Systematicity

Weak Lensing @ Flickr

I came across a word that I didn’t know today in Johann Muller’s Reclaiming Knowledge – Systematicity. It’s not in the dictionary, so I turned to Google’s define: function and…

Systematicity: this term refers to the quality of entailment carryover defined in the previous item: the logic of the source domain carries over to the target. It refers to the application of a system of logical relationships (part-whole, cause-effect, sequence of events, good-bad, etc.) from the source domain in the target domain. If TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, then, since limited resources can run out, time can “run out”. If a limited resource can be saved, then time can “be saved”. If a state is conceived of as a location, then moving into or out of the location will be interpreted as experiencing the state or ceasing to experience the state (“falling in and out of love”, for example).

This comes from a page entitled Terms and concepts for metaphorical and metonymic analysis on the website of the English Dept. at California Polytechnic State University.