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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 September 11

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September 11

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What is the word order of math?

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What is the word order of, lets say 2+3? Object-Subject-Verb?179.186.34.232 (talk) 15:23, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "word order"? "2 + 3" is not a sentence. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 15:27, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In "Two plus three equals five" the subject is "two plus three", the verb is the word "equals". and the "five" is the complement. Georgia guy (talk) 16:00, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This question reminded me of a query from a student one time, ostensibly about addition and grammar. He asked, "which is correct to say, 6 plus 7 is 12 or 6 plus 7 are 12?" Without missing a beat, I replied, "neither, because 6 and 7 add up to 13." --Kinu t/c 04:23, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
2+3=5 is, indeed, a sentence. It does not follow the rules of grammar and syntax which arise in a natural language. As BB is a person totally illiterate in the language of mathematics (see their comments on the metric system or infinity) their drivel should be ignored.
See the article Language of mathematics for further references. -- Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM
At least I sign my posts. And the OP didn't ask about 2 + 3 = 5, he asked about 2 + 3. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 17:37, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
179.186.34.232 -- The terms "subject" and "object" are rather irrelevant to math notation, but there are "operators" (functions) and "operands" (arguments to functions). In conventional simple math notation, an operator symbol for a two-argument function usually appears between the symbols for its two arguments (as in "2+3"), but in Polish notation, the operator symbol appears at the beginning, and in "reverse Polish notation" (often implemented in calculators in previous decades, and in the FORTH and PostScript programming languages), the operator appears at the end. AnonMoos (talk) 22:30, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Bingo. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Bingo lingo that would be one little duck and a cup of tea.--Shantavira|feed me 07:42, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yahtzee! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Yahtzee, 2+3 would make a full house. --T*U (talk) 13:57, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the English phrase "two plus three", my guess would be that "two" and "three" are nouns and "plus" is a preposition. Wiktionary confirms my hunch as regards plus. --Trovatore (talk) 17:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Real dictionaries disagree as to whether "plus" in that usage is a preposition (e.g. Macmillan, Merriam-Webster) or a conjunction (e.g. American Heritage, Collins). For what it's worth, I say it's obviously a conjunction since it can be replaced by "and". --184.144.99.72 (talk) 21:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But it also can be replaced by "together with" or "with the addition of". --Theurgist (talk) 11:58, 18 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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