This conversation has gone on far, far too long. It needs to die.
But it's hard not to argue with purely false statements, so I'm
responding against my better judgement.
David L. Willson writes:
>I've got a fair grasp of logic and the language, I think.
Not really, by the evidence you've given.
Sorry.
>If it is true to say, "All my pets are aliens.", It is similarly
>true to say, "My friend Shawna's middle-name is Xavier."
No, it's not.
Collective is not singular. Nor is plural.
All my friends could mean 0 friends.
"My friend's Shwarma's middle name" means I have a friend schwarma,
and she has a middle name.
0 is a pural number. It isn't, however, 1. So when you make a
statement about specific person, using the singular, the statement
fails if any of your subclauses fails. When you make a statement
about a set that happens to be zero, however, you can say whatever you
want.
The two statements aren't equivalent; an emtpty list isn't even a
little the same as a false (or null) statement.
Your English isn't standard English. Your logic isn't standard
logic. And your understanding of plural/singular is just wrong.
Now can we stop talking about this and get back to Icehouse games?
Apologies to everyone for continuing this.
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^-- "Did you know, if you increment enough, you /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\ get an extra digit?" "I knew," weeps Six. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\ "We knew. But we had forgotten." '---''(_/--' (_/-'