Side comment about the difference between “My server is a phone now” and “My phone is a server now.”
In linguistics, the terms “theme” and “rheme” refer to the status of information in a sentence [1]. The theme of a sentence is something that is known or can be assumed from the context (that is, old information), while the rheme is information that is newly introduced in the sentence, often as a comment on the theme. The tendency in many (most? all?) languages is for the theme to precede the rheme in connected discourse.
Without context, a reader is therefore likely to assume from “my X is a Y now” that X is something the writer had previously and that Y is something new. Because most people have a phone but few have their own servers, I was initially confused by the title “My server is a phone now.” I had to read the article to realize that the word order is in fact appropriate: for the writer, the server is old information (something he has had for a while) while the phone (as a server, at least) is new.
In English, theme and rheme might be inferred not only from the position in a sentence but also from how a noun is marked. Possessives like “my” are generally used before nouns referring to things that are previously known or assumed; the definite article “the” is similar. In contrast, the indefinite article “a” (or “an”) usually marks information being newly introduced, so it is more common with rhemes.
I worked as a Japanese-to-English translator for many years. Because the grammatical structure of Japanese sentences is very different from that of English, sentence-by-sentence translation often ends up with paragraphs where the information flow is awkward and unnatural. I gradually learned that I could produce smoother translations by reorganizing my English sentences into an old-to-new information sequence.
I wonder if this is a native/non-native English reader situation. I'm the latter and for me the title promised that I will read about a server that now is capable of letting a person call to order a pizza. That was immediate thought.
It would be very interesting to see a poll results on how many of us thought that the article is about a server doing phone stuff and not a phone doing server stuff.
I don't think so either, as a native English speaker, I originally read this as my server now has phone capabilities, not my phone is now being used as a server.
I don't think it is, I'm also the latter and happened to assume the opposite. The article was exactly what I expected from the title.
I mean, turning a server rack into a phone just isn't something that makes any sense, so it didn't seem like a valid option to consider. I've thrown it at a few LLMs now to see what happens and they also make the same assumption with no extra info, that it's a server now being hosted on a phone. That's the statistics talking. It's very unlikely to be the opposite.
Of course it's clear which is more likely in this specific case, but from the semantic structure I read (present tense) it the other way around. It actually struck me as a grammatical error when I first read (past tense) it.
If I said "my water is ice now," one would assume freezing rather than melting.
So in this case one would assume a server became a phone, when actually a phone became a server.
I think most of the time you’d play with the order it would be for comic effect, like someone saying “my dinner is pretzels now” after having too big a snack.
In this case you have enough implicit context to correctly infer the meaning, but the particular sentence construction strongly implies that the server can now make phone calls.
That also elides the distinction between "the server" as a piece of hardware and "the server" as a piece of software, which in an HN context is not insignificant.
The goal as a blog author should not be to grab attention and mislead readers into starting your article only to realise it's not what they expected and were interested in.
I doubt it was OP's goal. Commenter I responded to on the other hand said that the original was more 'attention grabbing' than my clarifying amendment, and that's what I said ought not be the goal.
Thanks to you, "My server is a phone now" becomes much more interesting now as the server is now a perpetual non-physical entity that inhabits a new physical form, the phone.
If you asked any native English speaker what “my X is a phone now” meant, I would wager that nearly all would say that it means that X can now make voice calls, like a phone.
In this case there is enough implicit context to infer the correct meaning, but that is not always the case.
However I still think it is phrased poorly as it does initially seem to imply your personal assistant has become an AI agent, but then I have to use additional knowledge I posses (that people can not become AI agents) to correct the interpretation.
I think a better phrasing would be “I now use an AI agent as a personal assistant”. No confusion there. Your phrase can be understood, just like the article title, but it’s not well-written English IMO.
Regardless it is extremely poor phrasing and would have been easily addressed by using "My phone runs a server now".
It's borderline clickbait, unless the author is an English graduate and assumes all their reader will be too. A phone running a server is not very interesting and has been shared many many times on HN before, while I've not heard of a phone running on a server before (which I why I clicked at all).
