komponisto comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 29 July 2013 10:26PM

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Comment author: komponisto 31 July 2013 08:27:25PM 0 points [-]

(Semantically, “ten minutes' walk” still means ‘a ten-minute walk’ rather than ‘the ten-minute walk’, but your point in reply to shminux was about syntax not semantics anyway.)

The "proof of synonymy" looks like this:

ten minutes' walk = (the walk) of (ten minutes) = a (walk of ten minutes) = a ten-minute walk

...the second "equality" being where semantics is invoked.