On 7 June 2011 16:27, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:
Words are vocal sounds. Vocal sounds are meaningful.
I think you have an elision here, Joseph.
If you take "are" as the plural of "is", you're effectively saying:
"A word is a sound, sound is meaningful."
Hence you appear to be conflating the relation of equivalence with
aggregation:
(Spoken) Words are (composed of) vocal sounds.
Just as you might say "Pyramids are (composed of) stone" rather than
"Pyramids are buildings".
Huw
Joseph Gilbert
On Jun 6, 2011, at 9:15 PM, Tony Whitson wrote:
Peirce explicitly contended that the meaning of any sign
(including words,
thoughts, arguments, feelings, or whatever), _qua_ signs, lies in
the
virtuality of potential future interpretations (just by virtue of
the
fundamental nature of what it is to be a sign, i.e., in the
activity of
sign-relations).
Also, notice that I'm using "meaning" as something that we -- and
our
words, thoughts, etc. -- DO, not something they contain, convey,
etc. I
recently noticed similar usage in the title of Jay's MCA review
of Sfard's
book, which speaks of "Meaning Mathematically," not "mathematical
meaning."
The latter locution could mean the same as Jay's, but it also
would allow
the more familiar reading of "meaning" as a noun. If we need to
begin
meaning differently than how we might be heard to mean in positivist
discourse, I think we need to begin choosing speaking that resists
assimilation to that discourse.
On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, mike cole wrote:
The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a recurrent
thought
when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed in
the word."
I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I always
have
this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far as
it is
taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later time,
in some
new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over again.
mike
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:
I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last
message. I
meant
the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears
below from
Martin.
In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the
meaning that
a
word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the
philological
sense),
but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues
meaning, as
it
continues living, non-timelessly.
On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over time; he
didn't
study philology for nothing!
A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
--Emily Dickinson
I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that words
do -- not
something they contain, convey, etc.
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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