Elements of Style in English
in [Lisp]
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From: Raffael Cavallaro on 15 May 2010 12:59 On 2010-05-15 12:50:20 -0400, Stan Brown said: > But those aren't the same thing. > > "Snow on rock" could indeed mean "the snow covered the rock". But it > could equally well mean "the snow is covering the rock", "the snow is > falling onto the rock", "there is a patch of snow covering part of > the rock", and so forth. "Snow covered the rock," can mean: "At that time, the rock was already covered with snow." "At that very moment, snow was falling, covering the rock." The fact that various forms of expression are often semantically ambiguous is orthogonal to the question of the cognitive model underlying grammatical norms. Hypothetically, if we had a language where the grammatical norm were one without subjects, we could still establish semantic and grammatical norms to allow the expression of both these meanings: "snow on rock in progress" "snow on rock already." warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: RG on 15 May 2010 13:17 In article <MPG.26589ad3f24666b998c22c(a)news.individual.net>, Stan Brown <the_stan_brown(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: > Sat, 15 May 2010 10:52:40 -0400 from Raffael Cavallaro > <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>: > > On 2010-05-14 23:27:15 -0400, Jerry Friedman said: > > > > > How would we say "The snow covered the rock" if we didn't have that > > > illusion? > > > > "Snow on rock," (note the absence of any active agent "doing" the > > "covering.") > > But those aren't the same thing. > > "Snow on rock" could indeed mean "the snow covered the rock". But it > could equally well mean "the snow is covering the rock", "the snow is > falling onto the rock", "there is a patch of snow covering part of > the rock", and so forth. Rock under snow. ;-) rg
From: Aleksej Saushev on 15 May 2010 14:09 pjb(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes: > "Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <mail(a)peterduncanson.net> writes: > >> On Fri, 14 May 2010 21:08:42 -0400, Stan Brown >> <the_stan_brown(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: >> >>>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:00:21 +0200 from Pascal J. Bourguignon >>><pjb(a)informatimago.com>: >>>> That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject? >>> >>>A good question. "Il pleut" and "it's raining" *look* like subject- >>>verb, but they're not really. More accurate would be "La pluie see >>>tombe"(*) or "Rain is occurring". >>> >>>(*) I'm sure there's a better way to say that. >>> >>>But I know very little of modern grammar. >> >> Me neither. >> >> With sentences such as "It is raining" and "It is sunny" it is possible >> to describe them as ways of saying "Rain is falling" and "The sun is >> shining" or something similar. How about "It is dry" and "It is dark"? >> They describe a condition in the same way as the other sentences. Sun >> and rain can be thought of as "substances", physical entities, which >> come from somewhere. "Dry" and "dark are not "substances". > > Ask yourself who or what is dry or dark. Alright. "����." What is dry here? The air? No, it isn't the only thing that's dry, the usage doesn't align with it, you can have dry air after rainy week, and as long as one can find puddles or mud, it may not be called "����." "����" happens when not only the air is dry, it is when it is dry overall, universally. You can imagine fictional unversum that is dry, but this exists only because you insist on it. In the real life there's no subject "being actively dry." Even if you restrict it to a specific weather context. Same applies to "�����." All this is similar to theist view on the world. When it is hard to believe that something can happen itself, one invents fictional deity to make it happen. -- HE CE3OH...
From: Nicolas Neuss on 16 May 2010 07:37 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes: > Rather than saying "John throws the ball," it is more scientifically > accurate to say "the ball is thrown while John has the subjective > illusion of being the agent of that throwing, but really, the throwing > just happens, much as the rain just happens, or the grass just grows." Usually, the less complicated interpretation is scientifically the better choice. So I prefer to stay with the former, unless you can predict something interesting from your latter interpretation. > However, John would be a dreadful predictor of the actions of his > conspecifics and other creatures if his cognitive worldview began and > ended with the notion that everything just happens. Precisely. > In stead, John has a firm illusion that the world is filled with > agents with goals[1], which allows John to have some predictive > success in anticipating the actions of others. He forms this theory of > mind by treating himself as an agent, and extrapolating his (fictive) > free will to others. It is a useful fiction, but a fiction > nonetheless. IMO, such a complicated setting of illusions is even more intricate than the assumption of reality. So, by Occam's razor, I am in favor of free will. > warmest regards, > > Ralph Nicolas -- What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank? (B. Brecht)
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 16 May 2010 11:47
On 2010-05-16 07:37:36 -0400, Nicolas Neuss said: > So, by Occam's razor, I am in favor of free > will. Occam's razor only applies when theories have equal explanatory power. The theory of free will cannot explain these experiments at all: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will> warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro |