The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach

Abstract

The basic conviction behind the NSM approach - bolstered by scores of empirical studies - is that meaning is the key to insightful and explanatory descriptions of most linguistic phenomena, phonetics and phonology excepted. Meaning is also the bridge between language and cognition, and between language and culture. Compartmentalizing language (or linguistic analysis) into syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics therefore makes little sense. In linguistics, meaning is everybody's business. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a decompositional system of meaning representation based on empirically established universal semantic primes, i.e., simple indefinable meanings which appear to be present as word-meanings in all languages (Wierzbicka 1996a; Goddard 1998; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002; Peeters 2006; Goddard 2008). Originating with Wierzbicka (1972), the system has been developed and refined over some 35 years. There is a large body of descriptive-analytical work in the framework, not only about English but Russian, Polish, French, Spanish,Malay, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Ewe, East Cree, and other languages.