(6) In the course of time speech communities may recategorize conceptual fields (e.g. due to cultural changes, world view changes, some sort of onomasiological fuzziness), which also lead to lexical recategorizations (either toward a more detailed or to a less detailed taxonomy). Of course, conceptual recategorizations also automatically lead to new prototypicality structures; but in the traditional sense prototype effects were seen only in connection with static concepts and static conceptual fields, where indeed the prototype would stand at the beginning of a lexical change.
This is not a pipe.
(Note that the French word "pipe" can also be slang for "penis," as well as refer to other objects).
This illustrates the continuing importance of Meringer’s (1909) call for cultural studies – ‘‘from the trivial to the sublime’’ (Hüllen 1990: 141) – alongside linguistic studies. It also highlights the value of Fillmore’s (1977) scene-and-frame semantics as an approach to word meaning, in that it takes account of prototypical scenes of usage and not just the physical attributes of an object. Indeed, it is possible to see Fillmore’s scene-based approach to the meaning of Wörter as a development of Meringer’s cultural investigations of Sachen.
Semantic gaps are those notions for which we have no word to express it. Most instances of semantic lexical gaps are not particularly interesting. To use an example from the Portuguese comedian Gato Fedorente: there is no word for the specific type of irritation you feel when you open the fridge to get some milk, and you find that there is no milk. However, there also hardly a reason why such a term should exist, and linguistically, such semantic gaps are hardly of interest. Semantic gaps typically become of interest when comparing the semantic gaps with lexical words by sketching a matrix of existing word where not all cells of the matrix are filled by a word, therefore also called matrix gaps. There is a good amount of work on what type of constraints are responsible for such matrix gaps. A good overview of such constraints is given in Proost (2007). A specific type of matrix gap is one that is expected to exist in a hierarchy, either a taxonomic or a meronymic hierarchy, but does not exist (see for instance Cruse 2004). An example is the word dedo in section 3.2. In the construction of a hierarchy, such gaps often get filled by made-up words, which Fellbaum (1986) calls pseudo-words, which are not necessarily word, but just tags to refer to the semantic gap. For instance, he postulates the tag “CREATION-FROM-RAW-MATERIAL” as a way to link a group of verbs, including weave and mold, that are taxonomically related but have no common hyperonym. Another type of lexical gap of special interest concerns those notions that are lexicalized in one language, but not in another. For instance, there is no direct translation for the English word finger in Spanish (Janssen 2002): there is only the word dedo, which is either a finger or a toe. The English word finger is therefore an untranslatable word in Spanish, and corresponds to a translational gap. Translational gaps will be discussed in more detail in section 3.2. An overview of the different types of lexical gaps distinguished in this article is given in table 2, with an indication of how to refer to the non-existing words that “fill” of those gaps.
Taxonomic gap: A gap in the taxonomic structure. Fillers: pseudo-words
Translational gap: A word in one language for which no lexical unit exists in another that expresses that same meaning. Fillers: untranslatable words
Whorf: was Whorf right?
Grue languages the fruitfly of lexical semantics. Grue: single word for the semes /green/ and /blue/; compare Russian and Hebrew with different words for the sememes /light blue/ and /dark blue/.
For disambiguation, we (in this blog) will use /animal/ and /plant/ as names of kingdom or unique beginner taxa (rank zero), according to the Linnaean classification; the sometimes autohyponymical (but not autohyponymical in CWE [Continental Western European] languages) class or basic level taxa (rank one) will be named in Dermarkian disambiguation /mammal/ (/beast/ or /quadruped/ if also including amphibians and reptiles with limbs); and /grass/, /herb/, /grerb/, /bush/, /vine/ (or /creeper/); respectively.
/Grue/ will be used to delimitate a taxon which encompasses the usual concepts of /green/ and /blue/.
La transferencia categorial, la que da lugar a la polisemia vertical, se basa en una relación entre las categorías conceptuales y no en la relación entre entidades en el mundo (real). A pesar de que la contigüidad entre las categorías relacionadas verticalmente puede concebirse metafóricamente en términos de los contenedores y su contenido o totalidades y sus partes, la “contigüidad” de las categorías conceptuales relacionadas verticalmente no es la misma que la contigüidad de las entidades (en relación con los dominios que establecemos en nuestra conceptualización según la experiencia).
