =
sometimes people want to be near fire
because they feel something bad
people can feel something bad like this now
It is warm now. =
sometimes people fed something good
because they are near fire
people can feel something good like this today
As these explications show, both kof and caId as descriptors of ambient
temperature imorporate value judgements, and in both cases, these j~udge-
mealks arc macgative. This suggcsilion is s~upportedby tehrer's (1990) abser-
wation that one can talk of a '"arm jumper" and perhaps even of a "cool
dress", but not of a "hot jumper" ar a "cold dress": '"am jumpers" and
"cool dresses" can be seen as functional, but hot jumpers or cold dresses
would not because normalliy peop,e don't want to feel hot or cold. The
contrast in acceptability between keep (orreseg] warm or keep cool on the
one hand and ?keep hot or ?keep coSd on the other points In the same dirm
tion.
On t k other hand, hot b o d , or a hot bath, are not seen as undesirable
(and keep (food) hot is perfectly acceptaMe); nor is a cold drink, or a cold
compress an one's forehead, undcsirablc. The idca a l samething warm
coming into such contact with our bodies implies a pleasant sensation, and
while the idea of something cold coming inlto such contact is more Bikely ta
imply something unpleasant this doesn? have to be the case; for example,
the coltocatians caM beer or caid meat do not imply anything arr&sirabla
(cf. cold ~~efhoscape),
and don" sound odd, unlike coidj~mperor hot ~ocksl.
These diflerences between temperature words as applied to ambient air
or dothes and as applied to objects can be amounted for by assigning to
the latter type explications along (roughly) the following lines?
This thing (Xjl is hot. =
if something is very near fire
something can happen to this thing bemuse of this
if someone touches this thing this person can feel something bad
because of this
X is like this
This thing (X, e.g, some soup, mimilk, water] is warn. =
if something is near fire
something can happen to this thing because of this
bemuse of this
X is like this
This thing CX, e.g. some soup, mill&,water) is cold. =
if somethitrg is near fire
something can happen to this thing because of this
if someone touches this thing this person can feel something
because of this
X is not like this
Though relatively simpile, all the above explications rely, crucially, on the
eioncept of 'firey-and %reLitself is quite complex, much more so than the
other environmental concepts discussed earlier [%sky','sun', or %@lloud')i.
In view of this complexity, we might be tempted to say that "fire" is a
purely ostensive term ("fire is what people call fire"). But this muld not be
any more satisfactory than saying, for example, that "sky" Is "what we call
skyyL, or "sun" is '"hat we call1 sun"'. For any native speaker of Englllshjre
is more than just a proper name, and it implies knowlledge which can be
spelled out. If we do spell it out, we can see, among other things, howjre
is semantically related to sun.
Speaking Informa8ly, fire is a phenomenon which can be seen (even at
night], which can be felt by people nearby, which causes a profound change
iE"h,ming"J in some things or substances, and which cam hurt people if they
get too close to it, k mere precise explication is given below. For the
reader's convenience, some '"raps" (in square bsackctsjr have been inclluded
in a number of places. These props shoulld Lare helpful, but not essential, for
the understanding of the explication.
The? concept 'touch' (or 'ann,'contact') has been proposed as a possible semantic phimi-
ti, by Cliff Goddmd (persona0 mmmunicailion). It has not yet baen tested cross-lingznisticalEyY

There is fire in that place. =
(a) something is happening in that place
(b) people can see it
(c) if at a time [at night] people couldn't see anything else in this place,
they could see this
(4 if someone is near that place, this person can feel something [warn,
hot] bemuse this is happening
(el something is happening to some things in that place leg. wood,
coals] h a u s e this is happening
(fl after this, these things will not be the same [they will1 turn to ashes,
eitc.]
(g) people carr think about it like this:
(la) this is something
(K) if someone touches this something, this person will feel something
very bad
Component (a) indimtes that fire is an event, or a process, (6) and [c)
that it is highly visible, (4that it generates warmth, [e) and QSJI that in the
process some substances are "bwnt". Component (g) indicates that people
think of this event or process in a special way, namely, (h) that it is a
"thing"', a tangible thing (i) which, however, should not be touched
(because one would bum onesello.
What is particularly important about this explication Is that it doesn't
include words such ;as hot, het~t,or burn (not to mention Pamres, hflmrma-
lien, carnbus~ioc~nr,
Jrclel, ekc.) as conventional dictionaries usuallly do, which
all, inevitably, lead to circularity.
Long as this explication is, I have indicated that it may not even be com-
plete, because it a n be argued that the full conmpt of %re'iincludes also
some r~eferencesb its role in human life: cooking, wamth, Bight as well as
destructive unwanted fires. En simple terns, these further aspecb of 'fire"
can be articulated along the following lines:
(fl often people do something in a plaoe
because they want this to happen [making dire]
(k) sometimes people d o it because they want something to happen to
something [to some food]
(0 sometimes people do it because they don" want to feel something
h d [cold]
(m)sometims people do it at a time when they cannot see things [at
night] &awe they want to see things PlgErt]
Ht could be argued, of course, that the formula above articulates not the
meaning of the wardfire, but something else-say, English speakersyalk
knowledge and folk ideas about fire. In my view, however, this would really
7. CEsfeflsimz md Concept Acquisition 225
be an argument about terminology (what is "meaning"") not about the sub-
stance: equally well, one could argue that the position of the head in the
body (above the other parts), or the location of the sky C'above every-
thing"") hlrellongs to "folk knowkdge"".ethm we call such things
'heaning" or "folk knowledgelideasy" they are part of the speakerskcom-
municative competenoe, and they are associated, invariably, with the expli-
cated words. (Far further discussion, see Chapter 11 11.1 The comgrlexity of
such meanings-or such folk knowledge-is lquite remarkable, m d it is
hard to escape the conclusion that the human mind has an in-built capac-
ity to acquire such horrors-or wrgnder~-~f ccomplexity and to organize
them along certain paths, for which the mind is perhaps somehow pre-
pared. This conclusion is strengthened by consideration of words for cul-
tural and natural kinds, which will be discussed next. (See again Chapter
11.1
6. Cultural and Natural Kinds: "read" and Water'
According to many theorists of language and cognition, there are two kinds
of concept: one kind is acquired via direct experience of the world, that is,
ostensivdy, whereas the other is acquired via language. For example,
Russell (1948: 78) wrote:
'Ostensive definitionymay be defined as 'any process by which a person is taught to
understand a word otherwise then by the use of other words'. Suppose that, know-
ing no Fremch, you are shipwrecked on the coast oFNormandy: you make your my
into a farmhouse, you see breed on the table, and, being famished, you point at it
with an inquiring gesture. BE the farmer thereupon says pain, you will condude, st
least provisionally, that this is the French for "read', and you will be oonfimed in
this view i l the word is not repeated when you point at other kinds of eatables. You
will then have learnt the meaning of the w r d by ostensive definition.
Having in this way inkroduccd tlrc concept of ostensive definitian, Russell
goes on to suggest that there are two different kinds of words in language:
ithose which are normally learnt by ostensive definitions and those which
are learnt via other words. He exemplifies:
Most children Lam the word dog ostensively; some learn in this way the kinds of
dogs, colllies, St. Bemards, spaniels, poodles, etc., while others, who Raw little ta
do with dogs, may Arst meet with these words in books. No child learns the word
gwdradped csstensiwllgf, still less the word animal in the sense in which it includes oys-
ters and limpets. He probably lems muat, bee, and beerk ostensivdy, and perhaps
insect, but if so he will mistakenly include spiders until corrected.
Names of substances not obviously oolbctdons of imdividuals, such as miilk, bread,
W O ~ ,are apt b be Pamt ostensively when tbey denote things fmiliar in every-day
life. (Russell 1948: 833

In a similar vein, Burling (1970: 801) distinguishes between what he calls
"referential definitions" and "verbal definitions":
The conclusion seems cfear: any theory of meaning must provide for two essenmtially
different ways by which we can learn and define the meaning of' words. Mother must
almost always be learwd in context, while second cowin once removed mulld prob-
ably newer be Beamed without some degree of verbal explanation. Water is learned
in context, hydrogen aFicmi&, with an explanation, and so on.
I would also agree that some concepts are learnt (partiy) on the basis of
ostension, and bred, milk, wafer, dog, or bee may indeed be of this kind.
Whether any concepts can be acquired pureiy by ostension is a problem
which I will discuss shortly. First, however, it should be pointed out that
the alternative set up by Russell or Burlling omits the third-and perhaps
the most important-souroe of our concepts, that is our innate conceptual
apparatus, which is both '"logically and onbgeneticalliy'"rior to either ver-
bal explanations or ostemsion.
It seems obvious that "'verbal explanations" must rely on words which
can be lleaunt without such explanations. Consequently, if ostension were
thc only alternative to verball explanations then all concepts would have to
be acquired, ultimately, by ostension. But how can one acquire by osten-
sion conceptual distinctions such as that between someom and somethhg,
or between you and R Astonishingly, Russell (though not Burling] does
mention you and I, as well as afler and before, among those words which
are learnt by ostension. But how colllld one possibly "show" to a child what
you or I means? Or how could one s b w to anyone what someone, as
opposed to somebhfng, mans? Of course, one could give examples of per-
sons, and examples of things; but how could one show the grounds for the
respective generalizations?
A s s ~ n gthat universal human ooncepts such as SOMEONE and
SOMETHING, YOU m d I, or BEFORE and AFTER are prior to all
experience, and to aPP explanation, and provide-like Kant's space and
time-a prariori f o m s of experience, let us return to the question of how con-
cepts which are rooted in people" experience (such as Russell's "read'or
'pain') may be actually acquired, and what these concepts may really stand
for.
Russell" charming vignette notwithstanding, to acquire the adult mean-
ing of either pain or b s e ~ d[whicl~,incidenitaily, do not mean exact$ the
same, and which do not have exactly the same range of useI3 chiidre11 (or
"or eiexmpb, Engkish distinguishes lexically between roSls thread rolls) and bread, wherea
in French "rol8s" are calbd r'es pefiss pains ("little breads"). This ract (among many othea)~
reflects digerent culinary traditions and dimerent expectations with respect to bread and pain:
bread is expected to be sliced (and, cons;equently, so& are conwived as a different cultural
kind), whereas pain, which plays a far greater role in French culture than bread does in Anglo
cuItwlre, is expected to be crusty on the outside and light and puffy inside, and is therefore less
7. Ostension and Concept Acquisition 227
shipwrecked mariners from distmt lands) must do more than simply
observe how these words are used in one type of situation, with respect to
one type of object: they must also figure out how to extend their initial use
to new situations, and to new, unfamiliar, types of referents. To da that,
they must go beyond a mere observation of material ob~ects(various pieces
or kinds of itaread), and come up with some (unconscious) hypotheses about
the way people think about those objects; they must make the leap from
ostensicrru to conceptualization, from objects to construals.
They must learn that "tPread9ssomething that people eat; they must also
learn that it is something that people, generally speaking, eat every day-
even if they, or their o m families, happen not to eat it every day; that it is
something people normally eat in order not to be huangry [unlike cakes,
which people normally eat for pleasure); that it comes in the form of large
objects which can be shared and which can last for some time (loaves) and
that people normally eat it with something else (e.g. butter). They must also
learn thalt-unlike noodles or rim-it is something that people eat with
their hands, and not with forks or spoons. (Words and expressions such as
bead~win~wr, bread and EPrrrre~,or sa,rsdwich provide lingnistic evidence for
the psychological reality of these compomnents.)
The fact thar bread is made from flour or from something like ffour, and
that it is baked, is probably less essential than the k t s mentioned above,
but it probably is, none the less, part of the adult concept of 'bread': to
understand this coancept, one must know thar the thing in question is made
from 'something that comes from plmts, that is, something that grows out
of the ground' (and that people do something to the ground for that pur-
pose); and also that, while one doesn't normally eat bread hot, to prepare
it one does need 'heats7
For Europeans, 'bread7s such a familiar everyday phenomenon that it
is often hard hr them to imagine that this conoept may need any exlplana-
tiion. M e n one looks at it from a cross-cultural persgectiv~e,however, it
becomes obvious that bread eating is a highly culture-specificphmornenon,
and that the word bseud stands for a complex cultural kind, whose esseru-
tial characteristics are by no mems easy to identify to c d t u r d outsiders (see
Nida lg475. The fact that in many languages ~(e-g.in many Australian and
keanic languages) the word for 'bread' is a recent loan from English high-
lights the "foreign" character of this concept in many cultures. 11 is also
likely that although loan words of this kind may have the same range of
GLenotata as the English word breadI the concept is in fact somewhat dif-
ferent. In particular, in Australian languages, which tend to contrast "flesh
food" and "piant food"",breadY (or, rather, 'burridi') is thought of above
suitable for slicing. [For example, a French bagwetre counts as pain, hut it is not expected to
be sbced.) Fhe fact that in English bread is a mass noun (e.g. *two brea&) whereas in French
paah cam be used as a count n o w (e.g. d e ~ poi@
x points h [he same direction.

a11 as a kind of "plant food"'. For example, in Maimithiyei bread is com-
monly referred to not just as burridi but as mi-b~rsidi,where mi is a gen-
eral classihr for food coming from plants (Ian Green, personal
mm'~lhimtion).As mentioned earlier, however, from an English 8pIkerE8
paint of view the 'plant' origin of bread may well be a less salient part of
the concept, aquired relatively late.
As a first approximation we can, then, explicate the concept of %read9
aPong the following limes:
bread
a kind of thing that people eat
many ;people eat it every day
wlipcri pcoplc don't cat somathing fur a long time
they can feel something biad
people often eat this kind of thing because of this
people eat it like this:
they eat it with their hands, not with anything else
when they eat it, they eat something else at the same time
they don't eat all d it at the same time
people make things of this kind
because they want people to be able to eat them
ORIGIN
in some places things grow out of the pound
because peoplle did something in these places
because they want people to be able ta ealt this kind of thing
people do some things to Urese things
something happens to some parts of these things because of this
people do something with these parts near fire
This explication, incomplete and imperfect as it no doubt is, is, I believe,
gsychloPogi~d1ymore real than a typical dictionary definition, such as, for
example, that provided by the Shorter Oxfard Ep~gii$hDic~iomryl(SIOED
1964): bread-"an article of food prepared by moistening, kneading, md
baking meal or flour, usually with the addition of yeast or leaven"; or the
one provided by the MacqwarB Dictionary of Ausrm~imEnglish (UPIEI]:
bread-"a h o d made of flour or meal, milk or water, etc., made Into a
dough or batter, with or without yeast or the like, and baked".
Contrary to what definitions of this kind imply, one can know what
bread means without knowing the meaning d words such as yefist, iearuefl,
or batter; but if one doesn't know that bread is thought of as something
that many people eat every day ("our daily bread"], and as something &at
they eat, roughly speaking, in order not to be hungry (rather than h a plea-
sure, like cake]; or'that it is made from something that, roughly speaking,
"comes from plants" (so that, for example, a "meat loafY3snot a kind of
7. O'steasion asad Concept Acquisition 2213
bread), then they do not know what b r e d means. The knowledge encap-
sulated in this concept goes far beyond ostension, and in this sense "read"
is far from a purely ostensive concept. It embodies generalizations which
are usually not made explicitly, verba1Ey, but which none the less can be
made verbally, and which sometimes have to be made verbally. For ex-
ample, if a small child refers to a cake or b a meat loaf as bread, he or she
is likeiy to be corrected: this is not bread, this is cake; or: this is not bread,
this is a meat loaf. Somlehow or other the child must build the generaliza-
tion that things with meat in them, or sweet things that one eats for plea-
sure and which one doesn't spread with anything, are not bread. I am not
saying that generallizations of this kind are given to the child verbally, or
that they are made by the child cnnsciausly, but thal i F lhcy arc not madc
at all, the concept has not been Ileamt.
Similarly, how can one learn the concept of %ater'(CBudEng% example)
by mere ostension?
Water is something that one can drink, but so is milk or orange juice.
Water is 'kolourless", "see-through"'; but so is vodka, and various other
liquids that a child is not alllowed to drink. Water is also the stlzff one can
go into in some places, for example, in a place called "the sea"; and this
stuff one is not allowed to drink either. Water is also the stuff one can wash
oneself with; but the idea of 'wash'preswpposes, it seems, the knowledge of
the concept 'water'. (One can %ash1 oneself only with water or with 'some-
at is lnslnally assumed, 'water'is not a universal human
iwencept for which every language has a word. For exsample, the closest
Japanese word, mim, does not mean the same as water and refers exclu-
sively to cold water (see Sluzuki 1978). One cannot say, for example, *atmi
whereas afmi miruku, 'hat milk', i5 fully aoceptable
communication). For 'hot waterqapanese has
h an honorific prefix, oyu).
the Engiish water can be either cold or
a from a tap, but if it comes from the sky, it is normally
d twin* not water (unlike the Pitjaritjatjara word k~pi,which applies
to the stuff falling sometimes Yrom the skyy;Coddard 1992~).None
in can be called drops of water.
see Clearly, there is much more to this concept than
on; and the most important oomponents
those that one learns first.
fully acquired the concept of 'water' one doesn't
rt from all other substances. If scientists tell us
like water and tastes like water, but it is not
e to believe them. We think: of water as a particu-
lar KIND of thing, a kind which we may not always be able to recognize
230 General Issues
but which one can 'put into one" body, through the mouth' (La. drink it),
and which one can "ee in various places not because people did something
in those pIaces"rilrers, creeks, lakes, sea, m d so on). These two we
perhaps the most cruclal components of the (adult) everyday concept of
'water" They cannot be acquired by ostension alom. There is more to the
a~quisitionof concepts like 'bread' and %water1 than RusselB's little fantasy
about art Englishman "shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy" sallows for.
My conclusion is this: the meaning of a "c~ncrete"wword like $read Jslr
water is indeed learnt "'in context", but it is built, in the child's mind, grad-
ually, and contains certain tacit knowledge which may not be verbal but
which is verbalizable. The Japanese child learns '7n context" that mizu is
old, but when she hies to use it with respect to boiling water she will be
corrected (presumably, verbally corrected); m d even if such an error, and
such a correction, never occurs, tlne child must somehow make a mental
note that a hot liquid which otherwise is quite like mizu is called y~ and is
never called mizu, and therefore that mizu must be cold. I am not saying
thal children make this mental nome consciously or verballly; but they must
make it somehow if they are to learn the p r o p r range of use of the word
mizu.
The same applies to names of animals, such as Russell5 dog. How could
a child learn this concept by ostension alone? Surely, sooner or later a
moment will come when the child learns to apply the word dog to an ani-
mal that looks different from all those that were called dog in her presence.
The word dog doesn? mean simplly 'an animal that looks like those that we
have heard people refer to as dog3'. d mall child may call a fox, or ewn
a cat, dog (Clark and Clark 1977). To develop a full a d d t concept of Vog'
one has to make in one's mind certain generdimtions, such as that t h y
bark, that they growl, that they can bite, that they live with people or near
people, that they can do diflerent things that people want them to do, and
so on (see Wierzbicka 1985: 369-70; see also Tyler 1978).
Again, the ability to recognize dogs is not a necessary Eonsequence of
knowing the concept 'dog" An adult person may mistake a woif, or a
dingo, for a dog, and this doesn't show that they don't know what dog
means. To know this one has to have aocess to a number of generalhatiom
about dogs (such as those mentioned above), not to a mental image ensur-
ing that one @an always tdU dogs apart Biom other animals. How exactly
these generalizations are built, and how they are stored in the mind, we
don't know; but they are oertailrly verbaiizable. (Cf. Chapter 11.)
Russell was convinoed that quadrtrped is learnt via a verbal explanation:
whereas dog, beet&, .or ant is learnt via osbnsion. He was less confident,
however, about insecf and seemed in Tact to r m o p b e , implicitly, that
bsecl cztmnot be learnt without a verbal explanation or at least a verbal cor-
rection.
7. Osfemsionand Concept Acquisitio~ 23 1
But is beetle redly very different in this respect from insect? Or, for that
matter, from am? In many AustraPian Aboriginal languages there is no
word for mat, because, for examplle, "edible ants" are conoeptuallized as
something quite different from 'red ants' or from poison^^^ anltsl'. In fact,
different kinds of what speakers of English would describe as h n t s h r e not
even assigned to the same supercaitegory. (See Hale er aL forthcoming.)
This suggests that each "species word" of this kind is learnt in tcrms of
some absbacm gencralizalions-not unlike tho% involved in q~rsdruped~
ifiscct, or second cowin once removed.
Having said this, I hasten to add: I am not saying that there is no dif-
ference between quadruped or second cclusi~rO R C ~ removed
F on the one hand
and dog, oras, bread, or wafer on the other. But the difference is not what
Russdl 01 Bwrjing say it is.
Concepts such as 'quadrupedkr 'second cousin once removed' are prob-
ably learnt by verbal explanation alone, so that ostension plays no role in
their acquisition, whereas ostension clearly does play a role in the acquisi-
tion of concepts such as 'dog', 'ant" 'bread', or 'waterJ. However, this
doesn? mean that the latter kind of concept can be acquired by osbnsion
alone. Nor does it mean that they can be given a purely ostensive defini-
tion, along the lines of "an ant is a kind of creature that people call ANT"
or ""bead is a kind of stuff that people call BREAD"".
Noit every language has a word for ctmn-ead'or for 'ant" and one could
never teach the speaker d a language which doesn? have such words what
they mean simply by showing them some appropriate specimens. Specimens
are of course useful, but the learners have also to grasp how far they can
go in applying the words in question to things which look different-r to
things which look similar but are differently handled, differently interacted
with. Abstract generalizations have to be built, and allthough the learner
QesnY necessarily bluiad them, and store them, In the fonn of verbal defi-
nitions, this is the only way, I believe, that testable hypotheses about their
content can be formulated. How dse?
M e n Burling (1970: 80) says that words such as wakr are ''learned in
contextY'(raitherthan with the help of other wards) he is no doubt right.
But this is different Bh . saying that the meming of such words can be
m
stated without a verbal definition. The quote adduced at h e beginning of
this section sserns to suggest that, in Burling's view, wards learned in con-
text do slot require verbal dehitions-and this is the point which I dispute.
232 General Iasres
So far, I ham rocused on the semanljc complexity of words of different
kinds. But, obviously, people don" sspeak just in nrrords: they speak in sen-
tences; and the semantic complexity of sentences depends not only on the
complexity of the words of which they are composed but also on the
mechanics of the composition itsclr.
Let us consider, for example, a simple sentence such as I ale m appk. En
broad outline, its semantic structure can be represented as follows:
[at some time before now],
1did something [EAT] to something [APPLE]
something happened to this something EAPPLE] because of this
To apply this fomula to a sentence, we need to 'plug in', somehow, the
semantic infomation encapsulated in h e words eat and appEe. For ear, we
could propose (as a first approximation] the f018wing scenario:
Someone ate something. =
(a) someone did something to something
(b) after this, something was inside a part of this person [MOUTW
(c) this person did something to this thing with this part
($3 something Inappened to this thing because of this
(e) after this, parts of this thing were inside another past of this person
[STOMACIfl
IC;rP if people don't t o this they cannot live
(g) if someone doesn't do it for a long time this person feels something
bad
The crucial components which ddisfimnguish 'eating'from Urinrking' are (rc]
;and (4: even though food doesn't have to be nieeessarily chewed or bitten,
when one 'eats' it (as opposed to "rimking') something happens to it ;in the
mouth, and it happens Irecause one does something to it with one's mouth.
(For a definition of moluth, see Section 4.)
As for appJle(sJ, this could be defined, in essence, as 'a kind of thing that
people eat', and in simpler syntax, 'a kind of thing-people EAT this kind
of thimg', a fomula whose intelrpretdion depends again on the explication
of sat. But a full meaning of apple contains of course more than a basic
categorization in terns of edibility. Trying to spell out this meaning (that
is, the folk conoept) fully, I hund that I had to posit numerous compo-
nents, some of great semantic complexity (see Wierzbicka 1985: 302-3).
But even if we ignored the enormous semantic complexity of a concept
Bike "apple', and if we d e b e d this word simply as % kind of thing that p a -
For an earlier attempt to state the meaning oreat, sea Wierzbicka ((19810: 901.
7. Oxtension and Concepl Acquisitio~ 233
pUe eat" or even as 'a kind of thing that people call APPLES" we would
still have to conclude that the meaning of the simple sentence I ate am apple
cannot bc represented in tcrms of onle global paraphrase. It can be repre-
sented in terns of semantic primitives, but only on a step-by-step basis. I
conjecture7therefore, that-to some extent at least-this is how the human
mind operates when it confronts the stupendous task of semantic interpre-
tation in general; or at least, that it is capable of doing so when it is needed.
The semantic structure of an ordinary human sentence is about as simple
and as "shallow" as the structure of a galaxy or the structure of an atom.
Looking into the meaning of a single word, let alone a single sentence, can
give one the same feeling of dizziness that can come from thinking about
the distances between galaxies or about the irnpenetraltPPe empty spaces hid-
den in a single atom. The experience can be disconcerting, and perhaps it
is not surprising that many theorists of language and cognition prefer to
take the view that meanings can't be analysed-as W. Lyons (8981:73-41
put it, 'Tor theoretically interesting reasons"'.
Brat no reasons, not even '"theoretically interesting'' ones, can absolve us
from the effort of trying to explore the meanings of words to find out what
unconscious principles determine the boundaries of their use. We have to
try to pin d o m the elusive and culture-specific corhgurations of elements
encapsulated in everyday concepts, and to face the formidable complexity
d meanings which ordinary people appear to juggle effortlessly in every-
&y discourse.
If we don't tackle this copnlolexity we shall also fail to achieve some of
our basic professional tasks, such as laying the groundwork for a more
efictive lexicography, developing tools to revitalize language teaching, or
promoting cross-culltural understanding via a non-ethnocentric description
ofcuBturaP variation. We shall also throw away our chance of exploring and
contemplating the dazzling beauty of the universe of meaning.
Semantics
 Against "Against Definitions"

1. LioguisXie Meaning

t try to review the m o m o u s literature on defini-

sent my a m concluiorions on the subject emergjag from
definitions, pursued over nearly three decades.
A "definitionya-in the sense which is relevant to linguistics-is an expres-
o tor speak, the meaning of a word by articulating it
to its components. [Gf. the quote from Locke 1690r'8959:33-4 in Chapter

Since to define a word is to deC0mplo~eits meaning into its constituent

s, only comp1ex concepts are susmptible of definition. Although
keys""simple ideas" do not correspond exactly to semantic primitives as
aceived here (see Wierrbich lI4lglCD), his argument agpEes equally to both:
H saw that the names cEfsimpiFpidem, md those only, are hca-
The eeiilwn whereof is this, That the several terns of a defi-
ether by no means represent an idea
a dehition, which is properly ~ 0 t h -
by several others not signifying each
as have no place. (1690j1959: 3 4
word, then, I mean, essentially, what h c k e meant:
ing" the meaning of a definable (i.e, semantically carnplex) w r d in
of indefinable I[i.e. semmtically simple) ones.

2. Definitions as a Tool hs Cross-cultural Research

Why do we need definitions at all? One of the possible answers to this ques-
tian is that we need them as ;a took lfais understanding other cultures [and
for making ourselves understood). Wards are a society's most basic cultural
artefacts, and-properly unrderstood-they provide the best key to a cul-
ture's values and assumptions. But to avoid misinterpretation, definitions
are needed thait are free of ethnocentric bias; that is, definitions couched in
terns of universal, culture-free, primitive concepts.
The need for such definitions is still nat wideiy recognized. To quote one

.
anthropologist: "It is perhaps a matter for some wonder . . that in so
many regards . . . social anthmpoilogists should still1 so commonly write as
though in their own language, and in the technical terms of their profes-
sion, they already possessed an ideal language" meedham 11972: 222-3). I
do not claim that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage is an '"deal lan-
guage" in the sense of being the final answer to the search for lexically
embodied concxptual universals. It is an approximation, to be improved by
further trial and error. But it is better to have a tentative and imperfect set
of indefinables than none at all.
Using the proposed set we can clearly define even those conlciepts which
are widely regarded as "unique", that is, absolutely culture-spec$c and
thoroughly "untransIatable". I will illustrate this claim here with just one
example: that of the Japanese concept of 'amae' (for other examples, and
more detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka 1991b, 1 9 9 2 ~and forthcoming el.
According to Doi, amae is "a peculiarly Japanese emotion", although it
has "universal relevance" (1981: 169). It is "a thread that runs through all
the various activities of Japanese society" (1981: 261, represents "the true
essence of Japanese psychology", and is "an important key to mderstmd-
ing the psychoIogica1 diflerences between Japan and Western countries"
(1974 310).
Doi explains that '"mae is the noun form of amaeru, an intransitive verb
which m a n s 'to depend and presume upan another's benevolence' " (1974:
307). It indicates "helplessness and the desire to be loved" '19811: 221. The
adjective amai means 'sweet', both with reference to taste and with refer-
ence to human relations: "if f is said to be ramrrs' to B, it means that he
alllows JfP to amamu, i.e., to behave self-indulgently, presuming on some spe-
cial relationship that exists between the two'"18983: 29).
Antaeru can also be defined "'by a comlbination of words such as 'wish to
be loved' and 'dependency needs' " @oi 1974: 309). The Japanese dictionary
Doigenkai defines amae as "to lean on a person's good williY"(qooted in Dai
1981: 72) or "to depend on another's aIfection'"l6~. Other dictionary
glosses include "to act lovingly towards (as a much fondled child towards its
parents), "to presume upon", "'to take advmtage oEll (Brinkiey'x 19613); "ta
behave Pike au spoilt child'" "be coquettish", "trespass on'" ""betrave in ;a
caressing manner; towards a man"; "to speak in a coquettish bne",
"encroach on bnels kindness, good nature, etc.]" (Takenobu 1918); "'presume
on another's lave", "be coquettish"', "coax" (Kenkyyus/~a's11954); and so on.
Morsbach and Tyler (1 9861, who analysed fifteen passages from Japanese
literature referring to amae, used in their translations of these passages the
following English glosses: ""take advantage of", "play baby", "'make up to
[someone] and get their sympathy"",koax", "act spoilt"', and so on.
On the basis of these and other similar clues, we can explicate the con-
cept of m a e as follows:
8. Against 'Againsf Dejnifiiom" 239
rPmae
(a) X thinks something Pike this:
(b) when Y thinks about me, Y ifeels something good
[c) Ywants to do good things for me
(4 Ycan do good things for me
(e) when I am near Y nothing bad can happen to me
uC
P
f3 I don't have to do anything because of this
Cg)i I want to be near Y
(A) X feels something good because of this
Doi emphasizes that amae presupposes conscious awareness. The sub-
component (a) 'X thinks something like this . . .?eflects this. The pre-
sumption of a spcial relationship is reflected in the component (b) "hen
Y thinks about me, Y feels something good'. The implication of self-
indulgence is rrooted in the emotiomral security of someone who knows that
he or she is loved: "it is an emotion that takes the other person's love for
granted"' (Doi 1981: 168). This is accounted for by the combination of cam-
ponents (b) 'when F thinks about me, Y feels something good', (c] < Y wants
to do good things for me', ('4'Y can do good things for me', and (e) "hen
I am near 16 nothing bad can happen to me" The component (f)'1 don't
have to do anything because of this' reflects the passive attitude of an ansue-
junior, who does not have to earn the mother-figure's goodwiU1 and pro-
tection by any spacial actions. The component Cg) 'Iwant to be near Y'
r~flectsCPoi's ((1981:74) idea that the baby in an "amae" relationship to the
mother 'komes to feel the mother as something indispensable to itsdf" and
that "it is the craving for close contact thus developed that constitutes
. . . amaeJ'.
Thus even "'euniqwe"",thoroughIy "untranslatable" words such as m a e
can be awurately and inteliilgibly d e h e d in terns of universal semantic
primitives.
3. The Concept of a S e m a n t i ~Invariant
A linguistic definition is a scientific hypothesis about the concept encoded
iTY a given word [see Robinson 91950: 41). Like other scientific hypotheses,
it cannot be proved to be right, but it can be tested and proved wrong-in
which case it is discarded, or revised and tested again. While the concept is
not ac~essibleto direct observation, it is manifested in a word's use.
Amdingly, a definition can be tested against a word's range of use; this
range of use may be very broad, but it has its boundaries, which are detcr-
h e d l by the different components of the concept.
The components of the conciept determine which aspects of a word's use
are variable and which are invariable. It is the purpose of a definition
capture the invariable aspects off a word's use, that is, its semantic kvari
ant.
Om might ask at this point: How do we know that a word real
a concept with some invariable components, that is, that it really
a semantic invariant? The answer is that we don" know it, but
proved to be a fruitful working hypothesis. The alternative hypo
the meaning of words is claangeable and "fuzzy", and cannot
in rigorous definitions] is sterile and can hardly provide an eEe
large-scde iexicographi~research.
The goal of capturing a word's semantic invariant by investigating its
range of use was set out more than 2,Om years ago, by Socrates, in Platoys
dialogue Laches, devoted to a search for the definition of the Greek can-
cepa 'andreia"usuaQly rendered in English as clsrwrage):
~OCMTES. I meant to ask you not only about the wurag of the heavily-amdl so[-
diers, but about the courage of cavalry and every other style of soldier; md not
only who are couciagleous in war but who are courageous in perils by sea, md
who in disease, or in poverty, or again in politics, are courageous; and mot only
who are couragzous against pain or fear, but mighty to conbnd against desirm
and pleasures, either h e d in their rank or turning upon the enemy. There is this
sort of courage-is there not, Laches?
LACHES.Certainly, Socrates. . . .
s m w m What i that o o m o n quality, which is the same in all these cases, and
which is called courage? ffPlallo 19710: 116-17)
Dictiomary descriptions usually do not succeed in capturing a word's
semantic invariant. Often, they don't even try to provide a definition, but
instead offer more or less random lists of quasi-synonyms, as in Web~ter's
New School and Ojfice Dictionary (1965) entry for tlne ward courageow:
"courageous-brave, bold"". Entries of this kind inevitably lead to vicious
circles. For example, to cantinue with the same dictionary:
corurageoz~s - brave, bold
brave - bold, courageous, intrepid
bold - courageous, venturesome
intrepid - bold, fearless
fearless - intrepid
If a rare dictionary does manage to define courage or coiurageasrs without
a vicious circle, it is likely to pay for it by n d even attempting Go capture
the invariant. For example, the h n g m n Dictionary of the Ersglkh
Lmguage H(LDOT8L 1984) defines courage as follows:
courage - mentaP or moral strength to confront and withstand danger, fear, or
difficulty
definition doesn't say what danger, fear, and d@ccrFby have in com-
(nor what is common to mental ssrengrh and rnaral strmgtlC3).
phic devices such as 'br", "often", 'hsudEy",oor 'ktc." are unmis-
s af the Iaxiwgrapher's failure to find a semantic invariant, as
iferation of different senses and subsenses in a dictionary entry.
words don't h v e any meaning in isolation, but only in sentemces,
g for t k semantic invariant of a word we have to s t a t (contrary
lexicographic practice) with some syntactic frame, and try to
he sentence serving as our point of departure in terms of words
slier as indefinables. For example:
X is courageous. =
X can do very good things when other people can3
because when other people think something Bike this:
I don't want bad tbings to happen to me
'A thinks something l i h this:
it is good if I do this
it is bad if I don't do it
I want GQ do it h a u r n of this
this is good
@or justification and discussion, see Wieezbicka 19192a.)1
4. Determinacy of Meaning
search B;or a word's semantic invariant presupposes a belief' in the deter-
ing. En recent decades, this belief has often been questioned,
and philosophers alike. Anyone who has engaged in Iexico-
arch can: readily sympathize with such scepticism: constructing
which matches a word's entire range of use is a huge task
m r e work ahan most are prepared to put in; and the temp-
er the first two minutes or the &st two hours may well
BUG the fact that one Baas tried, and failed, to come up
kctory definition in two minutes, or even two hours,
es the conclusion that meaning is indeterminate. (See e.g.
out the meaning of pafrtt, discussed in Section 9 below.)
unrealistic expectations abaut the amount of time and
y for success, several other factors have dearly contributed
e widespread soepticism about the feasibility of definitions, notably the
wing: (1) the lack of a set of imdehables; (23 ithe Pack of a coherent
envy; (3) confusion of lexical meaning with illocutionary and
such as metaphor, irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, and so on;
seductive power of the theory of 'cfarnilly resemblances". The first of
242 Lexical Senamtics
these four points has already been discussed. Of the other three, only fa@
tor(3) hasn't yet been discussed at allp but while the question of polysemy
has already been discussed in Chapter 6, and that of 'Tanwhly resemblances"
in Chapter 4, both these topics need some elaboration.
5. Problems of Polysemy
As Zgusta justly points out, "the lexicographer will1 do well to reckon
always with polysemy: this will cause him to undertake very deep analyses
of the wordsheanings" "971: 6163.
Polysemy can be obvious and unmistakable. For example, the Gnglish
noun sprig has at least four different meanings, defined by the Qxfod
Paperback Dictionary (OPD 1979) as follows:
1, the act of springing, a jump
2. a device (usually of bent or coiled metal) that reverts to the original position
after being compressed or tightened or strelchad . . . ententes (without m'e'ir'en"and " ~ n l y ' ~show
3. e place where water or oil comes up natlurally from the ground . ..
4. the season in which vegetation begins to appear . . .
It is obvious that if we tried to cover these four senses with one definition
we woufd get nowbere; the notion of "semantic invariant" makes sense oniy
with respect to specific senses of a word, not with respect to a mechanical
sum of a11 its diiFferent uses, and to be able to construct adequate d e G -
tions, we have to .separate the diflerent senses of a polysemous word.
Here again we must proceed by trial and error, assuming atways, to begin
with, that there is only one meaning, mnslructing a tentative defirrition,
checking it against a word's possible range of use, then, if newssary, powit-
ing a second meaning, and so on. A great deal of hard work m y be
required, but this fact by itself has no bearing on the issue of discreteness
of meaning.
Often the meanings to sort aut will be much closer to one another than
the four senses of sprhg. In sorting out ciosely related senses it is impor-
tant that the differences beltween what we posit as two separate meanings
be linked with the ward itself and not simply with different contexts in
which this word is used.
For example, it would not be justified to posit polysemy for the noun itwe
along the lines of (1) ramantic love, (2) parental love, (3) brotherly love,
and SO on, be~auseall these supposedly different kinds of "love" cam be
seen as sharing a semantic invariant, and as differing only in ways implid
by the modifying adjective.
Generally speaking, dictionaries Itend to posit polysemy on a truly mas-
sive scale; but it is usuatlly posited on an ad Roc basis, without any clear
8. Against "Against Definzlions" 243
guide-lines ar generid principles, and this applies to ambitious and innova-
tive dictionaries as well as to commercial hack jobs. (For rare exceptions,
see Neltuk $c Zolkovskij 1984; Mel%uk eit a[. 1984, 1988, 1992; or
Apesjan and Rozenman 1979; for a critique oh one ambitious and innov-
ative dictionary, the Songman Dictionary of Cmfemporary English
(LDQGE 19781, see Wierzbicka 1987a: 4-7.)
For example, the American Herirarge D k ~ i o m r yof the English Language
(AHDOTEL 1973) postulates the following three meanings for $
1, in the event that: If I were to ga, I would be late.
2, granting that: Even if that's true, what should we do?
3. m condition that: She will sing only ifshe is paid.
agree that the meaning of v i n sentence 1 is indeed different from the
eaning of if in sentences 2 and 3 [see Chapter 21. But the difference
etwelen the supposed senses 2 and 3 am be attributed to different con-
exts, not to the word $ itself (note, in particular, the contrast between
'even i f " h 2 and "only ik'yin 3). The following rephrasings of the same
) better Ltne similarity in their
eanings:
(I> If [we suppose thaq that's true [we have to decide: ] What should we
do?
(23 If she is paid she will sing. [If she is not paid she will not.]
ent contexts may hlelp clarify which meaning the
t they are not the source of the four different inter-
tions, which are inherent in the word spring itself.
consider the three distinct meanings postullaked by the same diction-
1. to olffer advice to; to counsel
2. to reloommend; suggest
3. to inform; notify
In fact, there is no evidence of any semantic difference between the alleged
meanings 1 and 2 (while 3 is indeed different). It is true that advfse can
m u r in two different syntactic frames, with either a person or an abstract
noun as its object Qe.g. The doctor advised BSEE $0have compkte rwr, The
doctor a$lvised comph?te resf), and different syntactic frames can be associ-
ated with differences in the semantic structure. But the verb itself does have
an invariant meaning, evident in both these frames (associated with the
alleged meanings I and 2). (For justification and detailed discussion, see
Wierzbicka 1987a.)
Finally, consider the verb fee!, for which the same dictionary, AHDO-
TEL (19731, posits several different meanings, including the following ones:
244 Lexical Semantfc8
lb. to peuoeive as a l o c a l d physical sensationr: feel a s h q pain.
lc. to perceive as a nonEocalized physical sensation: feel the cold.
3a. to experience (an emotion): I felt my interest rising.
However, the distindion between Pb and l c implies that a senten=
Sheyeif pain is ambiguous, and that it means two diFFemt things,
ing on whether the pain is nocallized or non-localized. F u r t h e m o ~ the
,
tinctiom 'taetwmn the fed of sensation and the feel of emotion implies
sentences such as How me youfeeling?, Ifeelg~lod,or IjreeI better are
all ambiguous. But in f x t , the two supposedly different meanings can
easily conjoined, as genuinely different meanings cannot:
I felt cold and miserable.
+He ordercd several books and an inquiry inlo the matter.
But while dictionaries often posit a great deal of unjust%
they also Frequently fail to recognize polysemy which is really
striking illustration see, for example, the discwssion of the
Chapter 9.1
Zgusta is off course right when he states that 'Yaken on the whole, polly-
semy will always prove a hard riddle for the lexicographer" "971: 73).
We do not have to assume, however, that this riddle cannot be salved. I
a system of semantic analysis based on a finite set of indefinables
the principle of reductive paraphrase, meanings re-emerge as d
determinate entities, and the '"riddle of palysemy'keases to seem ansca
uble.
6. Lexical Meaning and Pllocutlonary RhctoricaE Devices
A word can be adequately defined only if its literal meaning is distiaguishedl
from its metaphorical use, ironic use, playful use, euphemistic use, md
other similar uses. Dktionaries frequently fail in this respect, and, far
example, treat a word's metaphorical use as a separate lexical meanhg.
For example, OPD lists (among others) the falowing two meanings
the English wordfr{en$: (1) a person with whom one is on terms ofmut
affection independently of sexual or family love; (2) a helpful thing or
ity, e.g. darkness was our friend. In fact, this second use can be satisfac
rily a s o m t e d for in terns oF the first on the basis of a general princi
which allows us to use words of different kinds in the sense "ike x' (where
kx' stands for the word's literal meaning). Thus, in the example above, dark-
ness was not a TriendVn s o m separate Beximl sense of the word friend, ibu
it was 'like a friend'. Since the 'like x'device is productive in English [as i
is in many other languages), them is af course no need to mention it in indi-
vidual dictionary entries. One can also say, for example, that 'Varlmess was
8. Agsrfnst "Against Dejni'tiom" 24245
refuge",but OPD (rightly) refrains h m mentioning this use as a sep-
rate sense of the word rejuge.
If metaphorical uses and other similar rhetorical devices me not distin-
i s k d from lexical polysemy, then meanings may indeed appear to be
determinate and not amenable to precise definitions. But this is not the
d t Y ' o fthe meanings themselves.
7. Family Resemblances
key lfactor militating against large-%ale study of the lexicon until rwiently
st the absence of a suitable methodology but also the widespread
t such a methodology could not be devised. ParticwlarEy d m a g -
s respect was Wittgenstein" doctrine of "family resemblances",
gained extraordinary popularity (see Wierzbicka 1990b; also
Tf it is a s s u d that meanings have no clear boundaries and that they are
utually related by vague and elusive family resemblances, then it is nat-
condude that no precise definitions are possible. But without such
ons meanings can be neither stated nor earnpared. As a result, all
investigation of the lexicon comes to a halt.
e doctrine off family resemblances never had any empirjcal basis. It
the speculative idea of a philosopher-to be sure, a philosopher of
ast unparalelIed genius and charisma, but none the less one who was
immune to error. I believe that lexicographic research of reant years
rrs proved Wittgenstein wrong on this particular point.
As pointed out by van Brakel(199l: 61, in reicient literature on the nature
if meaning and categorization, the notion of family resemblances is usually
ked with the notion of prototypes ("it is almost canonical to refer to
genstein and Rosch in the same breath when prototype theory is intns-
dm).Van Buakel argues against the prevailing current use of the con-
a p t of prototype, and against the whole '"rototype approach'"t~~language
and cognition, and tries to separate prototypes ;thorn family resemblances,
of which he does approve.
But while I agree with much d what be says about the prototype
oach to meaning (see Wierzbika 1990b and Chapter 41, I believe that
doctrine of family rwmbllances is equalPy at fault. Van Brake1 writes:
With the notion of "family resenrbllane9Tittgenskb wanted to illlustrate that
t h e is no uniform sea of attributes which constitutes the meaning of a linguistic
expression. Them are omlly similarities between diflerent uses oF an expression.
Whatever rules are proposed, they only conventiondlly define some asplecb of the
Language use. It i not possible to grasp, or theoretically pin down, the meaning of
axpressions or the competence of a speaker-hearer. (1991: 6)
246 Lexical Semmtics
But the proposition that ""I is not possible to grasp, or theoretically pin
down, the meaning of expressions" is refuted by hundreds of definitions
which have been worked out by semanticists in the last two decades (e.g.
Apresjan 1974S1992; Md'Cok and kolkovskij 1984; MdTuk el a/. 1984,
1988, 1992; Wierzbicka 1985, 89187~~ 1992;0,e; Goddard 1991a, 1992a,E995;
or papers included in Wierzbicka E99Dc].L Once the different senses o f 8
polysemous word (or expression) have been sorted out, ewry meaning can
bc piillncnll down, alld Ihe scn~al~mhclbrunwla rcprcsenting it cat1 be tested
against a wide range of examples and hypothetical counter-examples.
Van Brakel" convicltion that every anallysis of the meaning of a word that
one may come up with "gives no more than one way of looking at it" ii
not borne out by the experience of methodical lexicographic work based on
a systematic semantic theory. Van Blrakel states: "As I hope my exampla
have shown, the meanings of words have a vagueness and flexibility that
resists ultimate rational reconstructionr' (1991: 16). But there is no neces-
sary conflict between precision and vagueness. As I have tried to show in
my study of English '%approximative expressions", even a vague meaning
such as kataud"e.g. around twenty), 'about' (8.g. abf~~tjifteen] or 'raugihly3
[e.g. mugFEEy half) can be captured in a precise semantic formula: [see
Wierzbicka 1 9 8 6 ~l991aS.
~ y of meaning rests.
Van Brakel's examples, intended to show that the meanings of words
"resist rationail reconstnuction", are worth considering because they illus-
trate some of the fallacies (as I believe) on which the belief in the indeter-
minacy of meaning is based.
Thus, according to Karl Heider (19701 the Dani people of the Mew
Guinea Highlands have more than seventy words referring to sweet pa&-
toes, which is not surprising, given that "sweet potatoes are extremely
important in the Dani culture" and that " m r e than half of all conversa-
tions are directly or indirectly about sweet potatoes" (van Brakel 1991: 81,
Nome the less, "After having spent some time trying to find out which sweet
potatoes were called lay what name, Heider gave up, concludimg that
Whough there are mare than seventy terns for sweet potatoes, they are
Important work on the structure of the lexicon has or comse been done 'by many other
semanticisls, e.g, by David Cruse (19861, It. M. W. %%on [IPSZ), Charles Fillmore (11971,
1977), Dirk Geeraerts (1993), Jeffrey Gmber (196%, Way JackendotT (1983, 1990I), Adrienrne
h h r e r (1974, 19831, John Lyons (1977), Eugene Nida n(19751, Leonard T a h y (19&5),IeI
Verschueeen (19851, and Uriel Weinmich (19803. To my knowledge, however, none .of t h e
authors bas attempted to test their ideas, original and fruitful as they may be, in large-scale
lexicographic studies, involving hundreds of lexical items and hundreds oh definuitions. (Qlue
outstanding exception is the work of Russian semanticists, in particullar Jwrij Apresjm and
lgoa Mel'Euk; me Wierzbicka 1976d319&6%,i,c.)iThis relative lack of intevest rim Bexicmgrapluy as
a testing-ground For semantic theories is in, nuarbd contrast to the attitude of the two great
semandicisns of the seventeenth mmbury, Leibniz and Wilkias (see Leibnss Table de dbfini-
tions' 1170411903,and John Wikins 1668; For discussion, see Wiembicka E975, 1994JT;D o l d
19923.
970: 33). He also noted that the
it different types of sweet potatoes have different
1) there are many diflerent names for
not seem to be linked with different
, these names are used ""with consid-
us, bcmuse the dirferent names may
s other than purely referential ones.
example, in Russian the words oseI (Yonkey" and izok H('donkey7are
linked with different types of donkey, and yet the semantic dilfferemce
ords is stable, and can be captured with full1 precision
see Apresjan 1974k1!$%)I. (Roughly
stion as a symbol of stupidity and
willingness to work hard without
clusion, therefore, that the Russian words osel and
are used with considerable imprecision would be false; and in all prob-
ty what applies to these two words applies aiso to the Dani words for
t it is on Ygllse conclusions of this kind that the doc-
sider also van Brakd's second example, that is, the area of English
used for describing wine. He writes:
r way to look at the incoosistenq of the way m y off the Dani words far
o h t o e s are used-not the way to look at it-is to cantemplate that also in
Pa such incoosistemies may aocur. For example, vocabullary for the descrip-
n of the taste and odour of winles does not seem to have any fixed meaning, even
experts, but seems to function primarily in constructing a vague tone off
dgeableness and concern about wine among a group of speakers [ k h r e r
Such use o f language is what Nalinawski called pharic r o m u n i ~ n "'an-:
.
oes not fmctiron here as, a means of transmission off thought. . Each utter-
ing the direct aim off binding hearer t o speaker by a tie of some
senliment or other." Hence, in such a case it doesn't make sense t o look for
icular cognitive model that underlies the speaker's specific thoughts aod utter-
Wan Brakel appears to assume that an expression whose function is
ainly "phatic" cannot have a specific meaning at the same time. But in
ct, although sentences such as
Lovely day, isn't it?
Nice day, isn't it?
Beautifid day, isn? tit?
a n he said to have the same phatic fkanctlon, this doesn't mean that in this
cclmltext there are no semantic differences between the words bvely, nice,
248 Lexical Semanfics
and beaub~$l, or that these words cannot be assigned co
The same applies to adjectives used to describe wine.
Consider, for example, the following dinner-party conversation a
wine:
-This l[Yuim]is soft md semsuous-quite an impravewent over the 67s, which
unstylish and flabby.
-Yes, it's sari, but 1 would say lhal it's grucefu'ul rall~erlhan scrrsuous.
It may well be that the main purpose of remarks of this kin
or impress other people, allowing the speaker ta show off his kn
experience, and expertise" (ibid.), but from this it doesn't
word5 themselves have '"ittle or no meaning"', as Lehmr sa
assume" "bid.).
What Is presupposed in such a view is that words have meaning
when they are used to inform, not when they are used,
impress or amuse. But one can &o try to impress people with lies, m d
~ o u l d n "be fies if they didn't mefin samething.
Words such as soft, sensuow, ar graceful may or may n
with some objective differences between xarious .wines (as the
plasams, and b ~ e l ymay or may not be associated with objective
between the people or things to which they axe applied), but t
mean that in certain contexts these wards have no meaming.
The meaning of the word so$ as applied to wine a n be explicated as foi-
lows:
This wine is soft. =
when this wine is in a person's mouth
this person f e k something good
this persan m say then something like this:
if I was touching something soft
I could feet something like this
It is not difficult to see bow this analysis could be applied to other "wine
wards" such as S S X E O O veEvesy,
~~, or silky:
This wine is smooth (velvety, silky). =
when this wine is in a person's mouth
this penon feels something good
this person can say then something like this:
if I was tauchhg something s m o t h (or: some velvet, some silk)
H could feel something like this
M e n applied to wine, words such as soit, smooth, velvety, or silky ar
kind of simile, and they make sense in the way similes or metaphors ma
sentence in which it is used, but overall meaming of the sentence
s also on other elements and aspects of the scnlence, including var-
r a n g of semantic stratagems used in talking about wine is quite
This wine is graceful. =
when this wine is in a person's mouth
a person feels something good
a person can say then something like this:
if I saw someone moving gracefully
I could feel something like this
This wine is sensuous. =
when this wine is in a person" s o u t h
this person feels something good
this person can say then something like this:
if I felt something in my whole body
because of one sense (or: because of one part of the body]
I could fed something like this
Explicatians of this kind may be very different from traditional definitions
put forward by either philosophers or lexicographers, but they do ofler an
alrxurate representation of meaning.
8. Dictionary Definitions
There is a widespread view that no rnatltes what reservations a smanticist,
or a philosopher, or a cognitive psychologist may have with respect to dic-
tianasy definitions, these definitions are basically all right-because diction-
aries are sold in minillions of copies and herefore they must be useful. For
emmple, speaking of the ubiquitous circularity of dictionary definitians,
Feixer writes:
The dietiornary for an ordinary language, such as English-Websrer5 Mew WorSd
DidEomary (1988), fat example-appears to succeed in providing useful definitions

for the terns that it contains in spite of resorting to definitional circularity. IS the
is n problem here. therefore, then it needs to be made apparent. haazose them see
b bc no prollbrlcrns in practice with dictionary delirultjorms. (1998: 51)
This faith in dictionary definitions is based on an illlusion. As pol
by Sledd (11972)1, the users of a dictionary cannot know what is
them, and how much information they could extract From a diction
dictionary definitions were as good as they can be (rather Itlaan as bd
they frequently are; see Wierzbicka 11992fi. "The average man and the aver
age reviewer m n a t demand the. best in a big di:tianary, because they have
no idea what the best might be: and even if they did demand the &st, the
businessmen who run commercial publishing houses would not give it to
them unless they saw a direct relation between qudilty and pofits1"I(Sedd
1972: 1136; quoted in Landau 1984: 112). There are no reasons to thinnlk,
therefore, that commemial success can provide an adequate measure of a
dictionary's usefulness.
Among many people who have never practised lexicography tbemelves
and who have (partly for that reason, no doubt) formed the strange view
that it doesn" matter how good or bad dictionary definitions might be
because their purpose is 'herely practical", one finds, with some surpris,
Noan Chomsky.
According to Chomsky, dictionary definitions don" offer anything like a
faithful representation of a word's meaning, and yet they am all right as
they are, because there is no need for dictionary definitions to be even
approxirnakly correct.
Anyone who has attempted to define a word precisely knows that this is an
extremely difficult matter, involving intricate and complex properties. Ordinary dk-
tionmy definitions do not come close to characterizing the meaning of words. Tb
speed and precisicpn (DEvocabulary acquisition leaves no real alternative tcp the con-
clusion that the ~ h i l dsomehow has the concepts available prior to experiewe with
language, and is basically learning labels for cancepts that are already part cif hls
or her conoeptuall apparatus. This is why dictionary defimuitionrs can be sufficient For
their purpose though they are so imprecise: the rough approximation su%oe:s
because the basic principles of word meaning (whatever they are] are k
dictionary user, as they are to the language learner, independently of
tion or experilenoe. The point is dramatically illustrated in the case of
even the deaF-blind, who can acquire knowledge of the visual voc
remarkable precision thotlgh extremely limited evidence; the meanings of such
words as watch, gaze, glare, scrrrfinize, etc. (1987: 21)
What is most striking In Chomsky's remarks is the absenoe o
cultural perspective, and the complete disregard for the fact that
fer in meaning across language and culture boundaries. For an
and culture learner, a g o d dictionary is a tool of prime importance, an
is an odd view for a linguist to take that there is no need to try to improve
8. Against '%gainsf Defi~ri~ions"2251
n existing dictionaries, however bad they may be, lxcause one can allways
rely on one% innate conceptual apparatus.
To take Chomsky's own: examples, how can students trying to learn
English acquire the necessary knowledge of words such as watch, gaze,
be,or scrlxfinize (short of moving for many years to an EngBish-speaking
if dictionaries do not offer them any reliable guidance in this
ct, dictio~ariesdo offer some guidance, but their help is far
and could easily be improved on (ir practical lexicography
lexical semantics w r e to work hand in hand).
For example, BPB d e h e s thle relevant meaning of watch as fo11ows1"to
ak at, to keep one's eyes fixed on, to keep under observation". This def-
ition, which includes three different would-be paraphrases, does not show
what the invariant meaning of watch is, or how it differs from the meaning
of the closely related but more basic verb look of. In fact, the difference
between the two lies partly in the temporal qualification (with watch imply-
ing the components 'for some time' and 'all the time') and partly in the
nature of the object (to which I[ will return in a moment):
X was watching Y. *
for some time, X was looking at Y all the time
The validity of the component Tor some time'is supported by the fact that
iook a5, but not watch, can be used with respect to a momentary evenk2
At that moment, he looked at her.
*At that moment, he watched her.
The component 'all the time"% supported by the somewhat incongruous
effect of the following sentence:
?While he was watching her, he was frequently looking at other girls.
As for the object of uvatchiag, it must be capable of change, For example,
one can watch a film but not a painting in a museum (unless one thinks that
something may happen in, or to, the painting, for example that it may get
sto1en). Hence:
X was watching Y*=
for same time, X was looking at Y all the time
because X thought something like this:
something can happen i d t o Y now
I[ want to see it
The expressionf i r some time i s Rat constrwcted out of semantic primitives and even the
word some used in it is not used here in date sense of the primitive SOME [see Chapter 2). A
mom articulated version of the semantic component in question could read (perhaps):'at at1
times. after one time, before another time'.
 Glare is defined by the same dictionary as "to stare angrily or fier
cially in astonishmentW,andgaze as "'Lo look long and steadilyq"
initions, too, fail to show the exact relationship between ghse
X scrutinized 3E: =
for some time, X was looking at E."
during that time, X looked at all parts of Y
if someone wanted to know everything about all parts of something
this person could look at this thing like this

thing bad towards you, T want you to know itY.

4. Fodolr on Definitions
X glared at K =
X looked at P
if someone wanted to say something like this to someone else:
when I think about you I fed something bad
I want you to know this
this person could Book at this other person like this
people can think: X wanted to say this to 3Y

and gaze) is incorrect, since one can glare at (though not sfare a t or lvsll
someone briefly or even mmentarily.
As for gaze, it implies, in addition to 'Ilooking', the followin
ncnts: (1) 'for some time' (duration), (2) 'all the time' (steadily), (3) a
of a knowledge-seeking purpose, and (4) 'feehngs"wonder, delight, fa present proposal. (1 981: 3 15)
ness, disbelief, etc.). The validity of these components is supported by
following negative material:
*He gave her a gaze.
W e gazed at her for a moment.
*Wile he was gazing at her, he was throwing glances at the other
?He was gazing at her intently, trying to read her thoughts.
*He was gazing at her wilth hatred.
This leads us to the following definition: Fodor's reall challenge lies in his daim that there is a '"triking
X was gazing at .'l = y of working examples [of definitions] in the standard iiteratwre"
for s o m time X was looking at Y sail the time 2841, that "there seem allways to be counter-examples to the pro-
if the person was looking at something for some time definitions" (285)' and that ' h o s t of the morphemically simple
because this person felt something sions of English are undefinable"(285).
molt because this person wanted to know something lieve that, for example, the definitions of the verbs watch,glareL.,gaze,
this person couEd look at this thing like this
people could think this about X
Finallly, scrwtinize adds !tohokiag srf dements of, roughly speaking, r;ho

I am very graleIu1 Lo lgor Mel'Euk, who discussed villlr me my definitions oF the verbs
inle in detail"..) point and Lr~sir"and who owered a number OF valuable insights.
 Eodor writes with refereme to George Miller's 11978: 285 disciussi
pahi):
What we have here is a proposal For defining "re transitive verb >plainty in Ile rson could $ay what calour Z was
the noun 'paint', together with some further conceptual apparatus [COVER,
FACE, and WITH]; and what I claim is that the definition doesn't work; X
Y with pafnt mag be a necessary condition for Xpainis Y but it is certadnly
sufficient condition.
brief c o w n b on this definition are in order. First, whib it is w n -
He concludes his lengthy discussion of paint as follows:

ter 71, and also, some non-primitive sptactic constnnctions. Second,

tion base that indudes 'ainosaur' and khlorodent'. Either way, the
that Milkrk example doesay work. That's not surprising; when ilt
lions, the exampbs almost always don't work. (1978: 288)

sary condition for Xpakts K For example, when a woman is painting:

finger-nails she is not putting paint on them, bulk nail polish. This does
mean that one can "paint" an object with just about anything; one wo

for the activity in question.

