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OT: Celebrating Python

Daniel Berlin dan at cgsoftware.com
Tue Feb 15 23:44:14 EST 2000 
>>>>> "DLB" == Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

   DLB> On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 23:03:22 GMT, Steve Holden
   DLB> <sholden at bellatlantic.net> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

   >> "Time flies like a banana": description or imperative?
   >> 
   DLB> 	You might be missing one option (since there are three ways to
   DLB> read that old phrase), or it may fall under one of the categories
   DLB> given...

   DLB> 	A command to make some measurement of time for the flies as one
   DLB> would measure the banana

   DLB> 	A reference to "time" "flying" in a manner similar to a banana
   DLB> flying

   DLB> 	A reference to some odd insect species "Time fly" which is
   DLB> partial to a certain overripe fruit
There are actually more ambiguities than that, once you really get into it.
Unless you assume Time is really the start of that sentence, and it's not
just a random phrase.
And you don't want to use a dictionary to see just how many different parts
of speech each of those are.
Then again, the phrase "John saw Mary" is just as troublesome to parse (Imagine i was
john, and murdered people with a specific type of saw, which came to be known 
as a john saw.  Evil, isn't it?)

I-have-a-Hidden-Markov-Model-based-part-of-speech-tagger-due-next-tuesday'ly
yours,
Dan
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