CHAT: EU allumettes (was: Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy,
From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 8:43 |
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
> Tommie L Powell:
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > > Politically, of course. But not linguistically. I think it is
> > > instructive to realize that a language that has the
> > > expressive capabilities of a natlang but that is
> > > unambiguous is linguistically achievable.
> >
> > Actually, there are some natlangs that are very nearly
> > impossible to make ambiguous statements in (without
> > violating mandatory rules of grammar). Czech is one
>
> I react with polite skepticism. I wonder whether you are thinking
> only of syntactic ambiguity? (I have often heard it said that
> languages with well-marked case systems are less prone to
> ambiguity.)
I think I should second this. All natural languages have vague
predicates, lexemes that inherently fuzzy like _bald_ or _yellow_
or _fuzzy_. And I'll betcha they also have plenty of syntactically
ambiguous constructions too.
=========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637