The Grip of a Vyse

In Modified Occam's Razor, Kramer speaks of 'lead'.

"Roots, I think, are real. But "senses"? What
significance attaches to the number of "senses" a
word has? And is the matter circular. Is "lead" one
word or two? How many senses does it have? Why
do we care? By what authority does etymology
assign meaning to modern words? Isn't etymology
merely interesting but usage all that
really matters? And if a word can have
more than one usage, again, what is a "sense" that
we should care about it?"

Excellent questions. Grice should have been offended that Americans decided to spell 'vyse' vyse -- for that's the ONLY example he gives of heterophony, as it were -- or homophony, rather (but surely there is no homophone unless there is a heterophone).

He's example (WoW: ii -- and again WoW:xvi) being,

"He was caught in the grip of a vice"

where 'vice'

--- "something resembling a sin"
--- "a tool carpenters' use".

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This applies to 'lead' as you 'read' it rather than pronounce it, though -- 'heterograph' -- or 'homograph', rather than 'homophone', then.

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Anyway, back to Kramer's comment:

"Roots, I think, are real."

And never be SO sure. For, after all, PHONES are real. Phonemes are already abstract. And I expect a root is composed of phonemes, rather than phones. I once wrote a paper on this, which I must have somewhere, for a seminar led by M. P. on "Phenomenology and the Social Sciences"! I was quoting from O'Connor's Phonetics (Penguin!) -- he says that nominalism/realism/conceptualism (the old philosophical dispute) reappears in the very definition of the abstract idea of a phoneme. Is a phoneme a SET of phones, or does it have a separate reality, etc.

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Kramer goes on:

"But "senses"?"

Exactly. What irritates me particularly is that 'sensus', here, does not mean anything related to 'aesthetics', or 'sensuality'. Apparently it has to do with spin. Spin parallel. Two senses: to the right, and to the left. THAT 'sense' of 'sense'.

Incidentally, that's a good title for a book, "The sense of sense" -- after all, Koell has a book, "The concept of concept" and Ogden/Richards, the meaning of meaning.

Kramer:

"What significance attaches to the number of "senses" a word has?"

Exactly. I was once discussing this with one (THE one) Adam Kilgariff, in FLN-L, a forum led by Brigitte Nehrlich, and Kilgariff sent me some papers he had written, including one, a genial one, which he entitled, "I don't believe in word senses". He worked for the Longman Dictionary. Kilgariff gets very technical about this, but he endorses a 'nominalist' position which defines an alleged 'sense' as a bundle of 'usages' (or 'uses' if you must). VERY statistical.

Kramer:

"And is the matter circular."

Yes. But mind, the circle is THE perfect figure. M. Chase, who I know Kramer and I disagree with on occasions, once cited for me a book on the "Circle" written by a neo-Platonic. The circle of wisdom I think it was called.

Kramer:

"Is "lead" one word or two? How many senses does it have?"

Grice discusses, soot and suit, I think, in WoW. Will see if I find the quote, although I may have discussed this in this blog when I was doing that Strand 5 (in reply to R. B. Jones, so I may be able to retrieve the quote with the aid of the search engine the blog provides).

Kramer:

"Why do we care?"

I think in the case of Grice, he didn't. He would speak of "logical form" or 'truth-conditions' as closer to his heart. At one time, he even feels disgusted to speak of the 'senses' of a thing as short as "or" (which he compares to 'to'). So, I think he was having in mind pretentious books talking about senses like L. J. Cohen, "The diversity of meaning" -- or Ullman -- semanticists who don't know the first thing about Occamist parsimony and are always willing to TRIplicate senses. Elsewhere, for example, among linguists who should know better, I was quoted from Cruse's boring textbook on semantics (Cambridge U. P.) and his idea of 'faces' or something -- as being the ultimate word on 'semantics'! Totally overprofusive quatriplication of 'senses'!

I tend to think that things (i.e. words) usually have ONE sense. Horn called this monoguism -- but I prefer 'uniguism', since there's something hybrid about mono- (Greek) and -guism (Latin) (cfr. 'sociology').

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The problem (actually the solution) is that since a sense is 1, surely even if you MULTIPLY senses (Grice, "Senses should not be multiplied beyond necessity" -- his modified Occam's razor) you cannot get anything HIGHER than 1:

1
1 times 1 = 1
1 times 1 times 1 = 1

etc.

Kramer:

"By what authority does etymology assign meaning to modern words?"

Exactly. Horn coined etymythology to have it in the right place!

Kramer:

"Isn't etymology merely interesting but usage all that really matters?"

Yes. But then I am biased. If I were to go to Thailand, say -- and show some interest in their native language, I would possibly BE interested in Thai etymologies. Suppose that they tell me that etymologically, the word they use to say "man" originally meant 'horse' (because of a myth they had, etc.). Surely I shouldn't care less. "No, it doesn't mean 'horse' anymore; it means 'man', plain" -- they try to encourage me. But I would feel very ODD calling a man a 'horse' -- or a horse a man for that matter.

Luckily Asian lingos are mainly idiographical -- but apparently they are so difficult to read that dailies take longer than a day to write -- never mind read. Most people watch CNN, though.

Kramer:

"And if a word can have more than one usage, again, what is a "sense" that we should care about it?"

Yes. Parkinson cared to reprint the proceedings of a symposium in the Aristotelian Society of London for his booklet, "Theories of meaning". I think the essay is boring, but it by Ryle, and he is at his pedantic best. He distinguishes between 'use' and 'usage'; and throws 'meaning' and a few other things onto the bargain.

Of course, the point of the existence of Grice -- Travis says in his review of "Ways of Words" -- was to prove Austin wrong. There are no uses, there are no usages, there are no meanings. There are just intentions!

Grice's Prolegomena to "Way of Words" (which he only published in 1989, but was a lecture delivered in 1967) is all about the vagueness, fuzziness and all bad things about the 'slogan' popularised by Witters,

"meaning is use".

Will see if I can select a good passage or sentence from it to quote.

Etc.