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I never learned english grammar in any depth - thanks to the hippies who set the elementary school curriculum when I was a child - but it seems to me a basic difference is in whether the thing after "is" plays the role of noun or adjective. "The car is transportation." v "The car is red." And, Gunnar, you're right about the red paint reflecting light and all that. Imagine how boring conversing with people would be if we had to be that specific and precise all the time. Still, it's good to know that such precision and specificity is possible, because sometimes it matters a lot. Cheers. Fil On 19 June 2011 16:37, Gunnar Swanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Fil-- > >> In the same way as "The car is red", I suggest we must consider carefully what is meant by an utterance (written or otherwise). >> > > Yes. > > Terry-- > >> I suggest that there are some activities of writing that are not research and some activities of research that are not writing. >> > > I haven't been following this very closely so someone may have posited that writing = research but I think it is a more likely claim that some writing is research or that some research is writing. > > Either way, we may need a lesson from the ghost of Alfred Korzybski. (Sorry to all for whom the following is elementary. No. Make that "Sorry to all for whom the following appears elementary.") Korzybski was the source of E-Prime--English minus all forms of the verb "to be." (I would have typed E' but then the typographers on the list would have required a discussion of primes vs typewriter tick marks. By the way, Ken and other Californians of the right era will remember the semanticist S.I. Hiakawa as president of San Francisco State and, later, Senator from California. He was a Korzybskista. Er, sorry about the "was," Sam.) > > Many E-Primesters are largely concerned with defeating "Aristotelian essentialism" or "naive realism" so they prefer "x appears y to me" statements over "x is y" statements but there's also the question, famously posed by Bill Clinton, of what the meaning of "is" is. > > If I say "Leroy is gay," everyone might agree but what have they agreed on? Certainly not, as you imply, Leroy = gay. A transitory state like "a runner is tired after running a marathon"? A basic natural attribute like "Half Dome is granite"? A preference like "Tony is a Jane's Addiction fan"? . . . > >> For example it is perfectly reasonable pub talk to say 'the car is red'. This use of 'is' fails, however as soon as someone (a sharp thinking PhD student?) probes further for example asking 'Ah - so it uses red oil does it? An red steel and red glass for the windows, red electricity in the wires, red transistors - everything is red and all the way through? The reveals how the 'is' identity statement is inappropriate and the intended meaning could have been better conferred by a more accurate phrase such as 'red painted car'. >> > > Even if everything associated with the car were colored red, people are confused by "car is red" sorts of statements. They believe that redness resides in the car but it is more accurate to say that the car (or, more accurately yet, the car's paint) selectively reflects wavelengths of light, causing a retinal response, which ultimately causes a perception we identify as red. Red resides in human brains, not in the car or its paint. > > I'll have to work on turning this into a Venn diagram. > > > Gunnar > ---------- > Gunnar Swanson Design Office > 1901 East 6th Street > Greenville NC 27858 > USA > > [log in to unmask] > +1 252 258 7006 > > http://www.gunnarswanson.com > -- \V/_ Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng. Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Ryerson University 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749 Fax: 416/979-5265 Email: [log in to unmask] http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/