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That's an interesting statement to apply to natural languages. Consider this headline in English: "Man attacks boy with knife". This can be read two ways, eith

That's an interesting statement to apply to natural languages. Consider this headline in English: "Man attacks boy with knife". This can be read two ways, either the man is using a knife to attack the boy, or the boy had the knife and thus was being attacked. The same sentence in Polish would make use of either genitive or instrumental case to disambiguate (although barely). However, a naive translation would only differ in the placement of a `z` (with) and so errors could still slip through. At least in this case the error would not introduce ambiguity, simply incorrectness. Similar to language design we can also consider: does the inclusion/requirement of parity features reduce the expressivity of the language?

tremon 6y ago
does the inclusion/requirement of parity features reduce the expressivity of the language? This was a real eye-opener for me when learning Latin in school: stylistic expressions such as meter, juxtaposition, symmetry are so much easier to include when the meaning of a sentence doesn't depend on word order.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > stylistic expressions such as meter, juxtaposition, symmetry are so much easier to include when the meaning of a sentence doesn't depend on word order. Eh.... some things are easy and some things are hard in any language. The specifics differ, and so do the details of what kinds of things you're looking for in poetry. Traditional Germanic verse focuses on alliteration. Modern English verse focuses on rhyme. Latin verse focuses on neither. [1] English divides poetically strong syllables from poetically weak syllables according to stress. It also has mechanisms for promoting weak syllables to strong ones if they're surrounded by other weak syllables. In contrast, Latin divides strong syllables from weak syllables by length. Stress is irrelevant. But while stress can be changed easily, you're much more restricted when it comes to syllable length -- and so Publius Ovidius Naso is invariably referred to by cognomen in verse, because it isn't possible to fit his nomen, Ovidius, into a Latin metrical scheme. That's not a problem English has. [1] I am aware of one exceptional Latin verse: > O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, tyranne, tulisti.
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tremon 6y ago

does the inclusion/requirement of parity features reduce the expressivity of the language? This was a real eye-opener for me when learning Latin in school: stylistic expressions such as meter, juxtaposition, symmetry are so much easier to include when the meaning of a sentence doesn't depend on word order.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> stylistic expressions such as meter, juxtaposition, symmetry are so much easier to include when the meaning of a sentence doesn't depend on word order. Eh.... some things are easy and some things are hard in any language. The specifics differ, and so do the details of what kinds of things you're looking for in poetry. Traditional Germanic verse focuses on alliteration. Modern English verse focuses on rhyme. Latin verse focuses on neither. [1] English divides poetically strong syllables from poetically weak syllables according to stress. It also has mechanisms for promoting weak syllables to strong ones if they're surrounded by other weak syllables. In contrast, Latin divides strong syllables from weak syllables by length. Stress is irrelevant. But while stress can be changed easily, you're much more restricted when it comes to syllable length -- and so Publius Ovidius Naso is invariably referred to by cognomen in verse, because it isn't possible to fit his nomen, Ovidius, into a Latin metrical scheme. That's not a problem English has. [1] I am aware of one exceptional Latin verse: > O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, tyranne, tulisti.
- deleted 6y ago
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