[Gllug] LinuxDoc / DocBook Documentation Writting

[Dylan]

On Thursday 14 September 2006 14:13, John G Walker wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:47:00 +0100 Tom Schutzer-Weissmann
>
> <trmsw at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > "I'm going to London and talk on global warming."
> >
> > No passing resemblance to the imperative "go and do something", or the
> > entirely normal "I'm going to London to talk on global warming" is
> > going to hide the fact that this is nonsense.
>
> It's meaningful to me. Possibly the difference between us is how we
> imagine the context.

I don't usually wade in to this sort of language discussion - being a 
theoretical linguist they tend to bore me because usually everyone is right. 
In this case, however, Tom is right and John is wrong. Although it is 
possible to extrapolate the intended meaning from the sentence, said sentence 
is ungrammatical. In co-ordinated structures, the two 'co-ordinands' must 
match syntactically and semantically in various ways. In the example, there 
are four possible co-ordinate structures:

1 - I ['m going to London] and [talk on global warming]
2 - I'm [going to London] and [talk on global warming]
3 - I'm going [to London] and [talk on global warming]
4 - I'm going to [London] and [talk on global warming]

In 1, the co-ordinands are semantically incompatible - one is an action 
currently occurring or soon to be initiated; the other is a habitual 
activity. In 2 the aspectual auxiliary (BE) cannot co-occur with 'bare 
infinitive' TALK. Similarly, in 3, the modal auxiliary /going/ cannot 
co-occur with a bare infinitive. In 4, the first co-ordinand requiteres TO to 
function as a preposition, whereas the second requires it to be 
the 'infinitive particle'.

This construction has absolutely nothing to do with GO and <VERB>, which is 
actually not even a case of co-ordination.

Dylan

>
> But I still don't get your point. Do you imagine that software can
> cope with grammar? How would it possibly cope with the difference in
> opinion between us regard the "go and do" construction, never mind
> more complex stuff?
>
> --
>  All the best,
>  John
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