Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

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.