On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Marilyn Harris wrote:

> >Can you not see that the words mean nothing
> >except the meaning that you choose to give them?
>
> In this instance, not really.

That's good.  There is a difference between word-meaning (or
sentence-meaning) and speaker-meaning.  If there were not, then
no one would ever misspeak.

A man walks into a diner and says, "I'd like a ham sandwich."

The waiter brings him a ham sandwich.  The man says, "What did
you bring me that for?"

The waiter replies, "You said you wanted a ham sandwich."

The man says, "Well of course that's what I *said*, but what I
meant was that you should bring me a bowl of chili."

The waiter should say, "Then you should have said what you
meant."

The claim that words mean nothing but what speakers intend to
mean by them is dead wrong.  People sometimes fail to say what
they mean.

It is also true, however, that some words and expressions are
polysemic, or ambiguous.  This doesn't entail that they mean just
anything, or that they mean whatever the speaker wants them to
mean, but it does entail that they have more than one meaning.
The word "paleo", as applied to diet, is like that.

Todd Moody
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