Approach
Linguists of the NSM school rely on semantic primitives (or semantic primes) for analysis (that is, simple, indefinable, and universally lexicalized concepts) and reductive paraphrase (that is, breaking complex concepts down into simpler concepts).
Research in the NSM approach deals extensively with language and cognition, and language and culture. Key areas of research include lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, phraseology and pragmatics, as well as cross-cultural communication.
Languages studied in the NSM-framework include English, Russian, Polish, French, Spanish, Malay, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Ewe and East Cree, as well as Swedish.
Read more about this topic: Natural Semantic Metalanguage
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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