That's a funny thing to say when even the long explanation I'm answering to does point out the fact that it cannot be reliably determined purely from the title in this case.
I think I’m English the term you’re looking for is an amphiboly. These sentences are not grammatically incorrect, but can be can leave ambiguity about their interpretation.
I think it's awkwardly phrased because it's too ambiguous.
"My car is a Jeep now" is most likely saying "I switched to using a Jeep as my car" because, short of a large merger, it's not likely that the same car changed its brand.
The same server can become a phone and also the identification of my server can be switched to a phone.
It's interesting you gave the perfect example and yet find OPs title awkward.
> "| switched to using a Jeep as my car"
"My server is a phone now" is exactly the same: "I switched to using a phone as my server"
> because, short of a large merger, it's not likely that the same car changed its brand.
I find a server rack becoming a phone that I can carry around and call people equally unlikely. And because of the improbability, it's ruled out of my interpretation.
1. Server becomes phone
2. Phone becomes server
I guess more people find 1 more probable than 2? That's surprising to me and especially on hacker news.
> Sometimes, particularly in speaking, when we want to focus on something important, we bring it to the front of the clause. This is called ‘fronting’.
It works in Spanish i think... "Mi servidor es un telefono" - As someone switching back and forth between English and Spanish, it often feels like Spanish sentences are "backwards" to English.
This shows a problem with the English language: the same sentence can be understood in at least two ways: "the server can now work as a phone", or "the phone is now my server". It is to solve this kind of issue that many languages have markers to specify what each noun means in the sentence.
This is nothing specific to English in general. Though English do offer high latitude of introducing ambiguities. For example stacking nominal groups with mere juxtaposition where for example French is more found of prepositions or adjective whose form is distinct from their equivalent noun/verb/adverb.
It's a problem with all natural language. That's why we don't program in English and in programming languages that are formally defined and can never be ambiguous.
Yes, I think that’s a rewording of what I said. As you point out, the word “server” in the title refers to a role, not to a particular device. But that role is, for the writer, something that is already known, so it comes first.
This theme-followed-by-rheme is only a tendency, not a hard and fast rule. In casual conversation, people do tend to structure their sentences that way without even thinking about it. In writing or translation, though, a sentence might need to contain a lot of different elements and, in the process of arranging them, a writer might put the rheme before the theme. Readers might think the resulting sentence seems a bit awkward, but they probably won’t be able to pin down the reason. This “My server is a phone now” title was an exception, because (as the comments below show) some people were confused enough to remark on it.
Servanto, some agent (in grammatical sense, so very broadly applicable) which serves something.
Servisto, some professional serving something.
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That's a big tangential to TFA though, add other noted it suffers from wording ambiguity that don't need any other language to be dispelled. Compare for example "Dæmons dwells on phone now", just as short, far less ambiguity.
In linguistics, the terms “theme” and “rheme” refer to the status of information in a sentence [1]. The theme of a sentence is something that is known or can be assumed from the context (that is, old information), while the rheme is information that is newly introduced in the sentence, often as a comment on the theme. The tendency in many (most? all?) languages is for the theme to precede the rheme in connected discourse.
Without context, a reader is therefore likely to assume from “my X is a Y now” that X is something the writer had previously and that Y is something new. Because most people have a phone but few have their own servers, I was initially confused by the title “My server is a phone now.” I had to read the article to realize that the word order is in fact appropriate: for the writer, the server is old information (something he has had for a while) while the phone (as a server, at least) is new.
In English, theme and rheme might be inferred not only from the position in a sentence but also from how a noun is marked. Possessives like “my” are generally used before nouns referring to things that are previously known or assumed; the definite article “the” is similar. In contrast, the indefinite article “a” (or “an”) usually marks information being newly introduced, so it is more common with rhemes.
I worked as a Japanese-to-English translator for many years. Because the grammatical structure of Japanese sentences is very different from that of English, sentence-by-sentence translation often ends up with paragraphs where the information flow is awkward and unnatural. I gradually learned that I could produce smoother translations by reorganizing my English sentences into an old-to-new information sequence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment