Re: "Each Other"

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> I've always found English to be odd and ambiguous here (how do you know
> whether "they wash their hands" means: "they wash each other's hands",
> "each one washes his own hands", "each one washes a single hand of his",
> etc...?) French behaves like Spanish, and I have always trouble with the
> English behaviour here.
I think only meaning 2 is at all plausible in English.  Meaning 1 is
IMHO grammatically barred, not just semantically:  "They washed their
backs" seems to me to mean that each washed his own back, even though
the reciprocal meaning would be far more plausible pragmatically.
As for meaning 3, it's hard to wash just one hand, but "they wash their
feet" seems to me to mean both feet, though there are known to be
problems with irregular plurals in this area:

        The cottage stood at the foot of the mountain.
        *The cottages stood at the feet of the mountains.
        He has a sweet tooth [i.e. likes sweet things].
        *They have sweet teeth.

Apparently it's difficult to use "feet" or "teeth" distributively;
the irregular plural seems to implicate a collective sense.

--
There is / One art                      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
No more / No less                       http://www.reutershealth.com
To do / All things                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With art- / Lessness                     -- Piet Hein