However, the three things are biologically more similar to each other than the animals lumped together under the single concept rhinoceros – horses, ponies and donkeys are similar enough to be able to inter-breed. For most native speakers of English, the three things in the images below map onto three different concepts and words, namely horse, donkey and pony. To clarify the issue involved, here’s another set of images.
I’ll come back onto the issue of sub-categories at the end of this article. In English, they are treated as sub-categories of the same core concept. The two animals in the photos are similar in some ways, but very different in others. However, there’s no inherent necessity for that to happen. Both of them map onto the concept and word rhinoceros. Two concepts or one? Sources for images are given at the end of this articleīoth these images are of things. Where this three-way distinction starts to become interesting is when we look at cases like the two below. The first image in the banner above is of a thing, which has a corresponding concept and word, namely rhinoceros. They’re abstract mental entities, which don’t necessarily need to correspond with a thing. Words are also what you might expect names, or labels.Ĭoncepts are more complex. Things means what you might expect real, solid, tangible objects such as horses, or colours, such as grey, or observable actions, such as grazing. One of the first things you learned on a linguistics course back in the day was the distinction between things, concepts and words. It was clean and elegant and it mapped on to reality in a way that opened up a whole new way of looking at the world. When I encountered the subject as an undergraduate, it was the first time that I really grasped what science was about.
I have a deep, quiet love for linguistics. Unicorns and non-unicorns Sources for images are given at the end of this article This article is a gentle examination of the distinction, with some thoughts about implications for human error.
There’s a useful three way distinction in linguistics between things, concepts and words.
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