Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

Roger Mills scripsit:

> (indef?) "As for elephants, they have trunks"-- though perhaps generic
> statements are a sub-class of definite, since this could be paraphrased "As
> for the elephant (in general), it has a trunk", so that "generic" = "the
> definite/defined class of all known examples of X"???
Yes, I think so.  And there are a couple of possible cases, viz. "As for
the elephant-collectivity", "As for elephant-substance", "As for the-abstract-
typical-elephant".  Lojban makes fairly careful distinctions among these
cases, and doesn't get mixed up about "The lion lives in Africa" (this is
the abstract typical lion) vs. "That lion lives in the zoo."

To distinguish, we can say that the elephant-collective has many trunks,
elephant-goo has no trunks, and the abstract-typical-elephant has an
abstract-typical-elephant-trunk.

I personally hold the view that "elephant", understood as a species, is an
individual rather than a class, an individual with lots of parts.  Similarly
"Cowan" is an individual, most of whose parts are named "Cowan", though some
are named "Leyfert" or have other surnames.  In either case the members
of the individual are identified by facts about descent, not some kind of
characterization.

--
Híggledy-pìggledy / XML programmers     John Cowan
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Unicode weenies and / François Yergeaus.        jcowan@reutershealth.com