Semantics and Context

[lolwhites]

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.

[Metamorfose]

Maybe someone wondering after a fit of anger looking at the "debris" on the floor.


Maybe one's asking whether they have completed their reservation at a hotel or restaurant (Can this be so?)

José

[lolwhites]

By the way, if anyone is wondering what the *beep* is in the original post, it's a general word for a pina colada or Long Island Iced Tea...

[revel]

Good morning all....

One would think, in this era of miracles like computer functioning, that cesure programs that are meant to keep the dirty words out of reach of even the most adult writers and readers in order to avoid hurting sensibilities would have a loop built in that would accept such words as "c*cktail", which as far as I know, doesn't mean anything else besides that mixed alcoholic beverage as lol points out. Who wrote "Great Expectations"? Why Charles *beep*. And knowing that the first four letters of that great man's name spell out a dirty word that refers to the male reproductive organ, I have to use an upsidedown exclamation point, D¡ckens, in order to fool the program. That d¡ck is in a certain context and the program has not been written to recognize that context, merely the chain of letters typed out.

Have you finished your book? for booking a room, I'd use the gerund instead of the noun, book is a bound set of papers while booking is something else.

If the two speakers were termites, then perhaps the understanding would be "Have you finished your meal?"

peace,
revel.

[lolwhites]

OK, I can see a basic meaning of finish starting to emerge, though book may be less clear. In my first example, and revel's, the book is a bound paper thing which probably has writing, pictures or both. In the second, the book the author may or may not have finished may well be a Word file on a hard drive.

Is there a basic meaning of book which covers both of these but excludes other Word files like CVs or letters? Isn't semantics wonderful!

[fluffyhamster]

Aren't we really just talking about the various stages that are involved in producing a readable book? If you just envisage the end product, I think that is what is meant by the noun 'book'.

[coffeedecafe]

i am reminded of the old story of the man who became despondent and drank varnish. "did he die?"; "well, yes but he had a lovely finish".

so maybe "did you finish you book?" could mean have you added the final touches to that lovely new rosewood cover?

also in canada i ran into some people who used the term 'book' to mean run really fast. in that case "did you finish your book" could mean have you had your morning excersize?

[lolwhites]

Aren't we really just talking about the various stages that are involved in producing a readable book? If you just envisage the end product, I think that is what is meant by the noun 'book'.

So you mean the essence of the term book isn't whether or not it's a finished product, but whether it has the potential to become one? Does it follow that the CVs, letters, memos, timetables etc on my hard drive are essentially potential CVs etc that become realised when I print them off?

Nice example there from coffeedecafe

[fluffyhamster]

Yes, that is what I mean.

With the CV, you still say 'CV' even if you are only 'Making a (new) one', 'Working on one', 'Revising it' etc.

It would be more than we would need to express or want to handle if we had a plethora of words to express what a "thing" is at various moments in a process in time (but note that in e.g. the publishing domain, they have found it useful to speak of 'drafts' etc). Vague, fuzzy, "fudging it" language (to a rabid semanticist) serves a very useful purpose!

[lolwhites]

One for you, coffeedecafe:

Q: What did the goat say when it ate the roll of film?
A: "I preferred the book."

[fluffyhamster]

Nothing for me, lol?!

[revel]

This thread has a promising start.

I've written three novels and several short story collections. I've never bothered to try to get them published, I'm a rather simple person and am overwhelmed by the publishing industry.

While scribbling those works in my own handwriting, I called them "novels" or "short stories", I never called them books. But I see fluff's point, if another author is not writing a novel but rather a book on, say, "How to Buy a House in Spain" then he/she would probably say "book", perhaps meaning the content rather than the final paper-thing we've already described. Hmmm, when I think about it, if I were to suddenly get smarter and wish to go through all the complications of publishing my work, I'd probably still say that I had published three novels and several etc... To say that I've written a book sounds either like I don't know what genre it is, or the other example, it's non-fiction.

peace,
revel.

[fluffyhamster]

Hmm, novels...they're a special kind of book, written by "special" people. Having two nouns ('book' and 'novel') isn't too much of a stretch mentally for most of us.

So, how many words are there exactly other than 'book', which we would use in preference to it, in order to make a necessary distinction? (I just thought, there are genres of novel e.g. thrillers).

[woodcutter]

I don't think there are any more. Nobody would say "Have you finished your book" in the coffeedecafe sense, they would add some kind of clarification.

(As they also would to 'the horse raced past the barn fell' and most of those 'garden path' sentences the experts love)

[fluffyhamster]

The horse raced past the barn fell.

The horse raced past the barn and fell.

The horse raced past the barn fell and the farmer had to get a new one.

(one= A copy of Lynn Truss's book)