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Re: Natural Semantic Metalanguage

From:Richard Kennaway <richard@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 19:43
At 14:48 +0100 20/11/07, Mr Veoler wrote:
>MorphemeAddict wrote: >> Yes, they are. >> AW discusses and justifies each prime in "Semantics: Primes and Universals". >> ISBN 0-19-870003-2 >> >> If you can find it in a library, then you can look at it before (or instead >> of) buying. >> >> stevo </HTML> > >I will see if I can find it, though English linguistics books are unheard of >here in a small Swedish town. But there are other towns. I will probably buy >the book whenever I will buy Describing Morphosyntax. Thanks.
Something to note is that the theory has undergone substantial changes over the years. At one point, Wierzbicka reduced the set of primes to 11; currently there are over 60. Books from different periods may say different things. I'm reminded of a series of competitions Edward de Bono set in the columns of a long-deceased science magazine called Science Journal, back in the 60's. One of them was to design a language containing not more than twenty words. I remember few details, though, and I don't know of those columns being published in a more lasting form. But it might be interesting to try the same idea here. -- Richard Kennaway

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Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>Langauge Constets (was Natural Semantic Metalanguage)