LEXICOGRAPHY AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS . Anna Wierzbicka. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1985. Pp. x + 390. $35.00.

In Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis, Anna Wierzbicka of the Australian National University undertakes to demonstrate that, contrary to the conclusion of some writers, everyday words can be defined. She acknowledges that defining everyday concepts is difficult, but she sets out to show by a number of representative definitions for concepts of different kinds that it can be done. Moreover, it can be done in a way that enables an outsider to the language and its culture to understand what the native speaker has in mind when using a word and finally to understand "the cultural universe encoded in the language's lexicon" (p. 5). As Wierzbicka discusses the analysis and explication of everyday concepts, she engages in an ongoing dialogue among philosophers, linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists. In particular, she aims to connect linguistic semantics and the practice of lexicography. Semanticists have operated in an empirical vacuum, supporting theories with a single example; lexicographers have operated in a theoretical vacuum, describing meanings without being able to tell what they are doing. In chapter 1, "Cups and Mugs: Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis," Wierzbicka deals with the names of simple artefacts and examines some recent attempts to replace traditional lexicographic method with one that is theoretically grounded and represents meaning more adequately. One approach states "denotation conditions," but Wierzbicka rejects this because the meaning of a word is not what is denoted but what is conceived in the mind of the users. Merely to distinguish a thing from others in the same category is not adequate; only a full semantic description of a thing's function and resulting form has the power to predict whether the term will be applied by a native speaker. Thus her definitions are one or two pages long. But they do not contain the kind of information given in encyclopedias, which provide information about things, not about what people mean when they use the word. Wierzbicka's method of analyzing the concepts that underlie everyday words is that of the philosopher rather than the lexicographer. Rather than collecting and analyzing samples of usage, the semanticist engages m introspection. She accepts the use of informants as in psychological experiments, but contends that unskilled informants can give only a superficial report of a concept. What is required is "concerted methodical and patient thinking by both the inquirer and his informants" (p. 42). As a concept is probed in depth, she says, differences over criteria diminish. In chapter 2, "Bikes and Cars: The Semantics of Complex Objects," Wierzbicka says that if someone does not know that pedals and a seat are parts of a bicycle, he does not understand fully what a bicycle is—his concept is incomplete; if he does not know that one wheel goes behind (not beside) the other, he does not know what bicycle means—he lacks the concept. In chapter 3, "Cats and Dogs: The Semantics of Folk Biology," Wierzbicka explores why people ordinarily (when there is no need to distinguish similar objects) refer to things in nature by words of one degree of specificity rather than another. For example, they say that a picture is of a boy and a dog rather than of a human being and an animal or of a prince and a beagle. She contends that the key to psychological salience is not the level of abstraction of the concept, but its richness in functional and people-related properties.