Subject: Re: countability (was: RE: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 06:38:07 -0500 (EST)

And Rosta scripsit:

> Can all nouns (e.g. water, mud, beauty) be categorized and counted?
> I mean, is it grammatical?

This bumps up against a philosopholinguistic problem with the notion
of "grammaticality judgment" in Chinese. In general, the typical
judgment does not take the form "That's impossible, you can't say
that". Rather, it comes out "That's odd, you could say that, if
you did I would understand, but it isn't what I would say."
This applies perhaps with even greater vigour to introspective
judgments by Chinese-speaking linguists.

That said:

There is no doubt that water can be and is categorized. I don't
know enough to comment on the other two.

-- 
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan [email-masked]
Please leave your values | Check your assumptions. In fact,
at the front desk. | check your assumptions at the door.
--sign in Paris hotel | --Miles Vorkosigan