From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Wed Jul 07 1999 - 18:04:20 MDT
> What do you think about the is of gerund, as in "he is walking"?
> How about the is of passivity? "The door was closed"?
>
> I've used e-prime for a while myself, but it seems a bit of an
> unnecessary hassle in at least the first case.
> Thoughts?
Not only are some uses of "be" perfectly clear and precise,
but it's possible to be as murky and deceptive in E-prime
as it is in plain English. It's an interesting observation
that most uses of "be" in English obscure more than enlighten,
and I often use that fact to tighten my prose by searching
for them. But that's all it is--an interesting observation.
To elevate that to the status of a new language, or to rely
on a gimmick in place of real analysis, or to mangle prose
to avoid "be" without good reason are all counterproductive.
ObLojbanPlug: Can't let a good language thread go by without
a plug for my own pet subject: <http://www.lojban.org>.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:25 MST