Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

Philippe Caquant wrote:

>This I found interesting, although a little bit
>confused. I have to think it over, but here are just
>some remarks:
>
>
It was confused... my rambles often jump around the landscape randomly.
;) Generally I wander off, see what comes to me, then try to refine it
and iron out the contradictions and/or mistakes.

>- I don't think "maleness" can be an archetype for all
>men, because it doesn't refer to mankind. Animals and
>plants can be male or female too. Perhaps
>"male-mankind" ?
>
>
I guess so.... :)

>- there is a difference between "the set of all men"
>and "the characteristics common to all men".
>Strangely, in French we use the same word,
>"humanite'": "L'humanite' court a sa perte" = mankind
>is running toward its ruin", vs: "Il n'y avait pas
>trace d'humanite' dans son regard" = there was nothing
>human in his gaze"
>
>
Surely this difference is reflected in the list I gave? Or perhaps
not... I was considering the architype itself to be a list of the
necessary and sufficient criteria for any object to be said to belong to
that architype: for instance "the characteristics common to men" =
"human-maleness". Maybe not? I don't know....

>- a group can be considered as an entity, for ex an
>army is composed of soldiers, officers, horses etc,
>but it is also a thing on its own; so is a forest. In
>French, there is an hesitation in some cases, one may
>say "une foule de gens se rassembla" or "une foule de
>gens se rassemblerent" (a crowd [of people] gathered).
>>From a purely syntactic standpoint one should say "se
>rassembla", but both are admitted.
>
>
If I ever designed a logical language, I guess I would need a way to
effectively make a set into an entity itself....

>- a subset is defined by specific characteristics (or
>attributes, or properties) of the set, therefore it is
>perfectly possible that the subset contains 0, 1 or n
>elements. The subset of all men who walked on Mars is
>empty (in 2004). It might not always be.
>
>
>
I know subsets can contain one or no members.... I was just worrying
about the fact that if you differentiate between subsets and elements,
this doesn't necessarily distinguish between singular and plural... so
if I incorporated this into a language (in some way) then I'd need to
make number optional, or marked in a separate way (I'm addicted to
compulsory number marking lol.... is there a number marking anonymous?)

>(BTW, another interesting question: when I say: "The
>Americans elected a President named Bush", "The
>Americans walked on the Moon", and "The Americans
>fought against each other during Secession War"), what
>does "the Americans" mean in each case ? Seems they
>are different sets, or subsets).
>
>
The problem of plurality seems more difficult than I thought at first.
What a plural argument means seems to vary from verb to verb and from
argument to argument. Using your example, "elected" very strongly
suggests that "the americans" performed the act together, since to elect
someone you all have to vote in the same election. But in some other
examples, the implication is different... perhaps this varies from verb
to verb, or is simply implied by the situation and can vary even when
the verb is the same?

>- I guess that" The men went to the supermarket" is
>usually understood as: they were more or less
>together. If not, one usually specifies: one by one,
>separately, at different times, in small groups, etc.
>Is this distinction a matter of number, or rather an
>adverbial one (the *way* they went), this could be
>discussed. This implies time (shall we go back to the
>Hopi problem: is "three" the same concept in "three
>days" as in "three men" ?)
>
>
>
 The more I think about this, the more I realize that things I take for
granted in language (that every language I've ever studied treats in
roughly similar ways... I haven't just learned Indo-European languages,
and I'm working on learning Basque at the moment, but I've never learned
Hopi ;) ) don't need to work that way. *sigh* I'm going to go away now
and create some looney language, or just go quietly insane myself lol....

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