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So the genie pops out of the lantern and gives you the usual spiel. But you're a genre-blind idiot and immediately exclaim, "I wish I was a little bit taller!" Now, technically, you have mangled the English subjunctive mood, because you should say, "I wish I were a little bit taller."
If this is an ******* literal genie, how does said genie respond? Can the genie interpret your utterance to mean, "I wish that, at some point in the past, I had been a little bit taller than I am now," and then simply shrink you down a couple inches in the present? Or does the genie process the mangled subjunctive as ungrammatical, something akin to "I wish FNORD purple monkey dishwasher!" and ask you to try again? Or does the genie recognize the fact that prescriptivist rules about grammar don't necessarily reflect the reality of how a language is used and that the only proper measure of grammaticality is use, so when someone says, "I wish I was a little bit taller," the genie can infer the subjunctive mood from "I wish" and understand what is being wished for? Or, similarly, does the genie know what the wisher means, even if the wisher doesn't say it exactly correctly, and then provide the wisher with his wish?
What this gets down to is, in what sense can we talk about the literal interpretation of a wish? For example, if you wish for a "pet brontosaurus," what does a genie provide? The brontosaurus is a creature that never existed, so a genie cannot simply find the Platonic ideal of the brontosaurus and then manifest a live version of one.
But there are many cases in which a wisher may wish for something not real. If a wisher wishes for a unicorn, for example, unicorns may not be real but the unicorn as a concept is. In that case, does the genie call upon the concept of the unicorn to provide what would be a real unicorn, or provide a book that contains unicorns (the only kind of unicorns that do exist--fictional ones), or does the genie know what kind of unicorn the wisher wants and provide that?
If the genie pulls from the general concept of a unicorn, what arbiter exists as to the real unicorn--D&D 3.5 Monster Manual, AD&D Monster Manual, or some other non-D&D-related resource entirely? And if there is no true authority on the unicorn, then does that mean we must assume a genie can only provide a unicorn (or brontosaurus) based on what the genie knows the wisher wants? If that's the case, then ******* literal genies cannot exist (unless you wish for one from a real genie) and you should feel safe in knowing that your wishes won't be twisted if you're imprecise with your words (or at the very least, genies will end up saying DOES NOT COMPUTE a lot).
This all assumes we don't have Wishmaster genies, who take some of the words from any sentence that might be wishful in nature and then kill you in the most horrible way imaginable for some reason. Those are not ******* literal genies as much as they are just ******* genies.
If this is an ******* literal genie, how does said genie respond? Can the genie interpret your utterance to mean, "I wish that, at some point in the past, I had been a little bit taller than I am now," and then simply shrink you down a couple inches in the present? Or does the genie process the mangled subjunctive as ungrammatical, something akin to "I wish FNORD purple monkey dishwasher!" and ask you to try again? Or does the genie recognize the fact that prescriptivist rules about grammar don't necessarily reflect the reality of how a language is used and that the only proper measure of grammaticality is use, so when someone says, "I wish I was a little bit taller," the genie can infer the subjunctive mood from "I wish" and understand what is being wished for? Or, similarly, does the genie know what the wisher means, even if the wisher doesn't say it exactly correctly, and then provide the wisher with his wish?
What this gets down to is, in what sense can we talk about the literal interpretation of a wish? For example, if you wish for a "pet brontosaurus," what does a genie provide? The brontosaurus is a creature that never existed, so a genie cannot simply find the Platonic ideal of the brontosaurus and then manifest a live version of one.
But there are many cases in which a wisher may wish for something not real. If a wisher wishes for a unicorn, for example, unicorns may not be real but the unicorn as a concept is. In that case, does the genie call upon the concept of the unicorn to provide what would be a real unicorn, or provide a book that contains unicorns (the only kind of unicorns that do exist--fictional ones), or does the genie know what kind of unicorn the wisher wants and provide that?
If the genie pulls from the general concept of a unicorn, what arbiter exists as to the real unicorn--D&D 3.5 Monster Manual, AD&D Monster Manual, or some other non-D&D-related resource entirely? And if there is no true authority on the unicorn, then does that mean we must assume a genie can only provide a unicorn (or brontosaurus) based on what the genie knows the wisher wants? If that's the case, then ******* literal genies cannot exist (unless you wish for one from a real genie) and you should feel safe in knowing that your wishes won't be twisted if you're imprecise with your words (or at the very least, genies will end up saying DOES NOT COMPUTE a lot).
This all assumes we don't have Wishmaster genies, who take some of the words from any sentence that might be wishful in nature and then kill you in the most horrible way imaginable for some reason. Those are not ******* literal genies as much as they are just ******* genies.
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