Re: 'together vs. to gather'

Muke Tever wrote:


> E fésto Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...>:
> >> 3) They don't require plural subjects anyway.  "Water gathers in these
> >> puddles," "The congregation disperses immediately after the preacher
> >> finishes."
> >
> > The last example misses (what I take to be) the point of this thread,
> > because although "the congregation" is not morphologically plural or
> > (necessarily) syntactically plural, it is what you might call
> > "semantically plural."
>
> That actually _is_ my point.  It's entirely semantic, and the choice of
> subject for the verb has nothing to do with the grammar.
But it does.  (Or choice of object, in the case of a trans.verb)-- Sometimes
there _is_ an overlap between semantics and syntax; some semantic features
of the noun can be specified in the syntactic features of the verb-- for
example "kick" must have a +-animate agent.  (But it is probably a matter of
_semantics_ that the +-anim. noun must also have "leg/foot etc." somewhere in
its definition.)
In standard usage, f*ck requires animate male and female participants;
anything else requires additional context. (There's a wide-ranging
discussion of this verb in "Studies out in left field".)  So there is no
reason why one of the arguments of a verb might not also be specified
[+plural].

[Sidebar: Some nouns that we in the US use in the singular, take the plural
in UK-- "Parliament have decided..., Manchester United win..." etc.  Is
"congregation" one of these?]

Even took a verb
> like "disperse" an indisputably singular subject, the *semantics* of the
> verb would lead one to regard the subject as a collection of parts of the
> subject.  (Hence the quibble about water or dust--mass nouns, strictly, do
> not qualify for number classification, but they are divisible which might
> make one think the post-dispersal/pre-coalescence were plural.)
>
> Here:
>     Johan stepped into the strange machine and dispersed throughout the
> room.
>
> The subject is quite singular, but I wager you can guess the function of
the strange machine already.

Ah yes, the Acme Little Jiffy Disperolator (TM).  Golf balls, coins, and
human beings e.g. are not ordinarily thought of as "dispersable" in the same
way as dust or water, or clouds. In cases where they are, then some special
context -- e.g. our Acme machine-- has to be introduced.

> > Other English verbs that have been said to require subjects or objects
> > that are plural (in some perhaps ill-defined semantic sense) are
> > "scatter" and "massacre."  You could scatter twenty golf balls around
> > your living roon, but you could hardly scatter one golf ball (or even
> > two).
>
> I dont see anything in the semantics of "massacre" that require a plural
> anywhere...
Doug has replied to this.  IMO "massacre" seems to require either plural
actors or plural victims, preferably both. With apologies to all the
Nations, consider--

a.--The Indians massacred the white settlers. OK
b.--The Indians massacred the white settler.  OK
c.--The/An Indian mass. the white settlers.. OK
d.--The/An Indian mass. the white settler.   ??? IMO
(Massacre however has two meanings-- 1. general slaughter (of humans,
animals) 2. a particularly vicious murder.  a and c show #1, b and perhaps d
show #2)
>
> "Scatter" is synonymous to 'disperse' anyway, but note that its close
> cognate "shatter" has no such restriction on number--
True, but _somewhere_ in the semantic specification of "shatter" there must
be the information that the object is brittle/breakable; also, that the
result of shattering is "more than one piece". But one of its syntactic
features is that the DO/patient must be [-animate]

"I'm sorry I shattered your cat" violates that, without special context
(glass figurine e.g.).

and is, incidentally,
> a pretty good indication of what 'scatter' or 'disperse' with a singular
> subject means.  I think, actually, that it is basically a question of
> usage--scattering a singular has a different effect from scattering a
> plural, though I don't think there's any trouble in running a golf ball
> through a smasher and scattering it[!] around the living room.
Special context again!  You can't scatter/disperse it until you've reduced
it to _many_ parts.

I don't know how current theories of syntax deal with these questions; I do
know that Chomskian TG didn't do a very good job of it...........

Reply