So, You Want To Write Your Own Programming Language?

[Chris Cain]

On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 09:19:25 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 January 2014 at 10:24:23 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> A good example are headlines. A classic is "Driver refused 
>> license". Now, everybody will assume that it was not the 
>> driver who refused the license (default assumption or the 
>> _unmarked case_).
>
> Why it's not a driver who refused a license?

More likely that it's a driver who was refused a license by the 
State (because of some reason such as "you've been caught 
drinking and driving 20 times so you're totally banned"). People 
aren't offered licenses and accept or reject them, they must seek 
them out. It doesn't make sense for someone to walk up (or be 
given a ride to by a friend) to the DMV wait 30 minutes and once 
they do all the work to get the license say "Wait, no, I refuse 
this after all."

So, despite "Driver refused license" possibly meaning "the driver 
refused to accept the license despite being able to" or "driver 
was refused a license by the State (due to some circumstance)", 
it's massively more likely to be the latter.