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I am an Italian PhD student in linguistics and I am interested in the analysis of the expression of Manner. I went throught the works of Lakoff, Talmy and Wierzbicka recently and their event semantics raised some questions in me which I am not sure to be able to answer. So, I would ask to the semanticists on this forum: in your opinion, what is the difference between Talmy's semantic components Move, Figure, Ground, Path and Wierzbicka's semantic primes MOVE, I/YOU/THIS, WHERE/HERE?

Is it just a terminological difference? Both authors seem to assert that these semantic "elements" are universally shared and not further decomposable. Am I wrong? Could you make some clarification? Many thanks.

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Compared to Wierzbicka, Talmy's notions are more general and more variable due to being contingent on cognitive perception. For example, in the sentence, "The bike is near the house", "bike" would likely be the Figure and "house" would likely be the Ground. That's because you're likely to perceive the bike's position in relation to the house, rather than vice versa. In contrast, Wierzbicka's semantic primes cover concepts that are universal across languages. The English concept of "move" as in "change position" is found in all languages. These concepts are quite specific, and they aren't going to vary much, if at all, in terms of perception.

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