Re: Expressiveness


Ar an t-ochtú lá de mí Márta, scríobh Joachim Pense:

[...] So seen in the large, the cases of losing and gaining
expressiveness add up. And this results in the (dogmatic?) statement,
that the expressiveness of a language is a constant, (and indeed that all
"proper" languages are equally expressive). But I am not convinced that
all those expressiveness changes really add up to zero.

The thing is, on the level António (not Seán!) is arguing about he is
certainly right; for example, you’ve just defined „editieren“ in English,
when English didn’t have a single verb for that, and with your definition,
you’ve demonstrated that English is as expressive as German for this
concept.

However, that level is not the only one worth taking into consideration. For
example, I could take up nuclear physics, write a textbook in Irish, and
give an extensive glossary explaining all the terms that I’ve calqued from
Russian or English, as appropriate. Now, after my publishing this textbook,
there would exist the possibility of studying and working in Nuclear Physics
in Irish; but that doesn’t mean that the Irish of today is as suited to this
field as is Russian or English.

[...] And if you can express the same concepts in two languages, but it
becomes ridiculously long-winded in one of them, are they still equally
expressive?

I think they’re probably equally expressive, but you need to admit another
value to your system, that of suitability for this problem domain or
concept.

--
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And God was a
bug-eyed, hexagonal smurf with a head of electrified hair; and God said:
“Si, mi chiamano Mimi...”
.

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