🚀 go-pugleaf

swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:

>I would object to the assumption that synonymy is a property of
>human language. Trivially, if we believe that two expressions
>"mean the same thing" then we have some meaningful criteria to
>distinguish them and some reason for doing so and, unless you want
>to multiply abstract entities endlessly, they therefore do not "mean
>the same thing". More concretely, for any pair of human language
>expressions that you claim to be synonymous in a given context, I
>claim that I can produce another context in which they are not
>synonymous. Finally, while genuine synonymes *might* exist as
>transient phenomena in human language, surely one would quickly
>be driven out by the other for simple reasons of efficiency (would
>you want to keep two identical copies of the same procedure in
>a program?).

I absolutely agree with this statement (whether it is (part of) a
theory of meaning or not :-)...).

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Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
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