Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

The Meddling of the English plurality on Meaning

Today, while working on my website
( http://xahlee.org/sl/build.html ),
i had to write:

[image] = Rezzing disabled. (rezz means creating objects out of
non-existence, in the context of virtual world. It originates from the
word de-rezz in the movie Tron↗ (about a video-game virtual world),
to mean death of the video game character. (which is is manifested as
sudden disappearance of the sprite↗.) )

Originally, i was just going to write:

[image] = No creating objects.

Here's the English problem. In the above, the sentence “No creating
objects.” — due to the English grammar's singularity/plurality
thing, is ambiguous, because by the plural form of the word
“object”, it might be interpreted to mean that creating a single
object is OK!

This is a example of my finding serious logical and efficiency problems
in English from the aspect of what is possible. I felt that i should
write it down more often whenever i came up such issues in my writing
process. (and post here for discussion too on occasion) So that, in the
long run, i will have collected MY OWN thoughts on all the problems of
English, in the context of 21st-century linguistics in our era of info
age.

(the literature on English being a wildly imperfect human communication
tool is not lacking among the linguistic community, but grammarians and
writers have no idea.)

For another episode of my complaint on the issue of plurality, please
see:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/plurality.html

PS the traditional resolution to the “No creating objects” is of
course “No creating object(s)”, or rephrase, or even the phrase as
it is is understood by CONVENTION. Countless writing guides and books
diddle and verbalize on issues like this. Now you see the complexity.

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/