A sentence such as Xpainted Y with Z (where the verb pafm' is used in
11381 a person OX) did soancthing to some
tlrc rcEcvant scnsc pcdi~ai?~)iiu~pPi~s language-specific. Far example, the closest Palish equivalent
object [ f l , putting some stuff (QZE on all the parts c~lrY that could be: seen
(tlzat is, on the surface of l'); it furlher implies that the sluff Z was Illquid
or semi-liquid at the time when X was putting it on ,'l and that Z had a
defnitc colaur [so that one could say what its colour was); and that X
wanted that stuff Z ta remain on the surface of Y and become, as it were,
part of this surSace. Finally, the verb purist implies a function: if one puts
some liquid or sehi-liquid stuff Z on the surface of object Y it is for a rea-
son, and normally (though not always) this reason is to make this object
look g a d (1 will return b this point shortly). As a first approximation,
then, the following definition can be proposed:
X painted Y with Z. =
(a) X did something to E"
X pokrasil Y Z-om ( X LrasitLed I
' with a.
=
(a) Xdid samething to Y
Qib] like peaph d o (b;P like people do
Qc) when they want something to look good when they want something to be a certain coQour
(4 when X did it (ED because they think that this thing will look good bemuse of this
 (4 when X did it
(el X did something to some stuff Z
(f)i if someone looked at Z at that time
iCg) this person could say what colow Z was st obvious, and in a sense the most important, to the ordinary Ianguage
(h) at the m e time tlnis person could think that part of Z was water the lexicon. This remarkable state: of atudYairs reflects the wide gap which
(s] X wanted Z to be like part of Y any linguists' declarations and actual elffarts continues to separalte acatde-
0) after Xdid it Z was like part of Y ~ngu~slijcsfrom "real life" as manifested in the needs and concerns oF ordinary
language users. It reflects also the failuire of linguistic science to develop adequate
The difllelrenm lie in he:wmpanents Qbl), ethodofogical tools for dealing with the lexicon-and a widespread Mack of Faith
expllication of paint, and (el, which is less spe the possibility of a purposerid, methodical and revealing scientific study of this
oomponenf of pa&.
Thus, conwpts such as those encoded in the: words p a i ~ ~mabw~E,
t,
krmit'are language-specific. Consequently9 they cannot be innate o the study of the lexicon is beginning
unleamt; and since Iexicological research shows tha ry may bencome in linguistics the era of the
universal, the "p"prmitiveconceptual basis" of h a t e , d approach to linguistic description"see
pie"', indehablle concepts mwt be quite: dimerent fro
[if I may say so] by Fador and his associates. r, and Parkes (1980) put forward the destructive
ns", which led to tlne conclusion that semantic
general is impossible and should be abandoned. It is time to
10. ConcacPusian ge ithe self-defeating nature of this ssogan. Meanings mn be rig-
ared if they are recognized for what they are:
To quote Chomsky again, '%ordinary dictionary definitions do not ue and culture-specific configurations of universal semantic primitives.
close to characterizing the meaning of wordsyp. ecogniae the: role of these primitives as a foundation on which all
b harn a n ~ l k language
r and understand another x meanings are b a d we can use them as an: instrument for impmv-
that words -not be defined can hardly be anyt ich will be developed in the fallowing chapter.
Fortunately, Ithis propasition is not true. As Armstrong, Glei
Cleiltman (1983: 2681 say, "the only good answer
so many doubt the validity of the definitional vie
theory is difficult to work out in the required detail". But "diRcuYt"
not mean "impossible"". As I wrote in my Lexicography and Conc
Analysis:

habitual devices. But the theoretical imssumptians implicit in these routines h

dom been the subject of serious analysis. (Wieszbicka 1985: 11)
And in English Speech Act V;?rbs:
IT modern linguistics were b be judged by the contribution it made to lexica
it would be bardl to understand why linguistics is said to have made d r m

9 Semantics and Lexicography
aa
For years, I b e argued that semantics as a schokdy discipline must prove
itself in lexicography. "'Lexicography needs linguistics, and Ihngukxics needs
lexicography, As Zgusta (1971: 1P Y) points out, for the treatment of mean-
ing in dictionaries to be radically improved, preparatory work has to be
done by linguists" (Wierzbiclca 1987a: 1-2). I believe that during the two
decades which have elapsed since Zgusta made this c o m e n t , much of his
preparatory work has in fact been done. In this chapter I will U y to show
that, as a result ah this work, the treatrncnt of meaning in dictionaries can
indeed 'be radically improved.
2. Scope versus Adequacy and Truth
Dictionaries are books about words. Unlike, however, various more or less
selective "studies in wordsY"e.g. Lewis 1960), dictionaries are meant to be
relatively complete-a~t least with respect to one thematic domain, or om
aspect of language. Since they are also meant to be prwtically useful and
commercially viable, one of the first dllcrnmas for a dictionary-maker is
how to combine completeness with a reasonable six.
It is at this point, I bdeve, that a practical lexicographer often Laecom
impatient with theoretical lexicography. Theoretical lexicographen tend to
maintain that to describe one word adequately one needs a grealt deal of
space (many pages, if not many dozens, scores, or even hundreds of pages).
As one leading lexicographer and semanticist, Igor Mel'Euk (1981: 571, pot
it: "Not only every language, but every lexeme of a language, is an entire
world itir itself." In a sense this is tme-but if so, then of course a praclt4ml
lexicographer does not have the room to do justice to even a single word,
let alone to the thousands of words with which he or she usually has Go
deal.
An earlier version of this chapter was published as one oE two "lead papers" in a special issue
of the journal Dfcrfonories (14. 1992-3: 6781, devoted to the )theoryand practia: of Meximp
raphy. In the same issue, a oumks of commentaries on the t w lead papers sere published,
along with the authors' replies [Dictionaries. 14. 1992-3: 139-59). Several OF these com~~nm-
taries are referred to in this chapter.
9. Semantics and lexixklograplrhy 259
One possible response to this situation on the part of practical Uexicog-
raphers is to turn their back on, theoretical lexicography and to continue
doing what they have always done: to rely on experience and common
sense. I believe that in doing that practical lexicographers have frequently
produced valuable and useful works, and can still do so. But I also believe
that if they try, instead, to look theosetical lexicography in the eye and to
take from it what it has to offer, they can do a lot better.
Landau C1984: 5) writes: "A dictionary is a book that lists words in
alphabetical order and describes their meaning." It is only as an after-
thought that he adds: "Modern dictionaries often include information
about spelling, syllabification, pronunciation, etymology (word derivation),
ma@, synonyms, and grammar, and sometimes illustrations as well."
I agree with 'Landau's emphasis: although a good dictionary has to
include, as Apresjan (forthcoming)i points out, morphological, syntactic,
prosodic, pragmatic, and phraseological information, as well as infoma-
tion about meaning, it is the latter which normally constitutes the core of
a dictionary. In what follows, I will not try to c o m e n t on all0 aspects of
the relationship between Lhcorc.elical and practical lexicography, but rather
will Bbcus, primarily, on the one feature which is truly essential: Ithe descrip-
tion of the meaning d words.'
My main thesis with respect to this central problem i& this: The descrip-
tion of a word's meaning may vary, Iegitimateiy, in completeness from one
work to another, but it should not differ in its basic content. A "definition"
is meant to represent the truth about a word" meaning, and there is only
one such tmith, whether it is to be presented in a research paper devoited to
one particular word or in a dictionary intended for a general audience,
including various dictionaries addressed specif cally to 'khildren", "learn-
ers'', 4'sbudents's, and so on.
It is a curious but widespread illusion that by saying things which are
untrue, meaningless, obscure, or theoretically untenable, the dictionary-
maker can gain in either insight or spaw, and that the dictionary user is
better served. If space is of paramount importance in a "comercialty
e'victionary, then all the space available, however limited, should be
for saying things which without being complete are none the less true,
eaningful, illuminating, and clear.
It might be thought churlish to deny that reputable c o m e r c i d diction-
aries do say, by and large, things that are '"me, meaningful, illuminating,
and clear". But unfortunately they often don't.
a Que partimlarly important area which has not been discussed at all in this chapter is that
of relationships Between the meanings OF words and their syntactic properties. For both gen-
eral discussion and ample exempiiffication, see Wierzbicka [M9&Te]. See also Ch. 5.
260 Lexical Semntic3
3. Saying Something that is not True
Sometimes dictionary definitions say things which are simply false. Far
example, the Oxford AwbsaJ"hy3Junior Dictionary (OAJD 1980) offers the
foillowing definition, of sure:
sure-knowing something is true or right
But of course '%knwingg' and "being sure" are two very different things,
and even in a dictionary intended for children they should never he
equated. An "adult" dictionary, the Oxford .$@perbackDictionary r(0P.D
1979) offers a more complex and 'kophistimte8" but in fact equally false,
definition:
sure-having or seeming to have sufioient reasons For one's beliefs, fma Rom
doubts
The apparent afterthought ""Tee from do~brs'Ysbasically right, but doubt
itself is defined by the OPjD via certaintry, and cerrahfy via dosxbt (doubt-
"feeling of' uncertainty about something'" ceastaia--"having no doubts").
Leaving aside this circular detour (see Secltion 101, we will note that for ~ u b -
jmtive certainty (being sure of something), having sufficient seasons far
one" belief is neither necessary nor suficienf.
Similarly, amounce is defined Ray the OAJD as "to say something in front
of a lot of people"'. But in fact, one can also announce something [for
example, an important decision) to one's parents, and the presence of a lot
of people is not necessary at all.
BoMis defined by the OAJD as "brave and not afraid". But this is wrong,
too: one can be bold without being brave, and be brave without being bold.
In particular, bolldness is shown in relation to other people, whereas none
can be brave even in solitary confinement (see Wiembicka 1992a: 208-91.
Srondard is defined by the same dictionary as "how good something is1'*
But in fact, it is rather "how good you think something has to be".
Threat is defined as "a promise that you will do something bad if what
you want does not happen". However, a threat is mot a kind of promise,
although it can be called that ironically; and one can say, for example,
t h r e a ~mdpromises, whereas one cannot say *spmie;eba d dogs (because a
spaniei is indeed a kind of dog]^.
AbiUty is defined by the 8?$JD as "the power to do something"". But
although the notions of 'ability'and 'powerkre related, the fomer cannot
be reduoed to the latter: "ower' implies that one can do things ]that some-
one doesn" want, and so it implies actual or potential conflict of wills; 'abill-
ity', however, does not h p l y this.
To show that errors of this kind occur also in ambitions, prestigious, and
innovative modern dictionaries, I will condude this section with two ex-
CobuiPd Engli$h Languuge Dictioy3ary [Cobui/d
s, Cobuiiild defirnes empathy as '"the ability to share another personas
s and emotions as if they were one% own""'.But in fact, as shown by
(19921, empathy does not imply that one shares another person's
(but rather, that one understands them, as if they were your own);
athetic counsellor cannot be expected to share his
efinition off forgive implies incorrectly that to be
one has to be first angry with them and want to
give someone who has done something wrong or
one has done, you stop being angry with them,
unish them'" But stories of saints and martyrs
lences in which someone is said to have forgiven
thalwt any implicallioru tlrat at first he or she was
ted to punish them. Likewise, in the Gospel story
the prodigal son [which for many people epitomizes forgiveness) there is
er was at first angry with his son m d wanted
4. Saying Something that is Superfluous
Given space constraints under which practical dictionaries usually oper-
ate it is surprising to see how often they waste precious space by saying
things which are entirely superfluous. For example, the Longman
Dictionary of Conrlemporary EngIish (LDBTEL 1984) defines the word
weapm as follows:
weapon-an instrument of okTenstve or defensive cornbat; something to fight with
The simple phrase "something to Bght with'qs perhaps not a perfect defi-
nition of weopon but it is a pretty good approximation; the definition is
qoiln, however, by the completely unnecessary addition of "an instrument
off offensive or defemnsive combat"".One can almost sense the nervousness of
the lexiooguapher who, having produoed an excellent short definition, real-
izes that he or she has nothing to add to ilt-and panics at what appears to
be m unfamiliar, unconventional level of simplicity, and tries desperately
to add something to make it longer, more complex, more "respectru.ble".
Theoretical lexicography can be very useful at this point if it can reassure
the practical lexicographer: "'There is no need to add anything; the simple
short definition is okay; on the contrary, it is the longer one which is faullty,
hecause, as Aristotlle pointed out twenty five centuries ago, in a definition
every superfluous word is a serious transgression."

5. Confusing Mleaning with Knowledge
Another way to waste space in a dictionary is to include in it technical or
scientific knowledge. For example, SDBTEL defines the word dentist as
follows:
dentist-a person who is skilled in amd licensed to practise the prevention, diagno-
sis, a11cl tre:uil~nient of disciusce, irrju~rics,: P I I ~nialra~rmuiutio~rs
nf thc teeth,
jaws, and mouth and wha makes and inserls false teeth
It may be instructive for a reader to learn that a dentist does all the things
enumerated in this definition, but information of this kind, however useful,
is out of place in a dictionary. The short definition oflered by IOAJD
(though not perfect) is much more satisfactory:
dentist-someone whose j~obis to look after teeth
The line between knowledge and meaning is not always easy to draw, but
in principle it can be drawn (see Wierzbicka 1985 and Cbapkr 1]I), and in
any case crBicfionaries are often full of infomation which quite clearly
belongs in an encyclopaedia, not in a dicctbnalry. Consider, for example, the
following definition of sugar (LDOTEL; my emphasis):
sugar-+ sweet substance that consists wholly of s~crose,is mlaurless or white when
pure, boding to brown when less refined, is usually obtained commercianly
fiom sugarcane or sugar beet, and is nutritionally important as a source of
carbohydrate as sr sweetener amd preservative of other foods
Clearly most of what the LDBTEL definition offers is not g a d of the
everyday concept at all (not to mention the fact that sugar is defined here
via sugar-cane and mgar-beet; see Section 10). As usual, lthe OAJD ddini-
tion, though not perfect, is much m r e piausibte: 'ki sweet food ithat Is put
in drinks and other foods to m&e them taste sweet'". (It would probably
be better still to say something llike this: 'csomething that peopb add to
things they drink or eat when they want to make them taste sweet; it ~jcsmes
from some things growing out of the ground w[i.e. plants); it is normally
white".)
McCawlley (1492-3: 823) suggests that, in one respat, the OAJD's defi-
nition of sugar "is more accurate than Wierzbicka", since QAJD's initially
guzzling use of 'food' in the definition neatly distinguishes sugar from such
sugar substitutes as saocharine and Nutrasweet".
But while sExgilEr should indeed be distinguished from saccharine, do we
have to call1 sugar a 'Tood'~something that McCawley himelf Gnds
counter-intuitive) to achieve this god? Iffiod stands, roughly, for things
that people eat, then it is understandable why people would normally not
call sugar "a food": one noranally doesn? eat sugar (on its own). To dis-
h between sugar and saccSiariue we could say that while both sugar
ccharke are "added" to some things that people eat a r drink, only
sugar can it be said that people can "eat it as part of some things they
onsider also the following definitions of horse from three different dic-
a solid-hoofed perissodactyl qluadrupd ~(Equrt~r
ccrr*~!fu~fi(SOED 3964)
a large sollid-hoofed herbivorous mammal [EQMMS cabaJ/u.r)domesticated by man
since a prehistoric period (Web~tesk 19881
arge solid-hoofed pllamt-eating Clegged mammal (Eqcttrs eabal[us,family Equidae,
e horse Family), domesticated by humans since prehistoric times and used as beast
of burdem, a draught animal, or For ridimp; esp. one over 14.2 hands in height
ardly needs to be pointed out that dehitions of this kind do not rep-
what ordinary speakers of English have in mind when they talk of
ses. The information imncluded in such "definitions" isi for the most part,
perfluous in a dictionary of English. It would be much better to
ply that a horse is 'k kind of animal called horse"'. It would be bet-
to try to explicate, in an abbreviated f o m , the folk concept encoded
ngllish word horse; but if a dictionary cannot afiord the space to do
waste space on infomation which is given in all encyclopaedias
h has nothing ta do with ordinary speakers' knowledge of their
guage anyway? (For further discussion', see Chapbr I 1.)
6. Dehitilons which are too Broad
011s which are too broad do not contain any falsehood (because
ng they include is true), but their implalcations are false (because
ey leave out certain necessary components).
For example, taiemr is defined by the QAJD as '"he ability to do some-
h g very well"'. But this implies that an acquired skill could be called tab
t, which is not true. The definition misses the crucial component 'inborn'
'if someone can do things of a certain kind very well not because hei'she
$I something to be ab11e to do them well").
7%succeed is defined as "to do or get what you wanted to do orget". By
is definiition if one gets a present that one wanted to get, this could be
esleribed as suweding; once again this is not true. (To sulciceed one has to
ca something; the disjunction ""dl or get" is therefore wrong.)
7% defy is defined as "to say or show that you will not obey". But if a
ild says to his or her brother or sister, 'You are not my mother or father,
will not obey you"', this would not be described as defying. [One can only
264 Lexical Semantics

defy orders given by someone who actually does have authority over m
and can be expected to be obeyed.)~
The definition of steal says "to take something that does not
you and keep it". But tll~iscould rcfer to robbery as well as to st
stealing, it is essential that the actor does not want people to mplain-l. to say that ame is dissatisfied, ta pmtest that something is wrong; 2.
or she is doing, and expects that they will not know it. to state that one i s sufTe'feritl.gfrom a pain, etc.
Secret is defined as "something that must be kept hidden from 0th
plc"; bull this could rchr LO physical objects, whcrcas in fact secret
only for something that one knows (and must mot tell other peo
Thirst is presented as '"he need to drink"; but in fact it r first meaning is stated in two different and non-equivalent ways. I1
sation, to w h d one feels Ywhen you feel you need to drink"). needs to be pointed out that one can complain without feeling (or
A ribbon is, according to lthe OAJD, "a strip of nylon, silk, or some a retending that one feels] pain; that one can protest that something is
material"". But if this were true, any strip of any material co
ribbon, which of course is not lrue. In Fdct, the word ribbon [in the re1
sense) refers only to a kind of thing made (by people) in order to
something look good. [See Section 9.) d with oneself without complaining about anyone or anything.
IFcl shed is defined as "to let something falYy[and it is illustaate in addition to being wrong in almost everything it says, the whole
sentences "trees shed leaves, people shed tears, and caterpillars exudes lexicographic despair and apathy: "It is impossible to czupture
skins"). Hut this implies that if 1 let a book fall 1 am shedding variant, or even to dmide how many different meanings are invohed;
cia1 concept missed by this definition is that of 'part" A can only shed B t is, we do not know how to go about it."
before the event B can be thought of as part of A (and after the event, can the lexicographers responsible for this entry had a reliable Ilexico-
not]. theory at their disposall, they would have need of neither their half-
Finally, a wswm is according to the O"AJD '% fully g r o m ffemak
which turns a bitch or a mare into a woman.
Needless to say, definitions can also be too narrow, but this fault seld speaking (for a detailed and more predse discussion see
oacurs on its own, and P will discuss it in the context of a 8987a3, the complaining person has to convey the following
which it is most commonly combined. Here, just one exa 'something bad happened to me-1 feel something bad bemuse
The QAJD defines appahtment as "a time when you have ar
and see some one'^s . is too restrictive, because the l a y e r who r w i v
clients or the professor who sees students can also have an
without having to "go" anywhere outside their ofice.

7. Capturing the Invariant nd the failure b even aim at capturing the semantic invariant. The
exlcogmpher realizes that the phrase "'to state that one is suffering from a
Althaiugh this may sound too grand far (what tends to be seen as) " is too narrow as a definition of comptain, but instead of looking for
humble task of a lexicographer, the process of constructing a s restrictive f o m d a he or she simply adds am ebc. (and, for good mea-
definritioln is-or s h o l d be-a search for truth. To find the truth abou
meaning of a word means to find the invariant concept which is part o
native speakersQacit knowledge about their language and
them in their use of that word.
Yet lexicagraphers often lack the confidence, the resolve,
reach for the invariant, and thus bccome unfaithfull to their t

are others which are inherently negative (that is, which reflect a negative:
evaluation), for example 'reckless', Yoolhardy', or Yinapudent', "Bold'
belongs to neither of tl~esetwo calcgorics, bcing cormpalibPc with either a
positive or a negative evaluation. By splitting it into two supposedly dif-
ferent meanings, one positive and one negative, the dictionary is misrepre-
senting the truth about this concept and blurring the difference between the
neutral concept 'bold', the positive concept "courageous', and the negative
concept 'impudent'. (P4wdless to say, 'boldy,'courageoms', and 'impudentJ
differ also in other respects; for detailed discussion see Wierzbicka 19920:
203- B S .)
Another characteristic example is the OPD definition of boast: '"0 speak
with great pride and try to impress people, esp, about oneself"".This time
no polysemy is postulated, but the little esp. (especially) is no less of a sigh
of resignation (or a moan of despair?) than the etc. of the previous defiuoli-
tion. Clearly, the authors of the entry could not make up their c01iective
mind as to what the essential features of boast are. If they had a reliable
lexicogtaphic theory to lean on, they would have k n o w that an esp. is a
sign of defeat and they would have fdt obliged to think a little longer. If
they had done this, they would have realized that the concept of "oast'
always involves oneself (whether directly or indirectly), and that it is not
diflerent in this mspect from 'pride" Again, for detailed discussion the
reader is referred to Wiembicka 1987a; here, it wiU suffiw to say that hast-
ing always involves the following attitude: saying something very good
about someone or something, thinking something very good about myself,
comparing myself with other people ('other people are not like me'), and
wanting other people to think something very good about me. Thus, if a
father says something very g m d about his children, evidentlly thinking
something very good about himself, comparing himsePf with other people
('other people are not like me'), and wanting other people to think some
thing good about him bemuse of this, then this can indeed be described as
boasting.
It may be noted in passing that the OPD definition of impress, via which
the OPD defines boast, is equally inadequate: "'to make (a person) farm a
strong (usually favourable) opinion of something"".suadJ"y, like esplechlly,
suggests that the component of "favourable opinion" is not n a e s s q ,
whereas in fact it is absoUutely necessary both for beast and for the relevant
meaning of imprw (as in "He wanted to impress h1erJ').
The Failure to capture the invariant is manifested in a particularly spec-
tacular manner in dhc use of the conjunction or, with which dictionary def-
initions are usualBy peppered.
For example, the QPD defines tempt as follow: "to persuade or try to
persuade (especialEy into doing something wrong or unwise) by the prospect
of pleasurc or advantage". The first or can be dispensed with immediately:
9. Semanfics and Lexicography 267
ting can of collrrse be suwssful, but so can trying; it is enough, there-
y "try to persuadem,thereis no need for "to persuade or try to
'. The disjunction c'~omethingwrong or unwise" caw be reduced
hing bad" (not necessarily " " e ~ " a r "morally very badW",ul
that is thought of as a bad thing to do]; and the "prospect of
asure or advantage" cam be reduced to the prospect of "something good
temptee)'". The qualifier espech#y cam be dispensed with altogether:
ply cannot tempt somebody to do something good; it has to be
Lng that is seen as "something bad"' (although the speaker can of
e be using the word tempt in jest).
conclusion, devices such as w ,espercial/ysu~aaS!y,the use of mulltiple
es [whether words or phrases) to portray the same meaning, or the
stting of arbitrary polysemles are all different manifestations of the same
failure of practical lexicography. This failure mars most entries in
of the existing dictionaries, and makes them m c h less usefid to the
r than they otherwise could be [under the same limitations of space
d other practical constraints). A rigorous and consistent lexicographic
om,with a firmly established principle of determinacy of meaning, can
illy remedy this weakness.
n particular, a sound lexicographic theory can prevent the common phe-
nomemoar of unfounded proliferation of meanings, as well as the (less com-
mon, but even more harmful) conflation of meanings which are related but
not the same. It can prevent the confusion of ironic, sarcasltlc, jocular, or
metaphorical usage with the literal meaning of words (as in the case of
threat, discussed earlier). It can oRer lexicographic criteria on the basis of
which meanings can be firmly separated from one another, clearly identi-
fied, and intelligibly stated.
8. Standing Firmly on the Ground of Dis~reteness
(Dineof the major reasons that most dictionary definitions are much less use-
ful than they could be is the widespread lack of faith in the discreteness of
meaning. As Aristotle realized better than many contemporary linguists do,
there are few things harder than constructing a good definition. How can
a lexioagrapher be expected to undertake the necessary effort if he or she
does not believe that lthe task is feasible at all? Theoreticians who under-
mine the lexicographer% faith in nhe possibility of stating the meaning oE
words truthfully and accurately are doing both the lexicographer and the
dictionary user grievous disservice. ln fact, most of the problems which
plague practid lexicography are linked with the issue of discreteness.
For example, how can lexicographers search with all their might, and
patience, for an invariant if they do not know whether they can expect to

find a definite number of meanings? To recdl the OPD definition of corn-
plczim, cited earlier: "I, to say that one is dissatisfied, to protest that some-
thing is wrong; 2. to state that one is suffering from a pain etc.". On the
face of it, two meanings are postulated here, but in f a t the Arst alleged
meaning is stated twice, in two different ways, and the relation between
these two different attempts at a definition is left unclear. The use of the
numbers I and 2 implies that this particukr lexicographer does believe in
the discreteness of meanings, but the constant practice of throwing together
different fomulations of what is counted as "one meaning" indicates the
shakiness of this belief, If the lexicographer felt obliged to state just one
definition for each @ypothetid) meaning, this would encourage him or her
to look for the true invariant; as a result, the multiple meanings postulated
In present-day dictionaries w u l d o f t ~ nbe reduced to a smaller number,
invariants would be captured, superfluous phrases wodd be omitted, space
would be gained, semantic rdations between diflerent meanings (and dit=
ferent lexical item) would be made much clearer, and, an tog of all thiss,
the language used wodd be much simpler and clearer, as well as more =a-
nomical. For example, as pointed out ember, far camphin one could pro-
pose just one unitary formula, and there would be no need for positing
polysemy, no need for an etc., and no need for agonizing between two non-
equivalent phrases "to say that one is dissatisfied'hand "to protest that
something is wrong" (not to mention other advantages linked with n stm-
darbarian and reduction of the metalanguage used).
Or consider the way LDOTEL defines the English verb rltl pray:
la, ba entreat earnestly; esp. to call devoutly on (God or a god]
b, b wish or hope fervemdy
2. arch~icor JomaE to request oourtesy---often used ta introduoe a qlueslti~m,
request or plea
3. archaic to get or bring by praying: (ia address God on. a gad wiflh adoralion,
confession, supplication, or thanksgiving; engage in prayer
Although three figures are used (I, 2, and 31, the actual number of mean-
ings postulated is far from clear: Ps (a) a separate micafling? Or @]? and
what about all those especiaI1ys, or$, eftens, semicolons? The relationship
between the different alleged meanings is even less clear than the number
of meanings postulated. For example, why should the meaning "to address
God or a god" be given under heading 3, and "to call devoutly on (God or
a god]'hPuner I? Are these two alleged meanings more different f m one
another than those listed under IH[sr)and 1(b] (only one of which mentions
Gad)? Why is the alleged meaning "to engage in prayer" given lander 3 and
"to call devoutly on (God or a god)", under 12
I am not saying that it is easy to define pray in a satisfactory way, and E
sympalhlize with the lexicographer" painful erlirorls. But 1 bclieve this pain
9. Setnantic..vand Lexicography 269
have been alleviated, and the efforts rewarded with more satisfactory
ts, if theoretical lexicography had sent a clew md unequivocal mes-
that meaning is determinate, that a definite (and minimal) number of
eanings must be looked for, that there are no "shades" of meaning, no
and (bls, and that no hedges [no ~specSd~Sly, +em, etc.1 are necessary or
ptable; and if, in addition to this message, clear criteria for establish-
d distinguishing different meanings had been provided. I believe that
h a dear message had been sent, and if the nemssary guide-lines had
ided, the entry for pray would have ended up with just two mean-
archaic and one contemporary (without any submeanings), and
e two meanings would have been stated clearly and a m a t e l y
hedges, OM, ees., or other visible signs of i n k i s i o n and ana-
;see WieraBPicka 19934.
sider the lists of quasi-equivalents offered in dehitions such
as the following ones from Webster" (1959):
ly (noun) - an answer; response; ccounnter-attack
- to ybld to aaather; surrender Formally; withdraw from; submit
calmly
neport (verb) - to give an amaunt af; relatq telU from one b another; circubate
publicly; take down (spoken words)
iequest [noun)- desire expressed; petition; prayer; & m a & entreaty
er (nourn) - method of regular arrangement; settled mode of procedure; rule;
regulation; mmmand; class; rank; degree; a religious fraternity;
an associatiom of persons possessing a common honorary dis-
tinction . . .
Walt is most striking about such lists is the fact that the Pexicographer
making no attempt to indicate how many different meanings are involved
ch case. Should the first four entries above leave anybody in doubt
t the lexicographer% mmotivatim for this failure, the hotchpotch of
I-equivalents thrown into the entry for order makes it quite clear that
e only possible motivation is despair. This despair is understand-
t is not jzrslified. As 1 have tried to show in my Dicfionary of
eecb Act Verbs (which includes, in particular, the verbs reply,
igm, seporr, and repest), meanings, can be sorted out from one another,
ace Wittgenstein and kllowers) boundaries between meanings can be
.The doctrine of family resemblances must not be used as arm excuse
eximgraphic laziness or as justification for lexicographic despair. (For
ther discussion, see Chapter 4.)
one final point related to the question of discreteness, Bet us consider
's (1982: 1012) claim that there is no reason why "dictionary definitions
are to be mad as mutually exclusive'" and that '"in practice, the warding of
definition 1 normally colors the interpretation of definition 2'" 1agree that,

fmm a reader's point of view, the wording of one definition may colour the
interpretation of the other definitions of a polysemous word. The main
problenn, Inowever, is to establish whether the word in question is reallty poly-
semous, and to ensure that its meaning or meanings be correctly identified.
If this is achieved, theu I think there is no need for such a "cross-fwtiliza-
tion of definitions"".
For example, Hanks quotes a sentence describing two girls as "shulta-
neously bold m d innocent"",sking: "Does boM here mean forward or
impudent or daring?"; and he answers: "'A bit of both, really"'. But why
should we assume that $aEd reaily does have two meanings which can be
stated as (I) forward or impudent and (2) daring? If none of threse supposed
"definitions" "s the sentence well, it is, I think, not because there are two
meanings which colour one another, but because neither of the proposed
"definitions" of boId is correct. (For an alternative definition, and justifica-
tion, see Wierzbicka 1992a: 208-9.)
A definition should always be able to stand on its own. If a word is %en-
uincPy polysemous, h e n each of its meanings should be stated separately,
and each definition should be able to defend itself. This is not incompatible
with Hanks" statement that "secondary meanings have a tendency Ito con-
tain traces of primary meanings'". I, too, believe that different meanings of
a word are usually interrelated, and that adequate definitions should reveal
those links. (For many illlusitrations, see Wierzbicka 1987; also Meltuk's
concept of '"emantic bridges", Me16Euk et a l 1984.) But this does mot
change the basic requirement that each definition shodd be able to stmd
on its o w .
91. Distinguishing Polysemy from Vagueness
One of the main reasons why lexicographers often find it di@cult, indeed
impossible, to a p t w the semantic invariant is that they do not know hoy
to distinguish polysemy from vagueness. It is not that lexicographers do not
believe in poiysemy: frequently, polysemy is posited in dictionaries on a
truly massive sale; but it is posited on an od k c basis, without any clear
guide-lines or general principles.
Consider, for example, the definition of ribbon mentioned earlier: "a strip
of n)llon, silk, or some other material" (COAJD). As pointed out, this defi-
nition implies that any strip of material could be called ribbon, whereas in
fact many different "strips of material" (e.g. a piece of sewing-taw would
not be so ailed [because their hnction is clearly different from that of rib-
bon: sewing-tape is clearly not made for tying things and, equafly clearly,
it is not made h r a decorative purpose).
But the generalization poposed here may seem to apply to many [even
9. Setnass tics and LexicograpIry 27 1
mrpst) cases rather than to aEI cases. For example, what aboult typewriter
ribbon? Is it meant for tying things? Or is it decorative? And yet it is called
ribbon, too, isn't it?
Confronted with an apparent exception of this kind, lexicographers often
tend to lose faith in the existence of a semantic invariant, take recourse to
hedges, qualifiers, and various other 4d hoc devices, and Pose the general-
ization.
But in fact the counter-example is apparent rather than real: the so-called
Jypew~iterribbon is not called ribbon but bypetvriler ribbon (even if it can
sometimes be referred to, elliptically, as ribbon].
The common belief that a modger-head constructiolv must indicate a
taxonomic ('kind of") relationship is based on a falEacy, which feeds on the
fact that compounds with such a structure can often be abbreviated, in an
appropriate context, to the head alone.
For example, ill is often assumed that an artificial leg is a kind of leg, that
a plastic flower is a kind of flower, that an electric chair is a kind of chair,
or that a house of cards is a kind of house. Since people cannot live in a
house of cards, m d since "a house of cards is a kind of house", the gener-
alization that houses are m d e for people to live in appears to be easily
refuted. Similarly, since plastic flowers do not grow out of the ground, and
since "a plastic icaawer is a kind of flowr", the generalization that flowers
grow out of the ground may also seem to be easily refuted.
Reasoning of this kind is fallacious because it confuses semantic rela-
tionships based on the notion of VikehlNlth those based on the notion of
'kind' [i.e. "horizontalY'and'%ertical" rerelionships; see Bright m d Bright
1969; Berlin 1992). For example, a rose is a kind of flower, but a plastic
Bower is Me a flower, not a kind of flower. Similarly, a deck-chair is a kind
of chair, but an electric chair is not a kind of chair ("somhhing for people
to sit on . . .'"; rather, it is an object which is like a chair, bwlt whose func-
tion is quite different from that of a chair. Finally, typewriter ribbon is not
a kind of ribbon; rather it is something which is like a ribbon, but whose
function is quite different from that of a ribbon.
There is, however, one important difference between, the case of type-
writer ribbon and that of plosticflowers: the fact that one can rala a plastic
imitation of a flower aflower is language-independent, whereas the Fact that
the "typewriter strip"is called in English rfbbosl! (typewriter ribbon) is lan-
guage-specific ((e.g. in Polish the corresponding rcompound is r a h a do
maszyny, lit. 'typewriter tape". Consequently, sypewriier ribbon has to be
Iisted in a dictionary as a separate item, with its own definition, whereas
pI~$tlflowesdoes mat.
To prove that a typewriter ribbon is not 'a kind of ribbon' and that the
definition of ribbon does not have to cover typewriter ribbon, we proceed
as fol~ows:we first assume, far the sake of argument, that typewriter ribbon
272 Lexical Semwtfcs
does have to be covemd in the definition of ribbon and we ask what the two
categories have in common; when we establish the common denominator
[roughly, "a strip d material"] we ask whether any object which fits this
common denominator can be called by the word in question (rfbbon]; we
find that the answer has to be negative; from this we conclude that the sup-
posed common denominator cannot account for the wohd's range of use;
and fmm this we infer the exisltenm of polysemy.
I[f we proceed in this way yve can arrive at dehitions with full predictive
power, not in a diachronic sense, explaining why certain objects came to be
called by certain names I(e.g, why the "'typewriter strip" came to be called
in English by a compound including the ward ribon, whereas, for exam-
ple, in Polish it came to be called by a compound including a noun which
on its o m means but in a synchronic sense, which means that the
definition matches a word's actual range of use. This procedure will enable
us to be precise and to dispense with hedges and qualifying expressions such
as ~rswally,ojrsen, typica!Ilp,or etc., which are meant to make up for the inao-
curacy of the definition itself.
Another m y of making basically the same point is this: a hafr ribbon dif-
fers from other kinds of ribbons in only one respect, spmified by the m d -
irfier (being used for tying hair with), so there are no grounds for positinrg
polysemy in this case. But typewriter ribbon differs from other ribbons in
more than one respect (it is used in typewriters, it is not suitable for tying
things with, it is not decorative); in this case, therefom, polysemy has to be
postulated (see Chapter 83.
Thus, although with respect to nouns polysemy often has to be estab-
lished on purely semantic grounds, this does not mean that there are no
guide-lines for establishing whether a word has one meaning or two (or
more).
With respect to verbs, the task of establishing the number of meanings Is
often facilitated by differences in syntactic frames. This point can be illas-
trated with the English verb to order.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary (GOD 19M) offers for lthis verb the fol-
lowing glosses: "'put in order, array, regulate . . . ; . . . ordain . . . ; com-
mand, bid, prescribe . . . ; command or direct . . . ; direct tradesman,
-
servant, etc., to supply r( dinner, settle what it shall consist of)".
These glosses do m t make it clear how many meanings are being posited
(and perhaps the underlying assumption is that the different meanings of
this verb cannot be sorted out from onre another). But in fact, if the s p -
tactic frames are sorted out in orderiy fashion, clear semantic dis.Xiwctians
emerge, too.
Leaving aside (for reasons of space) the meaning illustrated with the sen-
tences "'e ordered his affairs'kr ""He orde~edhis troops", 1will focus here
on the distinction between what 11 lnrilil call orderl and olrser2, which can be
9. 8emts~n~ics
and lexicography 273
tences "'She ordered him to leaveY'and"She ordered
with only minor
s in my Dictiomtzr'y
in a restaurant or a book in a boohhop
to have that thing and expects him to do
llar tto order]. But there are numerous
order2 but absent from order,. The per-
s to have something; an action by the
r ithis desired state of affairs to eventuate, but it is
oal itselt it does not matter who carries
s long as it is carried out. This seman-
in a syntactic difference: one ordersl a person (to
rders2 a thing (from a person). One cannot order2
r2 a steak, and one cannot order! a steak (as one
rs 110 a steak), even though concrete nouns can be reported
door', he ordered").
ect represents the focus of the speaker" interest. For
kiject has to refer either to the addressee or to the action
to IPZ~IV~",'We ordered1 an inquiry"") For 0rder2, it has
to an object ('We ordered2 a steak""), with the addressee being con-
y and syntactically demoted to a prepositional phrase CX ordered2
eakes who orders2 something assumes that the addressee
ny people may want to have, and that he is willing: to
people with some d these things, on certain conditions. The
cerns not only the product which the speaker wants to
sesxioes: the addressee has to do something; to the
object desired I(i.e. get it, prepare it, wrap it, serve it, and so on). For his
prt,the speaker undertakes to do something, too: whatever is required (for
example, to pay). He also has to wait, because his wish cannot be complied
with immediately [as in the case of buying), but onlly after some delay,
allowing the addressee to perform the necessary actions.
Finally, the person who orders2 something does not assume that the
ddressee has Lo do what Ere wants him to do; he does assume, however,
that the addressee is willing to do SO. A person who orders1 someone to do
k that 9 . a ~have to
thing is a little less confident, because
out ithe arderz. But, in this case, too,
nfident fclthink that if you can do it, you will
that order2 has developed out of orderl by a shift of
phasis from the addressee tla the object provided by the addressee, and
a concomitant disappearance of certain assumptions conoeming the

relationship between the speak~erand the addressee: order1 implies that the
addressee is subordinated to the speaker and has to do what the speaker
wants him to do. In o r $ e ~ this
, assumption is absent; instead, there are new
assumptions which emphasize the object ('something has to be done to itY]
and which de-individualize the addressee: he is not seen as an individual
subordinated to the speaker but as a person or group of persons who id-
bgly provide certain kinds of objects to unspeEified customers.
Thus the last gloss in the COD entry for order ("'direct tradesman* ser-
vant, etc., to suppIy9')confuses two diflFerent meanings, associated with tiif-
ferent types of social relationship and with different sets of assumptions: it
is one thing to order someone I(e.g,a servant) to do something, and another
to order something from someone (e.g, from a trades man)^. In an adequate
3iexiloographic description, these two senses whould have to be clearly dis-
tinguished, and the readers would have to k informed of the different
grammatical frames associated with the different meanings.
110. Avoiding Circullirrity
There was one thing that Edith could anat beet, and that was the d i e
liionary. ""The Larausse i s a big cheat. You look for a word, you find
It, they send you back to another word and you haven" got anywhere."
(Blerteaot 1973: 1103)
Conventional dictionaries are, generailly speaking, vitiated by all-pervasive
circularity in their definitions. Some didionaries are better in this respwt
than others (for example, the OMD is much better than all the Oxford dic-
tionaries addressed at adults), but while there are differences of degree,
there are hardly any exceptions+ircularity is a malady (in a more or less
advanced form) to wbicln virtually no conventional di~tionaryis immune.
Practical lexicographers are often well aware of the circwtrity of their
definitions, but not knowing how to avoid it they try to make a virtue of
"mecessity"', and attempt to justify this circularity as something that may
bother theoretical semanticists but that is quite amptable in a practical die
tionaq and which will never bother the ordinairy user. In fact, however,
they are dwxiving themselves (and unwittingly insulting the intelligence of
their intended audience). A few examples.
The verb tbohmp is defined by the OPD as "to move off the ground ete.
[try bending and then extending the legs or (of fish) by a movement of the:
tail"' (Ifitst meaning] and "to move suddenly witla a jump or bound, to rise
suddeniy from a seat etc." (second meaning). As for the f i s t definition, one
might query the unexpected attention it gives to fish (as we18 as its use of
etc.), but it is the second definition which is relevant in the present context.
For what is "a jump'? ?e OPD offers several definitions, but the relevant
9. Siemanrfsrtics and Lexicography 2275
rst : "a jumping movement". Thus r o j m p Is defined
jumping, and jmping is not defined at ail, being
a form of the verb ro jump. Substituting the
da, we obtain the falltowing: ta j u m p C ? omove
g movement"; lihat is, "to move suddenly with a
of moving suddenly with a movement characteris-
a movement". And so it goes on-like a record
ould take a real jump of faith to believe that that
ition which d l serve the dictionary user best.
another example, the QPD defines fate as "a persomn's destiny",
as "that which happens. to a person or thing thought of as deter-
placing the wordjate with its definition we get the fol-
that which hahagens to a person or thing thought of as
t which happens to a person or thing thought of as that
a person or thingY'(andso on, ad kjinitum!). Quite apart
oF this kind is an insult to the readers' inteiel-
what use could it possibly be to them? Bf somebody knows what
ans, what destiny means, and how they differ from one another,
any definitions at all; but if they do not know, or are
ictionary will not teach them anything. BoCh the pro-
ney is wasted on definitions of this kind.
be added that fate is also given another definition in the same
thought to control all events and impossible to resist",
Iso defined as '"ate considered as poweryy.This time,
definition we get: destiny Is "a power . . . considered
mare illuminating result.
that this last example is unfair because the concepts
iculady difficult to define. But in fact circw-
at the easiest concepts are often defined in the same
For example, LDQTEL defines besr as "excePling a11 others". Excel is
efined, in turn, via superior and surpass, superior via surpass, and surpass
ia betser, as well as via exceed, with exceed being defined in turn via m-
erior. What baffles the reader most is why besf ~ouldnVhaw been defined
ia better in the %st place rbetter than all the others'"), instead of going
und the circles involving superior, surpass, and exceed
Similarly, OPD defines question as "a sentence requesting information or
an answeryys and answer as ""smthing said or written or needed or done
to deal with a question, accusation, or problem". Omitting, to save space,
the numerous ors, we get something like this: an answer is "something said
to deal with a sentence requesting something said to deal with a sentence
requesting . . ."-and so on, ad infis~ffum.And yet the essence of a gues-
tion, or an smmwer, is not difficult to state: tbe gueslianr refers to a situation
when, rough,y speaking, someone says '7 want to know something, I want
someone to tell me" and nnswex means, roughily, '%elling someone soma
thing that Ithey said they wanted to kmwY'(formore precise definitions, see
Wierzbicka 1987~).
The examples given above were relatively simple, with A being defined
via B, and B via A. TypicaBly, however, vicious circles are like huge webs
enveloping whole extended families of wards, or Bike gigantic tmtades
extending throughout the pages of a dictionary. Far example, A is defined
via B, B ria C, and iC via A; or A, B, C3D, E, and F are defined via one
another-in circles, criss-crosses, and all imaginable sorts of combinations
-
refuse offer accept

rand patterns (for example, A via B and D;B via D, E, and E T; via A, B,
and Cn; C via A and l$ and so on)-with repercusions throughout the call
entire dictionary, which becomes an entangled web of overlapping circles. u answer
For example, in the OPD, one ~ l a afind a little circle (Fig, 9.1) and a larger
one, with the little one within it (Fig. 9.2).

request claim question

that ia living thing is an animate body, that a body is a corporeal substance,

In a system of this kind, every answer generates new questions, and these
new questions either lead us to further questions or bring us back ltc~the
starting-point (or both). It is just as Descartes said in his "Search after
Truth" (speaking through the mouth of Eudoxus and mfersing to the so-
called metaphysical steps or the tree of Porphyry]:
~uoaxw.You pay n o attention to my question, and the reply that you make
to me, simple as it may appear to you, wiill bring us into a labyrinth d &if-
ficulties, iF 1 try ever so little to press you. Were 1 for example to ask
E p i s t a o n himself what a man is, and were he to reply, as is done in the
Schools, that a man is a rationall animal; and if, in addition, in order to
explains these two terms which are not hss obscure than the first, he were to
conduct nus by a31 the steps which are termed metaphysical, we should ltwe
dragged into a maze from which it would be impossible k r us to lmerge.
As a matter of Faiet, from this question two others anise, the Brse is what is
an animal? The second, what is reasonabie? And further, if, ltcr explain what
sun analmall is he were to reply that it is a living thing possessed of sensations,
you see that the question, like the bramhes of a geneaiagical tree, would go
an increasing and multiplying; and finarly all these wonderfd questions
wouId finish in pure tautology, which would dear up nothing, and would
leave us in our original ignorance. (Descartes 1701/E93t: 31181
Circularity involves the same kind of regressus ad injinitwsr.
Pascal denounced circularity with his mock-definition of fight, He wrote:
There are people who go as Far in absurdity as to explicate a word by itself. I know
some who have defined fwmiare ("light') Bike this: ""La lumiboe est un rnouvement
luminaire des corps lumineux" [Light is a Itminary movement of luminous bodies];
as if one could understand the words lwminaire and ~ ~ ~ E Y Ewithout
w understand-
ing l~lmi8re. (Pascal 1667/1954: 5810)
Three centuries, and hundreds of dictionaries later, the problem of cir-
cularity has not only not been solved (in practical lexicography) but, on the
contrary, has by and large ceased to be seen as a problem! The hydra of
circularity is rearing its ugly heads with more and more self-assurance.
There mn be no doubt that-although dictionary makers are, naturally,

reluctant to admit it-what is sacrificed to this hydra is, above all, the inter-
est of the reader.
11. Relying on Indefinables
One cannot define everything. For any sound hexicographic undertaking it
is crucial to decide which words are going to be defined and which can be
raken as indefinable. The point bas been made so many times, so clearly
and lioroefully, that one feels embarrassed having to repeat it again and
again (see, for example, the quotes given in Chapbr !)I. Yet repeat it one
must, until this basic point is generally understood and finally universally
amepted. But how should a lexicographer decide on the set oF indefinables
on which the dictionary /s lo be based?
For obvious reasons, the set of indefinables must 'be reasonably small.
For example, if half the words in ru, dictionary were defined and the other
half not, the reader w d d have the right to complain, and perhaps even to
demand a 50 per cent rehnd.
Sccond, the indefinables must be cliosen horn among words which are
intuitively dear; otherwise, they are useless (or worse than useless] as build-
ing-blocks out of which the definitions of all the other (definable) words are
constructed. For example, if the words good and brrd are defined, directly
or indirectly, via mom! and immoral this is useless to the reader because the
former pair is by far clearer and mire intelligible to everybody (including
small children] than the latter. Thus, explaining good via moral or bad via
immoral is a parody of an explanation. And yet this is how dictionaries
often proceed-not 'because their makers rue foolish but because they do
not have a f i m and clear semantic theory at their disposal. To illustrate,
the QPD offers the following:
bad - wicked, evil
wicked - morally bad, oflending against what is right
evil - morally bad, wicked
If once pursues the leads offered a little further, the web of vicious circh
thickens:
to oflend - b do wrong
wrong - morally bad, conltrary to justice or to what is right
moral - of or mnoerned with the goodness or badness of human character or
with the principles of what is right and wrong in conduct
This, means bad -+ wicked -+ bad; wicked -+ oJJen!d --> wso~g+ had
wicke& bad --> wicked + mord -+ bad; on and on.
The QAJD shows more wisdom, in that it docs not attempt to define bad
9. S e m t f c s m d Lexicography 279
at all, and thus is free to define both evil and wicked via bad, imperfectly,
no doubt, but at least without circularity:
evil - very wicked
wicked - very bad
Unfortunately, the same wisdom was not sffiom in the case of good,
which b defined, causing, predictably, a vicious circle (and, incidentally,
committing the dictionary to a dubious and dangerous doctrine that 'goody
Is the same as 'socially acoeptablle'):
good - of the kind that people like and praise
praise - to say that someone or something is very good
solution to all this is very simple: to accept that both good and bad are
mong the most basic human concepts and that they neither can nor need
o be defined-and then to define everything else clearlly and accwraki8y.
Critics are often sceptical of the defining power of simple and general
m s such as good and bad. For example, Landau (19921-3: B 151 asks how
can be sufficient "to distinguish between, say, mistake, blunder, lapse,
ng, and sinyy;but 1 believe that simple and general words sllpch as bad
an achieve this goal much better than the unrestricted set of words used
conventional dictionary definitions. Consider the set of circular defini-
tions offered by AHDOTEL (1973) [abbreviated here for reasons of space):
ht&e - an, error or fault
- . . . 4. a mistake
- . . . 2. a mistake; error
- 1, a transgression of religious or moral iaw, espclallly when delib-
erate; 2, amy offense, violatian, fault, or error
iolation - 1. the act of violating . . . 2. an instance or violation; a transgres-
sion
sgression - I. the violation of a law, command, or duty
Pictoridly this is represented in Fig. 9.3.
!-/ violation
sin
Ltransgression f
FIG.9.3
280 Lexical Semantics
CobuiFd takes a diflerent approach, but, in my view, it is also far fram
sumssFul. For example:
mistake I. 1. an action ar opinion that is jmcamect or foolish, or that is not what
you intended to do, or whose result is undesirable; 1.2. something or part
of something which is incorrect or not right
The comment on the margin says, in ddition, that "mistake = errorWIf
the definitions offered by AHDOTEL are striking in their blatant circular-
ity, those oflered by CobtddJ'd are striking in their failure to capture an
invadant. ]Inmy view, however, misrukr (noun) does have a unitary mean-
ing, which can be stated as follows:
nsissde [Xmade a mistake]
something bad happened
k a u s e X did sometiling
X didn't want it Lo happen
X wanted something elm to happen
X thought that something else would happen
Hy analysing the concept of 'mistake' into its components, we can not only
avoid drcularity and capture a unitary meaning, but also show the difler-
ences as well as similarities between related concepts such as 'mistake',
"Iunder', and 'sin'.
For example, GanGtriSd defines blunder as 'b big mistake, especially owe
which seem to be the result of carelessness or stupidity". But not every
"big mistake", or even "terrible mistake", is a blunder, not even if it 2s due
to carelessness. Something like "stupidity'" on the other hand, is a neces-
sary part of this concept (so it shouldn't be introduoed in an '%specia1111ym
frame]. I would propose the following:
blmdes ( X made a blunder)
something bad happened
because X did something
X didn" want it to happen
if X thought about it For a shorr time, X wouldn't have done it
people can think something bad about X because of this
Landau doean" believe that a general! and simple word like bad could Ise
used in defining both a word like mistake (with no moral or religious h p l i -
cations) m d a m r a l and religious concept like sin" But if E am not RYjls-
taken, and if I am not sinfully over-confident, it can be done. Here is my
sin (in the serious, non-jocular, use of the word):
sin (Xcommitted a sin)
X did something bad
X knew that it was bad to do it
If. S ~ ~ ~ L Tand
F I Lexicography
IS'CS 28 1
X knew that God wants people not to do things like this
X did it because X wanted to do it
e shplicity of all the elements used in this definition [except the concept
d" which is not very simple, but which underlies thc concept of 'sin']
us to avoid circularity, portray stru~turatrelations, and avoid blind
uch as the one in which, for example, both AHDOTEL and Cobuild
mselves in their attempt to d e h e sin via law. To illustrate from
a sin - is an action a type of khaviour which is 'believed to break the laws
- 1. is a system d rules that a smiety or government develops over
time in order 'to deal with business agreements, social relationships,
and cldmes such as theft, murder, or violence.
dy, the definition of law quoted above does not allow for any "laws of
" ~ the0 attempted dehition of sin via h w does not allow for any
interpretation.
,a few words about wrong (adjective), for whkh AHDOTEL finds
ged to posit no less tban seven different meanings, and C~buiM,
many as eleven, without being able b show what all these supposed
ngs have in common. Of murse, one could write a whole study about
noepts of 'right' and 'wrong', but basically, the meanings of these two
adjectives are quite simple. In essence, they could be stated as follows:
It is wrong to do this (like this). =
it is bad to do this Oike this)
if one thinks about lit one can know it
It is right to do this (like this]. =
it is good to do this (like this)
if one thinks about it one can b o w it
Unlike the concepts of 'goods and 'bad', wwhh are universal, the concepts
of ' r i g h t b d 'wrong'are culture-specific, and in fact they are very reveal-
ing in the links which they postulate between values ('good' and 'bad') on
the one hand and 'thinking' and 'knowing' on the other (see Wierzbicka
19X9a; 19920, ch. 1).
A list of indefinables that has proved itself valuable in lexical senrantics
should be of great potential benefit to practical lexicography. Since the
same indefinabSes, and the same simple syntactic patterns, which appear to
be mast useful for ananysing the English lexicon appear to be allso wry use-
full in anallysing the Peximl resources of other languages (including ones as
diverse as Japanese, Pitjantjatjara, and Ewe), the ~onclusiondoes not seem
282 Lexice~l&man tics
premature that the same set of indefinables can be used as a core ofa "nat-
ural lexicograplnic mctalanguagc" swilablc ror both mo~l~olinngualand bilin-
gual dictionaries in most, if not all, Irmguages of the world. The practical
advantages of such an outcome would seem to me to be huge, as any Ian-
guage learner would thus have relatively easy access to dictioruaries of amy
language via their common coree2
12. Using Simple Language
The issue of indefinables is linked closely with that of simple language. Thle
use of excessivelly complex m d obscure language is one of the greatest
obstacles to effective cornmication in m y area of human endeavour; brut
in a dictionary, which s&s to expkria the meaning of words, it is particu-
larly out of place. k n a u l d refers, in this mnnection, to the writings of tbe
philosopher and mathematician Gassendi, m d he wribs: "Gassendiasexpo-
sition makes clear that there is scarcely a more reprehensible t m of mind
than is exhibited by these enigmatical writers who believe that the most
groundless thoughts-not to say ttne most false and impious ones-will pass
for grand mysteries if reclothed in f o m s unintelligible to the c o m o n m n ' "
[Arnauld 166219164: $8).
Despite repeated pleas from thinkers like Gassendi, the use of complex
and obscure language is a great plague of Western civilization, which mars,
in particular, most encyclopaedias, textbooks, manuals, printed instnnctiom
Ebr the use of machines and devices of dinerent kinds, and so om. M m
often than not, it also mars, and diminishes the usefulness of, dicieionarim
of diflerent binds.
Consider, for example, the definitions of the words obFigatory and
crpltbnol, given by AHDOTEL:
obligatory - 1. legally or morally constraining; binding; 2. imposhmg or rseordhg
am obligation. 3. of the nature of an obligation; compulsory.
optional - left to choice; not compulsory or automatic
wouldn? it be better to explain what these words mean in very simple
words, along the following lines:
I a n not suggesting lrhat the Natural Senantic Metalang~agedevised by the author carnd
colIeagues should be wed, unaltered, as a lexicographic metalanguage, but onUy that It an ke
used as the core of a iexicographic metalanguage. Nor am I suggesting that all bxical item
in a dictionary should b defined directly in terns OF the indefinables. In particular, the n m
oC natural kinds (e.g. cgt, ps~oort~c,burlerfly) or af culliural kinds (e.g. iGortC, bicycle, chaw
require a different approach, with a much larger defining lexioon than abstract vocalbula~
does (see Wierzbicka 11985; dso Ch.7).
9. Semantics and lexicography 283
obligatory - everyone has to do it
optional - one can do it if one wants to, one doesn't h a w tio do it
@'m not proposing these as fully accurate definitions, but only as an
improvement on those offered by the dictionary.)
My respect for the work of practical Iexicogqhers is so high that I
would not wish to be seen as accusing them of passing (as Gassendi put it,
according to Arnaud] "groundless and the most false thoughts" for "grand
mysteriesm&ut I think it is fair to demand of them that their definitions
avoid k i n g "clothed in f o m unintelligible to the common man".
13. Exploring New Models of Definition
xicographic definitions can be improved immensely while maintaining a
or less traditional f o m . This can be done, above all, by simplifying
egularking tlne language of definitions, by using a discrete model of
tionrs, by trying to capture invariants (and thus banishing all ors and
eras), and by getting rid of circularity. It is possible, however, to
ove definitions still further, if one is prepared to give up the traditional!
s of definition and to explore new formats and new models (drawing
on the discoveries olF,contemporary semantics).
Consider, for exampje, the LDOTEL entry for the verb so p~rms'sh:
la. to impose a ~w:naltyon for a hult, offence or violation
lb. to inflict a penalty for [an offence)
2. )totreat roughly, harshly, or damagingly
Many weaknesses of this entry are quite apparent: the positing of a com-
pletely unjustified polysemy (1 versus 2) and semi-polysemy (la versus lb];
the failure to capture the invariant (what do "fault, ofince or violation"
have in common?); the latent circularity.
The curious distinction between "impose" [la) and "in63ictY"r(lb) col-
lapses in the entry for inpict, which is defined as 'Yo hrce or impose (sorne-
thimg damaging or painful) on someone". Penalty is defined, predictably,
via pam&krnent: "punishment imposed for, or incurred by, committing a
crime or public offence1'- And if that much circularity was not enough,
more is introduced via crime, which is defined as "an act or omission pun-
ishable by law'"unth ; . pemcrify + pmbhment; punish + penc~ity+
crime + pmi~h).
Here as in many other cases, the simple and unitary definition offered by
OAJD is incomparably better:
to punish-to make someone who has done wrong suiFfer, so that he will not wanti
to d owrong again
284 Lexical Semantics
In fact, this simple short dediniiion can bc made even h t k r by shorten-
ing it further: since one can speak of "capital punishment" (by death) or of
"eternal punishment" [by hell), the corrective purpose cannot be a neces-
sary part of the concept. We are left, therefore, with the short formula "to
make someone who has done wrong sufler"', and this is probably almost a$
good as one can get within the traditional lapodell. The definition is no more,
however, than an approximation: it does not capture correctly all the cam-
ponenits of the concept, and in some respects it manages to be over-speciik.
In particular, it posits suffering as a nemssary part of punishment, whereas
in fact an intention to cause suffering is sufficient, even if no suffering actu-
ally occuw. What is missing from the definition is some indication of the:
relationship between the punisher and the punished, and of the punisher's
view of the action as morally justified. For example, if a little boy (Johnny]
hits his younger sister (Smie) on the head, and Swzie retaliates by biting
Johnny's finger, the OAJD definition would fit the situation (since Johnny
did something wrong and Swie made lnim suffer because of it), but the
word pmish would not. To portray the concept of 'pwnishnnent' accurately
we need, I think, a scenario, not a definition of the traditional kind:
X punished IY [for 4. =
I(. IY did Zll
(b) X thought something like this:
(c) P did something bad [a
(4 I want Y to feel something bad because of this
(el it will be good if Y feels something bad bemuse of this
u) it will be good if P do something to Y because of this
(g) X did something to Y because of this
Component (a) refers to the culprit's actian, (b) to ilfr) describe the pun-
isher's attitude, and (83 refers to the punisher" action. The punisher's atti-
tude incl.udes, roughly speaking, a desire to inflict pain ( d ) , and three
assumptims: that the target person did something bad (c], that it will be
right and julst if Ine or she "suffers" [feels something bad) because of \this
(e), and that the punisher is callled upon, to inflict the necessary pain wlprc-
sumably, as the person in charge).
Cruse (1992-3: 89) questions my analysis or thc verb psmi.rh on ithe
grounds that "the punisher may actually hate having to cause sufferinggL, 1 to the differences in meaning between all the different verbs which it
entirely agree that the punisher may hate having to cause suflerlng; but this
is not incompatible with an intention to cause suffering. For example, the
father or mother imposing the punishment on the child may s u f i r intensely
themselves; but if they didn't intend to cause some pain for the child they
wouldn't be "punishing" him or her. On the other hand, if the child doesn't
really feel any pain this doesn't stop the parents' action from being d e m i b
able as punidrrrmesrt.
9. Semantics and SexicegrqAy 285
As a second example of Lhc need for a scenario, consider the concept of
'revenge" which the OPD defines as follows:
revenge-punishment or injury inflicted in return For what one has suffered
The definition is unsuccessful for many reasons, two of which can be
linked with the use of the words punisFfimemt and rerrrm. Contrary to what
Uhe definition implies, revenge is not a kind of punishment, because it does
not imply the assumptions which as we have seen are part of the latter con-
cept. The expression in return is not defined at all, and the definitions
assigned to the noun retzdrm are useless and irrelevant from the point of view
d defining revenge (e.g. "coming or going back").
Again, the definition offered by the OAJD is much more satisfactory ("a
wish to hurt someone because he has hurt you or one of your friendspy)il but
is; not quite correct: rewnge refers to an action, not merely to a wish, the
mendon of "friends'2s swpefluous, and the crucial idea of 'Voing the
same" is missing. To portxay the concept of %evengayaccurately we need a
scenario:
Y took revenge on X [for Z]. =
(a) someone ( X ) did something bad [Z'j to someone ( 0
(b] because of this, Y felt something bad
(c) after thh, Y thought something like this:
(4 this person (A) did something bad to me
(el because of this, I want to do the same to this person (X)
(f)P thought about it for a long time
(g] after this, Y did something lbad to X because of this
Component (a) refers to the action of the offender, and lCg) to that of the
evenger; (b) shows what the revenger felt, and components ( 4 and Qe)
hew his or her thoughts [with their focus on "paying in kind").
Finally, consider the concept of ?temptingy,which Web$~ster$Dictionary
9) "defines" as follows: "temps-to put to trial; test; persuade to evil;
; allure; entice". It is hardly niecessay to point out that this entry does
t tell the reader whether the verb tempt is supposed to have one mean-
or more, and if more, then how many; that no attempt is made to cap-
e the semantic invariant or invariants; and that the entry offers no clues
s as supposed equivalents of fempt. It does nat require much imagina-
ion to guess that the same dictionary will "define" entice and a h r e via
As pointed out earlier, a much more illuminating alternative is provided
by the BAJD, which offers the simple, short definition "to fempt-to try to
make someone do wrong". But of course this is only an approximation; for
example, one can "'tryto make someone do wrong'9y threats, and this
286 Lexica/ Semantics
could not be called tempting. To portray Rhis concept adequately we need,
1 think, a scenario along the following lines:
X tempted Y to do 2. =
(a) X wanted Y to do Z
(i5) 'l thought somethilrg like this:
(c) if I do Z it will be bad
[d) because of this, I don" t w i t to do it
(e) X knew this
[J)because of this, X said something like this to E
6g3 if you do it, something very good will happen to you
[h] you will feel something very good because of this
(fi X thought something like this:
(j') maybe 3' will do ii t u s e of this
(k) X wanted this
I am not suggesting that new models of definition such as those illus-
trated here with rewage, psilnisfisrrent, and tempt should be nemssarily
accepted in dl practical lexicography, although I think it wodd be useful
to adopt---or to adapt-them for some types of dictionaries. But [I believe
it is ~ s e f b~ ra the practical lexicogaaphers to know that new models of def-
inition are available-and to let them draw on whatever is availablle in ways
which they would judge most appropriate in any given case.
14. Conclusion
There is more to practical lexicography than getting the meanings right, but
trying to get the meanings right is vitally important-more importmlt, I
think, than anything else. If theoreticall lexicography could not help in this
respect-by providing ideas, principles, criteria, models, and guide-line+
onc could really doubt its mliscrn dlt;rre. I have tried to show, however, that
theoretical lexicography indeed offers a31 these thing^.^ Most imporbntb
(from the present writer's point of view), lit oflers a too1 which can by itself
remedy a large proportion of the ills of traditional lexicography: a natural
Ilexicographphic metalanguage, derived from the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage, and based on universal semantic primitives.
' For briEliant di5cwi*mr of various aspects of theoreticall lexicography and of the princi-
ples of Pexicographic definition, we in particular Apmsjan (1974, 1992, foraskhcaming]; Mel'Euk
(1974b); and BogwsEawski [198%]. For discussion or the lexicography (PS the conclete Iexicotu,
see Wienbicka (19851 and Ch. 8. For some recent dictionaries which orer~onalethe indeter-
minacy and the circularity of trardiiiona! Ucxicography, and wlriclh aim a1 enjpirical adequacy
without departing from traditional models, see e.g. Apresjan and Rozenrnan (1975'9;
Boguslawski S1983); Gddard (U992a]. For a new model of a monolingual dictionary, see
Me16Cukand Zonkovskij (198411; Mel'Euk e l or! (1984, 1988, 11992); Rwdzka ef el! (E481).
The Meaning of Colour Terms and
the Universals of Seeing
Phemomenological analysis . . . is analysis of concepts and can neither
agree with mar contradict physics.
(Wittganstcin 1937: 16)
"dour' is not a universal human concept. It can of course be created in
all human societies, j~ustas the concepts Ltelevi~iona,
'computer', or honey"
can, but despite the rapidly increasing contact between human societies
illl many which have neither borrowed nor developed the can-
uryand of course there have been many more such societies in
are ""colourterns" a universal phenomnonr. It is certainly not true
as often been daimed, all languages have words for black and
s point will be documented and discussed in detail later, but in a
sense it is quite obvious: if a word is used to describe not only black, but
also brown, grey, or dark-blue objects, then it cannat possibly mean %blacky.
sh, and in many other languages of the world, 'kolour" can be
arded as a reasonably self-contained semantic domain. But in the mi-
se of hiurnan discourse it is not. To try to carve out, for all languages, a
"coolaur semantics" means to impose on the study of all cultures
arising from only some of them (in particular, from modern,
y complex, Western culture).
ltures, people are interested in "seeingY'andin describing what
they see, but they don" necessarily isolate "colour" as a separate aspect of
their visual experience. All languages haw a word for SEE (see Chapter 21,
but not all languages haw a word for "colour'? From what we know about
the vocabulary of "eeingyn different languages, we can conclude that in
ures the discourse of 'seeing' is contextualized, and the experience
is described as a complex and integrated one, with colour, texture,
lion, and many other attributes being treated as an indivisible
This chapter owes a great deal to many long discussions with CUiff Goddard.
whole. As van Brake1 (1993: 1 13) writes, '"n western languages, the domain
d cdour is clearly separated from other categories and there is a bias
towards hple at the expense of brightness anrd saturation. In other cultures,
the hue aspect of colour may, as it were, be subsumed under dflerenlt cat-
egories, so that it isn%really present as a separate domain."
1 do not doubt that there are some "universals of seeing"', which mn be
discovered and validated through the study of the world's languages. But
to establish what tlnese universals are, the focus of research must shift from
the search for "colour universals" to the search for '%niversaEs of seeing",
There can't be any colour univ~enals,if colowr itself is not a human mi-
versal. But 'sedng'is indeed a universal human concept.
To say that the search for colour universals has been largely misguided
is not to say that it has not been fruitful. The massive research into the
description of colours initiated by Berlin and Kay's (19641) classic study has
generated a great body of knowledge about the discourse of SEIEing, and
has contributed a great deal to any future theory d the universals of see-
ing.
In particular, this research has made it clear that the notion off colous is
not only far from universal but that its hale in human discourse is, relatively
speaking, quite limited.
What does seem universal, or near-universal, in the domain of seeing is,
first d all, the distinction between times when people can see ('Uay") and
times when people cannot see ("night'".
This universal or near-universal distinction between, roughly speaking,
nights (dark times] and days (times of light), appears to be linked, univer-
sally or near-universally, with same distinction or distinctions in the
description of what one sees. Roughly speaking, people tend to distinguish,
universally, between seeing things which look "light" and '%shinymand see-
ing things which look "'dark" and ""duaa(that is, light-less, shine-less).
Cleady, the first kind brings to mind the experience of ""sun-timevision",
and the second, that of "night-time vision". (It is worth recallling in this
connection Birren" (14178: 3) observation: "'A111 civilizations since the begin-
ning of man's existence worshipped the sun, and from the sun came light
and co1o~."3
The distinction between "dark" colours and ''light''colows appears to
play an important role in most languages of the world. For example,
Hargrave (11982: 208) makes the following comment about the Australian
language KKnnku: Yalanji (a "stage I1 language" in Berlin and Kay" cotour-
encoding sequence):
According to the investigators, bingaji and ngtnmbw mean 'light' and 'dark' as well
as 'white' and 'blmk" Several participants appeared to name chips Blight or dark ia
comparison with the frame around the chip or in comparison with the &.hip, just
shown them previously.
Hargrave adds:
Terns denoting light and dark have beem recorded by other researchers in Australia.
Jones and Meehan, carrying aut an investigahiom of Anibarra (north-ceoemutral Punhem
Land) colous concepts, concluded that there were only two real coIour terms, those
ror light and dark. Four additional h3colouur terms' were names for mimeral pigmemts
and could only be used to describe a limited range of objects (Jones and Meehan
1978: 2630). Davis faund that children at Mdinghbi, also in Punhem Land, first
classified all colowrs as vvatharr 'light' or mol "ark'. As they got older, they added
further tems which classified ~oloursby hue and saturation as well as brightness
[Davis 119821.
Another universal or near-universal has to do with the impartanoe of the
environment as a fundarnenltal frame of refemce for any human descrip-
don of 'seeing'. English words such as vfew, scenery3or landscape provide
useful hints in this respect, since they link the idea of %seeingywith the idea
of "lace'. For what do human beings normally '%ee"? Presumably, objects,
m h a l s , or people positioned or moving against a background (cf. the "fig-
ure" and '"round" distinction in psychology). Of the two, backgrounds are
ma doubt more stable and more predictable than "figures'? the sky (often
blue], the ground (often brown), the grass (typically green), the sun (often
yellow and brilliant), the sea (often dark blue), the broad expanse of snow
(normally wlnite)].
Of course, the landscape doesn't look the same everywhere. Not all
human beings are familiar with the sea nar with snow, the ground is not
evebywhere brown (and in some places it may be seen as predominantly red,
yeifow, or black), and even the greenness of the grass depends on the avail-
ability of water and on the exposure to sun (e.g. in Australia the grassy land-
scape is, typically, yellowish or brownish rather than green). I am proposing,
however, that the principle of using common features of landscape as a
friarme of reference for visual categories in general, and for 'colour3n par-
ticular, is an important human universal, and also that this principle is
responsible for many recurring features of human discourse on 'seeing',
Yet another universal or near-universal feature of human discourse on
seeing is the important role of comparison, or, more precisely, of the uni-
versal concept LIKE, in the experience of visual experienmw. The English
adjectives goEd and gotden Illustrate this mode of description very well, and
so do numerous other "non-basic colour terms" such as silver, navy blue,
khaki3mh blond, and so on. Another example is provided by some of the
main colour t e r m in the Australlian language Warllpiri: y~11ys~-yabu, 'red'
(lit. 'bbnod-blood'), karntawarclr, 'yellow' (lit. 'pllow ochre'), which,
together with two "environmentall" terms, waEya-waEyos, 'brown' (lit. "earth-
earth'] and ytrlk~ri-yukusi,'peen-blue' (lit. 'plants-plants"$ and with some-
thing like UdarVlolack' and 'lightfwhite', form the core of the Warlpiri
''co1our''vocabulary [Hasgrave 1982: 23 (13).

