Re: Gender and grammar

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Article #2969

#2969

From: Herman Rubin
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 00:00

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In article <8045tb$ofa$1@news.hawaii.edu>, Greg Lee  <lee@Hawaii.edu> wrote:
>In sci.lang Herman Rubin <hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
<...
>: looked upon as a cross between pronouns and nouns, and 
>: these can have whatever characteristics are appropriate 
>: at the time; within a single context, a variable cannot
>: have more than one meaning.


>This exemplifies the difference between the logician-prescriptivist
>and the linguist-descriptivist.  Obviously, pro-forms in
>natural languages do sometimes have ambiguous interpretations.
>Within a single context, a variable _can_ have more than one
>meaning (at the cost of ambiguity and possible non-sequiturs
>of reasoning).


I agree.  This is why there is need to add variables to natural
languages, so that precise communication can be done without
extremely drastic circumlocution.
-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558

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From: hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Gender and grammar
Date: 1999/11/07
Message-ID: <804ge3$4ogg@odds.stat.purdue.edu>
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