[aethr]

Something being "a primitive" is entirely based on implementation details. Not implementation details of how the language interpreters/compilers are constructed, but how you as a programmer implement things in the language in question.

A associative array might be considered a language primitive in PHP, but not in C. It is contextually dependent on the language being discussed.

Without speaking about a specific language, you cannot define something as a primitive or not in the strictly programming sense. Once you start talking about comparing two types of constructs in an abstract sense, the word primitive can only be interpreted using the English common usage, and then you are talking about an entirely different concept.