On Sat, 24 May 1997, Norman Carlson wrote:
>
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>
> IS our "sun" unique? My dictionary seems to suggest not.
 
For most intents and purposes of everday language, our sun is unique; and
for many centuries, it was unique, as humans did not realize that the sun
was just another star, and that stars are just all other suns. Imagine
your reaction if someone were to look up as sunshine broke through clouds
and say, 'Here comes a sun!' Here, use of the indefinite article actually
implies a _different_ sun from the one we all know and bask in for our
life-giving sustenance, and I think such an utterance would not be
accepted as expected or normal (maybe jocular or psychotic, or overly
nitpicky, if the utterer is an astronomer). This comes from our particular
knowledge of our particular world, which informs (some say creates) the
semantics of our language.
>
> However, my real point is this proposition, based on the responses to
> the "a tiger/the tiger" query:
>
> The combination "a phoenix" would ALWAYS be "ungrammatical," since there
> is only one of it!
 
Well, but we can create an instant metaphor by calling someone 'a phoenix
rising from the ashes'. This is grammatical, is it not? Not to mention
the metonymic polsyemy of 'phoenix', which includes pictorial
representations of the mythical creature, such as the little copper
phoenix on my keyring. I could easily stamp out five phoenixes from a
sheet of metal.
 
My point in both of these comments is to highlight the fact that meaning
in language comes from the sum total of our cultural knowledge,
adjusted to fit everyday customs and habits, the immediate situation, and
certain scientific untruths that we all continue to honor with language
(by Norman's logic, we should all stop saying that the sun comes up and
goes down, since in reality it does neither). Also, we use metaphor and
metonymy constantly as devices for extending the meaning of words and
expressions; these are everyday devices, not just literary ones. And they
have consequences for deciding whether a particular expression is
grammatical or not.
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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