linguistic questions

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

At 08:08 18/04/03 -0500, Robert Lawless wrote:

>Ha! You thought I didn't notice that nobody answered my son's question
>about how people come up with words.

I'll try to not-answer it too ;-).  Though that was not your son's question
-- I think it was something like "How do people recognize the meaning of
words".

Anyway, your son's question is poorly formulated for linguistics, that is,
it's too vague.  It's a good "7-year-old-son-question", but a very bad
"linguistic student-question" ;-) :

1) What does one mean by "people"?  An individual speaker?  Communities?
2) What does it mean to "come up with words"?  Create strings of sons anew,
which are associated to meanings anew, such as "froptring" 'a sort of
brownish deflated tire'?  Or associate new meanings to old strings of
sounds?  Or associate new strings of sounds to old meanings?  Or modify old
strings of sounds?  Or use already existing words?
3) What is it meant by "how" ("HOW people come up with
words")?  Historically?  In a given moment or language stage?  By which
cognitive processes?  In which communicative contexts?   How effectively?
(for example, I've just come up with "froptring", but it will probably
never make it to a journal's front page ;-) ).

Etc.

Arbitrariness and/or iconicity in word creation and change have to do with
different aspects of these various questions, but neither dimension is
absolute: in my classes I always emphasize the *relative* arbitrariness and
the *relative* iconicity of different types of signs.

In my opinion.

Best,
-celso

Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
lxalvarz at udc.es
http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/