Is English language grammar fundamentally flawed? [on hold]
The sentence "Where is the food cooked?" can mean two different questions:
- Where does the food get cooked?
- Where is the food that is cooked?
I think the fundamental problem of the grammar is that in the question form we place "is" next to the word "where" and the actual place of "is" in the sentence gets lost.
In mathematical expressions and in some natural languages we place a variable or a question word instead of the unknown value.
For example in the mathematical expression "5+7=12", if we don't know the value 7 we put x there and write "5+x=12".
In some natural languages like Turkish the question form of a sentence has the similar form and there is no such ambiguity:
- "The food is cooked where?"
- "The food cooked is where?"
With the mathematical form and in those natural languages that I mention we can ask questions with more than one unknowns like "y+x=12":
"What is cooked where?" (2 unknowns)
"What is get what where?" (3 unknowns)
And for some sentences it's hard to construct a question in English while in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the 16th President of US." It's hard to question the ordinal number of Lincoln. But in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the how many'th President of US?"
So I think that there is a weakness in English grammar in use.
Can these kinds of scientifically spotted problems of naturally developed systems like natural languages be solved in time by setting an engineered target state and crawling slowly there with governments' support by deprecating some features and introducing new features like developing computer programming languages?
grammar
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Peter Shor , Robusto, Spencer, Jason Bassford, phenry 2 days ago
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
|
show 15 more comments
The sentence "Where is the food cooked?" can mean two different questions:
- Where does the food get cooked?
- Where is the food that is cooked?
I think the fundamental problem of the grammar is that in the question form we place "is" next to the word "where" and the actual place of "is" in the sentence gets lost.
In mathematical expressions and in some natural languages we place a variable or a question word instead of the unknown value.
For example in the mathematical expression "5+7=12", if we don't know the value 7 we put x there and write "5+x=12".
In some natural languages like Turkish the question form of a sentence has the similar form and there is no such ambiguity:
- "The food is cooked where?"
- "The food cooked is where?"
With the mathematical form and in those natural languages that I mention we can ask questions with more than one unknowns like "y+x=12":
"What is cooked where?" (2 unknowns)
"What is get what where?" (3 unknowns)
And for some sentences it's hard to construct a question in English while in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the 16th President of US." It's hard to question the ordinal number of Lincoln. But in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the how many'th President of US?"
So I think that there is a weakness in English grammar in use.
Can these kinds of scientifically spotted problems of naturally developed systems like natural languages be solved in time by setting an engineered target state and crawling slowly there with governments' support by deprecating some features and introducing new features like developing computer programming languages?
grammar
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Peter Shor , Robusto, Spencer, Jason Bassford, phenry 2 days ago
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
7
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
5
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
4
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
3
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
2
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
|
show 15 more comments
The sentence "Where is the food cooked?" can mean two different questions:
- Where does the food get cooked?
- Where is the food that is cooked?
I think the fundamental problem of the grammar is that in the question form we place "is" next to the word "where" and the actual place of "is" in the sentence gets lost.
In mathematical expressions and in some natural languages we place a variable or a question word instead of the unknown value.
For example in the mathematical expression "5+7=12", if we don't know the value 7 we put x there and write "5+x=12".
In some natural languages like Turkish the question form of a sentence has the similar form and there is no such ambiguity:
- "The food is cooked where?"
- "The food cooked is where?"
With the mathematical form and in those natural languages that I mention we can ask questions with more than one unknowns like "y+x=12":
"What is cooked where?" (2 unknowns)
"What is get what where?" (3 unknowns)
And for some sentences it's hard to construct a question in English while in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the 16th President of US." It's hard to question the ordinal number of Lincoln. But in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the how many'th President of US?"
So I think that there is a weakness in English grammar in use.
Can these kinds of scientifically spotted problems of naturally developed systems like natural languages be solved in time by setting an engineered target state and crawling slowly there with governments' support by deprecating some features and introducing new features like developing computer programming languages?
grammar
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
The sentence "Where is the food cooked?" can mean two different questions:
- Where does the food get cooked?
- Where is the food that is cooked?
I think the fundamental problem of the grammar is that in the question form we place "is" next to the word "where" and the actual place of "is" in the sentence gets lost.
In mathematical expressions and in some natural languages we place a variable or a question word instead of the unknown value.
For example in the mathematical expression "5+7=12", if we don't know the value 7 we put x there and write "5+x=12".
In some natural languages like Turkish the question form of a sentence has the similar form and there is no such ambiguity:
- "The food is cooked where?"
- "The food cooked is where?"
With the mathematical form and in those natural languages that I mention we can ask questions with more than one unknowns like "y+x=12":
"What is cooked where?" (2 unknowns)
"What is get what where?" (3 unknowns)
And for some sentences it's hard to construct a question in English while in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the 16th President of US." It's hard to question the ordinal number of Lincoln. But in the mathematical form it's quite easy:
"Lincoln is the how many'th President of US?"
So I think that there is a weakness in English grammar in use.
Can these kinds of scientifically spotted problems of naturally developed systems like natural languages be solved in time by setting an engineered target state and crawling slowly there with governments' support by deprecating some features and introducing new features like developing computer programming languages?
grammar
grammar
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
edited 2 days ago
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
asked 2 days ago
jack40
21
21
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
New contributor
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
jack40 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Peter Shor , Robusto, Spencer, Jason Bassford, phenry 2 days ago
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Peter Shor , Robusto, Spencer, Jason Bassford, phenry 2 days ago
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
7
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
5
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
4
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
3
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
2
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
|
show 15 more comments
7
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
5
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
4
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
3
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
2
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
7
7
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
5
5
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
4
4
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
3
3
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
2
2
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
|
show 15 more comments
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
Thankfully, English is not algebra and, thankfully, algebra is not English.
