| Annotation Metadata
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^"permissions":^"read":ӶӺ,"update":ӶӺ,"delete":ӶӺ,"admin":ӶӺ°,"user":^"id":6,"name":"Sarah Oberbichler"°,"id":"Bi5ztzib1g","ranges":Ӷ^"start":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ7Ӻ","startOffset":724,"end":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ8Ӻ","endOffset":2633°Ӻ,"quote":"This in no way denies the fact that the continuous social and linguistic interactions among the members of a group or society lead to a progressive mutual adaptation of the individuals’ semantic connections. These interactions inevitably bring about the fact that the members of a language group tend to construct the meanings of words in ways that prove compatible with the usage of the community. This is to say, they develop a more or less common way of “seeing the world”. But what they see is nevertheless their subjective construction. \nThat this is a viable assumption becomes clear the moment one considers more than one language. I can illustrate this by a simple example. English text books of linguistics frequently give “the boy hit the ball” as example of a simple sentence that contains a subject, a verb, and an object. In the British Isles this sentence usually calls forth the re-presentation of a boy armed with a tennis racket or a golf club. In the United States he will be imagined to hold a baseball bat. This is a very minor difference. However, if the sentence has to be translated into German, it turns out to be far more complicated. The translator has to know more about the situational context, because the “simple” sentence turns out to be ambiguous. It would be appropriate in several situations, each of which requires different words in German. \nHere are the four most likely ones: \n\n\nFig.6: “The boy hits the ball” \nIf the boy hits the ball with a racket, a club, or a bat, the German verb has to be schlagen; if he hits it with an arrow or a bullet, it would be treffen; if he hits it with his bicycle, it would be stossen plus the preposition auf; and if he hits the ball when falling from the balcony, it would be fallen … auf or schlagen … auf. None of these verbs could be used in any of the other three situations. \nThe conceptual structures called up by the German verbs are more complex than the one called up by “to hit”. They all contain the meaning of the English verb, i.e. the construct of an object’s sudden impact with something else; but they also contain specifications of the event that are not part of the English meaning. As a result, English-speakers who want to express themselves in German must learn not only different words but also a different way of seeing the details of the relevant experiences. \nBetween any two languages you might choose, there are innumerable differences of conceptualization. If they lie in the area of perceptual or sensorimotor construction, they sooner or later become noticeable and corrigible in practical situations of interaction. If, however, they are a matter of abstract conceptual construction, such as the meaning of the German word Vorstellung and that of the English word “representation”, they may cause lasting misinterpretation because their incompatibility rarely becomes apparent on the surface. \nI have chosen examples of the differential construction of meaning in different languages because they manifest themselves in the daily experience of anyone who lives in more than one language. But the meanings individual users of one and the same language construct are no more homogeneous. Although individuals necessarily adapt the meanings they associate with words to what they perceive to be the usage of the community, the stuff those meanings consist of is always part of their own subjective experience. Consequently it is misleading to speak of “shared” meanings. The four terms I mentioned in the abstract involve meaning in one way or another and tend to reinforce the notion that its structure is a well-known fixed entity. This, in my view, inevitably leads to trouble. What speakers of a language have constructed as the meanings of the words they use, is at best compatible in the linguistic interactions with other speakers; but such compatibility remains forever relative to the limited number of actual interactions the individual has had in his or her past. What speakers have learned to mean always remains their own construction.","highlights":Ӷ^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°,^"jQuery321069380820571658712":^°°Ӻ,"text":"","order":"mw-content-text","category":"Argumentation2","data_creacio":1566400858611°
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