why cannot assign to function call

[Aaron Brady]

On Dec 31, 1:39 am, Tim Roberts <t... at probo.com> wrote:
> Aaron Brady <castiro... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I think the problem goes deeper than just English.  In any language
> >that has a plural, the propositions in question come out as, 'one
> >thing is two things' or 'two things are one thing'.  According to some
> >rules, these are ungrammatical sentences, due to plurality
> >disagreement.  Ex:
>
> >The Morning Star is ...
> >The Evening Star is ...
> >*The Morning Star and The Evening Star is...
> >*The Morning Star and The Evening Star are...
>
> >Neither of the latter two is correct.  (* marks ungrammatical.)   As
> >such, the listener isn't sure what meaning to take.
>
> This is taking a serious twist into off-topicness, but I need to dispute
> this.  I will assert that the 4th line is, in fact, grammatically correct,
> modulo the capitalization of the second "The".  The fragment is clearly of
> the form "X and Y are...", and regardless of the substitution of X and Y,
> the plurality of the subject agrees with the verb.
>
>   The Morning Star and the Evening Star are bright tonight.
>
> Ignoring the fact that we can't see both at the same time, why is the
> meaning of that unclear?

I want to get around to a clear answer to the OP's question, but I'm
frustrated by a month-long argument about it that suffered from some
serious misunderstandings of technical terms.  (Therefore, thanks for
entertaining my detour so far, as well as not jumping down my throat
yet.)  We didn't do a good job of explaining, and even disputed some
of the terms ourselves.  So, I'm trying to look for some clear,
vernacular language that won't confuse lay speakers in an explanation.

I agree that the form of the 4th fragment is 'X and Y are' in
general.  However, native speakers don't often use the form 'X and X
are'.  This is the source of my protest, because X = the Morning Star
= the Evening Star.  We don't say, 'G.H.W. Bush and the President
are...', say, at Camp David.  It is not that the meaning is unclear,
it's just that form is never used.

In fact, moreover, there is some exclusion implied.  If I said, 'I'm
going to St. Paul's and church,' my listener might think I had two
destinations, or I was being philosophical.  The conversational maxim
of quantity [1] even leads him/r to believe that I want to convey more
information that just that I'm going to church.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxim#Maxim_of_Quantity

In other words, s/he infers that there is a reason I didn't say only,
'I'm going to St. Paul's' or 'I'm going to church', and s/he wants to
know what it is.

How all this relates to Python semantics is, if I say, 'a and b are
the same object', the listener can get confused.  I don't say, 'G.H.W.
Bush and the President are the same'; I say, 'G.H.W. Bush is the
President'.

Part of the problem is that Python divorced variables from their
contents; variables and objects are two different things.  One is a
key in a namespace lookup; the other is the value there.  I want to
conclude that, 'Therefore, there is no such thing as a reference to a
variable; only a namespace and a key'.  However, I'm not on firm
footing to explain further, due to the uncommonness of the forms of
speech I would need to use.  Maybe I could observe, 'variable
references are a peculiarity of C++, not available in every variable
model'.