“In fact, what the mathematicians - Dan Asimov, Adam P. Goucher, Michael Kleber, Andy Latto, Wouter Meeussen, Warren D. Smith and Allan Wechsler – stated was the following: Regard English as a left-cancellative and right-cancellative multiplicative semigroup with identity, i.e. obeying the relations XY=ZY or YZ=YX implies X=Z, and having an element ‘1’ such that 1X=X1=X. If any two different-meaning words which sound the same are ‘equivalent’ we shall show each letter of the alphabet (as well as space and apostrophe) generates the trivial group, i.e. all alphabet letters (and space and apostrophe) equal the identity element.”
“To paraphrase: if the letters of the alphabet are a group (in the strict mathematical sense) then this group is the ‘trivial group’ in which every element is equal to 1.”