Synonymy- words with similar meanings (Note: Not ‘the same’ meanings. it’s still debatable if 1:1 word meanings exist)
Antonym - words with the opposite meanings (has 3 sub-categories)
[1] complementary words (one or the other - Hot vs. Cold, Dark vs. Light).
[2] Gradable words (words that are opposites based on a scale, not extremes) for instance:
good <—————>Bad (you can be ‘kinda good’ but this does not mean you are bad)
Right <—————> Wrong (You can be a ‘little wrong’ this does not mean you are completely wrong or completely right)
[3] Relational words (Buy vs. Sell/ Child vs. Parent) there is a relationship between the words.
Hyponym - Words that are ‘umbrella terms’ which gives a specific meaning; generally broken into ‘general’ and ‘super-ordiante’ terms:
General - Bird vs. Super-ordinate - Parrot, Magpie, crow
General - Dog vs. Super-ordinate - Bulldog, Terrier
General - Car vs. Super-ordinate - Mazda, Honda, BMW
Polysemy - Words that have several related meanings. These meanings arise either conceptually or historically:
Skip = to physical use a rope and skip OR to skip through a video
Hot = to be physical hot to touch OR to be seen as ‘sexy’ OR referring to weather
Homonym - Words with the same form (spelling) that have different meanings:
Bat (animal) vs. Bat (cricket; to bat)
Hit (physically connect with something through force) vs. Hit (hit on her)
Homophony- Words with same sounds but different form (spelling)
Tail vs. Tale
Knight vs. Night
Phonesthemes - Components in words that are in multiple words
Clash, Mash, Smash, Rash (-ash)
Glint, Glimmer, Glide, Glade (Gl-)
It’s important to note that these are not considered morphemes. Why? i’m not entirely sure, since morphemes like (un- ‘undone’/ unbecoming or -ing = running etc.) don’t necessarily have independent meanings and are dependent on the root of the word, so are these ones. But as far as I can tell, these words are categorized by phonology (sounds) rather than function.
The bartender gives them both water because he is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical function of homonyms in coda position as well as pragmatic context.
Q. Two linguists walk into a bar. Which was the specialist in contextually-indicated deixis and anaphoric reference resolution strategies?
This post continues the series relating to the Semantics of D/s and Advice for Doms, and specifically follows The Definition of D/s. It focuses specifically on the concept of Consensual Dominance and submission including:
The definition of consent
The challenges of consent
Incremental and progressive D/s
Hard, soft, and social Limits
Planning the journey, training, and encounters
Communication and trust in D/s
Empowering the Dom
Most would agree that mutual consent within D/s relationships is a good and healthy thing. As previously posted in The Definition of D/s, power exchange is all about the Dominant taking the power of free will from the submissive to increase his own power. And the responsibility for gaining consent normally lies with the Dom. The concept of consent is complex even in vanilla relationships, it is exponentially more complex in the context of D/s.
The Definition of Consent
Before we start talking about consent in D/s its useful to understand how consent is generally defined. Central to the principle of consent is the concept that every person has a right to personal sovereignty – the right to not be acted upon by another without giving clear permission.
Generally, consent can be defined as:
A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity.
Key features of this consent are:
Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point.
Consent must be voluntarily given and may not be valid if a person is being subjected to emotional, psychological, physical, reputation, financial pressure, threat, intimidation, or fear.
Consent to engage in one sexual activity cannot be presumed to constitute consent to engage in a different sexual activity
Past agreement to engage in a particular sexual activity cannot be presumed to constitute consent to engage in a sexual activity again.
Consent cannot be validly given by a person who is incapacitated.
It is the responsibility of the person initiating the activity to get consent.
Its important to recognise that this definition is equally applicable to D/s as to vanilla sexual interactions, and across all sexualities and genders. It is how society as a whole defines consent. It is also important to note that each part of the world has its own legal definition of consent, that may differ from the above - go look it up for your part of the world.
The Challenges of Consent
The definition of consent seems explicit and clear, until real life is applied. That’s when consent becomes more of a challenge. One of the problems is the words ‘mutual understandable words and actions’ to give permission prior to the action.
For example, two people are on a date at the cinema. One touches the knee of the other. Although innocuous this is not consensual by the definition, unless there was some words or actions to give permission. The fact that the initiator has touched the other persons knee without complaint before is not permission, neither is the fact the initiator as touched the other persons nipple before.
If the person initiating the action gets it wrong its at best inappropriate and at worst assault.
So what might these words or actions be that give permission? If the initiator wants to kill the mood, they could ask on text message ‘can i put my hand on your knee?’ and get an explicit ‘yes’ texted back so they had an explicit and documented permission prior to every sexual action they initiated. Obviously this is impractical and not very enjoyable. Likewise verbally asking permission for every sexual action would be also be ridiculous.
For most of us, its not so much about giving explicit permission as much about not rejecting the action if it is welcomed. If the action is rejected in some way (the person pulls their knee away) then there is no consent, no permission. If an action is not rejected, it is accepted that the initiator can attempt a more daring action, or the other can initiate an action in return.
Consent is never a problem, until its a problem. We have thousands, if not millions, of sexual interactions throughout our lives. If someone makes an unwanted advance, we demonstrate resistance or lack of enthusiasm, and the advance stops. Most people pick up on the subtle signals that encourage or discourage a sexual actions, and are appropriately tolerant and forgiving when someone gets it wrong (or they just bitch to their friends about it), and theres no enduring mental or physical damage.
Occasionally someone, bolstered by power or by lack of judgement, fails to recognise those signals and the action becomes non-consensual and damaging. This can be as much about the attitude with which the action was performed as the action itself, and normally follows at least one or more requests for the action to stop, or very obvious lack of agreement on the part of the victim. In the final analysis it is rightly established that consent wasn’t given.
D/s is all about the Dom taking the power of free will from the sub, potentially even when the sub resists, with both Doms and subs enjoying that power exchange. So the concept of consent is particularly important in D/s. It is especially important for Doms who usually bare the responsibility for gaining consent.
Consensual Incremental Progression
The challenge of consent has been in existence since the human race was conceived. In the good ole days there was social conventions that dealt with consent. The initiator was always the man. He went to hold her hand, if that worked, he worked through the bases:
1st Base - Kissing, open mouth or just a peck.
2nd Base - Hands below the belt or on breasts. Fingering and hand jobs.
3rd Base - Mouths below the belt. Oral sex.
4th Base - Full penetrative intercourse.
Some people use 5th base to refer to anal intercourse (LOL).
Each of the bases has an implied series of incremental steps within it. For example, 1st base; a peck on the cheek, then a peck on the mouth, then longer kisses with closed mouth, then french kissing. If he tried to jump ahead to quickly, he’d get a swift slap to the face (which today could also be considered assault). He wasn’t allowed to get to 4th based (or maybe 2nd or 3rd) until they were married.
