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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
All rules have exceptions, including this one.
OK, please supply an example of an exception to the above stated rule.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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All rules have exceptions, including this one.
This is a paradox of the same kind od Russell's paradox or the paradox of the barber - We already found an example with "Hofstader?? law".
In a a village , there is just one barber . The barber is the one who shaves all men that (which?) do not shave themselves.
Question: Who shaves the barber?
Ciao
Emanuela
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It's technically known as ellipsis, and even more technically known as exophoric ellipsis.
Exephoric ellipsis is the omission of words that can be recovered (i.e. worked out) from the non-linguistic situation, and is most often used in informal conversation, e.g. Coming! for I'm coming .
Cataphoric ellipsis is the omission of words that can be recovered from the grammatical context, e.g. We phoned the plumber and asked him to come tomorrow, where the repeated subject (we asked) has been omitted.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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old hand
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Bingley
Exephoric ellipsis? Cataphoric ellipsis?
And here I was prepared to fob off Emanuela with the simple 'explanation' that it's all telegraphese to save us from RSI.
Your answer sounds ever so much more impressive. Are you in competition with tsuwm for the 'most knowledgable about the language' award on AWAD?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Carpal Tunnel
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shanks,
My opinion, according to the presented evidence, is that tsuwm is our resident word expert, and that sweet Mr.
B. is our language expert. And, if we can consider these two as our language doctors, then we have a paradox.
Emanuela, I think I might have the answer to your paradox.
Will send private to check.
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old hand
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old hand
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Jackie
Good points. And good doctors too.
I think I too may have the answer to Emanuela's conundrum. Will send private to you to check! (Maybe we can work up a Chinese Whispers chain?)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Question: Who shaves the barber?
Ok shanks, I don't know about the answer, but I'll chinese whisper my attempt to you and perhaps we'll get a number of variants (or never know what we all thought...!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>>whigmaleeries, fizgigs, tchotchkes, bibelots, folderol
allô tsuwm. Bibelot is actually a French word used to describe a small decorative object. You know, the kind usually accumulated over the years, little statuettes, souvenirs et al. It is quite specific in its meaning.
Emanuela, the barber can be a woman and she can shave herself. (All right guys, don't all say "eewww yuck" at the same time...I meant her legs)
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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I feel embarassed , since, yes, of course, you can be right, but I was not expecting an answer...
Since the paradox of the barber (thinking of the barber as a man) is not just a joke, but is one of examples of self-referring sentences from which raised the modern mathematical logic-I can be wrong or at least imprecise, I don't know the subject well .
I could restate the problem in this way :
" This sentence is false"
Question : Is the the above question true or false?
Ciao
Emanuela
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veteran
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OP
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This sentence is falseYes, emanuela, my first thought was that the barber paradox was unanswerable. But we didn't allow for the fact that Russell's example was hampered by the time of writing, eh? Thinks: 'eh' is meaningless, but speaks volumes!
Thinks 2: why would the French 'hein' work better here?? If I recall correctly, Hofstadter (in Godel, Escher, Bach) suggested such self-referential statements could be answered by the invented word "mu" - which effectively unasks the question. My personal opinion is that blowing a raspberry is more effective - or just laughing, of course.  Zen again... Fisk
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