About that question on hyponyms

[bryllars at concentric.net]

  The problem with the proposal below is that most women I know can
no longer FEEL it (generalized "man") that way.
  It may be that over time these feelings will wither away and the "old"
texts will be
restored to their "normal" value - as Citizen dissappeared a good many years
after the French Revolution and Monsieur lost its stigma.
But -- right now if you want a generalized term other than "person" (which
feels awkward
to many and if adopted makes 400 years of English literature and
intellectual writing
feel awkwardly antique) you will have to invent an aesthetically pleasing
new one
and get that accepted.
    I believe "person" will continue to feel awkward and so generalized
'man' might come
back. Or some new term (hopefully a monosyllable)  will get itself accepted.

Bryllars at concentric.net



At 12:33 AM 10/17/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>About that question on hypernyms / hyponyms,
>
>>1) Is there a specific term for terms that serve both as terms for a genre
>>and terms for members of that same genre (e.g., "man" when used to refer
>>to both male homo sapiens and all homo sapiens)?
>
>(Sorry, I erased the original message and those that followed).
>
>If we regard man1 and man2 as different entries in the lexicon, man1 and
>man2 can be just treated as homonyms. This could explain why "All men are
>created equal" is acceptable -- though demode and ideologically
>hypocritical -- while "Half of all men can bear children and breastfeed" is
>very strange, to say the least.
>
>I believe "generalization" as the common process by which a term comes to
>cover a broader group of referents can apply in this case as well in which
>the broader group is the entire class. The reverse is "specialization". So
>in man1 / man2 historically we've got one of those (I don't know which; in
>Romance languages I would say the process was specialization, since Latin
>generic "homo" covered both "vir" and "femina"). But, if one doesn't want
>to use the expression "generic term" or "general" term for this hypernym,
>then syncronically we could talk about hypernym/hyponym homonyms, or
>something funny like that. An HHH, triple H.
>
>Peace,
>-celso
>Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo
>lxalvarz at udc.es
>
>
>