On interpreting rooks

‘Rooks console each other.’ (NRC Handelsblad, 23/01/2007) Question: can a rook console me? Can I console a rook? If in both cases the answer is ‘No’, then we have two isolated subframes, each characterised by a ‘console’-relation that has certain (formal and material) properties within that subframe, but which is limited to that subframe. The analogy with (in)translatability is obvious. The question that arises then is this: What reasons do we have (could we have) to call two such completely isolated relations both an ‘x-relation’? In what sense are these two the same relation?

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 23/01/2007