Historically speaking, it seems to have been due to two independent coincidences:
• The falling together of object pronoun her and possessive her seems to date back to Old English, where the genitive and dative cases were both hire. I’m unsure how this originated, but they seem to be separate in Frisian (the closest relative of English) and were reconstructed as separate in Proto-Germanic, which suggests that it was due to regular sound change in the evolution of Old English.
• Later, it seems like the third person possessive pronouns were derived by adding ’s to the corresponding genitive forms (which ended up as the possessive determiners). So her became hers, but it had no effect on his, since that already ended with an ⟨s⟩.
Thus we end up with the paradigm of:
| | subject | object | poss pronoun | poss determiner |
|---+---------+--------+--------------+-----------------|
| M | he | him | his |
| F | she | her | hers |
It’s simply that, in English, there is no indefinite plural article — or, equivalently, that the indefinite plural article is null. So ‘they are doctors’ is consistent with the behaviour of plural nouns elsewhere.
Contrast this with, for example, French, where the indefinite singular un(e) correspond to the indefinite plural des: La boulangerie vend des baguettes ‘the bakery sells baguettes’ (whereas English cannot say *‘a baguettes’). But as in Spanish, professions take no article either way: Il est médecin / Ils sont médecins. So all three languages are self-consistent, just in their own ways.
English still feels hard to explain when things sound natural and when they don't.
You can say "there are some vendors in the street" and it sounds normal. But if you were to say "they are some vendors" it sounds weird. It's pretty firmly more natural to say "they are vendors."
In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, this is an insightful observation: you use ‘some <noun>’ specifically in order to say that there exists some set of things drawn from some larger set or in some configuration. You say ‘there are some vendors in the street’ because you’re drawing attention to their existence in the street (and indeed ‘there is/are’ is the prototypical English expression for existentials). You don’t say ‘they are some vendors’, because the use of ‘they’ implies some specific group of vendors already known to both speaker and listener — highlighting their existence again feels weird.
(Of course, this analysis is still incomplete. At some point you simply have to list all the specific ways in which ‘some’ is used — which, indeed, is exactly what Huddleston & Pullum do. Furthermore I’m certain that there is some discourse context in which ‘they are some vendors’ would be natural, even though I haven’t managed to think of one just yet.)
> "They are vendors, not all vendors" is equally natural.
No it isn't. For example, I am a native speaker, and I have no idea what you wanted that sentence to say. There is no available contrast between the emphasized words, leaving me mystified as to why they're both emphasized.
Looking up through the context, I think what you want is "They are vendors, but they aren't all vendors." That's still not a felicitous way to express it; you'd be better off with "They are vendors, but they aren't every vendor." (Because "They aren't all vendors" is most naturally interpreted to mean "not all of them are vendors", with all as an adverb, as opposed to "not all vendors are one of them", with all as a determiner.)
This sounds to me like something a native french speaker would say in english. I feel like most english speakers would respond, “They are vendors,” “Just some vendors,” “It’s some vendors,” or even just “Vendors,” but not “They are some vendors.”
Back in the days when I had to take some latin for my studies, our lecturer always used to say "don't ask my why, latin might be more logical than most languages, but it's a language not math. Languages are not logical". It actually became a bit of a running gag because we still had some students who needed to ask why for every rule.
Even more common with "the". "They are THE vendors", which is either to say that those are definitely the vendors referred to elsewhere, or that they represent the archetype of vendors (whatever that is). Language is weird.
Interestingly, when you speak about a category as a whole, in English, you use the null article (“cats meow” or “I like apples”), whereas in French, you would use the definite article (« les chats miaulent », « j’aime les pommes »).
«cats» in «cats meow» and «apples» in «I like apples» are not categories, they are bare plural noun phrases with generic reference. They refer generically to members of the relevant class, rather than naming the class itself.
