From: M. E. Smith (mesmith@rocketmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 11 1999 - 16:22:44 MDT
--- "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com> wrote:
> NP, just say, "I live in Alabama" or "this message
> comes to you from
> Alabama."
>
Yes, of course, but I've read articles advocating
E-prime that actually use an equivalent statement (it
might not have been Alabama) as an example of the
terrible sentences made possible by the verb "to be".
I even read one which actually used the phrase "is of
identity", but it was obvious the author didn't know
what the qualification "of identity" meant, because
some of the examples of offending sentences were
examples of the "is of existence".
If we were having this same conversation in Japanese
about J-Prime, we wouldn't have the same problem,
because in Japanese, there is no verb that means BOTH
"to exist" AND "to be the same as, to equal". You just
have the verb "desu":
"Watashi wa bengoshi desu" = "I am a lawyer"
and the verb "aru" (for animate things like humans)
"Watashi wa Alabama ni aru" = "I am in Alabama"
My point is that in English, throwing out all "to be"
sentences throws out the baby with the bathwater, and
articles about E-prime should at least point this out.
The enemy of E-prime advocates is not "to exist",
which a fine verb, right?
> The "is of existence" has its problems too,
> especially when one considers
> the eventuality of uploading. After uploading, where
> one lives and works and
> thinks does not necessarily equate to where one has
> one's carbon-based body
> or structure of origination.
Geez, you don't now mean to throw out verbs like "to
exist", "to reside", "to live in". etc., do you?
E-Prime++? Wherever will it stop? ;)
Seriously, if you advocate Libertarianism, you can't
be in favor of forcing people to stop using the verb
"to be", so don't you agree that E-prime is just a
philosophical exercise? People are going to go on
using the verb "to be" as long as it's a useful to do
so.
Half of the time, E-prime advocates seem to be saying
that we should say "IMHO" before every sentence we
utter, which is silly.
=====
** *** ***** ******* ***********
M. E. Smith
mesmith@rocketmail.com
http://members.home.net/mesmith/
** *** ***** ******* ***********
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:29 MST