Semantics

BASIC CONCEPTS II 53
Decomposition has been widely used as a descriptive device but has
also been criticized by Lyons (1977, 1995), Allan (1986), and Cruse (1986,
2000), among others. At one extreme there is the position advocated by
Fodor, who surprisingly claims that no decomposition is possible and that
all words are learned and treated as wholes. At the other extreme, we find
Wierzbicka’s work (1980, 1985,1992,1996), who tried to work out a radical
decomposition of all words into a number of primitives. In between we
have Jackendoff’s (1983, 1990, 1996) position. He argues for some kind
of decomposition but observes that some conceptual information must
be represented in other modalities.
Thus, one extreme version of componential analysis is found in the
work of Wierzbicka (1996), who developed her theory in a very original
way taking inspiration from Liebnitz. She holds that there is a set of
universal semantic atoms in terms of which all conceivable meanings can
be expressed. She proposes a list of primitives of a concrete nature that
can be spelled out in any natural language.
Using different metalanguages, both Wierzbicka and Jackendoff select
several of the same components, for instance (SOME)THING, PLACE,
(BE)CAUSE, HAPPEN, BECOME and UNDER. However they differ in a series
of fundamental ways. Wierbicka assumes and uses English syntax, whereas
Jackendoff develops explicit formal rules for mapping syntactic structure
onto semantic structures which are consistent with generative grammar.
Thus, it is implied that there is some sort of correspondence between
universal grammar and Jackendoff’s conceptual structures.
Wierzbicka, on the other hand, analyzes grammatical meaning with
the same methods and concepts that are used when analyzing lexical
meaning. In addition, she has focused on cross-linguistic universals and
on the possibility of composing concepts and lexemes out of a common
store of universal primitives.
Jackendoff, like many self addressed cognitivists, locates word meaning
in conceptual structure. However, in contrast to most of them, he is strongly
componentialist. In other words, he believes that intuitively perceived
relationships must be accounted for in terms of shared semantic building
blocks. The central principle of Jackendoff’s conceptual semantics is that
describing meaning involves describing mental representations. For him
semantic structure is conceptual structure.
This theory is also known as the Mentalist Postulate. It is a strongly
rationalist hypothesis, and this author holds the idea that our conceptual
structure is built up of units such as conceptualized physical objects, events,
properties, times, quantities, and intentions. These conceptualized objects