Categorial transfer, which gives rise to vertical polysemy, relies on a relationship between conceptual categories - not between entities in the (real) world. Although the contiguity between vertically related categories can be conceived metaphorically in terms of containers and their contents or wholes and their parts, the “contiguity” of vertically related conceptual categories is not the same as the contiguity of entities (relative to experiential domains in our conceptualisation)
† Compare Nerlich (in press, cited in Nerlich and Clarke, 1999), who also argues that categorial transfer is based on our knowledge of categories and the way they are ordered in the mind.
OE "deor": /beast/ (ie /wild mammal/) and /deer/ (ie /cervid/). Nowadays, only latter meaning retained. This specification, according to experts, may have arisen in the context of the big-game hunt.
"colorado" /reddish/ in most Spanish dialects, including Standard Castilian
France French vs. Wallonian French mealtimes: /evening supper/ is "dîner" in France and "souper" in Wallonia. Also "déjeûner" means /breakfast/ in Wallonia and /lunch/ in France.
- Autotaxonymy – filling a gap in hierarchy by an extended sense of an item immediately above or below the gap
Usage labels of sensu plus a qualifier, such as sensu stricto ("in the strict sense") or sensu lato ("in the broad sense") are sometimes used to clarify what is meant by a text.
As regards the blurred boundaries between polysemy and monosemy, called by various authors underspecification, vagueness, generality or indeterminacy, one way of dealing with it is offered by Cruse (2004, 112), who points out that “there are many degrees of distinctness which fall short of full sensehood, but which are nonetheless to be distinguished from contextual modulation”. According to him these degrees fall under “facets” (such as "book" including the [TEXT] facet and the [TOME] facet; facets can be understood as sememes), “perspectives” (his adaptation of Pustejovky’s "qualia" roles, involving constitutive, formal, telic, and agentive qualities), microsenses of subsenses ("knife" referring alternately to pocket knife, penknife, or table knife), and finally domain specific local senses ("mouth" of a person/river/cave).
Thus Brugman and Lakoff (1987, 1988) argue that polysemy is not a surface phenomenon emerging from monosemy but reflects mental lexical organization. This has been countered by some recent cognitive linguistic approaches (e.g. Croft and Cruse, 2004) which maintain that the semantic input of words is construed in context. Words are envisaged not to have prespecified meanings as presumed by Lakoff, but only a “meaning potential” or general “purport” activated by the context on the basis of the range of potential knowledge associated with the words and the previous use of the word. This would imply that in contrast to the Brugman‑Lakoff account the underlying semantic structures are not stable and pre‑determined (just as Geeraerts concludes) and that the semantic input of words is a function of a contextualized interpretation specific to the actual use. As a consequence the word’s “sense‑boundary”, to use Croft and Cruse’s (2004) term, is construed in context.
Also, cognitive linguistics, in keeping with its generalisation commitment, goes beyond the traditional understanding of polysemy as being restricted only to multiple distinct yet related meanings of a single lexical unit, and views polysemy as a fundamental feature of human language. It claims that different areas of language exhibit polysemy; that polysemy reveals important features in common between lexical and grammatical organisation of language. For instance, Goldberg (e.g., 1995) argues that the ditransitive construction exhibits polysemy in the same way as words. In the area of cognitive lexical semantics there is a vast number of detailed studies of lexical items (especially on the preposition over) which, it is claimed, show that polysemy patterns indicate the systematic differences and patterns whereby lexical items are organized and stored in the mind.
Given that the question of whether polysemy involves more or less stable units of semantic structure or whether a word exhibits only a meaning potential resulting in contextual construals is still unresolved, and given the corpus‑based evidence that one and the same word displays different collocational and colligational sets (presum‑ ably corresponding to a distinct and relatively stable range of senses), it is arguably legitimate to ask what the relations between these distinguishable senses of the word are like.
