Technical terms with multiple meanings
Mar. 18th, 2009 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyThere are plenty of them, obviously. But anyway, writing my LOTW paper, I'm looking through one of these books, and it says, of this language, "Finally, for completeness, we can mention that tone is important in showing mod 1 distinctions." Mod 1 distinctions?! I have no idea what this might actually mean in linguistics, but I think that's pretty hilarious.
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER ADDENDUM: OK, OK, so "mod 1 distinctions" can in fact be perfectly meaningful in mathematics. But actually, I think this was probably "modal" distinctions, with the 'a' having vanished in typesetting.
-Harry
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER ADDENDUM: OK, OK, so "mod 1 distinctions" can in fact be perfectly meaningful in mathematics. But actually, I think this was probably "modal" distinctions, with the 'a' having vanished in typesetting.
-Harry
