From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: "Synonyms"
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:56:40 EDT
In a message dated 10/18/08 3:55:56 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
"Well, this is a novel idea. I never thought of words from two languages
that
specify (call to mind) the same referent as *synonyms*. This strikes me as
a
contrived argumentb&. two words
from different languages that point to the same referent (even a
conjunction,
i.e., a syntactical function) are called exact translations."
Ho! You're an impertinent lad, Brady! But you're young, so we'll hope you
can
still learn. I shall quote from an account of address given in 2005:
"Umberto Eco, professor of semiotics from the University of Bologna and
author of the celebrated novel The Name of The Rose, came to a solemn
conclusion: b
There are no synonyms between languages.b To illustrate his summation the
semiotician said: b No English word really explains what the German word,
Sehnsucht, means. Neither nostalgia, nor yearning, neither craving nor
wistfulness
really describes the full and exact meaning of the word.b
But then, I don't know why I quote Eco there -- my very point is that he's
all balled up.
Besides, youthful posting has more interesting errors to dwell on. Let's go
back to that, "two words from different languages that point to the same
referentb&" Words don't point, Laddie! They're inert, insensate, and
indifferent.
Your mind does all the doing and pointing. You contemplate the words, and
the scurrying lump of links in your head retrieves lots of associated
memories
from its soft hard-drive.
Then you say, "The utterance doesn't have meaning, it provokes the meaning
in
the listener -- in this case, a good or reliable or perfect translation."
Of course, the word doesn't "provoke" any more than it "points". But the
phrase that really captures my attention is "the meaning in the listener".
Let's
hope you don't mean "THE meaning". Let's hope you mean "A meaning", by
which
let's hope you mean "a notion" -- the which notion is a memory that's a
result
of the listener's exposure to repeated juxtaposition of the word with the
notion in the past.
Just to show what I reasonable fellow I can be about the use of the word
'meaning', here's this. Let's say as a very little boy you saw lots of
baseball
played. And your Dad would repeatedly say such things as, "Ah, now THAT's
baseball! Don't you love baseball! I know you want to play baseball!" After
a
while, even when you weren't at the game, when anyone said "baseball",
memories of
the games you'd seen would "come to mind" -- because of those impressed
associations of the word with what you were always looking at when the word
was
uttered. Given that, one could fairly harmlessly end up saying, say,
"That's
the
meaning of baseball for me."
Now, lest I seem too reasonable, I shall make this no doubt opaque remark:
In
fact, you never "saw" the game of baseball at all. You saw pitchers pitch,
batters swing, fielders catch, and much running. But you never saw the game
of
baseball. Every observation was reducible to, "accounted for" in, clips of
other objects and actions. You should be ashamed of yourself, Brady, for
ever
telling people you saw a baseball game!
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