Re: THEORY: Browsing at Borders Public Library

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Ed Heil wrote:
>
> >
> > Well, the thing with her "definition language" is that, darn it, it's
> > *ENGLISH*..  It's a very restricted English, and that makes it useful
> > for its intended purposes, but it *IS ENGLISH.*  And she is *doing*
> > all the exotic things that Langacker & Lakoff & Fauconnier & co like
> > to talk about with her definitions, and it is that which enables her
> > to write such wonderfully good definitions, but she doesn't seem to
> > realize it. :)
>
> I think you're supposed the understand the keywords in a very
> restricted sense - after all the C++ keyword 'class' has very
> little to do with English class distinctions, too. I think that
> if you'd use arbitrary symbols for her key concepts, or Chinese
> characters, it would work just as well (for people with the
> necessary dedication to memorize the symbols).
It's not clear to me that that's the case.  I mean, I'm not trying to
say that her definitions are somehow tainted by the cultural
assumptions of the English language.  I think she's done a convincing
job of filtering that out.  However, they are still *texts in natural
language*...  A very restricted, neutral subset of natural language.
But natural language nonetheless.

Unless, in _Semantic Primes and Universals_ (which I have only
browsed a bit) she set up a system which connects and gives meaning to
these in some other way than their being understood as natural
language sentences, I will not be convinced that she has found out
what Meaning is Really Made Of -- as she seems to think she has.

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Ed doesn't know everything, but he hasn't figured that out yet.
Please break it to him gently.              edheil@postmark.net
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