This study examines whether the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) are attested in Denesųłiné (Athabaskan, Northern Canada). The NSM claims that the semantic primes are basic and universal meanings expressible as lexical units or morphemes in all languages. This study finds, however, that certain claimed semantic primes are problematic to posit in Dene, including be (somewhere), bad, moment, feel, kind, and part . Dene seems not to express partonymy and typonymy via abstract lexical items. This article suggests improvements in the NSM in light of the Dene data and reflects on how semantic decomposition approaches like NSM can improve the documentation and analysis of this language.

中文翻译：

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Denesųłiné 中的语义素数：寻找一些词汇“普遍性”

这项研究检验了自然语义元语言 (NSM) 的语义素数是否在 Denesųłiné（加拿大北部阿萨巴斯坎）中得到证实。NSM 声称语义素数是在所有语言中都可以表达为词汇单位或语素的基本和普遍意义。然而，这项研究发现，某些声称的语义素数在 Dene 中存在问题，包括 be (somewhere)、bad、moment、feel、kind 和 part。Dene 似乎不会通过抽象的词项来表达partonymy 和tyonymy。本文根据 Dene 数据建议对 NSM 进行改进，并反思像 NSM 这样的语义分解方法如何改进这种语言的文档和分析。