There’s an overall journey, starting at the first date through to getting married and having kids. On that journey the parties have numerous sexual encounters, and those sexual encounters are made up of interactions.
The important learning point in ‘working through the bases’ is the concept of progressively and incrementally more intimacy both on the journey and in each sexual encounter. Working through the bases in a sexual encounter ‘warms up’ both parties so there’s less chance of rejection. Working through the bases on the journey keeps it interesting and fun (although in vanilla sex the variety runs out quickly). Advances can be rejected at any point. If there is no objection the initiator can move onto the next incremental step. The initiator should not jump straight into penetrative sex as the first step on the journey, nor as the first interaction in a sexual encounter.
Incremental and Progressive D/s
In D/s, the Dom takes a risk with every sexual action he initiates with another person, and the Dom does most of the initiating - he is in control. One way to mitigate the risk of misunderstanding is through small progressive incremental steps based on the assumption that the previous step, without complaint from the other person, is the basis for permission of the next progressive step. Like working through the bases, but D/s style.
D/s has 5 features that make the journey and sexual encounters different from vanilla sex:
The D/s Journey has numerous paths. Unlike vanilla sex, the D/s journey has many more potential paths since its not just about penetrative sex, but also pain, humiliation, servitude, and many other kinks and fetishes. And society has not laid out a standardised path for D/s like ‘Working through the bases’ in vanilla sex.
The D/s Journey has numerous destinations. The destination in vanilla sex is generally penetrative sex, at best in multiple positions, and marriage. Just as there are numerous paths with D/s, there are also numerous unique destinations. The D/s journey could lead anywhere depending on the people involved. Each D/s journey is unique in the path taken and the target destination.
The D/s journey is based on Power Exchange. The activities in D/s intrinsically involve taking someones personal sovereignty and abusing it in some fashion. This is not the case in vanilla sex.
The D/s Journey builds on experience and training. There is technical expertise involved in being a Dom gained through experience. And a sub can be trained to take more abuse by the Dom, such that each encounter can become more intense, even with same activities. This is not the case in vanilla sex which requires minimal experience and training.
The D/s relationship is one-sided in its nature. The Dom is generally the initiator, he is almost always in control of the encounter and the journey. The D/s relationship serves to pleasure the Dom, and the sub enjoys that dynamic. Whereas vanilla sex is for mutual pleasure, and both parties initiate sexual interactions.
Hence Doms, and subs, need to be very cognisant of the incremental steps and the overall direction of the journey. The fetishes, kinks, desires, and fantasies of individual Doms and subs are all dramatically or subtly different and can change from day-to-day. Some have a specific destination in mind, others like to go wherever the winds take them. When thinking about the incremental journey and potential sexual encounters, there are 3 dimensions to consider:
The Power Exchanged. There are numerous aspects to a persons personal sovereignty - their body, mind, freedom, time, dignity, money, health, fitness, social life, etc. It is in the Doms nature to try to acquire as much power from the sub as he desires. The Dom may start by taking the subs body for a couple of hours, but incrementally and progressively acquire more of the subs personal sovereignty, controlling more aspects of the subs life, potentially until the sub is under the complete control of the Dom.
The Method of Exchange. The methods through which the Dom acquires the subs personal sovereignty are also numerous. The subs freedom can be taken by controlling the subs orgasms to his gym routine, his body can be taken by restraining him, his physical comfort taken by CBT through to whips, his dignity taken by piss to sissification, his mind re-trained by corporal punishment or hypnosis, etc.
The Intensity. As the Dom starts to acquire each aspect of the subs sovereignty, with the method of his choice, he starts small and progressively increases the intensity of the power he exerts and the power yielded by the sub. This is reflected in incrementally more intense pain, humiliation, restraint, servitude, etc. Gradually, the Dom trains the sub to take more and more intensity. For example, the CBT becomes more and more painful, the piss play more humiliating and degrading, the orgasm denial in longer periods, etc.
Since each Dom and sub has different experiences, fetishes, tolerance, and long term ambitions, it is important that the boundaries of sexual encounters and training are discussed in terms of the Power Exchanged, the method of Exchange, and the Intensity. This leads to second important concept in consensual D/s, that of Limits.
Hard, Soft, and Social Limits
Since the Dom is in control of most of what happens within the D/s journey and each sexual encounter, he needs to understand the boundaries of the subs consent i.e. the consent pre-agreed with the sub that gives the Dom some freedom to do as he pleases during the journey, sexual encounter, and the subs training.
The concept of limits helps the Dom determine if he wants to start a D/s journey with the sub, and also helps keep the D/s journey on track and fun for everyone. If the Dom is very keen to partake in D/s interactions that are outside the boundaries of the subs limits he should be careful about starting a D/s journey with that sub, even if he finds the sub incredibly hot. Since this could lead to non-consensual sexual encounters. Although it is possible that a subs may be persuaded to modify their limits over time.
Limits are set by the sub. They are the specific parameters of his personal sovereignty that he is not willing to yield, or those he will only yield after some resistance.
There are 3 types of limits that are key to consensual D/s:
Hard Limits. Hard limits are the the boundaries of consent the Dom can never cross, the personal sovereignty that the sub will not yield. The Dom is non-consensual if he crosses the subs hard limits. Even though the Dom should never cross a hard limit, he can attempt to persuade the sub to remove it, or downgrade it to a soft limit, as he takes the D/s journey with the sub.
Soft Limits. Soft limits are the boundaries of consent that the Dom may be able to cross, but not without some more persuasion. This is the personal sovereignty the sub might yield after some resistance, but also may never yield. The sub may not have the experience to say they are ok with an activity, or maybe haven’t been trained for it, or maybe they don’t find that activity hot but are willing to do it if the Dom is passionate about it. Along with each soft limit the sub must explain his reasoning to the Dom such that the Dom can work to overcome each reason for the limit and ultimately overcome the limit entirely, or at least understand when to ignore the subs reasoning.
Social Limits. In addition to Hard and Soft Limits the sub may also have Social Limits. The sub is only human, he must prioritise his submission to the Dom alongside earning money, relationships outside D/s, spousal relationships, hobbies/sports, parents, etc. Many of these Social Limits will take priority over service to the Dom at some time or another - they can be hard or soft in nature, and different from one day to the next.
Each limit can be expressed in the 3 dimensions of; The Power Exchanged, the Method of Exchange, and the Intensity. For example:
Pain - The sub yields his physical comfort when he is flogged by the Dom. The sub may be ok with light flogging, have a soft limit for welts being left on his skin, and a hard limit for the flogging causing blood. The Power Exchanged is physical comfort (i.e. pain), the method is flogging, and the intensity has 3 levels for this sub - light flogging, welts, and blood. Not discussed were bruising being left for more than a couple of hours, nor the concept of being restrained while being flogged.
