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    Wierzbicka Primitives

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    Mint Npw
    Anna Wierzbicka developed an approach to semantic analysis called componential analysis. She believed that word meanings could be defined using a finite set of semantic primitives, or basic concepts that all people can understand in the same way. Wierzbicka proposed a list of around 60 semantic primitives that could be used to break down word meanings into more basic components. However, critics argue that relying on a limited set of primitives may result in definitions that are lengthy and not concise. Additionally, all primitives would need to be known in order to fully define a word's meaning.

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    Wierzbicka Primitives

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    Mint Npw
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    Anna Wierzbicka developed an approach to semantic analysis called componential analysis. She believed that word meanings could be defined using a finite set of semantic primitives, or basic concepts that all people can understand in the same way. Wierzbicka proposed a list of around 60 semantic primitives that could be used to break down word meanings into more basic components. However, critics argue that relying on a limited set of primitives may result in definitions that are lengthy and not concise. Additionally, all primitives would need to be known in order to fully define a word's meaning.

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    Anna Wierzbicka developed an approach to semantic analysis called componential analysis. She believed that word meanings could be defined using a finite set of semantic primitives, or basic concepts that all people can understand in the same way. Wierzbicka proposed a list of around 60 semantic primitives that could be used to break down word meanings into more basic components. However, critics argue that relying on a limited set of primitives may result in definitions that are lengthy and not concise. Additionally, all primitives would need to be known in order to fully define a word's meaning.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    65 views3 pages

    Wierzbicka Primitives

    Uploaded by

    Mint Npw
    Anna Wierzbicka developed an approach to semantic analysis called componential analysis. She believed that word meanings could be defined using a finite set of semantic primitives, or basic concepts that all people can understand in the same way. Wierzbicka proposed a list of around 60 semantic primitives that could be used to break down word meanings into more basic components. However, critics argue that relying on a limited set of primitives may result in definitions that are lengthy and not concise. Additionally, all primitives would need to be known in order to fully define a word's meaning.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    Noppawit Boonjoon 5980134822

    Wierzbickas approach to componential analysis


    Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most famous componentialists, attempted to define the
    meaning of the words as much as possible by using a finite set of indispensable notions,
    namely primitives. The set of these notions must be basic for all people to understand in the
    same way because she believed that these primitives must be able to tell all peoples innate
    semantics capacities.
    Wierzbickas Semantic Primitives
    Substantives: I, you, someone, something, people
    Determiners: this, the same, other, some
    Augmentor: more
    Quantifiers: one, two, many / much, all
    Mental predicates: think, know, want, feel, see, hear
    Non-mental predicates: move, there is, (be) alive
    Speech: say
    Actions and events: do, happen
    Evaluators: good, bad

    Descriptors: big, small


    Time: when, after, before, a long time, a short time, now
    Space: where, under, above, far, near, side, inside, here
    Partonomy: part of
    Taxonomy: kind
    Metapredicate: can, no, very
    Interclausal linkers: if, because, like
    Imagination and possibility: if would, maybe
    Words: word
    Adopt from Cruse (2011)

    For example: A is eating B.


    1. A is alive.
    2. A is doing something to B now.
    3. B will be inside A.
    4. A feels good to do something to B.
    Strength:
    1. This analysis provides the basic concept of a word that can be understood by all people of
    all languages.
    Weakness:
    1. We have to know all primitives in the list in order to define meanings of a word.
    2. The definition from this analysis is not concise and accurate, compared to Hjelmslevs
    analysis. Because of the finite number of primitives, the meaning derived from these
    primitives may not be straightforward and, in order to make it clear, it should be explained by
    using many sentences which make the definition not concise. While Hjelmslevs analysis
    reduces the word into other words with related meanings which finally can be used to define
    the meaning of the focused word in shorter and more meaningful way.

    Noppawit Boonjoon 5980134822


    Motivation for componential approaches
    1. Partial similarities

    CHICKE
    N

    MAL
    E

    FEMAL
    E

    cock

    hen

    Words cock and hen mean the same that they are both chickens, but they are also
    different because a cock is a male chicken, while a hen is a female chicken.
    This shows that these two words have something same and something different in their
    meanings, which is called partial similarity.

    2. Correlations

    MALE

    FEMALE

    ADULT

    man

    woman

    YOUNG

    boy

    girl

    Each pair of words in the table has partially similarity like the words cock and hen
    mentioned earlier.
    This table shows a correlation that the components [MALE] and [FEMALE] can
    accompany with other components like [ADULT] or [YOUNG] independently.
    However, the two components of a word may not be enough to give the full meaning, e.g.
    [YOUNG] and [FEMALE] can be components of the word girl as well as the word
    filly, which means a young female horse.

    3. Discontinuities
    In a sentence, there might be a discontinuity which shows the discreteness of its meaning.
    In case of ambiguity, the sentence I almost killed her can be interpreted in two ways:
    - almost([CAUSE][DIE]) : I did something that can make her dead but she was still alive.
    - [CAUSE](almost[DIE]) : I intentionally did something not to make her dead but she
    might almost die because of this.
    When we read the sentence Thats not a stallion, we will infer that it is a mare. That is,
    we focus on only the semantic component [MALE] of the word stallion, but not
    [HORSE].
    4. Simplex-complex parallels
    The word which has simple form can have semantics properties like the complex one. The
    complex form means a word which its meaning can be indicated by the morphological
    evidence in its form.
    For example, the word untrue is expressed its meaning by the morpheme un-, which
    means not, so its meaning is not veracious. However, the word false is simply told

    Noppawit Boonjoon 5980134822


    that it has the same semantic properties as the word untrue without any morphological
    evidence.

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