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And there's no correlation between the sound and the thing being referred to.

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Originally Posted By: Faldage
And there's no correlation between the sound and the thing being referred to.


onomatopoeia?


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Even that is subject to the phonemics of a given language. Here is a compendium of dog barks in different languages.

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Fascinating!


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So as this board now turns, we agree that "words" have no intrinsic relationship to the object or the non-objects they represent, therefore "words" have no meaning; words only have a function, namely -- the transfer of thoughts between human beings and other human beings and to dogs and monkeys and maybe, but not likely, to cats. Right?

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Originally Posted By: Faldage
Even that is subject to the phonemics of a given language. Here is a compendium of dog barks in different languages.
Great! Very amusing this dog-bark list. Thank you Faldage!
Interesting detail: only English and Dutch have the sound of very small dogs included (yip-yip and kef-kef).
Basque language is uniquely having a sound of old dogs included (jau-jau). Great list!

Everything has the meaning one is willing or capable of to give to it, I think.


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I think that we can all agree that when we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

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And there's whole lists of words we pay extra.

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Quote:
I think that we can all agree that when we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

Yes, tsuwm, but usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak?

The salient question is: Where and how is a word physically stored in the brain where it waits unobtrusively for our request for retrieval?

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> usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak?


Oh, I think there are a lot of people who speak only to hear themselves.


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