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> Which most of the English speaking world would interpret as "My mother
> can't do that", possibly with an implied "(but just about anyone else
> can)". This type of idiom leads to ambiguity, and is a barrier to
> communication--its only purpose is to be cute. -Dave
Hogwash.
I have spent the last ten years thinking about AI and learning how to
learn (as it applies to language). Everything that I've come to
understand says that much of the points made in this argument/discussion
have been total crap.
My father asked me if I wanted a baar.
I said yes.
He asked me if I wanted it out of the bottle.
I said yes.
He brought it to me in a glass.
I was upset -- I wanted [to drink it] out
of the bottle.
I have many more examples of this. English is *very* ambiguous, but
language in general is. We have to assume just to communicate on the
most basic level and arguing about flavor only seems to take away
from our humanism. This list has taught me new words, but
it has not taught me anything new about how to communicate.
One of my favorite new CDs is one that teaches me 51 spoken languages of
the world. I have recntly had the pleasure of experiencing Swedish and
now Dutch.
Where are you parked?
(What does this mean? How is a computer supposed to know this?)
I have bitched in the past about qmail doing what I felt
was stupid things -- but I have since come to expect this
from qmail and the list.
If you'd like to talk to me about any of this, please email
me directly so we won't bore the rest of the list with things
that will just be disagreement on anyway.
Scott
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