A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
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.
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.
hbn · · focus · HN ↗
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
bradrn · · focus · HN ↗
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.
spider-mario · · focus · HN ↗
inkyoto · · focus · HN ↗
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» and «apple» are categories.spider-mario · · focus · HN ↗
inkyoto · · focus · HN ↗
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.
spider-mario · · focus · HN ↗
> The Obama analogy illustrates reference vs mention, but that distinction is orthogonal to the actual semantic disagreement.
It’s orthogonal to what you have shifted your argument to, but in the context of your original objection, I think it was an apt analogy.