On 2/23/06, Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Thumbs are digits, but they are not fingers. Toes are also digits. But if you ask someone "How many fingers do you have?", the answer is ten. In aggregate, thumbs are fingers, but individually, they are not. Some aspects of English are pretty confusing. Like to discuss uniplurals? Or words which have two different forms for the plural, but with different meanings? How about verbs which have different conjugations depending on what the object of the action is? How about words which are their own antonyms? (That's one of my favorite categories.)
By the way, if you hold one hand in front of the other, you can hold up ten fingers with only eight gaps between them!
Heck, I can hold up my fingers with *no* gaps between them! Beat that!
Mike
I doubt that you can do it with no gaps. I though about it, but there will be microscopic gaps that you could not avoid. I figured that in a discussion with Mike McCarty, I had better be as accurate as possible.
So, the idea that the thumb is not a finger is specific to the English language. Indeed, in Hebrew it is a finger- as are the toes! So while English speakers have 8 fingers, Hebrew speakers have 20.
How about words which are their own antonyms?
I'd love to see some examples. I love word games- and this may be valuable. In an attempt to keep this On Topic, are there any computer (or linux) related ones?
Dotan