Diary of Lisa Taylor, reluctantly 42 (and a half)

Or.. 'f.ck me I'm forty.. two.. and a half', though can look 38 on a - not so deluded - good day. Or 'How to reconcile a well experienced mind trapped in a still - but for how long? – youthful body.' Don't have the 30somethings angst/problems, neither have the resigned (?) ageing baby-boomers in safe family territory outlook yet. Here's how I cope, one day all sexy women will get old... but never invisible. © Lisa Taylor 2005/6/7/8/9. Jeez.. so much for the 42 and-a-half delusion

Friday, February 20, 2009

14 February - Semantics

I emailed someone at work and told her I wanted a sentence changed and that it was just a matter of semantics that bothered me. Then I thought I better be right and went to check the meaning to be sure and boy how much there is to read!

I know well 5 out of the following, I guess around another 3 or 4 and have no clue about the rest (I did not study greek btw so that doesn't help): homonymy, synomymy, polysemy, paronyms, hypernymy, hyponymy,meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, exocentricy, endocentricity, linguistic compounds.

And I didn't know about the 100 years long back and forth argument that the Indians had about. words as indicators and not carriers of meaning. Never ever heard of vyakarana trdtition.
As for all the philosophers and theorists of words mentioned, approx 40, I truly only know very, very few, like, er... 3 and I could not reel off their theories, but just about place them in the correct part of a century. It made for a great half hour marvelling at how much I'd have loved to study this shit. But then it would have to be all I know as my head would explode.

I then read an article/caption on some photo by Wim Wenders who talks about his inspirations and I did better here, I recognise/know a few of these people's work, Salgao and so on. But it was equally depressing.

You just have to accept you'll never know diddly squat out of your main areas of interest or job that provides your livelihood and if you're not obsessive really there aren't enough hours in the day or night to delve into much else unless you're a bloke in which case you may just about manage as you're not dealing with laundry/shopping for food/cleaning/cooking/house admin/social life for all family organising/holidays sorting out etc etc. Yep, I still have a downer on how throught he centuries men who are not out toiling fields have more contemplative hours in the day than women. I even forgot child rearing above. How could I? Well I did because that was my main reason for the no motherhood decision. I did want to have some hours in the day.

But i should be talking Valentine stuff right? Well semantics are here too. What constitutes the meaning of Valentine, when did it even enter the lexicon and are there any Valentine deniers etc etc.

I'll have a good time. We've moved on from the first year when a certain someone was so utterly nervous and backward looking that to gain time he delved into his record collection and dared to play an Art Ensemble of Chicago record to me fuming on the sofa in my heightened sexual expectation status. Bless. Love him for that. In retrospect it may have been a deliberate test. I handled it well and didn't march over to hi fi all aggressive stance and broke the cd in two.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home