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Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Friday, December 10, 1999, 13:04
Nik Taylor
> > Sally Caves wrote: > > To boldly go where no one has gone before. > > > > They are to correct this one, though: > > > > To boldly go where no man has gone before. > > Actually, the second is more correct than the first. Man CAN mean > "human", and the Enterprise certainly (sometimes) went where no HUMAN > had gone before, but they've never gone where no ONE had gone before - > after all, they were constantly running into other species who were > there before them! :-)
I've tried to run that argument up the flagpole too, but consider myself defeated by the counterarguments (a) that _man_ means 'human' only when it's a bare NP, so "no man" can't literally mean "no person", and (b) that _one_ in compound pronouns like _noone_ means "human", not "sentient being" (which is arguable, but it is beyond debate that "human" is the prototype for the meaning of _-one_). So my solution would be to change it to: To boldly go where man has never gone before or, if you allow the same deviance from strict iambicity as the original, then: To boldly go where mankind has never gone before -- which is my preference. --And.