On 10 Feb 2005, at 5:21 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
No, grammar *enables* meaning. The switch you are making is a switch of meaning by changing the words. You've done nothing to change the *grammar*,
Okay. This may be a terminology problem. To me (and to linguists), "changing the grammar" means changing the *rules* of grammar -- for instance, changing from a Subject-Verb-Object grammar like English to a Subject-Object-Verb language like Japanese. So there's a difference between "changing the grammar" -- which effectively means you're changing the language -- and making a grammatical change, like switching the subject and object in a sentence.
Changing "Dog bites man" to "Man bites dog" involves making a *grammatical change* (which is *not* the same thing as "changing the grammar"). Yes, the structure is the same -- subject-verb-object -- because that's the kind of word order English has. But I didn't change the content. The content -- the words -- are exactly the same. But they fill different grammatical roles because they have a different position in each sentence.
So, again: grammar determines meaning.
You are manipulating the content, not the structure.
Again, I'm not changing the content. Content = words. The words are the same. I'm changing the structure by modifying the grammatical function of the words "man" and "dog."
I could also change the grammar without changing the word order. I could invent some arbitrary, artificial grammar that uses all the same English words but uses an Object-Verb-Subject order. In that artificial grammar, "Man bites dog" would mean exactly the opposite of what it does in good old Subject-Verb-Object English.
So, again: grammar determines meaning.
No, I'm not agreeing with you at all. Your example does not demonstrate anything about grammatical structure, since your two examples are structurally indistinguishable. It is only at the level of denotative meaning that there is any difference, at the message level, not at the grammatical level.
It is the Subject-Verb-Object word order of English that allows you to decode the denotative meaning of "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog." You can't determine the meaning without processing the grammar.
And, again, just because you don't consciously think about English grammar and its word order rules when you speak, or read, or write, doesn't mean it "has no significance in the *meaning* of any particular speech or written utterance". Quite the opposite.
And that's exactly what your example shows -- the same grammatical structure can convey two entirely different meanings. Thus, the grammatical structure itself is not a controlling aspect of the communication -- it is the words itself that control the meaning.
As I have said, many times, words *cannot* control the meaning because the words in "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man" are *exactly the same*. In order to decode the meaning, you need to determine which word is the subject and which word is the object, and the words themselves don't reveal that information. Only grammar can do that.
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY
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