Re: OT: PL/I was Re: Please welcome . . .

Gary Shannon scripsit:

> To facilitate comprehension perhaps a langauge should
> include explicit mention of the nature of a modifier
> like "green" or "kloyn," as in "I have a mouse of
> color green," or "I have a mouse of color kloyn."  Now
> we still may not know which color the word "kloyn"
> refers to, but at least we now know that it is a color
> word, and not a description of its personality or the
> size of its bank account.
This is what is typically done with foreign words in Gua\spi: one can say
"Mahogany grows in Borneo", but it's more gua\spi-ish to say "Mahogany
trees grow on the island of Borneo", which helps naive (or mechanical)
listeners who don't know what a Borneo is.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
        --Brian K. Reid