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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab

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To: jbe who wrote (2502)	5/21/1999 4:07:00 PM
From: Anaxagoras	Read Replies (1) of 4711

BTW, the issue at hand can be described more technically as follows: Whether the expression 'both' suffers a collective/distributive ambiguity. Some here claim yes, others claim no (i.e. the word's use is always collective). I have my own thoughts on the matter, I'm just trying to clarify things. An expression is ambiguous if and only if it has more than one meaning. It turns out that several common English words have this kind of ambiguity, and it's been discussed in various languages at least since the middle ages. In fact, I haven't checked recently, and my memory is fuzzy, but some of my contemporaries may have had an inkling of this as well in ancient discussions. Anyway, for example, and off the top of my head, 'all' has this kind of collective/distributive ambiguity. Take the sentence 'All the people are noisy.' Under the distributive reading, the sentence would not accurately describe a group of people unless each individual were making a ruckus; under the collective reading it would suffice for the group to be loud even if there were a silent individual in their midst. FWIW, Anaxagoras

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