Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 April 4

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April 4

When John met his uncle he took off his hat

I understand that this sentence has multiple meanings. Some Google-sources say 6, one says 108. However, I can't even identify that many... does anyone have anything on this? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, off the top of my head, the three pronouns could refer to anyone, not just John or the uncle. So it could be "When John met John's uncle John took off John's hat", or it could be "When John met Frank's uncle John took off Frank's hat", or it could be "When John met Frank's uncle Peter took off George's hat". That gives you permutations involving up to 5 people, although it's still nowhere near 100. That's just lexical ambiguity though; maybe there's some syntactic ambiguity here that I'm missing. Anyone else? Indeterminate (talk) 07:46, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a good point, I'd only thought of the John-uncle who takes off whose hat issue.

There's also the issue of whether it's a direct narrative or a general statement ("When John met his uncle, he always used to take off his hat" could be written in the form above)... ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

"Meet" can mean either "be introduced to for the first time" or "encounter (a person you already know)". "Uncle" can mean "father's brother", "father's brother-in-law", "mother's brother", "mother's brother-in-law", and sometimes even "friend of one's parents who is no actual relative by blood or marriage". Maybe we can also come up with multiple meanings for "hat" and "take off" (transitive, of course; the meaning found in "The plane took off" won't work here). —Angr 08:23, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps there is also here a slightly less than idiomatic use of "to take off one's hat to somebody". So, when John met someone's uncle he showered him with praise or otherwise congratulated him on something.91.180.221.237 (talk) 09:34, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, we have "When John met his (A) uncle he (B) took off his (C) hat." A cannot be the uncle, but B or C can. Any of them can be John, and any of them can be another person -- the same or different other people. If you think it seems nonsensical to imagine the sentence referring to 5 different people, you only need to imagine the speaker pointing to someone each time she says "he" or "his". The possibilities for A,B,C are:

• 3 other people. 1 way. (Switching the people around can't be counted as a different meaning for this purpose.)
• 2 other people, 1 occurring twice. 3 ways (any two could be the same).
• 1 other person occurring three times (i.e. "his/he/his" are all Sam). 1 way.
• 2 other people, plus John. 3 ways.
• 2 other people, plus the uncle (who can't be A). 2 ways.
• 1 other person, plus John occurring twice. 3 ways.
• 1 other person plus the uncle occurring twice (not A). 2 ways.
• 1 other person occuring twice, plus John once. 3 ways.
• 1 other person occuring twice, plus the uncle once (not A). 2 ways.
• 1 other person, plus John, plus the uncle (not A). 4 ways.
• John twice and the uncle once (not A). 2 ways.
• John once and the uncle twice (not A). 2 ways.
• John occurring 3 times. 1 way.

Which gives a total of 29 readings. I may have missed one or two cases, but this is going to be close to correct. The number 108 is of course equal to 2×2×3×3×3, and I think the person who came up with that number was ignoring the fact that the number of possible readings depends on how many different people the sentence is talking about, and imagining that the different possible meanings of different parts could be combined arbitrarily. --Anonymous, 11:00 UTC, April 4, 2009.

According to that, it's 4 x 5 x 5 (the first pronoun being any of those five less John), which gives 100? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:42, 5 April 2009 (UTC)