Re: THEORY: Underspecification

And Rosta scripsit:
>
> Ed Heil
>
> > That's just one of my favorite cogsci/linguistics topics.  The way
> > that language is not so much an encoding of meaning as a device
> > intended to elicit meaning in a suitably prepared brain.  It doesn't
> > "contain" meaning any more than a rider's spurs "contain" a horse's
> > speed.
>
> While accepting the first three paragraphs and the spuriousness of the
> container metaphor, I would content the implication that a language is
> not an encoding of meaning. I think that's exactly what it is: a set
> of sentences, where a sentence is pairing of a meaning (an underspecified
> proposition) and an underspecified sound (or gesture). Modulo a
> certain amount of polysemy in the word "language", language is a
> code, not metaphorically but literally.
I think that Ed is using "meaning" in its pragmatic sense (the meaning
of a message is just its effect on the listener) whereas And is using
it in some other sense, which perhaps is more common, but which I cannot
clearly understand.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin