[Corpora-List] What is the meaning of life?

[Trond Trosterud]

Adam Kilgarriff kirjoitti 2. jan. 2010 kello 06.46:

> Answer: life prime
> Does anyone have a source for my favourite formal linguistics joke?  (I heard it attributed to Montague, of Montague grammar, but I have no idea if that's right)

The really fun (or sad, or whatever) aspect of this joke is of course that it gives a precise account of one of the mainstream semantic practices (the other one gives the meaning as "1", if there is a world in which there is life, and "0" otherwise). 

>>From the viewpoint of lexicography, or the one of natural semantics, this of course what makes the joke so funny (cf. also mainstream textbooks in "Lexical semantics", dealing with zeros, ones, primes, and their interrelations (aka homo- poly- etc nomy)).

Trond.
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