[lit-ideas] Monkeys Can Speak
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:59:17 EDT
"He's in the grip of a vice"
In a message dated 7/12/2009 5:30:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
karltrogge@xxxxxxxx writes:
The following contains a word that is more than ambiguous (in the
strictly etymological sense) - it has THREE meanings. By a stretch of
the imagination, one of them may be perhaps derived from another. The
third is definitely distinct. (Hence I won't even pretend to ask for
the ONE AND ONLY ONE sense, because of course there isn't one.) ----
I suggest you have a look googlebooks Studies in the Way of Words by
Grice, Meaning Revisited. He considers,
"Quite a loose liver"
-- Surely, Grice notes, "Some would say that is ambiguous"
"But it's not, 'liver' qua organ of the body and liver as 'person who
lives' have nothing to do with one another"
A trickier example may be, he writes,
"He is the grip of a vice"
(He ignored American spelling).
"Surely I may either mean that Jones, say, is caught in one big instrument
used by Guttenberg to print, etc", or that Jones is plain vicious".
"The problem here is easily solved towards my UNIGUITY, Do not multiply
senses beyond necessity" -- 'vice' is really TWO WORDS: here. So it's hardly
an ambiguous word; there are TWO of them -- which happen to be pronounced
and be written very similarly -- indeed 'exactly alike'.
"But we are not stupid -- a word for us comes complete with some thought
in the mind of its user -- that's why we say monkeys cannot _speak."
Cheers,
JL Speranza
The Zoological Gardens, Regent's.
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