I was writing in English, not German. It's fairly common for words to shift meaning as they over time, especially if they move across languages. Would recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct if this confuses you.
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As someone w/ an advanced degree in Ling, I would not necessarily recommend that book. Also, if you read beyond that book, you might realize that linguistic shifts aren’t universally applied between popular language use & more esoteric borrowings from academiapic.twitter.com/hgByak3voL
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With all due respect, I'm going to trust Noam Chomsky, who endorsed the book and knows a thing or two about linguistics, over you.
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Setting aside basic issues that (a) Chomsky's "endorsement" of the book was 25 years ago, (b) it was not a straightforward endorsement, (c) Chomsky's views have changed significantly since then, and (d) linguistics has changed significantly since then... 1/2
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Sigh. What an endless game of moving the goal post. Is my use of "gestalt" within normal English dictionary meaning? Yes. Does knowing German give authority for judging English usage? No. Is Language Instinct a good Chomsky endorsed popular introduction to linguistics? Yes.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @thephilosotroll and
It doesn't matter TLI is good intro to the whole field of linguistics. After 25 years any science will have moved on. The distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism in TLI is clear & well-written, though, and that's the relevant part.
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Replying to @beyerstein @HeerJeet and
No, it’s not. Because the nature of the description that consistites a semantic theory is important... and that’s what’s at issue. Which conventions governing linguistic use are authoritative? How are they determined? These are basic q’s where TLI’s answers no longer suffice.
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Replying to @thephilosotroll @HeerJeet and
You don't need an elaborate theoretical apparatus for this, you need a simple argument for why pointing to a dictionary definition (in any language) is never the end of the story. TLI gets that point across really well.
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Replying to @beyerstein @HeerJeet and
... except for when you then need to explain what the remainder of the story is, and this is where TLI runs into problems. The broad externalist gesture is just to say, “meaning is determined by the conventions, and the conventions aren’t captured by dictionary definitions.”
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Replying to @thephilosotroll @HeerJeet and
For settling this twitter argument, you really don't. Is the meaning of the word "gestalt" in German a trump card in a dispute about the meaning of the word in English? I don't think any reasonable person would agree that it is, whatever semantic theory they endorse.
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Exactly. Especially since English is made up of literally hundreds of thousands of loan words from other languages, so relying on them to settle convention would cause chaos.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @beyerstein and
... gotta love pretending to know the background in semantics before aggressively strawmanning all of the relevant conflicting views in semantics.
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