Bondage and Restraint - The sub yields his freedom through chastity. The sub may be ok with wearing a chastity cage during play sessions, have a soft limit wearing a cage overnight, and a hard limit for wearing one permanently. The Power Exchanged is the subs freedom to orgasm, the method is restraint by chastity cage, the intensity has 3 levels for this sub - wearing a cage during play, wearing a cage overnight, and wearing a cage permanently. Not discussed was wearing a cage to the gym, nor cum control when the sub is not wearing the cage.
Humiliation and Degradation - The subs dignity is yielded through humiliation/degradation when the Dom pisses on him. The sub may be ok with being pissed on, but drinking piss is a soft limit, and pissing in his ass or being pissed on in public is a hard limit. The Power Exchanged is the subs dignity. The Method is humiliation/degradation through Piss. The intensity has 3 levels for this sub - being pissed on, drinking piss, and pissing in his ass and being pissed on in public. Not discussed was drinking piss in public discretely, being punished when the sub fails to drink the Doms piss, and being hypnotised to love the taste of piss.
Servitude - The subs time and effort are yielded through servitude. The sub is ok with being the Doms ‘Boot Black’, has a soft limit for cleaning the Doms apartment, and a hard limit for washing the Doms car in public. The Power Exchanged is the subs time and effort, the method is servitude through domestic chores. The intensity has 3 levels - boot black, apartment cleaning, and car cleaning in public. Not discussed was the concepts of cleaning the Doms apartment while being naked but for a chastity cage and taking a paddle across the ass when the sub fails to do an adequate job.
Social Limits - The subs time and priorities are yielded. The sub may be ok serving the Dom on Wednesday evenings, has soft limits for prioritising the Dom over his sports on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and anything that interfere with his marriage is a hard limit. The Power Exchanged is the subs time and priorities, the method is his service to the Dom, and the intensity is the amount of time the sub spends doing his Doms bidding.
Thesub should set his limits generally and very specifically, if required. The sub should always be ready to describe his general limits to the Dom - especially hard and social limits. Common hard limits are scat, blood, permanent damage, anything illegal, unsafe sex, and financial submission. Common social limits concern the days and times the sub can serve, and how the subs relationships must be respected. Common soft limits are piss, doing stuff in public or being filmed, humiliation, servitude. If the sub has very specific limits he should also make these known - maybe he does not like sissification or diapers in particular. If the sub is too inexperienced to have knowledge of his specific limits he should explain that to the Dom, and highlight the areas he is more or less curious about.
TheDom should ask for specific limits in the areas he’s particularly interested in doing. For example, if the Dom is into cock and ball torture and breeding, he should ask about the subs specific limits in that area. Also, if he requires service at a particular time or place he should enquire about the practicality of this with his sub. The sub should read any enquiries as a potential direction the Dom might go and answer honestly, but recognise the Dom may be just exploring options without any intent to perform those activities. If the sub has hard or social limits in those areas where the Dom has particular interest, then both parties should consider not moving forward with a journey or encounter.
The challenge with limits are that its almost impossible to comprehend and communicate every nuanced limit in relation to a specific activity. And communicating intensity in a limit with a common context between Dom and sub is very hard, for example describing a level of pain or humiliation when the Dom and sub have no common frame of reference.
Stated limits should not be taken as black and white scripts, but as concepts that overlap to give a picture of the subs true limits. When the sub says he as a limit for public play, but is ok with chastity cages, the Dom should figure out the sub might have an issue wearing a chastity cage to the gym and move ahead cautiously in that area. And where intensity is concerned, its important to for the Dom to build up the intensity from low to high gradually, and ask for frequent feedback to judge the pace, rather than leap in at high intensity even when the sub indicated he could handle it.
In addition to nuanced limits being hard to define exactly, they may not be set in stone - limits change and can be changed:
Creative Doms - The best Doms are highly creative in their ability to contrive different ways of abusing their subs, and this is something that subs enjoy. But this involves highly complex and nuanced overlapping power exchanges, methods, and intensity. Creative Doms can think up creative ways of breaching the subs limits (even hard limits) in ways the sub accepts and enjoys.
Inexperienced subs - subs may be too inexperienced to know or communicate their limits adequately. A sub may only know he does, or does not, like it after he’s tried it. A sub may start out with many hard limits which rapidly dissolve as he starts doing D/s.
Limits relax over time - The subs limits generally relax over time and with experience. What was established as a limit at the outset of the journey, may not be a limit after many sexual encounters, and as trust builds with the Dom.
Training subs - Training a sub can change his limits. The subs thought processes, behaviours, and ultimately limits can be consciously (or unconsciously) changed by the Dom through training - cum control to keep him horny, corporal punishment, and conditioning the sub with rewards can all change the subs perspective.
Drugs and Alcohol - Doms and subs should be careful when using drugs and alcohol in D/s. What can seem a good idea to both Dom and sub while on drugs or drunk, they may regret when sober. And safety is always an important factor to consider. But Drugs and alcohol can be a legitimate way of increasing the Doms power over the sub, if both parties are aware and accept the effect. Poppers are often used by Doms to release the sub from his inhibitions. The sub may refuse to lick the urinal at the pub, but after a few big popper hits and sucking the Doms cock he’s on his knees and eagerly licking the piss splash from the bowl.
Obviously, all of these dynamics make the concept of consent in D/s a very grey area even with agreed limits. The Dom should plan the D/s journey, the subs training, and each sexual encounter thoughtfully in order to assure that limits are respected and only breached when the sub is ready for it.
Planning the D/s Journey, Sexual Encounters, and Training
D/s relationships can be short one-off sexual encounters or extended journeys with multiple encounters, some ongoing for years or even a lifetime. How the Dom plans a sexual encounter and the subs training depends on the extent of the D/s journey.
One-off sexual encounters should generally be kept within the Doms experience level and within the subs limits and training level, since there isn’t enough time to train the sub and establish the trust that would enable limits to be breached.
When planning a longer D/s journey that will involve numerous sexual encounters, and extended training regimes, the Dom should always start at the beginning and not presume anything about the unique journey with an individual sub. The Dom should:
Set One or More Audacious Goals.The goals are fantasy scenes that the Dom would like to perform with the sub, or simply a sadistic intent to make the sub do more and more extreme play, or having complete dominion over the sub. Goals serve as the notional destination for the D/s journey. The goals should be aspirational, creative, and audacious but also somewhat realistic. Goals can be set within the subs limits, breaching only his soft limits, or potentially breaching his hard limits. They may challenge the Dom and/or sub, or be well within both their experience levels. Even if the goal is never realised, its the journey that is fun. Normally, a Dom would keep his audacious goal to himself. This enables him to refine and change the goal as the journey progresses, without committing to a specific destination, and to maintain an air of mystery about his intent. The Dom does not need the sub to consent to his goals, but he may chose it as an option.
