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Re: THEORY nouns and cases (was: Verbs derived from noun cases)

From:<jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, April 29, 2004, 20:07
Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> Um, on that logic, just about any everyday concrete noun is a good > counterexample - a hand, afterall, is just one out of a very strictly limited > set of configurations of mostly water and some organic compounds.
Well, no. A hand is not defined by the material it's made from -- cells are dying and being replaced, and within each cell, atoms exchange and recirculate constantly: you have essentially no atoms in common, except iron, with yourself two years ago. But a fist is a particular state of a hand, not a chose-en-soi in any meaningful sense; we do not have a noun meaning "curled-up toes", for example. -- Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the John Cowan portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see jcowan@reutershealth.com it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical, www.ccil.org/~cowan epical or dramatic? If a man hacking in fury www.reutershealth.com at a block of wood make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not? --Stephen Dedalus

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>