How's that? Unless you're a committed reductionist, the two words relate to
significantly different methods of agreeing meaning. You could take the
word 'Calculus' to mean very different things. Pure mathemeticians would
like one agreed meaning prescribed (agreed upon and unchanging) while others
who use the word in a less rigid sense create alternative meanings which any
linguist would be obliged to describe. Language is thankfully fluid but
prescribe doesn't mean the same as describe, in my limited understanding of
things.
-----Original Message-----
From: elephant [mailto:moqelephant@lineone.net]
Sent: 20 May 2001 09:40
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD "friends"
To describe is to prescribe and to prescribe is to describe.
From: "Bell, Tim" <tim.bell@musicsales.co.uk>
Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 12:00:09 +0100
To: "'moq_discuss@moq.org'" <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Subject: RE: MD "friends"
I always thought Platonic was used because we all know he was a philosopher,
therefore a thinker, therefore this is love which relates to the head more
than any other part of the body. In other words - it's a get-out clause
when someone just wants to be friends. As someone who doesn't know Plato
too well it's easy to come to that conclusion so I guess this one goes back
to the old debate on defining languages - do we 'prescribe' correct usage,
or 'describe' actual usage.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:17 BST