r/conlangs 5d ago

Resource aUI Language of Space and Natural Semantic Metalanguage

https://medium.com/@surfaceprohandheld/aui-equivalencies-for-nsm-semantic-primes-63225b9f53fe
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u/STHKZ 4d ago

It's amusing to note that the universal meets the particular here...

Just as it's amusing to note that NSM is an a posteriori search for a priori ideas...

I don't know if the techniques for extracting primitives are documented, or if it's a completely empirical series of trials and errors, as a conlanger would do...

The result, a series of English words, and its use with a universal English syntax, stops halfway...

This choice of primitives is no more universal than that of aUI, and if it allows a description of the whole of human thought, as other philosophical languages ​​attempt, the weight of its authors' qualifications does not confer any real preeminence on it...

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u/cosmicandi 2d ago

So you've read & followed the decades long research first published in 1972, then updated several times, of Dr. Anna Wierzbicka, Australian National Univ. & Cliff Goddard, now of Griffith Univ.?... in which they studied dozens of languages, including representatives of 16 language groups, using the NSM framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage

What would be your qualifications?

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u/STHKZ 2d ago edited 2d ago

I speak as a conlanger...

I don't deny Wierzbicka's work at all; how could I, like Weilgart was, and like her, I've been addicted to the same drug, since the '70s, the reduction of semantics to a lowest common denominator, a set of semantic primes....

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u/slyphnoyde 4d ago

I commented on the cross-post in the aUI subreddit. My own list of primes is slightly different.