J:
"I think ordinary usage entails that a set of things --ie a collective or group noun-- has more than one member, otherwise it's just an individual. Could you have a committee with only one person? Not really--the committee implies a group of people. The Alps are a set of mountains, like the rockies--a range. Mt Shasta, just one mountain. Not a range."
Dunno. In my idiolect, 'committee' can apply to just one person. But then people do call me solipsist (only I don't listen).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
My family is run by committees. I chair one and my wife chairs the other. Membership is unclear, except that neither of us is a member of the other's committee. I am nto aware of any other members of my committee, and my wife has never mentioned any other members of hers, but then she wouldn't, would she? Anyway, when it comes time to decide something, either of us can say "I'm going to leave that one to your committee," and, despite the loose definitions, the decision gets made.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting thing about sets - you don't have to know their boundaries to know that certain candidates are or are not members. I don't know the boundaries of Long Island Sound, but I do know that a quart of water selected two miles south of Greenwich, CT. is in it.
My college room mate was a math major. His favorite proof was that there are no uninteresting numbers. (If there were, one of them would be the lowest, which would make it interesting, thereby disqualifying it from membership in the set and creating a new, now also disqualified, lowest uninteresting number, until the set became a singleton consisting of the only uninteresting number. Poof! QED.)
Oh, my room mate was also a skirt-hound. He named his dog Mittag-Leffler, after a mathematician who, according to my roomie, jilted Alfred Nobel's daughter, thereby causing the old guy not to provide a prize for math for fear M-L would win it. He told me that story forty-five years ago, so maybe I misremember it, because Wikipedia says "A legend that Alfred Nobel did not set up a prize in Mathematics because of a thwarted affair with Signe Lindfors [M-T's wife] is not supported by historical evidence." Interestingly, the Wiki article cites and links to Snopes.com, which debunks a completely different story. But I digress...
ReplyDeleteI meant "M-L's wife," perhaps a slip resulting from the fact that my friend's wife's pet name for the dog was "Mittytag," which sticks in my brain as M-T. Glad to clear that up.
ReplyDeleteVery good examples, Lawrence.
ReplyDeleteJ provides a few examples: 'committe', to which I jumped. But then J also makes a point about Mt. Shasta NOT being a range.
I'm never sure about the Alps. Yes, they are a range. But surely one can climb just ONE Alp.
----
I was thinking about Grice's example of the "Governing Body" of an Oxford school or college. These (bodies) are like committees. And I can imagine that, 'by a resolution by the committee' may well be by the resolution of those who attended the meeting of the committee.
It seems like 'etymologically', a com-mittee does require some level of plurality. But I'm not sure if a 'board of directors' (which also seems to suggest that plurality) may NOT pass a resolution only when ONE of the directors (of the board) was present.
"The Board of Directors met this morning and it was decided that p" -- where actually the 'meeting' was just of ONE mind, as it were.
----
I may disgress if I say that I like to play, "Me and my shadow" on the piano, in Eb. "All alone and feeling blooo!".
Etc.