October 11, 2017 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Free Variables in Natural Language
Last night we were left wondering that
since mathematics is a language, and since it has free and bounded variables,
is it possible for natural languages to have them too?
It turns out that the answer to this
question is in affirmative.
But what on earth can, in natural languages,
act as free variables?
For one, personal pronouns can act as free
variables.
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are
associated with a specific grammatical person.
Grammatical person is a method in
linguistics of imparting deictic reference to participants of an event and thus
distinguishing them.
The personal pronoun can be of the first
person (as I), of the second person (as you) or of the third person (as he,
she, it and in plural they).
The word “personal” in a personal pronoun
does not refer solely refer to a person but is applicable to plants, animals
and objects signified by the usage of it.
Consider the following sentence of English
Language:
Tina had misplaced the keys of her car.
In this sentence, her is a possessive
pronoun and is a free variable.
You may ask in what sense “her” is free.
It is free because here the pronoun “her”
need not necessarily be referring to Tina.
Consider the following two sentences to get
the idea what I am trying to convey.
Lena had given her car keys to Tina.
Tina had misplaced the keys of her car.
Now it is evident that “her” in the second
case does not refer to Tina but to Lena.
It is clear now that the person who “her”
will be referring will depend on the situational context.
Yet there is a way this ambiguity to who “her”
is referring to, or in other word, who the referent is, can be established.
We were never taught this idea in our
grammar studies perhaps because they did not intend to overburden our already
broken backs in our glorious school days.
Or maybe this idea is more a part of
linguistics than English grammar.
Whatever the reason may have been, it is
never too late to learn.
The referent of “her” can be established
using some symbols.
One cool method is to use the co indexing
subscripts such as i and j.
The subscript i will indicate one referent
and j another.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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