Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

English does not discriminate well between the universal quantification (∀; all men are) and existential quantification (∃; some men are) when quantification is indefinite (men are). It's often unambiguous; saying "men are well-represented in the boardrooms of US companies" would not be taken as implying that a number of men close to 165 million (or 3.5 billion) crammed into American boardrooms. Where it's not, it's far better to assume that the speaker is using the existential qualifier, as universal quantification is usually spelt out as a rhetorical feature ("ALL MEN benefit from the patriarchy" is far stronger than "MEN benefit from the patriarchy").



That's a very good breakdown of usage of the word and I'd forgotten about the indefinite usage. In this particular usage, it included the word "always" ("men always"). If someone states "men always love sports" then I'd interpret that to be equivalent in meaning to "all men love sports".




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: