Re: [jboske] Collective: definition

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Nick Nicholas scripsit:

> That's the thing about masses, right? You can still chop them into 
> parts. *Not* individuals; so "one of the band" proves you're not really 
> massifying the band. But into handfuls of goo. "I stepped on some 
> foliage." "How many leaves?" "What should I care? But I didn't step on 
> the lot." Or (and this is an offensive example, but it's offensive 
> precisely because it suppresses individuality, so I think it is 
> instructive), "I met some pussy on the dancefloor" "Oh? how many women 
> did you charm with your debonair manners?" "Man, what do I care? It was 
> just some pussy." But our neanderthal does draw a distinction between 
> "some pussy" and "all the pussy on the dancefloor." He will draw a 
> distinction between being trampled to death by *some* outraged 'pussy', 
> and *all* the outraged 'pussy'. What he is not doing is distinguishing 
> between one and two women.

So far so good.

> Now, when the outraged women in the danceclub band together to 
> exterminate our neanderthal, he may very well reason that "all this 
> pussy" is acting as a collective. So is {pi ro loi} the collective? 

No, because piroloi djacu is "all the water there is", but not a collective
of any sort. I don't see any reasonable way of making individual
waters into a collective without them becoming substance once more.

-- 
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is 
dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are simultaneously 
overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third category.
--Alan King