Timeline for What does "teleport anywhere in the world" mean?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Nov 25, 2019 at 18:46 | comment | added | BadZen | So of course it is ambiguous, but there are defaults in ambiguity in language. I strongly suspect without any context most people would say those words 'usually' meant "teleport (to) anywhere", however, because that's how the word is colored psychologically. "Travel anywhere" is a more extremely (but still technically ambiguous) example. "Drive anywhere" is a less colored example, etc, etc | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 18:44 | comment | added | BadZen | You set up a specific context for your example; that's no longer a default! Indeed though, in that context the meaning would be clear and you would be "teleporting (from) here", because you understand they were providing a terminus service. If on the other hand there was minimal or no context, say I called you on the phone and immediately said "run here"... do I mean "come here and run" or "run to where I am"? Even that's a little contextual though, since in your example you're "already there" and in mine your are not. | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 18:33 | comment | added | Fattie | @BadZen "but understood by default to mean "teleport to"" ...Hmm, I don't agree with that. Imagine we have teleporting, and retail companies like WalMart, UPS, Dunkin' Donuts offer the machine at their locations. There would be a big sign out the front: "Teleport here." The word "teleport" is, simply, totally ambiguous: like almost all words in English. Note that simply "jump" or "step" is utterly identically ambiguous to the word in question. Note indeed that a native English speaker would not even ask "is X ambiguous"; you may as well ask "do politicans lie!" :) | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 17:28 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Actually, in @Fattie's hypothetical world, you might teleport at a place, but only if teleport has come to behave like post/mail, rather than like send. It could do; but I don't believe it has in our world. | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 17:27 | comment | added | Colin Fine | I don't agree with any of these comments, except Fattie's one about teleport stations. Maybe UPS meant "you can ship from anywhere", but it had never occurred to me that it even might mean that. I agree that, in a world in which teleport stations are a known thing, it could have that meaning. As for BadZen's analogy with "run", I don't accept it, because running doesn't have to be something doesn't have to be something you do from A to B: you can run at a place. You can't ship or teleport at a place, only from or to. | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 16:54 | comment | added | BadZen | It's not because of the word 'teleport' being new, it's just ambiguous (but understood by default to mean "teleport to). Compare to "I can run anywhere in Texas": it could either mean "anywhere I go in Texas, I can run there" -or- "I can run to any place in Texas". | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 13:33 | comment | added | Fattie | furthermore "anywhere" would be an awkward way of saying "from this station, you can teleport to anywhere in the world". You'd probably say, in that case, "from this station, you can teleport to any point on the Earth". "anywhere" more goes with sense A. "These days, if you have the credits, you can teleport anywhere.", ie there are teleport devices commonly available everywhere. | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 13:30 | comment | added | Fattie | Just FWIW as a sci-fi reader! I would probably disagree with your first sentence. "You can teleport anywhere these days!" would likely mean "these days, there are teleport stations on every street corner and in every home, they're everywhere!" "teleport to..." is a more comfortable way of implying you mean the other sense. (I'd say.) | |
| Nov 25, 2019 at 13:28 | comment | added | Fattie | Colin, actually the sentence "We ship anywhere" when used by say UPS in the US, specifically means the other sense. ("You can do the act of shipping with us, pretty much anywhere - because we have so many offices in every city and town...") Any word whatsoever in English that has a "doing location" and an "ancillary location" (such as "destination") has this ambiguity. (Sure, one or the other may be more common in a given situation, but, so what, ambiguity is ambiguity.) | |
| Nov 24, 2019 at 23:14 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | moved from User.Id=88427 by developer User.Id=155216 | |
| Nov 24, 2019 at 18:26 | history | answered | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 4.0 |