Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andre@shappski.demon.co.uk (Andre Shapps)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!shappski.demon.co.uk!andre
Subject: Re: The logic of "and" and "but"
References: <600434857wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk> <3il3p5$ov2@ss1.cam.nist.gov> <193589616wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk> <D4Kv5x.Avy@world.std.com>
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Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 01:02:36 +0000
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In article: <D4Kv5x.Avy@world.std.com>  jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) 
writes:
> French in particular,
> by its incessant use of the partitive "de" with such nouns, seems to
> me to imply a model of the world in which substances are treated as
> bodies -- "l'eau" as the name of the immense, scattered body
> comprising all the water in the universe.

Yes I think I (in my humbleness) agree on the use of "de". I had always thought 
of that as being similar to the use of the genitive in (you guessed it) Russian 
to me something along the lines of "some". In the sentence "would you like some 
tea?", the word "tea" would be in the genitive case in Russian and I think I'm 
right that you'd say ".. du the" in French.
-- 
Andre Shapps