But miversais or near-universals such as those mentioned above ccsulld
not be stated within the Berlin and Kay (1969) framework, with its empha-
sis on ""bsic"colour terns.
Shweder and Bourne (1984: 160) described Berlin and Kay" (1969) the-
ory of "colour universals" as an example of the "data attenuation rule"".
They wrate:l
Not infrequenlly, the discc~weryof a universat is the product of a sophisticatedl
pPQ6lesSof data restriction and data attenuation. Berlin and Kay (1196911, far e m -
ple, discover unIuversal prototypes for the definition of color categories, and a mi-
versa1 sequence For the emergence of a color lexicon. Their study begins with twsr
app1icrutions ofthe data attenuation rule. First, 'ec~lor"ccllassifimtion is equated with
the task aF partitioning a perceptual space, predefined in terms at" hue, saturation,
and intensity (thus, attenuating the referenda1 range of the ""co1or"wncept as
understood by, at least, some cultures [Conklin 19551). Smorrmdly, all1 collar cat-
egries whose linguistic expression fails t0 meet oertain formal criteria (e.g., snper-
ordination, monolexemic unity) are eliminatledl born oonsideratian. The
consequence of the applicdion of these two data attenuation rules is that 95% of
the world's expressions for color and most of the world's mlar categoties are
dropped from the investigation.
In the intervening time so much counter-evidenm to Berlin and b y ' s the-
ory has been presented that one could no longer say that they discovered
"universal prolatypes for the definition of colour categoriesy' or "a uniwer-
sal sequence for the emergenoe of a color Bexican" (see e.g. Kay eS 01. 1991;
MacLaury 19187, 1992; Hewes 11992; Kinnear m d Deregowski 1992;
Saunders 1992; Toren 1992; van Brakel 1992, 1993).
1 suggest that if we wish to discover, and to explain, the universals of
human discourse on seeing, we must, SO to speak, look in a direction dif-
ferent from that chosen in Berlin and Kay's (1969) classic and further
explowd in the huge body of research b ~ l on t the foundations laid out in
that wok.
2. Meaning and Scientific Kncawledge
The hardest things to observe are those which one sees every day. (""H faut
beaucoup de philosophie pour savoir observer une lois ce q u b n voit taus
les jours"; Jean-Jaqws Rousseau.") The question "'What do words like red
and blue mean?" may sound, to many, offensively foolish. But in fact, it is
"f. also van Brakehi (1993: 1112) comment: 'kll subsequent work in )the Berlin and Kay
trdition has 'been carried out with Mwnsdl Ccalom Chips and standardized procedures to
elicit B a s [basic crolour t e r n ] . lt has been estimlled that in doing ahis 95% of the nodd's
mlour terns are eliminated."
I, borrow LMSquote from Moore and Caslling 1019821, who used ill as one of the mottoes
of their hook.
10. The M e ~ n i ~ofgCoIour Terms 291
very difficult Ito answer. Although the psychological, anthropological, and
linguistic literature on colour t e m s is very extensive, it usually addresses
itself to other questions. The simple, "naive" question raised here tends to
be largely owedooked-as simple and ""laaTveY'questionsconcerning our
everyday experience often me.
It is, of course, true that the meaning of colour terms has often been dis-
cussed by philosophers, and linguists and psycholagists can profitably draw
on the writings of thinkers such as Loclce, Hume, Carnap, RusseUl, or
Wittgenstein. But the philosopher's perspective is necessarily different from
that of a psychologist and, even more, from that of a linguist. The crucial
difference is that philosophers are interested in language, whereas Linguists
[qua linguists] are Interested in languages. To a linguist, the problem is not
only to discover what the (English) words red or blue mean, but also what
the Hungarian words vdkfi3 and piros (roughly, types of red) mean, what
the Russian words goluboj and (roughly, types of blue] mean, what the
Polish words niebieski and granatowy (roughly, allso types of blue, but dif-
ferent from the Russian ones] m a n , or what the Japanese word aoi
(roughly, blue, but much broader in range than the English blue) means.
Glosses such as niebieski = blue or iaoi = blue or sing = blue will clearly nolt
do, since the range of each word is language-specific and cannot be cor-
rectly established on the basis of interlingual matching procedures of this
kind.
]But if miebieski, singy or aoi do not m a n the same as bIue, what do they
mean? And what does blue mean, in the first place?
To some scholars, questions of this kind may seem foolish, because they
believe that the meaning of every colour tern can be identified in tems of
physical properities of Bight such as wavelength or relative energy. For
example: ""When the wave lengths are between 400 and 470 nm [nana-
metres, lP9d,the field is reported to look violet for an average light levell;
around 475 nm it is seen as mostly bllue" (Hurvich 1981: 391).
In fact, however, scientific knowledge of this kind is entirely beside the
point, if we are interested in meaning, and if by meaning we understand,
essentially, what people mean when they use the words in question. Clearly,
when someone says a blue dress, niebieska ('FEM) sukienka (Polish)l, or sinee
( M E E P T .pSat8e (Russian), they may have no idea what wavelengths, or what
relative energy, are associated with the words &he,yriebieski, and sin& and
yet, surely, it would be foolish to conclude from this that they ddn't tnaw
what these words mean.
Scientific knowledge of wavelength associated with different colour terns
is valuable in a textbook of physics, but when it is repeated in linguistic
books and articles and presented as if it were an answer to questions about
meaning, it only clouds the issue and stands in the way of our search for a
real understanding of what people mean when they use these wards. As
294 Lexical Semantics
workings of our minds may, indirectly, reflect this; but the conceptualha-
tlons in our minds must be Linked to something that at constitute the can-
Lent of our thoughts.
The faith which some scholars have in the relevanae of nemrophysiology
to the study of meaning can only be equalled by their faith in the retevar~~ce
of formalisms. For example, Kay and McDaniel write:
We have found furUher that tlhe facts of colour semantics are modelled Felicitousky
in fumy set theory, and are not readily modelled in the traditional theory ol dis-
cretely contrasting semantic features. This finding casts doubt on the general use-
fwllness of the Feature model, and suggests that mare powerful formalism,
employing a range ooS strwtures much broader than the restricted Boolean algebra
implicit in the discrete semantlic-feature approach, are probably neoessary to pro-
vide realistic accounts of the semantics of words. (1978: 6441
The full title of their artic6e reads: "'The Linguistic Significance of the
Meaning of Hasic Colour Terms". This isianplies that the authors know what
the meaning of basic colour terms is; and that they me going to b d d on
that knowledge (which, one is to understand, has emerged from the neuro-
physiological research reported in the arlicle). But all1 the reader is told, al
the end, is that ithe authors believe that the facts of colour semantics can
ibe modelled felicitously in fwzy set theory, and perhaps in some other
"powerful mathematical formalisms"'.
In my view, if some scholars are interested in translating linguistic ffacts
mathematical formalisms'"sucl~ as, for example, fuzzy set
~ I Y L O "powcr~~U
Iheory) they have every right to do so, but I do not think that Ibly doing wa
they are bringing us any doser to discovering what words mean.
3. Meaning and C~plepurCharts
Another popular approach to the semanltics of colour t e m s is based on the
identification of meanings with denotata. One recalls in this connection the
scholars fmm Swift's G~IIiver'sTravcb (1728), who believed that verbal
explanations could be replaced with the demonstration of denotata, and
who carried everything they wanted to talk aboult on their backs. In the
same vein, it is proposed that instead of defining colour terns in different
languages we can simply produce samples of colours themselves. In partic-
ulm, great faith is placed in commercially produced colour cbips such as
those which were used by Berlin and Kay (1969) in their investigation of
universals of colour naming.
To some linguists it seems self-evident that the method which initially at
least seemed to produce so much insight in Berlin and Kay" investigsltiolll
of colour unniversals provides also an obvious solution to the problem of
the meaning of colour terns. The attitude of these linguists can be par-
liOl The Meaning of CoIour Terms 295
w e d as follows: What do words such as bhe, niebieskd, or gohboj mean?
Simple: we can show this by circling appropriate areas in a universal colour
chart. Far wordis such as Mue, niebfeski, and gsrlubaj these areas may over-
lap, but since they will not coincide with one another, the language-specific
range of each word's use will be correctly amounted for.
Bwt Berlin and Kay achieved the apparent suluiess they did because they
were investigating not the meaning of colour terns but the interlanguage
stability of colour foci-and the method they chose seemed initially appro-
priate for the task which they had set themselves. They saw clearly, how-
ever, that tihieis method was totally inappropriate for the investigation of
colour bowndairiex. Thus, they wrote:
Repeated mapping trials with tbe same informant and also across informants
showed that category foci plamrrranls are Rigluly reliable. . . . Category boundaries,
however, are not reliable, even for repeated trials with the same informant.
(Badin and Kay l969: 13)
They concluded:
ia is possible that the brain's primary storage procedure for the plsysical reference
of coEour categories is concerned with points (or very small volumes] of the colour
solid rather thm extended volumes. Sacondary processes, of lower salience and
intersubjective homogeneityswould then mount for the extensions of reference to
points of the croloue solid not equivalelvK to (or included in) the focus. Currenl for-
mal theories of lexical definitions are not able to deal naturailly with such phenom-
ena. (itaid.)
I believe that in 11969 this conclusion was correct; and that the concomi-
tant decision not to pursue, at that time, speculations about the meaning
of colour t e m s was prudent and justified. I think, however, that in the
course of the intervening twenty years, enough progress has been made in
the areas of both the theory and practice of lexicall definition to enable us
to tacklie the protPaem which in 1969 may have-rightly-appeared
inltaactable; Berlin and Eay had every right to limit their attention to colour
foci, and to choose not to explore colour boundaries. But if we wish to
reveal the concepts encoded in the colour ]lexiconsof different Eanguages of
the world we have to take into account both the foci and the boundaries.
But to return for the moment to the possibility af "showimlg'We mean-
ing ofcolour t e r n in colour charts, consider also Frumkinaysobservations:
any colour model is characterhued by some degree of indeterminacy, as far as its
possible naming is cmcermed. Often, people who are not professional colour experts
. . . i.e. who have nothing to do with the science of callour or with other areas of
howledge where precision in the naming of colour perceptions is important, will
not be able to find any intuitively satisfying conour terms to designalte a given
'colonrr madel'. In other cases, they will propose several tems for one colour model.
Since in practice there are situatioms where denotlaliive indeterminacy of colour
296 Lexical Semantics
designations and 'naming' indeterminacy of colour models may be very inconw
nient, specid nomative charts are produceded, which show what lcolanr designations
should be given to a given colour model. For example, the charts of the Bditig;b
Colour Coundl, 1939-11942, have such a nomative character. Charts of this kind
have purely pragmatic gads; for example, to achieve mutual understanding in the
description of different genres and species of plants it is necessary to ensure, in an
artificial manner, one-to-one correspondence between colour designation and
colour modds, despite the fact that in natural languages the correspondence is com-
monly of the many-to-many type. The charts of the British Colonar Council, just like
other normative charts, are a terminological guidebook, whose validity is strictly
limited to that do~nainfor which it was prepared, so that, for example, the nomen-
clalt~reol colouc designations for aolou~photo-reproduction (i.e. the system d
pairs: coiour designation-colclur model) requires already a separate guidebook.
(Frumkina 1984: 26)
Frumkina concludes:
The problem of colour naming, that is OF assigning callour designations to s p G c
coPour models, deserves separate investigation as one aspect of the problem oFnam-
ing in general. As for the possibility of describing colour designations by means d
pictures, the fact that the relations between cogour designations and colour mdels
are oE the many-to-meny kind makes it rather unrealistic. (1984: 27)
This echoes Conklin's f1973: 940) remark: "There is obviously more to
the study of colour categorisation than the matching of spectrographic
readings with human verbal responses." h o u l d add lo this that the use of
pictures and CIO~QPR~Icharts can be useful in tbe investigation of meaning if
one makes proper use of them, without placing unreasonable demands on
them. They cannot automatically show the meaning of a colom tern, but
they may help establish what the meaning of a colour term is. For example,
Jones a d Meehan Q1978), who investigated the use d the two basic colour
terms (-gungar&@ and -gungmt$a)i in the Australian Aboriginal language
Gu-jingarliya with the help of the Munsell charts, obtained results which
are indeed highly instructive b i n a semantic point of view. But they are
instmdive because they raise fascinating questions, not because they field
any ready-made answers.
Equally instructive is the fact (which the chart itself cannot show) of how
the data were obtained:
kt first, Gummmnana (the in8;orrnanlt)said these were no -gamgaIoa colours them
at U
d and pointed from the chart to a piece of reflective foil used for coding, Igbg
on a bench in the bnt. 'That one here, properly number one gum-grtmgrelfjia,no mare
this mob.', . . Having made his proibeslt, Gnrmanamana then proceeded to outline
the approximate boundary af the -gu~gaIsjracolours as shown in Fig. 2 [not repro-
dumd here]. It can be seen that only about 101% of colour chips are included in this
category, the main bulk of the chart belonging to the -gangundjaclass. (Jones and
Meehan 1978: 27)
10. The Meansing of G'oI~wrTerms 297
The question of w h d the words -gefngaI&ihand -gmgwndja mean is a fas-
cinating one, and 9: believe it is the kind of question that is more pertinent
to linguistic research than any questions concernling the neurophysialogical
bases of mlour perception, important and interesting as the Matter may be
their own right. I will return to this question later, after I have: discussed
e meaning of the English coilour terns white, biarck, bhe, green, red, and
law, and their closest counterparts in a Few other languages with com-
x colour lexicons. First, however, I should like to clarify what 1mean by
eaaingy",and how "'meaning" is related to "psychological reality".
4. Meaning and Psycholagicd Reality
leaning of a word can, roughly speaking, be defined as what people
or have in mind when they use it.' Since what they mean or have in
may differ somewhat depending an Icrantext and situation, we should
that 'beaning" has to d o with the constant, not with the variable,
of ;a word's use. These constant aspects can Ibe ascertained in a vari-
ays, indwding a methodical introspective study, a study of common
ology, w m m m metaphors, questianing of informants, psyi?noQin-
tic experiments of different kinds, and so on. All these methods reveal
in the speakers%nds, words are mutually related in different ways,
they allow us to establish, how tiley are related (see Wierzbicka 1985:
For example, Frumkina (1984: 30) reports that she asked a number of
infommts to explain to her "what pink ( r ~ z o v yis" ~ ) and that she obtained
m them the foPlowing E n d of answer: '"ink is a very3 very light red
cdour, quite light, but sumciently specik for people to be atale to
it is similar to red or has a shade like red." In Frurnkina's s e w ,
swen of this kind help us to reveal ' U e organization of memings in the
linguistic consciousness". 9: believe this is correct, and I think that
ate semantic description of the word pink (or rolzovyj] should
intuitive link with the concept encoded in the word red for kms-
nyjl and with that encoded in the ward light (or sve~J'yj].
It is important to keep in mind, however, that "linguistic consciousness"
has many diflerent levels and that while there are facts which lie on its very
surface there are others which are buried deeply, ellien very deeply, under
the 5urface. As was stressed forwfully by Boas (1911/1966: 63-41 and
Sapir (11949: 416-71, and more recently by Halliday 1(1987),native speakers'
Of COIPCSR one could also define the tern "meaning" in many other wags [see e.g. Ogden
and Richards 1923), and P have no desire ta argue about terminology. But the question of
"what people mean'"when they use a particular word) is clearly a very important and worth-
while question t~pask. Obviously, nemophgsiology cannot answer questions like that.

knowledge of their language is, by and large, subconscious. It is important
to distinguish tacit knowledge, which is hidden ""ithe depths" of a, per-
son" mind but which can be dragged to the surface (see Sapir 1949: 3111,
from scientific knowledge, which native speakers simply do not have rand
which no amount of searching could ever reveal. The latter, in contrast ta
the fcrrm~er,is not reflected in lanjg~ageafi~dplays no role in ttre li~iguisajc
piatlcrning. (See Cllapters E l and 12.)
Semantics is a search Ibr meaning, not a search for scientific or ency-
clopaedic knowledge; but this does not mean that it is concerned onlly with
facts whicli lie on thc surfacc, or vcry near Llnr swrracz, or spcakers' can-
sciousncss. Of we confuse '~syclrologicalscality" (sce Buding 1469) with
"consciousness" w shall never find out what goes on in people" minds ad
what conceptualizations are reflected in human languages.
Let us consider, for example, the following facts, reported by Erumkima
(1984: 30): ""W~lilcfor Russian infornuants, rlozovyj 'pink' and krasnyj 'red"
.
arc sirtrilal- in colour . ., feltyj 'yellow\afild kuriZnrvyj "brwnhre [far
tlicm) simply different colours, j~usltas different as krasrayj 'red' aandfi~ie-
sovyj "urple'."Shoonzld we then con~ludefrom this that an adequate seman-
tic descriptionr of Russian colour terms should present krastryj and$loSessrvyj
as totally z~nrelatcd-as unrclaled as, say, ZeEfyj and ,;fr'oS~fovyj,or zelenyj,
"recn" annd jiu/e~o9yj?
I tlzink thal we should not. It is important, B believe, not to draw hasty
conclusions from anything that informants may tell us. Rather, we should
take tl~eirinitial responses as one kind of evidence, to be used jointly with
other kinds of evidence. Informants' responses should never be taken at
face value; they should be interpreted and made sense of (see Wierzbicka
1985: 89-90; see also Chapter 12 Section 21."
5. Coloulr T e r n s as Quotations
Once again, then: what do people mean when they say, for example, "I
bought a bkue dress" or '" saw a blue car"?
One "ciommon-sense" answer to this question takes the following form.
'Tolour terms are learnt ostensively, and their meaning is also based an
ostension. We have all heard the word blue applied to a variety of objects
It should be emphasized, however, that "folk comments'" as well as folk definitions, can
provide precious insight into the meaning oF colour terms. To see this, consider, for example,
an informant's comments on the word hyi-hyi, 'grey', in the h t d h language Warlpirk
" M e n a gum tree is first in good condition, in Its Foliage, it is first green. But if it should then
(die and] dry up, its leaves would then become grey 1i.e. layayCFoj?iI . . . hyf-Eayi that is dry
grass and dry foliage, old dry leaves. And ludlayi-Sayi is while hair d ;people, that white . . . We
also refer to old people as /oyi-Eayi"*(Simpson 1989: 2). Clearly, the concept encoded in the
Warlpiri word SnjC/ayi is not the same as that encoded in the English word grey.
10. The Meaning oifcCaIo~rTerms 299
-and we have learnt, on this basis, what people mean by bhe. Bhe means
'what people call blue'."
1 believe that an answer dong these lines is probably correct, as far as it
goes (although, as I shall argue shortly, it does not go very far). In partic-
ular, it is important to note that an answer along these lines is not circular,
as it Is not circular lo say that, for cxannplc, llhc word JoSfjlSe~ri u ~RPIC senlencc
referring to some: particular person called John, means, roughly, "'the per-
son: whom 1 call JOHN" (where JOHN, in capital fletters, refers not to a
person but a sound). Assuming, them, that colour terms are Ileaart, essen-
tially, by ostension, and that their mcaning reflects this, we could propose,
as a starting-point For further discussion, the following explicaltion:
X is blue. =
people say of things like: X. "this is BLUE""
A formula of this kind represents the colollnr term as a kind of proper name:
it implies that just as the word h h n means, essentially, ""Le person called
JOHN'', the word !due mleans, essentially, "the colour called BLUE"".
S h m to understand a word like blue one must know that this word has
something to do with seeing (rather than, say, with hearing or tasting), we
could expand our first Formula as follows:
Xis blue. =
when people see things like A' they say of them: this is BLUE
It seems reasmuable to suppose that a formula of this kind may reflect
the child%first meaning of the wn;cPbhe; and it is important to note that
to sketch such a formula we do not even need the word clobur, which, one
must surmise, would be normally acquired much later than blue or red. (As
pointed out by LeikPniz (19616], the concept of cdour is not indefinable: it
can be defined via seeing, since colour is the only property which we can
perceive only by xeeingn5)
Since, however, the formula sketched above refers to some specific mod-
els (such as a particular object "A"" which would be different in each per-
son's individual experience) without attempting to draw any boundaries, it
cannot have full predictive power with respeclt to an adult's use of the word
bhe. N t e r all, ithirugs that people call greeFa or purple can also be seen as
similar to those which they ucaill biue-and yet mature speakers of English
do nolt extend their use of the word biue to objects which they call green.
As it stands, the formula sketched above dms not account for this.
In learning a second language, we often acquire the boundaries with the
help of negative feedback. For exampie, my daughters, who are bilingual
The concept of 'colour' is actually quite complex, and I will not attempt a dehition here.
It is clear, howelier, that a definition of 'collour' would have ni@r be based on the concept of
SEEiug.
3100 Lexical Semantics
but who iive in an English-speaking environment and for whom English is
their primary language, as childntem tended to extend the range 0 6 the PoEish
word niebiexki (%lue" rrom nieba 'sky') to dark shades which in English are
still called bhe, but which in Polish would have to be described as grana-
towy, not as niebie8ki. When they did this, I corrected them: 'hot nlbieski,
grsrrrtsfowyr"".(See nlsa Diiritlctt 1978.)
1 don't know what role corrections of this kind may play in the acquisi-
tion of the first language; presumably, a more limited one. It is known,
however, that in the first language, too, a child3 lexicon of basic colour
words is more limited than that of an adult, and that-from the adult's
point of view-children "over-extend" even words such as yellow and blue,
let alone b o w n , pink, p;urp3"e, orange, or grey. (See Warkness 1973: 182;
E. R. Heider 1972b.J This suggests that in the speakers' consciousness or
subconsciousness, neighbouring tems may detimit one another" range, to
some extent ([although the boundaries are, of course, hzzy).
In his discussion of the logic of colour terms, Bertrand Russell wrote:
We oertainEy know-though it is difficult to say how we know-that tw different
collours cannot coexist at the same place in one visual field. . . . More simply 'this
is red%and 'this is blwekre incompatible. The incompatibility is not logical. Red
and blue are no more Sogicajly inlcomplalliblle than red and round. Nor is the incom-
patibility a generalisation from experience. I do not think I can prowe that it is ncat
a generalisallion from experience, but I think this is so olbvious that n0 one, nowa-
days, would deny it. Some people say the inu@ompakibility is grammatical. I do not
deny this, but I am mot sure what it means. [RzosselE 1965: 781
Quoting this passage in my Lexicogrtrphy and CTsrncepruaJ' Analysb
(Wierzbicka 1985: 79-80; see also Wierzbicka 1940a) I suggested that the
incompatibility between red and blue is in fact semantic, and I proposed
semantic components to that effect, along the following lines:
X is blue. =
when people see some things they say of them: this is BLUE
Xis like this
when people see other things they say some other things of them
they don't say these other things of X
I have come to doubt, however, whether ""leclusiocrary'" components of
this kind are really necessary, for a number of reasons. First, not all pairs
of "basic colour terms" are felt to be incompatible in the same way and
to the s m e degrlee. For example, wkik and black are felt to be opposites,
whereas red and bhe are not. Furtihermore, re$ and pink, though incom-
patible, are felt to be closely related, whereas, again, red and blue are
not.
Even more importantly, some "basic colour t e m s ' b a y not be mutually
exclusive at all. For example, in Japanese both the t e m s aoi 'blue, blue-
10. The Me~~nSmg
of CoIour Terms 301
and rnidori 'green'appear to be "basic", and yet they
dcfinc ihc notion of a
a1 exclusiveness manda-
n follows, anyway, from identification (as argued
p@rsonrel;crred Lo srs JOHN is r~ormallynot reFerrcd
oes mean that when I refer to someone as "John" I
om I call JOHN and whom E don't call anything
ula: "he person whom I call0 JOHN'is sufficient.
if an explicit "exclusionary" component Is not necessary for proper
it is probably not necessary for colour terms either and a rudi-
y formula such as 3 is blue = when people see things Ilike X they
hem: Ithis is B L U E h a y be essentially correct (not for all colour
e caabstract"ones, such as red, blue, green, yellow,
3: 132) writes: '30perhaps . . . what all green objects
that we've learnt to call them 'green'aand what all kwaals
'yellow-green" a SShswap tern en the N.S. Pacific coast, which
d M a ~ h u r y(1987) 3 objects have in common is that Shuswap
t ltcl call them kwaai"sand can teach us which things are
as we can bach them which obj~erctsare green."
is is probably true; but, as I shall argue below, this is not the
6. ""Black" and ccWhilte"7"Dark"' and "Light"
If we say only that white means, essentially, '"hat people call WHITEy'$
bhck "what people call BLACK'" we will1 fail to account for the fact
these words are felt to be opposites, and also for the fact rhat they are
to be closely related to dark and Sight. For example, one can form in
English compounds such as light blue or dark blue, but one cannot form
mmpowds such as *lighr kvhite or *dark black. Nor, for that m t t e r , can
one call something *dark white or *Sight black. The expressions dark white
and light black sound self-contradictory, whereas lfght white and dark bIack
sound foolishly tautollogous.
To account for these facts we have to analyse both pairs of adjectives
into components, and to see what they have in c a i m a n .
H believe that (as hinted earlier) the clue to the semantics of dark and light
lies in the concept oE seeing, and that the prototypical use of these words
has to do not with any objects but with the ambience. We say, above all:
It was (allready) dark. It was (still) light.
Sentences including expressions such as '% dark ball" or "a light flower" X is dark. =
seem neither as common or as onar~iralas sentences wilh PIC words dark or at some timcs pcopEe can" scc mlucll
referring to the ambience. when one sees things like X one can think of this
One can also speculate that in children's speech the words light and h r k X is light (in colour)."
refer, plrredominantly, if not exclt~sirsely,to the ambient, not to calours. at some times people can see many things
Pllthozlgh h have no data to support these speculations, it is hard to irnag- when one sees things like X one can think of this
ine small children talking about a "dark dress" or a "light dress", whereas
sentences such as the one quoted earlier (by a two-year-old, Ellloom 1991), I do not think Ebalt the words durk and J'igSr~(as colour desigmnatiows) are
"I was crying because I dicriln" want to wake up, because it was dark, so art by ostension, with reference to some objects wbich provide models
dark" are of course well attested. "a dark oolour" or ''a light colour"'. Ef here is a model of "darkness"",
Bult what dlo we mean whew we say tbat "it was (already) darY or tbat a model of "li&tnessm>t is to be found in the darkness of the night, or
"it was still light"? I would suggest that we mean something along the fd- the light of the day. To put it diffierently, seeing dark objects reminds us
lowing lines: the experience of seeing things at a time when it is dark; and seeing ligbt
ects reminds us of the experience of seeing things at a time when it is
it was dark {at that time). = ligbt. It is interesting to note in this connection that in some languages, for
at some times people can't see much example in the Australian Aboriginal language Luritja, one of the two basic
it was like this at that time wolour terns ["light' and "dak'"~ Is in fact identical with the word for
It was light (at that time). = night-time ([Ian Green, personal comunication)~;and d s o that in Alice
at some times people can see many things Springs Aboriginal English, night is often called "dark t h e " (Jean Harkins,
it was like this at that time personal communication).
Turning now to the English wards 6Iack and white, I would suggest that
It could 'rae argued, quite plausibly, that these definitions are too broad, their semantic sltaucture would reflect both theh status of "basic colour
and that they could be linked explicitly with, roughly speaking, d a y h e terms learnt by ostmsion" and their association with the concepts 'dark'
and night-time, along the following lines: and "light'. (Cf. Leonardo da Vhci's comment made in his "Treatise on
It wm dark (at that time). = Painting'" "We shall set d o m white for the representative of light, without
at some times people can't see much .
which no color can be s m ; . . and black for total darkness"; quoted in
because the sun is not in the sky Birren 1978: 4)~.As a first approximation [to be refined later) I would pro-
it was like this at that time pose the following:
It was light (at that time]. = X is black. Ipartial explication]
at some times people can see many things when people see some things they say of hem: this is BLACK
because the sun is in the sky X is like this
it was like this at that time at some times people can" see anything
The matter requires further consideration. because the sun is not in the sky
For sentences referring to "darlr"' and "Eight" objects, we could then pro- when one sees things like X one can think of this
pose explications along the folllowing lines:" For white (of which more vdl be said later) we could initially consider a
symmetrical exgllicalion:
The word one in the sense used here has no place in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, X is white. [partial explication]
and should, strictly speaking, be replaced with sameone, along the following lines: when people see some things they say of them: this is WHITE
when someone sees Lhiogs like X, this someone X is like this
(this person) can thiak of tintes or this kind
I haw dccidcd Lo use one, rrulher than someone, however. lo make tlne explicatiaaus easier to One could also can~siderexplicating 'light' via 'dark', so ba speak @ecause even in broad
wad. daylight, dark ahiogs stiil look datk, whereas when it is dark, even light Lhings look dark).
 at some times people can see very many things
because the sun is in the sky
when one sees tbiangs like X one can tllrio~kof this
Explications of this kind amount both for the intuitively felt antonymous
relation between bhck and white, and for the intuitiveiy felt links betwen
bbck and dark, and between white and light. They do not imply that pea-
ple think of the day as "something white" and of the night as "somethlrrg
b1ack"ds they might think of snow as something white and of charmal as
something black. Nor do they imply that white objects necessarily make us
think of daylight, and black objects, of the darkness of the night. Bwt they
do imply a potential conceptual link: "when one sees things like this one
can think o f . . .".
There are good reasons to think, however, that the meanings af bhck
and while should not be presented as fully symmdriml. The associaition
between black and night is no doubt more straightforward and more trams-
parent than that between while a d day. The link kbween white and high
visibility seems intuitively indubitable, but it is not white itself which is
highly visible. Red and orange are no doubt more visible, or more obvious,
than white. On the other hand, white provides the best background far all
other colours: dl other colours are better visible in "broad daylight" (in
Polish, w bhfy dzieh, E ' n white day" than at dusk, and also they are better
visible in places which provide a white visual background, such as, for
example, a snowy landscape or the white paper on which we write or type.
To account for this property of white as the best possible background far
objects of all kinds (other than white) we could consider adding to its expli-
cation some further components aQongthe fotlowing lines:
X is white. [parltisl explication]
in some places, people can see very many things
when one sees things Bike X, one can think of this
It should be added, however, that 'white' is a much more complex, and
more problematic, concept than %lack" no doubt because 'black' has a uni-
versal prototype in a '"pitch-black" (very dark) night, whereas 'white"
doesn't have a similarly uniform universal prototype in a very bright day
i(becausewhen it is very light people see Pots of different collours), and may
in fact embody in its meaning two very differenit points of referenoe: a tern-
poral one (day versus night) and a spatial one (a white wintry landscape,
covered with snow).
AS mentioned earlier, snow (unlike day) cannot be a universal reference-
point in the semantics of vision, but of course 'white' is not a universal con-
loept either. For English, and for o t h r languages which do have a semantic
equivalent of h e English word white, a snowy Iandscape seems a plausibb
mferenoe-point, of course not as a neoessary feature of every individual's
personal experience but as a feature of the collective memory of speakers
of English, reflected in their shared semantic universe (see expressions such
;as snrow-while, snowy whIfc, or Samw Whil'e, and white CIsris~irwas)~.
A number of observations about the concept kwhitehade in the Iitera-
ture appear to support this suggestion. Thus k h i t e 9 s often described as a
'%whce colour",not a "voluanl: co1our'~seee.g. Westphal 1987: 14; Katz
1935: 7); a colour which "more than any other colour, offers resistance to
the eye" Westphal 1987: 14). It is also described as a quintessentially
"opaque" colour, incompatible with transparency.
"White is an opaque colow", noted Wittgenstein (1977: 4), and he puz-
zled: "Why is it that something can be transparent green but not transpar-
ent white?" (1977: 5).
It seems to me that the prototype of the ground covered with snow
explains, to some extent at least, intuitive observations of this kind. For if
"white" k "'e lightest of colows" (Wittgenskin 1977: 23, and is that
"which dms away with darkness" (11977: 151, this is explained by the fun-
damental contrast between day and night (roughlly speaking, the night is
"black", the day is the opposite of the night, and 'khite" is the opposite of
"black"). But if "white" is also "opaque", a barrier to the eye, surely this
is consistent with the image of snow covering and '%hiding" the ground? The
"bjue" of the sky, or the ' ~ e l l o w ' k fthe sun, can hardly be thought of as
a "barrier" between the eye and somethhg dse; the green of the vegetation
is also something that one can normally see through (except in the thickest
jungle); and of course deep waters of the sea, or of a Iake, are anything but
opaque. But the white expanse of snow is indeed an exceedingly light and
yet opaque '"barrier" to the e p , a covering of the ground, which cannot be
seen though, although it sets off, and lightens, the visibility of all "figures'"
visible against this light and opaque background.
Finally, it is worth noting that "black'hnd "white" are by no means
symmetrical in the world's languages, and that '%kicky' is a more common
term than 'khite"'. For example, Hargrave (11982: 211) writes this of the
Australian Ismguage Martu Wangka:
The primary question raised by thc data in comparison with IBerPin and Kay's]
mllour-encoding sequence is the absence of a basic tern for white---ar even for
'macro-white" Aawrdlng to the sequence, a Pamguage with two basic colour terms has
the: categories 'macro-blackkand 'macro-white', and foci for the latter can be expected
to vary between white and red, while the former may have foci in black, green or blue
[Kay and McDanieJ 1978: 63%. The Martu Wangka data, however, show clear Gate-
gorim focused in btack and red. Twemty-two participants d;$ focus a colour tern iru
the pure whine area, but a variety of terms were used, and five participants used two
or three terns. In all, twelve different terms were used which were focused in white.
Hargsave notes further that "This same lack of agreement on a tern For
white is found in the Warlpiri area" (1982: 2121, and she concludes:
3016 Lexical Semontta
The above data suggest that Aboriginal groups who were @aditiolnaIly desert
m w d s did not abstract the collaur white as a separate property of a variety of
mahral phenomena, and fierefare it canmot be oonsidered a basic colom term in
tlieir language.
when Wittgenstein wrote &at "white is an opaque collou~"41977: 41.31,a
""tmsparent white is impossible'"l977: 191, and that "' white water is incon-
ceivable" (1977: 51, he was clearly thinking of the
q'white". But the words from other languages glossed in ~ n g l i
may have a different image. For example, AQexandraAikhen~al
c o ~ m ~ i c a t j l oreports
n that in the Tariana language of Bra
"whi&" fi~~sajire) means also 'transparent"as w er, brighter, fresher greens. Trying to account for this in
Birren (1978: 3) qudes (in English] the following (so
fmm the Upanishads: "The red color of burning fire is
white color of fire is the color of water, the black color of fire is
of earth". Then, while the experience of snow is of course far fro
gal, so is the idea of an opaque, "surface co1ourq', 'white'.
7. Greea, gwyrdd (Welsh), h t u ~!yHsunlsnd~S
In mamy languages of the world, the nearest equivalent o f t
green is eiher morphologically or etymdogically related to words
herbs, or vegetation in general. For example, in Polish the ward
etymoQ~gkallyderived from zi&, %erb3.In 'Wartphi (as m
itbe far "green" or "green-blue" is a reduplication of
plants. Bn fact, even tkne English word green is believed to be e
rejated to grow (see Swadesh 1972; Mein 19661.
Native speakers of English, when asked to give some ex
usual[y mention grass, leaves, or fresh vegetation (most cOmmon
This does not mean that their range ol greens is restricted to the
grass, or even mare generally, to the colours of vegetation;
sonably clear that they do associate the concept e
gees with vegetation ("things gowing out of the grou
this, I would propose h e falllowing (partial) explanation
X Is green. =
in some places many things p o w out of the ground
when one sees things like X one can think of this
I haye deliberately refrained firom using here the phrase '" is li
bemuse there are shades which native speakers of English w0ulc.I
pared to call green although they would be reluctant to
colour of vegetation. None the less, a vaguer association
by the explication sketched above seems to be valid.
PO. The Meaning of Cobur Ter~ns 307
hings growing out of the ground" '8 no doubt
ot ody for the Engllish word green and far its semantic equivalents
r example, the Polish word zielhlny), but also
nearest counterparts of green in languages in which this word does
have exact semantic equivalents.
counterpart of greea is gwyrdd, whose
er than that 01geen: and some English
reens" are lexically identified with "b1ues"in Welsh [see Hjelmslev 1953:
n on Welsh to interpret these facts in
uld appear that Welsh restricts gwyrdd to
lnitively plausible prototype, I would propose (as a starting-
ssian) the following (partial) exp1icatian:
in some places many things grow out of the grounnd
at some times there is walter in these places (after rain)
when one sees things like X one can think of this
The reference to "wetmess after rain" brings to mind, 1 think, fresh, glis-
ore consisBnt with the range of g w y r d than a mere
owing out of the ground'" But it is not so much wet
is a point of reference; rather, it is a
growing out of the ground, rain comes,
thing glistens with wetness". The whole
vivid, natural greenness evoked also by the inages
ture lore ('"ow green was my vdley
owdaries of gwyrdd are as '"fuzzy" as
ifferent phrasing of the conceptual reference-points
somewhat difleremnt range of reference.
tation in the case d green, and to vegetation and
dd, may seem rather speculative, but they are
case of the Hanurrdo word laruy, desc~bedby
64: 191) as 'Yight green and mixtures of green, yellow, and light
c ~ l o u "which
r most tangibly visible in their [the Hanundos']
e surro~~ndings'~, and whose focal point is '"ear light- or yellow-green".
onklin shows that htq is clearly associated both with plants and with
3s- Hanundo has four basic colour terns, which can be PooseIy glossed
e m s of wetness versus dryness.
siccation and wrewess or freshness @u@-
environment which are reflected in the
tively. This distimction is of particular sig~ficanw
lterms of plant life. Almost all living plant types possess some fresh, succulent,
308 Lexical Semom tics
and often 'greenish' parts. To eat amy kind of raw, uncooked food, garliiGlularly fresh
knits or vegetables, is knowm as;pag-hry-un (Ssr~uy].A shiny, wet, baown-colowed
section of mewly-cut bamboo is rnakatuy (not marrrraq. Drkd-out or matured phnt
material such as certain kinds of yellowed bamboo or hardened kernels of' mature
nor parched corn are marara7. (Conklli~u1964: 191)
On the basis of Gonkclin" comments I propose the following tentative
explication:
X i s latuy. =
in some places many things grow out of the ground
there is something llike water in these things
when one sees ~thikingslike X one can think of this
1111 this case, unlike the case of the Welsh gwyrdd, "uiciness" rather tha
external wetness appears to be part of tihe conceptual model. (I doubt if"
shiny, wet, brown-coloured section of newly-cut bamboo" co
gmryrdd.) It is. also inkeresting to mote that although Hanunbo d
a separate word for "blueW>ts word for ""geen'Uoes not exten
blue at all, dark blues being categorized with "black", and light
"wfite". The association between Iarrduy and "juicy plants", which
as a part of the meaning of this word, is consistent with this fact,
Conklin" iiluminatimg description or Hanunbo makes it partic
clear that the use of colour charts are not a suitable melttrod
the meaning of cdour terns. To understand words such as Satuy an
we have to understand the conceptual prototypes to which these
refers to fresh, juicy plants, whereas th
refer. The prototype off laarls~~y
ciation between redness and dryness can be expiained if we assum
word rara? refem, in its semantic structure, to fire and to burning.
colour chips cannot account for facts of this kind, but verbal
can.
Of course one could say that the "wetness" implied by bt.rryis a sep
semantic feature, which can be added to a description in terns of
brightness, and saturation. But the evidence presented by Con
that in the speakrers' mind this ""wetness" or '~uiciness"is not an
dent semantic feature: rather, it is an integral part of Ithe same p
which determines the kind of greenness associated with this
warn, succulent, ripe, closer to yellows and to light brown th
What applies to Hanunfio applies also, rnoratt mulandis, to the S
term Rwaalt, Yellow-green', which was menltioned earlier, and
g in ahis mnnectim Toren's [I992 1693 remark: "co
abstract& From other domains of classification as if it formed a
flnn Hanunbo warm and cojid categories, with their connatations
. . . wggest a connection with plant classification, far which IE
than with ~ 0 3 as0 such".
~
10. The Meaning of (Cobm Terms 309
""Much to the amazement of MacLaury (1987) reporting this fact . . . 'con-
tradicts present physidogical knowledge? " (van Brakern 1993: B IS). To van
Brakel's highly pertinent question "Wound it really be possible that the
meaning of a word in a far-away-culture mntradicts our ph!ysi~r'ogical
howledge"?"'lwould add my own: Isn't it likely that in the natural sur-
rowdings of the Shuswap people these is something that is visually salient
and that is "ellow-green' (perhaps sun-burnt grasslands, like those which
define the yellow-green Australian landscape)?
8. Bhe, niebie~ki(Polishi), gohboj md shij (hssian], aoi
[Japanese), armd Jiia [Thai)
[mr numerous languages of the world, the nearest equivalent of the English
word blue is morphologically, or etymologically, related to the word for
ple, the Polish word niebieski is derived from niebo, %ky; and
Latin ccaeruillew is derived from the word caelm, 'sky" Words of this
association between the colonr concept in question and
"sky"". The English word jbhe and the Japanese word aoi are
related to the words for sky, but (judging by informants'
these languages, too, there is a strong association between the
nd the concept of 'sky" h:em asked to give shme examples
[we, or of something a&, informants invariably mention the
o account for these facts, I would propose not only for niebieski and
lso for ErSW and mi, the following stmamatic camponent: "
=
X i s bluelaolJniebieskir'caeruIeu~~
at some times people can see the sun above them in the sky
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
However, although words such as B S w , aai or niebhski are all semanti-
concept 'sky', they are not identical in meaning, since
of these words is unique. For example, as mentioned ear-
rs only to light and medium dark blues, to veq dark
glish would still be callled blue). To account for this, I
he, but not to niebieski, an additional reference-point:
"big water places", such as the sea or lakes (especially
is allows us to contrast the meaning of niebieski and blue
Xis niebieski. =
(4 at some times people can see the sun above them in the sky
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
3 10 Lexfc'cal Sem~asa'cs 10. The Me'caning ox CoIaur Terms 3 1 1

(Q) at some times people can see )thesun above them m i p the sky
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
(b) in some places there is a lot of (very much) water
when people are far from these places
they can see this water
when one sees things like X one can think of this
I have refrained from using in the explication d b/ue the phrase '" is like
this" "cause pople can distinguish the cdour "blue" from the spec5c
shade '"sky-blue'" None the less, I believe that a vaguer, more general m a -
ciation between blue and sky is valid, ampd my informal cjuestioning of a
number of informants confirms this.
I recognize Ithat the '%st", focal bIue is darker than sky-bhe, and IIIOR
"vivid'9harv the fcRbl~e'y of the sea. Bts exact shade may indeed depnd
some properties of the human perceptual apparatus rather than on the
shades prevalent in the human envimnment, such as the sky or "big water
places visible from afarY'".ut the mnge of blue is II
it cannot be explained in purely biological terms.
can account for it if we assume that the concept b
of swuctnare which is characteristic of the compoun
or pea (as collour terms): it does not provide an ex
some points of referen~e.~
Polislr Itas no pllrrase Pike '"sky-blue", h i t it has a more specific adjective
B!gkitrty, which is associated primarily with the sky. Accordingly, 1have no
used the phrase "Xis like this" for the Polish word nfebieski either, and
have used instead the vaguer formuia: "one can think of".
Let us turn now to the two Russian ccruntcrparts of b
'dark blue', and galcrboj, Vight blue'. Berlin and Kay (11969: 3671 have r
some doubts about the "basic" character of gnl~Eubaj,referring to some
dence showing t b t among Russian children goSuboj is less salient than
(Istomina 1963). However, there is also some evidence s
low", which in turn is less salient than the word
11973); and yet all of these words are regarded as
Furthermore, Frurnkina (1984: 31) reports that Russia
prised when they learn that English has only one
sing (i.e, blwe). This suggests, it seems to me, th
and grohbojas "basic". She also notes: "Some inform
spakers of Russian--don't want to regard the wo
m d seryj, "ref, aas basic "because: they are absent a m n g the mB0iurs of
Y"'
9 It is interesting to note, none the less, that aocosdixug to van Erakd (1993:1141, "English
speakers often volunteer two foci For 'blue"[one dark and one liglnt].'"
'-."'
llvey are all convinced, however, that golvboj and sinfjare there.
o Corbett and Morgan 1988; Moss 1989.)
ieve that the semantic relationship between gohboj and sinfj (and
these words and the English word blue) can be satisfac-
r if w show, in the explications, that d l three words
Y, but that gohboj'is directly likened to the sky, whereas sing
be "like the skyY'althoughit can make people tthink of the
specified in this respect (so that it can include both the
-sky-blue shades of the sky-sea range]. In addition, the
proposed below link golluboj directly with broad daylight and sing
nce of full daylight.
people can see the sun above them in the sky
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
X is Pike this kind of sky
at some times pe~plecan see many things
when one sees things like X, one can think of this
at some times people mu see the sun above tYrm in the sky
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
[b) Xis nor like tlve sky at these mimes
CC) at some limes people can't suee very nqu&
when one sees things like X one rn think of this 5
ed out that the explication assigned here to sffig does,
as a '"ark mlour'", although it does present it as darker than
see this, compare the following two variants:
eople can't see very much
eople cm't see much
t i(l), which I have assigned lio the English word
assign to other words which stand for colours thought
iflg not thought of as "a dark colourYy; and it differs
Polish word granralowy, also "ark blue" wwhh def-
a d a d colom. The h c t that has been assigned
accounts for these differences.
Panese word dlr~iI(@@), we note that its rmge cov-
s which in English are called bhe, but also some
e calked green.1° Thus, it is not only the sky which
calbd anlFf, but also wet grass and the crGo!" traffic lights. In fact,
information on the use of aoi comes chiefly from discussions ~ & hTakako To&, md
m her reports of infomaxutsSresponses. I am very grateful to her for her help in mat-
3 12 Lexical Semantics
Japanese has set phrases referring to both grass and traffic lights as
(Takako Toda, personal communication). For example, when teacher
Japan teach children tramc rules they say:
WWn the lights turn aoi look to the right, look to the left>and
cross."
When there is a need to contrast the colotnr of the sky with the wlo
grass, a different colour adjective is used for grass: midorr'. But when
(0) at some times people can see the sun in the sky
[b] in some places there is a lot of water
other.
(c) in some places things grow out of the ground
also restrictions on the use of a d as an attribute: o
mry state of trees or grass, for example:
Arne no ato, ki ga ao ao to shite im.
After the rain, the trees are (look) very m i .
The reduplication ao aae underscores the vivid, fresh look of the troes a
the rain. Hnterestingly, midori wauld not be used like this:
? h e no ato, ki ga rnidori midori to shite 2m.
to a temporary visual impression.
It is also intereslting to note that while troi Is readily applied to cha
a book with a green cover w u l d be described as midmi, not as aoi.
these facts point to a link between aai-mess and a possibility of change.
110. The Meaning of CoIour Terms 3 13
t to note that the sea, umi, is normally described in
, next to the sky, what could be visually more change-
the ocean? In fact, according to my informants it is the ocean
n grass or plants in general which provides the second best ex-
after the phrase aoi SOM,'blue sky', it is the phrase aoi umi,
comes to mind most naturasly in oonnection with
sea can be seen, at different times, as either blue or
triple model, based on the sky (primary point of reference), the sea
ference), and vegetation after rain {a tertiary point of
to accord better with the way aisli is used, and with
to it. Fosiowing this line of thought, one could pro-
wing (partial) explication:
when one sees things like X one can think of the sky at these times
when people are far from these places
they can see this water
when one sees things like X one can think of this
at some times there is water in those places
when one sees things like X one can think of this
ally, k t us consider briefly the situation in Thai, described authorita-
by Diller and Juntanamalaga [forthcoming). In ''lower", rural. Thai,
are only four basic colous terns, with foci in the areas of white, black,
nd green. In the '%igher"+uutban Thai, however, there are also two
of the "blues' type: f i a (lit. 'sky') and nam-gars (lit. "silver-tarnish".
efers only to very light blues ("sky-bluebr even lighter],
tter designates, in particular, the dark blue of the Thai flag.
ered in English the focal blue is too dark to be callledfda and
called nam-gan, and informants regard it as a "difficult to
e, allthough if pressed they may call it fhtr-k& (lit. 'sky-dark'
'1. There is, therefore, a "no man's sand" between the two
remarkably, it is this no man's land which corresponds to the
pposedy determined by universal human neurophysiology.
hlights the irreducible gap between neurophysiology anrd
g. Surely, what the Thais Pack is not a perceptual category but a con-
one. It is likely that sooner or later they will develop o n e - o n the
lish bhe, of the Polish rslbieski, or of the Japanese aoi, or
ems mast likely, in fact, that they will follow a path
ne, with two "basicL'words far "blue".) In any case,
X the exact shape of this future category on the basis of
3 14 Lexical Semansics
any past or future findings in either ~chromat~lagy ar neur~physiology~
Furthermore, the situation in Thai seems to be at variance with the @la-
era1 amount ofcolour category formation proposed by Rosch (1975b: 1M):
"There are perceptually salient colours which more readily attract attention
and are more easily remembered than other colours. When category names
are learned, they tend to become attached first to the salient stimuli, only
later generalizing to other, physically similar, instances. By this means these
natural prototype colowrs become the foci of organisation for categories."
But in Thai [like many other languages) it is the sky which is twated as
the "nalural prototype" of a bluelike category; and this "natural proto-
type" is different from the kind of "blue" which is said to be perceptually
most salient and which is (perhaps) most likely to become the focus of the:
not-yet-born basic "blue'btegory. For this category to be born, the focal,
pcrccptually 111osd salient ""bwc" must 'becronne conceptually linked with
srvllc ~ii~l~iccnblc it1 Llsc speakers' cxpcric~~cc-suclr as, for
~~cl'crelnec-hroilrl
example, the idea of the sky on a sunny day.
The nearest equivalent of the English word red is in many languages ety-
mologically related to the word for "blood" (recall, for example, the
Warlpiri word for "red" niccntioned in Section 1); i r can, bowcvcr, be related
to many other putative models, such as, For example, various minerals (for
example, red ochre) or other sources of pigments and dyes. The Polish ward
czertvmay is synchronically no longer analysable, but it is believed to have
come from the name of a red worm, czerw (Brwckner 1930). The English
word red is not synchl;onically analysable either. It is possible, none the less,
that here, boo, we can discover a common association which might unite
the speakers of English in their conceptualization of the category in ques-
tion.
In an earlier work (Wierzbicka 1980: 43) H proposed that red may be con-
ceptualized via the concept of %ladd',and I proposed the following rough
formula:
red--co!our thought of as the colour of blood
Further work with informants, as well as an introspective exploration af
my own concept of 'czerwony' Iprompted by objections expressed by other
linguists), have led me to question the adequacy of this kind of explication.
The relevance of blood to the concept of 'red' can be compared to the rel-
evance of milk to the concept of 'white', or to the relevance of chasmal to
the concept of 'bback'; while objects of this kind may provide good exem-
plars of certain commonly recognized colours, they are not things of extra-
JO. The Memring O ~ C O I OTMe rPm 315
ordinary visual interest, things that dominate people" view (like the sky,
the sun, the sea, or a white snowy landscape do). But if we do not define
red via blood, or not just via blood, what else can we do to ducidate this
ooncept?
Trying to approach the problem from a different angle, I shall take as
my point of departure the suggestion made by Manning (1989) that red is
'b rich, warm colour". The words "rich"amd ""warn" are used here
metaphorically, but I think that these metaphors provide useful clues to the
meaning of red. Of the b u r "'basic colour categories" encoded in English
as red$yellow, greem, and blue, two, red and yeS!okv, are thought of corn-
monly as "'warn caIours". Why is that? What does the notion of "a warn
mlour" mean and why is it that people associate 'karmth'kwith red and
y e h w rather than with green and h h e l
The answer seems to me rather obvious: ye/tmv is thought of as "warn"
bcause it is associated wit11 the sun, whereas red is thought of as "warm"
because it is associated with fire. It seems plausible, therefore, that although
people do not necessarily think of the colour of fire as red, they do associ-
ate red colour with fire. Similarly, they do not necessarily think of the
colour of the sun as yelllow, and yet they do think of yellow, on some lewek
of comnsciousness or subconsciousness, as a "sunny collour". It seems likely
that the association between red and fire, and between yeifow and the sun,
is a little hrther removed from the surface of speakerskcansciousness than
that between bhe and the sky, or grem and things growing out of the
ground. None the less, it is not difficult to bring these links to the surface.
I have asked a number of informants what colour they think fire is, and
several of them replied: orange. However, when F ask informants which
colour fire makes them ehhk of, many of them reply: red. I think the rea-
son may be that when asked about the colour of fire people think of the
flame; but when asked about "'what fire makes them think or', they think
of the whole situation involving fire, and this includes glowing red coals.
The association between fire and red is supplorted by the existence of set
phrases such as red-hot, red coals, or fiery red (cf. also the name of the
mast popular Australian brand of matches: Redheflds). Other European
languages have similar phraseological reflexes of this association. Far ex-
ample, in Polish the expression czerwony kksrr,literally 'red rooster" is a
synonym of fire. It is also worth noting that fire-engines and other para-
phernalia used by fire brigades are often painted red; that fire extinguish-
ers are also painted red; that red is generally used as a symbol of danger
or warning (for exampk, in traffic-light systems). It seems reasonable to
suppose that all of these facts reflect a common association between fire
and red.
The common association of the colour red with fire is well attested from
a wide variety d times and places. For example, Birren (393833 notes that
'"he Jewish historian Josephus in the first century AD associated . . . r d
with fire" (p. 3). Be mentions the same association in Chinese culture; he
addu~esLeonlardo da 'urinci" statement "We shall set down . . . red For
fire" (4); and he quotes from the Upanishads: 'The red color of burning
.
fire is the color of fire . . The red color of the sun is the color of fire
. . . The red color of the moorz is tlre color of fire . . . The red color caE
.
the lightning is the color of fire . ."'. (pp. 2-3).
It rnay also be worth recalling here Swadesh's (1972: 204) speculaticans
on the possible etymological links 'between red and the Latin nrdere, "tcp
born"~:is well as bcllwccu~/igh and tlic Latin ceSb~c'.s, whit^').^'
Tlve Pdct that pcoplc Lcnd to picraive the coPour of fire as orange or yel-
low rather then red does not undermine the conceptual link between fire
and redness, lf i t is true that '"be Four hue classes, red, yellow, green, md
.
bluc . . are ncurophysiologI~aIly ' w i r e d b r 'programmed' in human
bcirigs" (Witkowski and U;rowna 1978: 4421, for the purposes of conceptu-
alizatioo~hand communication tlvesc ncurophysiologhcal categories have b
be proj~ectedon to analogues given in shared human experience. For "bluen
and "green", the choice is obvious: the sky [and perhaps the sea) end veg-
elatioo~.For "yelllow"" the sun ofSers-perhaps-one natural point csT ref-
erence. (The k t that in children's drawings and paintings the sun is
represented as yellow reflects this association).'* For "red'" however, there
is no invariable environmental model. Although there Is the invariable
experientiat model of blood, most lzuman beings do not see blood nearly as
often as they do the sky, the sun, or grass, and in any case, blood Is not
nearly as salient, visually, as is fire. It is natural, therefore, that in manyw
perhaps most, human cultures, in addition to "local'hssociaitiorus such ar
that with red ochre, a deeper association should have been established
between "red" and its nearest analogue in human environment which is
both visually salient and culturally, or existentially, o v e r w h e l m i n impor-
tant: Bre. The fact that we can find traces off such a con~eptuallassociakiau
even in English provides, it seems to me, a striking confirmation of this hct.
These considerations lead us to propose the following (partial) expliea-
tions:
X i s red. =
when one sees things like X one can think of fire
when one sees thing like X one can think of blood
X is yellow. =
when one sees things llike X one can think of the sun
I NSwadesh's speculations rnay seem to us rather Fantastic in some 016 the details, but thls
does not invalidate his basic insight into the importance af Might and fire to tbe human con-
ceptualization of calour.
" As pointed out 'fry Xu (19941, however, this is not universal. Far example, in Chinese ml.
tnre the sun Is usually represented as md, no! as yellow.
PI further diflerence between red and yeIIow is that yellow is thought of as
a light ccrlour, whereas red is not thought of as either light or dark. Since
we haw already explicated the notion of a light colour, we can ow use it
in a fuller explication of the concept 'yellow':
X is yellow. =
when one sees things like X one can think of the sun
at some times people can see many things
when one sees things like X one can think of this
RRh colours"'aace ' U c c p ' ~ w tnot dark; they look as iS "there was much
lour in them", as if the dye, or the paint, was thick. They cannot be light,
ecause light collours look as if '"here was not much colour in them", as if
he dye, or the paint, had been used thinly. On the other hand, red is cer-
ainly a " ~ v i ~ i d ' k ~ l that
o ~ r ,is, one that is very easy to see. If we think,
hen, that red is "a rich colour" as well as a "warm colour'" and a "vivid
colour", we might consider, initially, an explication along the following
X is red. =
when one sees things like X one can think of fire
when one sees things like X one can think of blood
one can see things like X at times when one cannot see other things
On the other hand, additional components would presumably have to be
ostulated for the two Hungarian words for "red", vcs'rliis Q"dark red') and
kos ('light red". As a starting-point for discussion, I would propose the
Plowing:
X is piros. =
when one sees things like X one can think of fire
when one sees things like X one can think of blood
at some tines people can see many things
when one sees things like X one can think of this
X is vbras. =
when one sees things like X one can think ;of fire
when one sees things like X one c m think of blood
at some Xhes people can see very little
when one sees things like X one can think of this
These (tentative) expllications present the two Hungarian words for "red"
as manogous to the two Russian words for 'cblue"".

10. Malcrlo-white and Macro-black
Following the findings of Berlin and Kay (119691, it is widely believed that
the concepts "lack'and "white' are, in some sense, lexical universals. Berlin
alurl K a y tIicirusePvcs (0969: 2) plrrascd tluc clairuns In questio~uas FoIPows: "(I)
All languages contain terns for white and black. (2) If a language contains
three terms, then it contains a tern for red.'"^ infomall, abbreviatory
ways of referring to generalizations precisely formulated elsewhere, state-
a~icnlsof Llliis kind can bc scci~as quite legitimate. It is unforrwnate, how-
ever, that these informal abbreviations have led many scholars to conclude
that if a language has only two basic colour words, we know what them
wards mean: ""they must mean 'black' and "white"'.
But, as mentioned earlier, this cannot be true. Tf a language has only two
colouo. woods, wluich divide betweetr ~lliemselvesall the colours perceived by
tllc speakers, tliesc words cannot possibly mean the same as what the words
bkck and 111Aile mean. What do they mean, then? For example, what do the
Eu-jingarliya (Buram) words -guingaIsja and -gu~gun4a,discussed in
Section 3, mean?
Onc suggestion which has sometimes been made Is that words of this
kind mean 'lighthand 'dark" respectively. But this cannot be the whole
truth either if the word supposedly meaning '~ightY~ndulcfes red in its
range. For example, the fact that the Gu-jingarliya counterpart of white
includes also highly saturated, medium light red suggests that, in this case,
tl~econtrast between light and dark, that is, ultimately, between day and
night, cannot constitute the only underlying model. Since the combining of
light colours and red in one class groved to be a rule rather than an excep-
tion (see e.g. E. R.Heider 1972a; Turner 1966; Conkiin 19731, the simplis-
tic model opposing 'Yight" to "dark" h d to be abandoned and an
alternative had to be sought.
At that point, a number olpscholars suggested that the putative categories
"light" and "dark" should be replaced with composite ones: "light warm'"
versus "dark cold" (e.g. E. R. Heider 19724, and this is how "Stage I lan-
guages'kre now often represented.
But this reinterpretation, which may seem quite reasonable, presents seri-
ous difficulties, too. For what evidence do we have that speakers of lan-
guages such as, for example, Dani or Gu-jingarliya possess a notion of a
"'warm colour"? In English, there is at least h e expression "warm colows";
but in Gu-jingarliya and in, Dani the anly evidence we have is the very fact
which we am trying to explain: that is, that the speakers of the languages
in question include in one category colours which we [Ithat is, speakers of
English) think of as "warm colours"'. From the point of view of the Dad
and the Gu-j~kngarliya,the idea of a "warm colour" or of a "cooI ccplour"
may be just as alien as the undulatory theory of light. Consequently, the
expressions "wmm co1ours"and "cool colours" may help WJ to identify
the ranges distinguished by these speakers, but they tell us nothing about
the meaning of the relevant terns-what the speakers mean when they use
hem.
To my mind, the Fact Lhal languages commonly (tho~ughnot invariably)
EinL red with light rather than with dark colours suggests that this type of
categorization may have some explanation in common human experience.
My hypothesis is that the explanation lies in the natural association
between fire and sun, both of which are associated for human beings with
warmth and light: even if the sun is seen as, primarily, a source of light, it
must also be perceived as a source of warmth; and even if fire is seen as,
primarily, a souroe of warmth, it must also be perceived as a souroe of light.
The natural association between fire and the sun (reflected, indirectly, in
the notion of a "warm calourm~applying to both yellow and red] may also
account for the variation in the way diflerent languages which have only
two basic lcolour terms treat reds. If a language distinguishes light colours
from dark and medium ones, one would expect red to go with the latter,
and sometimes this indeed happens (for example, in the Papuan language
lalc; see Berlin and Kay 1969: 23). In other languages, Itowever, such as
Gu-jingarliya, red "unaccountably"' goes with very light colours. It seems
to me that the association between sun and fire would explain this. The fact
that reflective foil may be seen by Gu-jlngarliya informants as the '%best
example" of the category in question ("properly number one gun-gun-
gaSQaM')suggests that in this particular language the idea of sunlight may
be especially important for the conceptualization embodied in this category:
shining, glistening, bright objects bring to mind things lying in the sun [and,
possibly, reflecting sun).
The fact that some languages, for example the Papruan language Dani,
put even deep dark reds with their light colours, and that they alllow their
speakers to think of dark red as the ""bst example" of the category in ques-
tiom, is also consistenlt with the idea that both the concept of sun and the
concept of fire may play a role in the conceptualization of "macro-whites".
Presumably, in Dani it is neither daylight nor sunlight which plays the cen-
tral role in the conceptualization af "macro-white", but fire-and possibly
not even fire but glowing embers. if we assume that universal human expe-
rienrce suggests a number of potential foci, interrelated but distinguishable
(daylight-sunlight-fire-glowing embers)~,and that each of these potential
foci can be given priority in conceptualization by a particular culture, then
cross-linguistic variation in the behaviour of "macro-whites" begins to
make sense.
In any case, it is quite clear that the differences between the diflerent con-
cepts of "macro-whites" call for carefully differentiated explications, and
320 Lexical Semm tics
that the two colour t e m s of languages such as Jale, Gu-jingarliya, and
D;)n~iC ; I I U I I I ( Dhc itlcaiPi6nctf wit11 cllclr oPkucr, rus dhcy canrlall be
~ ~cruaau11lic:11!y
scmaoilicalily identified with the English words bbck and wwhire, dark and
/igk, or warn? and cool. References to the neurophysiology of vision will
not help, since this is, presumably, the same for all human beings.
Ilaving said Ilris, I will now try lo construct sonvc explications, hoping
that they may become a starting-point for a constructive discussion.
To start with the two Dani collour terms inlrestigabd by Rosch (E.W.
Heider 197201, we note that "the focal points (best exanaplles) of miti and
mob were not 'black' and 'white'. . . . Examples of mili w r e reliably
placed among the darkest greens and blucs. Mob, however, appeared to
have two focal points: Ithe most common a dark red, the less common a
pale pink" (1972~:4511). The poinlt is importanit and one must be grateful
to the author for skting it in quite unequivocal Iterms: "After each infor-
mant had pointed to an exemplar for mili and mob,I asked if he were sure
that was a better example than the pure 'black' and pure 'white' chips
which were available; innfornants reliably insisted that it was" (ibid.].
On the basis of Rosch's discussion, we can propose the following expli-
cation for !no/@:
X is mola. =
when one sees things like X one can think of fire
at some times people can see many things
when one sees things like X one can think of this
at some times one can see the sun
when one sees things like X one can think of this
This explication accounts for the fact that mola includes, as Rosch puts it,
light and "warm" colours. Unlike the explication of red, it does not include
a reference ta blood; it does, however, include a reference to fire, and so it
also accounts for, or at least is consistent with, the fact that most infar-
mants see red as the "best example" of mafa It does not aocount for the
fact that some informants see pale pink, rather than red, as the "best ex-
ample" of this category; this, however, can probably be explained in tems
of a change in progress (those informants who chose pale pink appear to
have moved to a system with three, rather than two, basic colour tern).
As for the opposite of moia (is. milt), w e note that it inclludes both dark
and "co1d''colours; and that its focus is "among the darkest greens and
blues". This description suggests that the concept in question has a largely
negative character and centres around absence of light and absence of sun.
This can be portrayed as follows:
X is nilili. =
at some times people can't see very much
when one sees things like X one can think of this
a1 sorurc Li~lmcspcuple carr'l scc llie sun
when one sees things like X one can think of this
when one sees some things one can think of fire
X is not like this
Turning now to the Gu-jingarliya terns -guaga/tjb and -gwssgundja, we
recall that lthey oppose light and brilliant shining colours to dark and dull
ones, and that bright red is included in the fanner group. To account for
these facts, I would propose the following explication for -gungaltja:
X is -gunngaltja. =
(a] at some times people can see very much (marry ithings)~
when o m sees things like X one can think of this
(a) at some t i m s in some places some things are in the sun
when one sees things like X one can think of this
(c) when one sees things like X one can think of fire
The first component (a) of this explication is the same which has been
posited for the English word light; component (b) accounts for the link
between -gungaltja and "brilliance"; and (c) accounts for the link between
-gunga!ga and redness.
As for the "darkfdulll" tern -gmgm&a, we have even less basis for speo
ulation about its possible meaning because we are not told what its ""bst
examples" might be. It would appear, however, that at least the dbllowing
components should be included:
'A is -gungundja. =
(a) at some times people can't see very much
when one sees things like X one a n think of this
(b) at some times in some places things are not in the sun
when one sees things like X one can think of this
The existence of "'macro-whites" and "macro-blacks"' at the beginning of
the alleged "evolutionary sequence" cannot in my view be explained in
tems of either physics or neurophysiology of vision. "'Black" and "white"
are indeed opposites in t e m s of physical properties of light and "psy-
chophysicat" properties of vision, but the fundamental contrast between
"jight or wam'kolours and "dark or cool" colours does not seem to be
similarly explainable. It could, however, be explained if we gave credence
to Swadesh" (1972: 205) speculations which place h e and light at the root
of human conceptualization of colour. Given the importance of fire in
human life, and given its percepitual salience, derived not only from its
collours but also from its movement, and from its brillianoe and lwninos-
ity, these speculations seem to me to be intuitively plausible.
 This link of "'macro-whites" with light, sun, and fire (in a31 their
aspccms, i~tcludingbrillDiarucc and Iu~nit~ersity)
lvigllligluns the fact that, con-
trary to what is commonly assumed, "mlour" is not a universal human
concept-not only because there are marry languages which do not have
a word b r 'kolour" but also because in languages with only two "basie
colour berms", like Gu-jingarliya, the allleged "colour terns" are not really
"ccrlour terms" tub" general descriptors off appearance, or of visual impres-
sion.
Witkowski and Brown (1978: 4411) argue that if in primary macro-classes
red is usually combined with yellow, and green with blue, this '"provides
evidence that a dimension based on wavelength order . . . is important in
human colaur categorization. Only conjunctive primary colours or, in other
words, those adjacent to each other in wavelength arder are combined in
composite classes."
But this does not explain why yellow-green is a very rare [though not
unattested) category. Nor does it explain why dark colours should be asso-
ciated with green and bllue, and tight ones, with yellow and red. Witkowski
and Brown try to explain this fact, too, in terms of "wiringy'(1978: 442):
"'Wring also underlies the pairings of warm hues with white and cool! hues
with black in the categories macro-white and macro-black resptivdy.
(The converse associations, warm-dark and cool-light, are not attested.)"
But this begs the question.
I believe that a hypothesis which links light, sun, and fire provides a bet-
ter explanation of the recurring regularities thaa a mere reference to the
supposed ""wring"'.
11. Macro-red and Grue
Those languages of th~eworld which have only three basic colaur t e r n
appear to oppose the concept of a "coloured'~chomatic)visual experience
to a "non-coloured" (achromatic) one. AS a rule, the ''co1oured''colour is
fo~usedin "red", which is the most salient hue far human beings (Bornstein
er SF!.1976). At the same time, however, it is a "warm" colour, that is to
say one which is opposed not simply to light and dark colours, but to light
colrours on the one hand, and to dark-cool or dull-cool ones on the other
(see Kay and McDaniel 1978: 640). This means, in effect, that "macro-r&,
wlrile focused in1 red, includcs not cli~rlyred, but also yellow and orange; and
also, that it is associated with "brightnessyy.
What could be the conceptual counterpart of a colour category which
people intuitively call "warmq'aandwhich has the following properties: it is
vivid H("coUourful"), it is highly noticeable both during the day and duriag
the night (and therefore is perceived as maximally distinct from bath
"light" colours and 'Vark'kolours), it is bright (luminous], and it is
focused in red but includes also yellows and oranges?
l [ ~ lmy view the answer is clear: the concept in question must take fire as
its point of reference. This leads us to the following type of explication:
X is 'macro-redy. =
things Bike X are "easy to see"
(i.e. people can see things like X at times when they cannot see other
things)
when one sees things like X one can think rkof ffire
at some times when one sees things Pike X one can think of the sun
Moving now from ccmacro-red~" to the next stage of the alleged "evolu-
ionary sequence'" we note with Kay and McDaniel(ll9178: 630)thaa "'many
e world's languages have a basic collour term that means grue". But
does "grue'kean?
or many writers on the subject, the first (and often, also, the last)
er which comes to mind is that '"rue" means "cool"'. But vague
phors like "cool" are not satisfactory explanations of meaning,
ough they may provide helpful hints. We must, therefore, ask further:
nd what does "cool" meam? Once this question has been asked, however,
e answer is not difficult to h d : ""cool" (when applied to colours) means,
essentially, "not-warm", and since "warn" makes sense only as an indirect
reference to fire and/or sun, "cool" must mean a colour which-while vivid
and highly visible w('kolowsed"')-does mot bring to mind fire or sun.
But this is not aiL The most striking feature of "grue" is that, while it
streltches over both bl!ues and green, "focal grue selections have often
proved to be bimodal, being chosen from both the focal blue and focal
green regions. But grue has never been found to be focussed in the inter-
mediate blue-green region" '(Kay and McDanieI 1978: 6310). This is an
extremely intriguing finding, which requires an explanatiomn. Kay and
McDaniel imply that they have one: "The absence of focal chdces from
this intermediate region is strong evidence that these colours have lower
grue membership values, and that guue has the 'membership structure stip-
ulated by the fumy union analysis" [ibid.).
But how can "fuzzy union analysis" explain the faact that the "bestqy
example o r "gme'"that is, of a "cool" colour] is chosen either From focal
blues or from focal greens, whereas the '%bestw example of a "macro-red"
(that is, of a "'warn'' colaur) is not similarly bifocal, and is always focused
b "red"? Of course one can nzodel the bifocal structure of "grue" in a
'Tuzzy union analysis", but I don't see haw one could exptuia it this way.
It seems to me that both the biabcal character of "'grw'band the "mano-
fm1" character of "macro-reds" can 1Pe explained on the basis of the
hypothesis that "'grue" isis,in a sense, defined negatively, as a "non-warm"

colour, whereas 'hacro-red" k ddicnned positively, as a "warm" coIowr. The
notion of a "warm" ccolour refers us to a positive experiential model: fire.
The concept of a "non-warm"colowr is dafined above all in opposition to
that model. It is only in addition to this contrastive oore that two positive
models are involved; and these are, clearly, the sky and vegetation.13
Admittedly, one could suggest that "grue" has its positive point of uefer-
enm in natural '%ahr places", that is, in lakes, rivers, or seas, which cm
be seen as blue, green, or blm-green. This, however, would not account for
the bifocal character of "grues"; whereas the hypothesis that they are cm-
aeptualized primarily with referenoe to the sky and to vegetation would
explain this.
These considerations lead us towards the following definition of '"me'"
(as it is llndersitaod by speakers for whom '%he" is more focal than
"geen""):
X is 'grueBs.= C.
(a) when one sees some things one m think of fire
X is not like this
(b] when one sees things like X one can think of the sky
(c) in some places many things grow out of the ground
sometimes when one sees things like X one can think of this
For speakers for whom "green" rather than "'bue'\epreserrts the lkst
example of "grue'" we would plaoe the components referring to the sky
after, not befare, those referring to vegetation, and we would include the
word "sometimes" in the component referring to the sky:
X is '$nuea9. =
(4when one sees some things one can think of fire
Xis not like this
(GI in some places many things $sow out of the ground
when one sees things like X one can think of this
( c ) saametimes when one sees things like X one can tlvink oh" the sky
It will be noticed that for "macro-red", too, two positive points of refer-
ence have been posited: fire and the sun; but the relationship between these
two models is quite dimerent than that between )the sky and vegetation.
First, one can presume that fire is visually much more salient than the sun,
whereas the sky and vegetation are on the same level of salience. Second,
fire itself can be seen as yeliow, orange, and red, and therefore it is not
n3Van Brake1 [IW3:117) notes (halt Zulu speakem, who haw one term Far '%he" and
'"reen", use at times expressions "grue like the sky" or " m e like grass" to difkrenrtiak
between the twa. It is also inltenesllilng to note that although the Tarilana word for "red" is
derived from Ithe ward far blood, ills rcrerenlirul range (red. orange, dark yellow) points t~ tine,
rather Itham blood, as a wnceptual prototype (especially given that dhe lanauage does have r
separate word far r~el!ows'].
10. The Meaning of CoJaur Terms 325
s something noru-yellow to saamething yellow. Both in
d brilliance fire can be seen as a unitary mode18 of all
ugh its lrocllns is identified as red rather than orange or
e sky nor vegetation can be seen as a unitary model
is why gmes are bifocal, whereas "macro-reds" are
s can also be bifocal because the category in question
ifferent way: by its "cooll", 'cnon-wann" character, that is,
of, roughly speaking, " h e associations". On the other hand,
[which emerge as a category before ""grille") are not defined
s", that Is, they are not conceptualized as "non-cool"
are defined with reference to a unitary positive model:
nd positive model here (the sun), it plays a secondary
case it can be seen as similar to the first one in terms of
lities: visibility and warmth. By contrast, the two models
of "gmgsess" can only be united on a negative basis, as k i n g different
from "warn ~olcaurs",that is from "ffiery'hnd "sumny'"'macro-reds".
12. Names of Mixed CoOours
According to physicists, there are three primary colours in light: red, green,
and blue. "White light can be made by mixing red, green and blue Bight"
I( WarEd of Science n.d.: 1163). But, of course, this is not how ordinary peo-
ple think about colours.
Acleordhg to psychologists, the smallest number of colour t e m s by
means of which we can systematize our colour experience is not three but
six. "'If pressed to the greatest possible economy of colour terms we find
that we can describe all the colours we discriminate by using only six tems
and their various combinations. These are red, yellow, green, and blue, the
four unitary hues, and black and white, the two extremes of the series of
hueless colours. All other colour narncs . . . can bc described by referring
to these six t e m s and combinations of them" [Hurvich 1981: 3).
I believe that the meanings of colour terms in languages with an elabo-
rated colour lexicon (such as English) accord reasonably well with the
above statement: beyond the list of the first six colours in Berlin and Kay's
sequence all the other ones [with the exception of brown, to which [ I will
return later) are conceptualized, on some level, as "mixtures". Very
roughly:
orange = yellow + red
pink = red + white
purple = blue + red
grey = Mack + white
 AS mentioned earlier, in Warlpiri, where colour terms are forme
reduplimtion, the nearest counterpart of the English word brmvn nze
erally, "arthearth" just as the nearest counterpart of the Engli
green means, literally, "grass-grass"l4. TTh manifest association
something " b r o m ' k n d the colour of the ground is instru~tiw.
Of course, the colour of the ground can vary, and it varies more than
colour of the sky or the colour of the sun. This is consistent witb the
that "brown" was further down in Berlin and Kay's sequence than "re
'cyellow", "green", and c'blue"'. At the same time, the hypothesis
"brown" does have a positive model (albeit a notoriously heter
one) would explain why it came in that sequence before '"grey'
"orange", and "purple"'.
These considerations lead us to the following [partial) explicatio
English word hrow~l!:
X is brown. =
When one sees things like X one can think of the ground (earth)
at some times people can't see much
when one sees things like X one can think of this
In support of this 'knvironmentaE prototype" approach to the
'brown" I would add that "brown colour" is often regarded by s
a puzzle.
For example, Westphal (1987: 53) notes that if red, green, and blue
darkemzed, "llze resulting maroons, navies and dark greens seem to re
their parent hue in a way in which b r o w doe
Boyruton" (1975: 315) view that "brown is certainly
the dark colours created by experiments of this kind] because it
almost entirely to rescmblle the original bright co~ourY'. (See also G
1977: 127.1
WestphaP (1987: 441 maintains, none the less, that "
a kind of darkened'yetiow", but this is counter-intuitive
uuwnviucing, "What dws it meam to say, 'Brawn i
Wittgenstein (1977: 25) asked, incredulously, and he noted: "'Bro
above all, a swrface colour, i.e. there is no such thing as a clear brow
only a muddy one."
I would like to suggest that "braiwn" and "yelllo
colours, and not as different versions of the same colour, because I%
associated, ~mconsciously,with diRerent prototypes: if "yellow" isis,p
ily, the colour of tihe sun CiigQlb, "warn'" and I
l4 Similarly, Alexandra AikhenrvaUd (pexsslnal cornmicadon) reports that in L r
notes ~ p l rthe Tarjana language oF Brazil [from the Arana Family), the nearest eoun
bsam is glassed as 'muddy, dirty, brovmislm', and that this ward is clearly associated
colour of the earth.
primarily, the conour of earth. Wittgenstein's observation that "'brown'"
Oike "whiteJ') is a '%surface colour", talllies well with the idea that the con-
cept %row' (like 'white') has its prototype in the surfaoe of the earth.
From t h i point of view of chramataiogy, it might seem strange that
human beings should treat "brown" as an important concept and honour it
with a separate ""itpasic calour brm". 8ut from the point of view of people's
We on earth, "the naked earth9Vsan important visual (and existential) ref-
erence-point (like the sky above our h e d , or the vegetation all around US].
It is this visual and existential saliena of the earth which explains, I sug-
gegt, the scienltistk "puzzle of brown"".ewes (1992: 863) writes: "Fixation
am t!he speGtrum colors and on physical m d neurophyslological explanations
for color proefion obscures the fact that many colors of cultural interest
to human being, such as the variety of browns and tans, while now under-
standable as compli~tedmixtures of light of different wavelengths, etci@., are
not present as distinct components of the sojar spectrum."
I agree with this, but I would add that the cultural interest of browns and
ns (which, presumably, has to do with the value of soil and cattle in
man life) must be seen in the corntext of the visual salience of big
expanses such as the sky (often light blue), the sea (often dark Hue], the
grass-covered ground (typically green), the snow-covered ground (white),
the naked earth (often brown).
It should be added that while I haye explicated a number of colour con-
cepts via "mnvironmental" concepts such as those encapsulated in the
English wards $re, sun, sky, graax, sea, and ground, these 'cenvironmentai"
concepts are not p~stul;rfedhere as indefinable conccptuai primitives in
s of which people conceptualize their experience. On the contrary,
,too, are regarded as constructs built by human beings on the basis of
ejr experience of life on earth. (See Chapter 7.)
14. Names of Specific (Locally Salient) Referents
It seems to be a universal feature of language that callour perceptions are
dewxibed, at some stage, not only with reference to wisuallly saPient features
of the ""macro-environment" (such as the night, the sky, the sea, or the sun),
but also in items of locally salient or particularly important referents, such
as certain minerals, animals, or plants of characteristic appearance. This
applies, for example, to the English words gotd arrd silver,and presumably,
it used to apply to the English word oraJrge.Words of this kind provide evi-
dence for the psychological reality of a comparative semantic component
in colour semantics in general.
But words off this kind, like any words, are subject to semantic change.
For example, the fact that the Russian w o d pIuboj, "light blue', is
330 Lexical SemlcJ.mtics
etymologically related to the word for pigeon, or that the Pollish word czer-
womy, 'red', is etpologically related to the name of a particular red worn,
does not mean that the associations in questions are synchronically alive.
They are definitely not: in present-day Russian, godtrboj' is clearly associated
with the coljour of the sky, not with the colour of pigeons.
Similarly, in the Dani language of New Guinea (E. R. Heider 19'72a),
three other colour terns are widely (though not universally] used in addi-
tion to the two basic words, mi&('dark-cool') and m o h Clight-warm'), dis-
cussed earlier: pimtdl, the name of a kind of red clay, is also used for ""rrle',
bod& the name of the root of the turmeric plant, is used for "ye11owW,and
io'uaiegen, the name of the bud of a particular flower, is used for '"Jue"
(whereas no special word is used for "green"]. It seems to me that facts of
this kind do not demonstrate that the Dani associate (what is called in
English) the colonr red with red clay and not with fire. For those Dani
speakers who have moved, or are moving, towards a threeaolour system,
and who are beginning to differentiate the old concept of 'rnolaq [focused
in fire but extending to sunlight and daylight) into two concepts, the name
of red clay may constitute a usefuim8 point of reference, but it dws not have
to dominate one of the emerging new cicrnceptualizations. At some stage the
word ppisrtur may be Oinked with both n?ed clay and fire [and perhaps also
with blood), an~dat sofinc point it may dissocialc itself from its etymon alto-
gether and attach itself excOusiwely, in the speakers' linguistic consciousnuess,
to a ddiflerent, more salient perceptual model.
I conjecture that this is precisely what has happened in the case of the
Russian word gotuboj and the Polish word czerrvomy. It has also happened
in the case of the English word ommge and is probably happening in the
case of the English word siFver (if not yet got&.
15. Camclusionr Chrolmatollagy, Cognition, and Culture:
The main conclusion which emerges from the analysis proposed here is that
the language of 'seeing' is rooted in human experience, and that its basic
frame of reference is provided by the universal rhythm of "light"days and
""drk'hnights and by the fundamental and visually salient kaltures of
human environment: the sky, the sun, vegetation, fire, the sea, the naked
earth, the earth covered with snow. Since some of these fundamental and
visually salient features of buman experience are universal, it is only to be
expected that they will be reflected, in some way, in recurring features of
the vocabulary d seeing. Since, however, they are aPso variable, with dif-
ferent kinds of smnery prevailing inr different parks of the globe, it is also
to be expected that the vocabulary of seeing will be far from uniform-
quite apart from such obvious and often discussed differences as the avail-
10. The Meaning ofih:olour Terms 331
of ""dable coloring agents'"Hewes
calour words'9in tlre Tariana language
a Aikhenvald (forthcoming): kadite,
orange, dark yellowy,mite, 'yellow',
h@oJ.Hse, "reen, blue" halite, 'white, light, transparent', kesoiire, "uddy,
dirty, brownish' (from rlcesole, %mud".
In some respects, this set meets Berlin and Kay" expectations since
bers it inciudes five which could be said to match with
'kvolutionary sequence" [bkack, white, red, yellow, and
iana set contradicts Berlin and Kay's
'brown", even though it doesn't have
blue" and '"reen". If the word for "brown"is rejected
the set as non-basic (because it is derived from the word ifar "earth"),
ord for "reed would have to be rejacted too (because it is derived from
word for blood)-and this would contradict Bedin and Kay's expecta-
tween the terms for "black" and "white",
e curious overlap of the terms for ""rdY'and"'yelllow'" remainn totally
ained from this perspective.
the other hand, the hypothesis that ""colour terms'hre oriented
ntal prototypes makes perfect sense of all
ana data, and it allows us to interpret the set with reference to night
daylight (white, light, transparent-unlike: a snow-covered ground,
the inhabitants of the Amazonian tropics), fire (red, orange,
vegetation (blue, green), and earth
ur brains, not in the world outside, and
by our human biology (which links us,
measure, with other primates); but to be able to communicate
em on to something in our shared envi-
As pointed out by Witkowski and Brown (1978: 42): "'Several authors
classes, red, yellow, green, and blue,
and white, are neuropffiysiologimlly
beings.'Vn addition, however, it has
lS As for Ilk "evolubiona~ysequence" proposed by Berlin and Kay,it is no longer seen es
fiienable and it is not clear which, if any, parts or aspects of it wi19 sunrive the current onslaught
of criticisms. P believe, however, that an alternative inlterpretation of this "evolutionary
aeg~enw"",hich I proposed in Wierzbicka [lg90crfi, i s worth keeping on record as a dimerent
way d thinking about the issues involved, which can eccommodale all the new insights emerg-
ing from the ongoing research h t o the history of human conceptualization of vision.
been claimed that these 'knerophysiolcsgicaaly wired" categories are
reflected in tanguage, For example:
se o n our common human experience.
ar particular structure is inherent in the human perception of
which is mot deducible from the physical praprties of light a1
process analysis identifies and describes four specific ~alegories
the R (red], G (green), Y (yePIow], andl B (blue) response states. . . . lea, their linguistic cadability across languages, and their superior retention in
of basic co1our terns in all languages d'brecsfy reflects the existence o art- and larigterm memory-it would seem most economical to suppose that
human neural response categories. (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 621; aktaibutes are derived fsom the same underlying fadors, most likely having to
added) ith the physiology of primate coPous vision. In sho~t,far from being a domain
suited to the study of the effects of language om thought, the colour space
But how can language be "directly" linked to neural response

human neurai responses), whereas concepts can be shared. To be a

talk with others about one% private sense data one must be a b b b
late them first into communicable concepts.

perception to certain basic aspects o r human existence we can lend

ing to what otherwise would be nro more than a mysterious play
and mnes in the human retina, and of the cells in the neural p llinks colour naming with common-but variable-
e anvirotrment and human wisud experience but not

anchors"', It is the shared concepts of fire, sun, sky, vegetation, and s

which function as mgnitiwe anchors far colour naming. The visual

communicable to others. te from Machaury will show just how far it has been necessary to tailor the
and Kay (1969) silhouette to explain the endless 'kcdour-naming" anomalies:
Ibrightness, similarity, and distimctiweness are not the only coordinates by
not mean the same as goluboj, a d green does not mean the same as g
334 Lexical Semntics
Similarly, Hewes (1992: 163) remarks on the harmful effects of the
"fixation on h e spectrum colors and on physical and neurophysiological
explanation for colour perception"; and he comments that "The criteria
employed by the color-name evolutionists for rejecting most commonPy
used color terms as 'not basic* are unrealislic'"ibid.).
Finally, van Brakcl (1992: 1169) comments as dbhllows on M a ~ h u r y ' s
(31992) attempt to "save" Bedin and Kay's theory:
I applaud MacLaury's recognition that if one "goes out into the fidd'bith 320
Munsell coloulr chips, one dmsnt always come back with pure hue words. He r s .
ognizes "'the myriad compllexities, subtbtks, and difrerences" which may turn up in
naming collour chips, and he allows many other "Ldimensions" to play a role. I m
also very sympathetic to his suggestion that the first ofieial "preliminary analysis
of data" ((Kay, Berlin, and Merrifield 1991) from the World Color Survey shows
"'the inevitable collapse" of the "empirical approach" to "calar-category evo!utionEq.
The choice between linguistic arbltrtxrhess and neurophysiological dieter-
minism in colour caltegorization is a false one. Human conceptualization of
colour, which is reflected In language, may be constrained by the neuro-
physiology of vision, but it can be neither described nor expilain& in t e r n
of neurophyiologr. To describe it, we need to take recourse to human con-
ceptual unlvemds (such as SEE, TIME, PLACE, and LIKE). To explain it-
in both its variable and its lmnilul~rsalor near-universal fcaturcs-we need to
pay attention to the way people actually talk about what they see, without
limiting our data in an artificial manner, and without, as Saunders (1992:
i65)aptlly put if, "reifying the neurophysiological into the phenomenal",
The Slemantics of Natural Kinds
1. Introduction
How is knowledge stored and organized in the human mind? In particular,
does the mind draw a distinction between "linguistic knowledge" and "non-
linguistic kncrwledge", or between a '"mental dictionary" and a 'hental
encyclopaedia"? For example, what do ordinary people know and how do
they thinlt about mice, crocodiles, or moths? Can the knowledge encapsu-
lated in the everyday meaning of words such as morrse, crocodiEe, or mot11
be separated from the knowledge that people may have about mice, croco-
diles, and moths?
There w hardly be a better way of approaching these questions than
malysing language. Language can allow us-better than anything
e-to discover how knowledge is represented and organized in the
uman mind. IF by analysing language we find evidence suggesting that
nguistic knowledge" differs somehow from "non-linguistic knowledge"',
that a distinction between the two a n be drawn in a non-arbitrary
support the view that the mind itself draws a distinction
tal dictionary" and a ccmental encyclopaedia". In this
e that this is indeed the case, and that by examining
e can learn how to draw the lime between "meaning"
between '7linguistic knaw1edge"and "encyclopaedic
y, until reoently the structure of the lexicon was not subjected
d methodical large-scale study of a kind which might throw
t on the organization of knowledge in the human mind. The main rea-
for this was the absence of a suitable methodology ;and also the wide-
F faith in the very possibility of developing such a
articularly harmful in this respect was the attractive but not
doctrine of family resemblances, which was put forward
in his PhiIos~phic~l hve$1fga6fons and which has gained
xtraordinary popularity in contemporary philosophy, psychology, anthro-
pology, and also linguistics {see Chapters 4 and $1. As mentioned earlier, I
believe that lexicographic research of recent years has proved Wittgenstein
wrong on this particular point. Meanings do have boundaries, words can
be rigorouslly defined, lexical fields with analogous semantic structures can
336 Lexica? Semantics
be uncovered, and, on this basis, more or less reliable and accurate cogni-
tive maps can be drawn.
Linguistic theories which deny the possibility of drawing the line between
one meaning and another have the tendency to become seEEffuPf2ling
prophecies: they make the study of the lexicon an unpromising and urnat-
tractive enterprise, and so prevent the discovery of evidence which would
lest their validity.
The view that it is impossible to draw a line between "meaning9' and
'%nowledge" or between 'Uictionaries" and "encyclopaedias" (sw e.g.
Haiman 1980a, P982; Langacker 1987, 1990) has had, I believe, a similarly
unfortunate effect on the study of the lexicon. For knowledge is open.
ended. The belief that a dictionary definition represents nothing other than
a selection from a (real or imaginary) encyclopaedia entry, with the choiwe:
being determined by practical considerations and having no theoretical jus-
Cificailtion, lcads to stagnation in lexical scmanlics.
On the othcr hand, the hypoehcsis that the meaning of a word is dder-
minate, that it can be established in a nom-arbitrary way and clearly delin-
eated, has the opposite effect. It encourages the semanticist to turn full
attention to the lexicon, to examine carefully all available evidence, to come
up with specific hypotheses, to look for possible counter-examples, and p n -
erally to engage In serious and thorough study of a language's l & d
resources.
But to be able to disoaver the boundaries between meaning and know!-
edge we need to have a clear idea of what meaning is and how one can
establish the meaning of a word or linguistic entity of any kind; in other
words, we need a mherent semantic theory and a rigorous semantic
methodollogy.
AS was shown in Chapter 7 , different types of words show dfierent Jer-
els of semantic complexity. In particular, there are words whose mearnimg
can be portrayed directly in terms of primitives. [for example, emotion
items), and words whose meaning is so complex that it can only be reduced
to the level of conceptual primitives step by step. The bulk of concrete
vocabulary, and in particular the names of ""living kinds" and c'culturd
kinds", is of the latter type.
None the less, allthough the tacit kmowJedge implicit in words such as
m o w or crocodile is quite extensive, it can be separated, in a mom-arbitrary
way, from encyclogaedic howledge about mice or crocodiles; and there are
some types of information about denotata which can never become part of
the folk commpt (e.g. information about the average weight, in grams or
kilograms, of a particular kind of animal).
un the words of a particular hguage.
2. Abstract Conmptts m d Ccmcrate Concepts
apter 7, both concrete conoepts and abstract concepts
usually much more complex than one might expect before trying to
ts are usually sufficiently
of the primitives, while an
b concept written purely in terms of the primitives
rehension (as a whole). I believe the correct conclu-
at concepts associated with natural and cul-
ly complex, One can, of course, try to deny
and chim that concepts of this kind are learnt largely by
nsltitute "gestalts'" not conceptual configurations,
ng in an encycllopaedia, not
lact remains that explica-
t a kind of knowledge which native speakers of a
age have and which is part of their communicative competence. (For
psycholinguistic evidence of the reality of this knowledge, see e.g.
mmkina and Mirkin 11986; Fmmkina and Mostovaja lsi8$.)1
Given that it is one of the tasks of a (monolingual) dictionary to portray,
faithfully and accurately as possible, the howledge encapsulated in
ge, it follows that iexplications of this kind belong,
ry. Of course, practical considerations may impose
breviations on the dictionary representations of
ds, but this is an entirely diflerent matter,
tical! line separating a 'cdictionasy" from an "ency-
ds "dictionasyY'aand'kencyclopaedia" in a
language-related "folk knowledge" (every-
guage-independent scientific knowledge [and cer-
my concrete reference works such as the Oxford E~ag&h
guage-related folk know,edge is different, and
shed in a principled way, from other kinds of knowledge
at it can be articulated in a coherent and rigorous manner, and I will
o do it with reference to a domain regarded as particularly dificullt and
Ily the domain of "living kind^".^
Whether or not 'Tolk-knowledge"' in general can allways be distinguished, in a principled
y, from "scie~tificknowledge'" is mother matter, which need not ooncem us here rut the
omen!. (See Section 6.) 1 am lalking here about the kaowicdge which has become entrenched

Pt is widely believed that the names of animals acquire their meaning from
science. The BEoomfielldian claim that am words acquire their meaning
fro111 SC~CIICCIrias bccn generally rcjectcd in corltcanporary linguistics as
selif-evidently unacceptable, and (as far as 1know) no dictionary has ever
sought to define words such as hale,jear, or ~endernesson the basis of
the latest findings of neurophysiolagy, as recommended by Bloodidd
(1933/1935) [see Chapter 111. None the less, in the area of the names of
animals and plants, the "scientific" approach has always been strandy
represented, even in dictionasies, and is still widespread. For example, the
Shorter Oxford Englid~Dictionary (SOiElD 19164) defmes hama as "a sol&
hoofed perissodactyl quadruped (Equus cahahs]'" Wehater (1976)
informs us that horse is "a large sdid-hoofed herbivorous mammal
(Xquxnrs cabaISus) domesticated by man since a prehistoric period"', and the:
Llomgmass. Dictiamasy [LDwOTEL 1984) finds it necessary to mention that
the animal designated by the word horse belongs to the family Equidae,
and that the word is applied specifically to animals "over 14.2 hands in
height".
It seems hardly n~ecessaryto argue that scientific definitions of this kind
do nor represend: the native speaker's concept. Science is, or tries to be, oni-
versa1 and to reflect the know1edge a ~ c m u l a t e dby mankind as a whole
(and, more specfidly, by the professiional experts in different fields of
knowledge); languages ware not universal, and each of them reflects the expe-
rience of a particular part of mankind, united by a common culture and ar
c o m o n existential framework (and not the experience of any llocah m p r t s
but that of the "people-in-the-street").
This point was argued by the Russian linguist Jurij Apresjan, in his mas-
terly work Lexical Semantics (1992: 32-3, 35):
The folk picture of the world that developed in the course of centuries and includes
h l k geometry, physics, psychology, elic., reflects the material and spiritual expi-
enoe of a people (native speakers of a certain language) and therefore is language-
specific in the fojlowing two respects.
First, a folk picture of a certain portion of the world may be ~:rucidlydtsFenenr
from a purely logical scientific picture of the same portion of the world that is
shared by speakers of a variety of languages.
The task of a lexicographer (unless he wants to g0 beyond his discipline and turn
into an encyclopedist] consists of disoovering the naive picture of the world bidden
in lexical meanings and presemting it in a system of definitions.
Seaand, folk pictures of the wodd, obtained through analysis of meanin& of
words in various languages, may dif"Eerin details, whereas a scientific picture aT the
world does not depend on the language used to describe it.
In the area of names for animals, the language-specific character of the
onccpls c~~capsularcd inr words ~lma~lilkslsilslclf oa a number of difrercnl
s. To begin with, the basic categoriratioa of the "animal kingdom"
diUer considerably from language to language. For example, in
lpiri the basic categories lexicalized in language are these:
(1) kuyu -meat, creature with edible meat
(2) pama -edible, not meat, doesn? grow out of the ground
(3) jwrllpu- flying creatures with feathers
data are from Hale ee: aI forthcoming; the phrasing of the glosses is
.) K q u includes not only edible "meaty" animals such as kangaroo,
sects such as honey ants; it also includes
to such creatures, such as honey or nectar, but it
(the d a s s i h t i o n is not exhaus-
r example, doesn't tnclude emu.
,the categorization embodied in the lcx-
language. Far example, Japanese and
n mice: and rats, and for native
uite difiwlt to learn the difference in
iwh words rat and mousese.lOrr the other
ally between the moths that eat
t fly around lamps at night, which native speak-
perceive as two totally different kinds of insect (moQ and &my).
types and the 'ToPk knowledge" embodied in the names of ani-
language to language. For example (as men-
, in Russian iJak ("donke;y"")pitombes hard work, whereas
"works (and eats) like a horse" rather than "like a donkey".
hard w r k is epitambd by a! buffalo, in Malay, by a bullmk, and
m. In English, cats are thought of as c o r n o n pets (as well
of mice), but in Warlpiri they are thought of as kcryu, 'keaeat"'.
pulsive creatures spreading diseases among people. But in
words glossed as "hopping mouse, rat" [and regarded as
quite different connotatiomns for the native speakers:
burrows. It digs a big burrow. . , . Wc kill them Lo eat. We cat them. The
meat of that small animal is good. They dig down in the burrows to find
that mima1 and they kill it in its burrow. They take it to cook itY"IHale er
a[. forthcoming).

4. An 18Ius1trration:Folk Elilia versus Scientific Micle
To show more dearly the diflermce between scientific knowledge lrnd
kind of knowledge which is encapsulated in a folk concept of a natural k
I will adduce here one detailed illusltration. This will take
sonably full explication of the folk concept mice (a revised version
proposed in my Lexicography and Conceptual Anai!ysi8, 1985), co
with the full entry for mice i~ the Encyclopaedia B r i t m
To show that the folk concept of 4mmwse>arallels in
folk conoepts encoded in other animal names lnre would have to
here, and discuss, many other such explications. Since this is i
reasons of space, ~tlne reader is again referred to
Coancepfual AmJ'y~is.~
M I C k n expIica~ionof the folk concept
a kind of creature
people call them MICE
people "Chink that they are ail1 of the same kind
because they come from other creatures of the same
kind
people t h i k these things a b u t them:
they live in or near places where people live
k a m s e they want to eat things that people keep for people to eat
people don" want them to live there
(some creatures of a similar kind live in fields)
a person could hold one easily in one hand
(most people wouldn't want to hold them)
they are greyish or brownish
one cannot notice them easily
(some creatures of this kind are white
some people use them when they want to find ou
creatures when peoplle do various things to them
some people keep them in or near their houses
bccausc [Eucy like to watch thcm and to look efics thcruu'p
they have short legs
Both the lexiwn and the syntax oF this explication are quite complex.
simgify the language, we could do so fairly readily, but at the: oost of lengt
cations considerably, and making them much harder lo read. For example,
'because:they come from creatures of Itb same kind' we could say:
bemuse before they were things of this kind
they were parts of other creatures of this kind
becausa: of this W E I C ~ dhcy move onc can't sce their legs moving
it seems as if their whole body touches the ground
because of this they czlm get quickly into small openings in the ground
they are soft
they can squeeze into very narrow openings
their head looks as if it was not a separate part of the body
the whole body looks like one small thing with a long thin, hairless tail
the front part of the head is pointed
it has a few stiff hairs sticking out sideways
here are two round ears sticking up one on eilthea side of the bop of
the head
they have small sharp teeth that they bite things with
they don't want to be near people or other animals BEHAVIOUR
when people or other animals are near they make no noise
they hide from people and animals in places where people and animals
can't reach them
animals of another kind living in places where people live [cats) want to
catch and kill creatures of this kind
people put special things in or near their houses to catch creatures of this
kind and to kill them
when they are caught they make little sounds
it sounds as if they wanted to say that something bad was happening to
them
they move in places where people live looking for something to eat
they can move very quickly
they can move without making noise
sometimes when they move one can hear little sounds
it sounds as if something light and rigid was moving quickly on
something hard
sometimes one can see very ssmalE, dark roundish bits of something
(dung) in places where they haw been
eople think of t h like this: RELATION
they are small creatures TO PEOPLE
they are quiet
they don" want people or other animals to come near them
one cannot notice them easily
they can do bad things in places where people live
they like to eat him yeilowish stuf3 of a certain kind (cheese)
that people eat
Before we proceed to an encyclopaedia entry for mice, a few brief com-
ments are in odes.
 The explication of the h l k concept proposed here starts with four com-
ponents, labelled here (for the sake of convenience] as "caLegory", "name",
"essence", and "'origin". Jointly, these components present mice as what
Bedin (19%) calls a "folk genus": a category of living things which is
thought of as having a biologically transmitted inherent nature linked with haadled adequately and most safely by trapping. Mice, especially the
together with their near relatives, the brown and house rats, are
a name (see Chapter 112). What follows is a series of camponenits spelling
r emormous econmic damage annually. Even those living in natural
out what Putnam (119751 callls the stereotype: what people think about mice. so numerous in limited areas as to become serious, although uso-
A s with most other stereotypes of animals, the stereotype is organized pests. Except In abnormal circumstances, however, mice
around the following signposts: habitat, size, appearance, belhaviour, rela-
tion to people. The sequence in which the components sure given is not a b i -
trary but seeks to elucidate the internal logic of the folk mncept (see
Wiembicka 19851. All this is very different from a typical encyclopaedia
entry, such as the one which Follows.
MOUSE (an encyclopaedic dewiption]
An imprecise term designating any small rodent but often meant to apply b the Many other variant strains of known genetic andlor nutritional history have
common house mouse (Mus musculw), the type of the genus MSCS and the fanmily eveloped for experimental purposes. (Encyclopaedtb Britlmnica, 1969, xv.
Muridae. In North America most species of the widespread and varied family
Cricetidae also are called mice. Specific kinds of mice are usually designated by a
compound term such as harvest mouse ~MlcrramysIof Europe; Reishrado'oJstomysd According to the Encyclopaedia Britamim entry r e p r o d u ~ e d above,
America), wood mouse (Apodemus of Eurasia], whitefooted mouse (SJeromysccrsef o w e is an "imprecise term" which doesn? correspond exacdy to any taio-
America) or pocket mouse (Perog'oJsarh~of North America). gical tsuxon. I n natural language, however (that is, in ordinary English),
Mim are indigenous to almost every land area and in a given area are likely b is not felt to be any less precise than folk genera such as horse, rabbit, o r
be the commonest of mammals. Some species are of narrowly restricted ocxummce
and habitat; others are Yrride-spread and versatile. The genus Mws, for example, tific category M m mlrslcuhs does not correspond to the folk c a t
occurs naturally on all major land masses; the typical s p i e s has been distributed reflected in the concept ?nouse? in everyday English "the com-
by man to a11 inhabited areas of tbe earth and has became naturalized. One species mouse" [Mus muscuh) Is not thought of as a specific variety
of Peromyscw occurs over most of North and Central Amerka from the subarctic
''Mus", and the expression "lkouse mouse" is nat used
to the tropics, in swamps, deserts, forests, mowtains and prairies. Mice eat a vari-
ety of foods, some oonsurnirrmg almost anything edible-seeds, vegetatiorrm, artha- it is precisely the "house mouseY%hiclln is normallly callled
pods and Besh when availabb. Tbeg are in tum preyed upon by a811 manner of larger "field nuice" or "'white mice" being seen as horizankd exten-
carnivorous mammals, rapacious birds and reptiles. Mice constitute the most tegory (see Bright and Bright 1969; Hunn 1476; Serllin
important prey group of any of the mamamais. t as other varieties, on a par with '%ouse mice"".
Mice mature relatively young; the house mouse typicallly is ready to mate two to , the folk concept 'mice'stands for what ordinary people see as a
three months after birth. Gestation periods, averaging about three weeks, is less ture" different horn scientific categories and identifi-
than two in some species. From l to 118 young comprise a litter, the size of the Bit- a m ('people call them MIECE'), and of its presumed
ter depending upan the species, the number oT3itlers already produced by the female
(the second or third is usually the largest) and the season. Breeding may take place
am any season in some species and be seasonallly restricted in others; in a widespmlead
species the climate of a given region is usually lthe determinant.
paedia entry For rmostse, one is struck by the mass of
Some species are social and live in common burrows or in colonies. Others are
solitary. Even in the social house mouse, however, excessive: crowding produces
metabolic disorders and abnormal behaviour patterns that may result in the deci-
mation of the population, a phenotnenon thought to be rebatedl to the well-knom maximum size of' a litter, on metabolic disorders
periodic '%uicidaI" migrations of lemmings to the sea @ee LEMMING]. overcrowding, and s o on. Oln the other hand, a great deal of
Many mice, notably the house mouse, seem to prefer dwellling in man-made s t w n which is essential to the everyday concept is missing. This

