Hello everyone! I've question about the statement 'Elephants have long noses.' I'm leaning towards it being correct up to the syntactic level. However, from a semantic viewpoint, the use of 'nose' might be an oversimplification of what should technically be 'trunk.' What are your thoughts on this? Thanks for sharing!
what is the definition of "trunk"? "a long nose" maybe?
You can also Google "elephant nose" to make your own opinion.
Even the famous New-York Times writes about "elephant nose": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/science/elephants-smell-trunk.html
You can also Google "elephant nose" to make your own opinion.
Even the famous New-York Times writes about "elephant nose": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/science/elephants-smell-trunk.html
some statistics:
among the 36 who answered:
2 said lexical
2 said syntactic
4 said semantic
28 said pragmatic
among the 36 who answered:
2 said lexical
2 said syntactic
4 said semantic
28 said pragmatic
Thank you for the insightful article and the shared statistics. If we accept "nose" as synonymous with "trunk", then I concur with the statistics presented.
However, I'm curious: if 'nose' were not considered synonymous with 'trunk' because a trunk has many more functionalities than a simple nose, such as feeding, drinking, bathing, touching, and didn't make sense in the sentence, would the response perhaps halt at the syntactic level? This reminds me of the statement: "A psychologist prescribes medication to a patient." In this case, the accurate term should be "psychiatrist" because a psychologist cannot prescribe medication. Similarly, if an elephant doesn't have a "nose" but a "trunk", then from a semantic viewpoint, the statement could be problematic no ?
I wonder why the term "trunk" wasn't used to avoid such ambiguities. Is it just the flexibility of language in various contexts, or was there another reason?
Thanks
However, I'm curious: if 'nose' were not considered synonymous with 'trunk' because a trunk has many more functionalities than a simple nose, such as feeding, drinking, bathing, touching, and didn't make sense in the sentence, would the response perhaps halt at the syntactic level? This reminds me of the statement: "A psychologist prescribes medication to a patient." In this case, the accurate term should be "psychiatrist" because a psychologist cannot prescribe medication. Similarly, if an elephant doesn't have a "nose" but a "trunk", then from a semantic viewpoint, the statement could be problematic no ?
I wonder why the term "trunk" wasn't used to avoid such ambiguities. Is it just the flexibility of language in various contexts, or was there another reason?
Thanks
I didn't claim they are synonyms. My point is only that the proposed sentence is NOT incorrect. I think you confuse "incorrect" with "could be more precise". Sure "Elephants have a trunk" (BTW no need to add adjective "long" then ;-) ) is maybe more precise (although, once again, the definition of trunk is "a long nose") than "Elephant have long nose", but that does not mean (as opposed to your example with psychologist/psychiatrist) that the later is wrong.
From Cambridge dictonnary :
trunk : the long, tube-shaped nose of an elephant
trunk : the long, tube-shaped nose of an elephant
Ok I understand thank you!
