Re: CHAT: RPGs (was Re: Wargs)

Sally Caves wrote:

> Brook Conner wrote:
>
> > polygamous  - having multiple spouses (spice :-), no gender specified
> >
> > polyandrous - having multiple husbands (i.e., male "spice")
> >
> > polygynous  - having multiple wives (i.e., female "spice")
> >
> > polyamorous - any or all of the above, plus other stuff too.
>
> polydactyl  -  having multiple fingers.   But don't we have multiple
> fingers
> anyway?  Why isn't the term hyperdactyl?  (to mean having more than your
> FAIR SHARE of fingers.)  I've always wondered about this.
My guess is that "poly" like "many" has at least two meanings:

1.  "More than some norm"  -- in this sense, it would be the
    opposite of "few."
2.  "More than one" -- a specialized version of the above, in which
    we are merely comparing singularity and plurality, so that the
    "norm" is specified as "one."

When you say that five fingers is "many" you assume definition two.
But... if the context of the discussion is "number of fingers," there
already exists a strong norm: five per hand.  So the most
straightforward strategy is to identify the normal number of fingers
with the norm in definition #1 for "many," so that "many fingers"
becomes "more than five."

This is an example of how the meanings of individual words are
blended when you put the words together: if there is a saliently
similar feature in both meanings ("the NORMAL NUMBER of fingers" and
"greater number than some NORMAL NUMBER") the strategy is to try to
identify the two when combining the meanings ("greater number than the
NORMAL NUMBER of fingers").  If this produces a meaning that fits the
context, then excellent!  If not, then try some other way of combining
the meanings.

And that's today's lesson in combination of meanings a la Cognitive
Semantics (Ronald Langacker, Charles Fillmore, et al. :)

Ed



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             edheil@postmark.net
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