Semantic complexity: Conceptual primitives and the principle of substitutability

Abstract

This paper argues that the failures of modern semantics have been caused, largely, by an unrealistic idea of the nature of semantic complexity, reflected in popular analyses such as “to kill equals ‘to cause to die’”. In fact, the semantic structure of an ordinary human sentence may be about as simple as the structure of a galaxy or of an atom. If we don't recognize this complexity and don't accept the challenge of elucidating it, we will never be able to fulfil the central task of linguistics: that of discovering, and describing, how meanings are encoded in the languages of the world; and of doing so not on the level of programmatic declarations but on the level of empirical detail. The author argues that to analyze meanings in their complexity we must be able to show how complex meanings are derived from simple ones; semantic analysis requires, therefore, a set of “ultimate simples”, that is, of universal conceptual primitives. In addition to such a set, however, we must also know how these primitives are combined into larger semantic units. The author explores both issues (the set of the ultimate simples and the nature of their “grammar”), and discusses the light they throw on the problem of semantic complexity.