English).3 But there should also be another kind of c o m p d i m
turaI dictionaryE')which would explicate the everyday concept of '
5 . The Evidence for the Folk Conapt
How do we know that th
The methodology of
given folk macept L a ~ornplextopic which cannot kw discussed hare
length. (For more detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka (1985) and Chap
1I; see also Apresjan (197411992). I will, however, adduce here examples
difierent kinds of evidence that can be used).
Ta begin with, there
words and phrases s
ser"') documents the psycho-
cats, which is further supported
r sayings such as "when the
s that a reference to cats should
s a reference to mice should be
some componemt such as 'ani-
people live want to catch and
to many dictionaries, there is also a verb to mouse, which can
ct to mouse-hunting by cats (and perhaps ow1s),
activities: "00 go or move about softly in search
something, to prowl"'(OED), 'Yo search furtively for somethimg, to
use attests to the pqchological reality of the
seless, furtive movements in search of foad.
mome-ear, noted in m n y dictionaries, stands for "army of
t have soA hairy leaves" (LDOTEL), Obviously, this is
y with mouse ears, and thus it constitutes evi-
for the psychological reality of ears in the folk concept of m o w .
rly, the cornpound moasa-hit ('b plant of the genus Myosrrsw, esp.
nssnimw, Born the shape of its seed teceptade"",ED) attests to the
concept of mouse. (See d s o the reference to
e about "the thtee blind mice")).
e m t use of the word mouse to refer to a
iemce of certain aspects
s characteristic of mioe. In
a that '"he whole body looks
compact, light little '%ody"with a long
ck, light, noiseless movements, fib both
case d many other names of animals, lexical evidence comes also
of wards semantically though mot necessarily morplrolagically]~
names (in Cruse" (1 986) terminology, c c e n d o n ~ s " ) .
e is a whole Family OF "horse wards"
reins, stirrups, star, stud, steed,
ey, m ~ ~ t a ncavalry,
g, and so on (see Wierzbicka B985: 201). In
ch endchnyms (other than those
3 mouser), but there are words
a; these include scurry, squeak,
344 Lexical Semansfcs
nibbk, and perhaps p caw per. These words give evidence for various as
of the folk conoept, such as character
ties.
omo on phrases such as quiet as a
also a source of evidence. The first of these t
perceived quietness of mice, and the second, th
human houses as a place which (unlike a chu
nent source of f a d .
Another source of evidence is to be found in conventional metaphor
person [nomaBly a woman) who is called a! mowe is perceived
not very noticeable, not drawing attention to herself. As ment
metaphors of this kind are partly language
important aspects of the folk concept.
Often, valuable evidence comes fuam proverbs and c o r n o n sayin
such as the one about carts and i c e cited earlier.
Literature, in particular poetry, is also
although one which has to be used
ations can be separated fram shared
mixture of fantasy and stereotyped every
useful in this respect. For example, the w
mim, see how they run" highlight the importance of quick and ap
enartless movement in the h l k concept of kouse" and so does
lowing rhyme:
Hickory dickory dock,
The mouse ran up the c k k ,
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory dickory dwk.
Finally, we can mention ethnographic
such as h e appearance of mice in loommn car
conspicuous round ears); the schematic drawi
Pang )thin tail at the end of a compact, vi
little body; common children" games such as the
farmer's wife, a mouse, and cheese; and so on.
It is important to emphasize that t
established simply by putting direct qu
knowledge which we are trying to establish is tacik knowledge, which
den below the surface of conscious
the surface through painstaking, rneth
longed dialogue with a wumber of inr
more as a method of verification than as a direct "'dscoveuy
For example, one reviewer of the earlier explication of mfce (in
I I . The Semandcs of Natural Kind8 347
485) has objected to "the statement that mice make no noise when mov-
around'hnd pointed out that "many people think mice make scratchy,
'(Malt 1987: 266). Other informants with whom I have since
this point have iagwed with the reviewer, and the explication has
ended in the relevant mspect. I presume, however, that the reviewer
ea of the "scratchy, mstling noises" by exploring her own
tions rather than by asking large numbers of inifomants. Obviously,
and warking with informants. But
er, not the latter, which needs to
so needs to be stressed that methodical introspection can
widely used procedures hvolv-
particular with linguistic evidence of various kinds. (For
6. General Discussion
methodical exploration of folk concepts, using all available
evidence, allows us to delineate their contours with a precision
pearances to the contrary, is simply inawessible to an ency-
entry. The editor of an encyclopaedia has to decide, in an
include from the mass of
to arrange the information
d so on. In investigating folk
psiition is quite different,
the task of choosing what to includq
the full concept as it really is, using
trying to use exclusively slim-
ich is being explicated. These
ncept fully, and to do it as far as pos-
left for individual choices
pt accurately we need that attention
Zolkovskij (U964b1,who callled for
dividual words. From the present
view, however, the metaphor of a portrait is not fully apposite
artistic freedom. By cmtuast, an
houlld leave no freedom of choice;
er compared to that of an
ine of a statue or an artefact hid-
(1982: 3.54) has argued against ""the separation of dictionaries
opaedias" on the grounds that "there are no hard facts, and all

scienm is ethnoscience" (3371, and that, for example, "our present knowl-
edge of cats and elephants is as provisional, and specific to our culture, as
the definitions of words like care and taboo in the languages where they
omur" (337; see allso the exchange between Frawley 1981 and Haiman
1982). ]But the conclusion doesn't follow from the prerniss. The ency-
clopaedia entry for mouse quokd earlier may indeed be ""provisional'" '%spe-
cific to our culture", and, E would add, based on a number of somewhat
subjective and arbitrary choioes. Yet the purpose of an encyclopaedia
would not be served by replacing entries of this kind with the explication
of the folk concept d the kind outnined in this chapter. PwadmicaIly, of
the two, it is the dictionary entry$ not the encyclopaedia entry, which can
be said to be "objective'bd non-arbitrary, and to represent a '"ard fact",
Psychocultur;al fact, of course, not biological fact. An encyclopaedia entry
for mouse may be provisional, biased, and subjective in its choices and in
its emqdmses, but it doesn" aim at establishing psychocultural facts; it does
not aim at dimovering conceptual sltrwtures. Enqclopaedic knowledge is
cumulative and inexhaustible. By contrast, the meanings of words are dis-
crete and finite. They embody a special kind chF howledge [and pseudo-
knowledge, such as that about mice's fondness F l cFr cheese), and they
consdtute a vital point of rekrencc far both communication and cognition,
Bt is true that the meanings of names of living kinds-unlike, for ex-
ample, those of emotion t e r n 4 0 have a masure of indeterminacy, since
the amount of "folk knowledge" encapsulated in a naive conoept may vary
somewhat from speaker to speaker (see Gal 1973; Gardner 1476; Mays
1976; and also Locke 169W1959: 82). But there is a limit to this variation.
For example, information such as that mioe are ready to mate two or thee
months after birth, or that gestation period averages about hthree weeks,
cannot be part of anybody's "najve concept". It can, of course, be part of
their individual knowledge, but nol of that mnceplt which they themelves
see as a shared stereotype, on the basis of their life-experiences in the com-
munity (see Wierzbicka 1985: 212-18; Tyler 1978: 2331-48).
This is not to say that living kind concepts such as 'mice"ave, after all,
the same kind of semantic structure as, Tor example, emotion concepts. The
two domains are fundamentally different, and the greater variability of liv-
ing kind concepts constitutes one of the important diflerences between
them. But it doesn't follow from this that living kind concepts cannot be
defined (or explicated); and from an explication the differences separatirrmg
them from scientific concepts [and from scientitic knowledge) can be clearly
seen.
In rejecting the (theoretical) distinction between dictionaries and ency-
clopaedias Harman (1982) was in fact defending the view that natural kind
words such as mice or J F F o ~ s ~ s embody a great deal of "cuitural knowledge*
and that they could therefore be defined. In saying this, he was arguing
I d . The Semwdics of NQEUMIKind8 3491
against the earlier claims of Kripke (14'72-31, P u t n m (19751, and others,
including myself, that natural kind words are like proper names and cari-
not be defined. I bdieve now that Haiman is partly right, and that natural
kind words (such as mice] a n indeed be defined, explicating the cultural
knowledge encapsdded in them. (The reasons why P have abandoned my
I972 position in this regard are set out in Wiembicka (19851.1
But a line can be drawn between, culltural howledge which has become
deposited in language itself and other knowledge-whether scient'fi a c or
non-scientific. Hairnan argues that "the distinction between linguistic and
cultural knowledge" is misconceived, and I would partly agree with this, in
so far that, for example, the "ling~~istic"knowledge about mice, spelled out
in the explication proposed in this chapter, represents cultural knowledge.
But there is also knowledge about mice which is not part of the folk con-
cept reflected in language-and a line can be drawn between that knowl-
edge and the knowledge [and ideas] encapsulated in the word mouse itself.
The fact that different languages draw such boundaries in different ways
demonstrates that these boundaries can indeed be drawn. For example, if
Japanese doesn't distinguish lexically between mice and rats, or English
between clothes moths (in Polish, nroCe1 and other moths (in Polish, tmy]~,
this shows that semantic boundaries between differear, living kind concepts
do exist, and that they are different from those drawn by biologists.
Hajiman's claims that "dl science is ethnoscience" (1982: 337) alnd that
"the difference between everyday experience and scientific experience is a
digerence: in degree of precision and generality" do not affect the present
argument: the question is not how to draw the line betwen science and
etkuoscience, or between cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge, but
how to draw h e line between knowledge and ideas which are encoded in
language and knowledge and ideas which are not.
Trying to discover how knowledge (or at least basic, 'Youndationd" lknowll-
edge) is stored and organized in the human mind, we can rely in consider-
able measure on language. There may be concepts which are not lexicxlized
in natural language, but these are probably less common, less basic, less
' salient in a given speecln community than those which have achieved lexi-
calization; they are also less accessible to study. Words provide evidence for
the existence of concepts. Lexical sets, sharing a similar semantic structure,
provide evidence for llhe existence of cohesive conceptual wholes (or fields).
Ef it is hypothesized t b t knowledge is organized in the mind in the form of
"cognitive domains", then conoeptual fields detectable through semantic
analysis of the lexicon can be regarded as a guide to those domains.
 The organization of cognitive domains is reflected in language, aad
above all in the structure of the lexicon. The lexicon of a ianguag is the Semantics and Ethnobiology
speakers' fundamental icagnitive resource; it is a treasury where the shared
knowledge of the world, and the shared models off biollogical, mental, and
social aspects af life, are held.
Exploring ths: lexicon in a systematic and methodical way we can dk-
cover how "ordinary people" (in contrast to experts and scientists) con-
oeptuallize the world; and we can learn to discern the line which separates
tanguage-related everyday knowledge from the specialist's knowledge, 1. Introduction
which is--or should be-largely language-independent-
It is widely agreed today that 'cculture Voes nolt consist of things, people,
behavior, mi emotions', but the Eoms ar organization of these things in the
o;pEey"(Frake 1942: 85, with reference to Goodenough 19573.
ause disagreement is this: How can the orgarui-
he minds of people k di%orvered?
d yet much neglected-path to discovery lies
the area of language, and that there is a whole battery of linguistic tests
~ a different
l aspmts of the organization af
ople. In this chapter, E will try to show the
ach with respect to some of the basic issues

and detailed study of botanical and zoolagical nomencla-

world (especially that undertaken by Brent
ealed thak different societies differ corusid-
ceptualization of the biological universe; but it has also
of strikingly regular structural principles
hssifhcation which are quite generaIY"i(Berlin eeb ai. 1973:
nt lines, univenals have also been suggested by k i E

of eithnobiologjcal universals and the ensuing

ated interest in the conceptuaPization of plants
s, md they are largely responsible for the key position of this
domain in current anthropology. In pasticuiar, the recent inter-
which is rapidly becoming one of the most top-
ical issues in mgrmitive science, is focusing very much on this particular
domain (see e.g. Gelman 1992; Keil 1989; Hirshfeld and Gelman 1994). In
the asrent debate on the question of ""whether there are domain-specific
cognitive universals that amount for the peculiar kinds of regularities
apparent in folk systems of knowledge and belief. . .or whether those reg-
ularities are the product of general prooessing mechanisms that cross . . .
domains" (Atran 1990: 471, the domain of '"living kinds" is accorded a spe-
dal place and is often treated as a natural testing-ground.
One issue which attracts particular attention in this context is that of the
*Z?E F
Bgqg
e
D
R

" e w A
E - .: ;
-.
gpp
2L E*
;E!= e
z.
n
fgI f EE. Z:
ga3 Y"
a@
8. F 5
2 sg
2- ?-
E g g
8 g.g
I EB.
t;- w P,
m 4 E

8
' = - v l

g n s
a; g
i%8 @

5 % El
w &
* g5.
m
2 2-
25g
11987a) shows that direct questioning of infomants, and even expelrimenlhs
involving informants, can only be a subsidiary methodological tooll.
Information coming directly from informants is often superficial, unreli-
able, and mislleading. Linguistic tests based on methodical! examination of
usruyc (such as, hr cxampllc, bhosc crlvisuged in the elassic smudics by
Conklin (1962) and Frake (3962)) and on systematic examination of
lexical and grammatical evidence (such as those applied in Apresjan
(1374r'1992], Berlin (1992), or Dixon (19821 3 provide more reliable results.
To illustrate, in McCloskey and Glucksberg's (1978) sessions with college
students ilt emerged that 3 per cent of their informants said '"No"" to the
question "Are geese birds?'" whereas as rnany as 117 per cent said "Yes" ' 0
the question "Are bats birds?" McCloskey and Giucksberg draw from such
data the condusion that the category "bird" in English is fuzzy. In fact,
however, closer exwinadon of linguistic evidence shows that this category
is not fuzzy at all, and t h t while geese may be thought of as atypical birds,
they are none the bss conceptualized as 'b kind of bird", whereas b t s are
not conceptualized as birds at ail (see Chapter 4 and Wierzbicka 1985). The
crucial point is that, in certain circumstances, an individual goom can be
referre$ to as bird (as a turkey at a Christmas dinner may well be referred
to as "the bir8'1, whereas a bat cannot.
Similarly, all the infomants that McCloskey and Glucksberg worked
with agreed that butterflies" are iasecbs, while 3 @er a n t stated that bee3 were
not insects, and 7 per cent that bars were insects; for Psh, 60 pier oen2 of
infomants classifiedjeIlyfisSz!as fish, 110 per cent daasikd alKgators asfssh,
and 2 per cent stated that tuna and saImon are notfish. This, too, was imter-
prreted as evidence for the alleged fuzziness of human thinking, and for the
lack of clear boundaries between different categories.
But in fact such results am artefacts of the particular techniques of inves-
tigation, Generally speaking, directly dassiffimtory questions ("'Is an X a
I"?' or ""What is an X?"') are unhelpful in the malysis of folk taxonomies.
What is more illuminating and reliable is the acceptability of sentences
referring to individual creatures, such as "Look at that fish over there?" said
with respect to jellyfish, or "How many birds can you see?"with respect to
groups including geese, buts, or bees; as d l as other kinds d linguistic evi-
dence (such as those discussed in Apresjan 1974/899.2).
Similarly, Dougherty ((1978: 78-9) reports that all students in one of her
samples placed butterflies in, the insect category (as does, incidentally, Cruse
(3986: 136) in his discussion of English folk taxonomles]~.But presumably,
the same informants wouSd not say "Sea that insect over there?" or "What
a beautiful insec&l3%th reference to a bufterfly. This suggests that their
responses were confusing scientific categorization with everyday language,
and misrepresented the subconscious folk taxornomy reflected in their actual
use of language.
As pointed out by Boas (1911) and Sapir (19271, the categorization
reflected in language is unconscious, and it is for this very reason that lan-
guage is such a revealing and valuable guide to culture and to social psy-
chology. Direct qliwestioning of informants appeals to their ccmsciows
kmowlcdgc, not lo lhdr tacit k~aowlcdgc,and is unlikely to reveal much
about their unccmscious canceptuallization of the world, whicE1 is revealed
more clearly and reliably in linguistic structures and in linguistic usage (see
Randall and Hunn 1984: 3331."
3. Types 0f Linguistic Evidenoe
There am rnany types of linguistic evidence which provide clues to the con-
ceptualization af the biological universe. I will not try to undertake here a
wmprehensive survey or detailed discussion (see, however, Wierzbicka
19851, but the five Eypes listed below [Sections 3.11-3.5) are particularly
important. The last two of these have already been introduced, with respect
to mice, in Chapter I 1.
3.11. Ways of Referring
Qne @an refer to a rose as ""tat flower" or to a magpie as "that bird'" but
in ordinary (non-scientific) usage one cannot refer to a particular tree as
"that plant" or to a particular pmpkin, as "that vine". This shows that,
despite many daims to the contrary, a tree (singular) is not conceptualized
ins folk English as "a kind d plant", or a punrpkin, as "a kind of vine":
'Look at that plant over there! It's the oldest oak in this country.
Similar tests show, incidentally, that the recent wave of '"anti-Ros%:hianY'
thinking sometimes goes too far, as when, for example, it is claimed that in
the English folk taxonomy dissimilar creatures such as caterpillars and but-
tedies, or frogs end tadpoles, are classified together (Atran 19190: 153;
The difficulty in identifying lire fonns in diKerent rangnagas of the world is well illustrated
By Randall and Hum (1984: 334). I suggest that the operational critecia proposed in this chap-
ter WOUMlead 10 much more reliable results, although the resulting repertoires of 3ife forms
would not always coincide with those proposed by Berlin et aL (1973) or by C. Brown (1977,
1979). In particular, the diflerence between anonolelnemicallly and polglexernial~labelled
m a , whose va'aedity nu importance Randall and Hunn 1(1984:34131 question, sbodd wnbinue
to be regarded as important evidence pointing to direrences in the underlying conceptualiza-
tion. Eurthennl~re,it should be kept in mind that "~unctional"and 'ktilitilean" mncepts such
i t behaw differently (in Einguistic usage) from "'moaphotypes" such as
as vegeta€a/eo r j ~ ~often
free or 16irdJzfienbicka 1984, 1985, 198h). On the other hand, linguistic evidence shows that
some categories, for examplejffower, which have been judged as "functional"and disquali6ed
on this basis as a potential life form (Atran 1987~:32; C. B r o w 1977: 3201, may in Folk aax-
onoang play a role malogous to that of genuine, taxonomic life forms such as bird, fish. or
tree.
356 Lexical Semanrrrf ics
Gclon:~n auld lCoBcy 2991). For cxnlnl~lc,uole ~ a t ~ r say
~ o ti l l Emlgiish while
pointing to a tadpole or a c~terpikr:
*Look at that frog!
*Look at that butterflyl
Linguistic tests of this kind sllrow that while an AEsalim and a dachshwd,
despite their dissimilarity, are put into the same folk category (dog), a md-
pole and afrog, or a bburser$y and a caterpillar, are not.
3.2. Grammatical Congruity
k a c b (1964: 41) has drawn a taxonomic tree of what he calls "the English
language discriminations of living creatures", which implies that in English
gigs are "a kind of farm animals", farm csnimnraEs are "a kind of l i v e s t o ~ k ~ ~ ~
iilvexrock is "a kind of tame beast", tome beasr is '% kind of beast", and
beast is a kind of "laad creature",
Many different tests could be used to show that this is an arbitrary
scheme invented by the researcher, not a failthful representation of the clits-
shficatiom embodied in the English language, One of these tests Is tlnat of
"grmmatical congruity": pig is a countable noun, whereas livmt~ckis a
mass noun ((cf,rhree pigs versus 'fhree Hves~ocks);on these grounds alone
we can establish that a pig is not conceptualized in English as "a kind of
livestoek", just as an apple (countable noun] is not conceptuali~edas "a
kind of fruit" (mass noun), or a chicken (countable noun) as "a kind of
poultry" (see Wienzbicka 1984, 1985, 1988~;see also Section 10 below).
3.3;. Morphological Structure
The morphological structure of a linguistic expression provides an impor-
tant clue to its meaning. For example, as pointed out by Mel%uk es a l
41984: 411, the two Russian expressions leJEa ('wife's mother', one word)
and mar' feny Cwife's mother', lit. ' m o t h of wife', two words] do not haw
quite the same meaning. Both SeSZa and mat' feny specify a certain rela-
tionship, but seFEa in addition identifies a certain (recognizable) kind of
relationship and it is the latter, not the former, which is always used in the
innumrablle Russian jokes about mothers-in-law. Similarly, as pointed out
by Langacker 419931, the two English expressions wentan and deer m ~ a t
suggest different conceptuallizations. Likewise in Polish, wolowim, 'beef', is
not used in quite the same way as rnip.rn wolowe, literally 'ox meat' (refer-
entially, the same thing as 'beefy). For example, in the context of meat
exporls, one would be more likely to use the phrase msipso ~valsrwe,whereas
in the context of a dinner menu one would be more likely to use the noun
wofewfna. M i p o wolo~vedifferentiates this particular kind of meat from
12. Semaslrics and E b o 357
other possiblc kinds, wlucrcas walorrvi!~a idcnkifies a, recognizable standard
kind of food. Considerations of this kind svnpporlt the significance of the dis-
tinction between "secondary Ilexemes" (such as blue spruce or scrub oak)
and "primary Eexemes" (whether analysable, such as fulfp-tree, or
unanalysablc onirs, sucln as J J ~ ~ J Sor~ Jc/!,r),
~ drawn by Hcsbin, Brcedlove, and
Raven ( 1973).
3.4. Phraseological Evidence
To ducidate tl~eEnglish concept of, say, 'butterfly" we can draw on the
stock of common English phrases and secondary lexemes, such as, for
example, ''a sot5al butterfly", "butterfly kiss", ''bbuttefiy clip", or "butter-
fly stroke"; for 'rabbit' we can, and should, draw on phrases such as "breed
like rabbits'" "a rabbit warren", 'Yabbit teeth", "rabbit mouth", "run away
like a scared rabbit", and so on (see Jauncey 1990).
The fact that the common English collocations involving mlosrse difler
considerably from the Japanese collocations involving nezumi, houselrat',
suggests that the two folk concepts in question are very diflerent. Analysis
of the two sets of collocations shows in what respats these two folk con-
cepts differ (see Miyokawa 1989).
3.5. Lexical Evidence
English has many different "endonyms" of the word dog, that is to say,
words which are, so to speak, semantically derived from it (see Chapter
11 1)-firsf of all, names of kinds of dogs, such as ~pmfel,poodk,fox-terrier,
jbuSE$09, boxer, dachshund, and so on, but also other kinds of 'Yog-words",
such as bark, growl, muzzle, feash, and kernel. All these words provide evi-
dence for some aspects of the cot3ceptwl~zatlonlinked with the English
wad dog. The existenoe of special nouns for kinds of dogs reflects aspects
of the folk classification, and shows that the conceptual hierarchy is in
this case more complex than it is for any other part of the English folk-
biological system (see Wierzbicka 1985 and Section 7 below).
The h c t that English has numerous nouns for kinds of dogs (e.g. poodle,
xpmiel, boxer, and so on] but no nouns for kinds of cats or kinds of mice
suggests that the two domains are conceptua6xed differently. Moreover, it
suggests that the domain of dogs, but not cats or mice, involves a special
Bevel of taxonomic categorizationn (("'subgenus'" see Cecil Brown 1987;
Wieszbicka 11985: 232-6). Roughly spcalking, a word such as poodk OF
spaniel identifies a oertain kind of dog, whereas an expression such as bhxe
whak, white nnorsse, silver fox, or bush turkey identifies a kind of animal
[namelly, whale, mouse, fix, or turkey) and differentiates some subset or
quasi-subset of the class of animals corresponding to that kind from other

possible subsets. This distinction between positive identification and differ-
entiation, whose importan~ewas first pointed out by Berlin, Breedlove, and
Raven (1973), is. reflected in a number of ways in linguistic usage [see
Wiembicka 8985). It is also often reflected in diachrony, since a cuiturd
change may lead to a change in conventional conceptuallization, and henw
to a linguistic change such as that from AIsarian l(adj.3 dog to ASsabjEQn
(noun].
I am not saying that linguistic evidence is the only reliable guide b
human conceptualization in general and to human categorization in par-
ticdar. There are, of course, many other types of ethnographic evidence
that anthropologists have traditionally relied an. But linguistic evidence is
particuiart y revealing.
4. "Life Forms" in English Folk Zoology
How many "life forms" a n be found in the zoological folk taxonomy
embedded in the English Ilanguage? And by what criteria can we reccogniiue
them?
The first criterion proposed by Berlin, Breedlave, and Raven (1973) and
Berlin (89811) is that of number: life form categories are few in number. "Ibis
is useful, but it doesn't really help us to decide on individual cases (abr
example, on shg, ssrake, spider, or busterfly).
A second, and operationally much more useful, criterion is that of " p l y -
typicity": a life f o m is a category which is thought of as comprising mamy
different (named) kinds of entities. Pipplying this criterion to the folk zool-
ogy embedded in English, we could identify the fdliowing as life forms: srnC
ma/, bird, j k h , snake, and perhaps insect. All these words naturally invite
the question "'What kind of (animal, bird, fish, snake)?" and all are readily
used in reply to questions of the form "WWt is a Cplatypus, emu, salmon,
python)?" Interestingly, the words bug and worm are normally not used like
that; rather, they suggest a lack of interest in the identity of the creatures
in question:
There arc bugs on my windscreen.
?What kind of bugs?
There is a worm in that apple!
?What kind of worm?
In mast contexts, questions inquiring about the genus of b;ulg.s or worm
sound either jocular or scientific, which is not the case with unfamiliar
birds, fishes, or snakes, or with wnfmiliar animals in a zoo:
What kind of bir&fishr'snake~animan/?wor~bug
is that?
12. Semantics and EtEnobiolog 359
ernin, Breedlove, and Raven (19731 offer tflzammul as an example of a
form, and mention animal only as a ""unique beginner", not as a life
ut mmml-like q ~ d r u p e dcnmiwre,
, or amprbsibiom-is a scientific
, and doe~n'tbelong to the English folk taxonomy at all. This can
ed lby linguistic tests such as the following one:
Look at that animallbirdlfishl
"Look at that mmaikrquadrupe&amphibian!
cientific concepts such as mammal stand for dasses, not for individuals,
d it is remarkable that although educated speakers of English are, so ta
speak, bilingual (in "scientific English" and in "folk Engli~h'"~and can mix
elements from both in their speech, none the less they unconsciozlsly apply
different rules to them and in particular do not use scientific concepts such
as m a m a 1 with reference to individual creatures:
What a beautihl animalhirdIfialh!
*What a beautiful mammalEguadrupedlamphibian!
Using the same linguistic tests, we have to oonclude that aniinul is not a
"uarique beginner" in folk English, as it cannot be used with reference to
individual spiders or ants. For exampk, seeing an insect on sowbody%sol-
r one cannot say (except in jest):
*There is an animal on your collar.
Similarly, one cannot (seriously] say of a spider or a butterfly:
*What a beautiful animal?
"Look at that animal over there!
If &ere is ;a zoological "unique beginner" in ordinary English it is creamre,
not animal, animal being rather a life f o m , on a par with bird, fish,snake,
or &sect Qcf. phrases such as "animals and birds", or series of children's
books such as "Auimals of Australia", ""Birdsof Australia", and "'Fish of
AustmQia"').The ward creature is perhaps not used very often in colloqluial
English, but it is certainly there (especiallly in the plural) as shown by
phrases such as 'kfl creatures great and srnall"flr by sentences such as the
following one:
Diving in the Coral Sea, one can see all sorts of strange and fascinat-
ing creatures.
If the word creature did not exist in the English folk taxonomy reflected in
ordinary English we could still speak of a covert category: "omething that
can move and feel' (mavens senriew], opposed to the covert category oF
'things that grow out of tfne ground'.
Returning to anha!, in the non-scientific sense of the word, it is
360 Lexical Semmfic-v
interesting to note that. ir is not just a col'loqnuial eq
has sometimes been suggested in the literature, For ex
easily be referred to as an animal, whereas a spider
neither can a slug, a snail, or a butterfly, On the other hand, human b
are mammals, but they are not amimoh in the mryday sense of the
Atran (1987a: 55) writes: T o r the most part, vertebrate life f o m
spond to modern [scientiBc] classes: mammals, birds, fish, eL. . . .
often, folk views on the extensions of these life forms diffe
callly construed extensions of the corresponding dasses in
from the folk viewpoint, are rattnea marginal cases . . . bat, ostrich,
etc.'.
But in fact mammal is not a part of the folk-English tax
foEk English conrcept animd, whose extension is reallly quite
that of rnamrnoJ', does inc1ude whale and bas (as well
Furthermore, in the present-day folk-zoological system,
though a highly atypical one. In some ways, then, Englis
is closer to the scientific one than is usually assumed. In olther ways
ever, it is much further from it-but to sea this it must be recognize
words such as mammal or qundradped belang only to the language of
ence, and are not part of the English faRk taxonomy at ail.
It is worth redling in this connectjam Russell's (1948: 83) re
words such as dog or ant are probably learnt by oslnsi
such as quadruped or aniimajl ("in the sense in which it includes o
limpets") are definitely mot, Russell doesnY spell out the intende
iizatiann, and it might be mnje~tusredthat the distinction t
was similar to &at between ""Talk genera" and higher-I
presumably life form terns such as bird or tree are also learnt
ostensiom"; on the other hand, scientific concepts such
hn, or animal (in the sense including spiders] are cle
way. (CK Chapter 7.)
5. Are there Manogeneric "Life Forms"?
But if creatures such as spiders or snails are not thought o
(folk-English] life form do they come under? Clearly,
slrakes,@shes, or bids. Could we assume that they aw
om right?
Amesag the many different criteria for life Form whic
gested in the lirteraltpure the taxonomic level (the first one
"unique beginner") has often been mentioned (e.g. Atra
this criterion, spiders, ants, or snaih could count as life Bb
ever, they are not (lexicallly) polytypic: ordinary Engl
12. S"erir~anticsa d EfRnobia!ogy 361
nds of spiders, ants, or snails.
as redback spider, or funnel web spi-
tain circumstances9 '" saw a redback
is kind are elliptical, and redbnck is used here as
fier in the secondary lexeme ~ d b a c kspider, not as a primary Bexeme
o w right. To see this, it is enough to compare the aaeptabiiity of
e phrase a redback spider with that of *a swallow bird or *a troutjish.
But if we allowed ~t~ails, spiders, ants, or bats to count as "'manogeneric
life forms" "wan 11987b), we would be undermining the main operational
criterion we have for distinguishing folk genera from life forms: the lin-
of kinds) of t h latter. It s m s
Bin el a t 1973) that categories of
generics" rather t h n "monogeneric life forms",
that not all1 living kinds are thought of in
however shaU1~4w".Atran has argued expljc-
esemt an exhaustive partitioning of the local flora"
erics'hre, essentially, generics, not 'hmano-
im has to be rejected (see Berlin 1992: 21 1).
be rejected anyway, given that (in English, at least] bcrsk, vine,
rb are not taxonomic life f o m terns (and that, semanticallly,
r pumpkin ''a kind of vine").
ce of the categories under discussion
in their semantics), it might be best
eir special shtus (for example, by callling
e this). In any case, it is misleading m d
"manogeneric life fomsm",&e@;ause the notion "life
nk is particularly usefull and particularly revealing
ind includihng many kinds")-indeed per-
a kind of living thing
there are many kinds of things of this kind
all these kinds '%we their names"
(i.e. there is a word for every onc of Lhesc kinds)
6. "Life Forms" in English Folk Botany
ow more specifically to English folk botany, I will argue-in dis-
t with most other writers on the subject-that only one of all the
life forms usually mentioned in the literature is reallly thought of
kers of English as something that comes in many different kinds
an therefore be recognized as a tavronomic life farm, namely tree. Even
 12. Semonrics and EtJsaobioJ'ogy 363
362 Lexica/ Semanrics

urban dwellers in America who cannot tell an oak fro asked "What is lilac?'
whom tree is psychorogically moue salieot than oak, y "a kind of bush".
Domgherty 1978) are aware that there are many diffe though it can also
trees, as there are many different named kinds of bir& or $shes, and
question ""What kind of tree is this?'"s perfectly natural to them, unlike
question "'What kind of maple is this?"
This brings ws to another putative csiterion for distinguishing life fo
from folk genera: thalt of psychollogical salienoe. Berlin, Breedlove,
Raven (1973: 216) described generic taxa as the basic, and psychologi
most salient building-blocks of a11 folk taxonom
Dougharty (1978) and others have showtrr that for m
bird may be psychologically more salient than oak or
1 have argued in detail elsewhere wiembicka 19851, we do not have to ""Look at that tree!" (as mentioned eariier) but it is dif-
clude from this that for these speaken tree and bS
Psychological salience may be a characteristic feature of fol to imagim anybody who would say "Look at that vine!", referring to
many s p h communities (especially those living largely in a na
human-made, environment) but it need not be, and should not be,
for defining and distinguishing these categories [see Berlin 19
was, it would lose most of its value as a theoretical consltruct
for cross-linguistic cornpadsons. The criterion of polytypicity is b,and so on. Conversely, when asked 'What is
rably more useful and more illuminating. so on)?", they do not hesitate to reply "A kind
Assuming, then, that tree definitely is a life form in ordinary En '. Furthemore, inlfcrmants do not hesitate to accept sentences in
what of the other putative folk-botanical life forms-that is, what of s to an individual tulip, daisy, or daffodil, as in
shrub, vbze, moss, grms, kerb, fern, or muskroom!? In same sense, all1
words can indeed be regarded as botanical "1i ing growing out of the ground, but in
however, in which tree or biirdare life forms; Bh real as the "part" sense. Intuitively,
a taxonomic supercategory. Take, for example, the word gross. On
sometimes refer to "difirent grassesW",n the plural; but if ol above all, a kind of thing which grows out of the ground, and
mes In many different kinds, just as a free is a kind of thing which
speaker of English "What kinds of grasm are there?',
omes in many diffemnt kinds.
unable to comc up with difrerent names. Some might mention b
(1987a: 32) argues that "when living kinds enter the space of
but this is a secondary lexeme, not a primary one
For example, referring to grass, that someone "was sitting with human function anldl use, such as eating, gardening (weeds
For most ordinary speakers, grass is simply grass. Not only do th n), entertainment (pets, circus and
omic importance". E believe that,
know of any named kinds of grass, f hey are unaware that there are
names, a situation quite ~dlifferentfrom that pertaining to free. Sinnil
wvl~en one asks nativc spcakcrs or English ""What kind
there?" or "What kinds of ferns are there?", they look baffled and are ga
erallly unable to come up with any names.
With barshes, the situation is somewhat different. A
know that bushes can be of different kinds (e.g. lilac b
biackberry brrskes, thorn bcrslges, gsrae Gwkes, nt
but they do not think of roses, tihc, blackberries,
of bush". Tyler (1978: 190) has actually defined lilac as
364 Lexical Semmbfcs
generaly speaking, this is quite true, and as I have argued in detail
(Wierzbicka 1984, 1985, 198&;crE,linguistic tests show that, conoeptua1111y,
appEes are not "a kind of fruit", nor are CarroEs "a kind of vegetable'" But
the same linguistic tests show that just as oaks, birches, or maples are, con-
ceptually, "a kind of tree"~td@s,hJfodiQ, or roses are, conceptually, "a
kind of flower'" aand that both tree andflower are, conoegrtudly, compara-
ble "kinds of things that grow out of the ground".
The circumlocutjion '"thing which grows out of the ground"'may seem
clumsy and unnecessary: why not say, simply, plant? But the point is that
plan6 does not redly function as a botanical '%aique beginner'" ordinary
English. In particular, trees are not thought of as 'Vi kind of plant", anad
neither are mushroom. When asked whether a tree, or a nzuskroom, is a
kind of pbnt, educated informants may of cowwe reply in the affirmative,
but they do not aocept that plant wuld be used with reference to an indi-
vldual oak or birch tree (cf. Section 3.1 above):
Look at that plant over there!
Which one?
*That oak treeithat mushroom.
A pJ'ans (in the everyday sense of the word, and in the shingula
small (much smaller than a person], and it has to be green. A pro
p/t,trr is a snnall grecn IcaTy plant such as 2u poltcd plant; but a f
mw~kirsrom,is not just an atypical piant-it is not a pion$ at all (in
English sense of the word planr).
In English folk taxonomy, then, planit. is not a "unique begin
it is a category comparable to bush, darub, gross, or moss. As
cepts gross, mtuss, fern, or mushrclom it is quite obvious that they are
thought of as included in the concepts of some folk genera subordinate
them, bemuse in ordinary English there are no such [known, named)
genera subordinated to grass, moss, jFern, or mushsoom.
What are these categories, then? If they are not (taxon.ornic,
lik forms, could rhey be unamlialed folk genera, like cacesrs, to
shg? It seems clear that such a conclusion would be counter
[partly for reasons discussed below, in Section 7). It is lntu
more satisfying to conclude that categories off this kind are in
more like life forms than like folk genera, but that they are not
(polytypic) life forms.3 To sustain Ithis point of view, h o w m
12. Sewramsics and Efhnobiologg! 365
further construct: a "quasi-life form" as distinguished from a taxonomic,
'" We also need some additional criterion distinguish-
both "life forms" and "'quasi-life forms". I will try to
such a criterion in Section 9.
7. Plollytypic Genera
b m s (such as bird fish, tree, orflower) differ from
in being thought of as polytypic and in including many named
el. This characterization, however, needs to be sup-
nal criterion, referring to the position of a given
o other named categories. To see the need for such
itional criterion, it is useful to consider the concept of dog.
existence in English of nouns such as spaniel or poodle is a particu-
though not the only) piece of linguistic evidence showing that
ught of in English as coming in many diflerent kinds. ;But
rly, it would be absurd to conclude from this that dog is a life form in
par with ranixscl.!, bir4 and Jfs'sh, and that spaniel and poodie
, on a par with cot and COW.
hought of as "a kind of animalm,and the phrase
unds absurd, whereas "animals and birds" is per-
o the following sentences: "It's not a bird, it" an
dog, it's an animal",]
ts involving co-ordination show that d ~ are g felt,
~
e on the same level as cars or sheep, not on a higher level,
or p ~ o d i eare felt to be on a level lower than that d cat om.
es cats, but Mary prefers dogs7', versus "*John likes cats,
ary prefers spaniels"'.
ic evidence shows that primary lexemes such as spaniel or
belong to a s p i a l level lower than that of folk genera, though
than that of specific taxa, normally represented by secondary lex-
h as Siamese cat or blue spruce. I have suggested that this level,
y available only for taxa of particular cultural importanoe, can be
subgeneric level (Wierzbicka 1985: 232-61; and a similar suggestion
forward, independently, by Cecil Brown (1987). (Cf. Section 3.5
hen, that not only life forms but d s o some-rather excep-
be thought of as coming in many different kinds.
re, a proviso: not aEB biological categories thought of ;as
m e d kinds are life forms. If a biological category comes
narmed kinds but is treated linguistically [e.g. in conjoined phrases]
on the same level as folk genera (that is, as categories which do
366 Lexica! Semantics
not come in many named kinds] h e n it is not a life form but a (rather
exceptional and cdturallly salient) follk genus subdivided into named sub-
genera.
8. "Gestatants" a n d 'Distinctive Features"
It has sometimes been claimed in the fiterature that folk genera are con-
ceptlaali~das holistic indefinable '"estaltsv" whereas life f o m s can be
defined by m a n s of it few abstract features. For example, racoobssn is con-
m p t d i m d (it has been claimed) in terms of its unanalysed, global "ramon-
ness", whereas bird can be represented in the speaker's mind in terns of a
few abstract features swh as feathers, beak, and eggs
Nunn 1976: 588).
But in fact, it is intuitively f a from clear that
gestalt of a free, a bird, or a j s h , just as we have a glo
ire/. Indeed, elsewhere Hunn (1977: 47) himself men
wccoon, dog, and bmbr'e-bee-as an example of
not a "deductiveve"' one. And indeed, if we can have a
despite the wide variety of types of dogs, why sho
global image of a bird? In fact, Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (195%
offer bird as their prime example of a holistic c
and bill and feathers and characteristic legs. But .
feathers, illhe bill and legs are highilly predictable. ID coding
environment, one builds up an expectancy of all of these features
sent together. It is this unitary conception that has the conffigur
Gestalt property of 'birdness'." What can be said of bird
of tree,$& or snake, as well as of dog, squir
tions of life forms such as bird, free, or@sh a
md C O I I ~ C ~ Ana/ysia
~ I U O ~ are at least as long as (in fact lon
sqlrkrel (see Wierzbicka 1985). 1t is doubtful, therefore, t
be distinguished from folk genera along the lines of "a
tures" versus complex unitary gestallts.
Furthemore, as pointed out by Cecil Brown (1990:
have unitary gestalts for "cultural kinds" too, wh
ones s u ~ has bottle or jug or relatively complex ones such as
The impression that artefactual concepts of this kind c
terns of "a few abstract features" is just as illusory as
forms such as free or bfrd could be so defined (for detail
and other similar concepts, see Wierzbicka 1985).
12. Semianlies csmd Erhnobiology 367
9. "Hidden Matures" and "Proper Names"
One further possible difference between folk generic concepts and life
h r m concepts is that the former-but perhaps not the latter-imply a
"hidden nabure"ar an "underlying essence" which cannot be reduced to
any observable attributes (see Atran E9XTa,b,c; Keill 1489; Kdpke 1972;
Putnam 1975, 1977; Schwartz 8978). For example, we may think that
some particular bird is a spurow, but if other people, whose judgement
we trust, assure us that this bird only fooks like a sparrow but in Fact is
not a sparrow [but another kind of bird), we are quite likely to accept
their judgement, assuming that the "underlying essence" or the "hidden
nature" of tfis particullar bird is not that of a sparrow. But could we sim-
darly accept the judgement that a creature which looks and behaves like
a bird in f a d is not a bird?
codd probably accept the judgement that a tree which
e an oak in fact is not an oak (but another kind of tree), or
a flower which looks like a tulip in fact is not a tulip but another kind
ower. But would we similarly alcvoept that what Books to us like a tree
stance but from dose by, in good visibility conditions] is in
a tree but some other kind of thing growing out of the ground
it doesn't have the '"idden naturey' of a free)? Or that what looks
e a flower in fact is not a flower (but, say, a mushroom), because
have the "hidden nature" of aflonarefl Similar questions mn be
h respect to n~n-taxonomicquasi-life forms such as brrshes or
in each w e the answer appears to be in the negative: we assume
ow how to racognize a Sree, or ajower, or how to recognize a
and we would not defer in such matters to experts; but with
might well defer to an expert.
ests that the meaning offfolk generic words like sparrow or opllk
have some component absent fliom the meaning of life form wards.
as bird or tree, a component which would account for the assumption
idden nature". This component can be linked with the idea that a IFOR
enus-in contrast to life f o m s and to various other groupings-provides
" b r living things which belong to it. For example, the expli-
tion of the wad tiger could start as follows:
a kind of animal
there is a word for animals of this khnd
h i s word is tiger
assumes that the dividing line runs between living things and
3, has argued, in apparent support of a presumed '%idden nature'"
, that "a given tree may not be as large as a person, but atornab are
still \trees %y nature"'((39815: 302).4 But linguistic tests show that bonsais
are not thought of in English as "trees". Just as a crob-ap$e would not k
referred to, in ordinary English, as "an apple"', a bonsai free would not be
referred to as "a t r e " "5 a sapling could not be so referrled to):
*Look at that apple!
"Look at that tree'!
It is interesting to note that "unaffiliated generics" appew to behave in
this respect as the names of other generics, not like the names of life fern.
Far exmpPe, if we are told that a creature which looks like a bat (or a mail)
in fact is not a hat (or a snaio, we might well accept this claim--certainly
more readily than the claim that what looks to us like a bird, or a tree, is
in fact not a bird, or a tree.
In talking about a possiblc "lllddcn nanurc" of living kinds, 1 do nor[
lapcsvn no abandon EIIY lclarlier claim (Wierzbicke 1985) thal folk genera are
also definable in terms of specific features, such as stripes, claws, and teeth
in the case of a tiger. On the contrary, 1 hope to have shown that folk gen-
era can be fully defined, and that in this respect they do not differ fmm the
names of cdtwral kinds (or any other words). The definitions which I have
provided list the newssarry and sufficient campnents of a concept such as
"gerkr 'squitreB" not necessary and sufficient features of all the referents
d the words in question.
I cllaimd in earlier work (1972) that biological kind terms, unlike the
namnes of arlefacis, cannot be defined and are a kind of generic proper
name. In subsequent work (19&5)1,on the basis of trial and error, I reached
the conclusion that the names of natural kinds can be defined, and I showed
that the resulting definitions (or explications), though complex, are ;en more
complex than those of names of artefacts. My present suggestion is that
these two earlier stands are in fact not incompatible; they can be reconciled
if we sugpllement the definitions oF natural kind words with an additional
component hinting at their hidden underlying essence.
What I am suggesting now is that words such as tiger or squirrel may
have one additional semantic component, referring to an '%underlying
essence" of a given genus, an essence which is felt to be something dfier-
ent from, though usually manifested in, typical perceptual features, such as
stripes in the case of a tiger, or a bushy tail in the case of a squirrel. This
means that in saying of something "'This is a tiger (squirrel, etc.)" people
mean not only that the animal in question can be expected to have dl Ithe
features characteristic of tigers (squirrels, etc.] but also that it is an a n i d
Cf, also the Eollonlng statements: "Thus, 'tree' and 'sparrow' remain Folk kinds, with pre-
sumed essenws"((Amn 1W0:16); and "the definition~of lexical entries for living kinds at a l
I'ewekpertain only ;lo the essences ofkinds, not the actual appearance OF their denotata" (EAI1m~;an
E985: 301; see a h Atam 1990:61.
that people d l tigers (r(squ$reb, etc.]. 'This cor-
ds very closely to P'utnamrs C1975: 141-2) formula, summarized by
(19137a: 50) as foUows: '' 'natural kind' terms swh as "tiger' can be
nhwith the blSowing empirical presupposition:
bears a certain sameness relation (say, X b fhe
f of the things which speakers in the linguistic
ccasions labelled %tiger"."
quoted in Atran 1987a: 421 claims that caws differ
other amhals in "familiar ways, but iL is no part of the meaning of
hat cows say 'moo" and give milk, and Pook thus-and-so. These are
ecessary truths-a cow that did not say 'moo' would still be a cow,
o would one that did not give milk or was purple.",
But semantic theories equating "'meaning" with necessary truths which
rcfercnts ol'a given term arc so slerile that they have
in lexicotogical descriptions or any large bodies of
or in any other language of the world, and they have
eless as a basis for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural
s. By contrast, if we assume that stereotypes, expec-
s, and so on can also be part and parcel of a word's
a fim foundation on which empirical study of
(see e.g. Apresjan 1974/1992; Goddard 1992a;
; MeilrEuk el a!. 1984; Wierzbicka l985, 1 9 8 7 ~ ~
A purple cow which doesn't give milk or say ""moa"caan still be called a
an animal of the same kind (that is, "having
nimals mlled c o w which are not purple, da give
more serious and more complete explication
such as cow, see Wierzbicka 1985).
t taxonomic supercategories such as tree orflower
nent asserting "sameness" with respect to
is means that whlen we refer to something as
imply that the entity in question has some "under-
that of all entities called trees. It seems particw-
that we do mot attribute "underlying essences" to non-taxonomic
forms, such as Gush or gros~.A h s h , regardless of its observable
ertles, is not something which belongs to "the same kind" as things
pleoplle called bushes. But I think that what applies to bush or grass
B life forms, it is perhaps less clear that they are
'budderlying essences'" and the matter requires
ars, however, that they are not: if we see a
e a bird, or an animal, it is hard to innaginre that
e could be persuaded that in fact this creature is something else.
370 Lexical S"ernmtics
Atran (1987a: 48) writes: ""living kind terms are conceived as 'phenome-
nal kindshhose intrinsic nature, or (to use Locke? notion] 'real essence'
is presumed, even if unhown"'. For folk genera (e.g. squirrel or oak) this
is convincing, but it Is inconceivablle that bushe8 may haw a ''real essenw"
of a bush, or that bugs may have a "real essence" of a bug. It is less incon-
oeivable, but still unlikely, that trees may have a "real essence" of a tree,
and b i d , of a bird. Presumably, the idea of a '%real essenay"as somehirrmg
to do with the notion: of oldgin and of inherited hidden properties: a cow is
a COW primarily because it "comes from" a cow. By contraslt, artefacts dm't
U I ar11cfacls and lo solrnc extclit the samc applies even to life
c o ~ u e~ ~ O D~LUler
forms (e.8. a free doesn't have to "come from" another tree, and a'bush
doesn't have to "come from" another bwh).
It is interesting to mention in this wnruecltion a feature of Australiaa
AborjgitraP languages, which links folk genera with proper names and per-
haps with an implied "hidden nature". In some of these languages one can
ask about the "name" of a living, thing in thre same way as one can ask
about the name of a penon @.g. "What name?" in Yankunytjatjara; see
Goddard 1992a: 171, soliciting in this way an answer identilfjiing a folk
genus. Since questions of this kind can be asked neither with respect to life
forms (trees, birds:,etc.) nor with respect to artefacts [Goddasd, personal
cornmication) a distinction appears to be d r a m between h l k genera and
everything dse. This fact supports the psychological reality of folk pneric
concepts and the absolute character of the distinction between folk genera
and life farms. It also supports the idea that folk genera are seen as a kinid
of "'proper name" (in fact the '%Aname"; we Berlin 1992: 6%) which can-
not be reduced to a set of observable properties and which is linked with ;a
presumed "underlying essencey'.
10. Living Things and Artefacts-Similar or Radically
Different?
Atran (11987a: 28) argues that different cognitive domains may have differ-
ent types of semantics, and that, in particular, the semantics of living things
is different from the semantics of artefacts. Accordingly, "'in work am-
c e r d with folk categorization researchers should clearly distinguish
between the conceptual structure of living kinds and living kind terns as
opposed to that of, say, artifacts and artifact terns'" He criticizes the bulk
of the literature on human: categorizaltion for taking it for granted that what
hdds for f d k biology holds also for the domain of artefacts.
According to Atran, BYne difd;erenws between living things and arkelacts
have to do, first, with the question of "hidden naliureybdrrd, second, with
the levels of categorization.
12 Semantics and Ethnobidogy 371
The notion that not only living things but also artefacts can be said to
ave a "hidden nature" is due to Putnarrr, who has argued that words such
i!% chair, or illoffjlecannot be "dehed by conjunctions, or possibly
of properties" '(11975: 1601):
perad is clot ~ " p o a y m ~with
w s any description-not even loosely synonymous with
loose description. When we use the word p ~ a c i !we~ intend to refer t o whatever
he same mfure as the normal! examples of the locali pencils in, the actual wodd.
Pencil is just as hdexictd as w t e r or goIdd5 (1974: 1621
As poirrtcd auk by Scl~~iurPd (19781, Iuowcwcr, tbc twu cascs-[hat or nab-
wal kinds and that of namles of arleil~cts-are by no nzeans parallell. It may
make sense, intuitively, to attribute a presumed "hidden nature" to lemons
or ffgers, but certainly not to chairs or pencils. "'What makes something a
pencil are superficial characteristics such as a certain farm and function.
These is nothing underlying about these features"(Schwartz 1978: 571).
Similarly, Atran (19870: 41) dismisses the idea of any "hidden nature"
supposedly implied by names off artefacts {("Talkof artifact 'natures'is idle
welll"], and he points out that "unlike living kind categories, labelled arti-
ct concepts are not meant to classify particular items. Instead, they dis-
criminate mental plans for serving functions" (r(198Ta:42).6
H hope to have demonstrated wierzbicka 1985) that the meaning of nnat-
a1 kind words such as lemon and sigigeu can be arualysed as fully and pre-
nsely es that of names of artefacts such as penti/# cup, or bora"~le. In both
cases, what is involved is not a "conjunction" of properties but a structured
Puttlam's idea aham not only natural kind terns but also names of artefacts imply an
"underlying essence'hplpears to be supported by Hunn 1(1987).But in fact, when Hunn (1987:
147) s p k s of a "cultural essence" shared by artefacts OFa given hype, and when he p i n t s
ant that "having a flat surface'' may be "@IT the essence of 'table' . . . as tbat is essential 10 a
table functioning as such", he is taking of something quite different from the presumed
'%nderlyir?g essence" or ""hidden nature" of folk genera. H u m (1987: 1417) argues (against
Atram] tbat "the 'virtual nature' of a concept such as 'pine' is open to modification on the
basis of additional experience. The possibility oF encounterirug a truly coneless pine cannot be
d e d our a priori. Thus "ones' are an empirically contingent feature of "pineness'." I tbhk
these arguments are valid, but they are not incompatiblewith the idea that the ooncept o l p h e
Indudes a refenenw to cones, and that if a comeless tree was calmed a p k e this would imply
that it was seen as an atypical t r ~ eof the same k h d as those trees which are called pime3 and
which would nonnaliy be expected to Rave cones. I hope to have shown in my study of cups,
mugs, and related conoepts wienbicka 1985) that names olarkfacts do indeed incllude neo-
~ssary((oressential] features, as wen as prototypical ones; but these features should be distin-
"
M s h d [ram the assumed '"idden essence" contempkated by Putnam, Schwartz, and Atran.
Actually, I don't think that Scbwartz is quite right in referring to both farm and function
as ""sua~eriiciallcharactedstics". Tbe: function of a "cultural kind" such as, for example, stool
(in contrast to ckair) can be wry oomp!ex and far From obvious. LkualPy, native speakers are
mat immediately a m r e why stools can be bath much bigher and much lower than chairs [e.;g.
bar SSOOLS versus Jao~~toaSs]. Some a s p i s of the function of a cultural kind can be quite "hid-
&*, too Qe.g. the fact that stools are meant for "doirug somethi&', not just for sitting com-
farlably, with the upwr legs supported om the seat and the feet on the ground). Brut this is
difFerent from the presumplion of a hidden "real esmoe", which native speakers may nol
know at all, as in the case of living kinds.
332 Lexical Semantics
g 12. Semunfi:s and EfEmobio!ogy
network, with its own logic, involving both essential and plrototyp
tures and ~omprisingthe causal relations betwen the individual
which explain their mutual presence (see also Keill 1989: 267). The fa
it may be Justified to add one further component (accounting for the
den nature") to the explications of lemons or tigers but not to those o
cib or horsSes does not cliiange in any way the rrccd for L l n r full cxpliicaYa
of the folk concept. Nos does it dellract from the deep analogies betw
the natural kind concepts and cultural kind concepts demonstrated in
numerous explications given in Wierxbicka (1985).
As for the levels of categorization, Atran argues that '%ierarchical
ing of living kinds is apparently unique lo that domain" (1987a:
corresponds also to Hunn's (1987: 1471 position on this point: 'V a
Atran that the phenomenal reality beneath folk-biological class~ficat
does exhibit unique features. . . Most notably, a transitive
ever shallow) is to be expected in the classification of Rora
I believc this is correct. In hct, Atran's and Hwnn's vicw
ness of hierarchicd ranking to the domain of living things corres
closdy to the claims put forward in Wierzbicka (1984). As I hope to
demonstrated in a number of works (e.g. Wierzbicka 1984, 1985, 19
linguistic tests show that in the area of artefacts there are no "supercat
ories" corresponding to the bliollogical rank of life form. Semanti
spooas are not a kind of culfery or a kind of tableware, cups are not a
of cont~iner,flrrblEes are not a kind offitmilure, skirt8 are not a kind of
in#, and dolts or rattles are not a kind of toy. Concepts such asfur
cjr10thing or toy are not taxonomic supercategories in the way that ba
taxonomic supercategory for swatlaw or pmrot, power for tul@ or rose,
treeEoroukormp!e. , "fuzzy". But a bottlFe is always a bobrb, as much as a dog is
I have argued that there are other types of supercategories in the dom
of artefacts, but that none of these types can be regarded as taxonomic, t
is, based on the concept of KIND:
To summarize the discussion of nontaxonomic supercaliegories, purely func
mncepts such as toy are defined in tems of what for; collllectiva-singwlaria t
such as Jwrwitilrsre are defined in terns of what for and where; coilecti
tantum such as !eftovers are defined in terns of where and why; and
munutables esuch as mediches are defined in terms of what For and where
additiou, all four of these types of non-taxonomic supercategory are d
tems of the mode of use: functional concepts stand for individual indivis
collectiva-singuiaria Itanturn stand for groups of indivisible things; mlli~tiva
ralia Itanturn stand for groups of things, divisible or not; and pseudo-con
stand for "stufEs" and divisible things. (Wienbicka 1984: 325)
I have also argued, as Atran (1987a: 42) does, that (at the bvel d su
categories) natural kind categories are not "fuzzyy' in the way artefa
kinds are (see Wierzbicka 1984: 3118).
373
ktran (1987~~'~ links the greater "fuminess'bf aptefactua! concepts with
a lack of presumption of "hidden natmesY'ar"underlying essences'" 1have
argued, however, that life forms don't carry such a presumption either. The
presumption of "hidden natures" is a characteristic feature of folk generic
concepts, not of all natural kind concepts. The "fuzziness" of artefactwal
supscalcgories is cxplaiued, I bclicvc, by i l h ~fact llrat they are not taxo-
nomic. Eliologilcall supercakgorles such as rrsre or bird are not "fuzzy'hot
because they imply some "hidden nature" but because they stand for "kinds
of things'"superkinds") rather than for heterogeneous collections, groups,
Furthermore, cultural kinds such as chair, borrle, or bicycle are not nec-
essarily any more 'Tuzzy" than living kinds such as dog or wiIlow. 1 do not
accept the argument that "one and the same item can literally be an
instance of 'waste paper basket' in one context and 'stooE' in another if ori-
enlted EBifEerently" or that 'Yt is the fact that artifacts are defined by the
functions they serve, rather than by any inherent perceptual properties, that
allows a given (morphologically selfsame) item to belong to different cate-
gories of artifacts in different circumstances. But, e.g., a dog is always a
19510: 57). As J. Lyons's (1977) tern "cultural klndY'suggests,
bicycle is not defined exclusively by the function it serves but
by its f o m (cf. the definitions in Wierzbicka 1485). It is only artefac-
egories (such as Soy, weapon, or ~ekfcle)which are defined
m s of their fmctions-and these categories can indeed be
heir range of reference). The same object, e.g, a knge> can be
ither a weapon or piece of cutlery (or a k f t d e n rstewil), because
supercategories such as weapon, mtlery, a r utensil are indeed
allways a dog. I agree, therefore, with Cecil Brow's (1990: 38) argument
that bottles or scwwdriufers imply as much "discontinuity"' in the world as
squirrels or racoons (and that they, too, evoke gestalts). It is not the pres-
ence or absence of gestalts or the degree of "fuzziness" which distinguishes
living kinds from cultural kinds. It is probably true, as Schwartz (1978) and
Atran 91990: 55) argue, that any '"tak of artefact natures is idle", but CUI-
tural kind comepts can be discrete, and can imply clusters of perceptual
properties, without implying any '"hidden e~senoe".~
Finally, living kind concepts are subject to inter-speaker variability and
can expand with the speaker's experienoe with denotsrta (a process which
Keil(1984: 535 sluggests that "the dividing line lbetwsen artifacns and natural kinds cam be
fuzzy in many cases", k c a w e complex machines, such as televisions, automobiles, and, above
all, computers ''take on many of the properties that supposedly distinguish natural kinds from
artilfacts"".This is an interesting point, deserving further investigation. It seems to me, how-
ever, that the two caws are mat truly parallel. Folk genera names such as tiger or Eemon appear
to attribute to the "'kinds" in question an underlying essence which cannon be Fully spelled out
in wonds; but the names of complex artefacts do not seem to carry any such implications.
 12. Sewansics and E t h ~ ~ b i o i ~ 375
gy

should not be confused with any increase in scientific knowledge); a s h i -
lar variability does not seem to occur in the domain of artefacts (although
timcs 01' kcllrniical invcrr~iomss u ~ l as
i ~eSe~isior~,
rudiu, or C ' W I S Y ~ raise
~S~~
interesting problems in this connection, too, as they do with respect to "hirid-
den natures"; see Keil 1989).
But as mentioned earlier, the mast fundatnentaY difference between the
two domains (natural kinds versus names of artefacts) lies m i the phenom-
enon of a transitive hierarchy of categories, which is unique to the r e a h d
living things (although in thalt realm, too, there are many concepts which
are not included in that transitive hierarchy, such as, for example, bwxh).
of hidden nature cannot be extended to [taxonomic) Eife form concepts,
such as tree or bird, or to quasi-life forn loanmptts, such as Bwh or gas.?.
AG tile same time, 1 haw supported Gcil Brown's (l990) claim that cul-
Swat kinds may imply a Bevel of discreteness and discontinuity attributed
by other scholars (e.g. Atran] only to living kinds. They may also imply
gestalts as much as living kinds do.
Above 21111%1 hope ]I have shown that linguistic tests can throw important
light on the basic issues in the study of human categorizattion in general and
etlhnobiolagiml categorization in particular; and that they can be used
eflmtively as a source of verification, documentation, and insight.

Despilte the intensive and wry fruitful work of the last two decade;, the
area of folk-biological categorization stilll sullfen from a good deal of con-
ceptual loanfusion. This confusion is due very largely to the fact that folk-
biological taxonomies ase frequently studied in the abs~kact,without t h
support of linguistic tests and linguistic evidence.
From lack of attention to linguistic evidence, scientific concepts such as
m m l or qwdrupe$ continue to be confused with folk cancepb such as
a~imakthe scientific senses of the words onimai and pbvrt cantinue not to
be distinguished from their everyday sense; and categories thought of as
polytypic, such as bird or tree, continue not to be distinguished from cate-
gories which in everyday I m p a g e are not treated as polytypic at all [such
as b~xh,grass, or mos8).
I have argued before (1984, 1985) and again here that the domain of liv-
ing things is unique in presenting ranking taxonomies of primary Bexemm,
and that, as Atram (19875: 306) put it, '"science and common sense consti-
tute logidly independent approaches to knowledge, despite their subtle
and pervasive interactions in West~ernsociety"". have also argued, in agrela
ment with Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven (1973) and Berlin (1992)9that the
categories of life form and folk genus are non-arbitrary and can be identi-
fied on the basis of clear, absolute criteria. I have disputed, however, the
claim that biological life f o m s "partition the everyday wodd of h u m
experience" (Atran 1987b: 31 I), and I have questioned the correctness of
the widely recognized repertoire of English life forms, including items such
as bush, vine, moss, g~ass,herb, mammal, or bwg.
I have supported Atran's claim that folk genera-unlike artefacts-imply
a "'hidden nature", and I have linked this Implication with Putnam and
Kripke's Idea of terns for living things being a kind of proper name, while
at the same time maintaining my eadier claim (1985) that all natural kind
terms can, and should, be def ned. I have also argued that the presumption
The Semantics of
 13 Semantic Rules in Grammar

As I have tried to show [see in particular Chapter 51, a ward's syntactic

khaviour reflects, and depends on, its meaning. Thus, it Is no accident that
one can mk,beg, or pply FOR something, but not order, demand, or corn-
m n d FOR something; or that one can both order and ask someone TO ;DICE
something, but not demofid or apply someone TO DO something.
So, the grammatical hhaviour of words is governed by subtle semantic
"rules"; and although at first sight these rulles may appear open to exwp-
tiorus, on further investigation even the appamt exceptions turn out to be
a n t i d l y motivated, For example, as I have s h o w elsewhere, there are
d semantic reasons why we say "the shirt IS old" h t "the trousers ARE
'"ice IS w a m Y ' b u t"beam ARB warm", ox ''wheat HX good'' but:
s ARE goad"' (Wierzbicka 1985, ch. 43.
augacker (1987: 47-18) writes:
stic theorists place mwch emphasis a n ithe importance af making strong
rical claims. Severall related Factors determine whether a theory or description
8es this requirement. For one thing, it should make clear predictions: the nature
orting or disconfirming evidence should be readily apparent. A theory must
restrictive, by limiting descriptive options to a narrowly specified range that
out many ~onceivableaIterrrmatives. ]It shovlid further provide a principled

.= eans of choosing among competing analyses.