More recently, Cruse (2004, 108–111) distinguishes several varieties of polysemy or relations that can hold between polysemes. First of all he speaks of linear polysemy, i.e. relations of specialization (or generalization) between polysemic senses which include autohyponymy/autohyperonymy (or autosuperordination) and a parallel part‑whole relations, automeronymy/autoholonymy.
Another way of disentangling the question of whether a particular reading is part of the underlying semantic structure of the word or the result of contextual specification, is by searching for criteria or tests for polysemy that would indicate either a general, inclusive sense compatible with different kinds of denotation or the presence of distinct senses. Basically, it boils down to the question (Geeraerts, 2006) “What does it mean for a reading of a word to be a different meaning?” Geeraerts examines three basic types of criteria (tests) for separating polysemy and vagueness, linguistic, logical, and definitional, and comes to the conclusions that they may be in conflict: “each of them taken separately need not lead to a stable distinction between polysemy and vagueness”, and that ultimately the “distinction between vagueness and polysemy is indeed unstable”. As a result he believes that “lexical meanings are not to be thought of as prepackaged chunks of information, but as moving searchlights that may variously highlight subdomains of the range of application of the lexical item in question” (Geeraerts, 2006, 141). These conclusions lead him to raise methodological issues and ask such questions as whether meanings are found or made, etc.
Thus Brugman and Lakoff (1987, 1988) argue that polysemy is not a surface phenomenon emerging from monosemy but reflects mental lexical organization. This has been countered by some recent cognitive linguistic approaches (e.g. Croft and Cruse, 2004) which maintain that the semantic input of words is construed in context. Words are envisaged not to have prespecified meanings as presumed by Lakoff, but only a “meaning potential” or general “purport” activated by the context on the basis of the range of potential knowledge associated with the words and the previous use of the word. This would imply that in contrast to the Brugman‑Lakoff account the underlying semantic structures are not stable and pre‑determined (just as Geeraerts concludes) and that the semantic input of words is a function of a contextualized interpretation specific to the actual use. As a consequence the word’s “sense‑boundary”, to use Croft and Cruse’s (2004) term, is construed in context.
Also, cognitive linguistics, in keeping with its generalisation commitment, goes beyond the traditional understanding of polysemy as being restricted only to multiple distinct yet related meanings of a single lexical unit, and views polysemy as a fundamental feature of human language. It claims that different areas of language exhibit polysemy; that polysemy reveals important features in common between lexical and grammatical organisation of language. For instance, Goldberg (e.g., 1995) argues that the ditransitive construction exhibits polysemy in the same way as words. In the area of cognitive lexical semantics there is a vast number of detailed studies of lexical items (especially on the preposition over) which, it is claimed, show that polysemy patterns indicate the systematic differences and patterns whereby lexical items are organized and stored in the mind.
Given that the question of whether polysemy involves more or less stable units of semantic structure or whether a word exhibits only a meaning potential resulting in contextual construals is still unresolved, and given the corpus‑based evidence that one and the same word displays different collocational and colligational sets (presum‑ ably corresponding to a distinct and relatively stable range of senses), it is arguably legitimate to ask what the relations between these distinguishable senses of the word are like.
More recently, Cruse (2004, 108–111) distinguishes several varieties of polysemy or relations that can hold between polysemes. First of all he speaks of linear polysemy, i.e. relations of specialization (or generalization) between polysemic senses which include autohyponymy/autohyperonymy (or autosuperordination) and a parallel part‑whole relations, automeronymy/autoholonymy.
Another way of disentangling the question of whether a particular reading is part of the underlying semantic structure of the word or the result of contextual specification, is by searching for criteria or tests for polysemy that would indicate either a general, inclusive sense compatible with different kinds of denotation or the presence of distinct senses. Basically, it boils down to the question (Geeraerts, 2006) “What does it mean for a reading of a word to be a different meaning?” Geeraerts examines three basic types of criteria (tests) for separating polysemy and vagueness, linguistic, logical, and definitional, and comes to the conclusions that they may be in conflict: “each of them taken separately need not lead to a stable distinction between polysemy and vagueness”, and that ultimately the “distinction between vagueness and polysemy is indeed unstable”. As a result he believes that “lexical meanings are not to be thought of as prepackaged chunks of information, but as moving searchlights that may variously highlight subdomains of the range of application of the lexical item in question” (Geeraerts, 2006, 141). These conclusions lead him to raise methodological issues and ask such questions as whether meanings are found or made, etc.
