Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was Re: Evanescence of information (was Re: Going NOMAIL: Honeymoon))

Lars Finsen scripsit:
 > Den 4. jul. 2008 kl. 03.12 skrev Herman Miller:
 >>
 >> I was browsing around at random on Wikipedia
 >> today and ran across a page on the controversy
 >> over the classification of babblers
 >> (Timaliidae), which reminded me of the problems
 >> I ran into when making the taxonomy for
 >> Eklektu. At the time, I thought a
 >> classification would be useful in defining the
 >> meanings of words and the boundaries between
 >> one and the other, by defining a particular
 >> example as representative of the group, and
 >> using the classification to set the boundaries.
 >> But then it turns out that the groups in the
 >> classification are not as well delineated as
 >> you assumed.
 >
 > I also made use of some classification in the
 > early stages of developing Urianian. In fact, I
 > bought my English Thesaurus just for that
 > purpose (no Norwegian thesaurus existed then).
 > Thesauruses provide rather detailed
 > classifications of words. However I found this
 > one messy, so I made my own. Can't refer to it
 > in detail now, as I'm not at home. But will
 > later, if it's of any interest to the list.

IME even a buggy and mostly arbitrary
classification like Roget's can be useful in
vocabulary building if only because it is readily
available to everyone. BTW I think Roget put more
thought than e.g. dalgarno or Wilkins into his
classification. To have a rather limited and broad
scheme was one Good Thing. Having a limited and
well-defined purpose was another. Not to claim
that he got *the* final and perfect classification
of everything was a third.

WRT classifications getting outdated with advances
in knowledge that certainly shows itself in the
Swedish library classification system: 25 top
nodes(*) labeled with the letters of the alphabet
(minus W) isn't very flexible. I for one think
that information technology should nowadays merit
its own to node, but instead it must be buried
somewhere under Technology, inspite of having
ramifications into several other top nodes.

(* Actually you could say that there are a number
of implicit super top nodes without labels, since
related subjects got adjacent letters, e.g. C
Religion, D Philosophy (to which psychology was
added in an afterthought) E Education, F Language
and linguistics, G Literary criticism, H Fiction.)

/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)