On Semene, Lexeme and Sgt. Bilko
The docile decent doctor takes as given what is acceptable, decorating and documenting the doctrine with a dainty and distainful dignity for condign and indignant disciples alike.
This dogma's proto-Indo-European roots are found in dek-, "to take, accept," which yeilds the Latin decere, "to be fitting." (American Heritage Dictionary, Appendix, p. 1511).
As the conventional form is to "take as given..." the initial verb of taking calls for scrutiny. We are moving in the algebra of language, such a system of constants and variables. The sense, Semene, is the thread of continuity, the constant through time...for those of us who are writing, reading and speaking, hearing modern California, West Coast, American English, the duration may well be on the order of seven thousand or so years.
"A word of caution should be entered about the semantics of the roots. It is perhaps more hazardous to attempt to reconstruct meaning than to reconstruct linguistic form, and the meaning of a root can only be extrapolated from the meanings of the descendants it has left." (p. 1498)
SEMENE : LEXEME
And there is also the question of the sound of the word as spoken & heard, mantram, PHONEME. The fourth element is the idea, object or act of which the word is a token--as it were, the REAL.
We find than the "form" taken by philology is that of the LEXEME, or the recorded, written token of the word. We are constrained by the evidence of the various forms in the marked state which we compare, contrast, according to reason, science, tree or branching logic. Relating these token forms we construct a web or network of meanings. Here we have two distinct formal grammars (tree & web, or binary and iconic) which generally characterize the mathematical models upon which recent discussion of split-brain function has been based. Whether or not this research "holds up" in the light of neuro-psychology's progressively subtle and complex distinctions, we now regard the parietal cortical functional specialization as useful in terms of a descriptive model bridging mathematics and biology. Whatever the degree of "specialization," or the precision of localization with respect to neurological function, we have a deep and clear distinction between elements of the paradigm. Our brains do exhibit data processing functions that are describable in such mathematical terms, as GRAMMARS of a process neuro-architecture. Similarly, we may indicate the mathematical model of an array grammar in order to characterize, generally, the data processing of the archaeocortical functions, and the model of a cybernetic, feedback, free association or self-referential grammar characteristic of neocortical activity, the meta-grammar.
We may only imagine what proto-Indo-European sounded like. And all of our extrapolations are based upon our view of the reality of some so-called objective world, which of course may not be identical with the world of reality just seven millenia ago, as archaeology and history teach us.
"When it comes to be a battle between brains and brawn, bet on brains!" Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko (above photo), in the segment featuring Drill Sergeant Fenton G. Benton ("one 't' in Benton"), as played by Phil Silvers and George Matthews (two 't's in Matthews?), where the Boys take out a life insurance policy ($100,000; $200,00 double indemnity) on the Beast.
To Mega Therion: The Great Beast of the Apocalypse as seen by St, John on Patmos, represented by the cabalistic value 666, and whose temple is sometimes recognized by New Yorkers as the Tishman building of Fifth Avenue & 53rd St., upon whose back rides number 667, the Scarlet Lady of Babylon, Mary Magdalen, high priestess of Maudlin College, Hester for Hawthorne, originally the "Eve" inside the Garden of Eden, with the Apple: A is for Apple, and the apple is red, just so in Snow White, with the switcheroo of the red and the green: red food treffe (Graves, Food for Centaurs--mushrooms); but it is the green mushroom that will kill you (Amanita phhlloides) not the red (A. muscaria).