Seminaire: Conference Anna Wierzbicka, 7 novembre 2011, ATILF, Nancy

[Thierry Hamon]

Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:36:04 +0200
From: Dorota Sikora <dorota.sikora at atilf.fr>
Message-ID: <4E8EF234.5020205 at atilf.fr>

Dans le cadre des séminaires de l'Atilf, nous avons le plaisir
d'annoncer la conférence :


/Universal semantic primes surface in human languages : French and
English perspectives/


par


*Anna Wierzbicka *

Australian National University/, /Canberra


le 7 novembre 2011

à 15 h00

ATILF - CNRS (UMR 7118)

44, avenue de la Libération

NANCY

salle Paul Imbs



Résumé :

The search for conceptual primes in language began in the 17^th century
with Leibniz. He posited the existence of an /alphabetum cogitationum
humanarum/, an alphabet of human thoughts, which he believed could be
discovered by experimental semantic analysis, i.e. by attempting a large
number of definitions of ordinary words in order to discover which
meanings can be defined without circularity and which cannot. It was a
conception closely akin to Descartes's, Pascal's and Arnauld's pursuit
of "clear ideas" and indefinable words.

After Leibniz's death the project fell of the linguistic and
philosophical agenda, until the second half of the 20^th century, when
it was taken up again by the Polish semanticist Andrzej Bogus?awski. It
was subsequently turned into a large-scale research program in the work
of linguists in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage paradigm program,
initiated in my l972 book /Semantic Primitives/ and later developed
jointly with my Australian colleague Cliff Goddard.

Leibniz never proposed anything like a complete list of the elements 
making up the presumed "alphabet of human thoughts". As of 2010, 
however, NSM researchers have advanced a complete and testable set of 
fundamental human concepts that surface in all languages.

Thus, this talk will report on the culmination of a long search: the
discovery of a set of sixty four elementary meanings common to all
languages and presumably innate.Two versions of this set, English and
French will be presented in my talk. The potential of this set as a
precise tool for investigating meanings and as a common measure for
comparing meanings and ideas across languages and cultures will be
illustrated with French and English examples.

In particular, I will focus on the French words /douleur /and /bonheur 
/and their putative English equivalents /pain /and /happiness/. I will 
also talk about the English cultural keyword /empirical /and I will show 
how it differs in meaning from the French word /empirique/. More 
broadly, I will discuss the cultural underpinnings of such differences 
in the meaning of words and the new vistas that the discovery of 
universal conceptual primes opens for lexicography, language teaching 
and the scientific investigations of languages, cognition and culture.



contact : dorota.sikora at atilf.fr

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