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Originally Posted by Nodrog
Or if a 'standardised' version of English was created to aid international communication, with a lot of the current grammatical idiosyncracies 'fixed' or removed? What about if we all reverted to E-Prime?
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I can't see how you could remove gender from the language without making it more ambiguous which would seem to be an unnatural progression.
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Originally Posted by Nodrog
Id argue that the richness of vocabulary in a language such as French or English plays a large part in increasing its complexity compared to something like Esperanto or Orwell's New Speak. Having to choose between 10 or so words that have almost-identical-but-slightly-different meanings, where the choice slightly affects the meaning of the setence you use it within, adds a significant layer of complexity over a language where one word would be applicable in all related situations. Every new word introduced into the language slightly changes the meaning of existing words (assuming you dont completely reject structural linguistics). Introducing another symbol for addition into maths wouldnt change the meaning of "+", but introducing a new word into English that had a meaning similar to the word 'fear' would siightly affect the meaning of 'frightened'/'terrified'/'fearful'/etc. Id personally say this added significantly to the language's complexity.
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Introducing a new word doesn't change the grammar though. If I come up with a new name for a shade of red, it doesn't alter the meaning of the word 'red' itself since my new name is just a subset of it. If I say
My new car is crimson
as opposed to
My new car is red
then it seems obvious that the first sentence is more specific/'exact' than the second, but it is structurally no more complex.
Though I think I'm taking 'language' too much on the grammar/structure-centric side of things than the 'medium of expression' side.
ps Where the hell does 'maths' come in the Chomsky hierarchy? Is it even expressible as a language? I've asked around at uni before but people just 'ummed' and 'ahhed'.