From: Wayne Leman (Wayne_Leman@SIL.ORG)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 22:44:55 EDT
> > > Dear B-greekers,
> > >
> > > On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:56:45 -0400 Jonathan Robie writes:
> > > > Here's a traditional example from Chomsky:
> > > >
> > > > Time flies like an arrow.
> > > > Fruit flies like a banana.
> >
>
> > > The first sentence of course means that those sorts of flies which
> > > feed on time also favor arrows because, like time, they are swift.
> > > The second one means this: All fruits navigate the air in pretty
> > > much the same way. So naturally fruit in general will navigate the
> > > air in much the same way as any particular fruit, say a banana.
> > >
> > > Did I get it right? ;-)
> >
> Not quite, but this only shows that writing is not an entirely
> satisfactory representation of speech. You evidently heard them
> mentally with the wrong tunes. [ ;-0 ]
>
>
> Barbara D. Colt, mailto:babc@ix.netcom.com
> St John the Evangelist, San Francisco
But, but, Barbara, we all know we can sing the same hymn to more than one
tune, or maybe that's precisely your point. Actually, Paul's explanation of
the meaning of those two sentences was rather clever, and I suspect by your
"Not quite" that you thought so, too. It sure wasn't the way I learned to
interpret those sentences in my linguistics classes, but then we weren't
always as clever as Paul! (If anyone objects that this message is not about
Greek, you can take "Paul" to be an unclear referent!)
Wayne
---
Wayne Leman
Bible translation site: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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