Moje notatki z książki Stevena Pinkera The Stuff of Thought.
The importance of semantics can sometimes get an exact value, namely 3.5 billion dollars. Larry Silverstein had the insurance of the World Trade Center buildings for 3.5 billion dollars per event. If the attack was two events then he could get 7 billion, otherwise only 3.5.
Showing ads in google as a reaction to search with plural nouns cost much more than with singular.
Common denotation with different connotations: firm, obstinate, pigheaded; slim, thin, scrawny; perfectionist, anal, control freak; exploring sexuality, promiscuous, slut. Tell him to be fruitful and multiply but not in those words.
“Conceptual semantics – the language of thought – must be distinct from language itself, or we would have nothing to go on when we debate what our words mean.” But some believe that there is no cognitive meaning only the one that the context creates. consider the example of George Costanza when he finally understands: coffee means sex! Yet others believe that there is no human thinking without language. Just compare people who were brought up without language. Or how difficult it is to bring into consciousness some basics of a language, e.g. tense. Susan Smith, who had drowned her two sons claimed in an interview that they had been kidnapped, by which she incriminated herself: “My children needed me, wanted me and now I can’t help them” Her use of past tense betrayed her knowledge that they were already dead.
The etymology of spam: a sketch from Monty Python\s Flying Circus when a waitress says what is available: bacon spam tomato and spam … spam, spam or Lobster Thermidor … Hackers in late 1980s used “spam” as a verb for flooding newsgroups with identical messages.