However, Lipka (1990, 134–5) implicitly divides semantic relations into two categories, (a) sense relations (to use a term introduced by Lyons, 1968, 428), i.e. semantic relations between the senses of different lexemes (we shall call them word‑external relations), and (b) semantic relations within a single lexical item, i.e. lexeme, which can be called word‑internal relations. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, the (linear) polysemic variations described by both Hansen et al. (1982) and Cruse (2004) are based on the same semantic relations, i.e. the sense relations that hold between the senses of different lexemes.
"door" for /leaf panel/
"gohan" in Japanese: either /rice/ or /meal/
"Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" as a correct sentence in English (ie. proper noun /a certain community or locality/; verb /to bully, to harass/; common noun /a ruminant bovid/). In translation, this sentence turns out like this: In Spanish: "Los búfalos de Búfalo acosan a otros búfalos de Búfalo". In Swedish, the translation is even far more different: "Bufflar frân Buffalo mobbar andra bufflar frân Buffalo".
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
is also a correct sentence in English. Though it can be bettered with punctuation as:
James, while John had had "had," had had "had had;" "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
After adding punctuation, this statement can be understood clearly as:Student John had had "had" in a sentence.
Fellow student James had had "had had" in the same sentence.
The teacher was more positively interested in James's use of "had had."
THE OLD MAN THE BOAT
The snag is that "man" is the verb, there is a verb "to man," ergo:
THE OLD (s.) MAN (v) THE BOAT (o).
The sentence means that the crew on the boat consists of old people. In Spanish, it would be LOS ANCIANOS TRIPULAN EL BARCO.
IS FRANKENSTEIN THE MONSTER? YES AND NO. THE CREATOR IS BARON VICTOR VON FRANKENSTEIN, THE MONSTER IS NAMELESS BUT HAS BEEN NAMED IN CANONICAL MEDIA AFTER HIS CREATOR.
IS THE SUPERHERO CALLED SHAZAM? YES. ANYWAY, A DC SUPERHERO CALLED CAPTAIN MARVEL WAS SOMETHING MEANT TO CAUSE CONTROVERSY AND THE LAWSUIT THAT NOW MAKES THE NAME SHAZAM CANONICAL.
IS SHYLOCK THE MERCHANT OF VENICE? NO. THE MERCHANT IS ANTONIO; SHYLOCK IS A LOANSHARK.
IS ANY CHARACTER IN THE SERIES CALLED COWBOY BEEBOP? NO. COWBOY IS THEIR PROFESSION, AND BEEBOP IS THE NAME OF THE SPACESHIP. ARE BUGS ANIMALS? YES THEY ARE. DO WE HAVE EIGHT OR TEN FINGERS IN TOTAL? TEN FINGERS. ARE REDWOODS PLANTS? YES THEY ARE. WHO BETRAYED JESUS? JUDAS ISCARIOT (NOT JUDAS THADDEUS). IS THE SUN A STAR? IT IS, THOUGH IT'S THE ONLY ONE SEEN IN THE DAYTIME. ARE ALL OF THESE JUDGEMENTS MADE BY SANDRA DERMARK, AND THUS CORRESPONDING TO HER SPANISH/SWEDISH WORLDVIEW? THEY ARE. DO CONTINENTAL WESTERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES CHUNK UP THE WORLD IN A WAY DIFFERENT THAN ENGLISH? OF COURSE THEY DO.
HEBREW AND RUSSIAN HAVE GOT DIFFERENT BASIC TERMS FOR LIGHT BLUE AND DEEP BLUE.
THAT IS NOT THE CASE IN WESTERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES.
GRUE LANGUAGES HAVE GOT THE SAME BASIC TERM FOR GREEN AND BLUE.
LOOK BELOW FOR THE SLIDING SCALE OF GRUENESS:
......
......
green/blue, verde/azul, verd/blau, grün/blau, vert/bleu, grönt/blâtt, zöld/kék, vihreä/sininen...
