The answers you are looking for are Nobel-worthy. I have not formally studied linguistics, but you might wanna start there. Regarding the king equation, I think

The answers you are looking for are Nobel-worthy. I have not formally studied linguistics, but you might wanna start there. Regarding the king equation, I think "king" is actually a vector in this context, as with the other objects. If so, then it is using the vector space formalism. That said, I definitely agree with you. An English speaker may find any of these reasonable: 1. King - man = expensive clothing 2. King - man = prince 3. King - man = queen What is "king"? What is "-"? What is "man"? If a king is a dressed up wealthy man, and you remove the man, you have wealthy clothes? Or, does removing the man mean degrading the king back into a boy? Or, does removing a man mean adding a woman? Wait -- what if a king is more than a dressed up wealthy man? Should we include his home? Do we need to subtract the home? How do you subtract a home? Is the king minus a man a prince if the king was a beggar when he was young? ... death of the universe ... Like you said, there's a combinatoric explosion here. Maybe this example is akin to trying to model each and every trajectory of all 10^23 particles in a gas. It looks like these scientists are stepping back, and looking at the big picture, instead, trying to find something more akin to PV = NkT