thomblake comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Alicorn 22 February 2010 01:53AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (823)
Tags: evpsych psychology

Comments (823)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: thomblake 25 February 2010 05:10:35PM 0 points [-]

I mean its not like "Chris lost his money" is unambiguous, it is not at all clear to me weather the he refers to Chris, or someone else. That would probably be clear in discourse because of context.

In proper English, that would not be ambiguous; pronouns always refer to their antecedents, and no other applicable noun can come between the pronoun and the antecedent.

This causes a problem with "they" in this case; "Chris and Pat went to their car" becomes unambiguously "Chris and Pat went to Pat's car" if "they" can refer to "Pat", leaving us with no pronoun for "Chris and Pat".

Comment author: wedrifid 26 February 2010 07:01:32AM 3 points [-]

This causes a problem with "they" in this case; "Chris and Pat went to their car" becomes unambiguously "Chris and Pat went to Pat's car" if "they" can refer to "Pat", leaving us with no pronoun for "Chris and Pat".

It sounds like all these (counterfactual?) people who speak "proper English" need to adapt their language.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 26 February 2010 06:43:10AM 3 points [-]

In proper English, that would not be ambiguous; pronouns always refer to their antecedents, and no other applicable noun can come between the pronoun and the antecedent.

nolrai explicitly specified "natural language," not your "proper English."

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit