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From The Stuff of Thought, Chapter 6 “What’s in a Name?”:
“‘Surely a person couldn’t be said to know the meaning of cat unless she knew that a cat was an animal, right?’ But suppose scientists made an amazing discovery: cats are really daleks, the mutated descendatans of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, a ruthless race bent on universal conquest and domination, who travel around in mechanical casings cleverly disguised as animals. Would we say that there is not such thing as a cat, since to our previous beliefs, cats aren’t animals?"
*lol* Steven Pinker is a Whovian! He evens defines it later on in a description of how to make new words:
What a dork. Linguists, they are my people. I got so distracted by the bit about daleks that I had to read the paragraph twice; the first time I lost the argument cause I was laughing. (It’s about how people mentally represent the meanings of words.) But on from the giggling and onto the rest of the book…
It’s a good read, particularly if you’re interested in linguistics. Well, really, despite the fact that Pinker’s books are basically pop-linguistics—didn’t know that existed?—it still helps to know something about the discipline. For instance, he spend the entire second chapter creating verb classes based on semantic roles, which is relevant to later arguments but would be pretty dense for someone with no linguistics experience.
The books subtitle is Language as a Window into Human Nature, and in it, Pinker sets out to shows ways that language enlightens human mental processes. I thought the second half of the book, in which he addresses metaphor in speech (“The Metaphor Metaphor”), naming (“What’s in a Name?”), swearing (“The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”), and indirect speech (“Games People Play”). Speaking of the chapter on swearing: if they put those parental advisory stickers on books, this book would have one, no questions.
The Stuff of Thought was a good non-fiction read both because of the interesting content and relatively easy to understand and humourous style. And because of the daleks. :D
“‘Surely a person couldn’t be said to know the meaning of cat unless she knew that a cat was an animal, right?’ But suppose scientists made an amazing discovery: cats are really daleks, the mutated descendatans of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, a ruthless race bent on universal conquest and domination, who travel around in mechanical casings cleverly disguised as animals. Would we say that there is not such thing as a cat, since to our previous beliefs, cats aren’t animals?"
*lol* Steven Pinker is a Whovian! He evens defines it later on in a description of how to make new words:
- "Suffixing: Whovian, 'a fan of the British science fiction series Doctor Who.'"
What a dork. Linguists, they are my people. I got so distracted by the bit about daleks that I had to read the paragraph twice; the first time I lost the argument cause I was laughing. (It’s about how people mentally represent the meanings of words.) But on from the giggling and onto the rest of the book…
It’s a good read, particularly if you’re interested in linguistics. Well, really, despite the fact that Pinker’s books are basically pop-linguistics—didn’t know that existed?—it still helps to know something about the discipline. For instance, he spend the entire second chapter creating verb classes based on semantic roles, which is relevant to later arguments but would be pretty dense for someone with no linguistics experience.
The books subtitle is Language as a Window into Human Nature, and in it, Pinker sets out to shows ways that language enlightens human mental processes. I thought the second half of the book, in which he addresses metaphor in speech (“The Metaphor Metaphor”), naming (“What’s in a Name?”), swearing (“The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”), and indirect speech (“Games People Play”). Speaking of the chapter on swearing: if they put those parental advisory stickers on books, this book would have one, no questions.
The Stuff of Thought was a good non-fiction read both because of the interesting content and relatively easy to understand and humourous style. And because of the daleks. :D
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