......
......
siniy vs goluboy, tekhelet vs kakhol
(the kh in Hebrew sounds for a guttural sound, like G in Spanish general or SJ in Swedish sjukdom).
Lindsey and Brown (2002) noticed that the distribution of languages around the world with a grue category is not patterned randomly: there are many more languages with a grue category near the equator. Speakers living nearer to the equator are exposed to higher levels of sunlight with lots of UVB which, according to Lindsey & Brown, leads to changes to the lens of the eye. So, according to their account, (at least some) people speaking a grue language simply do not see ‘blue’ in the same way as speakers of a language that differentiate ‘blue’ and ‘green’. If enough people within a community suffer from “lens brunescence”, then this might bias speakers of the whole community to not differentiate blue and green in words since the distinction would not be successfully communicated to all. The Lindsey and Brown hypothesis also predicts that speakers of grue languages do not choose focal blue or green as best examples, but according to their account this would be because speakers have warped perceptual fields. Other evidence is also consistent with the idea that visual experience can warp perceptual space. A recent study testing Norwegians born above the Arctic Circle found that individuals were less sensitive to the yellow-green-blue spectrum and more sensitive to variation in the purple range than those born below the Arctic, which Laeng and colleagues (2007) ascribe to differences in light exposure. Although this study does not directly assess colour names, considered together with Lindsey and Brown’s analyses, it is suggestive of the experiential shaping of colour categories; a topic that is still relatively under-explored.
Lindsey and Brown (2002) noticed that the distribution of languages around the world with a grue category is not patterned randomly: there are many more languages with a grue category near the equator. Speakers living nearer to the equator are exposed to higher levels of sunlight with lots of UVB which, according to Lindsey & Brown, leads to changes to the lens of the eye. So, according to their account, (at least some) people speaking a grue language simply do not see ‘blue’ in the same way as speakers of a language that differentiate ‘blue’ and ‘green’. If enough people within a community suffer from “lens brunescence”, then this might bias speakers of the whole community to not differentiate blue and green in words since the distinction would not be successfully communicated to all. The Lindsey and Brown hypothesis also predicts that speakers of grue languages do not choose focal blue or green as best examples, but according to their account this would be because speakers have warped perceptual fields. Other evidence is also consistent with the idea that visual experience can warp perceptual space. A recent study testing Norwegians born above the Arctic Circle found that individuals were less sensitive to the yellow-green-blue spectrum and more sensitive to variation in the purple range than those born below the Arctic, which Laeng and colleagues (2007) ascribe to differences in light exposure. Although this study does not directly assess colour names, considered together with Lindsey and Brown’s analyses, it is suggestive of the experiential shaping of colour categories; a topic that is still relatively under-explored.
WHAT WOULD WHORF SAY?
The phenomenon when a word in a language has two (or more) equivalents in another language is known as "semantic split". Or take an example from Turkish: both "scenery” and “view” are rendered into Turkish as “manzara”. Semantic partitioning of the world may also be different in different language due to cultural or historical reasons. For example, many languages do not distinguish between “to blame” and “to accuse” or “to be accused” and “to be guilty”.
Word meanings are a messy area. The lack of direct correspondence between L1 words and L2 words is something beginner learners often find difficult to come to terms with. But we, language teachers, should disabuse them of the notion that an English word = (is equal to) an L1 word relatively early on. As much as L1 provides initial support when clarifying meaning of a new word, it is also important to get across to learners how the English word may behave differently from its L1 equivalent in relation to the meaning it denotes and other words it is associated with, i.e. co-text.
THIS IS A TEACHER SPEAKING. MY OWN IDIOLECT IS FROZEN AND MAINTAINS THE NOTION THAT AN ENGLISH WORD = (IS EQUAL TO) AN L1 WORD.
THIS IS A TEACHER SPEAKING. MY OWN IDIOLECT IS FROZEN AND MAINTAINS THE NOTION THAT AN ENGLISH WORD = (IS EQUAL TO) AN L1 WORD.
(same as "KNEKT", se. /SOLDIER/JACK/).
