[B-Greek] APOLUTRWSIS
Barry
nebarry at verizon.net
Mon Mar 19 20:52:02 EST 2007
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eddie Mishoe" <edmishoe at yahoo.com>
To: "Barry" <nebarry at verizon.net>; "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] APOLUTRWSIS
> Both of you are right, in a sense. It is because of
> these 'restricted semantic ranges" (or as Mitch calls
> it, 'innate' senses) that 'run' and 'scan' have innate
> meaning.
No, afraid not.
> 1. The water scanned down the hill.
>
> 2. I ran the page just to get an idea of what to
> expect.
> What prevents 'scan' from being used in sentence 1?
> Why is sentence 2 nonsense?
What prevents it from being used is that it defies the conventional usage, not
that the particular sound sequences "scan" and "run" have innate meaning. BTW,
sentence two could make perfect sense, particularly if you are the editor of a
newsletter.
> Mitch, yes, words do have innate meaning. That is why
> words are not interchangeable in all contexts. You
> were correct to observe their semantic domains and
> nuances. It is because of their innate sense that
> words are able to interact with a context before
> introduced to the context. What I think others who
> disagree mean is that we don't know what nuance in
> which semantic domain is intended until it is used in
> a particular context. But that is actually unrelated
> to its innate lexical semantics. Because of its
> innateness, we can use words metaphorically,
> allegorically, etc.
Not all words are interchangeable in all contexts because words do not share the
same semantic range, and are used to express different significations. But this
is quite different from saying that a word has an innate or intrinsic meaning.
If this were the case, as someone else mentioned, then they would not change
usage over a period of time. Scan is a good example. A whole semantic domain
was added once scanners became available, so that now "to scan a page" is an
ambiguous phrase -- it needs further qualification. I have no way of checking
this now, but I remember a linguistics prof commenting that in the 19th century
"scan" generally meant "to read carefully with attention to detail." Why did it
reverse it's semantic range, if the meaning is intrinsic? Even if my half
remembered example is wrong, there are plenty of examples in the history of
language.
> Barry said:
>>
>> It means that words don't have innate meaning, but
>> only meaning in context.
>> With words that have a wide semantic range, what we
>> think of as the "innate" or
>> "primary" meaning is usually the most common usage.
>
> This is incorrect as stated. Context does not create
> meaning for a lexeme. Context identifies which nuance
> (within which semantic domain) is to be used. And this
> is also why language has a serious limitations and
> ambiguity, even in speech.
Context does not create meaning? Well, I never said it does. Context
determines which lexeme is suitable according to its semantic range. But that
doesn't prove "innate meaning" -- not at all.
> A truck used as a 'bullet' has no meaning unless
> bullet has innate meaning and we are able to use one
> of its innate senses metaphorically.
So how does this innate/intrinsic meaning get attached? What is the intrinsic
meaning of a la mode? Is the meaning to the English speaker intrinsic, or to
the French speaker (and yes, they mean quite different things, for those not
blessed with some knowledge of French).
Barry
To every complex question, there is one, simple, straightforward --
and almost certainly wrong answer.
--With apologies to Occam
http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list