Paul, Thanks for the clarification on Bertrand Russell's paradox. The root of the matter has nothing to do with the interpretation of the sentences, however. It has to do with defining sets in terms of themselves. I should have spelled this out better. This is how some people seem to be treating nouns and verbs. A noun is a word that designates a person, place, or thing. It is not a person; it is not a place; it is a word. The fact that a word is a thing places it in the set of things being defined. Hence, the paradox. I am not against this definition! As long as we are aware of the self-reference we can use this definition in teaching without any trouble. Problems arise when the students live in another universe and want to carry the words too far and use them in ways that are not negotiable. I realize that the power of poetry is the use of words in unique ways, but then meaning can no longer be wrested from the denotation of the words. It is constructed in the mind of the reader from connotations, and those very personal. I allow authors like Ezra Pound to use the language how they find it fulfilling, but must admit that I am not a fan of this kind of enlightenment. When someone says that a noun is an entity to be observed and analyzed like its own designations and then finally take it as the superclass of all entities, they are engaging in poetry, not science. Bruce ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul E. Doniger To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 7:22 AM Subject: Russel's paradox - sidebar Regarding Russel's paradox: Bruce, you paraphrased it such a way that it's not really a paradox: One could simply say the barber doesn't live in the village. Russel put it this way: "In a certain village there is a certain barber who shaves all those who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?" It's a very complex and interesting paradox that hinges a lot on meaning (semantics?). The easy answers, the barber doesn't shave at all or the barber is female, don't really remove the paradox. The philosophers divide the villagers into "self-shavers" and "clients of the barber." If the barber is a self-shaver, then he isn't a client (and vice versa) and therefore the paradox supposedly evaporates. It's quite convoluted. Paul D. ----- Original Message ---- From: Bruce D. Despain <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 8:37:47 AM Subject: Re: Defining Traditional Grammar 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] 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/