25 what depressed means and what they believe about people who experience that feeling, and not strictly
speaking part of its definition. My point is that sometimes, it is difficult to tell the difference.
2.7.2 Specific concerns about the current NSM proposal
While I am fairly confident about the 37 primitives of the Goddard and W 1994 study, I want to be careful about adopting the proposed inventory of syntactic combinations found in W 1996. In fact, I
will argue, on the basis of SE alone, that some of these combinations should not be regarded as universal. Often simply asking this question will reveal problems in the syntactic specification: “What do
the SE exponents of a certain NSM combination really mean?”
2.7.2.1 PEOPLE Currently, the NSM specification allows the primitive PEOPLE to combine with the primitives THIS,
THE SAME, ANOTHER, TWO, MANY, and ALL. The main reason for questioning these combinations is the curious “neutralization” that takes place
when the primitive PERSON and the primitive PEOPLE occur in combination with the above NSM determiners and quantifiers:
PERSON verses PEOPLE
these persons these people
the same persons the same people
other persons other people
two persons two people
many persons many people
all persons all people
I am unable to find a semantic difference between the expressions in the left and right columns. Apparently, in these contexts, people is merely an allolex of the primitive PERSON.
But not all instances of people can be reduced to instances of PERSON. W 1996:40-1 asserts that people used in sentences such as, people would not want something like this to happen, people would
say this is good, this is something made by people, or this is something used by people is not decomposable in terms of the primitive PERSON.
I do not wish to debate here the compositionality of PEOPLE as used in the above sentences
14
, but I would like to point out, however, that in all of the above contexts, PEOPLE is used to talk about people
in general unlike the primitive PERSON, and if PEOPLE is used only to make general statements about people, why should it be quantifiable at all?
My proposal then, is that PEOPLE, if it is indeed a primitive, universally does not allow any combination of primitive determiners or quantifiers. If we accept this, it would help us to make sense of
the curious assymetry noted in W 1996:117 that PEOPLE does not combine with the primitive ONE. PEOPLE would therefore be the only “indefinite” NSM substantive other members would include
SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PLACE, TIME, PART, and possibly KIND which does not combine with the full range of NSM determiners and quantifiers; i.e., the lone exception to the rule.
My proposal would place PEOPLE in an entirely separate category, with a closer affinity to the definite substantives YOU and I. Therefore in the two rules list below, PEOPLE no longer takes
determiners: s2
[IYOUPEOPLE[d1 PERSON][d1 THING]THIS] sp
[IYOUPEOPLE[d1 PERSON]]
26 2.7.2.2 NOT + WANTTHINK
It is commonly and perhaps universally assumed, within both NSM and formal semantics, that negation may be applied to any proposition without restriction. Problems with scope of negation, however, would
seem to argue that there are at least two predicates in natural language which do not allow negation at the clause level.
In NSM’s early history, sentences such as I don’t want John to drive were cited as important evidence for the non-compositionality of the proposed primitive DON’T WANT, since they cannot be decomposed
as meaning it is not the case that I want John to drive. Apparently however, DON’T WANT eventually proved inadequate for the treatment of negation and in W 1996 it was dropped in favor of the more
mainstream negator NOT. It then became necessary to re-examine such sentences and under the revised framework. The sentence I don’t want John to drive was analyzed as meaning I want John not to drive. This
analysis seems reasonable to me, but it also raises an interesting question about the negation of WANT. If in SE, don’t does not negate want because it negates the embedded clause and not the matrix clause,
how can one negate want in the matrix clause? What we would need in SE is a clause-level operator which, in combination with want, would express a meaning like it is not the case that I want John to drive.
I can think of no such operator in SE; in fact, I find it difficult to imagine how such a meaning would be expressed in SE.
There is an analogous situation with the primitive THINK. It has been pointed out to me that I don’t think John is sick does not imply I don’t think. It seems that such a sentence can be analyzed along parallel
lines as above: 67 I don’t think John is sick
I think John is not sick Here too, the same question arises. If don’t does not negate think at the clause level, how does one
negate think at the clause level? My conclusion is that the notion of an unrestricted NOT freely combining with the primitive
predicates WANT and THINK has more to do with surface grammar of SE than with the universal properties of NOT.
2.7.2.3 ALL + KINDS I am not convinced that the combination of ALL and KIND is found in SE. First of all, when we say there
are all kinds of birds in this place, we generally mean something like there are many kinds of birds in this place.
