Conference thebay::joyoflex

    
    Clearly non-reflexive is non-reflexive, since it does not refer to
    itself.  However because it is non-reflexive, it does refer to itself.
    So it must be reflexive.  If it is reflexive, it can't be
    non-reflexive.  If it isn't non-reflexive, it doesn't refer to itself.
    Therefore it can't be reflexive. Norman! Coordinate!�
    
    >Mark
    
    � From an old Star Trek episode.  There is a planet of androids, where
    the head android is Norman. The android society is brought down by
    forcing Norman into a logical contradiction. "Norman! Coordinate!"
    (or something similar...) was cried by some androids prior to their
    shutdown...

    "Non-reflexive" is neither reflexive nor non-reflexive.
    However, "reflexive" is reflexive.
    I didn't know that a Star Trek episode was based on an Isaac Asimov
    story, where they drove a robot insane by the same technique.
    At least Isaac Asimov's robot wasn't named after me.
    -- Norman Diamond

 > "Non-reflexive" is neither reflexive nor non-reflexive.
 >   However, "reflexive" is reflexive.
  
I think if one is reflexive, they both are. After all, we're getting close
to the argument by which *all* words are reflexive, insofar as they indicate
that they're standing in place of the thing they refer to.

So "Dog" means "Hey, I'm not a dog -- that thing I'm pointing to is what 
I mean by 'dogness'".

Richard.

    
>> "Non-reflexive" is neither reflexive nor non-reflexive.
>> However, "reflexive" is reflexive.
  
>I think if one is reflexive, they both are.

    Sorry, no.  "Orange" is six letters long, but "non-orange" is not.
    "Terminal" is a word used in transportation, but "non-terminal"
    is not.  (Though both are used in formal languages and compilers.)
    If a word has a characteristic, it does not necessarily imply that
    the word's negation has the same characteristic.
    
    Most words are non-reflexive.  A few words are reflexive.  A very
    few words are neither.

No need to be sorry -- I don't agree!

'Non-' is about as reflexive as you can get. It makes anything it's attached
to about as reflexive as you can get, too. 'Non-orange' is 99% relexive and
1% orange.

UI reckon the point about *all* words being reflexive holds, too.

Richard.

"Pentasyllabic" is pentasyllabic.

"Nonpentasyllabic" is nonpentasyllabic.

re .0

>     A reflexive sentence is one which refers to itself; for example:

I thought that kind of a sentence was called self-referential.

>     In a similar manner, a reflexive word refers to itself.

Pronouns are words, but reflexive pronouns do not refer to themselves;
like all pronouns, they refer to the same referents that their antecedents
do.  E.g., 

                   I hurt myself.
                   Using a mirror, Mary took a picture of herself.
                   This sentence refers to itself.
                   See for yourself.

Dave C.

    This time, itself refers to itself.

    I agree with .8. There's a note for self-referential sentences.
    
    But self-referential _words_ like `apocop' shouldn't be lost without trace.
    (Incidentally, I think `apocop' works better than `pentasyllabic' -
    perhaps because something (apocope) has been done to the word `apocope'
    to derive `apocop', whereas `pentasyllabic' just _is_ pentasyllbic
    [unlike that typo of mine]. Maybe the fact that it's an adjective
    weakens it in my view. I can't think why but it seems to me that
    `pentasyllabic' is self-referential in much the same way as
    `This is a sentence' - true, but not very interesting.
    
    I can think of an example in Spanish, but it calls for an accent, and 
    just _think_ of all those 5 secondses. The word is ESDRUJULA (no accents 
    on capitals, phew), which means `a word stressed, unlike most words, on 
    the last syllable but two'. ESDRUJULA is one.
    
    b