THEORY OF GAMES, 1944

[Thomas Paikeday]

TERRY IRONS wrote:

> If we go this route,  theory of games may be traced to Pascal's
> correspondence with Fermat (1654), in French of course, but tranlated into
> English by at least 1894 (Tannery & Henry, Gauthier-Villars et fils).
>

ME: Any instance of "theory of games" (even in a translated work)
should, in my view, qualify as a lexicographical citation if what is
meant is more or less what we are trying to define. But if Pascal was
talking generally about a concept, it may be like the references to the
airplane (pushpaka vimana) in Sanskrit literature. The word or phrase is
lexicographically more important here than the abstract concept and
variations thereof seen in the concrete.

MARK ODEGARD (private comm.): A matchbox refers to the box *small*
wooden matches are
kept in, whereas a
box of matches can refer to the box the larger 'kitchen matches' come in
or
to the (often decorative) boxes the long 'fireplace matches' come in. 'A
matchbox' is *always* small whereas no statement concerning size is made
about 'a box of matches'. Of course, this may be a modern distinction.

SALIKOKO MUFWENE: To begin with, do "box of matches" and "match box"
have identical meanings? Is it adequate to
hand a person an empty "box of matches?" What of phrases such as "book
of
matches" (vs. #"match book" at least regarding the intended meaning that
has
nothing to do with match-making--better yet, "phone book" vs. *"book of
phones") and  "bank record" (vs. #"record of banks" regarding the
relevant
meaning)?

ME: Traditionally, senses and subsenses of a dictionary entry are
separately treated with their own supporting citations. Variations of
the thing for which the entry word stands are of encyclopedic (not
lexical) interest, like modern airplanes as distinguished from what the
Wright brothers flew.

I think "box of matches" and "match box" have identical meanings. But
"Phone book," "bank record," etc. are different KINDS of compounds.
Isn't it well known that in noun+noun compounds, the meaning
relationship between the component words could be anything imaginable?
Theoretically, I think "phone book" could mean "book of phones" (similar
to "book of essays") and "bank record" could mean "record of banks,' but
usage and the context that goes with it gives the actual meaning sought
to be conveyed. That
is why most lay people don't care to look up words in dictionaries since
they can get the hang of it from the context.

ME (earlier)
>Of course, the
>latter ["game theory"] is shorter and faster to utter [than "theory of games"], hence the abbreviated [or shorter] form in the
>first place, but I think the canonical form in compounds of this type
>should be the linguistically original form.

SALI: I cannot interpret this.

ME: I would like to clarify that the canonical form I mentioned refers
to the form used for gathering citations. The  form of the entry word
itself should be the current and most frequently occurring form, in the
present case, "game theory" rather than "theory of games". In
traditional lexicography, when citation gathering was done by poring
over manual texts, it still is for the most part, a reader would
naturally look for evidence of the current form and would tend to
overlook the co-occurrence of the earlier or original form of the word.
Nowadays, if you are working with a commputerized database, it is easy
to make a search of "game" or "games" & "theory" and you may be
surprised to see items like "James W. Freedman: Oligopoly and the Theory
of Games, Amsterdam, 1977" (as I just discovered in my database) which
shows that while "game theory" is the most frequently used form, "theory
of games" was still current in formal usage half a century after Von
Neumann's 1944 book. I believe, in the forties when the theory was being
developed, the reverse situation existed, namely, "theory of games" was
the more frequently used form, but "game theory" did co-exist, although
evidence of it has not yet been found.