Semantics - Tumblr Posts

Hmmm, this is a funny one to think about…

Look. I’d say a door is actually much the same as a switch in this regard weirdly enough. Because a switch’s purpose isn’t to block electricity or to let it flow — otherwise you wouldn’t use a switch! You’d have either a gap or just a wire there.

No, a switch’s purpose is also to do both, just like a door. And a switch is considered ‘off’ when it is open as it doesn’t allow passage. So by the same logic a door must be considered ‘off’ when open! And ‘on’ when closed. I rest my case

This is causing a bit of a stir on Twitter but:

if we consider a door to be a kind of mechanical device, there must be an on state and an off state.

so.

Did I have a good time? Well, yes. But did I have a rollicking good time? I think not.

I don't know which makes me happier, the beautiful display of linguistic instinct regarding the semantic sensitivities of context (lexical and human), or the recognition of what I believe to be one of the biggest plagues on modern human thought: the inability to allow other people a different identity and point of view.

Lmao you’re an adult, you shouldn’t be using the word squick. Use trigger. Use your grown up adult words to explain how you feel instead of leaning on a cutesy uwu term that no one outside of tumblr uses. It’s embarrassing.

Idek if this is serious or ironic honestly

PhD in colour term semantics here. A lot of things can influence the semantic shift of a term, especially a colour term since these are among the most volatile and easily mouldable concepts in the human language it seems. Every term, even new, is practically immediately subjected to modification by all the nuances of colour (saturation, luminosity, reflection, etc.), quite apart from social influence. In 1976 Kelly & Judd (accessible on archive.org) compiled a dictionary of colour terms (based on the Munsell system) that they gathered from various sources. Like most all colour terms there are dozens of variations: Opal Mauve, Mello-Mauve, Mauve Blush, Mauve Taupe, Mauve Wine, Orchid Mauve, Pastel Mauve, Mauve Decade, et cetera et cetera, ranging from "moderate violet" to "greyish purplish red". Personally, my view of mauve is 'light violet', around or a bit lighter than the original, though when I dared to voice this view on Threads I was "corrected" (vehemently! 🤣) by someone, completely missing my point that the semantics of colour terms are, apart from the very core of each concept, extremely personal and multi-faceted. But according to them, this is mauve:

To me this is best described as sludge red (based on the two that I see as the most saturated, fourth and fifth from the right in the middle row)😝How these people came to the conclusion that this is mauve I do not know, but I am actually quite tempted to try to figure it out 😝 Then again, my data from North American and UK English do not bode well for the future of the concept of [MAUVE] 😅 US (one nomination each):

UK (one nomination each)

FWIW, "mauve" was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.

It was an eye-popping magenta purple

HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey ...

...which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.

(This dress is labeled "mauve" as it is the color the above becomes after fading).

They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.

Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.

Is there any sort of general theory of semantic shift that has widespread acceptance? Like I've noticed a lot of words in Ancient Greek philosophy that mean "mind" or "soul" usually meant "life" or breath" originally, technical words in logic or rhetoric often take on more mystical meanings over time, etc.

But is there a widely agreed upon predictive theory of how words typically evolve in meaning that lets us infer their prior (or later) meanings based on current ones? Or is it just descriptive, i.e. we know how these words all changed in similar ways so we put them in the "changed like this" category.

No, there's no such predictive theory. I would classify semantic change in the "very poorly understood" camp. The best we've got is a bunch of terms to describe common sorts of semantic shifts (metanymy, amelioration, etc.).

I say this a lot, but it's also important to remember that theories don't need to be predictive of future facts about the world to be scientific, they merely need to be predictive of future observation. So, e.g., paleontology can't predict what new types of organisms will evolve, but it can make predictive theories about dinosaur anatomy that can be tested against future observation (newly dug up fossils). Likewise, historical linguistics will probably never be able to predict language change, but it can make predictions that can be tested against future observations about language.

But as far as semantic change goes, there isn't even one of those, as far as I know.

cause i think there’s a big difference. first, you don’t have to be in love to be happy. But you have to be happy to be in love with someone. Or at least feel happy around them. If you don’t feel happy, most of the time, around people you love, then who are you supposed to feel happiness with?

second, maybe when we figure out that we’re not so in love anymore, the fear of being out of love, and losing love, or losing that warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart trumps our rational mind telling us that we’re not happy anymore. not as we were before, anyways.

there could always be the possibility that this falling in and out of love thing is just a means of defining the standard of how happiness is felt in a connection between two people, or a standard of how much you can love me, and how much i can bear it when you can’t.