![]() |
|
![]() |
||||
|
Be the first pioneers to continue the Astronomy Discussions at our new Astronomy meeting place... The Space and Astronomy Agora |
Essence
Forum List | Follow Ups | Post Message | Back to Thread Topics | In Response To Posted by Don Jarvis on April 30, 2003 21:55:43 UTC |
It's possible you are perceiving more essence to the question than exists. I believe you are lumping two types of meaning and ignoring the vagueness inherent in language use. Assume language is an attempt to classify a more or less shared approximate universe in which there are not always clear distinctions between groups of similar individuals. For convenience in dealing with such a multitude, arbitrary distinctions are accepted to set off arbitrary classes. The distinctions are the defining attributes of a class. Words are created to represent the arbitrary classes. The lexical meaning of a word is the set of attributes that define the class. The pragmatic meaning of a word or phrase depends on how the word or phrase is used and the intent of the user and is not generally available absent the user. A linguistic approach to your question would be to compare the attribute sets of electron and volkswagen. A pragmatic approach would be to demonstrate the difference by juxtaposing an entity from each class.
|
|
Additional Information |
---|
![]() |
About Astronomy Net | Advertise on Astronomy Net | Contact & Comments | Privacy Policy |
Unless otherwise specified, web site content Copyright 1994-2025 John Huggins All Rights Reserved Forum posts are Copyright their authors as specified in the heading above the post. "dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET" are trademarks of John Huggins |