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On 9/29/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:
Remember that one interpretation of bunch talk just is plural quantification. Pluralities of different sizes are just different levels in the lattice (though talk of levels and horizontal planes is not officially proper -- the lattice does not offer comparisons between items at the same "level" except immediate successors of the same node).
I can imagine a context where Dalmatians and Golden Retrievers count as two dogs, another context where Spot and Fido count as two dogs, and another context where baby Spot and grown-up Spot count as two dogs, but I find it difficult to imagine a context where Dalmatians and Fido count as two dogs, or Spot as a dog individual and baby Spot as a dog stage count as two dogs.
If this is to work, all levels of the lattice are available all the time and are treated in the object language as equals: Mr. Dog is the same sort of thing as the earless dog, something that is distributively a dog.
I think only one level of brodas at a time can be in the domain of discourse qua brodas. If we were to allow mixing levels, it would result in confusion. I don't think one can get away with something like "this page contains exactly 600 words and exactly 413 words". We can use "words" for word tokens in one context, and we can use "words" for word types in another context, but in a context in which both levels are relevant, it seems to me we unavoidably have to use two different predicates. It doesn't seem to make sense to quantify things from one level together with things from another level. mu'o mi'e xorxes