>From: pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) Subject: Re: Time's arrow Date: 2 Jun 90 04:46:55 GMT >Time flies like an arrow. >Fruit flies like bananas. Butter flies like a lame duck As I recall, somebody put `time flies like an arrow' through a machine parser and it said: * Metaphor: time thingy moves like an arrow thingy. * Preference: the `time' variety of flies like arrows. * Measurement: time flies as you would an arrow. >From: mdchaney@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (M Darrin Chaney) * ?: the 'time' variety of flies, like (as in 'such as') an arrow, ... it's a sentence fragment. My database teacher mentioned this. >From: nelson@udel.EDU (Mark Nelson) * Measurement: time flies as an arrow would time them * Measurement: time the flies which are similar to an arrow. I can never remember all or these myself. Fortunately, I've built a parser which finds them all. >From: jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin) * ?: the 'time' variety of flies, like (as in 'such as') an arrow, ... Actually, the last interpretation is a sentence fragment and would (should?) be recognized as such and rejected by the nl parser. However, Bertram Rapheal, in the ``The Thinking Computer: Mind Inside Matter'' presented the following four intepretations of ``time flies like an arrow:'' 1 Time moves in the same manner that an arrow moves. 2 Measure the speed of flies in the same way you measure the speed of an arrow. 3 Measure the speed of flies that resemble an arrow. 4 A particular variety of flies called ``time-flies'' are fond of an arrow. >From: kenny@m.cs.uiuc.edu Don Knuth gives several examples of English syntax: I was sort of out of sorts after sorting that sort of data. Only two tapes drives were in working order, so I was ordered to order more in short order, in order to order the data an order of magnitude faster. >From: butterworth@max.u.washington.edu >>* Metaphor: time thingy moves like an arrow thingy. >>* Preference: the `time' variety of flies like arrows. >>* Measurement: time flies as you would an arrow. >* Measurement: time flies as an arrow would time them >* Measurement: time the flies which are similar to an arrow. Aeronautics: an arrow is flown by time (Commas might be helpful here: "Time flies, like, an arrow." As in "Chuck Yeager flies, like, a jet". You know, like, what I mean? )