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Replying to Edith Wollin and William J. McCleary:
 
 
You're offering an interesting argument, Edith, when saying that
"sometimes I am a mother, sometimes a teacher, sometimes an
administrator, sometimes a gardener,...". Now I can see why you
said that 'who(m) I saw last night' IS a noun if it functions as
one.
 
Before I answer this argument I'd like to discuss another case.
If memory serves, Charles Laughton once played Galilei in
Brecht's play. Would you say that Laughton WAS Galilei? To me
this doesn't make sense. While Laughton was on the stage he
didn't change into Galilei, he was still Laughton, he just played
the role of Galilei. If an actor, who plays umpteen roles during
his career, actually became the persons he represents, this would
certainly put a lot of strain on his genes :-) It would be like
constantly 'beaming' them up, i.e. taking them apart and then
putting the pieces together again. - One more thing. Charles
Laughton was not the only one to play Galilei. Ernst Busch did so
once in Berlin, Ernst Schroeder in Zuerich, I think. If playing
roles made them into Galileis, too, we would have found a way to
do away with gene technology, cloning of anyone could be done by
just making people play roles, I could live forever by playing
the role of my son, and so could my son by playing the role of
his son, and so on.
 
Following 'your' logic we would also have to say that Ernst Busch
became Charles Laughton, and Ernst Schroeder, as well. So a
second method of cloning would arise. (The wh-sentence 'who(m) I
saw last night', you argued, became a noun because it can play
the same role as the noun 'Jack'.)
 
No, it doesn't help our understanding of the world when we put
who a person IS and what ROLES s/he plays in the same category.
Even if the odd actor may be turning into the character he or she
plays (e.g. in a tv-series), it just shows they are not
psychologically healthy people.
 
The person/the object must be distinguished  from the roles they
play, the functions they perform, the functional slots they fill.
We should not be trapped by language, i.e.  by the weird fact
that we can use one word for different referents, e.g. BE for the
object's existence and for it's role. You PLAY the mother's role,
the teacher's role, etc. That these are roles is also shown by
the fact that you use different language when talking as a mother
to your child, or when talking as a teacher to students, etc.
Much of the language we use is role-based.
 
And then, of course, we must distinguish a third category, namely
the category of word classes (sometimes called 'parts of
speech'). 'Noun' is the name of a word class. Like 'woman' is the
name of a class of female humans. Or 'American actor' is the
class of male persons born in the US and whose profession is to
play roles on the stage etc.
 
So instead of using just one category (noun) we need to use
three: object, class, function - provided we want to understand
the phenomenon of language (so as to make it easier to teach it).
 
And, William, if you want to set up a class of those objects that
can fill the same slot that a word like 'Jack' can fill, then, of
course, a term like 'nominal' would be much preferable to 'noun',
which traditionally refers to a group of words only. Whether we
need such a class is a matter that would have to be discussed.
For the moment I can't see it would be helpful - on the contrary,
because not every functional slot that can be filled by a noun
can also be filled by the same group of language objects. E.g.
all object slots can have nouns. What other structures, though,
can go into object slots depends on the individual verb.
 
One last thing, William. Like Charles Laughton played more than
one role, in the same way language items usually can fill more
than one function. But they don't usually change into other
words. 'Horse' is a noun is a noun is a noun, in 'the horse barn'
it does the same work that an adjective can do, but it does not
become an adjective. The work the adjective 'green' and the noun
'horse' can do here is traditionally called 'attribute function'.
'Fish' is a different matter. 'Fish' is two words, one is a
member of the noun class, the other a member of the verb class.
If the line is difficult to draw in some cases (in English, less
so in other languages), then this does not mean there is no line.
 
Sorry for the long meandering ...
Burkhard
 
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Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
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