Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Doug Kasten <doug.kasten AT juno.com>]

Bryan et al,

Though I'm not aligned with  Rolf on the whole 'firstborn' thread, I
myself am convinced of the legitimacy of  his quote below.  I have a
friend working heavily in semantics with the notion of 'fuzzy sets'.  The
data from semantics (I'm not familiar with that of psycholinguistics) is
quite stunning.   If anyone wants his demonstration of this, write me
off-list.  If I get his permission, I'll share the method.  This is from
the angle of semantics as he goes about debunking componential analysis,
which posits clearn boundaries for semantic domains, and not from the
perspective of psycholinguistics per se.  But considering what I've seen
from semantics, I'm hardly surprised at the evidence from another
discipline.

re: 'fly'   Homonyms are all over the place and no one should be
constrained to force the thing with which I zip my pants up and the
little animal that flies around in the air into the same word.  

I'd suggest that words which share etymological derivation can even
become homonyms due to the fact that the derivation is lost.  I'll be
thinking about specific examples but don't have one now.

Peace,
Doug
On Sun, 21 Mar 1999 22:19:05 -0500 B Rocine <596547 AT ican.net> writes:
>At 12:55 AM 3/22/99 +0200, Rolf Furuli wrote:
>>
>>On the basis of the results of psykholinguistics, it can be shown 
>that
>>meaning is connected with concepts in the minds of living people and 
>not
>>with words uttered or written. Each written word is a semantic signal 
>of a
>>particular concept in the minds of people speaking the same language 
>and
>>having the same presupposition pool. Such concepts have a core 
>meaning but
>>they become more fuzzy as their edges are approached. 
>
>I don't buy it! ...unless you admit that *fly* meaning insect is a 
>different
>word than *fly* meaning zipper is a different word than *fly* meaning
>tarpoline, etc.  I.e., all these *fly*s just happen to be homonyms, 
>maybe
>with a shared derivation and maybe not.  And if they are indeed 
>several
>words which happen to be homonymous, what help is your idea that a 
>word has
>a single core meaning?  What's the difference between your idea and 
>the idea
>that one word has several meanings?  
>
>Shalom,
>Bryan
>
>
>B. M. Rocine
>Pastor
>Living Word Church
>6101 Court St. Rd.
>Syracuse, NY 13206
>
>(w) 315-437-6744
>(h) 315-479-8267
>
>
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