Re: Letf / Right, was Re: Count and mass nouns
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, January 22, 2004, 15:54 |
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On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 11:51:07PM -0800, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> Maybe, but the fact is that for (likely) 99,99% of
> mankind, East is the direction of sunrise. Language
> conforms to human experience.
Someday humans may colonize another planet; if and when they do so,
they will probably decide that east is in the direction of the sunrise.
But my point is that the equivalence is so far tautological only on our home
planet, and it's not uncommon to read in the astronomical literature of
planets rotating the other way.
-Mark