John & Craig,
I have not been tracking this entire conversation, but it seems I
have dipped into it at the right point. I am interested in how
people have empirically tested the presence of abstractions as a
phenomena in our world. Could you say more?
I am glad to see this conversation is going somewhere exciting,
Gregg
On Dec 13, 2010, at 8:38 AM, John Chorazy wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Craig Hancock
> "I agree that "person, place, or thing" is harmfully simplistic. Do
> you
> simply ignore semantic definition or do you work on a more
> nuanced one? If we grant something the status of "thing" is there a
> cognitive dimension to that?"
>
> Being somewhat elusive, abstract nouns have never been very popular
> as objects of linguistic research. English Abstract Nouns as
> Conceptual Shells fills this long-standing gap in English and general
> linguistics. Based on a systematic analysis of a very large corpus,
> it introduces a conceptual and terminological framework for the
> linguistic description of abstract nouns [...] Semantic, pragmatic,
> rhetorical, textual and cognitive functions of abstract nouns are
> discussed, always with reference to the empirical observation and
> statistical analysis of the corpus data. In this way, a link
> between the corpus method and functional and cognitive theories of
> language is
> established. Caglayan annotated bibliography on Schmid, H.J
> "English Abstract Nouns as Conceptual Shells" (2000).
>
> Craig - my students are pretty used to defining a noun as not a
> name of something, but a sign or symbol of the thing itself.
> "Craig" is a name and label used as an identifier, but Craig the
> person is the noun. So I suppose that "proper" nouns are classified
> as those names of the people they label. Students also know that
> "love," albeit an abstraction, is identifiable as a noun too...
> they recognize its empirically tested presence as a phenomena in
> our world (your cognitive dimension mentioned above). I'm surprised
> that the definitions of nouns mentioned so far haven't included
> this discussion, but based on Schmid I guess this is an elusive
> concept for some reason?
>
> Hope you are all doing well.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
> John Chorazy
> English III Academy, Honors, and Academic
> Pequannock Township High School
>
> Nulla dies sine linea.
>
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