Understand the sub. The Dom must seek to know and understand the sub. The Dom must probe the subs limits, experience level, attitudes, physical fitness, likes and dislikes with respect to his audacious goal, but without giving away his intent (since he may change his goal based on the subs responses). There are numerous methods of discretely discovering the subs inner most thoughts on D/s activities and his limits. For example, sending the sub pictures of various D/s scenes and telling him to rank their relative hotness, asking him to comment on his limits with respect to those pictures, have him send his health and fitness stats, have him send a ‘Resume’ of all his D/s experiences with what he liked and disliked, message the subs previous Doms, tell him to complete the fetishes section on FetLife, or simply ask direct questions. If the Dom is experienced enough, and understands his sub enough, he is able to judge how and when to push the subs experience level and limits.
Understand the progression to the goals. The Dom should think through the progressive incremental steps to get the sub trained for the goal. Identifying appropriate progressive steps that; take the sub through any restrictive limits, ensure the sub is trained and proficient in the methods planned, ensure the sub can handle the intensity, and ensure the sub is appropriately physically fit and groomed. If the progressive steps are too slow, the sub may get bored and end the journey. If the progressive steps are too fast, the sub may get scared and end the journey. The Dom must use his understanding of the sub to judge the speed of progression, and make adjustments as the journey progresses.
Once the Dom knows the sub, the direction of the journey, and the progressive steps, he can work to plan the subs training. The subs training regime can take place both with or without the Dom being present:
Without the Dom Present. Training without the Dom present requires the Dom to have trust in the sub, but consent is less of a problem since the sub must perform his training under his own volition (hence can be a good way to work on the subs soft limits). The Dom may ask for evidence that the training has been performed, and implement a system of corporal punishment for when the sub fails in the training. Examples of this type of training are; wearing a butt plug to work as a step forward to a public submission goal, stretching the subs hole with bigger dildos to reach a fisting goal, gym training to lose weight or build muscle, licking some of his piss off his fingertips at the urinal as the first step to breaching his piss soft limit, sniffing the Doms jock with anal masturbation to key the sub to the Doms scent, only allowing anal masturbation to train anal orgasms, having the sub use his sub name on his cup at starbucks to further public submission, wearing dog tags as a precursor to a permanent collar, increasing use of a chastity cage, etc.
With the Dom Present. Training with the Dom present can be done in all aspects of life, not just in a D/s sessions involving sex. Examples of this type of training include all those that do not require him present, but also; buying beers for the Dom at the pub then drinking his piss, licking the Doms sweaty armpits clean at the gym, etc. The most significant training for a sub with the Dom present will be performed during a sexual encounter, or a scene.
When planning a sexual encounter, aka scene, the Dom should consider the following:
Before the Session. The Dom must consider all the logistics of the scene in detail - where and when will the scene take place, what equipment will be required, setting up the venue, music, who will be involved and in what way, how will everyone gain access to the venue, if other Doms will be there making sure they know the subs limits, ensuring privacy, etc. The Dom should enlist the help of the sub in some or all of the arrangements. Thinking through the safety of the scene is critical before the play takes place. The Dom must also decide how much of his planned scene he will share with the sub before hand, therefore how much explicit consent, bearing in mind the sub might not want to know.
Crossing The Threshold. At the day and time of the scene the sub arrives at the scene and must cross a threshold. The Dom has arranged an obvious threshold that makes it clear that the sub is leaving behind his daily life, and entering a world where he is only sub. It is common for Doms to demand a sub to remove all his clothing at the threshold, and may add collars, chastity cages, harnesses, etc. Some Doms test the subs devotion by the threshold being the door of his apartment or hotel room, and the sub must strip naked outside the door (semi-public) and wait to be admitted. However the threshold works, it is an important mental switch for the sub as he crosses a consensual threshold into the scene (whether he knows whats on the other side or not).
Warm Up. Just as with vanilla sex, a D/s encounter should start with warming up and turning on the people involved. The sub doesn’t have to be horny in order to serve, but it will make him more accepting of it. Getting a sub horny is normally as simple as having him sniff a jock, lick an armpit, or sucking the Doms dick. But the sub also needs warming up for the activities in the scene, especially if the Dom intends to push the subs experience level or limits. For example, if the sub will be flogged or caned, warm up his back/ass with slaps to get the blood flowing into that area. If the sub will take more nipple pain, then work his nipples over with fingers before hand. If fisting is on the list, then warm up the subs hole.
The Play. The main event is one or more types of play - D/s activities. The play can be focused on the Doms pleasure, training the sub, or both. The sub may be punished, fisted, fucked, whipped, take piss, wax, skull fucked, etc. If the sub is being trained to take more pain, humiliation, restraint, or servitude the Dom will often reward the sub as it happens in order to reinforce the training and conditioning. The sub should let the Dom know if he is ever not comfortable with the play. Safety is always the priority. The Dom should never feel rushed in the play. The Dom must be mindful, cognisant of his subs emotional state, physical state, and safety - especially if the sub enters sub-space.
Aftercare.After an activity has finished the Dom must bond with and comfort the sub, having food and water available for the sub can also help. The sub may need some time to ‘come down’ from his experience.
Crossing the Threshold. When the sub is ready, he will then cross the threshold back into his daily life, hopefully with a grin on his face.
After the Session. In the days following the scene, the Dom should check in with the sub to ensure he is emotionally and physically well. And to get feedback from the sub relating to the scene so that the next incremental step can be planned appropriately.
Even though the Dom will probably not to reveal his audacious goal to the sub, he may discuss what he has planned for an individual encounter. The less the sub knows about the plan, the greater the intensity of his submission. The Dom may incrementally provide less information about his plans as the journey progresses. The Dom must use his understanding of the sub to judge the appropriate level of information he must give prior to an encounter to ensure an appropriate level of consent. Many Doms and subs expect each scene to be fully negotiated before hand, others do not.
Trust and Communication in D/s
Trust is probably the most important component of a D/s relationship. It is slow to build, and quick to destroy. Trust is a two-way street between Doms and subs - and both directions are equally important:
The Dom must trust that the sub will indicate if he’s not comfortable, and sub must trust his Dom will adjust his actions accordingly, and each without judgement or reprisal.
Doms and subs must trust they will be understanding, tolerant, and forgiving of any mistakes the other may make in actions or communications. Subs often fantasize about certain scenes but when it comes to reality they hate it. Doms often misread signals or progress to fast/slow.
Doms and subs must trust that the other is embarking on the D/s relationship with some awareness of what is involved. Power cannot be exchanged without trust.
Constant communication is the key to building trust. Communication is not only verbal and explicit, but also through subtle and implied; hesitation to follow an instruction, moans of pleasure, signs of panic, eager enthusiasm, subtle hints where “no” actually means “yes”, etc.
