On 9/27/05, Richard Hudson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Jasper:
>
>
> As I said in my original message, if asked to draw (or describe) Clark
Kent
> and to draw Superman, people will draw them differently. So the
concepts are
> distinct, even though they are also 'the same person'

> No the concepts are not distinct. They just look different. There's
this
> fellow from the planet Krypton (or wherever it is) and sometimes
he wears
> glasses and looks like a bit of a nerd, and sometimes he
wears his
> underpants over his trousers and leaps tall buildings at a
single bound. The
> latter dress and behaviour are usually associated
with the activity of
> crime-fighting.

It looks to me just like the case of {I}/{me}: there's this
> word ME,
which is pronounced sometimes /mi:/ and sometimes /ai/. The
> latter
pronunciation is associated with the syntactic role subject (at
> least
in my English, I know other people's grammars are more complicated).

> ## Surely they don't just look different - they behave differently as well
> (as you say, one leaps over buildings, the other doesn't).

But he does! They are the same man. It just that he is such a funny
fellow he always puts on a wrestling costume before he jumps. In the
same way that I always sign myself 'Jasp' on this list (and nowhere
else).

Being a man of such integrity, Dick, you may find this sort of thing
strange, but it is quite common for people to adopt different styles
of dress and behaviour for different social contexts.

> So at least two
> properties distinguish them, so they must be distinct concepts (by
> definition - the only way to show correlating properties is to attach them
> to distinct concepts); but of course they could both be-a the same
> super-category (or one could be-a the other). If they're really equal (like
> Jekel and Hyde) then they must be sisters; but if Superman is a special case
> of CK, then Superman is-a CK.
>

Yes, I think they are sisters. Superman and Clark Kent are subtypes of
this Kal-El. This illuminates the discussion on the other thread about
the difference between tokens of Dick and tokens of THREE (I'm sure
that was your intention, And): I think we can construe different
appearances of individuals as tokens, it is just more relevant to
attend to their steady properties, whereas the local properties of
word tokens are more salient. Of course we must also treat words as
individuals, with steady properties which apply every time we come
across them.

Jasp

> --
> Richard Hudson, FBA,
> Emeritus Professor of Linguistics,
> University College London
> www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm