Synonymy avoidance

[Jonathan Lighter]

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer "RCH."

JL

James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: James C Stalker
Subject: Re: Synonymy avoidance
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I think synonymy isn’t as easy as denotative and connotative synonymy.
“That” and “which” as well as “since’ and “because” are
ancient usage shibboleths. To me, that status suggests that the choice of
either is not a semantic, or even a grammatical, choice, but rather a
sociolinguistic choice. The two words may be semantically so close that the
distinction is trivial in most semantic contexts (at the level of a BCH for
you older slang mavens), but the sociolinguistic difference is worth
attending to.

Jim Stalker

Jonathan Lighter writes:

> I was told in junior high that there are "only two true synonyms in the English language," and that they are "gorse" and "furze."
>
> The notion seems to be that "true" synonyms share the identical denotation, are of the same syllabic length, belong to the same level of discourse, and seem to share virtually identical associations.
>
> This is, of course, a somewhat tendentious definition of "true synonyms," but "gorse" and "furze" come a lot closer than most. "Whin" might be considered a third synonym, but it's not as rough-sounding as the others.
>
> JL
>
> Ed Keer wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Ed Keer
> Subject: Synonymy avoidance
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The discussion of 'dope' reminded me of this issue. I
> have a friend who is absolutely convinced that there
> is no synonymy in English (I assume he feels this way
> about other languages too). He looks for meaning
> differences everywhere becuase he wants to be sure he
> says exactly what he means.
>
> For example, he won't use 'since', except temporally
> because he really means 'because'. He's also driven
> himself a little batty looking for the meaning
> difference between 'that' and 'which'.
>
> I've heard some linguists believe there is no synonymy
> in langusge, but I have a hard time understanding what
> that means. Can anybody enlighten me on the issue?
>
>
>
>
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James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University


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