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Mike S., On 09/09/2012 20:27:
I really don't see a problem with Xorban's implicitly bound variables, which provide such a simple, succinct and easy-to-understand means at leveraging the verbiage of previous restrictions. They are much better defined than "he/she/it/they" in English, and tend to obviate the problems found in things like "John helped his[=Bob's] father fix his=[John's] car." Maybe there is some greater value that comes from repeatedly rebinding the same variables with the same restrictions sentence after sentence, but I am not seeing it.
The problem is that it requires the hearer to remember the most recent restriction for every vowel morpheme. That's a huge burden on memory. Most of the memory effort is wasted. And it violates the way human language works, because the mind throws away nonsemantic info as soon as it's been processed. The forethought version of this, where you give a V'u name to a restriction, is more acceptable, though still crude and memory-taxing. For reference tracking we have dV, and can introduce new devices if necessary. The implicit binding scheme doesn't substitute for he/she/it/they, since the pronouns pick out a previous referent, not a previous restriction. --And.