From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!techbook!szabo Wed Sep 16 21:23:00 EDT 1992
Article 6878 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: missing verbs
Message-ID: <1992Sep11.125017.1460@techbook.com>
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
References: <1992Sep9.230021.5182@news.media.mit.edu> <BILL.92Sep9232609@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> <1992Sep11.120124.15227@techbook.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 12:50:17 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <1992Sep11.120124.15227@techbook.com> szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:
>
>In article <BILL.92Sep9232609@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>>Anyway, English (and other languages) are full of curious asymmetries.
>>For example, it's okay to say "The bicycle is next to the house", but
>>it's not okay to say "The house is next to the bicycle", though
>>logically they ought to mean the same thing.
>
>"Is" here seems to carry far more than an Aristolean logic semantics;
>in particular it seems to imply an action -- one would park a bicycle
>next to the house, but not vice versa.

This may, in retrospect, overemphasize the action.  The house is a fixed
landmark, the bike is not, and that makes good sense as a mental map.
As another poster pointed out, if one knows where the bike is but not
the house, "the house is next to the bicycle" would be the thing to say.
The most common way to say it, in the circumstance of giving directions
to one's house, would be "my house is the one with my kid's red bicycle 
parked out front", assuming none of the neighbor kids have red bikes.


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