Cognitive synonymy
Cognitive synonymy is a type of
usage employing this definition, synonyms with greater differences are often called near-synonyms rather than synonyms[1] (compare also plesionyms
).
Overview
If a word is cognitively synonymous with another word, they refer to the same thing independently of
context. Thus, a word is cognitively synonymous with another word if and only if all instances of both words express the same exact thing, and the referents are necessarily identical, which means that the words' interchangeability is not context-sensitive
.
Willard Van Orman Quine used the concept of cognitive synonymy extensively in his famous 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", where two words were cognitively synonymous if they were interchangeable in every possible instance.[2][3]
For example,
- All bachelors are unmarried men.
- All unmarried men are not married.
Quine notes that if one is
referring to the word itself
, this doesn't apply, as in,
- Bachelor has fewer than ten letters.
As compared to the substitution which is obviously false,
- "Unmarried men" has less than ten letters.
See also
- A priori
- Analytic–synthetic distinction
- Empiricism
- Mental association
- Quotation
- Synonym ring
References
- ^ Stanojević, Maja (2009), "Cognitive synonymy: a general overview" (PDF), Facta Universitatis, Linguistics and Literature Series, 7 (2): 193–200.
- ^ Hanna, Patricia (2005), Cognitive Synonymy, from Notes on "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", archived from the original on 2009-06-24, retrieved 2009-05-05.
- )
Further reading
- Cappelen, Herman and Ernest LePore, Quotation, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).