Pretty little girls' school (was: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?)

On Friday, May 13, 2005, at 07:37 , Ph. D. wrote:

> Sai Emrys wrote:
>>
>> Someone explain the "little girls' school" reference? I have not heard
> it....
>
>
> It's the canonical example of ambiguity in English:
>
> "pretty little girls school"
Yep,  that's the full form. But that's specific to English in that 'pretty'
  has two uses & set of meanings:
1. adjective - pleasing, having superficial attractiveness, beautiful
without dignity, etc.
2. adverb - fairly, tolerably, to some extent etc.

Now I assume that in the sort of 2d writing that we have been discussing,
these two sets of meanings would be expressed by different symbols; hence
I just used "little girls' school" because all languages (at least in
cultures where schools are known) will have words (some possible
polymorphemic) for:
little(ness)
girl
school

What I meant is that if one merely puts symbols representing [little}
{girl.PL} {school} into a frame/ cartouche or whatnot, then the meaning is
ambiguous and IMO relying upon context to disambiguate is a poor way of
doing things.

With just the three words the possible meanings I think are just two:
1. parua schola puellarum - a liitle school which girls attend

2. schola paruarum puellarum - a school attended by little girls

I realize that in the sort of NLF2DWS Sai has in mind, this problem would
not occur at all.

Ray
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