What's your first answer to this problem?

[Martinus]

Languish has not yet perished.

So long as we still live.

What the alien force has taken from us,

We shall retrieve with a sabre.

[grumbler]

In hindsight, this being Languish, I guess I should have included another poll option "Depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". 

That's  precisely what I thought of when confronted with the idea that different grammars use different word meanings - if that were true, then a different grammar would allow any definition of "grammar" that is allowed by that grammar. 

[CountDeMoney]

We shall retrieve with a sabre.

...which should be no problem, with such a luxurious passenger cabin and spacious trunk.

[Maximus]

Grammar has a specific meaning in linguistics; it isn't a catch-all word that means whatever you want it to mean.

As a linguist, I can excuse your non-linguist misunderstanding of the term "grammar" (after all, you have probably seen a poster on the internet correct another poster's punctuation and seen them called "grammar police").  As an academic, I have to reject your misappropriation of the term "grammar" to describe a change in word meaning.  Grammar involves syntax and morphology, not definitions.  As a mathematician, I must reject your contention that there is a "grammar" that allows 2+5 to equal 12 in a base ten numbering system.  As a Languish poster, I am not surprised that you want to double down on your mistake.

I'm sorry your Linguistics for Dummies book took so long to arrive from Amazon. Too bad they don't have a kindle version.

[DGuller]

As a mathematician, I think it was fairly obvious that a plus sign was a redefined operator.  As a person with common sense, I just assumed that it was easier to overload the plus operator than to invent a new operator and then figure out how to type it.  As a human being, I can understand why normally polite posters snap at grumbler:  he is Languish's Ted Cruz, applying his intellect only to make himself a constant nuisance to others.

[CountDeMoney]

The answer is still 19, muttskis.

[grumbler]

Grammar has a specific meaning in linguistics; it isn't a catch-all word that means whatever you want it to mean.

As a linguist, I can excuse your non-linguist misunderstanding of the term "grammar" (after all, you have probably seen a poster on the internet correct another poster's punctuation and seen them called "grammar police").  As an academic, I have to reject your misappropriation of the term "grammar" to describe a change in word meaning.  Grammar involves syntax and morphology, not definitions.  As a mathematician, I must reject your contention that there is a "grammar" that allows 2+5 to equal 12 in a base ten numbering system.  As a Languish poster, I am not surprised that you want to double down on your mistake.

I'm sorry your Linguistics for Dummies book took so long to arrive from Amazon. Too bad they don't have a kindle version.

Obviously, yours did arrive.  Too bad it didn't explain to you what grammar was.

[grumbler]

As a mathematician, I think it was fairly obvious that a plus sign was a redefined operator.  As a person with common sense, I just assumed that it was easier to overload the plus operator than to invent a new operator and then figure out how to type it.

I think that it was fairly obvious that the plus sign was a ruse, designed to make people think that the formulas were mathematical, as Yi pointed out.  For the test to be honest, it would have needed to avoid using known language incorrectly.  The +  in this case isn't really an operator, it is a stand in for an operator and a variable.

As a human being, I can understand why normally polite posters snap at grumbler:  he is Languish's Ted Cruz, applying his intellect only to make himself a constant nuisance to others.

As a human being, I understand why you feel the need, since you have no intellectual argument to make, to resort to petty insults even when they make no sense whatever.  If "insulting" me makes you feel better, knock yourself out.  What you babble about me is of no consequence to me, any more than CC's moaning is.

[grumbler]

The answer is still 19, muttskis.

I thought we knew that the answer was 42, and we just didn't know what the question was.  That's what I read in a book, anyway.

[11B4V]

7

[DGuller]

As a human being, I understand why you feel the need, since you have no intellectual argument to make, to resort to petty insults even when they make no sense whatever.  If "insulting" me makes you feel better, knock yourself out.  What you babble about me is of no consequence to me, any more than CC's moaning is.

It didn't make me feel better or worse, but it had to be done.  "Human beings" like you need to be denounced regularly.

[grumbler]

As a human being, I understand why you feel the need, since you have no intellectual argument to make, to resort to petty insults even when they make no sense whatever.  If "insulting" me makes you feel better, knock yourself out.  What you babble about me is of no consequence to me, any more than CC's moaning is.

It didn't make me feel better or worse, but it had to be done.  "Human beings" like you need to be denounced regularly.

Okay, champ.  You just do your duty and "denounce" away. 

[Savonarola]

As a mathematician, I think it was fairly obvious that a plus sign was a redefined operator.

Heh, when I first saw people having difficulty with the "+" sign meaning something than simple addition, I found myself thinking Of course the plus can mean different thing in different systems.  Most of those are pretty advanced, but it's XOR in digital logic; they should have encountered that in their sophomore intro computer engineering class... oh, right

Seriously though, everyone should know that "+" can mean something other than simple addition.  For instance 3 + 4i isn't a summation; looking at magnitude in that case 3 + 4 = 5.  You should have encountered that in your intro calculus...   oh, right.   

[crazy canuck]

As a mathematician, I think it was fairly obvious that a plus sign was a redefined operator.

Heh, when I first saw people having difficulty with the "+" sign meaning something than simple addition, I found myself thinking Of course the plus can mean different thing in different systems.  Most of those are pretty advanced, but it's XOR in digital logic; they should have encountered that in their sophomore intro computer engineering class... oh, right

Seriously though, everyone should know that "+" can mean something other than simple addition.  For instance 3 + 4i isn't a summation; looking at magnitude in that case 3 + 4 = 5.  You should have encountered that in your intro calculus...   oh, right.   

But according to Grumbler the + symbol always indicates a summation - or we are all hopelessly lost 

It saddens me that a person who claims to teach didn't understand the point Max was making.  But I guess Grumbler never claimed to know anything about math.

[derspiess]

Math is hard.