Thursday, January 09, 2014

This Is Heinlein Territory

     The created -- well, chopped and channeled from English, more like -- language "E-Prime," which builds on the interesting notions of of Alfred Korzybski, dodges faulty or misleading usage of the various forms of "to be"/"is."

     Korzybski would be the fellow who explained to Heinlein that "the map is not the territory" and that humans are, perhaps uniquely, time-binding animals.  Startin' to sound familiar?  Thought so!  

     One does have to wonder if the Wikipedia entry has been looked over lately by any General Semantics types; the sentence, "This* was developed into the language "E-Prime" by D. David Bourland, Jr. 15 years after his death," has me suspecting otherwise.  Either that or he's a zombie.
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* "This" being the notion that one ought to be aware of and avoid sloppy or misleading usage of "is."

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