Re: 'together vs. to gather'

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.  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.

> 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...

"Scatter" is synonymous to 'disperse' anyway, but note that its close
cognate "shatter" has no such restriction on number--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.





        *Muke!
--
http://frath.net/                  E jer savne zarjé mas ne
http://kohath.livejournal.com/     Se imné koone'f metha
http://kohath.deviantart.com/      Brissve mé kolé adâ.

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