an eprime linter? https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=eprime
In particular is eprime-mode for emacs: https://github.com/AndrewHynes/eprime-mode
E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
61–70 of 157 posts
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#62I haven't read the paper/books but from the wiki article I find it problematic that "the code is red" is replaced with "we see the coat as red". Specifically if I were forced to use E' it would be very hard to argue certain philosophical positions. Objectivism vs. Subjectivism for example or to return to the coat...there could be a philosophical difference between the redness of the coat and the perception of it and…
"The coat looks red"
"The coat has a red colour"
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#63I 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'.
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)
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#64Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…
"Mt. Everest stands 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that causes the subject to exhibit the property.
I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to memorize a superset of the "to be" verbs. The rationale was that, while these verbs are direct and objective, they are "flat" and fail to engage a reader.
In the case of descriptors/properties that simply require too much wrangling to find an appropriate verb - the case of color came up elsewhere in these comments, as in "the barn is blue" - the guiding rule is that those descriptors shouldn't be the focus of a sentence in the first place. "The barn was blue" is not interesting enough to stand on its own as a sentence and something else needs to take the verb. "The blue barn loomed over the landscape" or "The blue barn dominated his thoughts."
Writing a Wikipedia article in this style is certainly an interesting exercise, but given the goal of a Wikipedia article I don't think it's a good fit. An encyclopedia entry is not narrative and needs to be direct and objective.
As an aside, her exercise proved to be oddly effective, as I can still recite the list from memory: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, be, been, being, do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. :)
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#65Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving. I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove 'to be' from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was used to control people's thought process.
The irony being that Orwell discouraged using the passive voice in "Politics and The English Language" 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. All rules are there to be broken 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
There's nothing 'ironic' about believing that different changes to language have different merits.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few more options: He goes by the name Jack. He bears the name Jack. He answers to the name of Jack. Everyone calls him Jack. His parents named him Jack.
...all of which seems circuitous, as if one is being dishonest or misleading. That's the biggest issue I have with E-Prime; speaking in it constantly makes one seem as if they are trying to hide something. For example: I hear "He goes by the name Jack" and I think, "okay, but what is his real name?" Or: "Everyone calls him Jack" implies once again that "Jack" is not his real name. "His parents named him Jack" implies…
Perhaps it seems that way because we are so used to identifying with our names? Not only that but in typical American etiquette we commonly follow up questions of identity with a nonchalant "what do you do?"... I just met you and I'm already seeking job/rank/social status. It's like we are just dying to box people into a convenient category.
If you think about it, a human being has 3 different identities:
1. His true self. Unfortunately we will never know the real Jack, just as we will never really know ourselves.
2. His appearance. This is the sum total of your interactions with Jack. The empirical Jack.
3. His being. You could call this Jack's spirit, or the effect that Jack has on you.
#3 is distinguished from #2 because Jack might be a real jerk, or he may have done something that seemed jerkish to you. Either way, it's clear that he both 1) did something and 2) it had an effect on you. There is an ongoing relationship between you and Jack, and while people are known by their actions, they are not confused with their actions. Therefore we must differentiate between Jack's actions and Jack himself, and so we call the man "Jack" though we often think we are talking about the #1 definition of selfhood when we call him that. But as I mentioned, you truly don't know Jack.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#67Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…
"Mt. Everest stands 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that causes the subject to exhibit the property. I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to me…
Oh, most of those words at the end of your comment are actually allowed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Allowed_words
E-Prime just removes "to be". So you can have other simple words, like can and have :)
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#68Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving. I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove 'to be' from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was used to control people's thought process.
Perhaps, but that sounds more like a kneejerk reaction rather than a real critique. The idea behind it is supposed to show that by removing the verb 'to be', you have to think more on how to properly convey what you actually mean. So in a sense it even allows you to get your actual thought process out there rather than having it dismissed for sounding overly harsh for example. Contrast that to Newspeak, whose design…
It's not an in-depth critique, you're right. But there are some interesting themes here, and by mentioning 1984 I'm referencing some deep questions in (what I hope is) a fairly shorthand way.
To be more explicit:
1. Do people 'think in a particular language' such that limitations in language limit their thought? This is something that psychologist have considered. The other comments in this thread suggest to me that there might be something in this.
2. Is it dangerous to allow any kind of authority that tells people what they can/can't say? If the answer to #1 is 'yes' then would such a group be too powerful to be allowed to exist?
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#69I 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…
I haven't checked the whole article, but the second paragraph contains the phrase "could not be expressed," so it doesn't completely adhere to E-Prime. Edit: I didn't notice earlier while viewing the mobile version of the page, but the Talk page includes a discussion of whether or not to enforce E-Prime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:E-Prime/Archive_1#Article... .
"could not be expressed" is not a derivative of "to be". "be" there allows using "express" without needing the subject (e.g. "I can express my feeling" -> "My feeling can be expressed")
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony being that Orwell discouraged using the passive voice in "Politics and The English Language" 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. All rules are there to be broken 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
There's nothing 'ironic' about believing that different changes to language have different merits.
Orwell writes 1984: reader finds "the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving."
Orwell writes essay advising writers to remove undesirable vocabary, part of which OP is an extended exploration.
Irony