The
English language minus the "is of
identity". Using English without using the "to be"
verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been). Using E-Prime, you could restate the phrase "Bob is black" as "Bob appears black to me". Based on the idea that language directly affects thought,
Alfred Korzybski discussed removing the "is of identity" in 1933 in
Science and Sanity, and in 1949 D. David Bourland, Jr. proposed the same, actually naming it "E-Prime". A person could employ E-Prime to aid in removing
racist thoughts ("Bob seems like a nigger to me"). Many
scientists and
physicists use E-prime in their
writing, helping to make their findings easier to convey. For example, "The
photon is a wave" morphs into "The
photon behaves like a wave under certain circumstances, and as a
particle under others." I find E-Prime very helpful in
debate as it can help to associate the perceiver and
hir perceptions and
judgements with what they seem to
perceive.
I attempted to compose this write-up in E-prime.
Check out http://www.general-semantics.org/ for more info.