Re: 'together vs. to gather'

I agree about the discussion of what is - or isn't
reality. I think that this is a pointless question.
The only question is: "How do we conceive the world
and how are we able to exchange information about it".
This of course changes with time, place, personnality
and other factors. For instance, some languages
include ghosts as a grammatical class of its own, and
it sounds quite natural to those people talking such
languages.

About dust, yes, in fact, we should go a little
further into it. I intend to do some experiments about
dust gathering first (I'm sure my wife will agree).

"A horde or irate linguists" is of course semantically
plural. We often face this problem in French, not
knowing if we have to say "un grand nombre de
linguistes s'est rassemblé" (grammatical position) or
"se sont rassemblés" (semantical position)(both can be
used, in fact).

--- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> That is not how I think of it when I gather dust
> from the top of my bookshelf
> or whatever - before it's a spread-out mass, after
> it's a mass concentrated to
> a little mound. And that may be the rub of the
> matter - plurality, as a
> linguistic phenomenon is not so much tied to
> external reality as to the
> speakers' construal thereof. (Please, no-one restart
> the discussion of what
> reality there is - you know what I mean anyway!)
>
> > In case of the transitive form, the plural would
> apply
> > to the object.
>
> For no reason I'm aware of, verbs tend not to agree
> with their objects (in
> accusative languages).
>
> It's of course perfectly possible to have these
> verbs with grammatically
> singular objects - "he gathered a horde of irate
> linguists", f'rinstance.
>
> > So maybe "to gather" would be the bridge leading
> from
> > plural to mass ?
>
> I think it's a verb, which for semantic reasons tend
> to have a pl object when
> transitive and pl subject when intransitive. But
> then I'm boring that way!
>
>
>  Andreas
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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