ABSTRACT
Suppose you were asked to group the following ‘entities’ into two classes, what would you do?
(1)
a. a man b. a cow c. a rock
Would you group the cow with the man or with the rock? This is a rather artificial activity so you may have no clear answer. After all, you could argue for either grouping according to whether you are considering the division between living and non-living (cow=man) or the one between human and non-human (cow=rock). However English forces us to make similar decisions dozens of times each day, and any speaker of English gives a consistent answer: the cow goes with the rock, not with the man.
