What's up with the dictionary?

Factual Questions
1

I posed this to Cecil and was directed here.

I remember grade school vocabulary tests where we were reasonably enjoined from using a form of the word to be defined in the definition. This gets me thinking.

Suppose one were to attempt to compile a dictionary from scratch, that is to start with a “complete” alphabetized list of undefined words (complete in the sense that all words in the definitions-to-be are in the list). Where would you begin? No arrangement of yet to be defined words placed after the word to be defined gives definition to it. It would seem there is no way to start a dictionary without making a few assumptions. The upshot , evidently, is that all words are ultimately defined in terms of themselves and the dictionary, rather than being a repository of meaning, is a grand tautology.

Each one of us has constructed from scratch a personal and unique lexicon which we call our native tongue because some of our fellow natives happened to have used the same words in composing theirs. However, each was developed from and within a personal context, a context which while it may have been superficially shared with parents, siblings and peers, is entirely unique and totally subjective. In other words, I bring to every conversation or text any meaning it might have for me. So much for “literal” interpretations.

Language has obvious value in commerce because commercial categories are both vague enough and well enough defined for the purpose. Just about everyone knows the difference between a tire and a pumpkin. Even so, it is always possible to be surprised at what another calls a tire or a pumpkin for that matter. But words standing for abstract concepts like “fairness”, “God” and “democracy” seem to have as many meanings as there are people.

All this to say, there are 6+ billion languages (and religions I might add) walking the planet. I suspect this is generally left unremarked for political reasons. If our basic individuality was fully acknowledged, the illusion of we/they would have no traction and the idea of political parties and armies would be seen as ridiculous.

What do you think?

Alex in Colorado

2

Obviously a dictionary has to use words to define words. Therefore all definitions are circular, there are no predefined meta-words that are used to define the rest of the words.

3

Have you read The Professor and the Madman? It may provide some insight.

4

Similarly, the idea of blue vs green:

5

Your radical ideas about linguistics have already occurred to others. Specifically, you’re talking about the notion of the idiolect, which is “the language or speech pattern of one individual at a specific period of life.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a long entry on the subject, despite its not being an encyclopedia of philology. (Whatever happened to that discipline? It used to be all the rage. It would be very useful to have a philologist in this thread, I can tell you that much.)

As a side note, The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology is now going to be taking up way too much of my time from now on.

6

Thanks for your replies.

An idiolect, as I understand it, is a personal subset of a larger common language AND as far as it goes implies a one-to-one correspondence with that common language. It is my thought that given the circularity of both, such a correspondence is meaningless and offers only the illusion of communication.

7

But if all we have is the illusion of communication, why did you bother telling us that communication is only an illusion? If you really believed it you wouldn’t bother saying it.

8

Why?. Too much time on my hands and not enough life, I suppose. I was just sayin’. :wink:

9

Your posting is both profound and clichéd, in that it is the deepest question in language and one that has been the subject of thought by everyone who thinks about language.

Every writer has to contend with this problem with every stroke of the keyboard. If you read more than the barest handful of threads on the Dope you will come across the seemingly impassible barriers between the way one person uses a word and the way another insists it should be.

Translators have the worst deal. Every single word they tackle must be examined for primary meaning, secondary meanings, contextual clues, and cultural idiosyncrasies.

Yet the problem is mostly solvable. It must be. We do talk to one another with comprehension. Written communication is understandable. Instructions can be followed. The world stumbles on without mass killings through frustration. Individual examples of butting heads abound, but they are resolved, even if only by ignoring the other.

Language is therefore much more flexible than you give it credit for. It is so flexible that even deliberate attempts to stretch meaning as far as humanly possible - James Joyce at his most Joycean, for example - can be appreciated by others, even though it is little more than personal experience expressed in punning code.

That’s why dictionaries are possible. All language starts with the spoken language. Written language comes after, an attempt to codify, even to freeze the sliding shifts of meaning and usage, which are quite different from definitions. Writers of dictionaries do not even try to pluck meaning out of speech. They all, uniformly, start with the written language. By taking five or ten or twenty examples of the use of a word they try to codify the code, teasing out a definition. The definition is not something that is intended to stand for all time as a separate and equal substitute for the word. It is designed to help you understand the previously used example of that word’s usage.

Fortuitously, most language is iterative. We hear and read the language as it already used and strive to learn to use it in a way so similar that it can be encompassed by all the others who have that experience. This works the vast majority of the time. The remainder provides us with the wealth of new words, new meanings, and new usages that comprise a living language. Oddly, and amazingly, we have little trouble picking up most of this newness. Context, definition, and repetition all serve as learning tools. We learn and relearn language constantly every day of our lives, as long as we are taking in words.

Dismissing this as illusion is a possible philosophical stance, but ultimately one that gets you nowhere. It’s similar to the other stances that claim reality to be an illusion. “I can only rely on my limited senses. How do I know that others with their senses have the same world?” And on and on. There are many versions of this trope. One cannot disprove them, except in the sense that unless you are truly a madman you live your life just like everybody else does. You talk, you read, you communicate, and you don’t even think about it 99.9% of the time.

