Lacuna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the Italian band, see Lacuna Coil.
A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work.
The word is Latin for hole or pit. The plural is lacunae. (The word lagoon referring to an empty space of water is cognate.)
The state of old manuscripts or inscriptions which have weathered or been damaged sometimes gives rise to lacunae - passages consisting of a word or words that are missing or illegible. In order to reconstruct the original text, the context is to be considered. In archaeology and literary criticism this may sometimes lead to competing reconstructions and consequent interpretations. Published texts containing lacunae often mark the section where the missing text is with a […]. For example, "This sentence contains 20 words, and […] missing".
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[edit] Histology
A lacuna (histology) is a small space containing an osteocyte in bone or chondrocyte in cartilage.
[edit] Psychology
When there is a significant gap in understanding or personality of an individual, a lacuna is evident, and is usually quite concerning psychologically. For example, "The father's total inability to recognize adultery as a problem created a lacuna the family struggled to fill for years".
[edit] Law
In law, a lacuna arises when there is no previous authority directly dealing with the issue of the case at hand. As legislation is necessarily incomplete, judges therefore often have to resort to analogy to reach a judgment.
[edit] Philosophy
In philosophy, a lacuna is a gap in an argument indicating a leap of logic which cannot be deductively justified by the premises as found in the argument.
[edit] Linguistics
In translation, a lacuna is a lexical gap, a lack of one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language. This is a factor in untranslatability.
[edit] Information science
In libraries, a lacuna is a missing section that would normally be expected to be represented in a collection. For example, a collection of English literature including little or no Shakespeare would have a serious lacuna.
[edit] Music
In music, a lacuna is an intentional, extended passage in a musical work during which no notes are played. A lacuna acts as "negative music" to induce a state of serenity (or tension) in the listener through its contrast to "normal" music consisting of sounded notes. Though no notes are sounded during a lacuna, it is a purposeful and valid musical passage used for a specific effect in the context of the overall work. Lacunae may last from several minutes to hours, days, or even years, depending on the intent of the composer.
Contrast this to a musical rest, which is of much shorter duration and a normal part of musical performance that serves to create rhythm and movement between notes. In general, rests do not call attention to themselves in the perception of the listener, whereas lacunae actively force the listener to experience silence as part of the overall performance.
Lacunae are seldom heard in popular music, as the attention span of the average listener and the financial constraints of popular media don't accommodate large amounts of silence. However, the long gap between the last listed track on a CD and a hidden bonus track could qualify as a lacuna, particularly in cases where the intervening silence is in some way meaningful, such as causing surprise with a loud fanfare or delight in an echoed theme when the hidden track begins.
Some classical forms of music incorporate lacunae[citation needed]. Additionally, some Japanese music incorporates lacunae, the auditory equivalent of negative space, a visual aesthetic element particularly appreciated in Japanese culture.
[edit] Movies
In the film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind the mind-erasing technique featured in the story is described by the chracters as ending in a 'lacuna'. The clinic that operates the service is called Lacuna Inc. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/maindetails ]
