Simply not true.  Game animals regularly admit of a collective sense like this both before and after being turned into meat.  See Quirk and Greenbaum.

Phil Bralich

-----Original Message-----
>From: Karl Hagen <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: May 4, 2006 3:55 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: A humorous note on "bear"
>
>With apologies for dissecting the frog...
>
>Since we're talking of individual bears rather than meat, and since 
>'bear' doesn't admits a null plural (like sheep), you have a 
>subject-verb agreement problem. Also, the recursion seems a little 
>problematic because when the null relative pronoun is in subject 
>position, you can't omit 'that'.
>
> Bare bear(s) bear bare bear(s) [that] bear bear(s)...
>
>However that reminds me of the sentence in Stephen Pinker's The Language 
>Instinct (which IIRC he attributes to a grad student):
>
> Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
>
>(= The bison from Buffalo that (other) bison from Buffalo intimidate 
>(themselves)  intimidate bison from Buffalo)
>
>Karl
>
>Phil Bralich wrote:
>
>>I am sure many of you are aware that the pronunciation [ba:r] is capable of 
>>making a fully recursive sentence where all the words are phonetically 
>>idenitical meaning, "naked bears give birth to naked bears who in turn give 
>>birth to naked bears who then in turn give birth to naked bears" and so on. 
>> 
>>to whit:
>> 
>>Bare bear bear bare bear
>> 
>>Bare bear bear bare bear bare bear bear
>> 
>>Bare bear bear bare bear bare bear bear bare bear bear ...
>> 
>>and so on ad infinitimus recursibus ursimus. 
>> 
>>Phil
>>
>>
>>    -----Original Message-----
>>    From: Linda DiDesidero
>>    Sent: May 4, 2006 2:33 PM
>>    To: [log in to unmask]
>>    Subject: Re: BEAR and time "I was born poor."
>>
>>    That's an interesting way of characterizing it, Craig (acting/behaving). No
>>    matter how we characterize the verbs, though, we can see that there seems to
>>    be some consistency between what the verbs mean and how they behave
>>    grammatically.  And that is really difficult to teach second language students!
>>     
>>    Linda
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>>  
>>
>
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