Both are count nouns, and, in English, a plural count noun takes the null article when it is used with generic or non-specific indefinite reference rather than to denote a contextually identifiable set.
However, in
Cat is divided into numerous breeds.
Cat excludes animals such as dogs and foxes.
Apple excludes such fruits as pears and peaches.
Apple contains numerous cultivated varieties.
“Cats meow” is “about” the whole of what makes up the category as opposed to parts of it. I thought it quite clear that that’s what I meant. If I ask you “could you please tell me more about Barack Obama?”, I would expect you to tell me about the person that the name “Barack Obama” refers to, not about the name “Barack Obama”.
> “Cats meow” is “about” the whole of what makes up the category as opposed to parts of it.
No. That is, at best, a highly informal proposition and, at worst, a frivolous disposition masquerading as a definition of «category».
Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.
The Obama analogy illustrates reference vs mention, but that distinction is orthogonal to the actual semantic disagreement.
Which itself is completely orthogonal to the point I was making. You can imagine I said “dinosaurs are extinct” and « les dinosaures ont disparu » if that makes you feel better.
> That is, at best, a highly informal proposition
That’s what it was meant as, yes, since you seemed to be misinterpreting what I was getting at (contents of the category as opposed to meta-commentary about the categorisation). The goal was to clarify, not to publish to an academic journal.
> Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.
Since categories have been invoked, we are discussing semantics.
«As a whole» leaves unclear whether your example means the kind itself, its members generally or every member without exception as they are three distinct interpretations. This is what I have remarked on.
«Cats meow» attributes characteristic behaviour to cats generally.
«Dinosaurs are extinct» attributes a property to a kind, making it a better example supporting kind reference.
The latter also establishes that English bare plurals can denote kinds. Their grammatical form does not guarantee that interpretation: «cats entered the dumpster» concerns individual cats on a particular occasion.
I never said it guarantees it. I said that when you discuss entire categories, you use one article in English and another in French, along with examples, and it is applicable to all three interpretations, ergo the distinction is immaterial. Whether it is factual to apply those statements to every single member is completely beside the point.
There's a reason your parent comment expected some to be "an article". It is the plural of a(n). It's just that the term "article" was defined not to include it. There's a different word for the part of speech.
No, some is not an indefinite article, it is a quantifier word, just like "few" or "many". This is most easily visible in the fact that you can say "A: How many pears should I buy? B: Just buy some." - which would not be possible for an article, which must always be attached to a noun (you would never answer "Just buy a" in response to that question).
Articles and quantifiers are different parts of speech in most grammars. Articles are specifically different in having no independent meaning, more similar to prepositions than to adjectives (which some is classified as in its use as a quantifier that we were discussing here).
English just doesn't have an indefinite plural article. This is not actually that uncommon - German has the same property, for example.
Ooh, very nice! I have my own tool I’ve been using for this [https://github.com/bradrn/full-history-search/], and it’s incredibly useful, but it’s also pretty primitive. This one looks a lot nicer.
No, the reason it occurred in the Markham Valley is because of the bit immediately after that sentence:
> a 1,000 metre climb over about 30 km takes you straight up onto the edge of the eastern highlands
i.e. because the Markham River provides a pathway from the Lowlands into the Highlands.
The paragraph you quote concerns a different proposition, as may be clearer if some of the subordinate clauses are elided:
> The reason why I believe that […] the highlands were functionally cut off, is that […] they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.
As I understand it one of the reasons why PNG developed so many unique languages is the extreme geographic complexity of the place. This resulted in language developing in isolation.
I have a personal theory that people living hunter/gatherer or very small scale subsistence agriculture lifestyles historically did not have a ton of surplus calories to spend on hiking over multiple ridges and mountain ranges to discover who's living in the valley 45 km away. The complexity of the jungle environment also makes it very difficult to 'bush whack' through somewhere that no trail exists. And if a foot trail isn't frequently used it will become overgrown very quickly.
