Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations

Where does exception collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaninggeneralizationcompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to exception is generalization.

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exception3 CONSTRUCTSState of exceptionSCHMITT · SUSPENDED LAWLexical exceptionCHOMSKY & HALLE · MARKINGProgram exceptionGOODENOUGH · HANDLER

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1922State of exception1968Lexical exception1975Program exception
2026

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Political theory

Suspension of normal law by sovereign decision

Carl Schmitt's 1922 Political Theology defined the exception as the moment when a sovereign lawfully suspends the ordinary legal order to meet an emergency, and argued that the power to decide when this happens marks who is truly sovereign. Giorgio Agamben's 2005 State of Exception traced how such suspensions, once meant to be temporary, have recurred as a technique of modern government. Here the exception is a condition of public law and state power, not a marked word that breaks a grammar rule or an event raised inside a running program.[1][2]

Unit
One declared suspension of the normal legal order within a polity
Recovery means
Ordinary law is meant to resume once the emergency passes, though theorists note the suspension can be prolonged
Measured by
Studied through constitutions, emergency decrees, and legal texts rather than by a numeric scale

Linguistics

A word marked to resist a general rule

Chomsky and Halle's 1968 The Sound Pattern of English formalized the exception as a word or form that carries a special marking telling the grammar not to apply a rule that otherwise holds across the language, so an irregular item is stored with a feature that blocks the regular process. In this account the exception is not random noise but a lexically listed departure that the rest of the system still treats as regular. Here the exception is a marked entry in a speaker's store of words, not a suspension of state law or an event raised by a running program.[3]

Unit
One lexical item marked as not undergoing a given rule
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Identified by testing which forms fail to follow a rule that applies productively elsewhere

Computer science

An event that diverts abnormal control flow

John Goodenough's 1975 paper Exception handling: Issues and a proposed notation defined the exception as an event a program raises when it meets a condition it cannot deal with on its normal path, transferring control to separate code written to respond. His notation let a routine signal such a condition to its caller and let the caller decide whether to retry, recover, or stop, which shaped the exception mechanisms later built into many programming languages. Here the exception is a control-flow event inside running software, not a marked word in a grammar or a suspension of a country's laws.[4]

Unit
One raised condition that transfers control to a handler
Recovery means
A handler may recover and resume, retry the operation, or terminate the affected computation
Measured by
Traced in code by where exceptions are raised, propagated, and caught, and counted in logs and tests

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Nearby collisions

sovereignty4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four sovereigntiesnorm4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructscode3 fields · 6 citationsjingle · one word, three constructs

References

  1. Schmitt, C. (2005). Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty (G. Schwab, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1922) https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226738901.001.0001
  2. Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attell, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226009261.001.0001
  3. Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. Harper & Row.
  4. Goodenough, J. B. (1975). Exception handling: Issues and a proposed notation. Communications of the ACM, 18(12), 683–696. https://doi.org/10.1145/361227.361230

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