<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Dec 3, 2020, at 10:23 AM, Bryan Richter <<a href="mailto:b@chreekat.net" class="">b@chreekat.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">Consider `forall a -> a -> a`. There's still an implicit universal quantification that is assumed, right?</span></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">No, there isn't, and I think this is the central point of confusion. A function of type `forall a -> a -> a` does work for all types `a`. So I think the keyword is appropriate. The only difference is that we must state what `a` is explicitly. I thus respectfully disagree with</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">But somewhere, an author decided to reuse the same keyword to herald a type argument. It seems they stopped thinking about the meaning of the word itself, saw that it was syntactically in the right spot, and borrowed it to mean something else.</blockquote><br class=""></div><div class="">Does this help clarify? And if it does, is there a place you can direct us to where the point could be made more clearly? I think you're far from the only one who has tripped here.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Richard</div></body></html>