Re: way-OT: regularity of german v. english [was: Re: OT - Programming Languages w/o English Syntax]
On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 02:03:56PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > But the "less formal process", i.e., intuitive mapping without know-
> > > ing what adjectives, adverbs, participles, etc are is less efficient
> > > than having formal knowledge (even if that formal knowledge does not
> > > consist of drawing diagrams).
> >
> > dude, that "less formal process" is the innate human linguistic
> > mechanism. no arguing with that one. plenty of people understand
> > sentences just fine every day without ever stopping to consider why --
> > and much more efficiently, as anyone who's ever been in a syntax class
> > will tell you!
>
> Sure, but reading anything other than short prose becomes difficult,
> and prone to misunderstanding.
Ever tried to read Michel Focault?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22michel+foucault%22&spell=1
He's the only writer I've read who wrote sentences too complex for me to
parse and understand. Every sentence is literally about a five-way
compound predicate with about three dependant clauses, each one
consisting of about a five-way compound adjective, and each paragraph is
about five sentences. Everything he says has about 45 concepts in it
:-)
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