Having said this, however, Langackex backs dowm (ibid.):
Far Ilnguistls, to demand of a rule, principk, or definition what might
d abs~/ueepredic~obili~y. What this means, roughly, is that a statement per-
a certain class must be valid for all and only the members of that class if
accepted as having any predictive value at all. Statements that achieve
predictability are obviously desirable, for they make the strongest and
empirical claims. Yet it cannot simply be assumed that language invari-
typically lends iWlf to statements of tlhL kind. In fact it does not.
ctatlonn of absolute predictability are sometimes unreasonable for natural lan-
and ~ommonEylead to erroneous ~am~usimms, dubious ciaims, or conceptual
on. We must scale our expe~tationsdown to a level of predictability that is
riate and realistic for the subject matter.
380 The Semantics of Grammar
According to Langacker, them, the nature of language is smch that it is
"unreaQistic" to expect "absolute predictability"'.
m e expatation of absolute predictability has beem prominent in diachronic and
typological studies, and has not fared well, The most famous example is the
neogiramarian doctrine that valid sound laws have a o "true" exceptions: apparent
exceptions can always be explained by analogy or by the operation of another
sound law yet to be discovered, or in some other manner. Today it is generally
agreed ghat this doctrine is wrong, whatever its buristic merits; certain types of
changes spread by lexical diffusion, typically Peavirrmg residues, so at no sllage d m a
sound law necessarily hold true for aPI eligible forms [see Labev 1981 for a general
review).
En Langaieker's view, what applies to putative "sound laws" also applies
Go rules of grammar (1987: 49):
h expectation of absolute ~edictabili(iY is dso apparent in the requirement that
certain rules (syntactic rules in particular) be fully productive. The validity of a
gammatical generalization is often denied unless one can predict exactly which
foms it does and does not apply to.
The expectation of "absollute precliictabillity)' is l i n h d , in Langacker's
view, with the outdated ""Aristotelian'bodel of ~ategorisatiomn,to which he
o p p o s e e a s more appropriate and more valid-the ' T o s ~ h i a n "prcatoltype
model (ibid.):
The standard criterl-attribute model of categorization also exemplifies an expee-
tation of absolute predictability. If the model is interpreted slrictly, a81 and only the
members of a class or category will possess the entire list of criterid properties,
which thereby achieves absolute predicubility with respect to class membership. We
have already questioned the appropriateness of this model for linguistic cakgork-
tion. . .. The prototype model offers a more realistic account in many instan=, but
adopting it implies that class membership is not predictable in, absolute ferns: it is
a matter of degree, decreasing as an entity deviates from b e prototype, with no ape-
cif c cutor point lbeyond which speakers alaruptig become incapable oFpemiving a
similarity and thus assimilating an entity to the category.
But are expectations of absolute predictability aiwoys unrealistic? I do noit
wish to defend the old dogma that sound laws have n o exceptions; but must
we s priori assume that there is no absolute predictability anywhere in lan-
guage? T o my mind, slatetnenls such as the following take caution too far:
cognitive grammar emphasizes the importance of factors that make it unreasonable
to expect rule applicability to be predictable in absolute terns. (ibid.)
The questiosn should rather be what kind of kiagulistic rules can be truly pre-
dictive.
Langacker himelf acknowledges that "generality is a virtue" (1987: 451,
and he elaborates:
Linguists properly seek general rules and universal principles. They merit our plau-
dits in stating obvious regularities, and our enwuragement in finding others that
are less madilly apparent. And munting heavily in favour of a theory or description
is ks ability to capture nonobvious generallizations or to unify seemingly diverse
phenomena.
I agree with Langacker that "we must recogmize that language is a m h -
ture of regularity and imgularity", a d also that "Linguists have occa-
ally invoked suspicious devices to make things appear more regular
they really areY"Cibid.). But lbeilng a n empirical science, lirrpistics
-like any other empirical sciencx+look for true generalizations.
2. Semantic Rules: The Past Practice
When arguing that grammatical categories d o not have neat semantic cor-
relates linguists have often invoked pairs such as oats and wheat. F o r ex-
ample, Elwdsom (1976: 6) wrote:
k second reason far bdieving in tho separation of syntax from semantics, as
autonomous levels, is that the same phenomena can require different chssificacatians
on the two levels. The clcarest instance of this that 1know of is number in the noun-
phrase, The argument runs as follow: there are some noun-phrases (or mouns-it
&s no difference to the argument) which are syntacticalIy plural but not semn-
tically pllural [such as these bo!hrtmm scaar'es, which may be ambiguous semantically
but in one of its readings must be as singular semantically as, say, this bathraom
weighkg machine; see also these oafs versus t h b wheat];and there are others which
are semantically plural but not syntactically plural, notably the following two cases.
Fitst, there are noun-phases with collective heads, such as the commitfee, which
a n occur witb verbs like disperse, which need to be marked as occurring only with
subjects that refer to a group of individuals-4.e. semantically plural subjects; and
second, there art: noun-phrases with heads like heap, as in a hrge h e ~ op f l ~ g swhich
,
can wcur in a reciprocal construction ('PI large heap of logs were piled on top of
each other'), in contrast with a large heap o f s a ~ dwhich
, has to be semantical.llysin-
gular. I take it as axiomatic that this kind of situation requires two diKerent levels,
each with ilis own classifimtion of the items concerned.
The argument goes as follows: there are two grammatical categories (sin-
gular and plural) anad two semantic categories {singular amd plural). The
grammaticas singular does not always correspond ta the semantic singular,
and the grammatical plural does not always correspond to the semantic
plural, so syntax and semantics have to be separated from each other as
two independent levels.
In my view, the examples discussed in this passage show something
rather different; namely that the distinction between "'sngular'bnd
"plural" is simplistic and does not fit the English language. Nouns such as

heap or cmmittee are not '%emantimlly plural but syntactically not fluran"".
Semantically, words of this kind stand for ''rnuYtifple entitiesy', or "emtities
composed of other entities"-and their grammatical behaviour reflects Ithis.
Far from being semantically arbitrary, the grammatical behaviour of words
of this kind admirably reflects their distinclt semantic nature. (See Jespersen
19241'19128: 19161,)
Consider allso the following passage of GBeason's (1969: 224) classic
work:
There Is an old story of a man who was asked, presumably by a grammarian,
whether psr~ftswas singular or plural. His wpPy was, 'Well, mine are plural at the
bottom, and singular at the top." Ultimately, the confusion, which many others
have also felt, rests not so mwh in the shape of the garment as in the grammar of
English. The object named is as clearly am entity as, say, a shirt or a mat. This
does not matter; by a cowentiom of English, pan& is plural. Interesting!y enough,
this Is not an isolated case; compare JmW#ers, breeches, shorts, shcks, etc. This whole
group of words are gramaticaiully plrl~ralwith no evident semantic justification ...
the distinction between these subclasses OF nouns is purely arbitrary.
How can one hill to recognize that words such as pmfs, trousers,
6reeches, shorts, slacks ( a d also scisgotx, gaggles, g1ass"es, tweezers9 f [ ~ ~ g s ,
forceps, and so on] d o form a semantic class, as well as a grammatical one?
G r a m a t i d l y , t h s e nouns have two shared features. They are all plazrah
tantun, but-unlike oats, chiwes, or cogce-grmads-they are not uncount-
able; they can be counted, but they require a special dasifier: a pair o$
Semantically, all these nouns designate objects which are seen as having
two identical parts, joined together, and performing the same function.
The word pmts is neither singular nor plural. Rather, it belongs bo a sep
arate category (one m o n g several categories of English nouns) which can
be called "'dual"'. The semantic unity of this group seems intuitively obvi-
ow-but we ctrwldn%articulate this intuition if we were resltricted to crude,
a priori semantic categories like '%emantically singular" and "semantially
pluran"'.
It is one thing, however, to acknowledge the semantic basis of a clws
such as the one including trousers, s c h ~ o r and ~ , so on, and another, to
maintain that the semantic rule which assigns nouns to this class is
"absolutely predictive'" For example, Langacker (1987: 473 is willing to do
the former but not, apparently, the latter.
]It is . . . fallacious to assume that a phenomenenon is purely "syntac~ica'justbecause
it is nonuniversal. For instanm, it is a matter of cowention (not cognitive
sity) that scissorsppang gimses, bimocuhrs, erc. are plural in form (and Bargely in
behaviour), but contra Hudson (19T&: 61, this does not imply that '"syntactic n u -
Iber" is distimct from semantic number or that syntax constitutes an autonomous
component of grammar. The plurality of these expressions reflects canventiomal
imagery: they highlight the bipartite character of the objects named, so the a s s q -
13. Semanxic R~uIesin Grammar 383
tion that they are semanticallly singular is incorrect. Contrasting foms like noxfrifs
vs. I ~ D S6P~, t d b ~ r t ~VS,
c kSs Z S ~ Q ~ Ystars ~ cowreEhrion, etc. similarly construe
S O ~ 'VS.
the conceived entity by emphasizing either internall multiplicity or overavll unity. The
existence d an autonomous syntactic compomnt hardly follows from the convemu-
tiandiffy of such images.
Nouils such as trousers or scissors do indeed "highlight the bipartite char-
acter of the objects named" (Wierzbicka 1985: 322-41. But this generalliza-
tion is not just an approximation open to counter-examples. Pn rmny
experience, rules which are truly semantic in nature do not admit excep-
tions. If the grammatical class in question is governed by a semantic rule,
then I would expect this rule to be '%absolutelypredictive'" 1 will try to show
that the various counter-examples which come to mind are in fact appar-
ent rather than real. [See also Wierzbicka 1993e.)
When we compare the ""dal" noun trousers with the "singular'koun shirt
the reason for their different grammatical behaviour seems to b e d l e a s o n
notwithstanding-crystal clear: trousers have a "bbipartite"sstmcture while
shirts are essentially "unitary" ob$eeds. Of course, one could argue that
shirts have sleeves, and that the role of sleeves in a shirt is analogous to
that of trouser legs in trousers, but it seem intuitively obvious that the two
Gaises are difirenli: sleeves are not as essential to the function of a shirt as
trowser legs are Eo the function of trousers (one can imagine a sleeveless
shirt, but not legless trousers).
But what about sStorrrs'2 And what about " h ~ t p ~ ~ npanfliesI
t ~ " , undie~,or
c b ? Trousers, jeans, slacks, and so on have separate coverings for the
and these coverings constitute a large part of the object. Stretching
facts a little bit, one could make the same argument far shorts. But
rs m d briejFsr don't have to have any separate coverings for the
why do they, too, belong to the same grammatical class as trousers
caul-se, rsnderpmrs still haw two separate "holes'" one for each leg;
ut why aw \these holes more important than the "holes" far arms in a
kt?Furthermore, why are they more important than the two 'kups" in a
a, which would seem to tre quite essential to the function of the garment
Langacker w o l d probably appeal at this point to c'conventional
imagery"'. People, h a t is, native speakers of English, think of underpantx
and shorts in terns of a '"bipartite structure", but they don't think of s h i m
even bras in these terms. 1 think this is corrwt but not sufficient. The
tion naturally arises: Do we have independent evidencx for this alleged
3$4 The Semmtics of Gr~msrmas
d i f l e r e ~ ~ine "thinking"? Or do we have any other reasons to think that
people think of garments in the dual noun class in a special way?
I think that we do have such reasons. Trousers, shorts, pants, and so on
can all be thwght of as "separate-leg gaments", in contrast to "wrap
arounds" such as skirts or dresses. This distindion between "separate-leg
gaments" and "wrap-arounds" involves an important cultural principle.
Traditionally (in the English-speaking wodd), "separate-leg garments" were
associated with men, to whom they accorded a full Pheedom of mlrwenzent,
whereas 'cwrap-arounds'~were associated with women, thus prchridhg a
symbolic protection (including visual protection) to the taboo area of the
body. Of course, in speciaP drcumstanw ldies could wear "non-fminind'
leg-separating clohes such as riding-breeches and so on, but exceptionis d
this kind simply confirmed the rule. In the present (English-spaking)
world, women tao, wear trousers, and other outer gaments separating the
legs (jeans, sham%, and so on)\, thus discarding the traditional feminine
image associated with "wrap-arou.ndsLI(nomally not worn by men]. But
the choice L still there, and it is culturally Important. Even if trousers are
now thought of as gender-neutral rather than masculine, dsesses and s M s
are definitely associated with women, so the choice between "separate-leg
garments'bd "wrap-arounds19s still! symtFOPically important. There is no
similar cullturally important cll~oicxIn the case of garments worn an t h
upper half of the body, so there is, so to speak, no need to signal whether
their structure is "bipartite" or otherwise.
Hut this is not the, whole sbry. Turning now to p m t i s , wrcties, s w i m e n ,
bathers, rrmks, scmgies (Australian), jocks, and so on, we will note that
these, too, are all "separate-leg garments". .kern of a similar nature which
are not "separatorsm-for exampfie, a gird!@or a pelticoat-are never plu-
ralia tantum in English. It is tme that-unlike outer gaments such as
trousers-pwrie5 or swimmer^^ are not worn in preference to some type of
'"rap-around'" What matters, however, is Ghat these garments, too, fdl
into the cullturally salient category of "leg-dividersy'-that is to say, gar-
ments which have two separate identical parts, m e for each leg.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is culturally significant too:
items of clothing which have two separate identical parts, one for each leg,
are those whose function consists in tightly covering the parts of the body
which have to be protected from being exposed to public view. The two sep-
arate holes for the two legs are relevant to this function: if instead of Ilhllwe
two legs there was one big aperture, the parts of the body which are meant
to be protected from view would not be so protected.
It is nor, then, the bipartite structure as such which matters, but a
saliessfly bipartite structure; and in the case d human artefacts (such as
tools or items of clothing) functional salienoe may well be more important
than perceptual salience.
This is, li think, why some gaments with a visibly bipartite structure may
have names which are not In the tro;ousers class, whereas others, whose
bipartite function is visually much less salient, may have names belonging
to this class.
Consider, for example, the words pyj@msand s ~ f lPhysically,
. the struc-
ture of these gaments may seem quite similar. Each is composed or two
separate parts which @anr be called trousers and jacket, respectively
[dltYrouglh a suit can also be cclmgosed of a skirt and a jacket). Why, then,
is pyjamus a "dual" pIurale tantum whereas sttit is not?
My explanation is this: pyjamm is seen as an alternative to niighbshirisS,
nightgown, or nightie, fhat is to say, it is seen as a leg-separating alternative
to a unitary garment; but suit is not seen as a legseparating alternative to
a unitary dress. Rather, it is seen as a unitary substitute for two separate
garments: a pair of trousers and a jacket (or a skirt and a top of some sort).
QElF ccrune, from a physical point of view, a suit is not unitary, but frarn a
cultural and psychological point of view, it is a unitary [though two-piece)
alternative to a combination of two different garments.
I conclude, then, Ithat in this area as in others, apparent exoeptions are
h fact no exoeptionrs at all. On the contrary, even minor variation in gram-
matical behaviour mmsponds to differences in the underlying conoeptuall-
izations. Although these underlying conceptualizations are not open to
direct inspection in the way physical objects can be, we can have access to
them through methodical introspection, and also through cultural analysis.
The different grammatical behaviour of diYTerent nouns provides clues to
different conceptualizations, and alllows us to formulate semantic hypothe-
ses. But these hypotheses can be verifled in terns of knowledge derived
from other sources.
For example, if we came across the name of a "wrap-around" "longing
to the class of frousers it would not do to assert flatly that this particular
"wrap-around" is conceptualized in terms of some sort of bipartite s l m o
ture. We woaild have to defend such a claim with reference to some evi-
dence other than the grammatical behaviomr of the noun in question.
I do not claim, then, that any object with a bipartite structure will have
a name analogous to Frowers, because we do not know a priori just how
important this bipartite structure is in the underlying conmptualizatiomn.
Rather, H claim that for every word of the trow,Fers class we can posit a con-
ceptualization referring to a "bipartite structure" and justify such a hypo-
thetical canceptualization in terms of some observations other than those
that we have started from. This point will be ellaborated and further illus-
trated in the following section.

4. Evidence for Different Coaceptudizatiiams
Consider, for example, the English word mouth and its nearest Polish equiv-
alent wsta. The first is a singular (countabBe), the second is a plurale tan-
tum. Is this diflerence in the grammatical behaviour arbitrary or can it be
linked with different conceptualizations? To maintain the latter we need
independent evidence; and if we look for it such evidence is readily forth-
coming: while both mouth zrnd wsta can refer either to the lips or to the a d
cavity, differences in the collocations of these two words suggest that the
lips are 'much m r e prominent in the conceptualization associated with the
Polish word than in that associated with the English one. For example, in
Polish not only wargi ('lips') but also wta ("mouth') can be described as
czeswne Cred'), rdzowe (pink), spgkane (cracked), spiarzcbnifrpte
and so on. By contrast, in English one would not speak of a ?r
*pink mo~tA,*cracked mouth, or *ch@ppedm o t h . These differe
locations suggest a difference in meaning-and this differennoe
is reflected in the diflerent grammatical behaviaur of the two words.
As a second exampls, let us consider the German words for
die Hose (singular, countable] and die girose~[pluralle tantu
informants are not aware of any difference in meaning
forms, so on the face of it the gramatical diflerence between
chronically at least, perfmdy arbitrary. But again, evidence far a diffe
in their conceptualization is not difficult to find.
For example, the same informants who claim to use
criminaitely admit that in the case of shorts )theywould use the singular
krtrze Hose, 'short trousers" rather than the plural (die ffose
the same informants also admit that for underpants they
gular [die Unserhose] rather than &he plural (die Unfe
facts suggest that when the duality of the object is less salie
Begs), the singular f o m is preferred,
On the other hand, in the proverb "die Frau hat die Hos
'(in that house,] the woman wears the trousers', only the plu
can be used. In this case, the word for trousers is used as a
cullinity, and the leg-dividing nature of the referent is implicitly con
with the traditional feminine manowraps. In this case, therefore, it
sense to ermphasiz the duality of the object-and this aacounts for
of the pplwral form.
As a third example, consider the words for "hair'9n English, Fr
Italian, and Geman, which Palmer Ql990) adduces as evidence for
trarimss of grammatical patterns. Why, he asks, is hair singular
whereas the corresponding words in French, Italian, and other
are plural? He maintains that the correct answer to this question i
13. Semantic Rule3 ira Grammar 387
is just the way it is. But this does not explain why, for example, in Geman,
where there is a choice between two f o m s [das Haor, singular, and die
Haare, plural), the speakers do not choose between these f o m s at random
but appear to be sensitive to considerations of countability. For example,
while both laage Haare (plural) and Sanges Haar (singular) can be used as
a counterpart of the English phrase hng hair, the singular Haar is highly
preferable in the phrase bckiges Ham, 'curly ha?. On the other hand, only
the plural Nmre is amptable inr the sentence msir ssehen die Hsrare zrr Barge
k
nny hair is standing on end (out of Sear)l'(Ulrike Masel, personal c o m u -
nication).
If we adopt Palmer's position, facts of this kind must be regarded as
totally mysterious and inexplicable. But if we link grammatical number
with semantic countability, an explanation is possible: a phrase such as
lockiges Ham, 'curly hair', suggests a mass which is perceived as composed
of interlocking cuds, not af individual hairs. On the other hand, when a
prson's hair 'stands on end', it l ~ a nwell be imagined that it is the biozivid-
uilll hairs which rise and straighten up (because of fear). The same point
can, of course, be illustrated from English, where the paural hairs can also
sometimes be used, but only with reference to conspicuously countable
individual hairs, such as the first grey hairs on a person's temples. It is true
B the two l a n ~ a g e sGerman
, and English, draw the boundary in differ-
ways, but the principle is the same in both cases: the contrast between
ngular and a plural appllies in situations of heightened countahility; the
singdare tanbum is used in situations of iowered countability.
All these examples show that the differennoes in grammatical behaviour
f apparent synonyms point in fact to differences in the umdarlying con-
ceptualization, and that claims about differenoes in the conceptualbation
can be validated on the basis off independent evidence.
5. The Mystery of Scales
The view that nouns such as heap or cr~mmitlee"are semantically pluraly'
and that the grammatid behaviour of such words is semantically arbitrary
is quik surprising because it seems clear that far from being arbitrary, the
'xed"' grammatical behaviour of such words reflects their ccmixed"
ntic nature, just as the "'mixed" grammatical behaviour of srouserx,
orforceps reflects their '"xed" semantic nahre.
it is said, however, that the grammatical behauiour of scales is
lily arbitrary ( r e d l the quote from Hudson 1976: 6), then I must
t that at first sight this looks reasonable: it seems clear that the gram-
ml plurality of scales has a historical rather than a synchronic expla-
les are a weighing instrument; and in the past, all, or most,

instruments of this kind had a saliently bipartite structure. Thus, in the
past, the grammatical plurality of scab was semantically motivated, but in
the present it is semantically arbitrary. Or is id
The first point to note is that at least in some dialects of present-day
English (in particular, in American English] there has emerged an alterna-
tive to scales in the form of a countable noun scak (as a weighing iinsm-
menti), noted, for example, by LDOTEL. This in itself points to a change
in conceptualization, foHowing the change in the material wltuae: the grad-
ual disappearance of '"lbipartite" sales and the emergence of unitary scales
(e.g, bathroom scales) has led to the emergence rof a new grammatical fom,
matching the new meaning.
The second point to note is that in contemporary usage even the plnzrale
tanmm scaEes Inas changed imper~eptiblyin its grammatican behaviour. ]In,
the past, when scales werc normally bipartite, the word sessfes taok the clas-
sifter a pair aj",just like ~rou,ver~,
S C ~ S S O ~ or
J , gIasse~.But in the present-day
usage, this is no longer the case. For most of my Australian informants,
bathroom scales can be described as a set of scale8 but not as a pair o j
scales.
When 1 questioned my teenage daughter about why she thought the
name of the object in question was s w h rather than scaie, to my surprise
she replied, without hesitation, that it was because of all the little nlurmkrw
which one could see there. Thinking that this interpretation was heifull
and idiosyncratic, I asked a number of other children and teenagers---and
to my even greater surprise, they all came up with the same answer. 1 can-
clude from this that these informants have, so to speak, reanahysed the
word scales, endowing it with new characteristics, both fomall and semm-
tic. Formally, scales has lost (in these people's sspeech) its ability to take the
classifier a pair ooS, and has become reanalysed as, roughly speaking, an
object with a "multiplle sltructure'~atherthan one with a '"bipartite stmcp
ture'" (The usage of those people who can still say "a pair of scales'bherm
speaking of bathroom scales will be discussed later.)
English has several classes of nouns which are '%ymrtircticalIyplural", that
is, of pluralia tantum. One such class includes Frowers, scissars, and so om.
It also used to include s c a h , but (for most people) doesn't include it any
longer. Nouns belonging b this class are countable, but to be able to com-
bine with numerals they require the classifier a pair of.
Another class of plurdia tantum includes "plural mass nouns" such as
oats, chives, or coflee-gro&s. These nouns do not combine with numerdw
at a& and they do not c o - m u r with the classifier a pair of.
In most people's speech, the plurale tantrum scales does not belong to
either of these classes: unlike oats or chives, it does combine with mmer-
als, but unlike schsors or oats it does not take the classifier a pair of. If
these people want to count bathroom scales they can do so either using the
13. Semantic R u l s its Gsarnmm 3 89
classifier a set of H('"wehave three sets of bathroom scales"') or without any
classifier ("we have three bathroom scalesy'].
But whenever we find an apparent freak in a language we should suspect
that it is in fact a member of a class &&rent from the onle we are looking
at-and that it obeys the mles of its own class.
As a fist appromimatichn the dam which scales betongs to can be defined
as follows: physical objects perceived as including a large number of iden-
tical parts or "bits" which are noticeable but difficult to count. The clear-
est examples of this class are: provided by the nouns bead and pearls, When
one says of a woman that she was wearing her beads or her pearis one
doesn't mean a multitude of separate little beads or pearls (plurals of the
countable nouns bead or peaso. One means an object composed of a mul-
titude of such (countable) beads or pearls, threaded on a string; and the
question: "how many beads (pearls) was she wearing?" wuleld be totally
inappropriate. Dictionaries of the English language usually miss this point
and fail to include bea& or pearls (as uncountable pluralia tantum) as sep-
arate entities. Similarly, the compound noun rosary beads does not desig-
nate a coltection of individual bead3 (plurall), but a single obj~ect,composed
of many beads, though having a structure of its own.
Another good example of the class under discussion is the word bmces
(as it is. med in Australia): a dental fitting used to correct irregular teeth,
which seems to include separate metal bits for each tooth. A related ex-
ample is fahe teeth-again a unitary fixture composed, or seemingly com-
posed, of many individual parts which look the same. Yet another example
is SsEirads (in particular, venetian bIinsds]-again, a unitary object visibly
composed of a multitude of semi-separate identical parts. There are also
games such as checkers, draughts, skittles, and so on.
This is, then, the category to which (for many speakers) the plural noun
scales ha# become assimilated. The grammatical shiat horn $a pair of)
scales to foa set of) scales has been accompanied by a semantic reinterpre-
itadon. For younger speakers, at least, states no longer stands for an object
with a salient bipartite structure but for an object with a salient multiple
structure---like d r a u g h , checkers, braces, rosary beads, or biinds.
Of course someone might assert that they pewonally do not regard bath-
room scales as an objlect with a saliently "multiple structures'. But this is
beside the point. What matters is that younger speakers who had come
across the plural faan of the noun scaIes and who subcon~iouslynoted its
plmale Yantrnm behaviour have interpreted this behaviour by subcom-
sciously assigning this noun to the class of nouns designating objects with
a noticeable multitude of '%ingsY' all looking the same. This is evidenced
by many infomants' sdf-reports. Evidently, the object in question (bath-
room scales) does lend itself to this interpretation. But if it does so only
marginaily, or not obviously, this only supports the argument developed
390 The Semantics ofGriarnmar
here: speakers assume (tacitly) that semantic rules know no exceptions, and
therefore they (subconciomsly) seek aa interpretation which would be com-
patibb with the rule. If they couldn" find it the grammatical behaviour of'
the noun would change.
What happened to scales, then, can be described as follows. At a certain
point in time, changes in the material culture brought about an intollerabllt:
mimatch bdween this word's form [including grammatical behaviour) and
its meaning. This mismatch could be rectified by a change either in the
word's Form (and/or grammatical behaviour] or in its meming. PLsmericran
English opted for the first solution and moved from S C ~ S ~LO~ Ja scale; rn
the other hand, British Englislb, and Australian English, opted for the
ond solution, and (in many people's speech) moved from scaies wen as an
object with a salient bipartite structure to smks seen as an object with a
salient multiple structure. As d;or those (rare) speakers who can speak of "a
pair of hthroom scales" it can be hypothesized that they still think of the
older bipartite scales as prototypical scales; so that they see a bathroom
weighing device as an untypial instance of a category whose prototypical
instanws do have a bipartite structure. For these people, a bipartite smo-
ture is as crucial to the concept of scales as $for all of us) flying is mcial
to the concept of 'birds', despite our common knowledge that not alP birds
can fly. If ostriches and emus can be seen as atypical examples of a caiteg-
ory whose prototypes can definitely fly, so bathroom scales can be seen by
some (older) speakers ills atypical examples of a category whose prototype
has a bipartite structure. But peapfe who are not hmiliar with the older,
bipartite scabs would never speak of modern bathroom scales as "a pair d
scalesmSThus, all three words-(a p i s of) JFCQ~S, a scarle, and ( a set of)
scales-abey absolutely general rules: the first one belongs to a class lof
words seen as designating discrete, countable objects with a salient bipar-
tite strwture, the second to a class of words seen as designating discrete,
countable entities rvnd thought of as unitary, and the third to a class of
words seen as designating objects with a salient "muEtiple'\tmcture (more
precisely, objects which include many clearly noticeable distinct "things" of
the same kind, which all look the same, and which in principle could be
counted, but which would be difficult to count). I challenge anybody to ffind
counter-examples to these rules.
6- Predictiwness and Different Languages
Same readers will no doubt raise the folllowing objection: If semantic mles
are fully predictive why is it that they are not universal? For exap1e, why
is it that the French word for "trousersa~s singular I(& gameal'oln), whereas
German has two different forms: die Hosen (pluralle tant turn) and die Hose
13. Senarmtic Rdes in Grammar 291
ce or in Gemany have a salient
glish-speaking countries?
onsider how the notion of '"redic-
hat exactly is expected to predict
.g. trousers, scissors, or scales]
e grammatical behavilour of their
nation, then undoubtedly we will
behaviour of a word
the drnotata. 1t is tErc
redictive, not Ilne detsofasda~.One cannot discover the
by examining its denotation because meaning involves
tiom, and the same physical objmts may lend themselves to
not universal, because reality is, by and large, open b dif-
lizations, and diflemnt meanings embody those conceptu-
in a particular speech community and
s "conventional imagery"). The
ptualizations may be explainable in
s of history, culture, living-conditions, religion, and so on. They are a
utside the scope of semantics. (Iwitll
.)I What semantics is concerned with
discovery of language-specific meanings. The meanings which go
hich apply to whole classes of ele-
ments can be said to underlie certain "semantic rulesw",n the sense that they
@andetermine the grammaticall behaviour of the elements in question (not
Ire grammatical forma but the grammatical behaviour).
Gleason (1969: 226) observed: "'The singular-plural contrast is common
languages. We must, however, expect that there will be considerable dif-
ween the assortments
of concepts which various languages bring together into each of these mt-
egories." This is perfectly true: different languages draw their distinctions
in different ways and, for example, we should not expect that the behav-
iour of the words for particular kinds of garments, or instruments, or what-
ever, will be the same in different languages.
But it is a mistake to conclude From this that within each language, the
distinctions drawn by grammar are '"arbitrary", as Gleason (ibid.) did:
What is important to node is that the category of pIural in English gathers together
a rather diverse assortment of concepts. All these have one thing in common: they
contrast with another assortment of concepts which we call "singular"'. That is, the
unity within the category is purely a feature of the linguistic system OF the language
which arbitrarily sets these two iar conkrast amdl imposes the requirement that every
noun be assigned to one or the other.
As pointed out earlier English doesn't really dr
n each rule is fully predictive. (For detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka
between "singular" and '~lural",but a number of more subtle distinctio
Baclctl rrcsultib~gcalegosy galluers llogctl~crnot a 'VI~
oepts') but a class of concepts sharing a s~~)@EliaaPI hen B say that semantic rules are truly predictive [he, have no exccp-
tic invariant. The unity within the category is a feature of this pa
semantic system.
Semantic rules, then, are language-specific. Th 1 (in Wierzbicka 1488) as Follows: "Strictly speaking, Wierzbicka can-
t answer the unqualified question d 'why is the word for 'bats" a ppPu-
following sense: if we find, in a particular la
itanttun in English while the word for 'kheat'9s not?' Her amount
share the same grammatical behaviour, a
iow is g0~erIIedby meaning (that is, that it o
we can expect that any other word in that language which may come
attention later and which shares the same grammatical behaviomr w
be governed by the same sexmanti@rule.
For example, V we notiae that the E
glasses, and forceps have the same grammatic
countable, but onty in combination with the classifier a
this behaviour is governed by meaning (roughly, salient
then we can ex@ any other words exhibiting the
behaviour to be governed by the same rule. If we come dassiffier a pair of (*a pair oJ chives). Semantically, words of this
which do share the wme grammatical behaviaur but vrr ply a conceptualizationn in terns of c'multipUicity" and "limited
ility" (referents occur in most speakemkxperience in limited quan-
to obey the semantic rule then we should suspect that we have d have visible particles which are neither totally uncountable nor
this rule incorrectly and seek an antern able, or worth couuting (cf. the difference in this respect between
consistent with all the data. If w cmn
should look again at the grammatical behaviour of the items which
fit the semantic rule and see if they do not form a grammatical class
own, different in some respects from !the class governed by that
rule.
For example, as mentioned earlier, a grammatical distinction such as
between "'singular" and "pIural" is simply too crude to fit all the En
nouns. English grammar has many categories base
"number", not just two. It has fully countable nouns such as tree or
it has "dud nouns" such as scissors or S ~ O P C I speakers'experience) in limited quantities and in a visibly 'multiple'
such as sass or chives, it has various c
such as hairh hair*strawh S S M W , flCEve~d/athread, an 'be a plurde tanturn? I do not claim this. There coulld be other factors
tantum applying to unmoveable multiple stuuctures such as stairs, ting the underlying conceptualization. The conceptualization is not
ers (herican), ga/lows, library ~tacks,stalk, and so on; it also has ssible to us directly and can only be speculated about. The grammati-
tanturn which are countable biut not in terms of the classifier a pair m (and its behaviour) provides the G a t possible clues to the under-
as s c ~ h scheckers,
, blinds, or braces; and it has several other classes conoeptualizatioms, but to be able to verify such ciues we must also
dinerent grammatical classes are governed
in each case, the rule L fully predictive, in the x n s le rcasoruing involved here QWlerzbicka 1988) has oftem been misun-
item which shares the full set of the gran~rnatical
class in questian. OF course some of thcsc classes are much lar
others, but this is beside the point; the point is that within its scope
but it will be allowed to stand.
In the case of oats (my account of which was questioned roo
, h n g others, there is evidence from different collocations.
ow to bathroom scales, one couldn't predict whether speak-
would name it with a countablle noun (such as a scale] or

bathroom scales (and also with informants' responses].

separate, their name changes, too: they are now called porridge, a s h g
tantllmn just like rice. So the "counter-example" actually supports
hypothesis.
7. Different Cultures, Different Conceptuallizatians

nipages embody dinerent can~ephalizatialns. The task of

('qua linguist) consists in discovering the conceptualizations

"spaghetti sauce" while there are no commercial 'bnoodlle sauces"

independent evidence for this hypothesis.
Palmer accuses me of circularity: differences in grammar are expl

on a lawn, oatflakes an a plate easier than porridge in a b


these particular coruceptualization~~The latter task belongs, as I have
pointed out, to the cultwal anthropollogist.
Having said this, howcvcr, lct rnc try orr uhc hat of a cultural anthropol-
ogist and try to show how different conceptualizatims of the kind d i s c d
here can be explained in terms of cullturall anthropology. Let us start by nab
ing the fo8lowing linguistic fact: English has more dual nouns for '"eparate-
leg garments" such as trousers or shorts than other European languages do.
For example, the Frenlelh word for trousers, k pantalo~r~, is syntactically sin-
gular, and so is b culotbe (women's underpants), le s& (men's underpants),
Jle rnafht (swimmers)i, or Ee pyjama {pyjamas). In Russian the wods for
trousers and underpants (#tony, brjdci; rsu8y) are plurallia tantum, but the
words for pyjamas (piilrrna) and swimmers (kupal'nik) are not. In G e m n ,
as pointed out earlier, the word for trousers can be either singular or plural
(die Hoseidie Hose$, and the word for swimmers is singular (Bademzug];
and so on.
The perceptual salience of the bipartite structure of many such gannenl,
and the cultural importance of the distinction between "separate-leg gar-
ments" and "wrap-arounds", explain why most, if not all, European Pan-
guages do place some nouns designating such garments in a category of
dual nouns. But why should English put a greater emphasis on this dis-
tinction than French, Italian, Spanish, G e m , or Russian?
My suggestion is this: English Greats the distinction b.etwmn ""sparake-
leg gaments" and '"wrap-arounds" more seriously than other ;E;ua;c~pean
languages do because of the Puritanical heritage in Anglo-American cd-
twe. That the importance of this heritage explains a great deal about this
culture is beyond doubt (see in particular W e k r B930i1968;abo Morsbach
and Tyler 1986). What matters here is that the importance d this heritage
also explains a good many characteristic features of the English language,
or rather, of Modern English (see Wierzbicka 1992a, ch. 2).
It is true that in the contemporary Endish-speaking world, sex is proba-
bly spoken of, or referred to, more freely and more matter-of-factly than in
many omher societies, including France, Italy, Spain, and Russia. This factJ
too, has its linguistic reflexes. For example, French, Italian, Spanish, and
Russian still don? have neutral, non-euphemistic counterparts of words
such as girljrfend and boyfriend (as opposed to $lrfic&e, rnbrress, jrriefld, or
giro; and they don't have neutral, non-technicall and generally usable words
such as vlrgi~aand penis (as opposed to medical terns or vulgarisms).
But grammar dloesn" respond to cultural change as quickly as the lexi-
con. The conceptualization of gaments in terms of '"separate-leg garments'"
and '"rap-arounds" has become so entrenched in English grammar that it
lives on aad extends to new items and new words, such as, for iexmple,
smdies, scungfes, G-ssrfjrgs (in some varieties of English), and so on--even
in the era of sexual pemissiwness and unisex fashions.
13. Semantic R~lljesin Grlrmmtlar 397
This is, then, my tentative explanation for the grammatical diuerence
between troursers and le panraion, or between underpomfs and lo culotte:
native speakers of French are, of course, as capable of perceiving the leg-
dividing nature of the obj,wtsin question as native speakers of English are;
but tbe latter are, so to speak, conditioned to emphasize it more than the
f m e r are. Hn English there is a pressure horn hhe language itself to con-
oeptualiae such items of clothing in terns of their legdividing character,
and this pressure may be due, indirectly, to the Puritanical heritage. It
should be noted, however, that if this tentative c~lruralexplanation were to
prove wrong, this wauld not detract i n any way from the absolute predic-
tiveness of the ~ernan~ic rule stated here.
The question why different languages draw the boundaries in the way
they do is not a semantic one. I believe these questions are also worth ask-
ing, and in some cases I have suggested answers. For example, in the case
of n m e s of fruit and vegetables, differences betw~een,say, Russian and
English may be due to different cvllinary traditions. (See Wierzbicka 1988.1
But it is important not to confuse a quest for culturai explaruations of this
kind with the quest for a semantic invariant of a given linguistic category.
Linguists do not have to engage in the former, however fascinating, but if
they refuse to pursue the latter, they are neglecting a central issue. For what
is linguistics if it is not a quest for meaning?
8. The Semantics of Gender
One c'oblFio~~ counter-example" to the view of language advanced here is
pmvided by the area of grammatical gender. This is a huge topic, which
nnot be discussed here in detail (see e.g. Corbett 19941, but a few brief
o o m e n t s may be useful. I will draw my examples from Polish.
In Palish, the word for ceiling (su$~) is masculine, the word for floor
od#oga)lfeminine, and the word for window COJFCFEO) neuter. How can one
explain facts of this kind?
The obviaus answer to this question is that in Polish the '"enderl"that
is, the word cBass] d inanimate nouns is not governed by a semantic rule,
d, in partkular, that it is mat governed by any rule based on cLsex''.
arly, wnslderations of slex are inapplicable to such noums. It would be
urd, then, to regard words such as SUBS,podtoga, and akno as counter-
examples to the claim that semantic rules kmow no exception. These words
are simply not governed by any semantic rule whatsoever.
Let us turn, then, to animate nouns. The Polish word for elephant (sEoh)l
is masculine, and the word for giraffe (2yrafo) is feminine; the word for rat
(szczur] is masculine, and the word for mouse [mysz) is feminine; the word
for fly (msrch] Is feminine, whereas the word for mosquito (komar] is
398 The Semantics of Grammm
masculine. In the case of animals and other living creatures questions of
sex may arise, so how can one explain such differences in gender? Here
too, the answer seems quite clear: the assignment of elephants, rats, and
mosquitoes to the s o - d b d "masculine gender'hzund of giraffes, mice, and
Wies to the so-called "feminine gender" is not governed in Polish by a
semantic rule.
Let us consider, then, human nouns. Here, the assignment of different
nouns to different grammatical classes is, generally speaking, based onn
meaning. Let us see, then, if this assignment is governed by fully predictive
rules.
Human categorization nouns such as m@czyzna ("man'), ckrtopiec ("boy'),
or s~artrszekQ'dd man" all belong to one class "masculine gender". Human
categorization nouns such as kobiefejfaQ'wornan')~, dziewczyno~('girll", or
S I C F ~ S Z ('old
~ Q woman') belong to "feminine gender"'. Human categoriza-
tion nouns such as dziecko ('chilid') or nie~lawlgvbaby') belong to another
class ("neuter gender"), Ml this is clearly governed by meaning. But then
are plenty of apparent 'kmaptions".
For example, there are expressive words such as kobiecisko Q'womany-
neuter), dz;iewczymi3ko ('girl'-neuter), 6:Jslopisko ('man'--neuter),
chtopczysko ('boyy-neuter), and so on. All such words may seem to be
exceptions to the rule, but in fact they are not exceptions at all; rather, they
farm a grammatical category of their own, governed by its own semantic
rule. Most words of this kind are derived fmm basic words which are either
feminine or mmdimie, and the replacement of this basic "naturalP"gedder
by neuter gender signals the speaker's expressive attitude, an attitude which
includes the companent 'H don" want to think of this person etc, as a
wamaaS$ir&"madboyeltc.'.
One or two nouns of human cailegorizanion are inherently expressive and
are grammatically neuter even though they are not (or no longer) perceived
as derivates of other, more basic nouns. The word dzkwczq, "irl"neuter,
for example, etymologimliy related to dziewczyna, cgirP'-feminine, evokes
the image of an i n n m n t young gid, nice to Book at and generally ondar-
ing. The neuter gender of this word signals the speaker" attitude: the ref-
erent, while female, is not thought of as, primarily, a female, but as a
young, innocent, and endearing creature.
In Polish there are also highly expressive masculine forms of feminine
names such as Marysik (from Marysia, from Mczria) or KIarrrsik from
[Kl~nn).In this case, the masculine gender signals an attitude of affection-
ate jocularity. (For detailed discussion, see Wierzbicka 1992a, ch. 7.)
There is also a group of expa-essive noun5 swh as niiedoIega, flied~roFj&,
faiftapa, or ciapa, which all des&nslte incompetent people, without enegy,
initiative, and ability to get things done. Nouns of this kind take feminine
agreement when they are applied to women, but when they are applied ta
13. Semansic R ~ u hin Grammar 399
men they can take either masculine or feminine agreement, the latter option
being more pejorative and more insutibing.
"Plrofessional activity" nouns such as tohiem, %olldierY, smlarz, 'carpen-
ter', &&or, '(medid] doctor', or pisarz, 'writer', are marked by extremely
complex gender behaviour and certainly cannot be reduced to any simple
rule based on sex along the lines of male sex-masculine glender, female
sex-feminine gender. [For discussion af similar complexities in Russian,
see Rlothstein 1973.1 Even more complex is the gender-behaviour of titles
such as projessor, 'professor', doklor, 'Ph.D, holder" or iniaiy~rier,"engineer"
((inPolish also a title).
The semantics of gender in Polish or in other languages with similar sys-
tems of noun classes requires further study, despite the extensive literature
on the subject which aiready exists. But it would be wrong to suggest that
semantic rules governing the gramatical behaviour of Polish nouns are
not predictive because this behaviour cannot be accounted for in terns of
two biological fealtures such as 'malehersus 'female'%
9. The Uncons~iousCharacter of Semantic Rules
Semantic rules operate below the threshold of consciousness. Linguists
often miss this point, and decEare that since there is no obvious reason why,
for examples oats should behave differently from wheat, the difference
betmen tlhe two words is semantically arbitrary. But in fact, semanntic rules
are usually hidden, or at bast partially hidden; and the fact that they are
hidden is linked to the fact that they are unconscious.
Frmz Boas" insight into the unconscious character of language is par-
ticularly apposite here. In his ffamous introduction to the Handbook of
American J ~ d i Languages,
a~ Boas (19 1111966: 63-41) wrote:
rlue wry fact of the unconsciousness of linguistic processes helps us to gain a clearer
understanding of the ethnological phenomena, a point the imporltance of which can
not be underrated. . . . in dl languages certain dassifications of concepts occur
.
. . all thew concepts, although they are in constant use, have never risen into con-
sciousness, and . . . consequently their origin must be sought not in rational but in
entirely unconscious, we may perhaps say instinctive, processes off the mind. . . . It
would seem that the essentid difference between Linguistic phenomena and other
eth~rollogicallphenomena is that the linguistic classifications never rise into con-
sciousness, whik in other ethnologicall phenomena, although the same unconscious
origin prevails, )theseoften rise into coasciousness, and thus give rise to secoaudiury
reasoning and to re-interpretations. . . . if we adopt this point of view, language
seems to be w e of the most instructive fields of inquiry in an investigation off the
f m a t i o n off the fundamental ethnic ideas. . . . Judging the importan.ce of linguis-
tic studies from this point of view, if seems weill worth while to subject the whole
range of linguistic concepts Ita a searching analysis.
4Nl The ,Yemantics of C~ammar
Linguistic rdes can be unconscious while being open to exceptioans and
thus without being fdly predictive. This applies, in particular, to phono-
logical rules {see Schuchardt 1895/1972; Venneman and Wilbur 19721.But
paradoxically, perhaps, semantic mles are different. They appear to be truly
absolute-albviousPy, not because they are "mechanical"' or physiological,
as neo-grammarians believed their Lautgesefze to be; but presumably
'caecause they are psychologically real (though unconcious): they am really
"thereW,atthe bottom of our minds (so to speak), and they apply across
the board, to anything that falls within their domain.
The word scale8 iIlustrates in a striking way the difference: htwleenn
umncansciowns semmtic mles, operating without exceptions, and conscious
rationalizations, which are often open to 'kxceptions" and counter-exarm
fles. For examplle, some infoman&, when asked why they thought they
called a bathroom "weighing machine" "ales rather than scale, came up
with a historial explanation: "because it derives fiom aid two-bawl weigh-
ing scales, is. as in scales of justice, or because originally scales consisted
of two scales, one for the weights and the other for the object ltol h
weighed". And yet the same informants report, when questioned, \that they
are unable to apply to bathroom scales the classifier a pair of. This shows
that while on a csanscious level they link the plurality of scahs with the pre-
viously bipartite structure of the referent, on a subconscious level they do
not do that: if they still conceptualimd $tales in terns of a pair of identi-
cal parts they would be able ta use the classifier a pair of. In fact, howev
they report that they could only use the classifier a set of or no classifier
all. Om the other hand, those informants who can still talk of "a
scales'" even with reference to bathroom scales, show that a (protot
bipartite structure is still a part of their concept of 'scales', whether
they are conscious of it and whether or not they could immediately
late this aspat of their concept in reply to a question.
101. Col~clusion
Stephen Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time (1989: 110)~
recently restated the criteria for a scientific theory as follows: '% the0
a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe
large class of observations on the basis of a madel that contains only a
arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about t
of future obsewations.'T"lTh may seem too hard a requirement for
ory of any human phenomena such as religion, customs, kinshi
or language. In my view, however, this requirement does fit semantic
operating in natural language. To retrace our steps: we started
arbitrary elements (frower~",scissors, glasses, and a few more),
13. Smunlic Rules in Grammar 40 1
basis we h i l t a model: the combination of plural agreement and count-
ability in terns of the dassifier a puir of is correlated with a specific seman-
tic structure (roughly, an object with a salient bipartite structure; for a more
precise formula, see Wierzbicka 11988: 558). Elarthemore, we made definite,
testable predictions: any other English words we might come across that
wouEd have the two grammatical! features in question! wodd be correlated
with the same semantic structure.
In the case of scales we started with just one arbitrary element, and again
we built a tentative model on this basis: the combination of plural agree-
tabillity in items of a classifier other than a pair of is corre-
semantic structure (roughly, an object including
f "things" all looking the same), and again, we
stable predictions: any other English noun that we may dis-
uld have the same two grammatical features will also be wr-
m e semantic structure. Bn an earlier study, I followed this
far oats and wheat (see Wierzbicka 11985, 1988).
believe that so far our predictions conoerning F ~ o u Jscaks," ~ ~and~ oafx,
the classes to which these items belong, have held good. What matters
s that these predictions don? have to hold good: they are
ulated in such a way that they can, in principle, be disproved or falsi-
by further observation. To quote Hawking (1989: 10) again:
theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis:
r pmve it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree
eory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not can-
n the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a
at disagrees with the predictions of ribe theoryr. As phiEosopher
ence Kad Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the f a t
t makes a number of predictions ahat could in principle be disproved or falsi-
y observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the pre-
wives, and our comfidenrxe in It is increased; but if ever a new
disagree, we have to abandon or modify the t h e o ~ .
how here and elsewhere (see in particular Wierzbicka
ry of g s u a r can be predictive in the sense in which
Hawking, expect a good scientific theory to be predictive.
stresses the empirical character of his version of cognitive gram-
a 'keaPist", he fully expects to find counter-examples to his gen-
. The hypothesis advocated here, ho~ever,aims at the more
standards of Popper and Hawking: one could refute it by find-
ltion that disagrees with its predictions.
 18. TransStMty and Repexi~es 4403

science, with its broader empirical scope and more sophisticated theoretical
14 A Semantic Basis for Grammatical Labds of this kind reflect the sound intuition that grammatical categories
Description and Typology: have a semantic bask, and also that they can be matched, lie some extent,
s-mot by virtue of the grammatical Ifom, or structure,
Transitivity and Reflexives s from h q p a g e to language, but precisely by virtue of
shared semantic core.
often are, they carry with them a
ause while they may hint at the meaning encoded in a
n grammatical category, they cannot represent this meaning amu-
hat a traditional grammatical lak!
ccurate portrayal of the semantic rmge lor a category
1. htrc~ductlon s that grammatical categories have no semantic basis
t be described in semantic terns.'
Grammar encodes meaning. Categories of g a m a r known, tra amounts to thrawing out the baby with the bath
ay find themselves in this absurd position if they have
erent semantic theory to draw on, or can see no alternative to either
semantic labels at face value or denying that the categories in ques-

is worth recallling in this connection John Lyons's commemnts on the

s d linguistic labels, made specifically with respect to standard labels;
alods, but applicable to other grammatical labels as well:
important to emphasize that, at the present stage af linguistic theory and
a ~omwiavteany very clear notion of the dis-
ithin the category of mood, throughout the
t are used in standard descriptions of partic-

lly are. This is true, far example,

o different functions are involved. (Lyons

linfing grammatical labels with well-defined meanings we can stan-

Jaklobson 1962). se off these labels m d thus help to overcome the oonfiusion that
ing about. The range of meanings encoded in one construction
we want to call ""irrrpative" (or '?e;Aexi~e") may well not be the

and interpretation of the hundreds, even tl~ousands,of o

languages which have become accessible to study in the
404 The Semantics of Grammar
same as that encoded in another construction, in another language,
which we want to give the same label. But this doesn't mean that we
not assign the label "imperative" (or "reflexive"") coherent
show how this cam fse done, I will first discuss the notion of
2. The Uniqueness of Grammatical and Semantic Systems
Every language has its own unique system of meanings encoded in
mar. Traditional graanmatica1 labels do not make this point clear.
who has had same experience with difirent languages knows that
called ""purai", or "past"' or 'kmimpleratie" in one Panguage does no
spond exactly to wtwt is call& "plnral"",'"pst"~r ""iperatliver' in ano
Is it justified, therefore, to apply the same labels to such different phen
ena?
There is nothing wrong In using the same label for different phe
as long as these phenomena have something in common, and as
label is defined in terms of a c o m m core (and of course as
language-specific phenomena linked with such labels are ngorou
of this kind were usually not given; I believe, however, that since
widely amepbed grammatical labels are based on sound IinglPi~ficin
definitions of this kind can, in principle, be provided.
Consider, for example, the (so-alled) English imperative ccrnstnr
in EQ away!, Give m that book, Keep the dam closed, or Be quiet. P
this construction can be described as a verb phrase with an uminflexe
as its head. Semantically, it can be described as encoding, protat
the foilowing core meaning: Y want you. to do something'. Since
meaning carries with it a certain illocutionary force, a more precise
(1) 1 say: 1 want you to do something
I think: you will do it because of this
In addition to this prototypid meaning, the same construction
be used in a restricted number of set expressions such as Sleep we
a! nice day?, or H ~ v ae good ts@&that is, expressions which encode
lowing gerrerall meaning: "I want something good to happen to you".
Can the English "imperative construction" be equated with the '"
ative constructions" in other languages-for example, In Polish? In
it can't, k a u s e the scope oF the Engjish construction! is diflerent from L
of the Polish. one; I will argue, however, that in another sense
indeed Iwe identified with one another, and that traditionall gr
right in identifying them terminologically
a First, some facts.
Polish verbs haw a special imperative form, or rather two such Foms,
singular and plural. What is normally regarded as the Polish imperative
construction takes the form of a verb phrase with the imperative form of
the verb as its head. For example:
(231 ChodZ tutaj!
come: IMP:SG here
'Come here?'
(3) mi mi tg ksiqtkg?
Give: 1Mhaa:SG me:DAT ~ ~ ~ : A C C : S G :bFoEoMk : ~ c c : s a : ~ ~ ~
'Give me this book!"
The basic (prototypical) meaning encoded in this construction is the same
as in the English imperative construction 7 want you to do something" but
the extensions from this prototype are different.
First, one doesn't say in Polish things such as +kPijd~brse,'Sleep well',
"Miej pszyjemay dzieh!, 'Have a pleasant day!' or *Miej d d r q podrdi!,
'Have a good trip!'-that is ta say, Polish doesn't have the 7-want-some-
nthling-good-to-happen-to-you' extension. On the other hand, the same
grammatical construction can be extended in Polish in ways in which the
English consbuction cannot. For example, it can be used with stative adjec-
tives or other expressions referring (explicitly or implicitly) to the
addresswee's thoughts:
(4) Bqdi; spokojny.
% ~ e tranquil' (i.e. don't worry).
(55 Bqdk pewny t e . . .
']Be certain that . . .'
(6) Bpdk zadowolony, 2e talc sie skcrhczylo.
'Be pleased that it ended Pike this."
(7) BqdZ dobrej nzyhli.
'Be hopeful' (lit. Be of good thought).
I suggest that the meaning encoded in this "psychoPogical extension" can
_ be formulated as fo11ows:
(831 I want you to think somthing good
Adjectives such as sprok~jny~'tranquil' or paway, "certain', are not inher-
ently positive, but they are compatible with the positive meaning of the
colvstruction as such, and whlen they are used in this construction they are
hterpreted as referring to ""god thoughts"0rm the other hand, terms for
megative emotions such as miezadowobny, "displeased', or ziy, 'angry' (lit.
"ad'], cannot be used In this construction:
408 The Semantics of Grammar
linguistic form, or by lingwistic structure, because these differ fram lw-
Iguage b language, but it can be provided by meaning. To quote a r
book on typology and language universals: 'The characteristic featu
linguistic typology . . . is cross-linguistic comparison. The fundam
prerequisite for cross-linguistic compamison is crross
ity, that is the ability to identify the csame'gramrilti
across languages. . . . This is a fundamental issue in all
in fact. Nevertheless, this problem has commanded
tion relative to its importance" (Croft 1990: 11). Croft q
necti~n Greenbrg's (1966b: 74) statement concernin
comparability of grammatical cmsiructions: ""Ifitlily realize that in
fying such phenomena in languages of dinering structur
employing semantic criteria'" and he comments: "'These b
marize the essential problems and a general solution. The
is that Panguags vary in their structure to a great exte
w h d typology (and, more generally, linguistics) aims to
But the variation in structure makes it diiEcult iff not impossible b
strlllctural criteria, or oaIy structnrab8 criteria, to identify
gories across languages."Croltt concurs with Greenbe
the ultimate solusltian to the problem is a semantic on
that the same conclusion was also reached by
crows-linguistic analysis of relative dauses (Keenan
This condusion would seem to imply that the relia
linguistic typology depends on the avaihbility of an adequate semantic
ory. CroR stops short, however, of spelling out this implication, and
other badinlg typologists tead to do the same. Frrm ex
The problem of cross-linguistic identification should not be overstated. Inr
cases, it is not diflicult to identify the basic grarnm
basis. To a great extent this is amomplished by exa
ten= m d its pants, which is of coarse based on semantics and pragmatics.
other hand, the weaknesses of an intuitive crass-linguistic identification
gories become apparent when one focusses OELan example w h i ~ his not so in
clear after all . . . (19901:831
E would argue, howeverI that while the researcher's intuition is a
able, indeed indispensable, starting-pint, it cann
coherent research methcxlology. As the remarks q
such a coherent methodology can only l x provided by semantics. 1 s
t h t the Naturd Semantic Metalanguage, which is based m un
semantic primitives and which has been widely teste
caP, and pragmaltic dewripdon of many languages
provide a suitable semantic foundation For grammatical typology. ImY
iticular, relying on this mekalanguage we can standardize the use of I
such as "reflexive'" "causativeWbc'iinnperative", or "s
14: Tramxitivity a d Rejexa'ves 409
the cross-linguistic study of grammatical categories. I have
this daim with respect to causative constructions in my
o f G r a m m s (Wierzbicka 19881, and with respect to 'kvidentials"
15. In this chapter, I will illustrate it mainly with respect to the
I category of "reflexives".
986: 131 points out, "universal concepts are necessary pre-
r aPI language adivity. They are the rertiurm com;naralimis nec-
ry for the comparison of languages, for translation; necessary also for
ssembling linguistic data."
The set of universal concepts arrived at on an empirical basis in the
quarter of a century of single-minded searching by myself and
vides, I beiieve, a fer~iusrmcampamtionis, in terns of which
onstructions can be rigorously and insightfully compared.
rs 2, 3, and 15; see dso Wielrzbicka 1988.)1
4. Reflexive Coltllstmctions
constructions are usually defined in terns of coreference of the
nd the object. For example, Givbn (1990: 628) o f i r s the follow-
n of what he calls ""te reflexives": "The subject is coreferen-
ith the object, and thus m f s upon itsevEP(re&lexively)In;
and Faltz (1985:
defines what he calls "primary reflexive strategies" as grammatical
h '%pcifucally indicate subject-object coreference".
to this characterization, English sentences such as Mary
herself or Mary defended hersev are instances of a reflexive con-
the object is marked in them as coreferential with the sub-
lying the same definitions to, for example, Polish, we might
believe incorrectly) that Polish has no "true" reflexive
art all. Consider, for example, the following pairs of sen-
(14) (a) Ewa zabla Adma.
'Eve kilIed Adam'
(b) Ewa zabla siq.
Eve killed ~ P L
'Eve killed herself.'
(15) ;Pa)Ewaa skaleczyka Adama.
'Eve injured Adam."
(b) Ewa skaleczyla sic;.
Eve injured REFL
(16) (4 Ewa urnyfa Adama.
Eve washed Adam.

