Topics Language

Question What is the difference between a word having two meanings and a word that has an "alternative" meaning? For intance, is MOUSE a word that has two meanings (first meaning: "a small rodent of a species found all over the world that has a brown or greyish-brown coat and a long mostly hairless tail"; second meaning: "a hand-held device for working with a computer by controlling a pointer on the screen") or does it have only one meaning ("either a small rodent of ..... or a hand-held device for ....")?

Accepted:
December 29, 2011

Comments

Interesting question. But I'm wondering what rides on the answer. And what is connected to the question. Of course, we begin by wanting to distinguish the meanings of the two relevant clauses you give ("small rodent," v. "hand-held device"). So, separately, you obviously hold that there are two meanings in play. Now in logic it may be true that, strictly speaking, the proposition "P or Q" is a distinct proposition from either of its disjuncts, and can happily count as a "single" proposition -- but we also recognize that it is compositional, composed of parts, so we can think of it as one compound proposition or as a disjunction of two simpler propositions. But these are perfectly consistent with each other, so we can happily accept both -- it is both one compound, and a disjunction of two simpler, proposition(s). No need to choose! Why not just say the same with respect to your example? In any case you can raise the same question even of the component meanings in your example - your 'rodent' version is implicitly a disjunction too, as is, probably, ultimately, the 'hand-held' example .....