Saying that language is the “illusion of communication” is a dead end. It occurs to everyone, and some thinkers do try to explore it in greater depth. Alfred Korzybski tried to take it furthest with his General Semantics. That had a vogue in its day, but is now almost completely dismissed. Rightly so, in my belief. In the end, he tried to make language rigid to fix meaning. That is diametrically opposed to the right path, which is to celebrate language’s slipperiness, even when it’s at its most frustrating.

10

You lost me at the word enjoined. :stuck_out_tongue:
Seriously, this problem is not unique to language. In mathematics you have to start with axioms or postulates to “bootstrap” the whole logical chain of reasoning.

11

Thanks for the link to General Semantics. Korzybski is my kind of guy. I lean toward a Zen approach which is, as I apply it (not always successfully as this thread indicates), the less you talk, the less you think; the less you think, the less confused you are.

12

So why don’t you just quit talking, quit posting to the SDMB, and quit thinking? Then you wouldn’t be confused at all.

13

Every dictionary presupposes that you know most of a certain list of words. It provides definitions to those words only because you might not know some of them. And different dictionaries exist depending on what words are assumed to be known. The best dictionaries are essentially compilations of different dictionaries in that sense.

A dictionary, like any other book, is completely useless to somebody who doesn’t know the language used in that book. Well, unless you have a dictionary that uses Simple English and happen to have a translation dictionary that can convert those to your native tongue.

14

Not all. The Oxford Picture Dictionary matches a word with a picture. As long as the picture is recognizable, the word is “defined” without other words.

15

adhay, there are those times (such as having the opportunity to read a thoughtful response from Exapno Mapcase) when the effort to overcome our separateness is worth the time.

16

The existence of archetypes tells us that we are not born tabula rasa, and that certain images and concepts are inherent in the structure and operating system of the human brain. According to anthropologist Julian Jaynes, it is no coincidence that we use words to communicate with each other; words were, he believed, developed by the human brain as the most efficient possible way of communicating between the two language centres of the brain prior to the rise of consciousness, effiency being necessary because the bundle of nerve fibres is only a few thousand neurons thick. It is on the basis of these few basic, universal, archetypal, Platonic ideals that we can construct the rest of our language.

17

Indeed, within forty years we will transcend mere humanity and our pathetic three-dimensional world and transform ourselves into infinite-dimensional creatures.

Hey, I believe this the appropriate response to all of SmashTheState’s posts about Julian Jaynes’s theories.

18

Exceedingly well-said, and like so many of the posts here on SDMB, worthy of a presence beyond a transient thread.

I would add one more comment to the OP’s musing. It’s partially true that “Each one of us has constructed from scratch a personal and unique lexicon which we call our native tongue because some of our fellow natives happened to have used the same words in composing theirs.” Our usage is personal but it’s not unique. If it were unique, no one would understand us. And it is not true that all speakers have–or should have–equivalent weight in defining the best usage.

The folks who attempt to codify language into the dictionary are experts. A more politically acceptable term might be “students of the language” but such euphemisms are simply for the sake of modesty. The language experts aren’t perfect; they don’t even represent themselves as Absolute Authority. But neither are they interested in their “personal” lexicon. They are interested in understanding the collective lexcion–the common meanings and usages. (And, at least in years past, the common meanings and usages of educated and/or expert users, particularly where definitions are presented as Standard Usage.)

An obvious tension arises here. We polloi don’t study the dictionary and then use language; we use language and occasionally reference the dictionary to see if we are using it properly, or to look up a meaning for a term new to us. As such, we common folk do drive standards rather than follow them, and we do have the power to change the dictionary, so to speak. There is some sense in which language experts are driven to accept a pooling of previously-ignorant usage as currently-acceptable usage. Nevertheless we commoners don’t have absolute authority either, since an entirely “personal” language is useless for communication. So the iterative process between experts attempting to standardize usage and incompetents (well…less expert users, anyway) actually using it creates a living language that simultaneously suffers from the meaning loss which occurs with this evolution, and improved communication which results from expanded meanings when language is allowed to evolve.

What’s up with the dictionary? The dictionary slows down the evolution of language so that more accurate communication can be maintained. That has a profound value. Awesome, even. It also serves to separate the educated from the uneducated, and not necessarily for pejorative reasons. While we may defend our right to under-educated usage, totally personal usage unfettered by the dictionary is also known as babbling.

Word.

19

Samuel Johnson: This book, sir, contains every word in our English language.

Blackadder: Every single one, sir?

Samuel Johnson: Every single one, sir.

Blackadder: Oh. Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the doctor my most enthusiastic…contrafibularities.

20

The “easy” answer is that dictionaries don’t (and can’t) exist in a vacuum. Language is learned elsewhere, and a dictionary can then be an excellent tool to help further one’s proficiency in the language.

What the OP describes is essentially akin to handing someone a dictionary in a foreign language of which that person has absolutely no knowledge. Obviously, the definitions would be incomprehensible. Looking up the words in the definitions would be pointless, as those definitions would be incomprehensible as well. I don’t find this to be an existential dilemma; it just means I don’t know Swahili.

But teach me a little Swahili, and that dictionary will allow me to learn a lot of it.