What Are Semantic Primes?

Try to define the word “want”. You might say it means “to desire something”. But what does “desire” mean? “To wish for something”. And what is a “wish”? You quickly find yourself tangled in a web of synonyms, running in circles without ever reaching a solid foundation. It’s a frustrating, dictionary-devouring game that reveals a profound question: are there some concepts so fundamental that they simply cannot be defined?

According to a fascinating linguistic theory, the answer is a resounding yes. Welcome to the world of Semantic Primes, the proposed “atoms” of human meaning from which all complex thoughts are built.

The Search for Semantic Atoms

The idea of breaking down language into its smallest parts is not new. But the most developed and influential modern theory on the subject is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework, pioneered by linguists Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. For decades, they and their colleagues have been on a quest to identify the core set of meanings that are universal to all human languages.

A semantic prime isn’t just a simple word; it’s a fundamental concept with three key properties:

• It is universal. The concept exists and is expressible in every known human language, from English to Ewe, Mandarin to Maori. The actual word will be different (e.g., “I” in English, “yo” in Spanish, “watashi” in Japanese), but the core meaning of “the person who is speaking” is present everywhere.
• It is indefinable. You cannot explain a prime using any simpler terms. How would you define “I” or “this”? Any attempt would be more complex than the concept itself. We understand them innately.
• It is foundational. All other, more complex concepts can be explained—or “explicated”—using combinations of these primes.

Think of them like primary colors. You can’t create red, yellow, or blue by mixing other colors. They are fundamental. But by mixing them, you can create a virtually infinite spectrum of other hues. Semantic primes are the primary colors of meaning.

Meet the Primes: The Official Roster

After decades of cross-linguistic research, the list of proposed primes has settled at around 65. They aren’t random; they fall into logical categories that cover the basic components of human experience. Here is a selection from the current list:

• Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING/THING, PEOPLE, BODY
• Determiners & Quantifiers: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER; ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH/MANY
• Mental Predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
• Speech: SAY, WORDS, TRUE
• Actions, Events, & Movement: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
• Evaluation & Description: GOOD, BAD; BIG, SMALL
• Time: WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME
• Space: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE
• Logic & Connection: IF, BECAUSE, NOT, MAYBE, CAN, LIKE (as in ‘similar to’)

Looking at this list, you can see how it forms a kind of “language of thought”. These are the concepts you need to describe who you are (I, YOU), what you perceive (SEE, HEAR), what you think (THINK, KNOW), and how you relate to the world around you (WHERE, WHEN, BECAUSE).

Putting Primes to Work: Explication in Action

The real power of semantic primes isn’t just the list itself, but how it’s used. The NSM framework uses these primes to construct “reductive paraphrases” or “explications”. The goal is to define a complex, language-specific word using only the universal building blocks. This allows for a kind of radical translation that cuts through cultural nuance to reveal the core meaning.

Let’s take a word that is not a prime: “sad”. How would we explain it using only primes?

An explication for sadness might look something like this:

X feels sad. =
X feels something
sometimes a person thinks something like this:
    something bad happened
    I don’t want things like this to happen
    I can’t do anything because of this
because of this, this person feels something bad
X feels like this

While a bit clunky, this explication is built entirely from primes (FEEL, SOMETHING, THINK, BAD, HAPPEN, NOT, WANT, CAN, DO, BECAUSE). More importantly, it can be translated directly into any other language’s exponents of these primes, providing a culturally neutral definition.

This method becomes incredibly powerful when tackling words that are notoriously difficult to translate. Consider the German word Schadenfreude (the pleasure derived from another’s misfortune).

An explication for Schadenfreude could be:

Someone feels Schadenfreude. =
someone (X) thinks about someone else (Y)
X thinks something like this about Y:
    something bad happened to this other person
    this is good
because of this, this someone (X) feels something good

Suddenly, a concept that seems uniquely German is broken down into universal human components: thinking about someone, recognizing a bad event, evaluating it as good, and feeling good as a result.

Challenges and the Ongoing Debate

The theory of Semantic Primes is elegant and powerful, but it’s not without its critics. The world of linguistics is filled with vibrant debate, and NSM is no exception.

• Is the list truly universal? Proving that a concept exists in all 7,000+ human languages is a monumental task. Critics argue that some concepts, like “above” and “below”, might not be as fundamental in languages that use entirely different systems for spatial orientation.
• Are the explications too clumsy? The reductive paraphrases can be long and lose the poetic or emotional nuance of the original word. Does the explication for “sadness” truly capture the full depth of the feeling?
• Is the list complete or correct? The list of primes has been revised and expanded over the years. This leads some to question whether it’s a true, objective discovery or a useful but ultimately human-made construct.

The Building Blocks of Human Connection

Despite the debates, the quest for semantic primes offers a profound perspective on language and humanity. It suggests that beneath the staggering diversity of our world’s languages, there is a shared cognitive bedrock—a set of core concepts that unites us all.

Whether you are ordering coffee in Cairo, telling a story in the Amazon, or writing an email in Tokyo, you are using language built from the same fundamental parts: I, YOU, GOOD, BAD, DO, THINK, HAPPEN. They are the invisible lego bricks of our thoughts, the shared code that makes communication, empathy, and understanding across cultures possible. The next time you struggle to define a simple word, take a moment to appreciate it. You may have just stumbled upon one of the very building blocks of what it means to be human.