Semantics of archetypes

[bradrn]

… it's hard to define "chair" in a way that excludes stools …

No it isn’t: ‘A chair is an item of furniture which is used for sitting on, fits one person, and has a back’.

I have a friend who has an ergonomic kneeling chair: there's a seat that's slightly tilted forward that you sit on, two lower pads raised off the ground that you put your knees on (such that you end up in a kneeling position, but raised off the ground), and no back...I'm pretty sure it's a chair, not so sure whether it's a stool.

Like this? I’d say that has a back — the slightly lower pad is the bottom of the chair, and the slightly higherpad is the back.

[Halian]

- Are marbles balls?

Yes.

- Is cereal a soup?

No.

Does a glass house have windows?

Yes.

Is an interior plant a type of decoration?

Yes.

Is a house a box?

No, but box-shaped houses do exist.

Is a prism-shaped, multi-floor office building a box?

No.

Is the surface of a body of water a mirror?

Only if still.

Is a stool a chair?

No; chairs must have backs.

Is a sword a knife?

No; knives are smaller.

Is a computer window a window?

Not in the sense of a building window.

Is a computer bug a bug?

No, thanks to semantic drift.

Is a computer program a program?

Yes.

Is Pluto a planet?

Yes, and I will die on this hill.

Is snowy weather a type of rain?

No; rain must be liquid.

Is Mecislau the greatest a-posteriori conlanger the ZBB ever saw?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is cedh audmanh the greatest conlanger the Akana games ever saw?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is H13 a crab?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was finlay a Hindu god?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was Nortaneous a magician?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is Linguoboy a sullen cat?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was Salmoneus a reptile?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was pthag at the right hand of the Father?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is WeepingElf a weeping elf?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was the Pole a pole?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was Radius Solis a ray of Sun, proceeding from his father Helios/Zontas?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was Torco a torco (a pothole) or a terco (a stubborn man)?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Was zompist in the den?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is picking up tiramisu like picking up tiramisù?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Shakespeare once said, ser, o no ser, esa es la pregunta. Am I the question?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Is an imp a goblin?

No.

Is a troll a goblin?

No.

Is Trump a goblin?

No.

Is Biden a goblin?

No.

Was what Willy Clinton had with Monica Lengüisky sexual relations?

Yes.

Was Jeffrey Epstein's death a suicide?

No.

Is book piracy piracy?

No.

Is book piracy theft?

No.

Is protecting your publishing company as an inherent part of the social aspect of the academic world for professors to progress or simply stay in their field, so that even though an academic's research may be fully funded from public money, peer reviewers get paid nothing or what you could metaphorically call McDonald's coupons, and little or none of the profits of the publication ever get to reach her or him, or her or his department, all in established legality, theft?

Yes.

Is a 500-page-long reference grammar of a natlang a bible?

Yes.

Is Tim Converse and Joyce Park's PHP Bible (1st ed., 2000) a bible?

Yes.

Is a bible a manual for one's life?

No.

Is a church a temple?

Yes.

Is an unaltered forested corner where a coven of Wiccans regularly meet to pray and sing a shrine?

No.

Is a boddhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism a god?

No.

Is a religion where at least one god exists but no such being ever does anything and are therefore not worth thinking about, like Deism or Epicureanism, a theistic religion?

Yes.

Is either of a monotheist or an oligotheist, denying the existence of most gods, an atheist?

No.

Is Western spiritual-but-not-religious Spirituality a religion?

No.

Is Western Buddhism atheism?

Yes.

Is a god a spirit?

Yes.

Is a god part of God?

No.

If, during Passover, an Orthodox Jewish family has properly taken care of removing all leaven inside, but on the fourth day they see a mouse nearby that may or may not have entered carrying a piece of leavened bread inside through a certain hole at the back, is it a family worth cutting off from Israel in accordance to Exodus 12:14-20?

Only if they don't take care to evict the mouse and its illicit goods.

If I'm directing a trolley bus going downwards at a violent speed and I have a choice between magically running over and killing baby Stalin on the left and baby Hitler on the right in the past in all other dimensions of the multiverse except this one, with no one ever able to believe me I have done this unless I tell them (after which they become 100% convinced) and while I'm in full awareness of this fact, is either decision I take a crime?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Alright then, here’s an interesting one: is a shipping crate a box?

Yes.

Is a sapient artificial general intelligence, possessed of humanlike personality, a person?

[priscianic]

No it isn’t: ‘A chair is an item of furniture which is used for sitting on, fits one person, and has a back’.

I have a friend who has an ergonomic kneeling chair: there's a seat that's slightly tilted forward that you sit on, two lower pads raised off the ground that you put your knees on (such that you end up in a kneeling position, but raised off the ground), and no back...I'm pretty sure it's a chair, not so sure whether it's a stool.

Like this? I’d say that has a back — the slightly lower pad is the bottom of the chair, and the slightly higherpad is the back.

Yep, exactly! But you sit on the higher part—that's where your butt goes. Not sure if I can sit on the back of a chair (at least, if you're sitting as intended), and I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with a chair where the seat is the back. (What is the "back" of a chair, anyways?)

