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From: bevans@gauss.unm.edu (Mathemagician)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,alt.romance,soc.men,soc.women,soc.singles
Subject: Language (was Re: Are Humans Naturally Monogamous?)
Message-ID: <1990Nov2.203149.16763@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 2 Nov 90 20:31:49 GMT
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In article <1990Nov1.233150.31363@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> wp6@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Walter Pohl) writes:
>	The original article said something like "is man naturally
>polygamous?"  After reading that sentence, I wasn't sure whether or
>not the author was referring to men, or to all people.  I mean, it's
>possible that men may be naturally polygamous and women aren't, or
>vice versa.  So the usage was in fact ambiguous.

Without having read the original article, I am without the full
context.  However, there are two possible interpretations:

1)  The word "man" was being used as a reference to males only
(a rather rare usage, but possible).

2)  The word "man" was being used as a reference to all of the
species:  homo sapiens.

Now then, the "common" way of expressing 1) would have been, "Are
men naturally polygamous" instead of "is man...," but as I said,
that doesn't mean that the first case couldn't be true.

>	Oh, if only I could reach the level of rationality that you
>have already acheived.

Does this short lesson help you?

--
Brian Evans             |"Momma told me to never kiss a girl on the first
bevans at gauss.unm.edu | date...But that's OK...I don't kiss girls."