"is the same as" [was Re: Respect goes both ways!]

[Larry Trask]

[ Moderator's note:
  I have changed the Subject: line to reflect the actual content.
  --rma ]

Stanley Friesen writes:

> I guess I am not so adamant that sameness always be transitive.

Well, if the relation 'is the same as' is to be taken as non-transitive, then
what, if any, semantic content can be assigned to it?  How would it then
differ, say, from the relation 'is similar to'?

> It is generally rather messy to try to apply a transitive form of
> similarity to biological entities, not just language.  For instance,
> species delimitation can be difficult if one insists on transitivity (e.g.
> the so-called ring species).  When does a fertilized egg become a new
> individual?   So I just take it as *given* when talking about a biological
> entity that the boundaries *are* fuzzy, as otherwise one must give up
> almost all boundaries in biology.

> And natural languages are clearly biological entities.  So fuzziness is the
> only useful way to go.

I have no quarrel with anything in these last two paragraphs, with which I
agree.

But, if we agree to a fuzzy interpretation of 'is the same as', and hence to
its negation 'is not the same as', then we can no longer manipulate these
relations as though they had non-fuzzy interpretations, and draw non-fuzzy
conclusions -- which I think is the practice I was objecting to in the first
place.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk