| has gloss | eng: 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 Wierzbicka calls semantic primes, or alternatively, semantic primitives — semantic because linguists 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. If you read linguist Anna Wierzbicka’s book, Semantics: Primes and Universals (Wierzbicka, 1996), you will find this argument, grounded in biologically plausible hypotheses and experimental observations. |