THE MEAT CASE:
"MEAT" OE /HUMAN SOLID FOOD/
"FLESH" OE /ANY MUSCULAR TISSUE, HUMAN OR ANIMAL, EDIBLE OR NOT/
"FOOD" OE /FODDER; ANIMAL SOLID FOOD/
changed into:
"MEAT" PRESENTLY /EDIBLE ANIMAL MUSCULAR TISSUE/
"FOOD" PRESENTLY /HUMAN SOLID FOOD/
"FODDER" PRESENTLY /ANIMAL SOLID FOOD/
"FLESH" PRESENTLY /MUSCULAR TISSUE, ESPECIALLY HUMAN AND NON-EDIBLE/
Certain Australian aboriginal languages have no words for /left/ or /right/, but always use cardinal directions; these Aboriginals orient themselves far better than Europeans.
We're talking about the Guugu Yimithirr language of Queensland (from which Westerners got the word "kangaroo") as the one without /left/ or /right/, that employs cardinal directions instead. Imagine... "there is a bug on your northern arm."
Cleaning fluids can be dangerous/
Flying planes can be dangerous
(Are the fluids/planes the thing that is dangerous?)
Some of these problems are to do with lexical differences between languages — differences in the ways in which languages seem to classify the world, what concepts they choose to express by single words, and which they choose not to lexicalize. We will look at some of these directly. Other problems arise because different languages use different structures for the same purpose, and the same structure for different purposes. In either case, the result is that we have to complicate the translation process. In this section we will look at some representative examples.
However, most other categories do not carve the world at its perceptual joints, and different languages employ categories that partition concepts differently.
A particularly obvious example of this involves problems arising from what are sometimes called lexical holes — that is, cases where one language has to use a phrase to express what another language expresses in a single word. Examples of this include the ‘hole’ that exists in English with respect to French ignorer (‘to not know’, ‘to be ignorant of’), and se suicider (‘to suicide’, i.e. ‘to commit suicide’, ‘to kill oneself’). The problems raised by such lexical holes have a certain similarity to those raised by idioms: in both cases, one has phrases translating as single words. We will therefore postpone discussion of these until Section 6.4.
One kind of structural mismatch occurs where two languages use the same construction for different purposes, or use different constructions for what appears to be the same purpose.
Cross-linguistic differences in how languages carve up the world by name are striking. For instance, languages differ markedly in what distinctions of contact, support, and containment their spatial terms discriminate (Bowerman, 1996) and what dimensions of inner experience their emotion terms capture (Wierzbicka, 1992). Nevertheless, patterns of naming are not completely unconstrained. Shared elements of naming patterns have been found in domains including colour (Kay, Berlin, Maffi, & Merrifield, 1997), body parts (Majid, Enfield, & van Staden, 2006), and cutting and breaking actions (Majid, Bowerman, van Staden, & Boster, 2007), and these commonalities occur to a greater extent than would be expected by chance (Kay & Regier, 2003). The search for shared tendencies across languages holds the promise not only of illuminating how word meanings are constructed, but also of revealing something fundamental about the nature of human experience across cultures and languages. What drives humans around the world to converge in certain ways in their naming while diverging dramatically in others? Documentation of synchronic variation or shared tendencies does not by itself reveal origins of these patterns; one can only speculate on the basis of the patterns observed. The goal of the current work was to advance understanding of the origins of cross-linguistic similarities in naming patterns. At the broadest level, two main sources of constraint surely influence the construction of naming patterns: the input the world presents to the human observer and the human observer who interprets that input. Any shared naming tendency will inevitably be a reflection of both. The world provides input of some sort, and the perceptual and cognitive systems that process the sensory input from the world filter and interpret that input. The few studies aimed at investigating the origins of shared naming tendencies have typically focused on the contributions of the observer. For instance, there has been interest in whether the visual system yields a segmentation of the continuous light-wave input that is reflected in cross-linguistic commonalities in colour naming patterns (Kay & McDaniel, 1978) or whether general principles of categorization create such segmentation (Regier, Kay, & Khetarpal, 2007). There has also been interest in how attention operating across space may constrain the application of spatial terms (Regier & Carlson, 2001).
