Abstract
Are there any concepts that all human beings share? Three hundred years ago Leibniz was convinced that there are indeed such concepts and that they can be identified by trial and error. He called this hypothetical set the alphabet of human thoughts. Gradually, however, the idea faded from philosophical discourse and eventually it was largely forgotten. It was revived in the early 1960s by the Polish linguist Andrzej Bogusławski. A few years later it was taken up in my own work and in 1972 in my book Semantic Primitives a first hypothetical set of universal semantic primitives was actually proposed. It included 14 elements. Following my emigration to Australia more and more linguists joined the testing of the proposed set against an increasing range of languages and domains. As a result, from mid 1980s the set steadily grew. The expansion stopped in 2014, when the number stabilised at 65, and when Cliff Goddard and I reached the conclusion that this is the full set. This paper reviews the developments which have taken place over the last 50 years. It reaffirms our belief that we have identified, in full, the shared alphabet of human thoughts. It also examines the recurring claim that one of these primes, HAVE PARTS, is not universal. Further, the paper argues that there is not only a shared alphabet of human thoughts but a shared mental language, Basic Human, with a specifiable vocabulary and grammar. It points out that the stakes are high, because what is at issue is not only the psychic unity of humankind (Boas 1911) but also the possibility of a universal human community of communication (Apel 1972). The paper contends that Basic Human can provide a secure basis for a non-Anglocentric global discourse about questions that concern us all, such as global ethics, the earth and its future, and the health and well-being of all people on earth.
Highlights
Are there any concepts that all human beings share? Three centuries ago, Leibniz was convinced that there are such concepts, and he called this hypothetical set of universal concepts “the alphabet of human thoughts”
For example: “the alphabet of human thoughts is the catalogue of primitive concepts, that it, those concepts which cannot be made clearer by means of any definitions”, and “the alphabet of human thoughts is the catalogue of those concepts which can be understood by themselves and from whose combinations our other ideas arise”
Seven years after the set of 65 universal semantic primes was first presented as the answer to Leibniz’s question about the “alphabet of human thoughts”, I am happy to repeat what I said in Imprisoned in English: “Extensive semantic investigations conducted over many years, by many scholars, in the NSM framework, have led to the conclusion that there are sixty five primes, the same in all languages” (p. 34)
Summary
Are there any concepts that all human beings share? Three centuries ago, Leibniz was convinced that there are such concepts, and he called this hypothetical set of universal concepts “the alphabet of human thoughts”. In Words and Meanings Cliff Goddard and I wrote: After nearly forty years of sustained research, both within selected individual languages and across many languages, linguists in the NSM program are prepared to claim that they have discovered the complete inventory of simple universal concepts that are embedded in the lexicons of all (or most) human languages. To say this is not to deny that much further work is necessary, nor does it rule out the possibility of further revisions to the current inventory. I will examine the recurring claims that one of these primes, which we call HAVE PARTS, does not pass the test of universality
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