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You're making the classic nerd error of assuming that natural languages should be as precisely defined as mathematics or computer languages. You're going to te
by Pitarou 14y ago
You're making the classic nerd error of assuming that natural languages should be as precisely defined as mathematics or computer languages. You're going to tell me that there's no such thing as deceleration next!
(To be fair, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." isn't exactly a "natural" sentence.)
And in any case, the sentence is still syntactically valid, which is all I'm really concerned about here.
- vacri 14y agoI'm not operating from logic, but from a 'natural' perspective. I've no problems with the syntax ("French citizens German citizens bully, bully Belgian citizens") though it's quite an awkward sentence in that format and any editor would require a rewrite, but it's just not something that someone would say if all the demographics were the same ("French citizens French citizens bully, bully French citizens") - ie, it's nonsense for that reason.
- Pitarou 14y agoWhile the sentence is technically ambiguous, we say ambiguous things all the time and still manage to understand one another. This is the domain of the study of Pragmatics. In natural communication, we START by assuming that the speaker had a meaningful intention, and then attempt to infer that meaning from context and assumptions about shared knowledge. I can easily think of contexts in which your "French citizens" sentence make sense.