From the Kitchen of Steven Pinker

I'm currently reading The Stuff of Thought by S. Pinker and it is making my head hurt. The man is completely hacking into our use of verbs as a species. In so doing he is raising (and answering) way more questions than I ever knew existed. It's really quite amazing that all of us can speak as fluently as we can. In fact, I'm starting to think that when we hear a clever phrase, like "there is nothing to fear but fear itself" we have no idea why it's clever at all. Laughing is our shortcut to understanding, the only other option is a dissertation. LOL
Ever heard of polysemous words? They are like homonyms (same word different meaning--remember Austin Powers asking about the "caliber" of women with gun barrells protruding from their chests) except polysemous words have a meaning that is so interchangeable that we rarely even think that it has two (or more) meanings. Take chicken for example, it can be a bird or an edible meat. When someone says that you're having chicken for dinner, though, I'm guessing that you've never conjured an image similar to the one on the right. However, if you were a robot using artificial intelligence there is no way to distinguish between the two concepts without more information. So how do we unconsciously do it? Actually, what I find more interesting is that a 3 year old of low intelligence can do it without effort, while delving into the reasons that it occurs or even realizing that we are taking a mental shortcut is generally left to intellectuals with PhDs. We seem to be wired for communication but not for understanding--and that I think explains a lot of what you see at the bar.
(Incidentally, saying "chicken" to mean cowardly person would be a homonym in case you were wondering, I think.)

Oh, and I appologize for my last rant about RD--a guilty pleasure--not journalistic integrity on my part either. One other random thought came to me about the i before e rule. Is that what Nelly was referring to in Country Grammar by saying: "e i, e i uh-oh"? I doubt it.