Doms must learn to read, and subs learn to give, both verbal and explicit, and subtle and implied communications. And those communications understood within the context of the individual D/s journey.
Empowering the Dom
The bottom line in D/s is that the Dom has and takes power, and the sub gives up his power. Both the Dom and the sub like it that way. Both like the Dom to be confident and empowered in order to take charge. The Dom is empowered by:
Incrementally progressive power exchange without rejection.
Clearly stated limits with explanations of reasoning.
A good understanding of the subs experience level, attitudes, likes, and dislikes.
A thought out plan for the journey, scene, and training, with mindful execution.
The subs constant communication with the Dom.
Established trust based on a common understanding of D/s.
These things enable the sub to empower the Dom to take control of their joint D/s journey, and have a lot of fun along the way. The Dom must feel empowered to dominate without guilt, shame, nor regret.
If the Dom is empowered and the sub isn’t indicating stop, the Dom has a solid green light to go!
Doms bear a heavy burden with the power and control they command, but it is in their nature to wield it, just as it is the subs nature to yield it.
A Final Word on Consent
Consent is an important concept, but also one that only becomes a problem when it is perceived to be breached. If we focused on the strict written definition of consent, as permission prior to every action and as if it were a legally binding document, then nobody would have any fun, and D/s and vanilla sex would be dead. Doms must be empowered to lead, and subs must follow, each being mindful to their respective inner-nature and acting in accordance with the principles that keep D/s appropriately consensual.
“Language isn’t neutral or objective. It is a vessel of cultural stories, values, and norms. And in the United States, everyday language plays into the violent, foundational myth of this country’s origin story—Europeans ‘discovering’ a virtually uninhabited wilderness and befriending the few primitive peoples who lived there—as well as other cultural myths and lies about Indigenous Peoples that are baked into U.S. culture and everyday life.
Cleve Davis (Shoshone-Bannock) points out that everyday language continues discrimination that is an extension of the centuries-long federal policy of genocide, assimilation, and oppression toward the original peoples of North America.
…
It might seem harmless when your boss mentions the need for a powwow among the company’s executives or an online quiz promises to reveal your spirit animal, but everyday language like this is a result of centuries of violence and continues to perpetuate stereotypes that have real-life impacts on Native communities.”
Everyone who likes this comic needs to read @aiweirdness ’s amazing book on the limitations of AI and how we silly humans like to pretend it’s a lot better than it is — You Look Like A Thing and I Love You.
What’s in our minds when we throw an if/then sentence out there? How do we work out what worlds we may be talking about? In this week’s episode, we talk about the semantics of conditionals: what an “if” looks like logically, why a simple logical arrow isn’t enough to capture the complexities of conditionals, and how we change what possibilities we allow ourselves to think of based on what our “if” clause holds.
We’re happy to be back again, and we’re looking forward to hearing what people have to say!
Going back and doing some cleaning as we get ready to do new things, I realized I never posted our extended discussion on event semantics here! So if you want some good discussion of how we can best capture exactly what verbs are doing semantically, continue on here.
Back in our episode about event semantics, we argued that we’ve actually been thinking about verbs all wrong in terms of how we treated them semantically. Up until now, we’ve treated verbs as though they were kind of like naturally occurring versions of the predicate symbols you find in the artificiallanguage of logic. So we could model the meaning of a verb like “travel” by taking advantage of this correspondence.
(1) “travel” ≈ Txy
Those variable symbols “x” and “y” following the predicate capture the fact that a verb like “travel” tends to combine with both travelers and destinations, in order to produce complete sentences. Borrowing letters nearer to the beginningof the alphabet to stand in for specific people and places, replicating those completed sentences in logic is fairly straightforward.
(2) “Athan traveled to London” ≈ Tal
After giving it some thought, though, we decided that a better way to think of the meaning of a verb like “travel,” along with other verbs, is not to treat it as a description of an individual, or even a relation between individuals and locations, but a property of events. Using this new logic, the meaning of “travel” would look more like “Te,” signifying that the act of traveling really refers to a set of coordinates in space and time — that is, an event. The verb “travel,” then, picks out any and all instances of traveling, in a way similar to how the noun “scientist” picks out, well, anyone who’s a scientist!
(3) “travel” ≈ Te
In our updated system, the meaning of “Athan traveled to London” now looks like a different kind of logical statement — one that’s existentially quantified. That means it’s a statement saying there’s at least one event out there in the world that fits the bracketed description following the backwards “E.”
In particular, it says there exists an instance of traveling, and that the person doing the traveling — the agent — is Athan, and that the destination is London. As you can see, the job of introducing other information, either about who did it, or how it happened, falls to other constituents. (We left it open exactly how the events described by verbs become existentially quantified, but a good first guess is that it’s tense that does the job, alongside locating the event in time.)
In making this move, we’ve ended up changing the typical verb’s argument structure, which is something we’ve touched on before. It means that we’ve fiddled with the number and kinds of things that any given verb is built to combine with. A verb like “hallucinate,” on a conceptual level, doesn’t combine directly with its subject anymore; instead, it’s meant to combine with an event, with the subject coming in obliquely. In the language of the lambda calculus, which is especially useful for keeping track of what combines with what, the meaning of “hallucinate” shifts over from (5a) to (5b) — from a function that accepts individuals as its input, to one that accepts events.
(5a) λ x . x hallucinated
(5b) λ e . e is an event involving hallucination
But it seems fair to ask whether this applies across the board: are all verbs created equal? Well, consider the following two sentences.
(6a) There’s a man drinking whiskey
(6b) *There’s a man liking whiskey
While the first sounds perfectly natural, the second seems off. And intuitively, the most noticeable difference we might point to between these verbs is that the first describes something done over a shorter period, while the second applies to an individual over a longer stretch, maybe even a lifetime. A bit more technically, linguists have attributed the split behaviours of these words to the fact that “drink” is a stage-level predicate, while “like” is an individual-level predicate.
Digging even deeper, it’s been recognized that more punctuated events (e.g., arriving, noticing, exploding) form only a small part of a much larger category of eventualities, which isn’t just some undifferentiated mass, but also includes things like lengthier processes(e.g., speaking, walking, sleeping) and even longer-term states(e.g., knowing, owning, loving).
The underlying difference, then, between stage-level verbs like “drink” and individual-level verbs like “like” might simply be that they apply to different kinds of eventualities (i.e., processes vs. states). It’s even been suggested that individual-level words dispense with event-based logic entirely, and work more like the predicates found in classical logic. This would actually go a long way in explaining why expressions of time and space, which we supposed place restrictions on events, don’t go well with every verb.
