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Re: Concept_sitting

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 20:23
Veoler wrote:
> love (v) = 'like' + 'very (much)' > > would be my suggestion. >
That doesn't work for me at all. Sure, it makes it a darn sight easier to love my neighbor if I happen to like him/her; but I will still try to love him/her even if I don't particularly like him/her. To me 'love' and 'like' are quite distinct concepts. ================================ David J. Peterson wrote: > The task you're doing can be done to any concept pretty much > however you see fit. If "rain" is "sky + water", perhaps "sky" is > "up + air". True - the splitting could in fact go on ad_infinitum. We could certainly split 'air' and, I guess, if one wanted to, it wouldn't be too difficult to split 'up'. 'water', of course, can be readily split. >All of this, however, will depend upon the frame of > mind one is examining the lexicon from (as well as the lexicon > itself). There is no "split" that will be true for all people or all > languages. Exactly - not even for all speakers of the same language. > What's this for? Why does "love" need to be split up? Here are > some possible splits for love: > > desire + empathy > desire + care > eros + jealousy > fear + compassion > > I can come up with an argument for pretty much anything. (Not > that I agree with any of them.) > Quite so - nor do I agree with any of them. By splitting 'love' in any way you want one is, in fact, restricting its meaning in a fairly arbitrary and certainly personal way. Nor is one significantly reducing ambiguity as the two elements into which 'love' is split still have wide ranges of meaning. Personally, I don't see how such splitting can ever be culturally neutral. Also I wager that any such splitting will produce some results at least that will seem very odd to people into, say, two or three generations time. The search for the so-called 'semantic primes' is not trivial. That is not to say a person should not try it - but they must realize (a) it is not a trivial exercise and (b) the result will almost certainly not be culturally neutral. Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== CENEDL HEB IAITH, CENEDL HEB GALON. (A nation without a language is a nation without a heart) [Welsh proverb]

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Amanda Babcock Furrow <langs@...>