Re: Metalanguage query

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 22:08:46 +0000, Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...>
wrote:

>Forgive me if I delurk briefly ...
>
>I've 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?
--------
Hmmm, nothing comes to mind from existing grammatical nomenclature.  If I
understand what you're describing, I have a category in Ithkuil that has
some vague similarity (in a far more limited way compared to yours) that I
call Designation.  Other potential name suggestions are Specification,
Manifestation, or a fancy-sounding but vague fabrication such as
Prolocution or Collocution.

--John Quijada

"Occasionally, a few birds, a horse perhaps, have saved the ruins of an
amphitheater.  --Jorge Luis Borges (from "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius")