In the Circle of Inspiration of Anna Wierzbicka: The Cognitive Definition - 30 Years Later

The author recalls the close ties linking Professor Anna Wierzbicka with the community of linguists centered around the journal “Etnolingwistyka”/“Etnolinguistics” published in Lublin (vols. 1-30, 1988-2018) and with Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, where in 2004 she received the title of doctor honoris causa for her research into universals in different world languages and her service as a morally sensitive humanist. The complementary character between the frameworks advocated by Wierzbicka and Lublin ethnolinguists consists in the opposition to taxonomic approaches to word meaning and the adoption of the subjective reconstruction principle, which derives from Wilhelm Humboldt’s philosophy of language; in the apprecia- tion of the role of colloquial language and the intuition of the average language user; in the use of both systemic and textual data, taking into account all relevant communication features that can be supported with “linguistic evidence”; in the use of simple sentences for definitions, which are arranged in coherent, facetted sequences. Anna Wierzbicka, similarly to Lublin ethnolinguists, postulates to capture the meaning of words in the context of social life, history and national culture. In particular, the author focuses on the concept of the so-called cognitive definition. The article discusses its genesis, construction principles and the most important inspirations for its emergence; although the concept itself was created autonomously as an extension of studies on the language of folklore, independently of Anna Wierzbicka’s works, it nevertheless exhibits clear parallels to the way of thinking of the scholar from Canberra. The author of this article shows the similarities (convergences) between the cognitive definition and the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) method developed by Anna Wierzbicka on the examples of mother and gold , but it also highlights some differences, which in the case of the cognitive definition are related to the use of colloquial definientia that do not have the status of semantic “primitives” ( primes ). Finally, on the example of the concept HOME/HOUSE, the author considers new perspectives for applying the cognitive definition in comparative works undertaken within the framework of the EUROJOS seminar.