Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Metalanguage query

From:Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...>
Date:Sunday, January 25, 2004, 22:08
Forgive me if I delurk briefly ...

I've been working on the basic philosophy of my language Telona (anyone
remember it? :) ) and
have come across a concept for which I can't think of an elegant term.
Maybe someone can help?

The first idea is that a word or phrase within an utterance refers to a
specific entity at a specific
time, and I'm using the word 'referent' to denote the
entity-at-a-specific-time which is being
referred to.  But the same word or phrase in another context could be
associated with a different
referent - the word 'house' can mean my house now, your house now, your
house a year ago,
etc.  The concept I need to verbalise is, for any given word or phrase, *the
set of all its possible
referents*.

I'm thinking maybe something based on 'describe', but ... 'descriptum'?
'Describend'?
'Descript' (ugh)?  Or is there something obvious I'm missing?

cheers in advance,
Jonathan.

==
emailing from work, so no .sig :)

_________________________________________________________________
Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you.
http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess

Reply

Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>