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Re: "Each Other"

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Thursday, January 22, 2004, 11:58
Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> Which reminds me of another odd (to my native English mind) > quirk of Spanish: when describing a group of people performing > identical activities, the number of the object is appropriate for > each individual, not for the entire group. Thus, for example, the > Spanish for "The children washed their hands and faces" literally > translates the last bit as "hands and face", because each child has > only one face. The word for "hands" is plural not because there > are multiple children, but because each child has two.
I like the feature whereby Spanish says _plomo y hierro fundidos_ 'molten lead and molten iron'. The adj. is marked pl. to specify that it modifies both nouns; if it were singular, it would modify _hierro_ only. English "molten lead and iron" is ambiguous: is the iron molten or not? -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Does anybody want any flotsam? / I've gotsam. Does anybody want any jetsam? / I can getsam. --Ogden Nash, _No Doctors Today, Thank You_