Language is the communication of concept, of thought process, of emotion, of poetic expression, of human relationship and of many other things. It is not algebra.
And we (I say we as meaning myself and a long line of ancestors stretching back to at least the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century) have developed a better language than you think we have.
Where is the food cooked ?
Where is the cooked food ?
. . . mean entirely different things to a native speaker. The first uses the past participle in a verbal way and asks where is the food being cooked. The second uses the same past participle in an adjectival way and asks where is the food which has been cooked.
Which is a very efficient and a very versatile use of language. I think it is really clever, myself.
No elected body organised this and no elected body can change it, if English speakers like it the way it is. We will just ignore them if they tell us differently.
And, by the way, if algebra is perfect, what exactly is the square root of -1 ?
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
add a comment |
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
Thankfully, English is not algebra and, thankfully, algebra is not English.
Language is the communication of concept, of thought process, of emotion, of poetic expression, of human relationship and of many other things. It is not algebra.
And we (I say we as meaning myself and a long line of ancestors stretching back to at least the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century) have developed a better language than you think we have.
Where is the food cooked ?
Where is the cooked food ?
. . . mean entirely different things to a native speaker. The first uses the past participle in a verbal way and asks where is the food being cooked. The second uses the same past participle in an adjectival way and asks where is the food which has been cooked.
Which is a very efficient and a very versatile use of language. I think it is really clever, myself.
No elected body organised this and no elected body can change it, if English speakers like it the way it is. We will just ignore them if they tell us differently.
And, by the way, if algebra is perfect, what exactly is the square root of -1 ?
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
add a comment |
Thankfully, English is not algebra and, thankfully, algebra is not English.
Language is the communication of concept, of thought process, of emotion, of poetic expression, of human relationship and of many other things. It is not algebra.
And we (I say we as meaning myself and a long line of ancestors stretching back to at least the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century) have developed a better language than you think we have.
Where is the food cooked ?
Where is the cooked food ?
. . . mean entirely different things to a native speaker. The first uses the past participle in a verbal way and asks where is the food being cooked. The second uses the same past participle in an adjectival way and asks where is the food which has been cooked.
Which is a very efficient and a very versatile use of language. I think it is really clever, myself.
No elected body organised this and no elected body can change it, if English speakers like it the way it is. We will just ignore them if they tell us differently.
And, by the way, if algebra is perfect, what exactly is the square root of -1 ?
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
add a comment |
Thankfully, English is not algebra and, thankfully, algebra is not English.
Language is the communication of concept, of thought process, of emotion, of poetic expression, of human relationship and of many other things. It is not algebra.
And we (I say we as meaning myself and a long line of ancestors stretching back to at least the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century) have developed a better language than you think we have.
Where is the food cooked ?
Where is the cooked food ?
. . . mean entirely different things to a native speaker. The first uses the past participle in a verbal way and asks where is the food being cooked. The second uses the same past participle in an adjectival way and asks where is the food which has been cooked.
Which is a very efficient and a very versatile use of language. I think it is really clever, myself.
No elected body organised this and no elected body can change it, if English speakers like it the way it is. We will just ignore them if they tell us differently.
And, by the way, if algebra is perfect, what exactly is the square root of -1 ?
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
Thankfully, English is not algebra and, thankfully, algebra is not English.
Language is the communication of concept, of thought process, of emotion, of poetic expression, of human relationship and of many other things. It is not algebra.
And we (I say we as meaning myself and a long line of ancestors stretching back to at least the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century) have developed a better language than you think we have.
Where is the food cooked ?
Where is the cooked food ?
. . . mean entirely different things to a native speaker. The first uses the past participle in a verbal way and asks where is the food being cooked. The second uses the same past participle in an adjectival way and asks where is the food which has been cooked.
Which is a very efficient and a very versatile use of language. I think it is really clever, myself.
No elected body organised this and no elected body can change it, if English speakers like it the way it is. We will just ignore them if they tell us differently.
And, by the way, if algebra is perfect, what exactly is the square root of -1 ?
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
answered 2 days ago
Nigel J
16.8k94381
16.8k94381
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
add a comment |
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
1
1
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
i?
– oerkelens
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
-1 has two square roots, i and - i. More generally, any polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients has n roots, counting multiplicity. But as there are better examples of ambiguity in English, there are better examples of imperfection in algebra: it is not possible to find a formula (using radicals) for the roots of arbitrary polynomial equations of degree 5 and higher, even though the solutions exist.
– Matt Samuel
2 days ago
add a comment |
7
I don't believe that the sentence you are talking about is a good example of ambiguity. There are better ones. For your second interpretation, I would ask "Where's the cooked food?"
– Mari-Lou A
2 days ago
5
It's very rare that we place an adjective like cooked after a noun like food.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago
4
@jack40 No, setting engineers loose upon a natural language, regardless of government support, has never been known to effect any significant change in the grammatical system of a naturally evolving language. You can’t control how people speak. Language is not maths, and things that would be problematic in maths are not problematic in natural languages because that’s not how languages works. None of the things you mention pose a problem to English speakers – possibly for Sapir-Whorf–related reasons, possibly not.
– Janus Bahs Jacquet
2 days ago
3
Actually, generations of people, native speakers and others, have learned a form of English that was never spoken by anyone, while being told it was "the correct English". This English included moronic rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. And yet, those engineered rules did not make it into the actual English as it was, and still is, spoken as a natural language. It just leads to questions on this site from people who are still taught those artificial rules while noticing that native speakers don't follow them.
– oerkelens
2 days ago
2
@jack40: That's a really big change to English, then ... Maybe you should just propose that we all start speaking Esperanto; it's just as likely to happen.
– Peter Shor
2 days ago