Who's your Daddy?

I wish I had come across this interesting bit when I was reading the work of anthropologist Marilyn Strathern in the context of miautics or fables of who gives birth to what. I might have been able to splice it into the discussion found in the second chapter of Sense (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/S3E.HTM).

Roger Wertheimer. The Significance of Sense: Meaning, Modality, and Morality Chapter Two "Counting Meanings"

Sometimes, even after the purported ambiguities have been pointed out, the disagreement continues. It may persist even between two intelligent, competent native speakers trained in the study of language and having highly sensitive ears. For instance, Ziff [1] believes that 'Someone was a child.' is not synonymous with 'Someone was a parent.'. I agree, but Chomsky, Katz, and Martin [2] do not.

[1] Ziff, Paul. Philosophic Turnings (1966) p. 153
[2] Katz, Jerold. J. and Edward Martin Jr. "The Synonymy of Actives and Passives" in Philosophical Review 76 (1967) p. 488

And so for day 575
10.07.2008