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Re: "Each Other"

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Friday, January 23, 2004, 13:32
En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>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'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. Christophe Grandsire. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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John Cowan <cowan@...>