Think of a language as being a two person exchange with two sets of shaped blocks and corresponding holes in a board where speaking words is putting some of your shapes into holes on their board. When you and another person speak the same language, you've got the same shapes and the same holes so you can easily exchange "information"-- all of your blocks have a perfectly corresponding hole on their board, and vice-versa. Two people with different languages have different brands, with some overlapping shapes (though maybe of varying sizes) and some shapes without a perfect analog. Can you fit a square peg into a round hole? Sometimes, sure, but you're not quite using that hole as intended-- though if the goal is to fill some set of holes on their board, it'll do.
Larry Horn has given this kind of rooster-chicken situation the name of Q-based narrowing. It happens when word B (in this case rooster) denotes a specific kind of what word A denotes (in this case chicken). Eventually, word A comes to be used as if it refers to everything word A denotes except for the things that word B denotes.
I think it’s because this time, there is another word, also more specific than chicken, that means “all chickens except for roosters”: hens! Why couldn’t the author just say Bob lived with a lot of hens, and have Henrietta the cat tell him he wasn’t a hen?
Oh, wait a minute. Uh, I guess hen doesn’t cover chicks…
Oh... and, like, Spanish has "pez" for /fish as animal/ and "pescado" for /fish as food./ And the Scandinavian languages lack an exact word for the noun "mind" (translating the corresponding word, depending on the context, as "förstând" --reason--, "minne" --memory--, "tanke" --thought--, "själ" --soul--, "hjärna" --brain--, "sinne" --sense--, or "psyke"): I mean, they lack an exact word for /mind/ yet can tell between several different kinds of /snow/ (nysnö --new snow--, kornsnö --granulated snow--, snömos --creamy dirty slush formed on the streets--, kramsnö --malleable snow, ideal for building snowmen, igloos, et al.--, and so on)... A mind is a terrible thing to translate into Swedish, for instance. Seeing these cases through a Whorfian lens...
Thomas Pynchon -- was his case like mine?Oh... and, like, Spanish has "pez" for /fish as animal/ and "pescado" for /fish as food./ And the Scandinavian languages lack an exact word for the noun "mind" (translating the corresponding word, depending on the context, as "förstând" --reason--, "minne" --memory--, "tanke" --thought--, "själ" --soul--, "hjärna" --brain--, "sinne" --sense--, or "psyke"): I mean, they lack an exact word for /mind/ yet can tell between several different kinds of /snow/ (nysnö --new snow--, kornsnö --granulated snow--, snömos --creamy dirty slush formed on the streets--, kramsnö --malleable snow, ideal for building snowmen, igloos, et al.--, and so on)... A mind is a terrible thing to translate into Swedish, for instance. Seeing these cases through a Whorfian lens...
onomatomania; an abnormal impulse to dwell upon certain words and their supposed significance. Obsession with a particular word which intrudes into consciousness. A morbid preoccupation with words, a preoccupation with words. Onomatomania counts as intrusive thoughts...
onomatophobia; an abnormal/irrational dread of certain words (do word senses count?)
The blood stains that won't go away no matter how much one washes... a metaphor from Macbeth which I find most appropriate... I take drugs, yet still reading or hearing certain word senses makes it resurface... a translator with onomatomania and onomatophobia; doesn't that sound ironic?
And most often I am upset with word A used in an exclusive sense/at the subordinate level because it doesn't fit my Continental European lumper/holistic worldview... (well, Continental Western European; Slavic languages seem to carve up the world just like English does). It feels like a hole in the pattern, like a tear right in the middle of the pattern. And my reaction is... well, it's becoming emotionless and not feeling anything but fear, righteous anger, and powerlessness upon realizing that I cannot change people's way of using certain word senses in certain languages.
My name is Sandra and I'm an onomatophobe, as well as an onomatomaniac.
So I have a ritual of taking drugs whenever I come across a restricted/excluding word sense in English that does not exist in Continental Western European languages. Also brushing my teeth until it hurts, flusing my mouth with benzydamine/Tantum Verde, not stepping into cracks, not drinking after eating, avoiding things I am fond of, eating fatty foods... it's all of a nearly religious significance.
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