Is this the poem of a "literal man," or is that attribute merely assigned to the speaker by a companion about whose mind the speaker possesses only inept, overliteral hypotheses?
Furthermore, the spoken word is a natural sign implying that the speaker possesses the concept of the object meant by the word according to its regular meaning.
But not every speaker possesses the ability to shape the truth with a heretical heart and a righteous imagination, which is the reason some of us go to the theatre in the first place.
Generative, or transformational, grammarians of the second half of the 20th century, such as Noam Chomsky, studied the knowledge that native speakers possess which enables them to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.
But what stood out to me was not only the variety of topics, but also the passion each speaker possesses.
In his obituary, he was described "as a speaker [who] took very high rank, possessing a force and fluency of expression, a power of lucid statement, and a readiness in debate, which with one or two exceptions have never been equalled in the Council".
So what are the attributes and assets that a Speaker's wife is supposed to possess?
One asks the other, "Did you know that in Hampstead they have fifty different names for bread?" Even if Eskimo speakers did possess a voluminous vocabulary for snow, or Hampsteaders for bread, it wouldn't prove that they were subject to some separate reality.
Similarly, the diaphonemic system in goes beyond the common core, marking contrasts that only appear in some varieties; Geraghty argues that, because of Fijian marriage customs that prompt exposure to other dialects, speakers may possess a diasystem that represents multiple dialects as part of their communicative competence.
These, then, are the most important kinds of information which the political speaker must possess.
While the moment demands a leader possessing LBJ's combination of political skills and moral clarity, instead, we have Republican Speaker John Boehner, who time and again has demonstrated that he prizes his speaker's gavel more than the public interest.
