February 1987
1. “Mean” is an active verb. It signifies the intentional act of a person. It is appropriate to ask about any intentional act, “What do you mean (to do).” One of the mistakes of our civilization is to make “mean” a passive verb as regards both human action and “natural” events.
2. People “mean” through action, including language, to help others form correct associations of universals in the “others’” own minds.
3. False witness is knowingly or unknowingly to affirm a false association of universals or to negate a true association of universals.
4. Valid (honest, true) witness is affirming an association of universals or denying such an association on the basis of sufficient support.
5. People “mean” by using words, usually words in sentences. All meaning is pattern, type, shadow, paradigm. Example: The school is small. “The school” is a pattern: this thing which partakes of the pattern of being a collection of persons which includes those more learned and those less learned and where the more learned are assisting the less learned to learn more. “Small” means that the numbers of persons involved is fewer than one expects to find. “Is” means that one should add the two patterns into one to think of this school correctly.
6. Typical patterns of meaning:
- a. Persons, places, things, concepts: Nouns
- b. Partial patterns of persons, places, things, concepts: Adjectives
- c. Actions or states: Verbs
- d. Partial patterns of actions or states: Adverbs
- e. Pointers to patterns: Articles, pronouns, demonstrative adjectives
- f. Operators on patterns: Conjunctions
- g. Affirmation of conjoined pattern: Verb “to be”
- h. Prohibition of conjoined pattern: Negation
7. Sentence formation: All basic sentences are kernel sentences, having only one subject universal, one predicate universal, a copula affirming or denying the conjunction of the subject and predicate universals to form a new universal, plus the possibility of a pointer to the subject universal. Example: The school is small.
8. Complex sentences are simply grammatically felicitous concatenations of kernel sentences. Example: This aviation school has only one instructor. Constituent kernel sentences:
- a. This school is aviational.
- b. This aviation school is school-having-one-instructor.
- c. This aviation school having one instructor is school-having-only-one-instructor.
9. Meaning of sentences: Permutations and combinations of the basic stock meanings in a person’s mind.
10. Metaphor: conjoining a universal with a target universal in a novel way, suggesting the result to be a more or less permanent description.
- Dead metaphor: customary conjunction. Apt metaphor: combines reaction of surprise and appreciation of insight in receiver.
- Example: He is a crab.
11. Simile: conjoining one standard universal to another in a more or less temporary arrangement. Example: He walks like a crab.
12. Class identification: Conjoining a given universal with a genus universal. Example: He is an Amerindian.
13. Personal identification: seldom possible with words; better done by photographs, paintings, fingerprint patterns, etc.