Our daughter went through a fairly long period of calling cats “dog”, and would aggressively correct us if we tried to correct her. Possibly something of the same thing.
I’ve never known how to make sense of the lack of humility people have about word definitions, especially when it’s children.
Since words don’t have objective meanings, I wonder if they’re kind of reporting an experience that they’re having, on which they really could speak authoratatively, something like “Trust me, from the perspective of a learner, the distinction between cats, and dogs, is simply too subtle, and insufficiently important, for the English language to continue to demarcate it. History will come to agree with me.”
Our daughter went through a fairly long period of calling cats “dog”, and would aggressively correct us if we tried to correct her. Possibly something of the same thing.
I’ve never known how to make sense of the lack of humility people have about word definitions, especially when it’s children.
Since words don’t have objective meanings, I wonder if they’re kind of reporting an experience that they’re having, on which they really could speak authoratatively, something like “Trust me, from the perspective of a learner, the distinction between cats, and dogs, is simply too subtle, and insufficiently important, for the English language to continue to demarcate it. History will come to agree with me.”