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On 10/4/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:
Indeed, I noticed that the notion of levels does not work directly at all well. The level below a pluality node is all the pluralitis lacking one memner of the head, but it is also all those members individually, so that successors are already level mixing, if levels count.
The notion of levels works in a kind of relativistic fashion. Same-level is akin to present in relativity: there is an absolute future and an absolute past, but what counts as present depends on the frame of reference. Similarly there are absolute upper levels and lower levels of the lattice for a given node, but what counts as same-level will depend on the particular model. So Spot and Fido minus one hair can be in the same level but Spot and Spot minus one hair (or Spot and the Golden Retriever) cannot.
In tthe model I presented, "among" is exactly the relation between a node and any node above it on a constantly upward path. In particular, each dog is among Mr. Dog. I hope you can explain what you thought I meant or, more exactly, what you did mean (and still do, I suppose).
I thought you meant the relationship that exists for example between a word token and a word type (a token can be among several tokens but not among its one type) or between a particular event occurrence and the event that is repeated. The occurrence can be one among several occurrences, but not one among the one event that is repeated. Maybe this is just a matter of terminology, but I think it's useful to distinguish the metalinguistic subsumption relationship between things that are normally not in the same domain of discourse, and the "among" object language relationship that holds between things in the same domain of discourse. mu'o mi'e xorxes