Semantics and Context

[fluffyhamster]

Hmm coffeedcafe says that 'book' might mean 'to run really fast' - the part of speech is thus a verb, not a noun.

This would seem similar to 'to clock' (a fast time, "it"): Wow, you were really clocking it then!

[metal56]

How many different contexts for this sentence can you think of:

Have you finished your book?

I can think of two:

1) Someone owns a copy of a given book and I want to know if they've finished reading it.

2) I'm talking to an author, maybe at a *beep* party.

Can anyone add to this list? I want to see how many meanings of the sentence, and the word book, we can manage.

Have you finished your book?

Said to a child who continually and nervously gnaws at his/her schoolbook.

[coffeedecafe]

speaking english in proper dutch grammar could lead to "the horse raced the barn around'.
i think we have established that any old goat can finish a book, but what you got out of it is the question?
when you are the person writing the book, you might not consider it finished until you have devised a method of marketing it so that it is useful to the people or groups you intended to interact with while writing it.
some people have offered free sample chapters as a come-on, with a follow up offer for the ending- for a price. this could be paid for online, or through the mails at an address or p.o. box. [ and delivered as e-mail, word format, pdf, cd, or printed manuscript]. others have done a membership approach, where you buy the right to read or print from the library of the independent writers ongoing, growing materials for a small fee.
as i am also an unpublished writer i have thought some about this. thinking is all i have done so far other than 2 small offers posted as free encouragement links on a fibromyalgia site which may be up soon. i will receive nothing from this but the satisfaction that something i researched and wrote simply because it was interesting to me may now take a wider scope of use to others.
with these marketing techniques in mind, "have you finished the book has now entered the genre of cliff-hangers.
"the horse raced past the barn! suddenly the farmer realized that something had fallen. his eyes widened in disbelief and horror!
-that concludes our chapter. for more of the story contact......=

[woodcutter]

The most likely candidate to me is a book in the sense of the book that a bookmaker keeps. I don't really gamble enough to know if "have you finished the book?" is really a plausible question in context though. Perhaps they always add something extra, and say something like, "Ere, Paddy! Have you finished taking money for the book on whether Coffeedecafe will ever construct a normal English sentence yet?"

[coffeedecafe]

you might wish to copper that bet, wood cutter, because, as you know, i sometimes find that the rivers of my reason often flow in similar but independent streams leading others who do not follow succinctly, to accuse me of mere rambling-to which i, not wanting to cause unneccesary debate or torpitude, agree for the sake of peace. peace be with you. you can make book on that.

[coffeedecafe]

"the quick brown fox ran over the hill top." 'he was really booking!"

[fluffyhamster]

It seems as though the various shades of meaning of 'book' is a fave of Cruse: he discusses it along with knives, spoons, kitchen drawers and sinks in OUP's Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approches (eds Ravin and Leacock - do a search on Dave's, I've been dipping into this one for years!), or the CUP Cognitive Linguistics book that he co-authored with William Croft.

Basically, he says that the TOME and TEXT meanings of 'book' can occur simultaneously or in close proximity without any resulting zeugma: Did you enjoy the book? Yes, but the print was too small.