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Mythical Lady Posted 18 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Every man loves a woman

0This sentence along with:02br
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00Bill wants to marry a Norwegian woman.02br
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00are said to have smenatically more than one interpretion. After a long time of pondering, I came to no avail.. (except my eyes hurt!! 05000)02br
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00Could any one provide me with some clues?02br
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00Thanks in advance,02br
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00Regards,010id38
  

Top answer

0There already exists a woman whom Bill wants to marry. 0-

— BarbaraPA

  • 0There already exists a woman whom Bill wants to marry.
  • 0-
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14 Answers
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0There already exists a woman whom Bill wants to marry. This woman happens to be from Norway.02br
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00Bill has met many women from Norway and found them all to be terrific, so when the time does come for him to get married -- although he has no girlfriend now -- he wants to marry someone from there.0-
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0Yes I got it. It is about the function of the article " a " either specific or non-specfic. 02br
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00What about the 1st sentence? 02br
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00Thank you very much0-
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0What first sentence?0-
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0I am wondering if this utterance wouldn't be ambiguous in any language.0-
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0The first sentence is 02br
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00Every man loves a woman.02br
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00Does it have the following interpretions:02br
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00Every man loves only one woman. ( who is one definite entity) This interpretion sounds weird to me.02br
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00Any man loves any woman. ( i.e their love is not confined to one woman )02br
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0I could be any man loves any woman, or for every man, there is a woman whom he loves.02br
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00It's one that seems selected deliberately for it's ambiguity.02br
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00There's a woman out there for every man has its ambiguity too.02br
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00But remember, we never communicate in a vaccuum. You'd know what was meant by context.0-
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0Hi,02br
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01font00Bill wants to marry a Norwegian woman.02font02br
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00Perhaps Bill is a priest who loves to perform marriages for Scandinavian women. Last week he married a nice Swedish woman to her boyfriend. Now 01b00Bill wants to marry a Norwegian woman. 02b02br
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00
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0Bill wants to marry a Norwegian.02br
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00Bill wants to marry a Norwegian woman.0-
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0Hi there,02br
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00Thank you all very much02br
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00Indeed, context is everything. But the problem here is that we are not given any context. The purporse of the exercise is to remove the ambiguity of every sentence by virtue of its semantic interpretions out of the context. 0-
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0Hi,02br
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00If a sentence is ambiguous and has no context, you can 01i00identify02i00 the ambiguity but I don't see how you can 01i00remove02i00 it.02br
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00Do you still have any questions about your original post?02br
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00Best wishes, Clive0-
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