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E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

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Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#91

Post by murbard2 »

bbayer wrote: post #27
lisivka wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have suspect that naive architecture of a program is heavily affected by native language of the programmer. My native language is easy to parse (14kb parser can parse 98% of technical language, while 200Kb parser can also fix errors), logical and composable, which may be the reason why there is so high rate of good developers from my country: not because we are smarter than average, but because we are taught from b…

Can you tell what your native language is? Finnish?

My money is on Ukrainian based on the handle. (Slovak would be a candidate too but less of a fit for "many programmers, etc")

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#92

Post by level3 »

jdmichal wrote: post #83
chrisseaton wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it? > E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'? For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.

It does. Specifically, it is carrying an implicit "which is": > E-Prime, [which is] a prescriptive version of the English language, ... That sentence should instead be written: > E-Prime prescribes a version of the English language which excludes all forms of the verb "to be".

You can add "which is" to turn it into a relative clause, but it functions just fine as an apposition.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#93

Post by saturdayplace »

saalweachter wrote: post #56

I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

Seems like a useful exercise.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#94

Post by megaman22 »

veridies wrote: post #11
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He/she calls himself/herself X"?

This is what Spanish and Italian do normally. "Mi chiamo" and "me llamo" both translate to "I call myself." Other languages probably do the same, but I'm not qualified to speak about anything else.

Also German - Ich heisse X (that's supposed to be an eszett)

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#96

Post by WorldMaker »

logicchains wrote: post #4

The argument for forbidding "to be" seems a little like the argument for forbidding "is a" (inheritance) relationships in programming: that any "is a" can be expressed more precisely as a "has a" and/or "does _". I think it's interesting to take the argument even further, to argue for structural types (like interfaces in Go and Typescript, and objects in OCaml) over nominal types (like Java interfaces and Haskell typ…

I found it interesting too when looking at it from the lens of Inform 7. The reasoning that E-Prime gives to avoid "to be" is largely the reasoning that Inform 7 works very well with its multiple uses of to be. Primarily in that the "god-like objective" sentences make sense when authoring establishing facts in a world state ("The house is blue.").

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#97

Post by dcuthbertson »

saalweachter wrote: post #56

I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

Fun to play with, nevertheless. :)

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#98

Post by albedoa »

saalweachter wrote: post #56

I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

> But betwixt you and I

you and me ;)

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#99

Post by nemoniac »

saalweachter wrote: post #56

I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

"betwixt you and me"

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#100

Post by dcuthbertson »

chrisseaton wrote: post #52
re wrote: post #14

I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]." For a similar example, the "Pl…

Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it? > E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'? For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.

> Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'?

The part between the commas, I think, is called a subjunctive clause. Does it really break the "rules" of E'? The sentence still contains a verb, so it doesn't look like a loop-hole to me.

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