On 4/22/2014 2:17 PM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 07:08:56PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> Sorry, I do not see any definition here. Just a collection of words
>>> which looks like a definition, but only locally…
>> Any definition is just a collection of words, of course. Can you tell
>> what is missing from this collection to make it eligible?
> This is a very delicate question, of course. And it is very personal:
> every definition assumes a certain target population. But let me try:
>
> A) It should be immediately clear which of the possible meanings of
> every word/phrase was intended by the author;
>
> B) It should have a unique non-self-contradictory interpretation;
>
> C) The reader should immediately get a feeling that given enough
> effort, one will be able to understand what is the interpretation
> in (B).
>
> Now, (A) avoids exponential growth of possible “local
> interpretations”. The need for (B) is self-obvious (although what is
> self-contradictory would also depend on the reader’s abilities).
>
> And (C) is a major psychological help: usually, (A) cannot stop the
> exponential growth of possible “global interpretations” (“how the
> pieces are intended to joint together”). Essentially, one gets a tree
> of possible choices, and it is crucial that when searching along the
> tree, one can cut off “wrong” branches as early as possible.
Thanks for the "theory" - we've taken the discussion off-list where we
can work collaboratively on improving the language rather than theoretizing.
A./
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Received on Tue Apr 22 2014 - 17:00:25 CDT
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