11 The explication should be carried out of whole utterances that are actually used in quite
definite situations and contexts. We cannot start from words or other parts of utterances, because they do not have any meaning in isolation, may have different meanings in different
sentences, and may have no meaning there.
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Thus, when one explicates a particle, one would also decompose the entire clause which contains it. The containing clause may expand into several clauses, with the contribution of the particle itself
corresponding to perhaps one or more of these expanded clauses. By way of illustration, consider an explication of the article a adopted from Grimes 1987:
32 a person
a. I am thinking of someone
b. I do not think you are thinking of this person Obviously, one could not substitute this explication directly into the sentence I saw a bachelor:
33 I saw a bachelor
a. I saw [I am thinking of; I do not think you are thinking of] bachelor
The substitution has rendered the utterance incomprehensible. One instead has to decompose the entire sentence and the article a at the same time:
34 I saw a bachelor
a. I saw someone
b. I am thinking of this person c. I do not think you are thinking of this person
d. this person has never been married e. this person is a man
f. people think of this man like this: g. this person can marry someone if he wants to
In the above explication, 34b and 34c correspond to the semantic contribution of the article a. But it should be noted that often for expediency in presentation, the principle of whole-utterance
explication is not strictly adhered to in the NSM literature.
2.1.4 Substituting one level at a time
The principle of substitutivity also requires one additional qualification. Some domains such as concrete vocabulary have very complex structures W 1985 which cannot be directly decomposed into primitives
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I do not believe that Boguslawski’s intent is to deny the existence of lexical meaning. I think that he would agree that the word swam makes an identical semantic contribution to the sentences The fish swam and The boy swam. In
my understanding, he is saying that strictly speaking, sentences are meaningful in a different way than are isolated words or parts of utterances. The form mine uttered with no qualifying context is meaningless. The form mine
uttered in the sentence The blame is all mine is meaningful. The same form uttered by itself following the question Whose notebook is this? is also meaningful and can be explicated. It is therefore easier to talk about the meaning of
sentences, than the meanings of, say, NP’s, because sentences are complete utterances, but NP’s are usually not.
12 in a single step. The principle of substitution is still valid for such words, but all possible substitutions in
such a definition cannot apply simultaneously. W 1991d illustrates this with the relatively simple concrete terms eyes, face and head:
35 A PERSON’S EYES
a. two parts of A PERSON’S FACE b. because of these parts, a person can see
36 A PERSON’S FACE
a. a part of A PERSON’S HEAD b. because of this part, one can know what a person thinks
37 A PERSON’S HEAD
a. a part of a person b. all other parts of a person are under this part
c. because of this, a person can think
The definition for a person’s eyes contains the term a person’s face. Likewise, the definition for a person’s face contains the term a person’s head. The definition of a person’s head, unlike the others, is
phrased completely in primitive terms. Defining a person’s eyes in completely primitive terms, however, produces a completely unintelligible
utterance. Since the definition for a person’s eyes contains a nonprimitive a person’s face, one would have to eliminate this nonprimitive term by replacing it with its definition b1 and b2:
38 A PERSON’S EYES
a. two parts of
b1. a part of A PERSON’S HEAD b2. because of this part, one can know what a person thinks
c. because of these parts, a person can see
There is still a nonprimitive term in this definition. The term a person’s head must also be replaced by its definition b1a — b1c:
39 A PERSON’S EYES
a. two parts of
b1. a part of b1a. a part of a person
b1b. all other parts of a person are under this part b1c. because of this, a person can think
b2. because of this part, one can know what a person thinks c. because of these parts, a person can see
These substitutions have disrupted the definition’s topic structure and rendered the definition incomprehensible. W concludes therefore that in such cases, substitution can proceed only one step at a time.
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2.2 Directionality
