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Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes)

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Thursday, May 6, 2004, 7:58
At 07:02 5.5.2004, Ray Brown wrote:

>Indeed, not - and humans being as we are, I think the aim to eliminate all >lexical vagueness/ambiguity is not realizable.
I doubt that it is desirable. I think the result would be a sterile beast, since human progress is generally a matter of patching the imperfect results of our predecessors. As for framing legal texts in an unambiguous language the thought is even scary. There will always be borderline cases, and what happens to the prerogative of courts and judges to follow the spirit rather than the letter of law? While I certainly don't believe that the historical development of human language makes any "progress" in whatever sense I do think that the opposing forces of what historical linguists call "rule and analogy" (and ambiguation and disambiguation is part of that) is what makes language a pliable and adaptible medium for human communication. An unambiguous language would not be amenable to change, and since human culture changes it would eventually be discarded. /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus)

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And Rosta <a.rosta@...>