Natural Semantic Metalanguage

Before we go further, we should understand the definition of the word

“metalanguage” since it might be new for some of us. Metalanguage is the
language that is used to present, name and describe terminological information, the
language of a particular field name in an entry, e,g. "synonym" is the English name
of the data field, that contains synonyms to main entry terms. To make it simpler,
metalanguage is a language that can be used to describe languages. Then, we
already know that semantic is the study of meaning in language. So, semantic
metalanguage is theory and a practical, meaning-based approach to linguistic
analysis. The leading proponents of the theory are Anna Wierzbicka at
the Australian National University who originated the theory in the early 1970s
(Wierzbicka 1972), and Cliff Goddard at Australia'sUniversity of New
England (Goddard & Wierzbicka 1994, 2002). It is called natural semantic
metalanguage because it is derived entirely from natural language and because it
can be understood via natural language without any additional arbitrary signs and
conventions.

To compare meanings, one has to be able to state them. To state the

meaning of a word, an expression or a construction, we need a semantic
metalanguage. Moreover, Natural Semantic Metalanguage ( NSM ) is important to
compare meanings expressed in different language and different culture.

Semantic Primitives

Linguists of the NSM school rely on semantic primitives (or semantic primes)
for analysis. Semantic primes means the suggestion that we have as part of our
inherited human faculties a basic set of innate 'concepts', or perhaps more
precisely, a non-conscious propensity and eagerness to acquire those concepts and
encode them in sound-forms (words). The words that those concepts become
encoded in what is called semantic primes, or alternatively, semantic primitives —
'semantic' becauselinguists have assigned that word in reference to the meaning of
words (=linguistic symbols). Words that qualify as semantic primes need no
definition in terms of other words. In that sense, they remain undefinable. We know
their meaning without having to define them. They allow us to construct other
words defined by them.

List of Semantic Primes

When Wierzbicka and colleagues claim that DO, BECAUSE, and GOOD, for
example, are semantic primes, the claim is that the meanings of these words are
essential for explicating the meanings of numerous other words and grammatical
constructions, and that they cannot themselves be explicated in a non-circular
fashion. The same applies to other examples of semantic primes such as: I, YOU,
SOMEONE, SOMETHING, THIS, HAPPEN, MOVE, KNOW, THINK, WANT, SAY, WHERE,
WHEN, NOT, MAYBE, LIKE, KIND OF, PART OF. Notice that all these terms identify
simple and intuitively intelligible meanings which are grounded in ordinary linguistic
experience (Goddard, 2002).

All people know all words below because they heard the words spoken a long time:
Table adapted from Goddard, 2002.

In effect, the combination of a set of semantic primes each representing a

different basic concept, residing in minds with a propensity to acquire certain basic
concepts, and a common set of rules for combining those concepts into meaningful
messages, constitutes a natural semantic prime language, or natural semantic
metalanguage. In English, the natural semantic metalanguage reduces language to
a core that enables full development of the English language. A new word can be
added as a shorthand substitute for a 'text' in the natural semantic metalanguage, a
'text' that can convey what English speakers mean by lie, by what a person does
when he says something not true because he wants someone to think it true. Any
English word can be described (defined) with a text using a primitive lexicon of
about 60 words (concepts) in the English natural semantic metalanguage. Likewise
can any complex semantic sentence in English be paraphrased reductively to the
core words and syntax of the natural semantic metalanguage. The texts can make
subtle distinctions English-speakers make between happy, glad, joyful, ecstatic,
etc., and can supply those distinctions to those who want to know them.

Given the universal nature of the list of semantic primes among languages,
and of the grammar, every language has essentially the same natural semantic
metalanguage, though each semantic prime sounds different among languages and
the appearance of the syntax may differ. Wierzbicka and colleagues refer to all the
natural semantic metalanguages as 'isomorphic' with each other. Conceivably, if the
dictionary of meaning descriptions of each language was reductively paraphrased in
the text of its natural semantic metalanguage, and that natural semantic
metalangugage was translated to a common natural semantic metalanguage for all
natural languages, it would greatly reduce language barriers.