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Vygotsky says that a word is a sign for a concept- Andy Words are invitations to form concepts -- Roger Brown. On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 3:18 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote: > Huw, I think words do not have "pragmatic force". For that you have to go > something like sentences. Vygotsky says that a word is a sign for a > concept. The utterance of a word does not therefore have pragmatic force on > its own, as you say, but by means of its semiotic properties, contributes > to the pragmatic force of a sentence or other more extended utterance. > That's how I'd see it. The odd thing is that a concept is a unit which is > greater than a sentence, even though a word is less than a sentence, and > yet one is the sign for another. The same applies to the relation between > activity and action. > > Andy > > > Huw Lloyd wrote: > >> 4. On "word meaning" my preference is to think about sentence meaning. >> Here it will be clearer that words, absent from a sentence, do not >> comprise >> a completed meaning. They have aspects which are defined, ofcourse, but >> these definitions only form part of a system of meaning which is derived >> from the synthesis of all the words in a sentence (and wider contexts). >> To >> ascribe a "completed" "word meaning" to "all those meanings implied by all >> possible sentences in which this word can be used" would be like trying to >> put the whole world in a shoe box, because the system of constraints that >> comprises all of the sentences is greater than those that comprise the >> word. Word meaning in this light is then a different genus of meaning to >> sentence meaning, it is a derivative of sentence meaning just as >> acceleration is the derivative of velocity (with time), hence they are not >> of the same type (genus). I suspect that the fuzziness to which you refer >> is partially the confusion of types of meaning. If instead of this >> elaborate interpretation of word meaning that encompasses all of the >> ambiguities that arise of its use in a sentence, we refer to "word >> meaning" >> as simply the known system of constraints that are the conventional >> definition of a word and that participate in sentence meaning, then we >> have >> a more tractable account of word usage that is also (I believe) more in >> line with scientific concepts, hence word and concept align better. >> >> Huw >> >> > > > ______________________________**____________ > _____ > xmca mailing list > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca> > __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca