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Re: 'together vs. to gather'

From:Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Date:Saturday, January 17, 2004, 19:46
Well, I never had to draw a magnetic field, so it's
hard to say. But is a magnetic field part of the
common people experience ? Who does draw magnetic
fields ?

As to "gather", I mentioned in another reply that I
agreed that there may be 2 different meanings, sth
like "mass-gathering" vs "plural-objects gathering".
But the problem I wanted to point at was: can the seme
"plural" be attached in principle, not only to a noun
ou noun group, but also in certain cases to a verb,
because this verb is implicitely plural ?

At first I just thought that things like tense,
aspect, mood should be attached to the verb (I mean in
a logical conlang), and other things like gender,
number to the noun. It seems that this is not
absolutely true.

--- Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:
> > Yes, but if you draw a diagram of, say, a magnetic > field, you also > have to draw multiple arrows. These aren't real > entities, they're > just the best way we have of indicating a vector > field on paper - in > reality, the field is continuous. So I don't find > this particular > argument very persuasive. > > I'm not sure convinced either way as to whether > "gather" implies > plurality. I would suggest that it's > language-dependant... I mean, > there are a lot of subtly different usages of > "gather" in English, and > it seems to me that some of them imply a kind of > plurality, even when > used with mass nouns, and others don't.
===== Philippe Caquant "Le langage est source de malentendus." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>