Quotes About Semantics

If there is a sphere where 'angels' dwell, is it a matter of semantics, whether we choose to call it Heaven?

Is another universe bigger or smaller than the idea of God? Does it matter? If there is a sphere where 'angels' dwell, is it a matter of semantics whether we choose to call it Heaven?

A laxity pervades the popular use of words.

If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!

Chiunque detenga il potere può controllare anche il linguaggio, e non solo con le proibizioni della censura, ma cambiando il significato delle parole".

Because the construction of meaning requires many kinds of integration networks in addition to simplex networks, a great deal of semantics falls outside the realm of symbolic logic.

Se debe a Gregory Bateson y a su famoso grupo de investigadores el primer proyecto de estudio sobre la comunicación y sus efectos no solo semánticos y sintácticos, sino sobre todo pragmáticos.

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

I want to block some common misunderstandings about 'understanding': In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word 'understanding.'

Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

Why is abbreviation such a long word?

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.

Cuando se afirma y se subraya tal cosa sin que tal diferencia resulte de las palabras mismas, y cuando en lugar de ello, las palabras se refieren precisamente a lo que niegan tales afirmaciones, surge la sospecha de que en tales palabras se esconde precisamente lo negado. Por lo tanto, no hay que creer demasiado en esas afirmaciones.

I think the semantics of mini-series for a network is that it has an end.

all sorts of considerations determine the truth conditions of a statement, and these go well beyond the scope of grammar.

For example, the difference between Pierre believes he is intelligent and He believes Pierre is intelligent is due to what are called relations of "command": co-reference is impossible if the pronoun is located "higher" in the phrase structure than its nonpronominal antecedent. Now in the second case Pierre is found in a subordinated position, thus "lower" than he, so that they cannot be co-referential in the relevant sense.

The interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Syntactic Structures and LSLT.

the autonomy of syntax;

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.

It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you're trying to say.

Si no entiendes algo, puedes hacer que signifique cualquier cosa.