This community is bizarre and probably the most genuine one I’ve stumbled upon. How do I consistently get more comments then updoots here?

      • bcgm3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        Some of these GIF hosts can be pretty obtuse. I was able to get at this GIF by going to the embed page and clicking/tapping the “copy link” button. In this case, the only difference in the two URLs was the file extension.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
    12·
    1 month ago

    Professional academic linguist here. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

    Words have the meanings that communities apply to them. There is no governing body over word meanings. There can be a tension (e.g. two groups using the same term in different ways), but that doesn’t really mean that the word means both. Words mean different things to different groups. It has to be this way, for epistemic and pragmatic reasons.

    In that sense, meanings are not consciously assigned. So the answer to your original question could be “no”.

    But in another sense, all meanings are possible for any given meaningful sequence around the world. Which means, in principle, given infinite communities of practice, a word could have infinite meanings. A stretch, of course.

    Edit:

    There is no governing body over word meanings

    I’m speaking here in terms of global English. There are some languages that have governing bodies, or at least bodies that claim to be governing bodies, like French with the Académie Française. But this is not at all the norm.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
      5·
      1 month ago

      Or, to put it another way, (unprofessional academic linguist here), a word has meanings by what you mean by it, and what the listener understands it to mean.

      In a sense, it can mean anything you want it to. In another sense, it can mean anything the listener/reader interprets it as. Most useful though is when you mean the same meaning that the listener understands.

      And for “accepted/official meaning”, that’s just a community all agreeing on a meaning. Optionally with a recognised group (e.g. dictionary writer) affirming certain meanings as accepted in the community.

      • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        1 month ago

        I think you’re getting at intended meaning versus received meaning. Which is totally a thing, but intended meaning is far less well understood than accepted meaning (not necessarily at the word level, but definitely at the sentence level).

        At the sentence level, companies pay big money to have tens of thousands of sentences manually annotated for intended meaning (to try and train AI to be able to discern it automatically).

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    7·
    1 month ago

    Theoretically, yes. In practice, no. Suppose bla becomes a everything word. If anyone asks what bla means, you say it means bla. The other person won’t understand, you persist on bla bla bla meaning bla means bla, by which bla can mean anything and you realize that it just doesn’t work, because if it “means anything”, in reality it means nothing.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 month ago

    The simple answer to your question is no. Language is as much about distinction and exclusion as it is about description. The word “circle” stands for the description and properties of the circle, but would be incoherent if it did not also exclude straight lines.

    You can often find examples where some things are considered premium or desirable not for the properties is has, but for what it lacks. Just think of all the products marketed to not have something like BPA, fat, sugar, Carbs, gluten, asbestos, lead, and even cruelty.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    5·
    1 month ago

    In theory, yes. In practice, no.

    The association between meaning and word is arbitrary, but socially dictated. You’d need to have other people accepting that that word conveys that meaning in at least some context.