<p> Modern, Western people often conceive the universe as a mindless void full of lifeless objects. This mistaken conception perpetuates a deep-seated loneliness and disconnection from the larger universe. German philosopher and sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) used the term <i>disenchantment </i> to describe how modern humans experience the universe without any magical or mystical explanations for its or their own existence. Mythology, religion, philosophy, and science are all attempts to orient to myriad beings and the vast universe. Thus far, none of these endeavors has provided an adequate feeling of being at home in the universe. </p><p> Many scholars of language have attributed the disenchantment of the world with the invention of the alphabet and the formation of language. This thesis argues it was not language that separated humans from the universe, but instead a changing relationship to the stars. The works of philologist Owen Barfield (1898-1997) focus specifically on word etymology and offer insights into humanity's ever-evolving consciousness and correlating worldview orientations. His studies reveal meaningful correlations between the way humans think and their vocabularies. </p><p> Since the earliest recorded Proto-Indo-European language, Sanskrit, the word <i>star</i> has remained the same in its meaning and transliteration into English. Through a brief linguistic explanation of how the word <i>star</i> came into modern English, it is possible to appreciate not only its history, but the mystical power of the word itself. When correlated with humanity's most original worldview orientation, the word <i> star</i> brings back the language and consciousness of our early ancestors whose influence might otherwise be forgotten. Behind words and letters that seem to signify a lifeless, meaningless universe, is a worldview imbued with sacredness. This thesis argues for the revival and excavation of English etymologies (through Barfieldian philology) and an appreciation of language itself to move humanity towards a re-enchanted relationship with the stars and the larger universe.</p>

<p> Determining the semantic content of sentences, and uncovering regularities between linguistic form and meaning, requires attending to both morphological and syntactic properties of a language with an eye to the notional categories that the various pieces of form express. In this dissertation, I investigate the morphosyntactic devices that English speakers (and speakers of other languages) can use to talk about comparisons between things: comparative sentences with, in English, <i>"more... than", "as... as", "too", "enough",</i> and others. I argue that a core component of all of these constructions is a unitary element expressing the concept of measurement. </p><p> The theory that I develop departs from the standard degree-theoretic analysis of the semantics of comparatives in three crucial respects: first, gradable adjectives do not (partially or wholly) denote measure functions; second, degrees are introduced compositionally; and three, the introduction of degrees arises uniformly from the semantics of the expression <i> "much".</i> These ideas mark a return to the classic morphosyntactic analysis of comparatives found in Bresnan (1973), while incorporating and extending semantic insights of Schwarzschild (2002, 2006). Of major interest is how the dimensions for comparison observed across the panoply of comparative constructions vary, and these are analyzed as a consequence of what is measured (individuals, events, states, etc.), rather than which expressions invoke the measurement. </p><p> This shift in perspective leads to the observation of a number of regularities in the mapping between form and meaning that could not otherwise have been seen. First, the notion of measurement expressed across comparative constructions is familiar from some explications of that concept in measurement theory (e.g. Berka 1983). Second, the distinction between gradable and non-gradable adjectives is formally on a par with that between mass and count nouns, and between atelic and telic verb phrases. Third, comparatives are perceived to be acceptable if the domain for measurement is structured, and to be anamolous otherwise. Finally, elaborations of grammatical form reflexively affect which dimensions for comparison are available to interpretation.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2977. Adviser: Anil Gupta. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 9, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 2, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: A, page: 0620. Chairs: Lawrence Moss; Michael Dunn.