On Dec 7, 2012, at 11:13 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Someone in, say, remote western China, however innately intelligent, who > had never heard or read a thing before now about Cleopatra (or heard or read > the English 'designate', etc) could conjure effectively no notion at all (and > certainly nothing "informational") now if exposed solely to the sound or > scription 'Cleopatra'.
Not precisely. Your remote listener could easily conjure a notion upon hearing "Cleopatra." But it probably wouldn't be congruent with your notion: it won't be the Queen of the Nile, or Elizabeth Taylor, or a Shakespearean character. Perhaps hearing someone speaking in a foreign language conjures no notions--i.e., "meanings"--just the response that the language sounds pretty, or guttural, or melodic, or whatever. Perhaps something said in a foreign language sounds like it "means" something, which you try to infer by context and gestures. Or it sounds like another word you know, so you produce the notion of that, not what the speaker had in mind. Even in English, someone may misunderstand or incorrectly parse the sounds being spoken (or often, sung) and think it "means" something else. These misunderstood words are called "Mondegreens," from the experience described by Sylvia Wright, who didn't understand the last lines of Percy's Reliquaries and thought it read "They ha[v]e slain the Earl O'Moray / And Lady Mondegreen." The correct line is "and laid him on the green." BTW, there is a comparable effect in writing. It is quite common to misread someone's poor handwriting, which the writer has no problem reading. But even in printed English, there are instances of misreadings. The "long s" is a form of the letter "s" that resembles a lowercase f without a full crossbar. It was often used in printing up until the 19th century, and then fell out of favor and familiarity. Now it often confuses people, who do not understand what a man speaks of his oldest "fon," or the like. Also, it is nowadays an accepted "antiquarian" touch to write "ye olde XYZ shoppe," pronounced /yee/ (and often /shop-pee/). The "y" is actually a misread middle-English thorn, representing the voiceless consonant we now write with "th." The original letter closely resembled a lowercase y, and as the early fonts often didn't include the thorn, printers used a "y" (sometimes from a blackletter font). That came to be read and understood as a /y/, not as a /th/, and so we have our modern faux-archaic "ye olde" term. Long story short: just because the listener or reader has no knowledge of the referent does not mean he or she cannot produce a notion in response to the word. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
