What is it about?
This paper investigates the concepts of `needing' and `wanting' in natural languages and shows that in many languages they are deeply rooted in cognition. The main conclusion is that the concept of `needing' is more basic, and the concept of `wanting' involves evaluating and prioritising needs that compete with one another.
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Why is it important?
This work brings together recent insights from cognitive sciences, comparative psychology and philosophy to close the gap in understanding the interaction of needs and intentions and how these are encoded in natural languages. Moreover it provides arguments to consider any speech act as driven by needs and intentions.
Perspectives
Personally, I struggled to find work that relates the concepts of `needing' and `wanting' and how they are encoded in natural languages offered semantic accounts of the concepts of `needing' and `wanting' that were defined in a non-circular way.
Jakob Maché
Universidade de Lisboa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: From needing to wanting, Evolutionary Linguistic Theory, April 2026, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/elt.00068.mac.
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