Source for the semantic range of ...

Jim West jwest at Highland.Net
Fri Aug 27 07:44:56 EDT 1999


At 06:38 AM 8/27/99 -0500, you wrote:
>My Greek prof always told me,
>"a text with out a context is a pretext."

Your prof was correct.  Semantic domains, etymology, and all those little
tidbits of trivia are interesting- but not useful in the final analysis
because words gain meaning only from context.  Words dont HAVE meaning, the
OBTAIN meaning by their contextual usage.  To isolate a word and assign it
meaning is futile.  Even dictionaries do not attempt this.  Instead, they
use the word in question in a sentence so that its meaning is obtained by
its context.

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- jwest at highland.net
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest




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