Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 08:18 , Philippe Caquant wrote:

[snip]
> We also find in some computer languages the concept of
> "null", for ex, "true / false" is no more simply
> binary, it becomes "trinary" (or ternary ?):
Both words exist in English but IME 'ternary' is the more common (<--
Latin _ternarius_ [adj.] "consisting of three" <-- _terni_ [distributive
plural adj.] "three each")

> true,
> false or null.
Yep - tristate logic is fun & tristate computers have been built - I don't
know what the current position is in this world of binary machines  :0

> So I would always preserve at least one
> possibility for "undefined" in every opposition (and
> probably, express this "undefined" by using no mark at
> all). For ex, male / female:
Ah - you mean like Novial:
home (man or woman, person, human being) ~ homa (woman) ~ homo ([male] man)

> if you see a mouse
> running on the floor, I guess you'll find it hard to
> decide, without closer examination, if it's a male or
> a female one. Clearly here we should have the
> possibilities of saying: a male mouse, a female mouse,
> or a mouse of undefined sex (or gender).
But we can and do! Indeed in many languages, like English, you must!

A mouse = a small rodent of genus Mus, sex undefined; a female mouse; a
male mouse.

Cf. also Novial: muse (undefined sex); musa (female mouse); muso (male
mouse)

> French says
> "la souris" but "le chat", while German and Russian
> both say "la souris" and "la chat".
> The gender has absolutely no meaning, because "la souris" can be male
> while "le chat" can be female. This is a natlang
> aberration.
Only some natlangs  :)

Fortunately we anglophones don't have examine mice closely before we talk
about the little critters.

Many languages, for example Chinese & Japanese, are also undefined as
regards number. In Chinese hàoze may be just one mouse or several or many
mice. We have either to relay on context or to specifically mark
singularity or plurality, just as in English the sex of the mouse has to
be marked if we deem it important.

[snip]
> I don't speak Hopi neither, I just mentioned the Whorf
> (was it Whorf ?)
I wouldn't get too hung up on Whorf or Sapir. If you apply Sapir-Whorf
theory strictly then you (I mean Philippe) have to see the world in a very
animate way where everything is either male or female. You would be
convinced, for example, that bridges were all male. Then if you visited
Wales and discovered that the Welsh for bridge is 'pont' you would think
"How sensible"; but on learning that in Wales every 'pont' is a feminine,
you would be either, I guess, assume the Welsh were crazy not to be able
to spot that bridges are obviously male! But I don't suppose for one
moment you think like that.

Now somewhere I've got a Hopi grammar... umm, I had better start looking
:)

[snip]
> third one being hidden in my drawer) ? So we could
> think that there is such a thing as "three in
> presence", "three in the same moment", "three in
> history"...
Just different ways that ephemeral objects of our "shadow world"
participate in Threehood which.....

> The idea that these are all "three" is an
> abstraction, I guess that might not be so obvious for
> everybody in the world.
... for Plato was not an abstraction, but a universal unchanging reality.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004

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