Re: Expressiveness


Aidan Kehoe wrote:
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.

Please note that I was not arguing against the belief that all
languages are equally expressive. I was just exploring the foundation
of the belief and wondering why it is frequently expressed so
dogmatically.

<snip>

--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair

.

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