[zompist]

… it's hard to define "chair" in a way that excludes stools …

No it isn’t: ‘A chair is an item of furniture which is used for sitting on, fits one person, and has a back’.

First, I was unclear, I should have said it's hard to do it without simply excluding stools. Which you've done, by adding "has a back".

This was Saussure's point, a century ago: words don't exist in splendid isolation; they are divisions of a semantic space and influence each other. "Stool" carves out some space from "chair". So do "sofa" and "bench", which is presumably why you add the "fits one person" thing. If we didn't have the words stool, sofa, bench then there would be no need for these carve-outs.

Second, as priscianic says, there are kneeling chairs; there are also bath chairs with no back, and some things are even sold as backless chairs.

Defining things has a place in language, mostly for technical terms. But chairs aren't one. Children don't learn what a chair is by reading your definition.

[bradrn]

… it's hard to define "chair" in a way that excludes stools …

No it isn’t: ‘A chair is an item of furniture which is used for sitting on, fits one person, and has a back’.

First, I was unclear, I should have said it's hard to do it without simply excluding stools. Which you've done, by adding "has a back".

This was Saussure's point, a century ago: words don't exist in splendid isolation; they are divisions of a semantic space and influence each other. "Stool" carves out some space from "chair". So do "sofa" and "bench", which is presumably why you add the "fits one person" thing. If we didn't have the words stool, sofa, bench then there would be no need for these carve-outs.

Good point — I didn’t realise that was what you were saying.

Second, as priscianic says, there are kneeling chairs; there are also bath chairs with no back, and some things are even sold as backless chairs.

I’m not sure what a bath chair is, but from what I could find online it doesn’t look like a chair to me. And as for that ‘backless chair’ thing, I certainly wouldn’t call that a ‘chair’. (I’m not sure what I would call it, actually, but it’s definitely not a ‘chair’ for me.)

Defining things has a place in language, mostly for technical terms. But chairs aren't one. Children don't learn what a chair is by reading your definition.

So? That doesn’t mean it has no definition. (There are some things which do appear to be nearly impossible to define, like ‘game’, ‘God’ or ‘nature’, but ‘chair’ isn’t one of them.)

[aporaporimos]

Is a church a temple?

Yes (pace Zompist).

Is a god a spirit?

A god is a spirit and, without the articles, God is spirit.

[Raphael]

Is a sword a knife?

Only if you ignore the functions of things. Neither of these things is just "a thing that cuts". What it cuts is important.

(I'd also note that cultures that actually use edged weapons are likely to have several terms, creating a stool/chair situation. They'd likely be amazed at a time traveler who called them all swords.)

Hm - is a saber a sword?

[finlay]

Is a sword a knife?

Only if you ignore the functions of things. Neither of these things is just "a thing that cuts". What it cuts is important.

(I'd also note that cultures that actually use edged weapons are likely to have several terms, creating a stool/chair situation. They'd likely be amazed at a time traveler who called them all swords.)

Hm - is a saber a sword?

A saber is a sword but not all swords are sabers

[KathTheDragon]

Is a khopesh a sword?

[alice]

If you eat cereal and drink soup, how can cereal be a soup? We should be told!

[Linguoboy]

If you eat cereal and drink soup, how can cereal be a soup? We should be told!

I don't normally "drink" soup unless it's miso soup. I do sometimes drink down the remaining broth in the bowel after finishing all the solid parts, but I do that with cold cereal, too.

Speaking of cereal, "oatmeal" was, for me, in a separate category of Breakfast Foods, as was "Cream of Wheat" (a brand of farina). Those were the only hot cereals we had growing up.

"Porridge" was, for me, quite literally the stuff of fairy tales, being a word I knew only from the story of the Three Bears. Even though I later encountered it in the literature of Ireland and the UK, it remained essentially a fictional food (like Turkish delight is for most USAmericans). That changed when I met my late husband, who called oatmeal "porridge", which led to the formation of a category of hot cereals called "porridge" of which oatmeal was only the most common example. I consider congee/jook a type of "porridge" even when not consumed for breakfast.

"Temple" was strongly associated with non-Abrahamic religions for me growing up, despite its importance in the Bible. (Roman Catholicism just doesn't seem to dwell on the period of the First Temple much at all compared to Jews or most Protestants.) I found it odd that there was a college called "Temple University" and jarring when Jewish friends talked about going to "temple" rather than "synagogue" or "shul". I still think of "temple", "church", "synagogue", "gurdwara", and "mosque" as first-order divisions of the category of "places/houses of worship".

[masako]

Simmer down, this is literally the topic of the thread. That things aren't so easy to define

Yes, Ma'am.

Not all windows open, though.

Now, that depends on how hard you hit them, doesn't it.

[KathTheDragon]

Not all windows open, though.

Now, that depends on how hard you hit them, doesn't it.

I'm not sure that should count as "opening"

[bradrn]

If you eat cereal and drink soup, how can cereal be a soup? We should be told!

I don't normally "drink" soup unless it's miso soup. I do sometimes drink down the remaining broth in the bowel after finishing all the solid parts, but I do that with cold cereal, too.

