On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:43 PM, Dan Bron <[email protected]> wrote: > In a draft, I had originally written "Meaning its definition is irrelevant". > I think that sums it up.
Change "definition" to "imperative definition" and that seems reasonable. Mostly we think of using J verbs using their imperative tense. Gerunds (and other nouns) are passive and we use a different concept of definition when dealing with passive forms than we do when dealing with active forms. (As an aside, note that the practice of using the gerund as a noun seems to be characteristic of English but not latin languages -- there, they seem to like using the infinitive for this purupose. But I am parroting what I read here, and I do not have any deeper insights on this topic.) Anyways, the definition which is relevant when cap is the left tine of a fork is a passive definition, and not an imperative definition. And making this distinction -- that it's being used passively -- seems worthwhile. > Everything we discuss re J is modulo bugs, unless we constrain ourselves to > the Platonic J embodied in the DoJ. Precision issues are again not > grammatically anomalous, and in fact could also be considered semantically > transparent, if we hold numbers to be analytic (or constrain our discussion > to Platonic J). I do prefer to ignore precision issues when I can get away with it. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