(b] Ewa umyia siq.
Eve washed REFL
In each pair, sentence (a] is transitive, but sentence (b) is intransitive (
below), and so it cannot have an object, but only an intra
and so for [b)sentences the question of corefemnce between
does not arise. English so-called reflexive sentences are also
tivity by a number of criteria (for example, t Picy can" bc passi
least their reflexive object can usually be conjoined with oli
(17) Harry covered his wife and himself with a blanket.
In Polish, this is not possible:
(18) *Henryk prsykryli siq i tone: kocern.
Harry covered REPL and wife:~ccblanket:n~.s~~
Thus if one can desmibe English reflexive sentences in tems of coreferen-
tiality between the subject and the obj~ect,the same descripltion would not
q p l y to Polish sentences usually called by this name.
It might be objected that the Palish reflexive marker sig cannot'be con-
j~oinedwith "other lobjects" because it is a clitic (see e.%.Rappaport, forth-
coming). But the very fact that a would-be object is a clintic may point to
the sentence% low transitivity. In many larmguages, 'kditic objects" don't
behave like "real ob~ects"in a number of respects (e.g. they don't tistin-
guish "direct objects'Vrom "indirect objects", they don" respect the r u k
for the relative order of "direct objects" and "indirmt objects", and so on).
We should constantly remind ourselves that the number of syntactic ore
arguments depends not on the number of entities involved in the situation
referred to, but on the manner in which the situation is conceptualized by
the speaker, and that one cannot speak, For example, o f a ""tansithe
action" or an '"intransitive action", because the same action may be viewed
as c'transitive" or ""intransitive", depending om the point off view. (For fur-
ther discussion, see Wierzbicka 1988.)
Furthermore, even if one wished to argue that in Polish semntences such
as 19 and 20 below:
(19) Ewa zabiia Adama.
Tve killed Adam.'
(20)
. Ewa ,
zabiia no.
'Eve killed him.'
The co-ordinatim test is, of course, ouly one test among many which can be used to judp
the !eve1 of a sentence's tmmitivity. I think, hawever, that it is an important one, and that it
provides a reliable key lo the mnccplluallktion, or all least to one aspect or the conwptud-
izallhon. (For some olther tests, see e.g. Wieuxbicka 1958: 18-/9; also Hopper and Thompson
11980.)
14. Trarzsirivfty and f?le$exives 41 1
are equally transitive, despite the fact that go is a ditic, the fact remains
that the syntactic status of the "reflexive" clitic sip is not the same as that
of the non-reflexive clitic go. Whether it is a full-blown direct object or not,
go behaves in some ways like a n o w phrase, and in particular, it can com-
bine with agreleing predicate nominals, whereas sig cannot. For example:
(211 Zobaczyit Adama samego/pijanego.
s;aw:3so Adam:ncc alone:~cc/drorrk:~~cc
We saw Adam aioneidrunk."
(221 Zobaczy! go samegolpij~anego.
saw:3sc; h i m : ~ c aalone:slccjrdrunk:~cc
c
rn 'Hei saw h i q atanejldrunkj."
(23) *Zobaczyl sig samegolpijanepo.
saw:3so REFL a1ane:~cddrunk:acc
Facts of this kind suggest that in contemporary Polish the clitic sf@, tradi-
tionally called "reflexive pronoun"(zaimek rwosny; see e.g. Szober 1966:
lW], is better viewed not as a pronoun but as a "particle" [as it is indeed
viewed by GeniuSienb 1987: 245). But if sig is m t a noun phrase in (con-
temporary) Polish, then it cannot be the direct object of any sentence where
it occurs, and consequently, a sentence where an otherwise transitive verb
combines with sig cannot be regarded as transitiven3
It might be claimed, of course, that definitions couched in tems of coref-
erence between subjects and objects refer in fact to "underlying objects",
not to '"suface objects"'. A claim of this kind, however, presupposes the
now obsolete framework of transformational grammar, with its underlying
structures, surface structures, and transformations deriving the latter from
lthe former. Since the basic assumptions on which this framework was based
have been repeatedly refuted and since its inadequacy has been widely
acknowledged even by most of its former proponents, it seems hardly nec-
essary to argue against the use of this framework any more. (Of course it
might be said that in the 19801s and 1990s syntactic '"nderlying st~uctures"
are used onlly as convenient fictions. But if so, then they have no empirical
content and cannot be used as a basis for identifyimng and matching con-
structions across languages.)
Returning to Polish, it has to be recognized, I think, that most Polish
sentences usualEy described as reflexive (see e.g. Kwaplsz 1978; Saloni 1976)
are intransitive and so can't have any corekrential subjects and objects. It
is true that B"crUish also has another ccreflexive"construction, illustrated by
sentences such as the fo8lowing:
"The element sic has a number of different functions and diVerent statuses in Polish gram-
mar (see logustawski 1977). What is said about sir in this chapter oonwms mly lane of these
functions, and one OF these stalwses.
4 12 The Semantics of Grmmar 14. Transitivity 'rnd j'Ee$exiwes 4 13

(24) Kochaj bliiiniego jak siebie samego. (34) +JEW@ ~[~kryEasig $ m q , a nie okryfa A&ma.
love:rrvr~neighbour:hcc like selfiacc EMPH:ACC Eve covered REFL EMPH:ACC but didnY cover Adam.
'Love your neighbour like yourself." 'Eve covered HERSELF, but didn" cover Adam.'
(25) On nienawidzi samego slcbie. (As scotcncc 34 abovc shows, tllc cclilic sip cannot combine with the
he hates EMPH:ACC s e h ~ ~ emphatic pronwn $am;but the same is true of other clitics.)
We hates himself.' In his study of the relationship between prosodic and syntactic proper-
ties off pronouns in Slavic languages, Rappaport (1988) presents the rela-
These sentences are transitive (as, for example, the test of conjoined objects tionship between the Polish "reflexive pronounq'ssjebie and the "'reflexive
shows), and their object, sieebde (being a special "reflexive" pronoun), is clitic" 84 as exactly parallel to that between tonic and atonic versions of
inherently marked as coreferential with the subject. But sentences of this personal pronouns such as jego, 'hirn"tonic], and go, "him' (atonic). I
kind normally require the presence of an emphatic specifier, smego (mmej, would argue, however, that in fact the relationship betwen the members
samych, etc; lit. 'the same" homophonous with samego, 'alone') and t h q of each pair is quite different, from 'both a syntactic and a semantic point
are highly marked. (Sentences without an emphatic specifier are not impos- of view. The ditk (which as we saw earlier has s m e properties of a noun
sible, but they would have to bc contrastivc.) phrase) points to a second participant in the speaker's conceptualization of
Of the two patterns, the intransitive pattern is more basic and it is the the situation; but sig [which as we have seen does not behave Bike a noun
only one whkh is w m a l l y used in physical action sentences [whether the phrase) signals that there is only one participant in the speaker's field of
action is voluntary lor not): vision (the one identified by the subject of the sentence). On the other hand,
~ k b isk a noun phase, and it does have a referring function, allthough by
(26) Ewa okryia sig kocem.
virtue af its lextal meaning It signals identity between its o w referent and
Tve covered herself with a blanket.'
that of the sentence's subject.
(27) ?Ewa okryda siebie a heem. Since sentenoes with siebiie are tuansitive (by a number of criteria) and
Eve covered sem$:acca ~ m : a c cwith a blanket siebie can be conjoined with other objects, it is understandable that
428;) EEwa okryia raieebie kocem. ability of sentences with siebie dqpeds on the extent to which one
Eve covered selfislcc with a blanket a n treat oneself in the same way as one treats other people. For example:
(241 EWQskaJleczyEa sig. (35) Adam zastrzeEiB swojq Bong i samego siebk
"ve injured herself (either aocidentally or lon purpose)^.' 'Adam shot dead his wife and HIMSELF.'
(30) ?EWQshleczyla s m q siebie. is more natural and rmore amptablle than
Eve illjured EMPH:ACC S ~ ~ ~ A C C
'Eve injured HERSELF." (36) ?Adom U E Q swojq
~ ~ 2ung isamego siebie.
"Adam drowned his wife and HIMSELF.'
(31) ??E&w~ skaSeczyh siebie.
Eve injured se1f:acc The reason is that the actions hnvalved in shooting oneself and shooting
someone else are fairly similar, in contrast to the actions of drowning one-
En fact, even in a contrastive context, the intransitive pattern L usually self and drowning someone dse: to drown someone else one would have to
much more natural in physical action sentences than the transitive one, push a person into water, or hold their head under water, whereas to drown
with an emphatic marker (in the nominative) added to the subject: oneself one would have to simply jump into water; but in the case of shoot-
h g , the basic action is the s m e , regardless of who one is shooting at.
(32) ?Ewa okryle samg shbie? a e 0kry6a Adma. The fact that in Polish even ""the best" transitive reflexive sentences sound
Eve covered EMPIU:ACC se8Eacc but didn't cover Adam:~cc more natural if they include an emphatic masker shows that from the point
'Eve covered HERSELF, but didn't cover Adam.' of view of Polish cdture, reflected in the Polish language, one's relation-
(33)Ewo sama sig ekryta, a Adama nie okryiu. ship with oneself is normally expected to be dinerent from one" relation-
Eve:pla~EMPH:NOM REFL covered but Adam:plcc didn't cover ship with another person. In this respect, Polish differs Bimn English, since
'EYCc ~ i ~ e r eHERSELF,
d but didn't cover Adam.' in English not only sentences such as
414 The Semantics of Grammar
(37) Adarm hates HLMSEQF.
but also those without lthe emphasis on the pronoun:
(38) Adam hates himself.
are fully acceptable. [l will return to this feature of English in Section 5.1
To conclude our discussion of the differences between sir and siebie, sen-
tences with sit and sentenms with siebie suggest two different conceptual-
izations of a situation, and in fact very few verbs ante semantically
compatible with both sir and siebie; this is not the case, however, with go
and jego Chim", which can combine with the same verbs.
Thus, when applied to Polish, the definition of ""rflexives" cconuhed in
terms of coreferenw ibetween subjects and objects makes the basic can-
struction traditionally regarded as reflexive into a non-reflexive one, and
allows only the more peripheral emphatic mnstructicrn to be regarded as
refle~ive.~
Furthermore, under this definition many, indeed most, languages tradi-
tionally described as having a reflexive ccrnstruction would have to be said
to have no reflexive construction whatsoever. For example, Dixan (19801:
433) goes so far as to make the following general comment about
Australian Aboriginal languages: 'Xeflexive and reciprocal verbs owur
only in intransitive constructions-the singlle core NP is in s function and
involves a noun in absolwtive and/or a pronoun in nominative case.""'
What do linguists normally mean, then, by a "reflexive construction"?
I believe that what they really have at the back of their mhds is a wr-
tain meaning, and that they call different constructions in different lan-
guages 'Wlexive" if they sense that the central function of these
constructions (though not necessarily the only one) is to express this
unidentified but intuitively felt meaning. This unidentified meaning is often
called '?reflexive meaning'" For example, Dixon (1972: 90) says that in
Dyirbal "reflexive Ibrms sometimes carry a reflexive meaningWphereas"in
other cases, the reflexive afix appears just to derive an intransitive from ai
transitive stem, without carrying any reflexive meaning'".(See also Marana
8984: 152, quoted in footnote 5 ; or Geniugied 1987: 355.)
I hypothesize that the prototypical meaning which, on a subconscious
level, guides linguists in their actual use of the term "reAexive'kan be rep-
resented as follows:
Needless to say, for reasons of space, the account of Polish reflexives given in )thischap
ter is vary sketchy and does not aim at completeness. In particular, P am not going la survey
here the existing literature on the topic.
in ract, Maran& explicitly Unks "reflexivization" with intransitivity. He writes, for a-
ample: "Many languages include s w a l intransitive verb forms with reflexive meaning" ((1984:
052). (One wonders, however, what exactly he has in mind when he talks of' "refPexive mean-
ing".)
(39) (R) at some time, someone did something
because of this,
something happened to the same person at the same time
For example, a sentence such as
(410) Harry killed himself by cutting ibis wrists.
indicates that at some time Harry was doing something with some sharp
object ((bringing it into contact with some parts of his body), and that he
died because of this (loosely speaking, "'at the same time").
The condition "at the same time" has to be understood in a broad sense,
as it is usually understood in ordinary language, not in the sense of strict
simnltaneity. For example, if a man kills himself by cutting his wrists, the
action of his cutting his wrists precedes, stricltly speaking, the event of his
dying. Both events have to occur, however, at what is mnceived of as the
same time. Although one can say, for example,
(41) He killed himself: he cut his wrists on Thunday and he died on
Friday.
one cannot say:
(42) "He killled hilmself on Friday by cutting his wrists on Thursday.
(43) *By cutting his wrists on Thursday, he eventually killed himself on
Friday.
ReiRexive sentences are similar in this respect to transitive clauses. (For dis-
cussion, see Wierzbicka 1975, 19XOb.)
It must be stressad that dbmula R is proposed as a representation of the
prototypicai meaning of all so-called "reflexive" sentences, not as their
semantic invariant: there are many types of so-called "reflexive" sentences
in many languages which do not have the prototypical meaning in ques-
tion. Nor am I proposing formula R as a full definition for the notion
"reflexive co111struction~';rather, I am suggesting that a usefid definition can
be f~lrmulabdwith reference to this semantic formula.
I propose, then, the following definition of a reflexive construction:
A REFLEXIVE CONSTRUCTION IS A CONSTRUCTION
WHICH ENCODES THE MEANING SPELLED OUT IN THE
FORMULA R (AND POSSIBLY SOME OTHER MEANINGS).
A reflexive construction may have more than one meaning ("just as an
imperative may have more than one meaning; cf. Section 21, but it must
have the meaning spelled out in the formula R.
The formal characteristics of a given "reflexiveyhonstruction (in the
sense defined here] will vary from language to language, and so will the
additional meanings which it can serve, but the prototypical meaning
418 The Semantic8 of Grammar
I t should be added that wlviOe the English and Polish reflexive construo
tions have been described here with reference to transitive verbs, the pro-
posed semantic definition of a reflexive constrlrction can also be met by
intransitive verbs, and that it can account b;oH the fact that, in many lan-
guages, reflexive markers are widely used with change of state verbs,
regardless of their transitivity. For example, in Romance languages reflex-
ive markers are often used with perfective verbs of physical position, in
contrast to the comespanding imperfective verbs. For example, in Italian
there is a contrast between the imperfective sedere, Yo sit, to be seated',
and the perfective sedersi (with the reflexive marker -si), 20 sit down" or
between the imperfective giacere, 'to lie', and the perfective sdraiarsi, 'to
lie down'. Facts of this kind can be explained with reference to the pro-
totypical reflexive smnario: 'at some time, someone did something (e.g.
made some movements); because of this something happened to the same
person at the same time (roughly: this person came to be in a new posi-
tion).'
Of course, one might declare that "reflexives" of this kind are purely bm-
ical arvd have nothing in common with fully productive gramaticd
"reflexives'" but by doing so one would be losing a generalization which
c&nbe captured in bms of the semantic scenario.
The definition of reflexives proposed here corresponds, by and Iarp, b
the accepted usage (in the sense that it picks out, on the whole, those con-
structions which are usually called 'beflexive"]. But it doesn't necessarily
correspond to the way the term "reflexive" has been used by every descrip
tive grammar-bcause the general usage of this term not 'being controlled
by any precise definition, Is, predictably, shaky, inconsisterut, and at times
arbitrary.
Consider, for example, the possibility that a language may have two did-
ferent constructions, one far describing a voluntary action, for example:
(53) Adam covered himself with a blanket,
(54) Adam cut hrimsdf (on purpose).
and another for describing actions with unintended resdts, for example:
( 5 5 ) Adam burned himself [amidentallly].
Should both these constructions be called "reflexive" or should the tern
"reflexive" be reserved for only one of them, namely, the xoluntary one?
DiiFFerent authors have trealted this problem in different ways (see e.g. the
discussion in Dixon 197Q,b, 1977: 280).
Im my view, however, whatever analysis may best fit this or that par-
ticular language, a universal definition of the notion "reflexive construc-
tion" should not take as its reference-point a semantic formula stipwiatinng
14. Transitivity and Reflexives 419
that the action must be voluntary (RX, as in SormuUa 57 below), but
rather should remain neutral on this point (as in formula R, repeated
below as 54):
(56) (R) at some time, someone did something
because of this
something happened to the same person at the same time
(57) (RVj at some time, someone did something
becanase of thh
something happened to the same person at the same time
this pewon wanad this (to happen)
Formula R Is clearly more hiuitful as a basis for a universal definition
because in most languages of the world so-called 'Veflexive constructions"
(as described in the relevant literature) are not restricted to situations when
the action is voluntary and the subject 'hcts upon itself ', and in Fact in
many languages reflexive sentences can be ambiguous betwen a '"voluntary
action'heading and an "accidental event'heading. For example, in
Spanish,
(58) Juan se math.
Juan REFL killed
can m a n either that Juan killed himself voluntarily, or that he died by acci-
dent, as a result of his own action. Similarly, in Pollish,
(59) Jan mbii dq.
John killed REFL
can refer either to a suicide or to an accident. Even in English many reflex-
ive sentences are similarlly ambiguous; for example,
(60) John injuredhumedrcut himself.
1 suggest, therefore, that the meaning commonly (though not univenaily)
grammaticallized in one way or another in different languages of the wodd
in the f o m of some recognizable "reflexive" construction is the one pso-
posed here, R,rather than a more specific one, requiring the presence of a
voluntary action, RY. WelFlexiw constructions difler i n this respect from
""tansitiw constructicms", whose semantic prototype refers indeed to a woo-
unitary action. (See e.g. the data in Hopper and Thompson 1980, 1982;
Blank 1984; Tsunoda 1981.) Although reflexive constructions in the sense
defined in this chapter are very widespread, apparently they are not uni-
versai. For example, the Austronesian language Samoan appears to have
no reflexive construction [Mosel forthcoming).
420 The Semantics of Grammar
5. Transitive Consltructions
The distinction between intransitive and transitive construdions, though by
no means sharp and clear-cot {see Hopper and Thompson 1980; Verhaar
195PlO), plays a fundamental role in most languages of the world. The cur-
rent knowledge about the different ways in which this distinction can b
manifested in different languages suggests a certain prototypical smnwrio;,
or what Civdn (1990: 565) d l s "the prototypical transitive event"'. (3%
also Slobin 1982.) According to Givhn, 'Three semantic dimensions arre
central to the semantic definition of transitivity. Each corresponds to one
central aspwt of the prototypical transitive event, thus also to one centrd
feature of the prototypical transitive dause." GGivcin specifies these three:
"dimensions" as follows:
(a] Agent: The prototypical transitive clause involves a volitional, controlling,
initiating, active agent, one that is responsible for the event, i.e. its salient
cause.
(b) Porient: The prototypical transitive event involves an inactive, non-volitional,
non-contralling patient, one Ithaid registers the changes-of-stake associated
with the eremi, i.e. its scaSient e..ecr.
(c) Verk The prototypicat tramsitive clause imvoives a compact @on-durati~e]~
bounded (nan-lingering), realis (morn-hypothetic@ verb and Itense-asp&-
modality. It thus represents an event that is fast-moving, completed, and real,
i.e, perceptdiy and cogwitivefy ~aEfe11t.(Glv6n 19901: 565)
In my terns, the prototypical transitive scenario can be represented as
follows (see Wierzbicka 1988):
(61) at some time, someone was doing (did) something to something
because of this,
something happened to this something at the same t h e
this person wanted this (to happen)
Of course "transitive sentences" don't have to meet all the aspects of this
scenario, but a departure from any of them is likely to lead to a decrease
in syntactic transitivity [manifested in case assignment, passivimlrjllity, and
so on). The evidence far this assertion cannot be surveyed here for resrslrns
of space, but it can be easily found in the abundant literature on the s u b
ject (in particular Hopper and Thompson 1980; Motavcsik 1978; Tsunoda
1981; see also Wierzbicka 1988).
In an earlier work discussing the semantic basis of transitivity
(Wierzbicka 1981) I proposed a somewhat different semantic formula, with
a person or animal rather than an inanimate object as a prototypical
patient. I was in two minds about it, however, and ileft the question open,
adducing in fact a number of arguments in favour of my present position
14. Trawitivity and Reflexives 421
(that the prototypical patient is inanimate). As T argued at the time
Wiembicka 191811: 37-81, \the fact that animate patients oken receive dif-
ferential case marking (ACC#NOM) does not establish that clauses with mi-
mate objects we mare highly transitive than those with inanimate ones.
The matter is complicated because a highly transitive clause requires two
clearly individuated arguments, and human obj~ectstend to be more highly
individuated than inanimate ones. None the less the meaning encoded in a
"cardinal transitive clause" (see Hopper and Thompson 1980) presupposes
a maximum contrast between the two arguments, one active (a human
agent) and one passive (an inanimate object purposefuliy acted upon).
Givbn writes (1990: 630): "The prototypical transitive verb has an agent
subject and patient direct-object. If reflexives and reciprocals were to apply
b prototypical transitive verbs, they must be restricted to verbs that can
take h m a n strbJiects." In reflexives, Givcin points oult,
the object must also be human, if it is to be corererent with the subject. But the
prototypical transitive object-patient is not human, but primarily a d w b inanimate.
. . . Therefore, protrotypicai transitive verbs such as 'break', "build', 'make" "chop',
'destroy', 'hndYN etc. cannot undergo the reflexives or reciprocals-unless their
meaning is metaplhorkally extended @way$+om the transitive prototype. (1990:
6301)
P entirely agree that the prototypical transitive object is a ' 3 m b inani-
mate" and that prototypical transitive verbs are physical action verbs such
as break, chops buiId, or o p m . A prototypical transitive scenario celebrates,
so to speak, purpseful human action, in the course of which a human
being controls and &cts ""dlb objects": chops a tree, breaks a branch,
makes a fire, roasts an animal, builds a shelter, and so on. Actions of this
kind are so vital to human survival that one can hardly be surprised to see
the basic scenario enacted in them to be encoded, almost universallly, in the
grammar of human languages.
Purposeful actions directed at other people are also important in human
life, bur other people are potentiail agents themsellves and they are less likely
to be cast in the role of completely passive patients. They are likely either
to co-operate with our action or to resist it rather to remain pure "under-
goers" of it. This is why, I ~thimnk,human undergoers are sometimes marked
(for example, in Spanish) in the same way as recipients, beneficiaries, ""mal-
eficiaries", or addressees (for discussion, see Wierzbicka 198E ).
As for purposeful actions directed at oneselr (as a patient), they are
hardly necessary for human survival. In faclt, they often havle self-
destruction as their goal (as in killing, hanging, drowning, shooting, or poi-
soning onese1Q. The whole idea of '"acting upon oneself" requires the abil-
ity, and the inclination, to look at oneself from outside, and to treat oneself
as a person-in-the-wodd, on a par with other persons-in-the-worM-as
422 The Semantics of Gsammrar
pointed out by Haiman (1995), hardly a universal human proclivity.
understandable, therefore, that human languages do not lcielebralte
directed action on anything Bike the scale on which they celebrate pw
ful action directed at ttne physical environment and "dumb ma
('"elf-directed"" actions such as eating or getting dressed are, of
vital dbr survival, but these are normally viewed as 'Voing som
rather than "doing something to oneself ". Even in English, "eating
tinguished from "feeding oneself'".)
On the other hand, the idea that by doing something I can cause so
thing to happen to me (whether something I want or something I
want) is important, because it encourages people to take care, so tha
don't cut themselves, bmn themselves, injure themselves, and allso tha
can, when necessary, hide themselves, cover themselves, warm themse
wash themselves, and so on.
The prototypical reflexive scenario differs, therefore, from a prototypi
transitive scenario in several respects: it involves a person, rather th
person and an object (DO versus DO TO), it involves the idea of "
mess" ("something happened to the same person")), and it doesn" t(
warily) involve the idea of purposeful action.
The idea of ""smeness" is missing, I believe, from sentences such as
Sentences of this kind are therefore not synonymous with their counterparts
with a reflexive pronoun:
(63) He washed/shave&dressed himself.
The situations described can, of course, be exactly the same, but the E:
wptualization is different, and in some situations one construction m
more appropriate than the other. In particular, if there is more emp
on the details of the resulting state, the reflexive construction (64a and 6510
may be preferred to the non-reflexive one (64b and 65b):
(64) (01 She washed herself with special care.
(b) She washed with special care.
(65)(~EI) She dresseld herself slowly, payirrg attention to every detail.
(b) She dressed slowly, paying attention to every detail.
1t is internsling to note, therefore, that the simple and therefore attractive form
something to mneself", which might be sumested as an alternative to -agent = patie
fact culturally biased, as it implies the ""sir-aiienation'"discwssd by Haiman. Not
the nunlner oFlanpuages into which this fornola could be translated is rather limited, On the
other hand, the semantic fornula W proposed here is based on lexical and g r a m a t i d uoi-
wersals and can [I hypothesize] be translated into any human language.
bkm-reflexive sentences such as He washed or He dressed suggest a routine
action, and they indicate that this action is seen as a unitary event, not
decomposed, in the speaker's mind, into difffem;ent events involving "the
same person". (For this reason, as pointed out by Faltz (1985: 7) one is also
more likely to say The W S wmhed himself than The car wushed)
Consider also the following contrasts:
(66) Mary hid.
(67) Mary hid herself.
(6%)Mary was hiding in the shed.
(69) *Mary was hiding herself in the shed.
The reason why 67 and 68 are acceptakale whereas 69 is not (in the appro-
priate sense) is essentially the same as the reason why in many languages
(e.g. Romance languages) perfective .verbs are often reflexive where their
imperfective counterparts are not: the reflexive marker indicates a concep-
tual split between an action and a resulting change of state.
These examples highlight the danger involved in the common use of
expressions such as "reflexive meaning" unaccompanied by precise d e h i -
tions: gammar encodes different types of conceptudizationi, not different
types of sitmaition, and the same situation can be conceptualized in differ-
ent ways. (See Langacker 1987.)
The prototypical reflexive scenario is mot, then, a special case of the pro-
totypical transitive scenario, with the additional condition that the
"patient'3s coreferentiall with the "agent". ]It is a different scenario, over-
lapping with, rather than subsumed under, the prototypical scenario of
transitivity.
The idea that if I do something, something (wanted or unwanted) may
happen to me does not require any "objectivization"' of oneself, but it does
encourage foresight and care; and-judging by the evidence of human lan-
guages-it does play an important role in human conceptualization of the
warldl and of our life in the world.
It should be pointed out that in English, too, reflexive sentences are not
atways transitive to ;;any extent. Using the co-ordination test again, we will
note, for example, the following contrasts:
(70) He covere&defendedr'protected,shothimself and his child.
(71) *He hid himself and his child.
(72) *He warned himself acrid his child.
(73) *Me seated himself and his child.
(74) *He stretched himself and his child on the grass.
(75) *He threw himself and his child om to the grass.
Facts of this kind highlight the inadequacy of a semantic definition of
reflexive constnuctions couched in terms of the notions "agent" and
 424 The Semantics of Grammar
'"patient": the so-callled "patient'bay stand for diEerent semantic roles in
sentences referring to oneself and those referring b another person. In the
case of the sentence He covered hhseFair3$ his child with Q blanker English
allows the speaker to treat the two "patients" in the same way, though
many languages require here, too, conceptwiization in terns of two dis-
tinct roles. But in cases such as bodily movements even Esagllish makes a
distinction between oneself and other people. The cover-all term '"patient"
obscures such facts.
The scope of transitive reflexive sentences is wider in (modern) English
than in other European languages, and, perhaps, wider than in any ather
language. This syntactic feature of(modean) English has an obvious seman-
tic and cultural interpretation, of the kind suggested in H a b a n (1985,
1995: 22-41.Speaking of sentences such as
(5b) I expat myself to win.
(6b) I got myself up.
(his numbers] Haiman writes:
My central claim in this essay is that the representatiom of reflexivity by a separate
reflexive pronoun in sentences like (561 and (6b) iconically signals the recogaitian
of not one but two participants, and thus implies same kinad OF d e ~ c h e n lfrom
t
the? self. . . . ordinary sentenoes like
(7) (t~)P (don't] like myself
(63 He restrained himself with difficulty
. . . refleclt a degree d self-alienatiom which-unalike "reflexivizetion'Yin h e nmiddc
voice . . .-is probalbiy far from universal. The evidence for this comles not adv
From the large number of languages which have no reflexive pronoun at all . . . speaker conceptualizes the situation, can explain all the aspects of a sen-
(199la: 16)
I believe tlaat H a k a n is essentially right and that he is saying something
importmt. 1 would point out, however, that in addition to the presena or
absence of a "reflexive pmnoun~",we must also pay attention to the transi-
tive or intransitive character of the reflexive sentence. For example, Engllsh
sentences such as
(76) He hid himself.
(77) He stretched himself on the grass.
do contain a reflexilie pronoun, but, as pointed out earllier, they are not
transitive (at least judging by the co-ordinatian test), and, I would argue,
they do not show any '"elf-alienation'yunlike, for example, He restrained
hfmseif wirh d@mEty or 1 don't like myse&).
I agree with Waiman that the emergence m d current prevalence of the
reflexive pronouns in English is itself a sign of semantic and cultural devel-
opments of the kind discussed in his paper. But on the level of individual
14. TransifMty and Reflexives 425
sentences there may be no semantic diflerenoes between those with a reflex-
ive pronoun (as in English), those with a reflexhe dikic (as in French or
Spanish), or those with a reflexive suffix (as in Russian or Dlyirbal], pro-
vided that all the sentences in question are intransitive. For example, 1
don't think there is neassarily any semantic difference 'between the folilow-
ing three sentences, the first of which uses a reflexive pronoun the
second, a reflexive cliliic (se), and the third a reflexive s u f h Q-QLS):
(78) He hid himself.
(791 11 s'est mch8. [French)
(80) On spq~atalsja. (Russian)
On the other hand, a transitive reflexive sentence such as 81 may indeed
differ in some aspects of its semantic structure from intransitive ones such
as 82 and $3:
($1) He covered himself with a blanket.
482) I1 s'est enveloppb dans une couverture.
($33 On pokrylsja odejdom.
The fact that only 81 allows ~onj~ained direct ob~ects[He covered himself
and his chiidJ does indeed point ta a different conceptualization.
Once again, what matters is not just the number of ""grticipants"iin a
given situation (because this depends on th~espeaker" point of view), and
not even the number of "core arguments" in a given sentence (because two
core arguments can be associated with different degrees d transiti~ty):
only a reconstruction of the full semantic scenario, in terms of which the
tence's grammar. (For full discussion, see Wierzbicka 1988, chs. 5 and 6.1
Typologists have often recogmized on a theoreliicai level that to compare
languages (or anything else) we need a lertium ~ ~ t t ~ p ~ r a d f(See
o n f Kibrik
s.
1992: 1219-30.) For example, Faltz, in his cross-linguistic study of reflexives,
writes: " " B f o t settling in to an examination of a phenomenon in many dif-
ferent languages, it is necessary to have some language-independent idea of
what that phenomenon is, so libat we know what to begin to look for. The
tern reflexhe must therefore be provided with some universal content"
(Faltz 1985: 811. By using as its tools meaning-based categories such as
'"noun", "nulmneral", '"plral", '"past"', "imperaltive", 'kcnditional", or
"reflexive", linguistic typology has also mognlzed that in the case of lan-
guage the necessary tmrim cosnparationh 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 def-
initions, the actual analysis was carried out on the basis of intuition and
common seruse. The treatment of the category of c"reflexiws'~illustrated in
this chapter is a good case in point.
American structuralists such a3 Eeliig Harris and Charles Fries, who
refrained from using any traditiomnal grammaticall labels and from referring
to any traditional grammatical categories (e.g. Harris 1946, 1951; or Fries
19521, were therefore more consistent and more rigorous in their approach
to linguistic analysis than either traditional grammarians or present-day
typologists. They did not, however, develop linguistic typology.
Languages differ in form and structure, but they all encode meaning. In
their grammars Cust as in their lexicons) different languages encode differ-
ent configurations of the same semantic primitives. Some configurations,
however, appear to be very widespread, and to play an important role in
the grammar of countless and most diverse languages of the world. I believe
that recurring configurations of this kind represent meanings which am par-
ticularly important itll human conceptualization of the world. Bt is am
important task of linguistics as a discipline to identify such meanings; by
Sulfilling this task, linguistics can contribute in a significant way to the study
of humankind, transcending th~eboundaries of academic disciplines,
Among the meanings which linguistic investigations show to be grm-
maticallized most widely in the languages of the world, mrt: can recognize
certain scenarios such as the "ilransitive" soenario or the c'refle~ive'2
scenario; and we can see that large parts of grammars are organized around
such scenarios, and can be described with reference to them. Other widely
gramaticalized meanings are of a different nature. All types of meanings,
however, can 'be rigorously described and insightfully compared in term of
the same set of universal semantic primitives and of rhe metalanguage
based on them. I believe thalt witlloul such a metaUang;wag, grammamid
typology has no firm h s i s and no precise tools with which it could fully
achieve its objectives.
15 Comparing Grammatical
Categories across Languages: The
Semantics of Evidentials
n this chapter I am going to illustrate and document the claim that gram-
ar encodes meaning by andysing one area of grammar in a number of
Eerenrt languages of the world: that area which is usually associated with
he term ""evidenticulity"'. As the goal of this chapter is mainly theoretical,
empirid, my data wilt be drawn exclusively from onle source: the voU-
entitled Ewidetatiar's'fy,edited by Wallace Chafe and Johanna Hichols
6). I will re-examine the data presented in some of the chapters of this
wme by experts on a number of languages, and B will try to show how
se data can be reanalysed in terms of universal semantic primitives, and
OW in this way they can be made both more verifiable (that is, predictive)
nd more comparable across language boundaries.
AS it is, the contributors t0 the volume operate with analytical categories
ch as "dirmt" (experience or evidence), '"ersonal", "innmediate", ""first-
and'" c e w i t n e ~ ~ dand
' y , of course "indirectW/'non-hmedialte"y "second-
d'" 'hot-witnessed", '7nfersed"~ndso on. The trouble is that labels of
kind stand for different things in different Ilanguages; and that they
ave very litltlle predictive value. For example, when we are told that a Uan-
e distinguishes "direct evidenceq'frorm "'non-direct evidence", or
ate evidenoe (or experience)" from '"on-immediate evidence", we
e no idea exactly what these labels m a n with respect to this par-
nguage, nor how the categories in question are used in this Ian-
- and if exactly the same labells are used with respect to another
ge, we can by no means expect that they will be used in the same
nse, nor that the categories bearing these labels in the second language
ill correspond in use to those bearing the same labels in the first language.
See Ki'bsik 1992: 43, 129-30.1
By contrast, if we rely on universal semantic primitives such as I,
"
NOW, DO, THIS, and BECAUSE, SEE, or NEAR, we can posit inltu-
ively clear categories such as Inow bemuse P see i t k r '1 know because
did it" which will mean exactly the same with respect to any language for
which they are pstulated. FomuIae of this kind are intuitively veriffiabPe -mda (Perfamative-Perfective]
and they are empirically testable. They make dear predictions about the P know this
range of use of the categories which encode them, so that if we posit the because 3 did it a short time before now
same meaning for two categories in two different languages (e.g. 9 know it
bemuse I did it'), we can expect that these two categories will have the same Oswdh%examples of the use of these suffixes include sentences 1, 2, and 6
range of use (except for possible diflerences due to same specifiable cultural (his numbers):
Factors)~.IF our predictions are not fulfilled, the formulae are proved inad- (11) qowA.qtula. (Perfornative-]imperfective)
equate, er inaccurate%and have to be revised or adjusted. Proceeding in this (underlying form: qowaQq-kela)
way, we can obtain an optimal fit between semantic formulae and language 2 turn packicing (a suitcase].'
use. Whether this fit can be perfect and absolute is an open question. But (23 qawhhmela. (perfornative-PerFectiwe)
it can certainly be better than the fit between traditional labels such as [iunderflyilvg am: qawaocp-mela)
"direct", ""pewondYa, "immediate", c'fint-hand" and language use. 'Ijust packed.'
The formulae propaved in the present chapter are meant, above all, to (Q m i 4 3a me-?&! p%kbm-mela.
illustrate the proposed metlhodology. Since I have no knowledge d the lam- there-VISIBLE I your-ftutheranr. kill-PERFORM.
gmages for which these formulae are proposed, I have to rely entirely on the 'Right there 1 killed your Father.'
information provided by the experts. But in many cases this infomatiom is
se rich and so clearly presented that it provides a suficient basis far the Seeing
Eorrnul~ationof semantic hypotheses. It would*of course, be ideal if, in the
future, the experts tlhe~nselveswere to test these hypotheses against further h o t h e r pair of complementary suffixes, one imperfective and the other
data. perfective, is what Oswalt calls the 'Tactual-Visual" pair, -$ti and y6.
These suffixes "signify that the speaker knows of what he speaks because
he sees, or saw, it." ln addition, "the Factual (not the Visual) also applies
to classes of actions or states which have been observed enough by the
2. Kashaya speaker for him to generalize them as true, and to classes which may sim-
ply be common knowledge" (1986: 36).
Kashaya (of the Porno family of northern California) has a very rich sys- Clearily the meaning of the ""Visual (Perfective)'"uffix can be represented
tern of verbal sufixes indicating evidentiality-as Oswalt (1 986: 24) paints as follows:"
auk, one of thc most elaborate and discriminating in the world. What is par-
licularly interesting about this system is that although it is so daborate it -yi% (Visuali)
is also beautifully transparent in its semantics. I know this
because I saw it
Doing This mn be illustrated with Oswaltlt"ssentence 9:
To begin with, Kashaya has two evidential suffixes (a perfective and an (91 qawahy. (Visualn)
imperfective) which point to the speaker's personal experienoe as a self- (underlying fom: qowaaq-y%)
'(I just saw] be packed, I just saw him pack."
explanatory source of infaanation. QswalaEa calls these sufhes
""E"rformativen,and defines them as follows: 'The Perfornative sufBxes
signify that the speaker knows af what he speaks because he is performing
the act himself or has just performed itv'(1486: 34). ]In our terns the mean- labels "VisuaLY and "Visud2'h& dlow axe mine. VClswaEt's labels sue "V13mL"and '
ing of these suffixes can be represented very simply: ". Strictly speaking, the fornula assigned to hhe "Specific ~lmperfecliive)'~emsaof the
" s u f i should dleaw fear bath present and past events, extending over same time {cf.
-Gels (Performathe-Imperfective) assigned ho sentence 13). Tlnis m l d be achieved as follows:
I know h i s far some time I @odd say: 1see this
because ]I am doing it b u s e of this, I can say: I know i t
 The "Fac!.ual'buffim appears to have two distinct senses, one manifested nolt see it" (1986: 371. Unlike the "Performative" and the "Visual" suffix, it
in sentences referring to specific events, and another, in generic sentences. is indifferent to aspectual distinctions. Oswalt's examplles include 14, 115,
The specific sense of this suffix parallels that of the "Vi~uai~": and 16:
-%%B (Wlsual~) (14) mcP.dum. H(lmperfectiv$j
I know this
because 1 see it " (underlying f o m : m ~ - ~ ~ d - ~ m n 2 i )
Imriheard someone running along.'
(11 5) mamh.dn. (Perfective]
This is illustrated with Oswalt's sent~ence8:
(underlying fom: mo-ma%-qnn8)
(8) qowB.qh. (Factual) 'I just heard someone run in.'
(underlying form: qowaQpikk) (161 hayu ckhno-n. (lmperfmtive)~
'[I see) he is packing.' 'I hear a dog barking."
The generic sense of the 'FactuaI' suffix is quite different. It can be repre- The meaning of the suffix in question seems quite clear:
sented as folllows:"
- h n l (Auditalryjr
-M (Faclwal)~ 1know this
everyone knows it because I hear it
This use oF 'FacturaP" can be illustrated with the generic interpretation of
Oswalt's sentence 13: Hearsay and Personal Experience
Another sufix, which OlswaQtclassifies together with the "Perfornative",
bird=~c.sum. sound-~acrv~n, the "'Visual", the "FBctual" and the "Aladitary'hder the label "Direct
'Birds sing.' Evidence", is -yo~w&,the suffix of "Personal Experience". in narratives, a11
The same sentence, however, can mceivc a dimerent, specific interpretation, the other evidentials described so far are replaced with this one suffix. This
which (unlike the generic one) implies visual evidence: means that a radical simplification of the evidential system takes place, with
all evidential distinctions replaced with just one: that between "Personal
(13) sihta=yachma cahno-w. Experieni~e"and "Quoltative".
b i r d = ~ ~ . s u esound-PACWAL
~, The meaning of the "Quotalive" as such seems reasonably clear. It "is
'(1 seehaw) birds arelwere singing.' the one evidential for infarmation leaned from someone else, contrasted
It doesn't seem possible to reduce these two diflerent uses of "Factual" tta with the many for information learned through the speaker's awn emperi-
one; and it would perhaps be better to give the sufix in question two dif- ence" "986: 41). An example is provided by:
ferent labels: "VisuaBz" hit;the specific use and Tactual' for the generic use (27) mol =f-do-. h a p cxihno-w.
(at the same time renaming Oswalt's Yisual' as cVi~u~I1')~. then = n s s - ~ a r o a - ~ o ~ -dog
~ m ~sound-ass
~t
"Then, they say, the dog barked."
Hearing Presumably, here as elsewhere, the meaning of the "Quatative" can be rep-
In addition to its two "'Visual" sufixes ("Visuall" and 'T"uriualzv')Kashaya resented as follows:
also has an "Adltory'hsufix, -knnii, which "signifies that the speaker -do (Quotative)
knows of what he speaks becalllse he heard the sound of the action, but did I say this because someone else said this
OswalY describes the use of the Factual suffix mot only in terns of "camera knowledge" I don't say: I know it
but also of "cliusses 06adions or stales which bave been observed enough by the speaker for
him ao generalize Ilhern as true" '1486: 36). but B think that both these uses can probably be What is much harder to establish is the meaning of the "Personal
subsumed under "common knowledge" and that the Fornula "everyame knows it'' captures Experience" suffix -yowti, which in narratives constitutes the only "'Direct
wrrectily the semantic invariant of this sufix. Evidenoe" alternative to the "Quotative".
 One possibility which comes to mind as a hypothetical meaning of -yaw6
is this:
I know
because I was there
BUG this interpretation is undermined by the fact that -yaw$ can be used
with respect lo "moving actions seen on television or in the movies" "986:
42). It is also hard to reconcile with the fact that what is lexperlenoad in
dream, visions, and revelations is also reported with -yowd. In the case of
ielevision and movies, it could be argued that the speaker "'was therdyin
front of the screen); but in the case of dreams, visions, and revelationus
(which may or may not reature tbc speaker himselfl such an irrterprelation
makes even less sense: if H know something because I have seen it in a dream
it is not my physical presence somewhere that matters but my psychologi-
cal experience.
It seems to me, therefore, that we should llook for a diflerent, more pllau-
sible interpretation of the "Personal Experience"ss;uffix. The Fact that in
narratives ali other devices are reduced to one-'Quetative"' versvlw
""Prsonal Experience", suggests the following interpretation for the latter:
-yowh (Personal Experience)
I[ don" say this because semeone else said this
I know if
Compare this with the formlla for the ""Qotativee""suggested eadier:
-do (Quotaailre)
I say this kcxiuse someone else said this
I don't say: I know it
Oswalt (1486:40) comments: "The simplification in narratives of the
elaborateness of the evidential sysltem is understandable-when one tdks
of events that may have happened a considerable time previously, the pre-
cise type of evidence is less important and, indeed, is often not remembered
by the speaker." Thus, the only question which redly arises with respect b
narratives is this: does the speaker say this or that m the basis of bea~say
or not? "Quotntive" signals hearsay; the sufix of "Personal Experience"
f i not signal [by virtue of
siganajs no hearsay. Thus, the ' % e a r s a y Y ~ udoes
its meaning] an absence of 'Urect experience"",Rather, it is the so-called
suffix of "Persand Experience" which signals (by virtue of its meaning) an
absenoe of hearsay. The fact that it is common for a story to have tihe -do
('"uotative") su& "in almost every sentence" (1986: 44) lends, I think,
support Ito this analysis: if most, or nearly all, sentemms in a story are
marked as bawd on hearsay, it makes good sense for the speaker to mark
those exoeptional anes which are not based on hearsay.
Inference
The "Inferential I" suffix -qG 'barks an inference based on circumstances or
evidence found apart, in space or time, From an actual event or state . . . To
a certain extent -qG is a default category for evidence through senses other
than those that have specific sensory suffixes (Visual or Auditory) . . . The
Kashaya Inferential su@x implies no lack of oertainty, merely lack of higher
ranking evidence" (OswaEt 1986: 38). These comments seem to suggest that
the s u f k in question means:
P know this
not because I see it
not because I hear it
But this is a very implausilbfe semantic formula. Consider, for example, sen-
tence 20:
(210) cuhai. mu?ia-qb,
'Bread has been eneoaked,'
uttered by somebody coming into a house and detecting an odour. The for-
mula T know it not because I see i t k i g h t seem to fit this situation, but
why should anyone want to say, in addition, 'not because I hear itY?
Consider also sentence 24, when the same sufix is combinned with a
future tenser
(241 hdQ ya mihyild-khe-t%n=i-q-a. rnu.kito biaqb=+li.
how we w i n - ~ v r-not =ASS-INF-NON-PIWAL him what=in.
'It appears we113 never be: able to beat him in anything.'
Here, the fomuila skeitched would make no sense:
We'll never be able to beat him in anything
I know this
not because I see it
not because I hear it
We have to agree with Oswalt, therefore, that the sufix in question is
'YnFerentiaP''rathe~than '%sensory", levem though it "implies no lack of cer-
tainty, merely Pack of higher ranking evidenoeySs1 propose for this s u l k the
following semantic fomular3
In his grammar of the Dagheatani languagiz, h M , Kibrik (19?Sn&) discusses similar phe-
nomena under the heading "'zngLmosf"(~it,a naun meaning 'not in front of the eyes')^. He
remarks that "the weaning ~F'urglazoost" is mwposed OF the meaning 'a participant in the
speech event is present in the situation which is being desccri~~andl 'the binay meaning of
negation"'" (319776: 543). The examples he omen, however [Kibrik 19770: 228-31), include
same where lthe speaker is actuaiely present in the situation but far one reason or another rails
to see some aspect of this situation. This suggests that Kilbrik's heading ("za$laznostd ")may
actually be more awurate Ram a semantic point of view than the definition, and that the best

-q?l (Inferential 3)
I know this
because P know something else
Kashaya afso has another "'inferential'hsuffix, -bi, which 43swaIh labels
'Vnferential PI", and another "experientiall" s u f i , -miy6, which Olswalt
labels "'Remob Past'" but not enough information is provided about these
two suffures to enable us to sketch more than very tentative semantic for-
mulae. Virtually all that Qswalt says about these suExes is that "RetnrDte
Pasty"s a r e m t e past alllcrnadilvre to -yowd and that "'Inferential IP", in oom-
bination with another suffix -w,Is close in meaning to the English "turn
out'"e.g. Yt tuned out to be my husband'). As a starting-point for further
testing we could propose, therefore, the following formulae:
-miy& (Remote Past)
E know this
not because someone else said something
it happened a long time before now
-bi-w (Inferential 11)
1 know this now
because I know something else now
I didn't know it before now
David Weber (1986) begins his discussion of the three evidential suiffnrces,
-mi, -$hi, and -chiyin Tanna Quechua (a language of central Peru), by refer-
ring to AdeIaar's f 1977: 79) statement that these wulfixes "indicate the valid-
ity of the information supplied by the speaker"".delaar assigns tci these
three suffixes the following meanings:
-mi "indicates that the speaker is convinced about what he is saying",
-shi "indicates that the speaker has obtained the infomation that he is
supplying through hearsay",
-chi "'indicates bhrral: the speaker" statement is a conjecture".
These definitions suggest the following semantic representation:
"
semantic fornula for the category in question [in Anchg may be know this not Ibemw I
saw something'. This fornula seems to dso fit examples such as 'he didn't came' or 'he had
no inteakion to work', when there was miual!y notauing €or I k speaker to see: 'l k m w this
not beau% I saw something'. .]It would be good if this formula coluld also be tested for rate-
gories such as the ''iderential" in Krrshaya and in the other laoguaps described in Chafe and
Michds (1986).
15. The Semantics of Evidentials 424
-mi
1 know this
-shi
someone else says this
E don't say: I know it
-chi
I think this
I don" know it
Buit Weber argues that while kdelaar's definitioms may be appropriate
for Tarma Quechua, they are not valid for the dialect that he has investi-
gated himselt; namely for Huanuco Quechua.
'In Tarma Quechua, Weber says, -mi Is used not only for personal expe-
rience, but also to indicate conviction, whereas in Huanuco -mi is used only
for personal expeaienm. Speaking of a number of Tarma texts that he had
examined, Weber comments: ''In all Ignacio Zarate Mayma's texts in
Adelaar (8977: 308-4107) and in Puente (l972), P have not found a single
case of -ski. Even though much of the material is far beyond the realm of
the teller" experience (including folktales about the fox and the condor), he
uses -mi throughout. This is because he believes the stories he is telling
. . . These facts justify Adelaar" claims for TamaY"l986: 1142).
But in Nuanuco Quechua, Weber tells us, the situation is diflerent. "To
the Huanwco Quecltnna ear, Zarate's use of -mi seems exceedingly incautious
with respect to the information he conveys"(l42). Weber" informant also
mentions a manl referred to by his neighbours as "Iokr.c~",krazy', who con-
stantly uses -mi. "No one believes what he says because he %always speaks
as though he had witnessed what he is tellling about.' "
Apparentlly, then, there is a difference between the Tanna sense of -mi and
the Huanuco sense of -mkif in Tarma -mi means 'I know', or perhaps '1 can
say: I know', in Humuco it musk mean something different. But what?
W e k r glosses the Huanuco senses of -mi, -$hi, and -chi as "dimt" (~nw),
"indirect" (IND), and "cc~njecture" [CNJ), respectively. We insists that
in Huanuco, "-miand -ski are basically evidential: -mi means 'learned by
direct experiencebnd -$hi means Yearned by indirect experienoe
[Rearsayy " "(139). In particular, -mi is mot a "validational"' Q""ndicating
commitment to the truth of the proposition"";(139), but an '"evidential"
("indicating the source of the information"). 'N vaiidaltionall interpretation
for -mi is often appropriate because of the axiom that direct experience is
reliable [and thus lone is convinced about it)" (IN).The basic meaning of
-mi, however, is not "validatianaly~ut "evidential", like that of -shi: -$hi
implies absence of direct experience, and -miyits presence.
But what does it really mean thalt -misignals "'direct experienoe"? It could
mean a number of things, such as the following:
434 The Semmaics of Grammar

(Il) I know this According to Weberysinformant, this sentence "'is natural with -shi but not
k a u s e I saw it with -mi,even if the speakcer is convinced that it Is true" "((11986:140). Weber
(2) 1 kknw this explains this fact as folllows: "This is bemuse with -MIS it implies that the
because I heard it speaker has met his great grandfalther. What is basic for -miis the source
(3) I know this of the information (direct experience), not commitment to the tmth of what
bemuse I perceived it his name was" (CPM).
Weber also points out that '"he same result obtains dbr a sentence that
(4) 1 know this the speaker does not believe, e.g. 'The moon is made of cheese.' According
because I did it to TCV meber's informant] this is natural with -$hi, indicating that the
(5) I know ehis speaker has been informed ]that the moon is made of cheese. With -mi, says
because it happened Lo me TCV,it implies that the speaker has been to the moon" (ICLrO.0).
(16) I know this But these comments take us back to the question: M a t does -mi really
because I was there mean? The last two examples appear to suggest the foilowing interpreta-
(7) I know h i s tion: 'Iknow this because I was therey. But clearly, this cannot be the
not because someone said it invariant of -mi, because this fomulla does not fit the case of the diviner,
or, for that matter, the case of the person hit by someone. Et would be odd
Would any one of these diuerent possibilities cover the whole r a n g of to say 'I know that you hit me because I was there'.
use d -mfl Let us examine Weber's examples, with these questions in mind. k t us examine one Fwther example provided by Weber-sentence 2a3
Sentence Ila Weber" nuaImers] refers to a diviner who has chewed w a uttered "in response to person(s) who hare expressed doubt as to the
and predicts deatlx speallr~r'sability to make it (e.8. to the top of a mountain)" (139).
Noqa -mi chaya-:-man apw-qa.
die-s~urr-~ur I arrive-I-mm if:l:go-m~
"t will die.' mive, if 1were to go."
'lwwouldlt~10;ulEdJnnlght

According to Weber, the "rhetorical force" of this utterance (in these par-
ticular circumstancres) would be '" assert that it d H die". T h s , the diviner
doesnY mean 3 know because: I saw it', or 'I kknw because I h a r d it" or
'Iknow because I was there', and, cbarly, he doesn't mean 'I know bmuse
I did itY,or 'I kknw because it happened to me', although he could con-
ceirabjy mean 'I know because somehrring happened to me" and he miat
mean 'I know, not because someone said something'. The same two possi-
bilities would also h d d for sentence 3a:
( 3 4 Qam-pis maiqa-ma-shka-mki-mi.
~ Q U - ~ ~ S h&-IOBI-PERF-2
CJ
'Youalso hit me.'
Here, Weber provides the following additional gloss: "I sawifelt you hit me
(and was consciou~'.En this situation, some of the other possibilities listed
Clearly, the speaker does not m a n here 'I h o w this because I was these'.
Nor does he m a n 'I know this because I saw it*, or 'I know this because I
did it', or 'I know this beeaplse it happened to me', or '1 know this because
" "
something happened to me'. It could be argued that in this case the speaker
might mean P o w this because I fed sornething"(i.e. have a feeling that
I mald do itY).But this interpretation would not fit the case of the great-
grandfather ('I know that my great-grandfather9 name was John, because
: I feel m me thing').
Wd, then, is the semantic invariant of -mR It seems to me that we are
left with only one possibility which would fit all1 of Weber's exmp1es,
namely, number 7: 'J know this, not because someone said something'. If
tlhk k right then -mifunctions in Huanuca Quwhua as a marked categoryry,
defined in opposition to the hearsay -#As':
-mi

"
earlier would also be applicable: 'I know this because it happened to me',
9 know this because B perceived it', or know this because I saw it" But
none of these formulae would fit the case of the diviner. k t us consider, h
1 say this
not becaum someone else said it
I know it
turn, the (ummbered) sentence glossed as:
-shi
'My mother" grandfather's name was John.' H say this
438 The Semravzrim of Grammar
because someone else said it
I don't say: I know it
It is not the case, then, that -shi indicates the absence of "direct e v i d e n ~ " ~
and -mi its presenoe. Rather, -,?hi indicates the presence of hearsay (as the
basis of the speaker's statement) and -mi, its absence.
OF course, a denid of hearsay could also be compdible with a conjm-
ture and -mi is not compatible with conjectures. Bat this is accounted for
by the component '1 knowhssiped here to -mj: mnjectures are not com-
patible with 'I know'. For the Huaanuco Quechua element -chi, which
W e k r characterizes as "conjecture'" we can propose the same semantic
formula which we have assigned to the T m a -ckl:
-chi
I think this
I don't know it
"
The contrast between the component 'I don" know ithassigned to -chi and
the component don't say: I know ithassigned to -ski aoccrunts, I think,
for the different '"alidationan"' force of these two elements. Weber's exam-
ples suggest that -ski can be used in cases where the speaker is not at 4
certain of the information conveyed, or ellen when he is highly sceptical (as
in the case of the sentence "the moon is ma& of cheese"), but allso in cases
when the speaker is convinced that the sentence is true (as in the case d
the sentenoe ''my mother" grandfather's name was John"]. The mnzponent
'Idon't say: I know it' is compatible with both these types of situation. On
the other hand, the component 'Idon't know itY,assigned to -chiysuggests
a lack of confidence, and would not be compatilsle with situations wherv the
speaker reports second-hand innfamation that he views as fairly reliable.
Of course, in Western culture, second-hand information regarded as reli-
able is usuallly not distinguished from first-hand knowledge. But as Welaer
points out, in Quechua culture "'(only) one's own experience is reliable'"
(1986: E38), and the cultural norm is '"void unnecessary risk, as by assum-
ing responsibility for information of which one: is not absolutely certain'"
'(138). This explains, for example, why in a booklet on Peruvian history
(discussed by Weber), sentences such as "Their tools and things are found
throughout Peru" has -shi rather than -mi:as Weber points out, it is so
''because the author loouId not possibly have seen all those things found in
"
all those places" (1411). Clearly, the author of the booklet dws noit wish to
imply don't t o w ' . But the cautious component 'I don't say: I know it"
does not imply lack of knowledge; it implies only an unwillingness to
a s s m e penonall responsibility for the information provided. Such a cau-
tious attitude might seem unnecessary, and even odd, from a Western point
of view, bult it is understandable from the point of view of Qumhua cul-
rUrR.
The analysis of Huanuco Quechua eviderutials proposed here explains, it
seems to me, the fact that -mf-though labelled by Weber c ' d i r e ~ t " 4 0 e ~
not seem to k widely used in sentences based on the speaker" personal
experience, and that many, perhap most, such sentences occur without any
evideetlals. "For example, ATR [an informanntll, in telling of going to see a
foothall game, did not use -mi in the parts describinng his getting to and
from the garne (told in the first person), but he did use -mi in describing the
events af other people (companions, players, referees)" (11986: 141).
IF -mi meant something like 9 know this because I did ist'or 'I know this
because it happened to me" this absence of -mi in most personal narratives
woutd he puzzling. But if -mi signals that the account is not based on
hearsay, this absence of -mf in most personal narratives is understandable:
nomally, there is no need to say:
I did it
I know this not because someone else told me
If the speaker is not suffering from amnesia it would be assumed that he
knows what he did without someone else telling him about it, Hut in the
case of other people's actions, the report could well be based om hearsay,
so if it isn't, it makes sense for the speaker to sigma1 this non-hearsay basis
of the sentence by means of -mi. Huanuco Quechua differs in this respect
from worn other languages (e.;g. Wintu) described in the same volume,
which have markers (also labelled as "direct") signallling "personal experi-
ence" of soma sort in a positive way rather than "absence of hearsayan.
U n d e n t a n d a b in these languages the marker in question is used more
widely than -mi' is used in Hwanuco.
According to SchPichter [L9B6),Wintu, a language of northern Calihrnia,
has four evidential sufikes, which she labels as "nonvisual sensorial",
'chearsay'3nccinferential"yand 'kxpectational". Here, as elsewhere, the labels
at &st provide hints, not explanations: they cannot tell the reader what
each of the sufixes in question really means and in what range of situations
it can be used.
Non-visual Sensorial
T0 begin with, the suffix -nfluEr "is used if the speaker wishes to indicate
that the statement he is making describes a fact known to him through one
of his senses other than vision, i.e. his hearing, feeling, taste, smell, touch,
or any kind of intellectual experience of 'sixth sense' " (1986: 4731.As a first
x-VI €iP

T i i %p mm " r
%*= tj-T3
-ga
%~$.-g
G o s Da g vl
personal responsibility ('I don't say: H know'). The phrase 9 think' dolesn't I propose that the "sensory evidence", which is nomafly visual, cam be
really fit myths very well. On the other hand, the fornula: represented as follow^:^
-ke. -re. (partial ierrpiitxtion)i
someone says this I know something now
1 don't say: I know it "ecause I see something'
fits both myths and all the other sentences with the "heaysay" evidentid whereas the ""ife~ece", wwhh apparently has to concern a third person,
adduced by Schlichter. Furthemore, this last formula allows us to account can be represented as:
for the difference between sentences with the "hearsay" evidential and those
sentences with the "non-visual sensorial" evidential which report speech, I think I can say something ahout someone because of thls
such as 4 OF 7: It seems to me that these two components jointly fit all the examples
44) He said "don't do it!'(We heard hirn say not to do it) adduoed earllier, as well as Schlichter's two additional examplles, 23 and 24:
(7) How did he instruct you (in your hearing)? (233 Hida Faysaw. yo.!
Sentences such as 4 and 7 are consistent with the following intepreta- very hurry EX
'He must be in a great hurry (1 see him wn, I can't witch up with him)?"
tion: the speaker thinks 'that's what the other person said3eclause some-
thing happened to the speaker himself: the voice ueaching Ibis ears. I (24) NiiEay lewin sukese-.
presume that the 'cnno-visual sensorial" evidential would nomalIy not be nephew here stand
'My nephew must have been here (1 see tracks).'
used in retelling a myth, because in this case it would make more sense for
the speaker to wish to disclaim personal responsibility for the message Ch For example, in 23, what 'I know mnowr'is that 'he is running', and what
don't say: I know this') than to claim personal respondbility for it CI 'I lthink I can say about someone because of this'is that %he is in a @eat
think". hurry', Similarly, in 24, what 'I h o w nowy is that 'there are tracks here'
I conclude, therefore, that ithe most likely semantic structure of the and what 'I think E cam say about someone because of ahis' is that 'my
evidential in Wintu is indeed this: 'someone says this; 1 don't say: nephew was here'.
I know itq.

