Thursday, April 5, 2012

On language:




There is a subtle difference between “Each one” and “one another.” Using the example of a heap of bricks, you can say, “each one is supporting each other one” or else you can say they support "one another.” Either way you are saying that they support one another. Or: each other. But yet there is a distinction. Ambrose Bierce says that the only way to parse here is simply to think it over carefully!
     There are two ways in which the brick event could transpire, as follows. Are we to say they're one big mass----that is supporting itself? That is the first case for “each one.” The mass supports itself the mass. (Each individual brick is part of a great project?). Or are we to state it the second way, which is that of the “one another” type, and this is a bit more like looking at each one. There is more a sense of going one by one, Bierce says.
     Either way, each brick is supporting the other but there is this difference.

No comments:

Post a Comment