Re: unnatural languages

* Herman Rubin wrote:

Do you include verbs, adjectives, adverbs? And at most,
these are highly restricted variables. The brevity of the
notation is important. How would YOU use human language
to disambiguate

He gave him his toy.

You don't need to disambiguate a sentence, the sentence was uttered to
disambiguate a situation. You only need to say that which isn't already
clear from context [1] or irrelevant anyway. That's why "he" and "him"
were used above, because in context, there was no need to specify the
people more exactly. Or so the speaker thought.

____
[1] Credit for this observation goes to Hockett (at least, for having
made me familiar with this approach).
--
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell.
Peter Moylan in alt.usage.english
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: unnatural languages
    ... notation is important. ... He gave him his toy. ... Human language hardly conveys any meaning by itself. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: unnatural languages
    ... How would YOU use human language ... You don't need to disambiguate a sentence, ... Consider word problems; ... in their English ...
    (sci.lang)