Edmond, Phil, et al.,

I realize that Jean Atchison is a respected "linguist" but her quote cannot
be taken literally.  She would have better expressed the situation if she
had not used the words 'noun' and 'verb' to refer to the concepts that the
words of their respective classes refer to.  There are levels of reference,
levels of meaning.  This is the problem that Bertram Russell ran up against
when he proposed to mathematize concepts with formal logic.  The perplexity
is called the paradox of the barber: "If a barber shaves everyone in the
village who does not shave himself, then who shaves the barber?"  The sense
in which a noun or a verb is an entity cannot be studied at the same level
as objects of the rest of the real world can be. You will always run up
against this paradox.  Russell's solution was to propose a theory of types.
It's not pleasant, but it is the only way to make progress here.  The
problem arises when we use a natural language to describe a natural
language.

So, let me reword Atchinson's quote more precisely as follows:

'Nouns designate entities at one end of a continuum, with words that refer
to entities that retain their identity through time, such as dog, mountain,
sky.  Verbs designate entities at the other end, with
words that involve rapid change, such as jump, hit, swim.  In the middle
come expressions to refer to properties, some semi-permanent, as in a large
elephant, a round pond, a green frog, and some temporary, as in an angry
bull, a happy baby, a hot day.'

It is difficult for a scientist to accept that the object of study must be
taken as blurred into the rest of the world.  To make progress in any
investigation, there must be an analysis, a separation of the object of
study (here language) from other phenomena in the real world.  (The English
teacher must stop this incessant desire to philosophize by abstracting
everything out of existence.  This is endemic in the English department;
that has been my experience.)  Linguistics is the study of natural language.
The study of the concepts that language refers to is part of semantics.  (As
the saying goes, "that's just semantics.) Our investigations of grammar will
be more fruitful if the concepts of our study are kept apart from the
concepts of the world outside that study.  The same principles of
investigation must govern linguistics as they do the other sciences.
(English teachers need to realize this about science and the formal
languages of mathematics.)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Edmond Wright" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 3:44 AM
Subject: Re: Defining Traditional Grammar


> One must agree with Phil Bralich on the issue of human selection when it
comes
to what in the real we are to call 'entities'.  Take this quotation from
Jean
Aitchison's 'The Seeds of Speech' (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press,
1996):

'Nouns are at one end of a continuum, with words that retain their identity
through time, such as dog, mountain, sky.  Verbs are at the other end, with
words that involve rapid change, such as jump, hit, swim.  In the middle
come properties, some semi-permanent, as in a large elephant, a round pond,
a green frog, and some temporary, as in an angry bull, a happy baby, a hot
day.' (p. 132)

She then shows how languages differ in this regard, pointing out that there
is an indefinite borderline, as regards what they refer to, between nouns
and adjectives on the one hand, and verbs and adjectives on the other.  She
thus goes on to illustrate the point from English:

'Some adjectives seem more like nouns, as in a gold watch, a tin tray,
others more like verbs, as in a lasting peace, a whistling kettle.'  (ibid.)

It is important here is to ask what kind of a Ocontinuum¹ she is referring
to.  It appears that she just means that there is a gradation of meaning in
the words themselves so that we could set them out in some kind of ascending
order from stability to changeableness. But what cannot be left out here is
the actual continuum, the changeable real, 'matter', the 'hyle' of the
Greeks, Heracleitos's flow of becoming, whatever you like to call it, upon
which people are endeavouring to get a mutual fix with their statements to
each other.  This is a serious engagement with the contingencies of time in
which we each (if we are not lying) are, according to our own lights,
hopefully endeavouring to update others.  What we apply these functional
devices we call Oparts of speech¹ to is a matter of human choice.  The word
Omatter¹ itself gives away the fact that we are trying to divide up the
continuum of the real together so that our PURPOSES, our desires and fears,
will keep in harmony both with the real and with each other across persons.
So what we apply them to must reflect our immediate and long-term
preferences, those that our bodies and the society our bodies try to
maintain out of the real in the hope of success, and not necessarily
anything already so classified in the real.  Entities, even persons, don't
come already labelled or as purely 'singular' in the real.  If I may here
refer to my recent book 'Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith'
(Macmillan, 2005), you will find there the notion of a singular entity
exposed to a close analysis (chapters 4 and 5), together with its relation
to the Statement in use.

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
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