In a message dated 1/30/09 2:02:04 PM, [email protected] writes:
> Are you implying that in a zero-copula, one cannot make the error that > one makes in a copulating language when one says "Sentimentalism is X"? > > If so (i.e., zero-copula is not susceptible of this error), how does > the use of "to be" produce the error? Or to put it conversely, if the > two languages produce essentially equivalent statements, why does the > zero-copula syntax not produce the error? > The extent to which our thinking is led astray is vast -- especially abstract philosophical topics like ontology, phil of mind, phil of language. And the edges are very fuzzy. Here's a suggestive though inconclusive fact: The number of people who speak zero copula languages is in the billions (Chinese, Indonesian, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Irish, Amerindian, Turkic, Hungarian, 'Ebonic', American Sign Language, and more). And yet very few philosophers who speak/think in those languages are globally well known in those abstract topics I mention. Zero copula languages vary. Strangely (to us) though they don't have copulas in the present tense, some have them in the past tense. Others don't. The absence of 'is' is something you're already familiar with from black and white movies with Amerindians or Chinese. "He good man, I sure!" "That my dead horse in driveway!" While, say, pointing at candy: "That chocolate!" Some of those languages don't have tenses at all. "I eat chocolate yesterday." (We often accept that as correct English: "I fly to London tomorrow. I eat with the Prime Minister tomorrow night.") To answer your question, my guess is they all hypostatize and reify like crazy. And I'm fairly sure their minds are led by their words to discrete and stabilize the words' alleged referents. I'm fairly sure -- but not totally sure. We have Indonesian housekeepers, and when I explain"zero copula" to them, they grasp the notion quickly, but that could be because they have already learned English (or Dutch when they were children) and thus are already familiar with one of the many peculiar differences between Indonesian and English. And yet I sense a certain surprise when I explicitly cite some of the manifestations of the differences. I have, happily for them, never tried to broach the subject of reification to them. "Do you reify in Indonesia?" "Oh, no. My father forbid that in our house." Lest I seem to be saying that from a great height, I should report that at least two of them strike me as sharp enough to have been academic standouts in the U.S. if, when they were growing up, they'd had the opportunities now available in America. ************** Know Your Numbers: Get tips and tools to help you improve your credit score. (http://www.walletpop.com/credit/credit-reports?ncid=emlcntuswall00000002)
