For a while, I tried using E’ (E-Prime), which doesn’t have forms of to-be. The above examples can be rendered in E’ like this:
“The sky looks blue.” (already E’)
“Wikipedia describes the sky as blue.”
“I heard rumors about a blue sky.”
“I recall memories of blue skies.”
“When I did the math, the sky came out as blue.”
After using this for a while, I got some better understanding of what “to be” means. It is either expressing common knowledge or proposing something to be common knowledge.
There are lots of language that use a “to-be” copula far less frequently than English. I don’t know that it actually affects people’s ontologies. It would be evidence in favor of Sapir-Worf if it did.
Weak Sapir Whorf is probably true though. I don’t mean in a trivial sense that it has a negligible effect. I think the effect is small but likely measureable. Mainly thru making some social effects more noticeable because easier expressible.
For a while, I tried using E’ (E-Prime), which doesn’t have forms of to-be. The above examples can be rendered in E’ like this:
“The sky looks blue.” (already E’)
“Wikipedia describes the sky as blue.”
“I heard rumors about a blue sky.”
“I recall memories of blue skies.”
“When I did the math, the sky came out as blue.”
After using this for a while, I got some better understanding of what “to be” means. It is either expressing common knowledge or proposing something to be common knowledge.
There are lots of language that use a “to-be” copula far less frequently than English. I don’t know that it actually affects people’s ontologies. It would be evidence in favor of Sapir-Worf if it did.
Weak Sapir Whorf is probably true though. I don’t mean in a trivial sense that it has a negligible effect. I think the effect is small but likely measureable. Mainly thru making some social effects more noticeable because easier expressible.