(7a) Katarina often speaks German
(7b) *Katarina often knows German
(8a) Ted is being held captive in the facility
(8b) *Ted resembles his father in the facility
It could also explain why perception verbs like “see” and “hear” and “smell,” which seem to be looking to combine with something fairly ‘eventive’ in nature, get along with some verbs much better than others.
(9a) Cassandra saw James talk to himself
(9b) *Cassandra saw James love her
So the innovation of event semantics not only gives us a way of explaining exactly how adverbs and prepositional phrases fold into sentences, as we spelled out in the episode — it can also account for the fact that verbs regularly contrast with each other regarding the sorts of sentences we find them in to begin with. And having only really scratched the surface, you can be sure we’ll have a lot more to say about this topic in episodes to come!
We’re excited to announce that we’re going to be interviewing Elizabeth Coppock in a few days! Dr. Coppock is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at Boston University. To quote from her site, her research “concerns the meanings of small words in various languages, the invisible forces that give complex expressions their meanings, and sometimes even the nature of meaning itself.”
If you have any questions you’d like us to ask her, please let us know! Among our interviews, we haven’t talked with any semanticists yet, so if there’s something you’re curious about, send it our way. And we’ll be looking forward to sharing our discussion with her soon. ^_^
How do we know who “he” is? And how does “he” differ from “himself” when we interpret it? In this week’s episode, we talk about the syntax and semantics of pronouns: how we can place them in sentences, how they link up to variables, and the role of context in how we interpret them.
Hope everyone enjoys the video! And the eyepatch. We’re looking forward to hearing what people have to say. ^_^
How do events factor into our mental linguistics? How can we adjust our logic to capture different sentence permutations? In this week’s episode, we take a look at event semantics: what problems they’re meant to solve, how they help us limit time and place in our sentences, and what evidence we have that events are real.
Glad to be back, and we’ve got some exciting things coming up, too! Looking forward to hearing what people have to say. ^_^
In our episode on the linguistics of propaganda, we talked a lot about how false implicatures can bend the truth just enough to sneak misconceptions into people’s heads, without them even necessarily realizing it. These are sentences where we imply something that isn’t true, without coming out and saying it overtly. But while we’ve touched on the topic of indirect speech before, we haven’t spent much time talking about why we do it. That is, why don’t we always just say what we mean, instead of risking a garbled message?
To get at an answer, let’s consider a few different uses we’ve got for indirect speech, and then see if we can figure out what they’ve got in common. Imagine, first, that you were out on a date, and as the evening winds down, you want things to move in a more romantic direction. Would you come right out and say it? Well, some of us might. But chances are that many would take a much more gentle approach — say, by asking if the other party wanted to come over to their place for coffee, or maybe to Netflix and chill.
Or let’s say you were driving a bit too fast, got pulled over, and were pretty sure you were about to get a ticket for a few hundred dollars that you really can’t afford. But let’s say you happened to have $50 on hand, and you’re feeling just brave enough to give a bit of bribery a go (NB: The Ling Space does not condone bribery). Would you move right to “I’ll give you money if you let me go”? Probably not, if you have any intention of staying out of jail. You’d likely try to be at least a little sly about it — maybe wondering aloud if the problem can’t be “taken care of here.”
Or picture the old cliché of a mobster extorting protection money from some local business, under penalty of violence. Since explicit threats are often illegal, but the enforcer still needs to get their message across, euphemistic speech ends up a vital part of their criminal enterprise. Phrases like “It’d be a shame if something happened to this fine establishment” replace outright intimidation, though the message remains the same.
In each of these cases, the speaker is affording themselves plausible deniability. Trying to move a new relationship (or even an old one) in a different direction can be potentially awkward, especially if the other party isn’t as interested as you. But if you play your cards close enough to the chest, and things go awry, you can always deny you were talking about anything more than coffee, or a night spent binge-watching the latest season of House of Cards.
And since bribing an officer is against the law, but might get you out of paying a hefty fine if they happen not to be the most honest cop in the land, the indirect approach lets you test the waters without committing yourself one way or the other. If they catch your drift, everybody leaves happy; if they don’t, well, you can hardly be found guilty for someone else misunderstanding your otherwise unimpeachable character! (More generally, shifting from one relationship type to another, like from one rooted in dominance to one that’s more transactional, can lead to tension, which is why bribing the maitre d’ for a better table can seem just as nerve-wracking, even if it’s not a crime.)
As for that threat: it might be hard getting something so weaselly to stick in court. On the face of it, after all, it really would be a shame if something happened! And they can always claim they were just expressing genuine concern, as laughable as that might seem.
And, so, indirect speech — and by extension plausible deniability — has many uses, both amongst those in positions of power, and those with none. Though paradoxical on the face of it, it can provide avenues for authoritarians to obtain and maintain control,* while protecting the powerless when all other exits are blocked.**
It’s fair to ask, though, why bribes and threats and the like that are so thinly veiled should work at all. Doesn’t everybody know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means by now? And is the mob really fooling anyone with their supposed concern for the well-being of the community? The secret lies in a concept we’ve spent some timepicking apartalready:mutual knowledge, otherwise known as common ground.
Mutual knowledge refers to the knowledge that exists between two or more speakers — not simply what both of them know, but what each of them knows the other one knows (and what each of them knows the other one knows the other knows, and so on). So while the intent of asking a partner over for coffee might seem obvious to both parties involved, because the invitation was indirect, there’s enough mutual doubt should either one decide to back out. If the answer is “no thanks,” embarrassment is saved, and everyone can go along pretending nothing ever happened. The possibility that either speaker doesn’t understand what just took place is small, but when we start asking whether each of them knows whether the other knows what happened, or knows that they know that they know, uncertainties multiply unbounded.
What indirect speech really does, then, is keep things off the record. While the information implicated by someone might be clear as day to anyone within earshot, that information manages not to work its way into the common ground. And, so, unlike base assertions, which fall square into the vessel of mutual knowledge we carry between us in any given conversation, implicatures float around just out of our reach — visible to everyone, but ephemeral enough for us to pretend they don’t even exist, if and when we need to.
Inour most recent episode, we talked about modals: words like “can”, “may”, “must”, and more. In particular, we took a deep dive into the semanticsof modal verbs. But we didn’t talk much about how they fit into the structures of sentences, and this seems to leave open some important questions. For starters, we made the claim that — in terms of their meanings — modal verbs combine with whole sentences, and not just the verb phrase that follows them. After all, the meaning of the sentence in (1a) seems to correspond to (1b).
(1a) The Observers must report to their commander.
(1b) It must be that the Observers report to their commander.
On the face of it, it seems weird that subjects in modal sentences appear separate from the main verb phrase, as in (1a), while being interpreted as though they were right next to them, as in (1b). It looks like this could be a big problem for our overall theory.