The best candidate I can find for ALL in the context of kind is the form every: 68 Every kind of knife has a handle
However, there are some problems with this kind of sentence This is a somewhat peculiar sentence in SE. One would rarely, if ever, hear such a sentence in spontaneous speech. A second question is,
whether the meaning of such a sentence is distinct from sentences like: 69 All knives have handles
or even as noted in W 1972:180-1: 70 Knives have handles
Assuming that it is intuitive and reasonable to treat the bare unquantified plural noun knives as an abbreviated form of all knives, it is difficult to find a difference between these sentences, other than their
conciseness or lack thereof. If these three sentences do indeed convey the same meaning and I am uncertain of this, this would render the kind of in 68 superfluous. I would therefore be left with no
27 examples in SE of the combination of ALL and KIND. Perhaps there could be a reason for this. If the
primitive KIND intrinsically separates objects into groupings and if the primitive ALL intrinsically links objects together as group, perhaps it does not make sense to refer to both of these at one time. Needless
to say, I have not yet come to a definite conclusion on this matter.
2.7.2.4 A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME I am well aware of the dangers of using symmetry as a consideration in the formulation of an
explanatory semantic theory. Nevertheless, I believe symmetry can be a useful tool for pointing out gaps in one’s theory.
Consider the primitive TIME. TIME may combine with the full range of NSM determiners and quantifiers THIS, THE SAME, OTHER, ONE, TWO, MANY, and ALL. It shares this combinability with
other members of the so-called “indefinite” substantives SOMEONE, SOMETHING, KIND, PART, and PLACE. Curiously, however, TIME does not combine attributively with the primitives BIG and SMALL,
although all the other “indefinite” substantives do.
Recently, the expressions A SHORT TIME and A LONG TIME have emerged as possible universal primitives. From the standpoint of symmetry, the obvious question is, why could not short and long be
considered as allolexes for BIG and SMALL in the context of the primitive TIME? This would not only restore TIME to the community of well-behaved “indefinite” substantives and
reduce the inventory of primitives, it would also allow us to make a generalization about temporal adjuncts: the role of a temporal adjunct would be determined purely by what modifies it.
Temporal determiners such as THIS, THE SAME, ANOTHER, ALL, BEFORE, and AFTER in combination with TIME would mark ordinary tense. Quantifiers such as ONE, TWO, and MANY would
mark repetition. Finally, the attributives BIG or SMALL would mark durative adjuncts. Three seems to be the maximal number of temporal adjuncts in a canonical sentence:
71 Some time before now, I did this for a long time two times. This is what we would expect if we were to allow only one adjunct of each type into each clause.
2.7.2.5 SOMETHING Currently, the primitives THIS, THE SAME, and SOMETHING are allowable complements to mental
predicates. Consider, however, the following sentences: 72 I thought the same
73 I thought the same thing
A number of questions arise in connection with these sentences. Do they have the same meaning? If not, what is the difference? If so, is one form more basic than the other? That is, should we regard the
same in 72 as a having a deleted thing or should we regard the same thing in 73 as a phrasal lexeme meaning the same in this context?
The same questions arise when we consider the primitive THIS with the other mental predicates: 74 I said this
75 I said this thing
In this case, 74 sounds much better than 75. Nevertheless, 75 is acceptable to me. In these two examples, the point that I am trying to make is that it is difficult to determine introspectively a semantic
difference between mental complements with the primitive SOMETHING and those with the bare determiners.
28 My proposal is that there should be a single mental complement SOMETHING which may take a de-
terminer such as THE SAME or THIS, but from what I have argued so far, it would not be possible to choose between these two competing syntactic specifications.
I would like to bring in one additional piece of evidence to support my proposal. It seems to me that one should be able to say, in the metalanguage, sentences like:
76 I said something else 77 I wanted you to think something else
78 I didn’t know anything else
Unlike the NSM determiners THIS and THE SAME, which may serve as substantives by themselves, the primitive OTHER occurs only in combination with a substantive. If we allow the combination OTHER
THING i.e., something else as a mental complement, it would seem rather odd not to also allow the combinations THIS THING and THE SAME THING. If we allow these two combinations as mental
complements, then we can reduce our inventory of mental complements by removing THIS and THE SAME. The resulting system would be more economical and symmetric.
2.7.3 Conclusion
