> 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 continuum¹ 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 parts of speech¹ to is a matter of human choice. The word matter¹ 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] Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33 Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/