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From: garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: Personal Defenses
Message-ID: <829@bunker.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 11:37:09 EDT
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Posted: Fri May  3 11:37:09 1985
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I deleted net.politics and net.legal from the newsgroup list,
and added net.nlang because I want to know if my analysis is
correct.

> > I think the point of whether it is good or not good to carry personal
> > defense weapons (unconcealed) is moot when compared with the fact that if I
> > WANT to and am not violating someone else's personal rights, I should be
> > able to. I think that says it all.	-- Jay Mitchell
> 
> Interesting that this statement can be parsed two ways:
> 
> ...I should be able to [carry personal defense weapons].
> 
> ...I should be able to [violate someone else's personal rights].
> 
> The first meaning was meant, of course, but it makes the second easier, too.
> 
> Merlyn Leroy
> "Eat photons, terran scum!"

I think there's a bug in Merlyn's parser.  How can "I should be able to"
refer to anything other than "to carry personal defense weapons"
(the only infinitive present) ?  There is also a syntactic problem --
the second part of the condition ("If I ... am not violating someone
else's personal rights") clearly precludes the possiblity that "I
should be able to" refers to violating someone else's personal rights.
"If I am not doing X, I should be able to do X" is nonsense, even
if that were a grammitically possible interpretation.

Any comments from linguists?

Gary Samuelson