From cowan@ccil.org Fri Nov 02 03:37:50 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 2 Nov 2001 11:37:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 71901 invoked from network); 2 Nov 2001 11:37:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m5.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Nov 2001 11:37:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Nov 2001 11:37:49 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 15zceF-0004JY-00 for ; Fri, 02 Nov 2001 06:38:07 -0500 Subject: Re: countability (was: RE: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e In-Reply-To: from And Rosta at "Nov 2, 2001 03:54:14 am" To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 06:38:07 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Profile: johnwcowan 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 cowan@ccil.org 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