Talk:Hypostasis (linguistics)

Complexity
It isn't dense. It is "dense".84.227.230.13 (talk) 04:08, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

This reads more like some rambling linguistics professor (or some insecure fellow trying to make the impression he's a linguistics professor) than a clear, concise encyclopedic entry for the common folk... 83.71.43.61 14:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC) James J. Emerald


 * Heck, I'm a linguist, and I don't have a clue what this means! For one, the definition, vague as it may be, seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the example from Bloomfield.  (BTW, I came here because someone was asking about this on Linguist List, and I wanted to know what it was about.) Mcswell (talk) 17:59, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I came here for a definition and this writing is way too dense.216.158.233.219 (talk) 18:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Morningwindow

The second sentence of the following paragraph is rather ambiguously worded: "In descriptive linguistics, the term was first introduced by Leonard Bloomfield to account for uses of synsemantic words as autosemantic in sentences such as 'I'm tired of your buts and ifs.' In this sense, the usage meaning of the word is referred to as a whole."

For one, even though "this sense" clearly refers to Bloomfield's sense, the phrase is only a nominal reference to such a perspective as we are not given much information beyond an obscure example that the scholar uses to illustrate his concept. The concept itself is not entailed. And God help us if we are to attempt to theorize what, in any degree of specificity, is connoted by the phrase "usage meaning". One would infer from the phrase that some linguists distinguish between "standardized" definitions of words and the implied senses these words/phrases/particles take on when they are "used" in their several contexts. But that sounds rather shaky, philosophically speaking, as words are always "used" in a context...i.e. there wouldn't seem to be some imaginary, ideal meaning or context for terms apart from their usage; thus all definitions and meanings are "usage meanings". I'm sure this is a heavy topic of debate in linguistics, in some form or another, as the Nominalist/Essentialist debate continues to be, in some permutation or another, in philosophy. Anyway, yes, the article needs some improvement. Artisticidea (talk) 02:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed new article entitled Hypostasis (literature)
Given the text so far presented in the article, it seems that what is known as hypostasis in literature is quite different from the linguistic process of giving reality to entities. The literature hypostasis seems to equate with mixing levels of narration, i.e. violating the grammar of the narrative structure. While the editor of the /* Hypostasis in literature */ section indicates a relation to metafiction, metafiction does not break the narrative structure, so much as have characters bring literary motifs as objects into the narrative. Given the lack of references, I have doubts that (1) the word "hypostasis" is actually used for this type of event (literary device) and (2) that the word "hypostasis" is appropriate to describe this type of event. However, this section does not belong in this article, this literary device of breaking the shell of the "suspension of disbelief" does deserve encyclopedic treatment, but what title it deserves remains, for me, an open question. Expatostoria seems like a better term, if one wants Greek roots. --Bejnar (talk) 19:24, 31 October 2012 (UTC)