I've been scanning Chomsky's lectures about language for a while now. In vain. Does anybody remember him talking about how people have a rich and specific meaning for words, even words as simple as 'house'?
I vaguely recall that he talks about painting your house, filling your house completely with cheese, and color referring to the outside face of the house. His point, as I recall, is that everyone seems to be in agreement of all these strange properties of 'house', despite even the heaviest, most comprehensive dictionary failing even to scratch the surface of its meaning. Thus, properties of 'house' must be innate, so the argument goes.
I find this argument very interesting and I really