12 Thomas Egan
(10) Pierrot had told us that the table would weigh between six and eight hundred
pounds. (PM1)
(11) The coroner estimates he went into the water sometime between midnight and
five A.M. (SG1)
The Scale and Time senses are both directional in the sense that the ‘between-
ness’ they encode is always construed as extending from the lower point or smaller
amount to a higher point or larger amount in the case of Scale and from an earlier
time to a later time in the case of Time.^3 Thus one could not encode the semantic
content of (10) as ‘between eight and six hundred pounds’. Nor could the time inter-
val in (11) be understood as stretching from five A.M. to the following midnight.
There are two senses involving two or more participants, usually human, who
have something in common. In the first sense, labelled Relationship, the two par-
ticipants are Experiencers. In the second sense, labelled Interaction, they are both
Agents.
(12) Thoughts a man should not think about his superior officer, even if there was
no personal empathy between them. (FF1)
(13) There were frequent clashes between the various ethnic groups, usually over
jobs. (RF1)
The seventh sense is more complex in that it presupposes the presence of a par-
ticipant other than those explicitly mentioned in the construction. It is labelled
Comparison, and illustrated here by (14) and (15).
(14) There isn’t any distinction between work and play. (JSM1)
(15) This sort of back-of-envelope calculation leads to a comparison: choice between
two conclusions. (LTLT1)
Among the more common collocates of between are ‘similarity’, ‘difference’ and
‘choice’. Tokens encoding actions of choosing or picking obviously presuppose the
presence of a chooser. Moreover, as stated in (15), the act of choosing implies a prior
act of comparison. Similarly an act of comparison is necessary to arrive at a predica-
tion of similarity or difference. It is the implied act of comparison that lies behind the
common classification of predications of similarity, difference and choice.- Strictly speaking this is only true of positive values. There is a certain indeterminacy in
usage in the case of negative values. In non-scientific texts it is common to start with the higher
value, to say ‘between minus four and minus six’, for example, whereas some scientific texts
employ the same direction as for positive values, writing ‘between minus six and minus four’.
Examples of both usages can be found in Mark Davies’ ‘Google Books Corpus’, see< http://
googlebooks.byu.edu/>.