Sociological Linguistics

[Robert Whiting]

On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
>from the simple to the complex.

and then
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
> define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
> complexity.

Thank you, Patrick.  Your posting shows more about you and your methods
than I would ever care to put in print, and you have certainly made all
my points for me.

Just one thing though:  When you say

     Gelb, under whom I studied, ...

do you mean that he was your dissertation supvervisor or principal
advisor, or that you took a course from him once, or that you saw him
around the OI on occasion, or that you studied on the second floor
while he worked on the third.

And I should answer your questions that stem from real ignorance
rather than being rhetorical.

> But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
> between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

I would use what everybody else who knows how to use a dictionary would
use.  'Dog/cat' is an example of a difference in "lexical meaning":

     lexical meaning n:  the meaning of the base (as in the word _play_)
     in a paradigm (as _plays, played, playing_).
                       Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

while 'cat/cats' is a difference in "grammatical meaning":

     grammatical meaning n:  the part of meaning that varies from one
     inflectional form to another (as from _plays_ to _played_ to
     _playing_).
                                     Ibid.

So 'dog/cat' are lexically different and 'cat/cats' are grammatically
different, but both pairs are semantically different (i.e., have
different meanings).

> What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
> other mechanism?

There are a number.  Most commonly there are "measure words" and
"quantifiers."  Measure words are required between definite quantifiers
(numbers) and nouns, but are usually optional (but sometimes required)
after indefinite quantifiers (e.g., ji "some, a few," haoji "quite a few,"
duo "many, much," etc. [tones not indicated]).  One can also use the
quantifier one (plus measure word) to indicate the indefinite singular.
Demonstratives can be marked for singular and plural by the use of measure
words (-ge for singular, -xie for plural) and these demonstratives can be
used together with nouns to indicate the number of the noun.  Also, the
plural marker of pronouns (-men) is often used to mark the plural in nouns
referring to groups or classes of people.  Otherwise, singular and plural
are generally determined from context, but if elimination of ambiguity is
necessary, there are ways to accomplish it.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi