Re: Gender and grammar

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Article #2972

#2972

From: Greg Lee
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 00:00

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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).

-- 
Greg Lee <lee@Hawaii.edu>

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From: Greg Lee <lee@Hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Gender and grammar
Date: 1999/11/07
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