Questions tagged [meaning]
The meaning tag has no usage guidance.
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How to be safe from unwanted meanings?
I am going to register a name. It is a unique name, a play on the original English word. I will be receiving international audience, therefore, I want to make sure it does not have any undesired ...
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Is it possible to define a concrete object with language clearly and accurately?
How do we know whether counterexamples of a concept are infinite or finite? Is there an end to the process of revision?
It is usually claimed that defining a concept clearly and accurately is almost ...
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Can 𒂔 mean Garden?
A Wiktionary edit from 27 August 2009 changed the etymology of the English "Eden" being some Sumerian "e-den", then in 23 July 2015, it was assigned as the sign 𒂔.
But at that ...
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Are there ways to convey any type of knowledge from one language to another?
In terms of linguistic possibility, is it possible to translate any term from one language to another? Expanding, to what extent is it possible to translate scientific or philosophical terms, for ...
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How do people discussing NSM primes ensure they're thinking of the same meanings?
Natural Semantic Metalanguage sets out number of semantic primes. A semantic prime is a meaning which cannot be reduced to a combination of simpler meanings. The Wikipedia article has a table of them, ...
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Present participles in a noun phrase
I'm working on a research project on premodufying present participles and I would like to have a native speaker's impression on the grammaticality or frequency of the following options.
There are ...
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How does Chinese function so well without determiners and a lot of the subtle detail that English has?
I have been typing into Google Translate and Yabla all day (Yabla is basically a Chinese glossing tool), trying to get a sense at how simple English sentences with prepositions are translated into ...
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Looking for references on translatability from the point of view of theories of meaning
I am looking for references on un/translatability from the view point of theories of meaning.
In philosophy of language there is a variety of theories of meaning. On the other hand, there are ...
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What is the difference between if and if-then?
According to [33]. Davis, W. (1983). Weak and strong conditionals. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64(1), 57-71., there exist two versions of if conditional as shown below.
(1) a. If it is humid, ...
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What are the structure and meaning of this sentence a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie?
There is a special sentence in English, e.g. a lie is a lie is a lie, or a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. This kind of structure does not have a verb center. that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar ...
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Does "So do I" reflect a mirrored perspective or a direct perspective?
For example, if I was to say "I love you", and someone responds with "so do I", would their response, from a solely grammatical point of view reflect that they too, love themselves,...
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When do you go from morpheme to word to sentence in agglutinative languages?
I am working on a cross-language dictionary for fun (i.e. every language), and have been refining this idea of "terms" (as described in that link) for a while. A term is basically anything ...
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Can we claim that all words derived from the same root must necessarily be related in the meaning?
In many languages that I know morphology plays a role in creating words. And, as much as I know, in morphology we have a root, which is the most important part.
Now, in seimitic languages (like Arabic,...
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Who says that words historically evolve from concrete meanings to more abstract meanings?
Conventional wisdom says that when a word has two meanings -- one concrete/tangible and one abstract -- the concrete meanings is the older one, and the more abstract one is the newer meaning that ...
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What is the term for words that were once polite and became impolite?
Sort of the opposite of a euphemism but not exactly -- I am thinking how the word "lady" when used to address an adult, female stranger seems to have a negative connotation as in "...
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What is the linguistical terminology for (and if) letters of a given alphabet have(ing) their inherent meaning?
Letters or phonemes.
Letters, like runes according to this article:
https://sonsofvikings.com/apps/fireamp/blogs/history/viking-runes-guide-runic-alphabet-meanings-nordic-celtic-letters
At least that'...
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Are there different "kinds" of meaningless sentences?
There is famous sentences by Chomsky ("Colorless green ideas sleep furiously") to show that syntactically sentences can by devoid of meaning, or at least have a very odd or dubious meaning. ...
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How to identify politeness strategies?
I'm working on a project and I need to learn how to recognize politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinsons' theory. Even though I've read the theory and many different examples I still have ...
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Is meaning prescribed?
The way I see it, there's two aspects to the choice between the descriptivistic and prescriptivist approach. There's the ought aspect; how ought we view the meaning of words? Then there's the is ...
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Is Baron Hoffman correct — "The meaning of words is a matter of dictionaries and grammars"?
happy new year.
I am a legal profession, not a linguist. I hope this is a worthy linguistics question. Can I have your thoughts please on this quotation by Lord Hoffman, a former Law Lord? Nowadays ...
user5306
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Name for a deliberate change of a meaning? [closed]
Is there a specific name, a figure of speech, for a "deliberate, even subtle change of the meaning of a word"? Example: "- You're doing politics at school as a teacher! - Everything can ...
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Why is “I pray” a response to “thank you” in many languages?
I noticed that “I pray” is used as a response to “thank you” in many languages.
For example,
Turkish
Teşekkür ederim. (“I thank.”)
Rica ederim. (“I pray (or make a request).”)
Italian
Ti ringrazio....
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Is there a human language with a continuous and differentiable morphology/phonology?
This might be a strangely framed question for a liguist, since I'm a physicist and know very little about this field.
My question relates to how changing a symbol (for example a letter) in a word ...
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Perception of "luck" in terms of positive/negative aspect, improbability pattern and scale in different languages
I am interested in how concept of luck is expressed in different languages. As far as I know, in most Indo-European languages, there are similar ways to express the concept of luck and situations ...
