Further evidence of the decline of English

[Jonathan Lighter]

Let's rally for it.

JL

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 4:34 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Further evidence of the decline of English
>
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>
> La tesis ... se leyó en inglés ... bajo el título, "Speech and text
> translation involving the Basque language: an application of
> stochastic, finite-state transduction."
>
> He knows English better than I do! "Stochastic, finite-state
> transduction"?! WTF is that?! I recall a serial in F&SF called "The
> Stochastic Man" and I recall "finite state" from Robert Eugene Wall's
> magnificent work, Introduction to Mathematical Linguistics (now,
> sadly, out of print, but available used for $198.14), and I've come
> across "transduction" here and there, in a variety of contexts. But,
> as used, these strings mean nothing to me.
>
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
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