THEORY OF GAMES, 1944

[t.paikeday]

Thanks to everyone who detected the error. Actually I tried to make the
correction within an hour of the original message (about midnight), but the
posting didn't seem to go through. I tried again several times this morning
without success. My "sent" file showed the messages as sent, but my "inbox"
wasn't receiving my own posting. So something seemed wrong with my connection.
And just a couple of hours ago, a technician came in to install a high-speed
cable modem and he wiped out everything in all my files! I had to call
Sympatico to get the e-mail system starting from scratch. So here goes. Sorry
about this long explanation on top of my error.

Perhaps an excuse would be better for a change after the explanation. Suppose,
for the sake of argument, notwithstanding the lack of supporting evidence,
"matchbox" does mean "box of matches" in some outlandish dialect. These
speakers got tired of saying "Hand me a box of matches" and decided to cut it
short as "Hand me a matchbox." Their dictionary would record this sense
besides the more standard one of  "box FOR matches." Does anyone have a
quarrel with that, I wonder.  The argument about "theory of games" v. "game(s)
theory" still stands, I would think. Thanks for the reassurance (I lost the
message) that both are lexically the same.

Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:

> Thomas Paikeday <t.paikeday at SYMPATICO.CA> writes:
>
> >>>>>
> I think "box of matches" and "match box" have identical meanings.
> <<<<<
>
> I don't. A match box can be, and often is, an empty box that originally
> held, and was manufactured to hold, matches. A box OF MATCHES cannot be
> empty. The "of"-phrase makes the whole phrase quantitative.