We are indebted to Dr Grew for the time and care he has taken in examining our supposition. None of us least of all I can offer anything conclusively to gainsay his own interesting variation on our tentative hypothesis. It may have been so! But alas this must all remain conjecture for who amongst us can truly pull back the double-lined curtains of monism and peer into the depths of other men's motives?

As so often when perusing Dr Grew's telling vignettes of incidents in men's lives we could not forbear from once again regretting the demise of the pedagogical walking holiday as a natural part of young men's varsity education. The mutual stimulation that this afforded between experienced older tutor and eager young pupil amid bracing air and savage scenery is something which would surely be of benefit to the pale and sickly youth of today as it was to those of us of an earlier more rugged generation? I may write Mr Balls of the Department of Skills about this but no doubt will be told that the expense of all the hiking boots would be too great for the vast numbers now entering our varsities and poly-technix.

We will admit that our interest was piqued by Dr Grew's revelation that he had received instruction in Logick from one of Herr Wittgenstein's own pupils. Who could the intermediary be we wonder. We ourselves were privileged to take the rudiments of Logick from Herr Professor Stefan Korner who had himself attended a number of Herr Wittgenstein's famous seminars in Cambridge. It was almost as if one had sat on Czerny's knee when learning the forte-piano! And what tales he had to tell of the merry japes that went on! Is it possible that Dr Grew and I sucked at the same philosophical breast?     

Thank you tinners, what about counties? In?

The OED says that it's at for all towns except London, but the rule can be extended to large places. Scholes, mentioned above, talks about a certain composer (Sullivan) "born in London". So it seems to be a question of size. And yet we always say that Jesus was born in a stable, never at.

Some mistake there. You were expected Mr. Now to ask "What is a Brahm?" . . . Not that we have any ready reply we hasten to add.

P.S. It appears does it not that we should have written "he was suddenly sent to a day-school at Linz." Wittgenstein once wrote "My bad spelling is connected with the whole of the rest of my character and my weakness in study." He would refer to the other boys in his class as "Mist" (German for "that shower").

We are not quite sure what the Member means there, and frankly his "solely" sounds somewhat suspicious. Might we request an example?

In the mean time Members may wish to consider the following familiar cases:

• he was wearing new red socks and boots;
• railmen defy union order to stop coal shipments;
• he had better taste in films than girls;
• I didn't go because it was my birthday;
• I'll tell you when they arrive;
• if the lady is agreeable;
• fine old houses are demanding mistresses;
• he gave her dog biscuits.

The need for the disambiguation of all of these cases and indeed for the application of grammatical rules additional to the deficient ones that are used is both evident and pressing; nevertheless we seem to find ourselves somehow in agreement with the Member without knowing exactly what he means, because it is true that in no case may the need of the aforementioned supplementary applications be said to "determine grammatical rules," solely or even part[ial]ly - although it may perhaps be said that the need arising from an excess of ambiguity does determine the application of certain grammatical rules appropriate to each case.

Our own "tutorial tête-à-tête" too in reply 479 is we suppose grammatically ambiguous in that it may be understood as either noun-adverb or adjective-noun. What we actually intended was adjective-noun, but here a disambiguation through grammatical clarification hardly changes the envisaged situation - which must in the end be the meaning of "meaning" must not it?

Partridge gives us what is perhaps his lengthiest entry - eight pages - under the head "ambiguity," and refers often to a) Jevons and b) Empson with his "seven types"; but we prefer to turn to the limpid D.A. Cruse, who in his excellent "Lexical Semantics" distinguishes these four:

1) Pure syntactic ambiguity:

• old men and women [either (old men) and women, or old (men and women)]
• French silk underwear [either (French silk) underwear, or French (silk underwear)]

2) Quasi-syntactic ambiguity:

• the cosmonaut entered the atmosphere again [either ([came to be] [in]) [again]], or [came to be] ([in] [again])]
• a red pencil [either a pencil painted red, or a pencil which writes in red]

3) Lexico-syntactic ambiguity:

• We saw her duck
• I saw the door open

4) Pure lexical ambiguity:

• He reached the bank
• What is his position?

Finally we list for the further information of interested Members Partridge's three remaining examples of the "misplaced only", besides Wittgenstein's:

1) Shakespeare's "mistake":

    "The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
     Though to itself it only live and die."

Correction: "Though only to itself it live and die" is presumably what Partridge meant although he does not precisely say so.

2) Coleridge: "The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them." Properly: "Only the wise." We are none too certain about his "are" either!

3) Chesterton: "His black cloak looked as if it were only black by being too dense a purple. His black beard looked as if it were only black by being too deep a blue." Properly : "black only" of course.

*nods*