Inferential
According to Schlichter (1486: 521, h e fourth Wintu evidential, -?el, "denotes
The third Wintu evidential, -res, "'indicates that the speaker believes Itis that the speaker believes his proposition to be &mebecause of his experience
stabmmnt to be true k a u s e of circumslantial sensory evidence. This evi- with similar situations, regular patterns, or repeated circumstances c o m o n
denoe t m s out to be most often visual" (IScMichter 1986: 51). IIPwstuaIIive in human life". Schlichter's prime examples are (25) and (26):
sentences are:
(25) Tima minel?ed, pira.Te'el
(203 Heke ma.n hara.kire. m. cold die: starve
samewhere EX go COM.DUU. 'He might freeze b death, he might starve [it's cold and he%alone, helpless,
'He must haw gone somewhere (1 don't see him)." sick)."
(21) Piya mtryto.n dekna.sto.n lpiya ma.n biyaEtirem. ( 2 9 Tlsnltoa truqa.7eiF.
thaw feet steps )that EX be CQM.DUB. berries ripe
'Those tracks of steps?That must have been hirn." 'The berries must be ripe (it's that time of year)."
(221 Hadi wintbh minelbirem.
why! person die !u.~vs. But Schlicfster's data also include several examples where the same eviden-
'Why, a person must have died ((1see or hear someone cry)!' tial is used to indicate hearsay, as jm 27 and 28, and she suspects that "his
Interestingiy, in scenknces of thls kind "the action referred to by the verb The question of whenher the component 'because I see sometlhing'can be regarded as part
stem always, has a third person subject" "986: 511. of the ~ermanticinvariant is a matter for further investigation.
I

may represent a semantic change toward a single evidential for indirect evi-
dence which includes both hearsay and expectationm(1 986, 531:
(27) Mo.nlukin ba.laheres winthu.tr biya-kija7aJ'leibasp'urit kwt.
long ago myth people be cow they all
'ln the myths from long ago they [the animals) wre all people."
(28) TWni ma-rrm piphrit Tuna suke-kjldel h0.nto.n ~inuM~u4ito.t pipkit.
that way EX they so stand CON long ago people they
'That" the way it was among the peaple long ago.'
It seems to me, however, that both itbe "expectational" and the ''hearsay"
use of the element in question can be accounted for in terms of a unitary
semantic Ejomula:
-?el
I think this
I can%say: I know it
This would apply to the 'kxpectational" examples as follows:
(25) 1 think: Yne will freeze to death, he will starve
I can? say: I know it
426) 1 think: the berries are: ripe
I can" say: I know it
But the same formula would apply to the *%earsay'' sentences with the
same s u f i :
(27) 1 think: in the myths from long ago they (the animals) were all
people
E can't say: I h o w it
(283 l think: that's the way it was among the people long ago
l can't say: I know it
If this is correct, then there is a subtle difference in meaning between
""haway" sentences such as 10 to 84,with the suffix -ke, and "hearsayy'
sentences s w h as 27 and 28, with the suffix -re!. This conclusion seems: to
me quite consistent with the illlustrative sentenloes offered by ScEmichter, but:
of course it needs to be checked against a more extensive range of data.
According to Gordon (19861, Maricopa has a number of sufixes which
indicate the source of the infomation. Two of these sufixes, -(k)jPwb~,
'"sight evidential'hand -(k)'n, "hearing and other nonvisual sensory eviden-
tial", indicate "first-hand knowledgege"' of the speaker. Thus, "-(kjPvsr is
IS. The Semantic8 of Evldemtiais 447
found on the final main verb of a sentence in which h e speaker is assert-
ing something which he or she kknws about on the basis of having directly
seen the event expressed in b e sentence" (6;11986: 77). Gordon illlustrates the
use of the "sight evidential"" with the following sentences (Gordonyssum-
bering):
(43 M-iha-'guu.
~-~~c~-sEE=EY
'Yao dancled (I knaw because I saw it).'
(53 Ika-'pu.
dance-s~~=Ev
'He danulced (I know because I saw in].'
(163 '-iima-k'yw.
"
L-dlanw-k=s~~=~v
Idwnad iffor sore, in the past]."
But the third of these examples presents a problem. Clearly, in this case the
nice simple gloss 'I know because E saw ir-oes not fit, and has to be
replaced with something else ("for sure, in the past")^. But if so, then what
is the real invariant of the suffix in question?
A similar problem arises in the case of the other sensory evidential,
-(k)"r;rwhich is used 'Yo mark that the information in the sentenae is from
the speaker's first-hand knowledge, though in this case the knowledge is
gainled not by having seen the event, but by having otherwise sensed (usu-
ally heard] the event or stateY"(6ordon 1986;: 77). This is illlustrated with
sentenws 7, 8, and 9:
(73 M-ashvar-ha.
~-s~~~-HR=Ev
Tau sang (I know because I heard it].'
(83 Ashvar-'a.
s~~$-HR=EV
'We sang (I kmow because ]I heard ilt).'
(9, '-ashvar-k'a.
I -sing-k=sn=ev
'I sang (for sure, in the: past; I hleiitdlfelt myself)!
But again, in sentence 9 the nice simple gloss 3 know because I heard it'
does not fit, and has to be r e p l a d with samething else. Gordon C1986: 78)
comments on kh difficulty as follows: "When these sulMixes are used on
verbs which have a first person subject, the evidential sense Is less promi-
nent and instead they convey a strong assertiveness about the actual1 occur-
rence of the event expressed by the semtenloe."
But what does it mean that '"he evidential sense is less prominentv'? To
say this is tie dodge the crucial issue of the semantic invariant: is the sense
 E know this h a p p e d because I did it
"
3 know this happened because I saw it' pc~stulatedas the invariant of the
suffix -(k))uu or isn't it7 Similarly, is the semantic mmponent know this
because I heard it'postgated as the semantic invariant of the s u f h -('k)"ss
people codd see it
A similar analysis can be proposed for sentenoes with the "hearing evi-
or isn't it? Sin% the% hypothetical conaponenJts clearly do mot fit sentences dentid", with two core c~mponentsassigned to all the occurrences of this
with first person subjects, they cannot oonstitute the:invariants d the sd- evidential, anid witla one additional component provided by the gramati-
k e s in question. lcal context. C

The reason why those hypothetical components do not fit sentences with
I sang -(k)'a
&st pewon subjects is quite clear. NomaBly, when we report our own activ-
I sang
ities we are certain that these activities have actually taken place because
I know this happened because I did it
we know we have performed them, not because we have seen or heard our-
people could hear it
seIIves performing them. Et would make sense, therefore, to say:
Third person sentences can be analysed as follows:
I danced ((I sang]
I know this happened because I did it He danced -i(k)l"u
he danoed
but hardly:
I h o w this happened
I d a n d {I sang] people could see it
I know this happened because I saw it (heard it)
One further minimal pair, 23 and 24, may be helpful here (ss stands for
But if rinse attribute these semantically plausible formulae to sentences with s m e subject):
first person subjects we are left with no invariant. Can we find semantic (23) Nyaa 'awu '-mx-kc-'yun.
compomnts which could fit all the uses of the *'sight evidential" ( h t is, I Set. 1-hurt-SS-SEE=EY
both h t person and non-first person uses)? And can we find such invariant 'I was sick.'
semntic components for the ""haring evidential'? If we can't do that, could (243 Pam-sh 'ajayu ray-'yuu.
we at least iind, for each s u f i , two different but related formulae? It seem Pam-SJ s.t. hurt-sm=ev
to me that we can. As a first approximatiom, I propose the following: 'Pam was sick."
-(k)"uu Clearly, it makes more sense to posit for sentence 23 the following for-
I know this happened nrwJla:&
people could sm it
I was sick
-[k)'a I know this happened because it happened to me
1know this happened people could see it
people could bear it
rather &an the ll~nnatural'Ceyewitnessreporta':
I am not suggesting that these components will always, in all gramaticd
contexts, be interpreted in exactly the same way. It is possible, even likely, I was sick
that in f i s t perperson voE3tional sentences the '1 know' component will be I know this happened bemuse I saw it
inteqmted as based on "internat evidence" rather than on visual evidence people muld see it
('I know it happened because I did it'); but this is not incompatibie with
the presence of a component appealing to other people's visual evidence
('people could sae it'). Thus, for first person volitional sentences I would
1 For 24, we cowid propose the following fonndae:

propose the folbwing analysis: Thle glosses "11 was sick" and ""Pwas sick" may seem inwmpatible with, the mmponent
Tt Rappznded', but ~ t hpressim
b may be due Lo the English glows: in Maricopa, the ward
I danced -[k)l"ymu referring to 'Xigsick" is a verb, and it probabny bas a more dynamic: meaning than the
English adjeGtive sick.
I danced
 450 The Semantics of Grmmar
Pam was sick
I know this happened
people could see it
It is one thing to assert that one has seen somebody dancing, and
another, to assert that one has '"seen" that somebody was sick. The vaguer
I
formula "eople could see it' sowds more appropriate in this w e than the
explicit and specific claim '1 saw it'.
I would propose then that the '"ight evidential'' -(k)'yuu in Maricopa
has the invariant meaning 'Iknow this happened; people could set: it" and
that a specific grammatical context can add to this core meaning a further
cmplonent 'bcmm I dlid it' in the case of volitimal first person senltences
and 'because it happened to m ' i n the case d non-volitional first person
sentences. Similarly, I wvulld propose that the "hearing evidential" -(k,J'a
has the invariant meaning 'I know this happened; people could hear itY.
One question which should be clarified at this point conoems the possi-
bility of the suffix -(k)'a applying to sensory evidence other than hearing.
Gordon is not as clear on this point as one would wish. She mentions the
possibility of evidence otlner than auditive ('Yn this case the knowledge is
gained not by having seen the event, but by having otherwise sensed Wo-
ally heard) the event or state", 11986: 771, but all her examples refer to
sounds (singing, crying, saying). She says explicitly that "possibly the mast
typical placx for this fiis on verbs of" "saying' which report infomatiom
addressed to the speaker" '(78). The only example when a sensory word
other than hear appears in the gloss is 9:
(9) 1 sang (For sure, in the pas[; I hesrdrXFelt myselo
But the event referred to in this sentence is auditive, and it is likely that
Gordon mentioned "fa1lngWas well as ""hearing" in her gloss only because
she felt uncomfortable attributing to the speaker the idea that he kmew 1crF
his own singing because he heard himself singing. It seems much more rea-
sonable to suppose that the speaker knew of his singing because be did it
(Ghat is, on internal grounds), nor because he could hear himself do it.
This is not to deny the possibility of a language hawing a "sensory non-
visual evidential" with a broader range of use, and I do not exclude the pos-
sibility that Maricopa is such a language. But the evidence provided by
Gordon seems to suggest that - ( k ) b is an "audltive", rathler than "sensory
non-visual", evidential.
In addidon to the two sensory evidentials, Maricopa also has a "hearsay
evidential", consisting of a form of the verb 'ii-M,'say', --Iixh, followed by
the "hearing evidentid'" This third evidentha '7s used to indicate overtly
that the speaker does not vouch far the truth d the utterance, but instead
is merely repeating something he or she has heard spoken of' (8986: 86).
Sentence 32 is an example of this:
15. The Semmfics ~$Eva'denthh 451
(32) Bonnie-sh chug-k-'ish-'a.
Bonnie-SJ marry-k-say+sh-HR=EV
'(They said, E hear tdl) Bonnie got married.'
Pam-sh Bonnie tpuy-m-Yish-'a.
(3%)
Pam-SJ Bonnie kifl-rn-say+sh-~~=~v
'Pam killed Bonnie hear tell].'
The examples offered by Gordon suggest that the meaning of this eviden-
tial can be represented as folllows:
-'ish-'a
people say this
I don't say: BE know it
It is possible, however, that this fornula is too restrictive, and that the evi-
dential in question can also be used for information repeated alfter one spe-
cific person someo one", rather than "peec~pb"").
Bulgarian and Macedonian have two past tenses, the so-called 'Vefinite
past" and the "indefinite past'" As pointed out by Friedman [1986)),in the
past these two categories have often been interpreted as evidentials, with
the '"definite pastY'ssignalling"direct" infomation, and the "indeiinite
past'" ccimdirect's,'Vistanced'" or "reported" hinrormation. But Friedman
himself argues that these past amounts are "greatly oversinvpliYied and not,
strictly speaking, accurate" "986: 168) and that in fact "the forms under
consideration Q not mark the source of infamation or evidence, but
rather the speaker's attitude toward ill'"l84-5).
To show that the "deljinite past" cannor mean personal witn~essing,
Friedman mentions the following k t :
for example, a Bulgarian colleague of mime, diceussing which of his colleag~~es
had
attended a wnference in America which he had not been able to attemd, said dome
of them:
(1) &Be hmo.
"She) was these.'
This despite the fact that his only source or information was a report. (171-2).
What could this "definrite past" mean, then? Clearly, it Cillfunot mean "'I
know because I saw", or 'I know because I was there" and it can't even
mean 'I know, not because someone else said it" It would seem, then, that
the only possible invariant which can be attributed to it (in addition to
 452 The Semaratic8 of G r ~ m r m s

ccpastne~~'y,
that is, %before now') is '1 know" This is consistent with ithe "non-confirrolativity" in contexts when there is no wmbaast between "indef-
other examples cited by Friedman, such as 2 and 3 poi& Macedonimp: inite past" and "definite past".
(2) No podMna se slueija raboti za koi ne znaeu. To take an example of an unmarked llexical category, the unmmrked
but later happened things about which not (I) knew English word dog can be interpreted as 'he dog'when it is used in contrast
'But later things happened [PAST DEP.] that I didn't kwow atPout."I(I know this] to the marked word bitch (e.g. "I have a bitch and a dog"") but when it is
43) Od najstarite vrerninja luketo veruvaa deka meshna used on its o m [e.g. '%e have a dag""jrtlnere are no implic;smtions of male-
From oldest times ;Ute-people believed DEF) that moon ness. Similarly, if the "indefinite past" was really unmarked we could expect
vliae V ~ Ziivotot na zemjata. it to imply ""nonr-conhativity" in those contexts where it is used in con-
influences on the-life an the-earth trast to, or in combination with, the "mnfimatoryY"Uefinite past'" in
'Since most ancient times people have believed [PAST DEF.] that the moon hdln- other contexts, however, we would not exexpect it to carry such implicat'I ~ons.
enrces life om earth.' (I know this) Why is it, then, that the "indefinite past" tends Ito imply "non-cofimativ-
The hypothesis advanced here is also consistent with the fact that the "def- ity" even in those icontexts where it is used on its own? Friedman himsellf
inite past" cannot be used "in subordination to clauses which directly conrn states that "it will ordinarily be a s s u d that the speaker is using this f o m
tradict h e meaning of personall confirmation" "986: 1312), for example: fix.the indefinite past] in order to avoid persoanal canfirnation of the infor-
hniation, e.g. due to its being based on a port" ((1741,
(411 *Toj ne vernva deka taa go napraruri toa. QMracedonim] But why should it be assumed to be so if the "indefinite p s t " was really
*Toj ne jarva Ee tja napravi m a . (Bulgarian) unmarked? For example, why should it normally be assumed that in the
he not believe that she it did it sentence
*'He doesn't believe that she did [PAST DEE.] iX.'
[?a) His father was [PAST INDEF.] very fond of flowers.
"
If we explicate the "definite past"in terms of the suggeskd component 'I
h o w ' we obtain a contradiction between 'I know' and don't believe" and
this would aecount for the sentence%unac@eptability.On the other hand,
'"he speaker was basing the statement on indirect infornationY"C1174) if
there was nothing in the sentence itself to suggest such an interpretation?
sentences such as: Friedman calls the "non-confrmativity" of the "indefinite past" its "con-
textual meaning"; but in the case of 74 no context is provided, so the "non-
I don't know who did [PASTDEF.]it confirmatory" reding of the ""ideffinite past" canrnot be attributed to the
are acceptable-presumabIy, bemuse there is no conflict between 'I don't influence of the context.
know (who did itlhalvd 'I know that someone did it" The subordinate sen- I conclude from this that the '"ndefinibe past" is not an unmarked cat-
tence does not identilfjr the person in question, so tkne component 'I know" egory taut carries a meaning of its om--even though this meaning is hard
carried by its definite p s t tense can only be linked with the presuppioition, to establish. Friedman's motivation for trenting the '"indefinite past'bs
'someone did itY. unmarked, despite its usual implication of "non-e~nfirmativity"~is quite
The analysis proposed here is fully consistent with Friedman's assemtian clear. For example, he says: "As it is impossible to assign a single meaning
that "uhe definite past is marked for the speaker's s o n 6 m t i o n of the infor- which is present in dl uses of the indefinite past, i.e. as there: is no specific
matian" "(11986: 1743; or at least with the spirit of this assertion. (Friedman's, type of restriction on its occurrence as there is for the definite past, it must
examples repeated here make it clear that Ere doesn't really mean "con&- be treated as unmarked with respect to the definite pastl'"11173).
mation" as opposed to "affirmation"; rather, he means a confident asser- But is it really impossible to assignn a single meaning to all the uses of
tion, viewed by the speaker as knowledge.) the "indefinite past'? I Impn"t think it is; although H quite agree that tradi-
On the other hand, Friedman's analysis of the Bulgarian and tional labds such as ""idirect narration"/""dlistanced narrationy', or
Macedonian "indehite p s t " as ""unmarked pastY'isharder to accept, givem "reparted imrfomationY'dcdlno1 capture the invariant of this category (if
the fact that this supposed;ly unmarked past "has also developed a chief there is one).
oontextiual variant meaning of ncuncl~nffirmativity~ repoPtedness, or eviden- Let us consider Friedman's sentenms adduced to illustrate the unmarked,
tiality" (134). Friedman attributes this apparent meaning of "non- "non-evidential" use of the indefinite past (Macedonian examples):
confimativity" to the contrast "with the markedly confirnative definite (6) Dosfla sme mboltele.
past" (174). But this explanation does not account for the implication of enough [we) are worked
 454 The Semantics af Grammar 15. The Semantics oJEvi&ntia& 455

'We've worked enough.' [One retired man commenting to another on thek kind of direct or indirect evidence, i.e. the statement was not based on e report or
right to a pension) even a deductiom, but only on the speaker" assuamuptions and expectatians regard-
[7)Tatkomi bil mnogumeraklijaza cvexa. ing the normal conduct of such matters. (1986: 175).
father to-me was wry hmd for flowers
'My Father was very fond of flowers." It seems to me that this explanation c o n h s the analysis proposed as it
~ ( b Sum
) sltanal noRieska vo den. shows dearly )that the statement was based on an 'I think' rather than an
(1) am gob u~plast night at one 'I know'.
'I got up at one this morning.' Let us consider, in tmn, Friedman's data on the Macedoniam and
Bulgarian pluperfmt. Here, '"he equipolient sharpening of the confirma-
I can see why Friedman is reluctant to regard sentences such as these as tivdnonconhative apposition . . . results in a set of restrictions which
based on "'indirecty' or ""reported" information. However, I submit that if are truly evidential in nature-witnessedi'nonwiLnessd in Macedonian and
we look in a different direction we can find an invariant-that is, a formula *mnfimative/nonwitnessed in Bulgarian" "(177-8). The: evidemce for this
which fits both "'nron-evidential" uses such as Ithose in 6, 7, and 8, and "evi- "equipollent sharpening of the opposition" is fouunld in the fact that "in
dential" ones such as 7a. Essentially, I propose that the cwtrast bekwem Maedoniara the definite pluperfect a n n o t be subordinated to verbs of
and nothing, but that between "
the "definite past" and the '"indefinite past" is not that between 3 Hmw"
kknow'and 'I think". Let us test this
hypothesis against all of Friedman's Macedomian sentences with the "hdef-
reporting, while the indefinite pluperfect cannot be subordinated to verbs
of witnessing and direct perception brut can only be used for reports and,
rarely, deductions and suppositions" "178).The illustrative sentences are 8 5
inite past"". and 16 (Macedonlan):
(6) We've worked enough + (15) *Toj r d e deka tie ja imaa srrJeao rabotata.
I think we've worked enough he said that they it hadl finished the-job
(71 My father was very fond ol Rowers 4 *'He said that they had finished [DEF.PLWPBRP.] the job.'
I llnink my father was wery fond of flowers
(t&] *.Pas uridcw kakoSdeka tolj go imrd napraveno toru.
[I remember him always buying Rowers lor ows house, even when we had
I saw howlthat he it had done that
very little: money) "'1 saw howlthat he had done [INDEF. FLUPERF.] it.'
(8) I got up at one this morning 4
II think II got up at one this morauing These facts can be easily amounted for on the basis of the fdlowing semsn-
(I didnt have a watch) X ~ CifaIXl3diW:
( 7 4 His father was very fond of flowers -+
&$nSte pluperject [Macedonim)
P think his father was very fond of flowers
(I remember him always buying flowers for heir house, evem when they had I know this
wry little money) not bemuse someone said somelltring
ifldefimitepl/~perfecl(Macedonian)
1 think that the proposed interpretation fits all these sentences. At first
sight, It doesn't Fare quite a s weil when tested against Friedman's Bulgarian
I think this
exalnples such as 9: because someone said something

(9) Sdo na sto bifi pokanemi. Friedman's idea of the "equipollent sharpening of the confirrnaltlve!non-
1OiPh (theyjwere invited canfurnative opposition" in the pluperfect is reflected here in the two sym-
'Absolutdy, they were invited.' (1 think they were invited; "I abscalu88y metrical components: 'not because someone said something' and 'because
certain of it.) someone said somethiang" but the contrast between '1 knowband 'I think'
is preserved, and this amounts for the intuitive link between the 'Udenite
But Friedman helpfully supplies a clarifying context for this sentence:
past" and the "definite pluperfect"', as we11 as for that haween the "indaf-
it was uttered by a cotleague of mine in. Sofia during the course of a discussion as inite past'hnd the "indefinite pluperfect". (In Bulgarian, the situation is
to whether a certain delegation had been invited to a oongcess. My colleague was apparently more complex; and as Friedman mentions it only in passing,
convinced that they had been invited, although his conviction was not based on any without any details, I will not attempt to capture it in semantic famulae.)
 15. The Semantics of Ewidentiats 457
One final point which requires a comment is the reference to %saying%
the formula assigned to the Macedonian "indefinite pluperfmt". .I think 8* A S u m a r y of the Formulae
this bemuse someone said something.') Is this formula compatible wih
suppositions and deductions? I believe it is, evlen though suppositions and 4 Kashaya
deductions don't have to be (and usually are not] based on hearsay. The -ke8a (perfomatbe-Imperfective) -yow& (Personal Experience]
proposed formula does not read: T think this because someone else mid I know this I don't say this because someone
something', but 'I think this because someone said something'* because I am doing it dse said this
Suppositions and deductions may well stare with our "saying somethingy' I know it
(not necessarily viva voce) along the Following lines: '"if we say that such -mela (Perfornative-Perfective)
and such, then we can think that swh and such". I know this -do (Quotative)
It would seem, then, that perhaps there was some truth in Jakobsonys because I did it a short time before I say this because someone else
(1957: 4) view that Maoedonian and BuEgarian have "true" evidential cat- n m said this
egories. IF the formulae assigned here to the Macedonian pluperkts are -# (Visual (Perfective)) "Visuali " I don3 say: 1know it
correct, then Macedonian does have categories encoding epistemological I know this -q?i flnferenliial 131
meanings such as 'I think . . . because' and 'I know . . . not be~ausa'.00n because H saw it I know this
the otber hand, Friedman is probably right in implying that there are no . because I know something else
-I% (Fa~tual(Imperfective;))
%because' components in the meaning of the Macedonian (or Bulgarian) -bi -w (Inferential I1 -w)
'6Visua12's
"definite pasb'hnd "indehite past"". I know this now
I know this
What is particularly satisfying is that we @am amount for both the because H know something else now
because I see it
""eidentialr" nature of the pluperfects, and the "validational" nature! of the I didn" know it before now
pasts, while respecting in our analysis the intuitive links between the -44 (Factual-generic sense)
'Tactual" -miy8 (Remote Pasit)
"
piuperfects and the pasts; and refteclting them in the invariant componenb
'lknow' and thinky. everyone k n o w it
(Auditory)
I know Ithis
nor because someone else said
1 know this
something
it happened a long time before now
bemuse I lnear it
Meaning is encoded not only in words but also in grammatical categories. Quechua
The meanings cncodcd in grammar-just like those encoded in the l e i -
con-are language-specificiCIf one attempts to identify the meanings H ~ a n u c oQluechcsa
encoded in different languages by means of the same, arbitrarily invented -mi -mi
labels, such as, for example, "first-hand'' and ""second-hand", c h m e d i a ~ ' " I say this I know this
and "'inferred", or "direct'bnd "indirect", one cap only conceal m d not because someone else said it
obfuscate the language-specific character of the categories to which they I know it
are attached. To be able to compare grammatical categories across hn-
-shi -shi
p a g e boundaries we need some constant points off reference, whkh sllip-
I say this someone else says this
pery labels with shifting meanings cannot possibily provide. Universal
tmause someone else said it I don3 say: H know it
semantic primitives can provide such constant and language-independent
I don't say: I know it
points of reference. They offer, therefore, a secure basis for a semantic
typology of both lexicons and grammars. At tlhe same t h e , they orFger us chi -chi
convenient and reliable tools for investigating the universal and the lan- I think this I think this
guage-splecidic aspects of human cognition and human conceptualization of I don't t o w It
the world.

-nthEr (non-visual sensorial)
I think this
because something happens
@appened] to me
-kc- (hearsay]
someone says this
I don't say: I know if
-(k,l'yu~ (sight)
4 know this happened
people could see It
(first person volitional sentences)
I know it happened because I did ir
people could see this
(first person non-vditional
sentences]
I know it happened because i t
happened to me
people could see this
[non-first person subject)
I know this happened
people conlld sce it
(definite pas41
I know this
(indefinite past)
1 think this
- r e [inferential)
I know something now
(because I see something)
I think I can say something about
someone because of this
-?el (expectationat)
I think this
I can't say: I know it
-(kJb (hearing)
I know this happened
people could hear it
(first person volitional sentences)
I know it happened because I did it
people could hear this
(non first-person subject]
I know this happened
people could hear it
-'idz-'a (hearsay)
people say this
I don't say: I know it
(def nite pfuper'eck)
I know this
not because someone said some-
thing
(indefinite pluperfect)
I think this
because someone said something
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 BE [THERE ESIARE] 124 Brazil 331
bead 389 bread 225, 227-9
BECAUSE 69-70, 114, 837, 1164,4127; Itreedlove, D. 351, 353, 355, 358, 361-2, 374
see abrp causality Eretheaton, P. 86, 96
becbming 50 Bright, I. 0. 271, 343
bee 208 Bright, W. 271,343
BEFORE 567, 110, I14, 132 BrjAIey's Japanese-Bngr'ish DCfionory 238
beg [for) 177 Bdtish English 3910, 3W
behauriouaism 3, 4, 5. 7, 19 Bmdsky, Joseph 36
behind 93 Brown, C.H.42, 60,63, 542, 316, 322, 331,
Bennett. David C. 355, 357, 3654, 373-4
Brown, D. E. 44. 52
Bccwru, P. 93,95
brown 3 2 M
AbeIson. R. P. 171 Brumer. J. 5, 6, 8, 22. 42, 48, 50, 58, 366
abn'Iity 260 bucker 1 N
ability 106 bug 358*374 374
ABOVE 58. 59, 11% 1356 besf 275 Bugenhagen, R. D. 32. 135
absolute predictability 379-80, 382-3 betoiwy (beigep 326; see @Gocolow Bukhad, D. 3 4 1 4
abstract wnceph 337; see &Q concepts bilblical references: khsiasbes 88; St Bulgarian 451-2.4544
A m h m 30-65 Bickerloru, W. 293 Burling, R. 226,229,231,298
acquisition 213; of conoepts 18, 221; of bicycle 373 bwh 3611-3, 367,369, 370,374-5
b5nwge 16, ms411,.65, 78, 85 Biemisch, M. 108 butterfly 357,359
actton 35,54 122; amon mmplemeat l19 BIG 15, 5 4 5 , 131 Bybee, J. L. 56
active imperative oon$m&ons 406 biolo&all categories 365 Bystrow, I. S. I, 406
addressee I21 bioi~gicatlkids 368; see a h KIND bJieitny 310
A d e b , W. F. H.434-5 bipastik b d o n 385
adequacy 251 bipartite smmw 385-5, 388,390, 396,401 cabbage 164
adjamcy 137 CAM 67, 103-5, 140
adjectives 3146
adjmct 112
bird l%r (55-6, 163-4, 174, 354, 356413, 362,
365, 366, 367,3618-9, 370, 373, 374,375,
canoaical sentences 30-1
Caramma, A. 362, 167
adverb 146 arteikts 3704, human 384 390,402; birdmess, scale of 151 Carey, S. 41,63, 221
advise 243 arteractud k i d s 372; see o h super-caiqopi~s Im,IF. 288, 303,3061, 315 Carting, C. 290
AFTER 56-7, 110, 114, 432, 187-8 mR fjor,/ 177-8 BitDer, M. 194-5, 206 Camap 251
agent 51, 122,416*42&U, 423 aspect, imgerlectiw 488,423,428,41301; Black, M. 167 Carni, E. 57, 59
agentivity, hierarchy of 411 perfective 4118, 423,431 b i d 3004, 303-4, 318; see aGrp macro-black carrods 364
A p d , h a 23 atomic pdicate 39 btaskbe~ries362-3 Cartesian 12,418, 33,981, 125
Aikhenvald, A. 80, 328,331 Atran, S. 63, 351-3.355, 3610-3,3634,367, Bhke. S. J. 41 HCastefieda, M. N. 38
aE&w 3 16; see also mhw 369-75 cat 365
alienable pswssion 61 attributes 145 Bloom, L. 59,66,TEO-1,7&9,94, g6, 213, 31012 catagodes 151, 173, 363-4, 374, 380, 398,425,
ALIVE 86 attributive linker 143 BloomlieId, L 3-7, 9, 19, 338; Bloo~llfheldians5 456; biologb1, oolour 332, 365; ethmobio-
ALL 46, 128, 193 augmentor 73, 76, 129 bIue 2904,295, 29%300,309-13, 315, 332; see logiml 37% evidential 456; Folk 173;
all 210 Austin, 6.566 a h colour grammatical 381, 42-3,407, 4264,456;
allolexy 26, 33 Austin, I. L. 67, 71, 105, 1741, 366 b f d e r 280 neural response 293; Inflectional 26;
allotnorphy U l4 Australian AhoriginaO languages 14, 30, 32,411, Boas, F. 37, 184, 214 297, 355,399, 402 semantic 293, 381; see oIsa supercategories
alphabet af human thoughts 13, 119 60,62, 74-5, 88, 94-5, 101, 151, 1186, 196, boast 175,266 categorization: Aristotelian model of 380; folk
Alpher, B. 94 2010,288,296,303, 305, 370, 414 bwr 149 biologid 3i"4;human 62, 370, 375; levels of
amae 238-9; see elso motion Australian English 3W. 395 b d g pards 60, 218 370. 372
mazemmt 179-80; see afso motion , Austronesian U4, 84 Boguslawski, A. 13, 51, 66, 74, 110, 1122, 153, causaity 69, 186,416; see o h BECAUSE
h e k a , Felix 32, 34 154,2041,256,411 causaticn 69L70
h e r i m English 388. 390,39% see oSso causafii~vec~nstructions408-9
ArrglwAmericen cwliure Chare, W. 427,4341
m o w 8 46 back 93 Bolinger, Ddghm 68 Channdl, J. 286
Anbarra 289 BAD 51-3, 108, 13% 278-9, 291 BoPle, Kees I5 chair 371, 373
and 187 Bain, M. 185-6, 189, 192, 198 QonsaC 367-8 Chappell, H.27, 32, 34, 53, 60-1
Andenan, E. S. 60 Raker, E. 41 b~rdowy324 see a h COEO'UT Chase, A. K. 194
Anglhn, L ~ e m y2Y4,221 Baker, 6.158 Barnstein, M.H. 293 chicken 356
Pln~1o-hedcanculture 396 Bandajalang 42 Bornskin, W.K. 322 Chierchia, G. 8, 21 3,2 14
a n k S 3 5 M , 369,374 B a r a h k , Stamiskaw 215 botsEe 373 child language: 58, 59, 92, 213
moilcrrce 2m barre8 174 children's spewh 51, 55, 62,70
m w e r 275-6 BartleYt, E. 5. 300 child's meaning 221; see a h meaning
ant 231, 360-8 basic ~ l l a n Items
r 294; see also mlow Chinese 27, 32, 138: Mandarin 14, 27, 32, 53;
Antinumi 106 basic sentences 112
aoi 291, 300, 309, 31 1-13; see atso mlow bat 368
onofo~be175 Bates. E. 86. 96
chromatology 330; see elsol mlour mnligmily 92 d i r ~experience
t 428,435 4434, 4416, 450; immediate evidence 427,
circularity 48,274, 275,277, 283,394 converses 108-1 0 direct objects 410, 421; see abo object 428; internal evidence 448
Clarrcg, P. 64 Cook, S. 36-7 direction 124 evidenaial markers: -?el[expctational) 445,
Clark, E. V. 51, 59, 92, 125,221,230 coal mlours 318-19, 321 disappointm~nf17940 446, 458; -qcf (inferential) 433, 434, 457;
Clark, H. H. 221, 230 COOS 320 discreteness OF meantug 242, 267; see oSso -re Censory) 445, 458; -w [inferential) 434;
Class-meanings 4; see ufm meaning, definition co-ordinntlcn 423 meaning -nlid [visual) 429, 430, 457; -*ek (performa-
Classen, C. 81 Coaknt, G. 31 I , 397 disrwce 89, 90, 109, 1134 the) 428, 457; yci; [visual) 429, 457; -yowri
classically definable 161 mre arguments 425 distanced narrati~n453 @rsolna11 experience) 431,432, 434, 457;
classification: elhnobiological 62; folk oorelerence 41Y9110,4I1,414,4I6 distinctive featunes 366 ev~dentialliulrhes 428, 434, 439; Factual
biological 351; scientific 62 couratabikity 129, 394, 401 dbrress 181, 152 suthx 430-1; indirect evidence 441,427,
classifier 401 counuble n o w 392; pseudo-countables 372 Dimon, R. M. W. 41,79, 138, 246, 354,414, 435, 454; inference 403, 4336, 439, 4461-5
clause adjuncts 144-5 counterfactual 101-3 4&6,418 ewideratialiry 82, 409,4274, 432, 435, 913941,
clause operaton 039, 1415 counting 1Xr 50, 1114, 122, 427 441, 443, 445,451; expechtiomsll 439,44%6
climb 165-6 courage 240 Dobsorn, 1. and Y. 88 evolutionary sequence 321, 323
diGic 410, 413 EQUFQgr?oW2@-8 dog 230, 3 5 W , 365, 373,453 Ewe 14, 32, 281
Clone. G . L. 161 cow 365,369-70 Doi, T. a&, 2 1 ewire 331; see a h colou~
c!oed 220, 223 ereodere 359 Dolehl, FFedric 246 existence 83, 85-6, 125; see a h BE
Cobuild 280, 28 1 criticize L76 &main specifn@ity351 existential quantifier 75, 84; see d o quantifiers
COD (Conri~eOxford DisrSomry) 272, 274 c r ~ r tW.
, 408 Domenico, P. 1016 experhential suffix 434; see aEso s u f i ;
aopieion 330; human 456 Crowley, T.43 Donddsoa, Margaret 20-6 evidential categories
oognidve dinerenoes 184; domains 349-50, Cmse, D. A. 59, @ I , 284
110, 218,246, Dougherty, J. W. ID. 362 eyes 2 1'9,220
370; grammar 401; mouroes 2051; mvolution cultural kinds 40, 131-2,225, 366,368, 3'73, down 59
5, 6. 8 +. .,
372 Dowty, David 8
~ d 221-3
d cultwall LnowUealge 348-9 d u d nouns 383,392
Cole, M. 205 cu8otlle 397; see d o separate leg garments dual 402; see crbm number
Coleman, L. 152, 153 r n 162
~ b p & , J . 164
Coley, J. 63. 351, 352, 356 ~ h r n o wT
, . 102 dumtion 97-8, 109
collective conoepts 155, 372; p1u;alia tanturn cusferpl 373 Durie, M. 30, 142
386, 388: 389, 392, 393 czerw 314; see abo colour Dyirbal 414, 425
oolour: baslc terns 294; t m s IlibiO, 287, 291, czerwony Rur 3 15; see ah0 colour fare 275
322, 331; catqories 332; conceptw/.2atiorr czsrwo~~y 330; see &OJ W~QLI% mrs 289 FEEL 48,49, 119, 120, 243-4
293; ma1 318-19: 321; foci 295; Pinguisaic easli 94 feminine Eender 398; see ofso gender
mpnesentation of 332; mixed 325; neuml da Yirrci, Leonard0 303 eat 232 femhine names 398
representaflion of 332; non-warm 324; dark 301-3, 31 P hlesiastes 88 FeWr, J. )11. 249
perceplion 223; semantics 287; universals -&a (quotatilre sunix] 432,457 Edelman, 6. M. 21, 58 jewdifde 46
28%;see ako concepts; categorization; and Da~hesaani433 Ellen, R. F. 63 ,I f-p 185
S ---
under specifrc colour n m e s Dahl, 0.56 Einitsky, C. 1169, 243, 246, 270, 286, 356, 369 Fillmore, C. 42, 149, 165-6, 171, 246
combinatorial possibilities 114 Daipenkan 238 emotions 48, 161, 171, 178,214; lertms 24,32, $re 221,223-41, 329
command 177 D a h t a 51 1801 first-hand 423, 428
committee 382 Ddy, M.1. 86, 101, 104 m p ~ # l h y261 fish 354, 358, 359, 3 W 2 , 365,366
comparative 45, 54, 77, 90 Daud, 5. 30, 142 &cycEo$taedio Brirannica 337 Fletcher, P. 1103
comrphh 175, 265,268 Dani 246-7, 3 18, 320, 330 encyclopnedic knowledge 335 flower 271, 363,365, 367, 369
complement 1112, 145; action 119; event 119; Davis, 8. L. 289 endonyms 351 focal and marginal members 163
prepositional 145; psychological 119-20; De Jonge 153 English: American, 388, 390, 395; Australian Fador, 1. A. 18, 23, 150, 169,211, 213-14,
quotatiye 145; speech 119 390,395; British 39101 394; folk 355 241.253-5.257. 369
complex wncepls 21; see ofso concepts Enffield, N. 122, 130 F O I ~w~aaPII1,
~ , ~ A: I 96
complex Entenas U 14 definite past, see past mviromrnenAa1 protodyp approacb 328 folk botany 361; dblk biojogy 351, 353, 374,
Comrie, 8. 4 k, 68, 408 deffinitiornr 183, 212,237, 253,259, 263,270; envy 161 see afso categories: folk categorization 173;
unccpu: abscracc 337; ucquisllior~or 18, 221;
oomplex 21; colie~tive155, 372; colaur 293; universal 419: verball 226
.
modcl of 283: rcrerenllivll 226: uniliivrv 419:. Ernoul, A. 198
Eruin-Tripp, 3. %5
conmplls 340,342, 344, 347, 374; English
355; g n a s 63, 339,342-3, 353,36e), 361,
ooncrete 221, 255, 337; etnoEianaO 171, 178; defy 263 aspeckaISy 266, 267-8 364, 365-7,368, 370, 3734; l o ~ ~ ~ l l e d225,
ge
folk 340, 342, 344, 347, 374; functional 157, Deibler, C. 2M essences, hidden 352; real 370, 371; underlying 337, 339, 348; psychology 48; taronomy
172,372; indetinabte 171,278, 281-2; innate deictic 42, 97 2h7-8. 771 355, 359, 360, 361; aoalogy 358
11, 17,253; invadanl 264-5, 268; Ianguiuge- &m0nd 177, 178 .. -.
..- .- food 262
lndegendenl 353; plugging concepts En 232; dernonslrative 42 ethnobiology 353; ethnobiological analysis forbid 175
scientific 374; simple 213,237 denororion 39 1, 394 353; categorization 375; classification 62; forgive 261
conwpLua1izatlon 391, 393-5, 413,422, 423, dentist 262 universalla 351; see a h folk, bblogical Foss, M. A. 161
425,426; human 456 Wregowski, J. B. 290 Eurapean languages 3% Fought 4
conditional 68, 103, 403,425 Descartes, R. 12, 204,211,276-7 evaluators 39, 130 Frake, C. O. 351-4
configuration 17 1 deucriptons 35 Evans, J. 1103, 188 Frawley, W. 348
congrrrrehre 150 destiny 275 Evans, P1. 141-2, 186, 188, 196-7, 203,206 F ~ n c h .L. A. 9, 14413, 45-7, 57, 59. 68-9, 99,
urnj~unctions 146 determiners 35,42, 73-4, 126, 144, 146 event complement 119 185-4, 193, 198, 386,390, 396,403, 425
Conklin, W. G. 290. 295, 307-8, 318, 354 dictionary definidims 250; see aiSro d&nitjan events 35. 40 Friedman, V.A. 4516
cannflaitrers 173 Biller, A. 37, 383 evideniial categories 456; non-visual sensorial piend 244
contextual meanine 453: w e QSSQ meani~ne dLect evidence 427,431, 438 439,444; hearing 446, 48-50; hearsay 439, Fries, C. C. 4, 4216
Kant 7Q 71, 93,226 Tatup 306-8; see ofso colour Lurifij~a 194, 303 mela-lan~uage426
Kashara 428,430, 433,434, 457 Laughren, N. 94,339 Lu@ C. 24,2041 mela-prdicale 64, 143, 145
Lave. J. 205.2U0 Lyons, I. 14, 110, 125, 246, 373, 403 -mi 434-9, 457
l m 281 Lyons, W. 40, 233 midari 31010, 312; Eee srba co1ours
Katz, P1. 41 LDOCE (Lomgma~SPjcfirrrraryofe;bnrmprmy mipso wdowe 356
Ray, P. 152-5, 288,290, 292-5,305, 3101, &gSish] 243, 261 no%osox1i 394 milir' 320, 3301; see aSsa mlour
318-19, 322-8, 331-3, 334 LDO3;EL 49, 240,262-3,268,275, 283, 138, Macedonian 4516; gluperfacts 456 Milingimbi 289
Rayardlikl 14, 65, l41, 186, 188, 195, 203 345, 388 McCawley, J. D. 33, 39,jr;?, 75, 86, 121, 148 Miller, E. A. 184, 254
-ke 4413-4, 445,457; see also &dentis1 Le Pan, D. 5'7, 184-5 McCloskey, M. 354 Mirkin. B. O. 337
categories Leach, E. R. 356 Mdonnell-Glnet, S. 8, 213, 214 mistake 280
Keenam, E. 408 Leavers, G. 89 McConvell, P. 189-90 Misumalpan language 14
Kmsing, R. M.56-5,97 left 93 McDmiel, C 292-4, 3015, 322-3, 332-3 miyii 434, 457
Rei1, P. 63, 351, 367, 372-4 !e,flovers 372 McEmgor, w.60-1 Miyokawa, Y. 357
Reller, H.220-1 Cehrer, A. 110, 173, 156, 222,246, 248-9 Mackury, R. E. 290,301, 309, 3334 mfzu 229, 230
Ke&ywka 5. Mew Japme.si~-BngSbIrDic~ionnsy Leibniz, 6.W. 18-P3, 19,28,32, 76, 82, 184, MxFrlamam, J o b 16,411 moEo 320, 330; see a!so slolowr
238 2Q6-7, 211,2113, 237-18, 246 macro-black 318 mole 349
kesolire 33 1; see oho colour h o w 371 macro-red 322-5 Mondey, A. 153
Kibrik, A. 403,416,425,427,433-4 ilw 78 macro-white 318, 322 morrogeneric life forms 3611-1
kf!! 211, 213 Lessard, A. 169,243,246, 270,286,356, 369 Mdhane, J. 41,78 Monlague grammar 8
KIND 60,624, 352, 363; arffefaclual 372; bio- Levinson, S. 93, 95 mgpie 355 Moore, T. 290
l cultural W, 171-2,225,366, 368,
l a r @ ~3W; U q - B m h l 62, 185, 194,205, 2107 Malay 25, 32. 339 mmF 278; m w d rules 105
371,373; natural lM,171-2,225, 335, 348-9, Lewis, C. W. 258 naofem%fj 115 Moravcsil E. 393,4201
368-9, 3714; living 337, 373; KIND OF 141 lexical meaning 244 mihevr 15 MORE 764,129
Kinnear, P. R. 290 lexical universals 13,253 Malkiel, Y. 257 Morgm, E. 31 1
Kir&ilz 209 lexicography 233, 258; practical lexiagra~hy Malrhson, G. 41 rnoupholoyEi4 struclum 356
Kleln, E. 306 286 MaEolM, E. 56 morphn(;ypes 355
h kp 373
n lexicon 456 malowat' 255,256 Marsbach, H. 238,396
KNOW 48, 49, 119, 120, 093,201, 2M, 427, ilgas" 153,214 Malt, B. @. 347 Moscow semantic schooll U
4% iie 152-3 m m a l 359, 3601, 374 Masel, U. 84, W, 128,387, 416
Smowledlge, cultural 348-9; enqclopmtii 335; Bfe 86-4;life ram 353, 358, 36043, 374 3M; Mandarin, see Chioese Mandarin Mass, A. E. 3111
emnyday 338; folk 225,337, 339,348; momgeneric life farms 3644; poiytypic life ManppMbuEa 1432, 138 moss 374
linguistic 335, 349; non-linguistic 33% fonn 365; quasi-life form 365; see etsa Manning, C. 315 Moatavaja, A. D. 337
scientific 2!Xl, 338, 340* 374; tacit 2301 LIVING TNIWGS M A W 441. 128 mother 154-5
Koado, Do3-inne K.24 IJghr 301-3, 316. 320-1 mapEes 364 rnowe 33949,355, 357; folk mice 340; rnowe-
KIbplcke, K.-M. 155 Lightbow, P. 39 Marmtz, A. 414 eos 3441; mouse-salt 36a; mourehoie 344;
koriErcPvyy' 298, 3110 LIKE 711-2, 114, 143,2$9,352; like this 127 M a r i m p 446,4419,490 mawetrap 3414
k m i f u 255,256 Mac 360, 362, 363 I ~ ~ R 24,~ W30;S nuarkerese 23 mousy 3414
krwnyj 297, 298; see aIsa wbm limited countability 393, 394 MaRithiyel 196, 197,228 m ~ u d219, 386
krmowy 326; see aha colour linguistic evidence 355 Manhallese 103 MOVE 82-3, 115, 124
W p b , S. 164, 349, 352,367; 374 linguistic fonn 408 Martin, Gottfried 13 MUCH 44; see a t . MAW
&onhaus, M. 153 linguistic kknewldge 335. 349; see o h M a r ~ uWangka 305 muLarry 362-3
Kuczaj 11, S. A. 86, I01, 1104 knowtedge naot'teny 356 multiple entities 382; see also number
kwhi 199 linguistic labels 416 Matthews, Petar Hugm 4, 7 multiplicity 390, 393, 394
Kushner, H.3. XI linguistic meaning 237; see aEso meanimg MAYBE 1103, 104, 039, 140 mwhram 364, 367
Swt$p 192 linguistic representation of colour 332; see a h meaning 369, 391,426; and colour charts 294;
kuyu 339 colour see ah@m@I(Dlow; m d psychologid reality
kwadr 301, 308 linguistic ruler 380, 400 297; and dentific Bmow1edge 2901; class- name 3018; proper names 367
Kwaio 56, 57. 97, 98 linguistic aypolagy 425,426 meanings .4; child's 2211; contextmall 453; Wash, EE. 339
Kwpisz, Z. 411 linkers 112, 145 deteminanacy oh 241; discreteness OF242, nature, hiddm 367-8, 370, 371-4; underlyimg
-(kJ ')w 446-9.458; see al'so evidenflirl &lie 16, 55; see aha SMALL; size 267; iiwariant 148,4510; Ilanguapspenific 7L1

categories LIVE 86. 88, 125; livesrock 356; Yving 391; lexica1 2414; linguisflic 237; system af natural environment 21 8
creatures 356; living k i d s 337, 373; mwnmgs 404 Natural Semantic Metetalanguage 22-3,238.
LllYlhlG THING3 63, 356, 370 Medim, D. L. 63, 352 282, 286, 408; NSM grammar 11 12, 1E4
locstion 125 Mixlbaru. B. 289. 296 natural kinds 1164, 171-2, 225, 335,348-9,
b c k e , J. 82, 212-13. 237,2911, 348. 370 Mcillet, A. 198 368-9, 3714
Oocwtionaty topic U2 1 -mela 457 NEAR 89,90, QL, 92, h34
Oogioal ogrerator P7 Mel'hk, 1. 3159,218,243, 246, 253, 258, 270, necessary and sufficient features 168
S. 1. 250, 259, 280 long 91 286, 356,358, 369 Needhanu, R. 204, 206-7
Landman, J. 103 LONG TIME 97, 98,133 mental dictionam 355 nestion 64-5, 139
Langecker, R. 334 356, 37943, 391,401 Longacre, R. E. 55 mental ptedicat& 35,48,78, 119 Nelson, K. 9, 46-7, 57, 6 8 4 9 9
language, acquisition 16, 20, 41, 65, 38, 85; b n g g u 14,635 memKalisrn 3. 6. 19 neura! representation of rnlour 332; see abo
simple 282; universals m;me 428 ;look o f 252 wlour
language-independent mnmprwaI rolplls 353 hve 242 neural response categories 293
bangwage-spik meanin@ 391 Lucy, JI. 333 neurophysiology of visian 320, 321
Latin 26, 72,316 Lwia, A. R. 2W-00 neuter, see gender
New Guinea 330 Olerson, D. 169 polysemy 25, 26, 29, 33, 40,67, 185, 186, 188, rebuke 175, 176
rrermi 357 oslensian 226, 231, 369 207,241, 242, 270 red 2990, 291,297, 3PE),314-16; SeC @&SO prusC60-
Ngaanyaoj~arra '8 188 Olstyn. F. 286 polylypk genera 358,362. 365; see also genus red
Ngandi 2W Osw~~lt, R. L. 428-34 Romo 428 reference point 128
Ngachman 190 OTHER 43,123 padse 365 mfimmtial definitions 226
Edichols. J. 427, 434 outside % Popper, K. 401 reflexives 410124, 408-10, 414-19,4221&; affix
Nida, E. A. 168, 227,246 p a a n t e a u 27, 1127, 143 414, 425; clitics 425; marlcers 418, 423;
nfebdesikf295, 300, 309, 315; see also colour Posner, U. 147 pronoun 424-5
niezdawolonp 435 possessive ccmstruuctions 61 EEel&enbach, H. 37-8
n o n a m p i t h n a l semantic relirlionsbip 28-9, possibility 101, EM-7, 139 relative terns 54
71 p m a 339 Post-IBlmfieOdians 4 re&f 179-80
no&nnha6ivimy453 pmrs 382; see a!so separate leg garments potential 1102 repepJy269
non-direct evidence 427; see abo evidentiall pmta1'ota 390, 397; see aSso separate leg praise 176 report 269
artefiories garments pray 268,269 reported indbmatian 453-41
cnora-evidential 4 5 3 4 see aha evidential Penu 195 pwperatary stage 197 reprhmd 175, 176
categories precision 246 repracrch 175
non-immediate evidence 427; aee aSao p d i m k s 144 request 269
widmkia11 categories Paskes, C. 169, 21 1,257 pdictilreness 380-1 research methodology 408
mu-&&we senences 423 parror 1174 pmfemntid fwttms 166 resonance 33
non-tanonomic solpercalegory 372 PART &I, 142,363; PART OF 141; prepositions 14% rewage 285
aon-visual wnwdal 439,444; see & particles 146 primany lexmes 357, 361,374 Rey, A. 257
evidential categories pantonomy 35, 60,1141 primitive thought 184-5, 207 rhet~rica]devices 241
w o d m 394 parts-OF-speech 146 primikivm [semnticJ 11; new 73 rhetcnical force 436
norm 77 Pawl, B. 11-12,41,277 principle of reductive paraphrase 244 ribbon 2641, 270-2; Lair ribbon 272; iypewrth~
nose 219 passive irrealis mnstm~tian406 pronouus 36, 146; see aEm persona0 proaom ribbon 271-2
NOT 6.4, 139; see a h megatian pas@tense 432,404,4125,456; definite 451, prototypes 148-9, 164, 245,352 rice 394
not-witnessed 427; see efso evidmtiaf 452,453,454,456; indetbik 4511,452,453, prototypical trmsitive event 420 I . A. 297
Richardsidls,
mtcgorim 454,456; remote 434 pmxhity 92; see also NEAR righa 93,281
noum 42% classes 3% mncrede 171; patient 51, 1115, 118, 122-3,416, 420,421,4234 psedooomtables 372; see loha wmlable Rips, L. J. 63, 352
cwntabk 392; dual 383, 392; h a h t e PrawIey, A. 30, 201-2 nouns, mmtability Robinson. R. 259
397; professionall activity moms 399 pearls 389 psychic unity or (h@rndlad 184, 205 Romance Uanguaples 418, 423
MOW 97,99, 1O(D pencil 371 psychalogical: cmplment 1119-20; object 116; Rosaldo. M.Z. 24
NSM marural Smanllc MetalamguageJ 22 PEOPLE 40,41,1116, 117,451 realityq298, 370; salience 342; subjact 1k4, rosary beads 389
-n@Er 439,441, 442,457; see atso evidential perfective 418. 423,431 119; topic 120, 121, 127 Rouch,H. E. 148, 151-2, 141, 1E3, 1167,245-7,
categories perfornatives 1108,428-31 Puate, B. 435 314, 320, 330, 333, 352; Rowhian prototype
number 4,454, 387, 392,425; dual 4612; person 39: 1114 p m p k h 355, 361,363 model 380; see e h Heider, E. Rosch
multiple 382,390, 393, 394 persona1 experience 431,432,439 punhhmene 283-5 rose 355,362-4
numerals 44,425 personal evidemoe 427, 428: see &a evidentid pturpde 326; see a h oolour Ross, II. R. 121
Nunmubuylu 151 categories Putnam. H.164, 66%.340, 349, 351,367, 369. RaEhstein. R. A. 399
personal pronouns 36,413 Rousseau, I.4. 290
OAJD jOxford Amtrnlh h i o r Dtcabnaryp Pehu 438 Royce 64
260, 2624, 270,274, 278,283-5 petr$ed 2 16 pyj& 385; see also separate leg p m n t R o m a n , A. P. 243,286
mk 3624. 367,370 pewny 405 rozovyj 297, 298
oars 3811, 382, 393, 394, 399, 401 ph0no9ogical rules 40na -q# [inrerentiall] 433,434, 45R see a h Rudzka, B. 286
object 112, 414 surlrace 411; underlyine abject Piaeen, J . 197, 203 evidential categories, evidential markers Russell, fP. 37, 222,225-6, 230,291-2, 300,
41 1; slee o h dirmt object pimwf 330 -re, (senso& 445, 458; see elso eerienth1 'ltiilh
obiigatory 282 pink 2997, 30r0, 326; see a!so colcur categories, Evidential markers
OED f n e 0xfu1.dEflgSisL Dic~wnnry] 337, Pinker, S. 176 qwdqped 23 I, 374
345 pfror 2411,317; see a h ccd80ur quantifiers 35, 44, 126, 1128-9; existential 75,
@$ten 268,272 Pitjantjatjara 189, 192, 198, 229, 281 84; see aho number
Ogden, C. K. 297 Plank, F. 419 quasi-life from 365
Oglloblin, A. K. 406 phm 364,374 Ipluechua 432,434-5,4374,4139,457 saccharine 263
o b o 397 p1'm#icflowers 2711; see also flowers Sacks, Oliver 6;22
Ommura 198 Plato 21 1, 240 stfs 180-1
ONE 44, 128, 129; sea atso number precrS 1 7 ~ 8 Sahaptin 207,208
Onishi, M . 16, 53,229 plurality 4, 381, 3874,392,401-2, 1104,425; rabbis 357 St P a d 51
OPD ( 8 g o r d Paperbrsck DLtfowry,I 242,251, see abo number mcmn 366 S d ~ n iZ.
, 41 1
252,260, 265,266,268, 274,275, 276 plumlia bantunu, see collective concepts r d o 374 SAME 43, 72,I27
oppasites 108-10 P@%"] Rand11, R. 353, 355 sonsego 412
oipknol 282 ookras~l255 Rappaport, 6.410, 413 sons@ 412
or 267, 268 ram? 308; see also colour Samoan 04.65, 5151, 101,128
orange 326,329, 3310; see #EM colowr rar 339 snmych 412
or&? 175, 177,272-3,274 ~ffawen,P. 351, 353,355, 358, 361,362, 374 Sanskrit 15
Chtony, A. 161. 1163, 352 Read, K. E. 198 Sapir, E. 3, l8,45, 53, 55, 297-8, 355
Saunders, B. A. C. 2951, 333-4
b u s m r e 28 sie 41 1,413-14 subject 112,416, 421 SSsrear, threoien 175, 260
Lw4 S. &4 si~bie412-14 subjunctive 408 Tien. 11. 138
SAY 5% 120 night widcnflisll 446, MR. 454; see 0ko ~ubsers.129 tiger 368-89, 371
Sayers, 8. 185-6 ed6niGdal categories substandves 35, 114, 144, 146 t h e 35, 56,97, 131; see ofso temporal
scales 337, 389,390, 395,400-1, a p k oJ 0 silky 248 mcceed 263 notions
set oJ 390; bathroom d e s 388, 389,395 sdEwer 329, 330 s u t b , experiential, factual 4310-1.434; fjinguru 190
sccaarias 171 Si!verstein, M. 41 i n f m t i d 46)3,439; quotative suffix 345, T d a , T. 3 12
Schank. R. C. 170 similarity 71. 72. 143; see oisa LIKE 432, 457; verbal 428; visual 429. 431 Tolai 84, 85
Schlicher. A. 439-46 Simpson, 1. 298 s d t 397 !QRUTdO 164
ScUck, Work 68 sin 2801 top 208
Schuchandfi, H. singular 381, 383, 391, 392; see a h n u m k r Toren, C. 223,2W
Schwartz, S. P. 367, 371,373 s k g 291,309, 310, 311; see Q ~ dQ o u r Sullivan, M.A. 205 toy 156, 372-3
scientific mice, see mouse uim 109; see also Sirsh; SMALL man 21210*223, 329; sun-time vision 288 lransitivity 4012, 410-12, 420-1, 4 2 1 6 ,
scientific classification 62; see oEso classihation +ja 424 s u p r a t e g o r y 856,172, 372-3; artehtual transiflive hierarchy of categories 374
scjientific concepts 374; see aho concepts sky 220, 223, 329 373; 0011-taxonomic 372; see eho categorim- ltnansitiw object 421; bansiliiw verbs 418,
scientific howledge 338,366). 374; see also Slavic languages 413 tion 421
knowledge Sldd, J. 250 sure 260 Travis, Catherine 32, 33
scissors 382,383, 392 Slobin, D. 1. 17, 19*21, 24, 26, 57, 77, 79, surface properties 352 free 355, 361-701, 362, 3 8 , 364, 365,366, 367,
m g e 258 92-3, 96, 130, 132, 135, 420 slursauce structures 411 1 368, 369, 370, 373-5
scripts 171 SMALL 54,131 mrprire 1741-801 Treerat, W.37
scmlkize 250-3 Smitb, E. 169 Suzuki, T. 229 Tdeu, 5. 170
sdroiarsi 418 srnoarh 248 Swadcsb, M. 306,316, 321 drawers 382, 383, 385, 392, 397, MU; see also
sc 425 snaiE 360-1, 368 swearwords 107 separafle leg garmeols
sea 329 make 3 5 M , 366 Smtser, E. E. 153 ilrulh 25%6111,2&ll
Searb, 9. R. T I , 174 snow 304 Swift, Jmatbam 2 w Tsohatzidis, S. L. 152
second-hand 427 Snyder. L. 86,96 syntax, Formal 3, 7; oore arguments 410; see Tsunoda, T. 419-20
secondary bxemcs 357,365 social cognition 41 aSso subject, objecl; properties ob pronouns
secret 264 social pules 11105 413; syntax OF meaning 19, see o.&o
sedere 418 SOED (SSsbrfe~OxJor6 E&hh DkrionarprJ meaniag; syntactic frames 176; spt;aoctic Turner, Y. W. 318
serEersl 418 228,263, 338 f ~ ~ e n t a l l i s8m TWO 44, 128, 129; see @haplurality, duals
SEE 78%79.10, 1E9,287,427 sofl 248 system of meanings 404 Tyack, T). 96
Seiler, H.&O9 So1omoo Islands 56 szczfs'iFjwy 2 15 Tyler, S. 230, 348. 362-3
semantics 427; Fornab 8, 214; semantic atoms SOME 74,76, I28 Suokr, S. 41 1
221; semantic bridges 27& senramtic SOMEONE 38,39, 114, 116, 117, 192, 226. fypic~fly272
categories 293,381; campkxity 10, 232; 45 1 tacit knowledge 2301 typology 409,407-8
condition 4616; countabiliLy 387; dimensiolns SCUMETHMG 38,39, 114, 118, 226 T d e n a h Jopmae-EngIhh Dictfonary 235 Tzeltal 93
420; distinctions 402; ffield 178; semamtic SoI1 312 relent 263
bomulae 428; invariant 24. 2 3 W & 265, Smensen. N.3. 33-8 Talmy, L. 246 urnad33liated generics 361, 368
47-8; molecules 206, 221; prime8 9, 17,32; sound l a w 3801 Tarians 306. 331 uncle 1162-3
primitives 9, 14, 171,426; protoflype 416; Sovran. T. 71-2 Tbuade 193, 194 UNDER 58-9, 1110, 135, 136
range 433; ne0atbmhips 271; oon- space 15, 5&,89, 133 taxonomy 35, 601,63, 141, 155, 172, 363 umderlying. natures 352
compositional melationships 28-9, 33; rule# spacing 1147 Taylor, 9. R. 513, 166 undeslybg objects 41 1
379, 381,383. 3904,SW; m a n t i c theory smdwKKi 394 Kelevidon 374 undedying sWuc~tures41 1
Ma; theoq OF grammar 401; typology 456 &&ieE 365 fernperatwe 221 w n & q a n ~ 383, 397; see atso separate leg
senses; five senses 81 Spanish 3%, 419.421, 425 temporal liruk 416 Parrnents
Scnnory cvEdence 433, 441. 445; oviJertdisU 447; spedrrww 174, 367 lemporal notions 56 m~erstflnd198
sensory non-visual evidential 450; predieautes spatial orientation 92; see also space rempr 266, 28.54 unSsappy 18011
82 speech Acr Verbs 33, 171, 174, 176, 178,269, tense, Maoedanian pluperfects 456; see olro unique beginners 359, 360, 364
sensuow 248,249 717 past lunitary definition 4 6 7
sentence 147 speech 35; commuraity 391; compbment 119; rer~$etf,terror 2 16-1 7 wifary hwes 325; see utso colour
Yeparam leg garments 384. 396, sea also fomatae EO& SdEa 356 universal detinihn 419
culotte, pantalon, shorts 383; trousers spider 359-61, 366 Thai 14, 36, 37,3W, 313, 314, 339 universal grammatkal patterns 3 1, 112
382-3, 385, 392* 397, 401; underpants 383, spies 159, 160 thank 172 universal quanlifier 47
197 Spiro, M. iE. 39 The M#cqwrie Dictionrary o,fAw!rallnn Bwg1i.d~ unirenal semantic primitives 426-7.4156
3ePbkCroatian 64 spokojnmy 405 228. universalism 14
Sharp, D.W. 205 spring 242, 243 The New EgIlsh B&!e, see biblical references universals of seeing 287-8; see afso SEE
squirre! 366, 368-9, 3711 theory of cultural scripts 34 unmarked past 452; see uSso past
standard 2M theory of universal semantic primitives 352 v 59
shirr 383 Slliclnkevit. N.Y. 406 THERE IIS 83, 85; see uEso BE U p n ~ s h a d s306
Shopen.T. E53 Stanlaw, J. 333 rhirag 114, 118; see aEso living things Wses 182
SI4ORT TIME 97, 98, 133 store 252 THINK 26,48, 49, 112, 119, 120, 197,2034, urge 177
shorfs 383; see aka sparale k g gslments 208, 456 usra 386
Shuswap 301, 301, 309 thirst 264
S h ~ e d e R.
r ~ 39,205,2901, 333 THIS 42-3, 226, 427
SIDE 92, 136 Thompson, S. 41111.419-23
v a I w y optbns 33, 21, 182-13, 129
valency or mantic primitives 1 13
wljdsrionnl eIEjdentLS~435,4156
value 109
Van Br&eU, J. 245-7, 288,290, 301,308-10,
324,334
wehicfe 3373
w'ehery 248
eni iron 356
Yenaman* T. 4010
verb 146, 420
verbal definitiorar 226
verbal mplanations 226
verbal srpffwres 4% see &Q suhk
Vemors, J. B. 41
Vethaat, d. W. M. 84.420
Qer9cLuemm, 11. 149, 13,165,246
VERY 67,6B%,141
Vico 93
Vietnamese 4Q6
rime 361, 363. 374
risioru: nieurophysiology of 320,321; night-time
28% sun-time 288
visual evidence 441, $A&
v i p l su& 429,431
- V d 430,4157
volitional mtemces 44%
voluntary action 418-i9
Yon Stunner, J. R. 194
v&6s 29U, 317; see a h w l o w
vrar' 153,2U4

warm &lour# 3118-19, 321, 324; see aim colovlr

warn 32101,322-3
IvW 208
watch 250, 251
Mlarrer 225,229, 23P
weopos 261, 373
Weber, a.J. 396.4349
Websrer's flew S c h d and Ofice Dictionary
240
Websrerk Mew WorM Dkldonary 249
Web~ter'sThird Mew ! ~ ~ e ~ o t b Dicrioaary
na!
oJ~.kt?Ern&& Lamgwgt? 162,263, 269
W&1, s i o n e 15
Weinmick, U,145,246
Weiskopf, S. 322
we& Nib; see &O wollour
Wellmam, H.M. 48-9
Welsh 306, 302'
wem 191
rest 94