I see prototypal inheritance in communication. When I communicate that I fried an egg you automatically make a number of assumptions about the properties of tha

I see prototypal inheritance in communication. When I communicate that I fried an egg you automatically make a number of assumptions about the properties of that event. If we generally hold the same assumptions then I've transmitted the concept with high fidelity. However, if I believe that your assumptions about the event won't reify the event in a way that mirrors my own then I will want to override your assumption by communicating extra properties about the event. You can dive a bit into this by way of semantics. For example, the semantic frame 'cooking'[1] lists 'fry' as a member. What are the salient differences between the parent frame 'cooking' and its member 'fry'? A quick way to explore this is by examining the propositional differences between the frame and member roles. You can imagine the differences between the Instrument and Result roles and how their assumptions differ. How does this relate back to programming? One way to examine programming languages is through their ontological semantics. As much as we write programs for computers, we also write them for other people. Prototypical inheritance mirrors the structure of languages we already find in nature. [1] https://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/vn3.3/vn/cooking-45.3.php#cooking-45.3 https://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/vn3.3/vn/cooking-45.3....