Klarinet Archive - Posting 000110.txt from 2000/02

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Jelly Doughnuts
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 23:23:03 -0500

On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 08:22:09 -0800 (PST), leupold_1@-----.com said:

> --- Tony Pay <Tony@-----.uk> wrote:
>
> > > On Wed, 02 Feb 2000 09:10:30 -0600, vfreyer@-----.net said:
>
> > > I am a Danish. (Short for Danish pastry, much like a jelly doughnut,
> > > describing my eating preferences.)
>
> > Yes. My point is that the second sentence, uttered by you, does not
> > mean -- could not *possibly* mean -- that you are a pastry.
>
> Not so. The only reason you can tell that the sentence refers to
> nationality -- as opposed to a pastry -- is the capital D at the
> beginning of the word.

Actually, I hadn't included the capital 'D' at all in my considerations,
because I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that as a pastry, 'danish' is all
lowercase. Are you sure?

> If somebody walked up to you and *spoke* this sentence, you would have
> no way of knowing whether they were revealing their nationality or
> having a serious identity crisis.

This is true:-)

> If interpreted in the former sense, the sentence is gammatically
> incomplete, because the word Danish is a modifier, not a noun. If
> somebody walked up to you and said, "I am a Danish," and you assumed
> they were referring to nationality, your response would be, "A Danish
> WHAT?"

I'm far too polite.

> But if you chose the latter interpretation, that the person was
> identifying themself as a pastry, your reaction would not be to the
> sentence itself, since it is grammatically correct in this context.
> You might just take them seriously and, if you haven't had breakfast
> yet, start gnawing on their left arm.

But I wouldn't let it get too far out of hand.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

...I'd explain it to you, but your brain would explode.

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