Thankfully, when we take into account some of the important discoveries we’ve talked about in past episodes, like the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis, this problem goes away pretty quick. If it’s true that, in general, subjects start off somewhere insidethe verb phrase, and only latermove to a spot that’s higher up (and more to the left, at least in English), we can suppose that the meanings of sentences — modal and all — are simply computed beforethe subject starts moving around, instead of after.
But, this still leaves us wondering what part of the tree modal verbs typically call home. If you want to know more about how to set that up, keep reading!
The liminal zone between syntax and semantics (especially when we’re drawing mid-twentieth century trees) makes me completely bonkers. I don’t see the point of doing this kind of structural, ideologically-coded work when what’s at issue are conceptual relationships.
I mean, I guess I understand that it would be nice to represent relationships of meaning systematically and in terms of order, but I feel like the various models still don’t account for (any maybe shouldn’t) all the nuance of which human language is capable.
I’m always so much more comfortable using syntax to approach grammars and glosses rather than as a generative and constitutive system of language.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. I would love to hear some arguments for the coordination of semantics and syntax in this way. Or an explanation of how theoretical syntax improves our (english-speaking) understanding of semantics. OK, go!
So this is actually a really deep and interesting question that gets to the heart of linguistic theorizing, and even science in general. We’re going to try to do this without going through all the examples from the episode and the original post, but I hope it still makes sense!
Let’s start with what we said in our post about the apparent tension between modal verbs combining with whole sentences on a conceptual level, while being sandwiched in between subjects and verb phrases on a syntactic one. We could, in principle, rework the meaning we’ve assigned to modal verbs to make them work without the added complication of subjects moving around inside sentences. That is, we could paint a superficially simpler picture of how the meanings of these sentences come about. But removing the complexity from one part of a theory often ends up hiding it in some other part of that same theory. And so, even though we could tweak our definition of modal verbs to work in a syntactically simpler system (i.e., one that very literally has fewer moving parts), that new definition is made more complex. To get a bit technical, it goes from a simple characteristic function to a somewhat fancier function-valued function, which is a kind of higher-order function (representing a kind of logic that’s a step above the ordinary).
It turns out we can’t have both a simple syntactic representation, and a simple semantic one, because the order that one thing happens in influences the order that another thing happens in, and ignoring this would be like trying to put your pants on after putting on your shoes. So, the theory as a whole becomes simpler in one way, but more complicated in another. It’s this kind of unavoidable choice that has to be made, where to put the complexity, and we made it the way we made it because we already have other reasons to think it’s actually the syntax that’s complicated in this case, and not the semantics.
On supposing that there are actually two different spots in any given syntactic tree where modal verbs might live, depending on their flavour: this is actually practically useful. We guessed that knowledge-based modal verbs are relatively high up in the structure of any given sentence, while rule-based modal verbs are much lower down. To put it another way, we supposed that some modal verbs are structurally closer to the subject, with lots of room down below, while others are structurally closer to the verb phrase, making things more cramped. And this actually ends up having observable consequences, since in the case of higher, knowledge-flavoured modal verbs, there’s room enough between them and the verb phrase for all kinds of auxiliary verbs, like in “Peter must have been telling the truth.” But with lower modal verbs, that are about rules instead of knowledge, and which don’t leave as much space between themselves and the verb phrase, we don’t end up seeing all these intervening auxiliary verbs, as in “Peter must tell the truth.” So it looks like there’s some reality to there being a couple of different places for modal verbs to hang out, which has a real effect on the kinds of sentences we can build. And it’s worth mentioning at this point that we do find sentences with two modal expressions in them, and that when we do, the knowledge-y modal always seems to come before the more rule-ish one, like in “Peter must have to tell the truth.” We might be able to explain all these facts using simpler structures, but chances are that the meanings that come out of it get pretty sophisticated pretty quickly.
Finally, let’s look at what we said about the internal syntax of modal phrases. On one level, it’s just useful to represent things this way, to be able to visualize all the pieces and parts that go into building the meanings of these sorts of sentences. But in principle, we could simplify both the definitions of modal verbs and their surrounding structures, without any obvious trade-offs. And some linguists actually go ahead and do this. However, there are reasons to think that (for example) the modal base is on some level really present inside the trees we build in our heads. For one, sometimes the modal base is actually pronounced, as the topic of the sentence: “In view of the rules, Peter must tell the truth.” But even when it’s left out, because the context makes it obvious what’s being talked about, there are still reasons to suppose that, at a minimum, there’s something there in the tree that corresponds to it. In particular, when we get to talking about conditional (if-then) sentences like “If he wants to stay out of trouble, Peter must tell the truth,” it’s useful to think of that “if” part of the sentence as restricting, or limiting, the modal base. And that’s much easier to do if the modal base is, although unpronounced, somehow actually there in the tree. It could probably be done other ways, but that likely means supposing there are a couple different kinds of modal verbs – some that fit comfortably into conditional sentences, and some that don’t – and I’m not sure there’s any good reason to think that we have twice as many modal verbs in our vocabulary as we think we do!
And we definitely take the point that, as we’ve presented things, we don’t even come close to fully capturing all the variety and nuance found in human language. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough space to cover everything in one go. But we’ll for sure be back to talk more about modal verbs in the future, and what we find when we look at other languages. It’s a gigantic and fascinating topic, with many different dimensions to it! And with the basics out of the way, we can now start to get to the good stuff! ^_^
Inour most recent episode, we talked about modals: words like “can”, “may”, “must”, and more. In particular, we took a deep dive into the semanticsof modal verbs. But we didn’t talk much about how they fit into the structures of sentences, and this seems to leave open some important questions. For starters, we made the claim that — in terms of their meanings — modal verbs combine with whole sentences, and not just the verb phrase that follows them. After all, the meaning of the sentence in (1a) seems to correspond to (1b).
(1a) The Observers must report to their commander.
(1b) It must be that the Observers report to their commander.
On the face of it, it seems weird that subjects in modal sentences appear separate from the main verb phrase, as in (1a), while being interpreted as though they were right next to them, as in (1b). It looks like this could be a big problem for our overall theory.
Thankfully, when we take into account some of the important discoveries we’ve talked about in past episodes, like the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis, this problem goes away pretty quick. If it’s true that, in general, subjects start off somewhere insidethe verb phrase, and only latermove to a spot that’s higher up (and more to the left, at least in English), we can suppose that the meanings of sentences — modal and all — are simply computed beforethe subject starts moving around, instead of after.
But, this still leaves us wondering what part of the tree modal verbs typically call home. If you want to know more about how to set that up, keep reading!
In our old system, we might’ve been happy dumping all our modal verbs into the bucket labelled “inflection.” And this seems reasonable at first, since like other kinds of inflection (e.g., tense, aspect, voice), modality sometimes appears as an affix on the verb.
(2) Turkish: gel-me-meli-siniz
come-ɴᴇɢ-ᴏʙʟɪɢ-2ᴘʟ
‘You ought not to come.’
But this probably isn’t the most sophisticated picture of how sentences get put together, given that concepts like tenseandmodalityare pretty different from each other. Moreover, if they really were members of the exact same category, you might not expect to find them showing up in the same place at the same time, like how a coin can’t land both heads and tails; in fact, most modal verbs have both present tense (may, can, shall, will) and past tense (might, could, should, would) forms.
So, it probably makes more sense to think of modal verbs as appearing either somewhere just below, or somewhere just above, a dedicated tense phrase (TP).
It might even be both, given that modal verbs seem to interact with tense in subtly different ways, depending on their flavour:
(3a) Olivia could have used her powers, but she didn’t want to.
(3b) Olivia could have used her powers, but I haven’t found out yet.
After all, the sentence in (3a), which is saying something about Olivia’s abilities, seems to be about what was possible in the past(i.e., circumstances might be different now), whereas the sentence in (3b) says something about the speaker’s presentstate of knowledge. In other words, it looks as if the same modal verb either falls under the influence of the past tense, or else manages to escape it, depending on how it’s interpreted. This suggests there might be modal phrases both below and above the tense phrase.
Lastly, it’s important to say something about how modal phrases actually get their meanings, and what that says about their internal structure. In the episode, we gave the modal verb “must” a meaning that looked like this:
(4) “must” = λ B . λ p . B ⊆ p
Reading it from left to right, it says that a modal verb first combines with some contextually defined modal base B — whose job it is to give the flavour, like whether it’s about belief or ability — and then goes on to combine with the sentence p, saying of the two that the set of worlds described by the base is a subset of the set of worlds described by the sentence. The modal base, then, is kind of like a pronoun; it’s like “they” or “them,” since it picks up its meaning from the context of the conversation. Whether “must” says something about someone’s knowledge, or about some set of rules to be followed, depends on the content of B. And if all this is right, it means that the structures of modal phrases — at a minimum — look something like this:
In reality, a bit more needs to be said about this, since a modal base by itself (as we’ve been thinking of it) can’t completely determine the meaning of the sentence. That’s because all the context can really provide is a general description of what’s being talked about — like whether what’s being discussed includes beliefs, rules, goals, abilities, et cetera. But, it can’t take the extra step of supplyingthose beliefs or rules or goals. To get a sense of why this makes a difference, take a look at the following sentence.
(5) I must report to the Colonel.
Imagine that this sentence is said by someone who mistakenly believes that the Colonel asked to see them. In this case, unbeknownst to the speaker, the sentence is false. And the reasonit’s false is because of what the actual requirements are, and not simply what the speaker might suppose they are. So, whether or not this kind of sentence ends up true or false depends on the way the world actually is, and not the way the speaker thinksit is. In other words, speakers can be uninformed about the content of the modal base, in a way that can’t be handled by context alone; that is, they can be mistaken about what the relevant rules or beliefs really consist of. And all of this means that the modal base must really be more like a function that’s meant to take some world as its input (the world in which the sentence is spoken), and then produce a set of worlds out of that, for the modal verb to work with — one that accurately captures whatever’s being talked about.
So, a more complete picture of what the internal structure of a modal phrase looks like is this:
What we see here is a function (sometimes called an accessibility relation) combining with a special kind of world pronoun. This relation R is what’s actually provided by the context of the conversation; it’s what determines the overall flavour. That w* symbol is what does the job of filling in the content of whatever’s being talked about, by providing the full set of rules or abilities under discussion. And it’s together that they determine the modal base — the set of worlds that modals like “must” or “may” go on to compare with the set of worlds described by the rest of the sentence. This way, we fully account for the fact that the truth of modal sentences depends not just on the context of the conversation, but on the way the world is.
As a final point, it’s worth mentioning that no matter which kind of structure we choose to represent modal sentences, none of them ever quite match up with how the sentence is actually pronounced. That is, the Logical Form of the sentence (how it’s interpreted), at least in these cases, is reliably different from its Phonetic Form (how it’s said). In fact, as it’s turned out, the idea that there are mismatches between how sentences are spoken and what they mean has played a big role in modern syntactic theory — one we’ll continue to talk about in the future!
How do we capture the meaning of “may” or “can”? What kinds of linguistic math do we need to understand them? In this week’s episode, we take a look at modality: where words like “must” fit in our meanings; how we consider many ways the world could be to account for their semantics; and how the same string of sounds can have a lot of flavours.
We must say, we’re happy to be back! Looking forward to hearing what people have to say. ^_^
We can put whole clauses inside other phrases, but what does that do to their structure and their meaning? In this week’s episode, we take a look at the syntax and semantics of relative clauses: how these clauses kind of look like adjectives; how using them creates islands from which words can’t escape; and how moving things around in them throws semantic variables into the sentence setup.
Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say! ^_^
The term ‘uncut’ claims cut to be normative, and 'un’ as an adition, which reinforces the notion that the foreskin is extra. Every time I hear someone use this term, I want to alter our cultures understanding of normal.
A dick (with foreskin) is a dick. A dick with out foreskin is a cut dick (an aditional procedure, and alteration, and aditional information needed to describe the condition of the dick).
I’m kind of glad to hear that everyone does this. Because it means it isn’t colonizer bullshit, it’s what everyone does. It’s just people discovering new things. Everyone goes:
“Oh hey these people have their own style of [language A’s word for thing. Say, what do you call it?”
“Oh it’s [language B’s word for thing].”
“Got it, it’s [language B’s word for thing] variety [language A’s word for thing]”
This is seriously not colonizer bullshit, it’s just one of the common ways that loan words work.
linguistics side of tumblr please talk about how this is a type of reduplication
Andso, a finger on the monkey’s paw curled.
This isn’t a type of reduplication. Reduplication is a very specific linguistic phenomenon which refers to the duplication of phonemes, morphemes, words, or whole ass clauses, as a way to changing meaning, add or remove emphasis, or a whole bunch of other things. But it’s specifically about the repeatition of sound: ‘bread’ is reduplicated to ‘bread bread’ or 'brebread’ or 'breadad’ or what have you depending on your reduplication scheme; and not 'naan bread.’
Naan Bread and such are an example of an entirely different linguistic phenomenon centering reduncency, except it isn’t the sound that’s redundent but the meaning assigned to the sound. It’s the broadest terms, naan bread is a tautology(linguistics); narrowing in on specifics, it’s Semantic Pleonasm, in which two words which convey similar information are paired together to give the best combination of information; Think “tuna fish” for a monolingual example of variety-category semantic Pleonasm. Then getting to specifics, we have Bilingual Tautological/'Pleonastic’ Expressions, in which the combination of words are sourced from two differet languages. This is where we find 'Naan Bread’ and everything else this post is talking about.
