Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

Is it true Korean script was DESIGNED and not just chaotically evolved?
 
Consider the 3 constructs:
1.His job was to separate X-grains from Y-grains with tweezers.
2.His job was to separate diamonds from pebbles with great care.
3.   An  essential role of the ESRB is to identify risks with a systemic
  dimension  and  prevent  or  mitigate their impact on the financial
  system  within  the  EU.  
 
Apparently the "with" in 1 & 2 is 'associated/modifies' the verb
'separate', whereas in 3 it modifies the noun 'risks'.
So the structure is completly different.

And if by chance you reasonably start on the wrong route, you
need to roll-back when you find that your interpretation makes no
sense.  Even worse, an interpretation different from the writer's
intention may well make sense - be grammatically correct.

This problem is analagous to the problem of top-posting:  it
doesn't allow the knowledge to evolve in presentation sequence;
i.e. from top to bottom.  The reader needs to refer to 'forward'
material to understand the current content.

Is it possible to eliminate 'forward references' ?
A reason to eliminate 'forward references', would be the ability to
eliminate the need to roll-back.
Rolling-back is wasteful, because it means discarding  structures
which have consumed energy to construct.

Just because the language evolved naturally via chaos, is no good
reason to accept the resulting flaws.  Aviation english, on which
the safety of peoples's lives depends, has long used limited syntax.

Law people too, have a constrained language: never say "it", always
specify the actual noun. Since I can't see why "prior to" is better
than "before", I suspect that much legal jargon has no rational basis.

Q. what work has been done on designing a language [like computer
languages are DESIGNED] to avoid the above mentioned problems ?

I imagine a system which could build an ample sentence for a Spanish
or Chinese speaker to understand:
" If you want to, you can deposit [leave on trust with me], half the
price, and I will order your prefered colour [hat] from the factory,
and you can collect the item in 10 days, by paying the balance".

Perhaps it's more efficient to parse fruity-english to simple-english,
and autotranslate that to simple-chinese, and have people translate
that to fruity-chinese is they want to. Rather than have people waste
decades learning fruity-english or fruity-chinese and be dependant
on the [expensive to educate] few who know both languages to a
fruity level.  Telecommunication protocols use such a method.