F. Leon Wilson wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, John Konopak wrote:
>
> > At 11:39 AM 4/16/98 -0400, you wrote:
> > >What is a word?
> >

Snip

If you are interested further in these concepts might I suggest that you look into
Alfred Korzybski's work, "Science and Sanity," and you may be able to find
additional material at the web site of the Institute of General Semantics.

http://www.general-semantics.org/

Korzybski's work was originally done in 1933 and was monumental in describing the
process whereby our organism utilizes abstractions through sensory processes and
subsequently in memory and speech, etc.  His intent was to point out the nature of
the process and how one might avoid "unsane" use of ones faculties by an awareness
of these processes.  The manner in which a "token" such as a word can transmit
such a wealth of information and the problems when one confuses "words" with
things, i.e., the Road Map is not the territory, is truly awe inspiring.  It is
readily apparent that such tokens represent entirely different things in each
organisms cognitive milieu.  The distinctions in each individual's "associative
network" alone make each organism's perception of the extensional world totally
unique.  Still, the similarity between each organism's responses appears at the
same time impressive, to say the least, and accounts for our ability to
communicate so well in spite of such differences.  Chomsky, from what I've read,
was "right on" in his concept of our genetic or phylogenetic development of
apparatus or schema in our nervous system to enable us to handle language
intrinsically.  Subsequently, folks are now looking at other channels, i.e.,
Richard Dawkins' concept of "memes" as a unit of cultural heredity, evolving and
replicating within the organisms, which are quite promising.

Just thought you all might be interested judging from the questions...

Cordially,

Bob

--
Bob Grimes

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