Re: Nouns, verbs, adjectives... and why they're p

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:

> I don't think that anyone can at the same time deny something
> and try to understand it. I doubt that you be the first one
> to ponder over that problem in the past two millenaries
> and the schoolboy's answer *permanence, immanence, remanence*
> is a hint that I humbly feel worth meditation. Your question is
> a flat one, whereas it raises many different aspects of language
I see all-the-time cases where thinking is unconsciously
shaped by language structure or metaphor. So I would be
an extreme Whorfist. Philosophy must be carefully
separated from the carrier language to avoid confusion.
So I would usually just avoid philosophy ...

> Take my favourite example : *the nice dancer* = the agent
> who dances well or the person who is nice. You choose either
> the noun or the verb *hidden* inside the the noun.
This problem is easily handled algebraically. If A is the
agent, D is the dancing, and N is the niceness, we need to
decide between N + (D * A) which is the default precedence,
and (N + D) * A which is somehow "marked", as in Old New
Jerseyan we would say, umm, I can't say that here.