Jerry: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Jerry Shepherd <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Karl, > > > > Three things: > > > > (1) With regard to the idionsyncratic way in which you are using terms > like "form,"function," "meaning," etc., Ruth has already very eloquently > explained the problem here in her latest post (Thank you, Ruth). You are > actually using the terms "form" and "function" in almost the exact opposite > way in which they are used in either linguistics or just in general > conversation and writing. > See my response to Ruth. > > > (2) With regard to the "strike" in baseball example, you have several > problems. First, the use of "strike" in the sense of miss, is used > outside of baseball as well. People "strike out" in love, in dating, in > making sales calls, in attempts at making persuasive arguments, etc. > Sorry, but this example is invalid. Invalid because here you reference a compound lexeme, one where two or more words in combination give a third meaning that neither word has apart from the other. In Chinese, the majority of ideas are communicated through compound lexemes because of the structure of the language that each lexeme is a single syllable. German formalizes the arrangement by combining the different words into a third, or more, word, then list them in dictionaries under separate headings. > If you come back at me and say that "strike out" is, as you refer to > it, a "complex lexeme," I would point out that the same "complex lexeme" > refers as well to people "striking out" against other people, which goes > back to the more traditional concept of "hit." > You need to consider contexts, is it being used as a complex lexeme, or as simple lexemes? Is it a metaphorical reference to a compound lexeme as used in a very narrow context, or general uses of the terms as they are used elsewhere? Your argument fails. > > > But it is equally important to note that every day from early April to > late October, baseball, America's favorite pastime, has millions of viewers. > There are more millions who don’t watch it, possibly several times as many as who watch it. Come to think of it, I don’t know a single person who has mentioned to me that he likes to watch baseball, that he does so regularly, nor anyone who brings it up in casual conversation. This is in the U.S. Then when you add the millions who live in other English speaking countries where baseball is not played, and add the many millions more who speak English as a second language for business, engineering, as the national language in their countries otherwise divided into many languages, you’ll find that the vast majority of English speakers would consider the baseball usage as highly idiosyncratic usage. Example: when the compound lexeme “strike out” was brought up in an earlier discussion of the term, a native English speaker on this list who comes from a country where baseball is not played, did not know what the term meant, and his guess was wrong. He had to be told that this was an idiosyncratic use that comes from baseball, and what it means. > In fact, I'd almost be willing to wager a small fortune that during > those months of the year, the word "strike" is used more often, every > single day to refer to a "strike" in baseball than it is used in all other > contexts together. In other words, every single day, the word "strike" > is used far more often to refer to a "miss" that it is used to refer to a > "hit." This can hardly be referred to simply as a idiosyncratic usage. > See above. > > > (3) This leads to the third point, and that is that when you ask, "Where > do I deny usage in my discussions, both here and previously?" you are > equivocating, because you still tie "meaning" to > > a "single unique" underlying concept. You still deny that the usage > constitutes the meaning. And that's the problem. More often than not, > the meaning of "strike" as it is used in North America today, is "miss," > not "hit." As far as "meaning" is concerned, the word "strike" has > become divorced from the underlying concept. It cannot be denied that > there is still a relationship and a development of one from the other; but, > as far as meaning is concerned, there are two very different meanings in > operation. > Here you confuse statistical frequency with mainstream use or meaning. We have discussed this fallacy also in Biblical Hebrew grammar, where in the case of the Wayyiqtol, the vast majority of uses, possibly over 90%, are in narrative of past events, therefore the error is made that the Wayyiqtol is a conjugation for past tense. But when one takes into account that the narrative past tense is only one of the contexts where the Wayyiqtol is found, and the other contexts indicate a different meaning to the Wayyiqtol conjugation, a meaning that also fits the narrative past tense, indicates that we need to consider all contexts, not just the one that has the statistical greatest frequency. In fact, at times a minority use, i.e. with small statistical frequency, can give greater insight to a lexical meaning that the majority usage. Likewise, just because “strike” may be used multiples of times in one game in the narrow confines of baseball does not make its use normative and not idiosyncratic. But unlike the Wayyiqtol above, the uses of “strike” in all its other contexts does not predict its use in baseball. Therefore its use in baseball is idiosyncratic. > > > Blessings, > > > Jerry > > Jerry Shepherd > Taylor Seminary > Edmonton, Alberta > [email protected] > > > Karl W. Randolph.
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