Re: Letf / Right, was Re: Count and mass nouns

Some people thought, and I replied:

> > Maybe, but the fact is that for (likely) 99,99% of
> > mankind, East is the direction of sunrise. Language
> > conforms to human experience.
> Rather: language *names* human experience. Vocabulary items are
> conventionally applied to phenomena we witness, and that's all the meaning
> they contain. So ultimately you cannot separate word meaning from
> experience. Defining words from other words is just delaying the
inevitable
> (the fact that most dictionary definitions are circular should be evidence
> enough :)) ), because eventually you always end up having to point out
> something and say "this is *X*", because there's just no other way to
> explain what the word *X* means.
Well.

I was considering trying to go and redefine a lot of words of English to be
more precise. Basically, I theorized, you could eventually strip everything
down to a list of so many words (concrete object, abstract object, various
math terms...) by which you can build a definition of everything else.

I got the idea more from math, since I'm a math guy. In math, everything can
eventually be defined down all the way to sets. Even complex calculus--in
the end, it can all be brought down to sets.

So basically, someone could take a word, and take all of it's non-root
subwords, look them up, substitute the definition, and continue ad recursium
until you have a (fairly long, I imagine) definition of that word just using
root words.

I would still like to do this, I just realize it could be difficult. What is
a car? Well, it's any automobile that isn't a truck or a van or... So yeah.
What is a truck? It's not a car.

Then again, I think with careful thought, a better definition could be
developed. The problem isn't in definition, it's in relation along with
definition. We both see the same color. We both percieve the exact same
wavelength of light. However, the word we each choose to use to name that
color may be different. I say it is "red", you say "orange". Well, both of
us are listing the color (which exist on a continuum) with discrete objects.

...basically, there would be a lot of problems. And not that anyone cares
about precisely defining things.

But I do suppose it would be fun to build a base of words that are so
precisely defined.

-Keith