Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was ...)

On 2008-07-04 Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
 > Also, a major disadvantage is that taxonomic
 > vocabularies tend to have awfully low
 > redundancy, with words denoting closely related
 > concepts being uncomfortably similar to each
 > other. If 'apple' is _mala_ and 'pear' is
 > _male_, a misspelling of the last vowel is hard
 > to spot because each of the words fits into most
 > contexts where the other could also occur.

IMHO there is a distinction to be made between
using a taxonomy to decide which meanings to
provide words for and using a taxonomic morphology
of the Wilkinsian kind. The latter clearly leads
to the problem you describe, especially if the sub-
distinguishing morphemes are only one phoneme
long, which opens a whole other can of worms, viz.
whether short morphemes are a virtue in themselves
and how much redundancy is desirable (once one has
decided that redundancy is desirable in the first
place, which the likes of Wilkins seem not to have
understood in the first place). One strategy which
might help would be to use morphemes which are
meaningful in themselves for the sub-distinctions,
a bit like is done in Chinese compounds (e.g. "pomacea-
sweet" vs. "pomacea-sour" for 'pear' vs. 'apple'.
That there are apples which are very sweet is
beyond the point; the typical apple is sourer than
the typical pear).

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)