[extropy-chat] E-Prime

[David Lubkin]

Dan Clemmensen wrote:

>"John's birthday will occur on Friday."
>
>(I assert that this statement implies the second statment also,
>because you know that today is not Friday.)

The context in which the question occurred was that a correspondent 
asserted that "today is X's birthday" and I wished to correct them. Your 
rephrase doesn't reflect the need in conversation to explicitly deny the 
initial assertion.

>However, "birthday" is not precise, so the following may be better:
>
>"John's mother bore John on a prior anniversary of Friday."
>
>I have not studied E-prime. I simply restated your assertion in
>less ambiguous english.

Your second rephrase presupposes existence of a mother and of pregnancy.

Of more immediate concern, no form either of us presented clarifies the 
calendrical system in use. Indeed, my grandmother celebrated her birthday 
on the anniversary of its date according to the Hebrew calendar and even 
did not know her correct Gregorian birth date.

I had disputes with my ex-wife over whether a day began at sundown the 
night before, at midnight, or at a reasonable morning hour. (When does a 
custodial period begin or end?)

And my daughter takes birth time and time zone into account, and raises a 
glass at the precise time designated on her birth certificate.

Our exchange emphasizes for me the great difficulty of removing all 
ambiguity. So much for writing a clarified version of the US Constitution....


-- David Lubkin.