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Examples for calque / loan-translation words with different meanings in different languages
Are there words/phrases/compound-words in two different languages that use the same words in their respective languages (like a calque / loan translation) but result in different meanings?
Here is a ...
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"Matter" and "What Matters"; "Substance" and "Of Substance"
This thought is directed at those who have an interest in the deeper meaning of language and how it connects to our perspective of reality. Perhaps a bit philosophical. If this is not the proper place,...
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Is an unambiguous description of left and right side of the body available in some languages
The nautical terms "port and starboard" refer to the left and right side of a vessel when looking from the stern to the bow. At first it seems silly, but, it's actually great to ...
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Do we have a term for priori knowledge in linguistics?
Broadly speaking, these terms have been introduced throughout history to categorize knowledge:
A priori, rationalism, deductive reasoning => meaning that we gain new knowledge, only by using ...
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What is the phenomenon of wrong sticky memory?
I want to learn some words from different languages.
For example I want to learn Greek μελάνι which means ink.
However, since I knew this word as dark or black in English morphology and etymology from ...
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What is meant by the maxim, "Context is King"?
How is context "king" in deriving meaning from words?
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How can you differentiate kick from kick at? [closed]
In English we can find both expressions: He kicked the door. and He kicked at the door. It seems to me that they have the same meaning. Can we find the context in which only one of them is appropriate ...
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What are the target and source domain of this metaphor
The metaphor is: "the shower of arrows was over".
Could "War" the source domain? And the target domain could be "water"? It doesn't make sense to me.
I have read the ...
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Why is there pressure to change seemingly neutral words that some consider 'offensive' to their more 'neutral' synonyms?
Clearly, there is now pressure to stop using words such as whitelist/blacklist (which are now considered racist) and instead replace them with allowlist/denylist; master/slave terminology in tech is ...
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Why does "also" in German and in English denote different things?
There are some words in the German language that may seem to be familiar to a native English speaker, but in the end, it turns out that they are so-called "false friends" and have different meanings.
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Is it possible to infer the meaning of a word of a language based on corpus analysis, without prior knowledge of the language?
If I am totally foreign to a language, are there corpus analysis methodologies and theories that I can employ to figure out the meaning of a word in a corpus based on that language?
If yes, do point ...
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What are the differences between speech acts and implicatures?
Here's what I have come up with.
What I understand is that implicature is always indirect and not explicit, so the hearer must infer from the context.
Speech act, on the other hand, may be direct ...
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What is the entailment of this sentence?
I found that most of the examples of entailment are statements about a third person, but never the speakers themselves. So I wonder what the utterance like "I'm cold." entails?
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What is meaning according to Saussure?
Did Ferdinand de Saussure define meaning in his Course in General Linguistics?
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What word category do twink, adonis, muse etc. belong to? [closed]
Terms such as candy, cutie, honey, princess, diamond, queen(?), stud and bunny are terms of endearment (these terms are often used in a relationship to show affection and may also be used, with ...
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Two meanings of "Someone believes everyone to be invited"
Carnie claims in his syntax book that the sentence
Someone believes everyone to be invited
has two meanings. I can see only one (when the existential quantifier has scope over universal one: when ...
user31981
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Is there a formal definition of the term meaning?
According to Wiktionary and Wikipedia,
meaningfulness is "the state or measure of being meaningful",
while meaningful is "having meaning, significant",
while meaning is "the information or ...
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Meaning of the inverted copula
I just discovered the existence of the inverted copula concept.
Learning a bit of Latin, you have the structure:
Subject - Copula - Predicate.
But as the case is the same in Latin for the Subject ...
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In case the fregean distinction between "sense" and " denotation" is used in linguistics, what purpose does it serve in this discipline?
I'm referring here to the distinction Frege made in his paper called " Sense and denotation".
A classical example is " the morning star" and " the evening star" : different senses but same ...
user24680
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Can one avoid using the notion of meaning when defining syntax and pragmatics?
In an elementary course on philosophy of language ( at the highschool level) , I try to explain to students the distinction betweeen semantics, syntax and pragmatics.
Referring myself to Carnap/...
user24680
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Does this sentence have two meanings?
The sentence is
Some employee must leave.
I was told that it is actually ambiguous and has two meanings. But I can only see one. What are the two meanings?
user31981
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What is the difference between directive function and informational function of a language?
In Geoffery Leech, Chapter 4, Semantics The Study of Meaning, It is written that
"The third function of language is the directive function whereby we aim to influence the behaviour and attitudes ...
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what is out of context thinking called [closed]
In the movie "pursuit of happiness" this particular exchange happens
Martin Frohm: What would you say if man walked in here with no shirt,
and I hired him? What would you say?
Chris Gardner: ...
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Hand gesture - Patting
I apologize if the following question is off-topic on this site.
Some time ago, I was sitting at a table in a cafeteria/canteen. A few tables away, I saw someone I knew. This person also saw me and ...
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How can the Arabic word "Hijr" be translated as "perception" or "understanding" or "intellect" [closed]
The sentence I mention is from Quran (written at least 14 centuries ago) verse 89:5.
Full phrase is : هل في ذلك قسم لذي حجر
And this is translated as:
Sahih International: Is there [not] in [all] ...
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Maximally dissecting lexicon according to meaning (heuristically)
I'm trying to find a set of N English terms that maximally express the 'space of meaning' that all words are encapsulated within. I don't know the correct nomenclature to describe what I'm looking for ...
