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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Woops -- somehow, my reply to Bob Amsler became
detached. Here it is: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hello Bob - </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Long time no see! Hope you are well.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>> how would you describe the constraints on
<X></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Well, I would deny there are constraints. In my corpus analysis work I see
plenty of preferences but no constraints. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>> I would guess that if <X> is a human being for whom
one is a legal guardian, </FONT><FONT size=2>then there would be a
different sense than if <X> is an inanimate entity which </FONT><FONT
size=2>one owns. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>.. and somewhere in between is an <U>animate </U>entity which one
owns. If you abandon your dog, is it more like abandoning your wife or
more like abandoning your car? It may be politically incorrect (but
still true) to point out that "legal guardian" and "owner" are semantically
quite close, especially insofar as the meaning of "abandon" is concerned.
Anyway, is a husband the legal guardian of his wife? Haven't we moved on
from there?</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Most lexical sets that I've looked at are like this: some clear
prototypical members but no clear boundaries. Where does this leave your
decision tree structures?</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Your discussion of sense distinctions based on test criteria and your
comments that "descriptions suffer from ambiguity which can be very hard to
interpret" suggest that, for you, sense distinctions must
be stipulative idealizations rather than classifications based
on observed usage. I.e. a given society or speech community can
STIPULATE (legally or otherwise) that a pet belongs in the set of animate
entities with rights to legal guardianship or whatever. Right? </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>But then you have to have had some sort of ownership relationship with
something before you can abandon it, don't you? If this is right, then
cars, refrigerators, wives, children, dogs and (pet) cockroaches would all
belong in the same lexical set in relation to "abandon" -- though perhaps not in
relation to any other verb. The contrast would be with "abandoning
oneself to grief", assuming that ownership has nothing to do with the
interpretation of the reflexive.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Friendly greetings,</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Patrick</DIV></FONT></DIV>
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