tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 23 03:54:26 1996
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name or word?
- From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
- Subject: name or word?
- Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 11:53:20 GMT
- Organization: Materials Science Centre
- Priority: normal
"Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> wrote (Subject: Re: misc):-
> ... Put stars or something around Maltz' name so people know you mean the
> person, not the verb. Be nice to those prone to be confused. ...
This same confusion between proper-names and ordinary words happens sometimes
in written Chinese. The only good resolver to this ambiguity is "apparent
nonsense is likely a proper-name": e.g. "hair enrich east", pronounced "mao
tse tung", is nonsense if treated as the sum of its parts, so it must be the
(well known) man's name. Not so easy if the name and its context mane sense if
treated as ordinary words, if the speaker does not know of the person named.