What is the correct interpretation that should be given to the following?
My wife does not compliment/complement me anymore?
Don't consult a dictionary. Allow me to demonstrate the method in your presupposition of my naivety or madness and allow self-discovery of your innately human ability. What we have here is not an
ambiguity in the strict sense, i.e., a vagueness because the sentence is
sensible in its own right. I will argue that like me you feel just a tad uncertain as
to the meaning of the word - why? Rather, should I ask what or how would you
propose to 'get the meaning' of the word?
Yes, your thinking is correct!
Context. If you were privy to a context of use then you would easily come to
grasp the meaning. By the way, context is a natural everyday occurring fact. We
are in an immediate context, surrounded by one or more contexts, and experience
one or more contexts continuously. That's too obvious you say?! Because it is
such a naturally occurring thing, we take it for granted, it recedes into the
implicitness of our thinking and we fail to use it actively.
The good news is that it takes little
linguistic or cognitive effort to enable a naturally occurring ability
(function) to uncover an associative naturally occurring thing (form).
Before I introduce the topical
components of the series, let's return to our uncertainty above by simply
adding contextual cues or markers:
a) My wife does not compliment/complement me anymore despite
me doing nice things for her. Besides the additions giving good
context, I introduce perhaps a novel but powerful notion - the contextual
marker (cue). The word 'nice' acts as a marker and should have given
away the correct word expected to be assigned to this sentence: compliment
(say nice things about someone)
b) My
wife does not compliment/complement me anymore as often as she did when
I was still learning the business. The giveaway in this sentence is the
word 'learning', which intrudes another notion - an indexical, i.e., requires
context to manifest its meaning. Learning suggests a time in the past from
which the person has progressed, which further suggests that he has moved on and
therefore the wife's support has also moved on; diminished because the man has
grown out of the learning.
As you may have noticed following
my previous posts, I am passionate about contextualization. Why is
contextualization so important? Simply put, it is one of the things that sets
us apart from machines and by developing our contextual thinking skills, we can
tap into this innate human capability and unlock the full potential of
communication.
So,
whether you’re looking to improve your own language skills, or simply gain a deeper
appreciation for the power of context, be sure to check out this exciting new
series on Contextual Thinking. Here is a preview of the scope of the series:
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