Quotes about Semantics

If you understand McCarthy's eval, you understand more than just a stage in the history of languages. These ideas are still the semantic core of Lisp today. So studying McCarthy's original paper shows us, in a sense, what Lisp really is. It's not something that McCarthy designed so much as something he discovered. It's not intrinsically a language for AI or for rapid prototyping, or any other task at that level. It's what you get (or one thing you get) when you try to axiomatize computation.

Logos is a Greek word which denotes meaning.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments—the elements of thought—until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language.

you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand.

Terminological inexactitude

Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.

Golden years' must have been coined by the young. It is doubtful that anyone over seventy would have described this phase of life with such a symbolic word.

To employ words is not the same as to understand what they mean. Moreover, the relation between words and their meanings is elastic. Words remain, while meanings are subject to change.

God wants us to walk in obedience - not victory. Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self. This may seem to be merely splitting hairs over semantics, but there's a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin. Until we deal with this attitude, we won't consistently walk in holiness.

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor less.

When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.