October 12, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Bound Variables in English Language
Last night I had said that the referent of
pronouns such as “her” in our sentence can be established using some symbols
such as co indexing subscripts such as i and j.
So now let us consider once again the
sentence that we were going over last night:
Tina had misplaced the keys of heri
car.
In this sentence the pronoun “her” is co
indexed with subscript i through which we are make it clear that the
interpretation of this “her” is = that of Tina
The other variation of this sentence would
be:
Tina had misplaced the keys of herj
car.
In this case the interpretation that is to
be made of “her” is = that of any other woman but not Tina.
In linguistics this is one technique of
removing ambiguities that arises out of free variable pronouns.
So far we had a glimpse of personal
pronouns that act like free variables.
So what can act like bound variables in
English language?
Both reflexive pronouns and reciprocal
pronouns can act like bound variables.
It is understandable if you find these
terms alien even after having studied them in High School English Grammar text
book Wren & Martin as lots of water has flown under the bridge since then.
So I shall freshen up your grammar a little
bit.
Reflexive pronouns are those pronouns that
are either preceded or followed by a noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to
which it refers.
A reflexive pronoun will usually end either
in –self or –selves.
It is usually used when the object of the
sentence is the subject itself.
We all are very familiar with reflexive
pronouns and use them all the time without being aware of what they are called
and why they are being used.
Let me first list out few examples and then
see how they appear in complete sentences.
First I shall list the pronouns and then
place next to them their reflexive counterparts.
I – myself
You – yourself
He – himself
She – herself
They – themselves and so on
Let us see how they are used in a sentence
and what special relevance they bear in sentence construction.
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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