My preferred source for these things is Palmer’s Language families of the New Guinea Area [0] (part of the extremely comprehensive book, The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area). Page 10 has a nice map of language families and isolates.
I am the furthest possible thing from a linguist but looking at a hastily searched language map of PNG, my first thought is "wow, that's a lot. And some of those aren't even in the same family of language?"
> wow, that's a lot. And some of those aren't even in the same family of language?
Indeed! Palmer counts ‘862 languages comprising 43 distinct families […] and 37 isolates’, (where an isolate is a language with no known relationship to any other family). I should add that the map you linked shows the branches of only a single language family, namely Trans–New Guinea — most of the other 42 families are in the grey areas. (Though due to uncertainties in historical linguistics, that map includes some groups as part of Trans–New Guinea which Palmer considers separate families, for instance Timor—Alor–Pantar [there part of ‘West Trans–New Guinea’] and South Bird’s Head.)
> my first thought is "wow, that's a lot. And some of those aren't even in the same family of language?"
The meaning of the historical linguistics term "family" doesn't map directly to our common usage.
A language family is a collection of languages for a which we can identify a significant number of shared core historical grammatical and lexical features.
Just because languages belong to different families doesn't mean they don't have a shared ancestry, just that we can't see it in the modern languages.
If anything, in PNG population genetics identifies the highland populations as closely genetically related, but their languages have diverged to the point that signs their shared ancestry have been lost.
There is an theory that the linguistic diversity PNG represents the state of human societies in Southwestern Asia just before the emergence of agriculture - possibly explaining why many ancient attested languages like Sumerian, Elamite, and Assyrian which were in close proximity appear to be entirely unrelated to each other.
It is the same how languages in Caucasus are isolated from each other - mountains are high and act as borders between different people, even if in straight line they would be living very near.
Yes! I know it! (And I’m not old at all.) I saw it at, as I recall, a model train exhibition when I was very young, and I found it so hilarious I’ve never forgotten it. In fact I was quite surprised when I eventually learned it was a well-known thing, considerably older than I am.
> ``Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?''
> Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.
> ``Are you a Satanist?''
> Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party.
> ``Uh, no, I can't say that I am.''
> ``Gee, ma'am. Are you sure about that?'' they asked.
> I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, ``No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo.''
> ``Hmmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why it is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there.''
My buddy was driven out of Lubbock on threat of violence because he was wearing his burning man gear of black trousers, black coat, and black top hat. No satanic imagery.
He is both an atheist and British, so they were accidentally correct.
Speaking as a Jew, I don’t read GP as being ‘anti-Jewish hate’ — it seems to be at least vaguely positive in claiming the weekend as a Jewish invention, albeit with very muddled phrasing. (For one thing, Zionism didn’t exist 2000 years ago…)
> Is there a name for a light source which has a constant emission intensity across a given range of wavelengths?
The issue with this is that you can’t necessarily define ‘constant’ in a meaningful way. Being a density function rather than a point function, the energy irradiance from a source changes changes depending on whether you measure in terms of wavelength or frequency. I recommend [0] as an introduction to the problem.
I'm not sure I follow why the density function can't be constant over the interval any more than it can be the usual slanted bell shape it is? I'm more than fine that the actual light is sampled out of this in quantized bins and amounts, that shouldn't be any different than any other light.
Historically speaking, it seems to have been due to two independent coincidences:
• The falling together of object pronoun her and possessive her seems to date back to Old English, where the genitive and dative cases were both hire. I’m unsure how this originated, but they seem to be separate in Frisian (the closest relative of English) and were reconstructed as separate in Proto-Germanic, which suggests that it was due to regular sound change in the evolution of Old English.
• Later, it seems like the third person possessive pronouns were derived by adding ’s to the corresponding genitive forms (which ended up as the possessive determiners). So her became hers, but it had no effect on his, since that already ended with an ⟨s⟩.
Thus we end up with the paradigm of:
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