Anna Wierzbicka

Anna Wierzbicka

Born	March 10, 1938 (1938-03-10) Warsaw, Poland
Main interests	semantics, pragmatics, and cross-cultural linguistics
Notable ideas	Natural Semantic Metalanguage

Anna Wierzbicka [ˈanna vʲɛʐˈbʲitska] (born in 1938 in Poland) is a linguist at the Australian National University. She also lectures at Warsaw University and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She studied at Warsaw University. In 1972 she moved from Poland to Australia.

Wierzbicka is famous for her work in semantics, pragmatics, and cross-cultural linguistics. She is especially known for Natural Semantic Metalanguage, particularly the concept of semantic primes. This is a research agenda resembling Leibniz's original "alphabet of human thought", which Wierzbicka credits her colleague, linguist Andrzej Bogusławski, with reviving in the late 1960s.

See also

• Polish Linguists

Books

• Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The Hidden Cultural Legacy of English (2010). ISBN 0195368010
• English: Meaning and culture (2006). ISBN 0195174747
• What Did Jesus Mean? Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in simple and universal human concepts (2001).
• Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and universals (1999).
• Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese (1997).
• Semantics: Primes and Universals (1996).
• Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations (1992).
• Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction (1991).
• The Semantics of Grammar (1988).
• English Speech Act Verbs: A semantic dictionary (1987).
• Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis (1985).
• The Case for Surface Case (1980).
• Lingua Mentalis: The semantics of natural language (1980).
• Semantic Primitives (1972).

External links

• Wierzbicka's page at Australian National University
• Bibliography of Works by Anna Wierzbicka (in English)