Abstract
1. On the status of the primitives It is interesting and surely non-coincidental that the semantic primitives proposed by NSM researchers include some of the most hotly-debated topics in the formal semantics literature. There is a large body of formal semantic research (too large to be cited here) on each of the following NSM primitives: indexical pronouns such as I and you , demonstratives like this , quantifiers such as something, all, many , and one , modals like can , propositional attitude verbs like know and think , adjectives such as good and bad , the predicates have and (there) is , the connectives because, when , and if . Other proposed primitives such as before, after, the same, like, and kind (of) have also been the subject of discussion and debate. Indeed, there may not be a single proposed semantic primitive which fails to strike formal semanticists as extremely complex. Thus, it is difficult for us to accept the NSM claim that primitives such as i , you , someone , this , think , and want are ‘simple words’ and that they are ‘intuitively comprehensible and self-explanatory’ (Durst, p. 2).