3 ms·

Exactly what I thought when I read the article. The proponents wanted to ban a class of semantics but instead chose to ban a relevant but totally different clas

Exactly what I thought when I read the article. The proponents wanted to ban a class of semantics but instead chose to ban a relevant but totally different class of syntax. (can't help rewriting to follow the style)

euyyn 11y ago
I have trouble imagining how to answer "What's E-Prime; I've never heard of it." without using the semantics of "to be". And answering that seems to me the primary goal of an encyclopedic article. If the article starts with "E-Prime prescribes..." I still don't know what E-Prime _is_. Is it a committee? Is it a style guide? (Right now the article says it's a version of English, which, if superficially, at least answers the question).
- krupan 11y ago
  You can't ask "What is E-Prime?" if you are not allowed to use the word is.
  - raygunomical 11y ago
    The person who has never heard of E-Prime will use the word "is" when asking what E-Prime means.
- obsurveyor 11y ago
  Your original question is invalid because the questioner would never ask it if they only used E-Prime. Let's re-phrase your question with E-Prime: "Describe E-Prime to me, I've never heard of it." You get the idea now? The very form of the question affects your understanding of the answer. Through the description you receive, you begin to understand what E-Prime means to those that came up with it. In E-Prime, you literally can't state what it is to anyone else because that would go against E-Prime's rules.
  - euyyn 11y ago
    The questioner cannot use E-Prime because he doesn't know what E-Prime is. And before being interested in its description, he'll probably want to know what it is (is it a law? is it a game? is it a style guide? a brain training exercise? is it a dog?). See, "E-Prime" is a proper noun, and proper nouns don't have a meaning; they instead refer to specific things (giving them an identity). The same way Spain is a country, E-Prime is "a variant of English."

euyyn 11y ago

I have trouble imagining how to answer "What's E-Prime; I've never heard of it." without using the semantics of "to be". And answering that seems to me the primary goal of an encyclopedic article. If the article starts with "E-Prime prescribes..." I still don't know what E-Prime _is_. Is it a committee? Is it a style guide? (Right now the article says it's a version of English, which, if superficially, at least answers the question).

krupan 11y ago
You can't ask "What is E-Prime?" if you are not allowed to use the word is.
- raygunomical 11y ago
  The person who has never heard of E-Prime will use the word "is" when asking what E-Prime means.
obsurveyor 11y ago
Your original question is invalid because the questioner would never ask it if they only used E-Prime. Let's re-phrase your question with E-Prime: "Describe E-Prime to me, I've never heard of it." You get the idea now? The very form of the question affects your understanding of the answer. Through the description you receive, you begin to understand what E-Prime means to those that came up with it. In E-Prime, you literally can't state what it is to anyone else because that would go against E-Prime's rules.
- euyyn 11y ago
  The questioner cannot use E-Prime because he doesn't know what E-Prime is. And before being interested in its description, he'll probably want to know what it is (is it a law? is it a game? is it a style guide? a brain training exercise? is it a dog?). See, "E-Prime" is a proper noun, and proper nouns don't have a meaning; they instead refer to specific things (giving them an identity). The same way Spain is a country, E-Prime is "a variant of English."