Re: Screens

In article <md3cf5l8b1k3b38pi005g07og9e8t3k0l2@xxxxxxx>,
Jasper Janssen <jasper.janssen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

He has a point. The "purely descriptive" camp, when taken to extremes as
you're doing here, ends up with words meaning nothing, rather than
something, and communication becoming impossible.

Nonsense. Words mean what the users of the language take them to
mean, at a given time and in a given place and register. That is what
makes communication *possible* in the first place. Words do not have
Platonic essences. Language changes: all people, in different times
and situations, use old lexemes to mean different things (polysemy),
invent new lexemes to mean the same thing as some other word
(synonymy) or something entirely new, take bits out, tack bits on, and
in general adjust their vocabulary to meet the semantic and stylistic
needs of the moment -- and their ability to communicate depends solely
on whether their vocabulary is compatible with that of their audience,
not on some official _imprimatur_ from Geneva or anywhere else.

-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
.

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