| Title: | The Joy of Lex |
| Notice: | A Notes File even your grammar could love |
| Moderator: | THEBAY::SYSTEM |
| Created: | Fri Feb 28 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Mon Jun 02 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1192 |
| Total number of notes: | 42769 |
The attached note is most out-of-place in Soapbox. Be that as it may, for
the life of me I can't remember where recently I read something about some
people who actually speak (or try to speak) a form of English (called
"E-prime") that has no verb "to be."
--Simon
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Note 385.0 No "To Be" About It 6 replies
ACESMK::CHELSEA "Mostly harmless." 15 lines 20-MAR-1992 17:12
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The Ayn Rand discussion has turned to the use of language, and it
reminded me of something a friend mentioned a while back.
Seems a group of philosophers got together and decided that the verb
"to be" stifles our language. Apparently they felt that people fall
into a thoughtless pattern of language, with an inordinate number of
sentences following the form <subject> <be> <equivalence>. People do
not take full advantage of the richness of language, particularly
verbs. Also, this habit has a philosophical flaw, something about
artificially constraining <subject> within the equivalences.
For the philosophically inclined, "What do you think of all this?"
For the not-so philosophically inclined, "Do you think you could manage
if we struck the verb 'to be' from the language?" Try it and see.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 951.1 | CFSCTC::SMITH | Tom Smith CTC2-2/D10 dtn 287-3293 | Sat Mar 21 1992 09:29 | 6 | |
NPR conducted an interview with one of the proponents (an author, no
doubt) about a month ago. As you might expect, he did not use any form
of the offending verb. One might view it as an interesting exercise,
but leading to some peculiar conversational detours.
-Tom
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| 951.2 | JIT081::DIAMOND | bad wiring. That was probably it. Very bad. | Sun Mar 22 1992 18:30 | 3 | |
I glad I didn't have anything to do with it. I wouldn't caught dead
talking that way. "To or not to, that the question." Does anyone
here think that that Hamlet?
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| 951.3 | SSDEVO::EGGERS | Anybody can fly with an engine. | Sun Mar 22 1992 18:34 | 3 | |
I wonder if "To exist or not to exist..." is within the rules.
Whoops. ...violates the rules.
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| 951.4 | KAOFS::S_BROOK | Mon Mar 23 1992 07:15 | 3 | ||
To exist or not to exist; that question has merit. Stuart | |||||
| 951.5 | PENUTS::NOBLE | This space for rent | Mon Mar 23 1992 07:29 | 12 | |
The Atlantic carried an interesting piece on E-prime a couple of
months ago. Naturally, the author wrote it in E-prime, but you could
easily have missed that, were you not expecting it. E-prime may have
no application beyond an academic exercise, but it does help in a number
of ways to prevent constructions that obscure the fact that the writer
has little or nothing to say.
Interestingly, I noticed since when reading Consumer Reports that I
had difficulty finding any uses of "to be". The quality of writing
in CR always impressed me with its clarity; now I think I know why.
...Robert
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| 951.6 | existing | USCTR1::JDUNN | j0^~~^ | Tue Aug 11 1992 13:09 | 1 |
I guess we'd lose being and nothingness. | |||||