White horses and orphan colts

[robinturner]

On the recent discussion of radial categories (see replies to Oops, I did it again), what do the linguists/philosophers out there make of these statements attributed to Huizi (a leading member of the "School of Names"):

"A white horse is not a horse."
"An orphan colt has never had a mother."

Correction (28/6/01)

Oops, that wasn't Huizi, it was Gong-sun Long (the other main person in that particular school). Huizi (also known as Hui Shi) was the guy who said things like "The heavens are as low as the earth; mountains are on the same level as marshes."

Comments

get rid of irregular verbs?

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

But then it would be okay to say "the signs costed $400," and I'd be out of a job!

Re: get rid of irregular verbs?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Well, there was a time when "costed" was the correct past tense and past participle of "cost" (which was frequently spelt "coste" anyway).

Incidentally, I read somewhere that there are moves - how serious, I don't know - to establish a "European English" analogous to "British English", "American English" etc. This would be based on English as spoken in an EC context, and would include -ed as the universal past tense marker, and "isn't it" as the universal question tag (replacing "wasn't it", "aren't you" etc.).