Re: A question and introduction

* Andy Canivet said on 2002-06-13 22:51:11 +0200
> > From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> >
> > That's right. The nullar number of a noun indicates its absence.
> >
> > For example, the sentence "I don't see a house" would be translated as:
> >          ebu' fww't3 my'julir.
> >
> > ebu'     - receptive 1st person pronoun
> > fww't3   - physical verb, "to see"
> > my'julir - nullar form of _juli'r_, "house".
> >
> > So literally, this reads "I see no-house."
>
> You reminded me of a thought experiment in my Cogsci class:
> Bill not being in the room looks exactly the same as a big purple elephant
> not being in the room.  We generally tend to think of space as independent
> from objects (although this may be, admittedly, a result of our worldview
> and heavily reinforced by Cartesian dualism) - the room is the same and is
> always the same, regardless of whether it contains Bill, an elephant, or
> nothing at all (granted the mystic and physicist in me disagree with this to
> a point, but...)
>
> My anthropology prof told me about the Warnindilyagwa - a group living on an
> island in north-western Australia.  Their particular view of the universe -
> the dreamtime (similar to other Australian peoples) - was basically like
> looking at the spaces between things.  Indeed, as much as there is a chair
> in a room, there is a "no-chair" surrounding it...
>
> This confusing and paradoxical stuff really screws with the Cartesian mind.
> Having a nullar numerical noun inflection in your language suggests that
> it's speakers must have a *fundamentally* different way of looking at the
> world... Cool!
I believe there are other natlangs that put the negation on the noun
instead of the verb. <convenient>All my linguistics texts are at
home and I'm in the office now, so no examples...</convenient>.

To the point: there's a difference between zero amount of something
and nothing of something. Saying that there's zero of something
implies that there *can* be more than zero of something, or that it
*used to be* more than zero. With a "not" you may imply that
something has never, or will never exist. (Ignore neat double
negations like 'not unbig' for the moment.)

"There are no elephants here."
"There are zero elephants here."

Is the nullar a 'zero' or a 'not'? Both?


t., in whose main lang the difference is relevant, and marked, incidentally :)