{"id":6100,"date":"2016-10-28T06:10:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/28\/meaning-is-tied-to-use-syntax-too\/"},"modified":"2016-10-28T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:10:21","slug":"meaning-is-tied-to-use-syntax-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/28\/meaning-is-tied-to-use-syntax-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning is Tied to Use; Syntax Too?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would seem so.  Consider the way Peggy Noonan, no slouch of a political commentator, uses the adjective 'crazy' in this passage<\/a> about Donald Trump:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

He had to be a flame-haired rebuke to the establishment. He in fact had to be a living insult\u2014no political experience, rude, crude ways\u2014to those who\u2019ve failed us. He had to leave you nervous, on the edge of your seat. Only that man could have broken through. Crazy was a feature, not a bug. (The assumption seemed to be he could turn crazy on and off. I believe he has demonstrated he can\u2019t.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is perfectly intelligible of course, even though Noonan uses 'crazy' twice as a noun.<\/span><\/p>\n

The syntactical difference between noun and adjective no doubt remains in place; it is just that a word that traditionally was always used as an adjective is here used as a noun, as a stand-in for the abstract substantive, 'craziness.'  A bit earlier in her piece, Noonan uses 'crazy' as an adjective.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Can you adduce a counterexample to my 'always' above?)<\/span><\/p>\n

No word has a true or real or intrinsic meaning that somehow attaches to the word essentially regardless of contextual factors.  Is the same true of syntactical category?  Can every word 'jump categories'?  Or only some?<\/span><\/p>\n

For a long time now, verbs have been used as nouns.  'Jake sent me an invite to his Halloween party.'  'How much does the install cost?'  'An engine overhaul will cost you more the vehicle is worth.'   How far can it go?  Will tire rotations ever be advertised as 'tire rotates'?  'I thought the rotate was part of the deal!'<\/span><\/p>\n

Some words have always (?) had a dual use as verbs and nouns.  'Torch,' might be an example.  <\/span><\/p>\n

'I' is an interesting case.  (I mean the word, not the English majuscule letter or the Roman numeral.)  'I' is the first-person singular pronoun.  But it can also be used as a noun.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose a Buddhist says, 'There is no I.'  Is his utterance gibberish?  Could I reasonably reply to the Buddhist:  What you've said, Bud, is nonsense on purely syntactical grounds.  So it is neither true not false.<\/span><\/p>\n

More later.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Acronyms, Initialisms, and Truncations: Another Look<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Christology, Reduplicatives, and Qua-Entities<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>General Terms, Singular Terms, and Direct Reference<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Yes, Trump Really Is Saying 'Big League,' Not 'Bigly,' Linguists Say<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It would seem so.  Consider the way Peggy Noonan, no slouch of a political commentator, uses the adjective 'crazy' in this passage about Donald Trump: He had to be a flame-haired rebuke to the establishment. He in fact had to be a living insult\u2014no political experience, rude, crude ways\u2014to those who\u2019ve failed us. He had … Continue reading “Meaning is Tied to Use; Syntax Too?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,6,408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives","category-language-matters","category-language-philosophy-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}