Without grammar, all you have is a list of definitions, which themselves come in sentences and only indicate the possible uses the single word could have in a sentence.
Does "red" mean anything unless connected to, at least, some index, e.g., "That is red"?
2007-02-23 18:50:48 · 5 answers · asked by -.- 3 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Word!
Humans unknowingly allow "the world" to create our words and what we make them mean. Much more powerful we become when we let our Words create our world!
2007-02-23 19:08:57 · answer #1 · answered by nmyopinion 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think we use the language that comes naturally to us at the time of speaking. What comes naturally can change as we move, become more educated, associate with different people, etc., but as long as a person isn't using a word that's outside of that, I don't think it's pretentious. Also, from your example, rudimentary and basic may mean nearly the same thing, but why be general when you can be specific? Languages are beautiful, wonderful, necessary inventions. Why diminish them? I recently heard someone get upset when another person in the group used the word "transpire" instead of "happen", when they mean basically the same thing. I don't understand why they got upset. They understood "transpire", and even if they didn't, it would've been an opportunity to learn a new word. In that instance it seemed ridiculous to get upset over the use of "transpire" when no one who knows what transpire means would get upset by a person using "happen".
2016-05-24 04:59:55 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Red is a tangible and physical color that can be silently pointed to and thus defined by that simple finger gesture. For our early ancestors, likely many local animals of prey and wild berries were among the first of these type of words. Cuneiform and hieroglyphs were among the earliest forms of writing and also took this one-to-one association of the object with the word-sound. English grammar is actually a real barrier to casual human communication as it makes things much harder than they have to be.
2007-02-23 19:41:53 · answer #3 · answered by Eoas 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think you're on to something. What came first: the sentence or the word?
It seems more natural to think that the word came first. But when creating a language, words are created with sentences in mind. I'm not talking about concrete sentences, but abstract sentences of thought. So these abstract sentences must have abstract words.
My head's starting to hurt. This is something to think about.
2007-02-23 19:19:10 · answer #4 · answered by Billy Nostrand 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
word meaning, i may say.
A lot of words have multiple meanings, in here the meaning of a sentence would be dependent on how you would like to put a certain word in use.
e.g. "That is blue"- the gist you're trying to point across is 'that is color blue'
e.g. "That is blue"-the idea you're trying to convey is: 'That is something sad'
e.g. "Those are blues":- The idea you're trying to pass on is:"Those songs belong to certain type of music".
Word meaning is more basic, no doubt about it for me.
2007-03-02 21:41:34 · answer #5 · answered by oscar c 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