Re: 'together vs. to gather'

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)

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