Interesting! Next question: do you eat or drink soup? (I’m not actually sure how I would answer this.)

"Porridge" was, for me, quite literally the stuff of fairy tales, being a word I knew only from the story of the Three Bears. Even though I later encountered it in the literature of Ireland and the UK, it remained essentially a fictional food (like Turkish delight is for most USAmericans). That changed when I met my late husband, who called oatmeal "porridge", which led to the formation of a category of hot cereals called "porridge" of which oatmeal was only the most common example. I consider congee/jook a type of "porridge" even when not consumed for breakfast.

My father (and sometimes mother) often have oatmeal porridge for breakfast, so I always just assumed that porridge was a synonym for oatmeal. I had no idea that porridge was a category rather than just one specific type of breakfast!

"Temple" was strongly associated with non-Abrahamic religions for me growing up, despite its importance in the Bible. (Roman Catholicism just doesn't seem to dwell on the period of the First Temple much at all compared to Jews or most Protestants.) I found it odd that there was a college called "Temple University" and jarring when Jewish friends talked about going to "temple" rather than "synagogue" or "shul". I still think of "temple", "church", "synagogue", "gurdwara", and "mosque" as first-order divisions of the category of "places/houses of worship".

I think ‘temple’ is more of a Reform Judaism thing — I find it pretty jarring as well to hear a synagogue being called a ‘temple’. The people I know universally call it a ‘shul’, and I’ll talk about ‘synagogues’ when talking to non-Jews, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘temple’ unless I’m talking about a synagogue with the word in its name (e.g. ‘Temple Emannuel’).

[aporaporimos]

"Temple" was strongly associated with non-Abrahamic religions for me growing up, despite its importance in the Bible. (Roman Catholicism just doesn't seem to dwell on the period of the First Temple much at all compared to Jews or most Protestants.) I found it odd that there was a college called "Temple University" and jarring when Jewish friends talked about going to "temple" rather than "synagogue" or "shul". I still think of "temple", "church", "synagogue", "gurdwara", and "mosque" as first-order divisions of the category of "places/houses of worship".

Huh; I think the reason I think of a church as a kind of temple is because of my familiarity with Catholicism; Catholic tradition sees churches as successors of the original temple in Jerusalem, and church architecture is in some ways modeled on the layout of the temple. I wouldn't refer to a church as a "temple" in most normal cases, but a sentence like "a church is a temple of God" is totally fine to me.

I grew up near a Reform Jewish temple and only much later discovered that this is a controversial among different Jewish groups—as I understand it, Orthodox Jews expect the eventual reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem and in the meantime distinguish sharply between it and the houses of worship that exist now.

[Moose-tache]

I'm sure this came up the last time someone asked if a hot dog is a sandwich. The fact is, semantics in humans terms, that is, the way that people actually do words, is not a branching tree, where everything on one branch must also belong to each parent branch above. Sometimes this works (a "chicken" is a "bird" is an "animal"). Sometimes it doesn't (my grandmother, who grew up on a farm, would laugh at someone who suggested that a rooster is a type of chicken, even though she has no other generic term for the species).

If some noun technically falls within the prototypical definition of a category, it can still fail to be within that category. This is because of two things. First, categories are usually built from the ground up, not from the top down. We don't know what a house is because we sat down one day to think of a universal definition. Our understanding of the term house derived from being shown examples of houses as children. Someone who has never seen a Modernist cube might find it as unfit to be called "house" as you or I might find a cave or a tent. The same goes for "chair," "soup," and "sandwich." The second reason is that individual items can be elevated out of a category. Marketeers know this, and try to push it whenever they want their products to stand out ("It's not a pizza joint; it's Scapparelli's!" which is clearly just a pizza joint). If someone invented hot dogs for the first time they might well think of them as a long skinny sandwich. But it's become its own thing over time that is thought of as a distinct item, even though dictionary definitions of "sandwich" might unconsciously describe hot dogs as well.

[masako]

Not all windows open, though.

Now, that depends on how hard you hit them, doesn't it.

I'm not sure that should count as "opening"

If the result of the action is no glass between the agent and the outside of what was the "window", is there really a difference?

[KathTheDragon]

If it does count, it's as far from the prototype as it can be. Imo opening a window implies some kind of hinge action, and more importantly the ability to close it again, notionally returning to the original closed state (in practice the window won't necessarily close perfectly).

[masako]

Hinge action?

So, what are these things in my house that slide up and down?

[bradrn]

If it does count, it's as far from the prototype as it can be. Imo opening a window implies some kind of hinge action, and more importantly the ability to close it again, notionally returning to the original closed state (in practice the window won't necessarily close perfectly).

Hinge action?

So, what are these things in my house that slide up and down?

I was going to suggest that non-violence could be a key part of ‘opening’, until I realised that there’s plenty of windows which require a good hard shove to open them…

As KathTheDragon mentioned, possibly a better criterion would be reversibility: once you’ve opened a window, it should be possible to close it again. That encompasses hinges and sliding windows, but not, say, sledgehammers.